The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day four: The countdown continues with numbers 67-56

“The Goalie”, as he became known, attained a level of celebrity hitherto unheard of among football’s last line of defence. He was, in every sense, a larger than life character whose sustained sporting performance and, in particular, his retention of astounding shot-stopping reflexes, defied his general approach to life, which could most kindly be described as flamboyant, embroidered with more than a hint of scandal.

Hugely influential in Rangers’ completion of their nine-in-a-row title-winning run, he also won three Scottish Cup and two League Cup-winners’ medals and was part of a Challenge Cup final-winning side during a season with Queen of the South.

Dual qualified, having been born in England but identifying with the native Scotland of his father, ex-Hibs goalkeeper Lewis, his international career might never have happened had he played for England Under-21s after being selected in their squad.

That said, he might have won many more than 43 caps had his career not coincided with that of Jim Leighton, who was perhaps a bit easier for a manager to deal with and represented Scotland more than twice as often. Ironically, having come close to committing himself to England at Scotland’s national game, he was also to represent Scotland at England’s national game as a fine cricketing all-rounder.

Read more: The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day three: Numbers 79-68

The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day two: The countdown continues with numbers 91-80​

The 100 greatest Scottish sporting icons day one: The countdown begins

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

There is every possibility that Tommy Burns’ name would have figured in this list had it not been for Goram. Following the sadly premature death of the Celtic favourite – who won a dozen honours as a player and was hugely respected on the other side of Glasgow – it was poignant to reflect that he had once said: “If anyone gets round to doing my tombstone it will have to read: ‘Andy Goram broke my heart.’”

As Brendan Rodgers and his men pursue an unbeaten campaign, 19 points clear at the mid-season break, it is extraordinary to be reminded that Celtic suffered a solitary defeat to Rangers in the entire 1995/96 Scottish Premier League season yet missed out on the title by four points because that one defeat was suffered at the hands of Rangers, the other three matches were draws and, in four attempts, a free-flowing Celtic team scored just once. Rangers won the double that season, deep into their nine-in-a-row run, also beating Celtic in the Scottish Cup semi-final.

66

REAL MADRID V EINTRACHT FRANKFURT AT HAMPDEN

A football match? Yes, but this was no ordinary game of football. When the 1960 European Cup final was played in Glasgow it meant that Hampden Park, a stadium of legend and record-breaking crowds, would be hosting arguably the greatest club side of all time in Real Madrid.

Not that their German opponents were any slouches, having crushed the Scottish champions Rangers 12-4 on aggregate in the semi-finals, including a 6-3 win at Ibrox.

However, Eintracht were no match for the Spanish giants on that May evening, watched by more than 127,000, who marvelled at the skill and ability of Gento, Di Stefano – who netted a hat-trick – and the magnificent Ferenc Puskas, who scored four times as Real Madrid stormed to a 7-3 win and a fifth successive European Cup.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

The TV pictures were monochrome, but Real Madrid, in that famous all-white kit, dazzled TV audiences and the huge crowd at Hampden alike with their speed of thought, passing, running, and above all else, their prowess in front of goal.

It was a game that captured the imagination, to such an extent that probably 10 times the actual attendance would claim to have been there, just to see the brilliant Real Madrid in action, and many great coaches would subsequently identify that match as a key moment in their football education.

As a venue, Hampden was the perfect stage, although it was less impressive by the time it staged the 1976 final, with Bayern Munich beating St Etienne to complete a hat-trick of European Cups.

By 2002, Hampden had been redeveloped and held just 50,000, unrecognisable from the massive bowl that once stood on the site, but Real Madrid put on another show that year when beating German opposition again in Bayer Leverkusen, with the winner from Zinedine Zidane regarded as the greatest individual goal in the long history of the tournament.

65

GORDON BROWN

Brown was part of the team who beat England twice in the space of a week in 1971, earning him the attention of the British & Irish Lions selectors who took him to New Zealand where they achieved  what remains their only Test series win against the All Blacks.

By 1974 he was the obvious choice to partner the captain in the second row as Willie John McBride’s “Invincibles” also did something unique by going through a tour unbeaten, including a Test series success against the Springboks.

Brown defied the odds after a Draconian SRU ban had ruled him out of the 1977 Five Nations Championship, to get fit enough, under the supervision of Rangers manager Jock Wallace, to go on a third Lions tour, albeit a losing cause this time in New Zealand.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

One of the most popular characters in Scottish rugby history, “Broon frae Troon” was the son of Jock, who represented Scotland as a goalkeeper, and younger brother of the equally maverick Peter, who was his international captain for a spell, including the 1971 wins over England, but also his sometime rival for a place in the team.

My last memories of Broonie are of just before he died, tragically prematurely in 2001. The previous summer, while covering a Scotland tour to New Zealand, I had returned from a bar in Gisborne to a note pinned on the motel room door reading simply “Call Gordon Brown” with a phone number attached.

While he was someone I had interviewed a few times and got along well with, it seemed an extremely unlikely message to receive. However,  I recognised the number as an Ayr one and, knowing he was very ill, worked out the time difference and proceeded to call him.

Briskly dismissing my protestations that I did not do public speaking, he asked me to undertake an engagement that he could not attend due to his ill health, before firmly insisting that I was the only man who could do it and that he would be sending over a signed copy of a book I had interviewed him for, that would be auctioned that night. I would not have done it for anyone else, but it went all right in the end and the reward came at a dinner at Dalmahoy that winter.

Broon was guest of honour, but arrived late and while still a vast, cheery figure, he was so poorly he had to be helped into the room. Midway through the meal, however, I felt a tug on my jacket, initially looked round, then down, to see Gordon on all fours. “I just wanted to thank you for doing that dinner for me, I didn’t want to let them down," he said. Unsure whether he was on his knees because of his illness, or merely for entertainment value, I tried to find the words to reply as he said: “I’ll see you in the bar afterwards,” before turning to crawl back to his top table seat. I never saw him again.

When the dinner finished, he was engulfed in the affection of former team-mates who had far more right to his time than a journalist who only got to know him in his latter years and he died soon after. However, the effort he made to acknowledge a wee favour and the way he went about it were typical of the man.

A truly great rugby player, he is remembered as much for his sometimes almost overpowering, but always hugely entertaining, presence.

64

FINLAY CALDER

Best known for a long time in rugby circles as the less successful twin brother of Jim – a regular in the Scotland back row for several years who scored the try which won, in 1984, Scotland’s first Grand Slam for 59 years – Calder emerged as an international player in his own right among a sextet of newcomers in 1986 which also included the Hastings brothers and David Sole as Scotland shared the Five Nations Championship title with France.

Along with them he was a key member of the side which claimed another Grand Slam in 1990, while he was persuaded out of retirement to help Scotland reach their only World Cup semi-final in 1991. In between times he led the national side, in turn earning the captaincy of the 1989 British & Irish Lions who won a fiercely fought Test series in Australia.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

It is extraordinary that the Calder twins made a combined 61 Scotland appearances, between them played in two of only three Grand Slams that the national side has won and both made Test appearances for the Lions, yet never played in the same international team together.

Reflecting on that, Fin once told me how the psychological key to his own success had been finding the resolve to get the better of Jim in one of the sprints with which they finished their training runs together after he accused him of always having been a quitter.

I have no doubt that Jim knew exactly what sort of response he might provoke. In that instance sibling rivalry served Scotland and the Lions well.

63

PAUL LAWRIE

The last Scot to win a major golf championship, doing so just down the coast from his native Aberdeen at Carnoustie in 1999, Lawrie played some of the best golf ever seen over the closing stretch of what is regarded as the toughest of all Open Championship venues, to claim the Claret Jug.

It was the unexpected pinnacle of what might otherwise have been considered a solid professional career, but it should be noted that Lawrie’s sustained excellence was such that he achieved what no other has before or since by following the appearance in the 1999 Ryder Cup, which was part of his reward for that Open win, by returning to the European team after a 13-year absence to play a key role in what became known as the Miracle of Medinah, inspirationally claiming the biggest of his team’s wins in the singles series which turned around a match which had been dominated by the home team.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Lawrie is worthy of his place on this list for his golf alone, but the way he has used the platform his Open win earned him for the greater good of the development of the game, to the benefit of youngsters, particularly in the north-east, but all over Scotland and beyond, has only added to his status as one of Scottish golf’s all-time greats.

62

DARIO FRANCHITTI

Talented as you might be as a sportsman, there are certain things that are a real test of your ability and toughness; like winning a Test series against the All Blacks in New Zealand, or winning a world title fight against a Mexican in Mexico City, or getting an lbw call against an Indian batsman in Mumbai.

Beating anyone in their own back yard at their game sets you apart from the rest. Which is why Dario Franchitti is so well thought of in the USA, for the Scot not only beat the best America had to offer in IndyCar racing, but did it on their patch and also beat the best the rest of the world had to offer as well.

Having started out in single-seaters, the Bathgate-born Franchitti moved to drive for Mercedes in the German Touring Car series in the mid-90s, knocking back the job as test driver for McLaren so he could commit fully to the CART series in the USA, before making a highly successful – and lucrative – move into IndyCar racing.

Franchitti won the famous Indianapolis 500 three times and the overall championship on four occasions. However, in 2013 at the Grand Prix of Houston, the Scot suffered serious and career-ending injuries after impacting a catch fence following a collision with Takuma Sato.

So ended the race career of a driver known to millions in the USA, but a man who could pass hundreds of his countrymen in Glasgow or Edinburgh unrecognised.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

In the mid-90s I was very fortunate to make the trip to Germany to join the Mercedes race operations for the day.

I saw their DTM entourage at work and watched Dario immediately impress his new employers. Now, if it took balls to drive one of those C-Class Mercs, with 500 horsepower, sequential gears, ABS brakes, active aerodynamics and even a full ground-effect setting, it took a bigger set to tell McLaren boss Ron Dennis he wasn’t interested in a F1 test contract.

For that alone Franchetti deserved to make a success of his American adventure and he did it, thanks to dedication, talent and pace along with no small measure of good fortune given the crash he survived in 2013. And, he remained a nice guy throughout.

61

SAM TORRANCE

Twice runner-up in its Order of Merit in the mid-1980s, Torrance is on the top-10 list of all-time European Tour tournament winners, but will always be best remembered for his contribution to the reinvigoration of the Ryder Cup as a key member of the teams who transformed the event from a one-sided golf exhibition to a genuine sporting contest.

His joyous but dignified reaction on sinking the winning putt in 1985 which claimed Europe’s first win – Great Britain had won the biennial match three times, but not since 1957 – is one of the most replayed in the history of the sport and after eight appearances as a player, between 1981 and 1995, he became a key figure in the backroom staff, captaining the team to victory at The Belfry in 2002 after the hiatus caused by the postponement of the scheduled 2001 match due to the 9/11 attacks.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

A wise-cracking character who has been popular on the circuit since turning professional as a teenager in 1972, earning his first significant win that year at the Radici Open in Italy, Torrance has something in common with Andy Murray in that it was his great good fortune to be blessed with natural sporting talent but also to have a parent who was an outstanding coach, his father Bob earning respect across the world as a blunt-speaking guru.

60

SHIRLEY ROBERTSON

Growing up in Menstrie, slap bang in the middle of Scotland, just about as landlocked as it’s possible to be in this island nation, Shirley Robertson was taught to sail on Loch Ard in the Trossachs on a boat her father built for her from a kit in the garage of their home in the little Clackmannanshire town.

Taking up the sport at the age of seven, that she wanted, from early on, to make the trip to Loch Ard Sailing Club every weekend was an early indicator of the determination that would see her gradually develop her skills until focusing her efforts on Olympic success after graduating from Heriot-Watt University in 1990.

Through the nineties she had a string of podium finishes in major regattas and competed at the Olympics in both Barcelona and Atlanta before her major breakthrough in Millennium year when she claimed a gold medal in the solo Europe class.

Four years later she was – along with Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb – part of the trio dubbed ‘three blondes in a boat’ who won the Yngling class, ultimately cruising to victory having achieved it with a race to spare as Robertson became the first British woman to win gold medals at consecutive Olympic Games.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Looking back on how it all began, several years after her gold medal successes, Shirley Robertson explained that: “I wasn’t brilliant at school sport but with sailing it was different. I instantly found something I loved. I was that sort of child that if I found something I really enjoyed I wanted to get better and better at it.”

Many of us think that the vast majority of children are like that. Some are just more fortunate than others in terms of having the parents and teachers who are prepared to make every effort to ensure that they find that something.

59

STEVE HISLOP

It was a competitive sporting career that might never have happened and if he was among those racers who drive or ride as if they have a death wish then that would be understandable, too.

His father Sandy, who had inspired both Hislop and younger brother Garry to take up motorbike racing, died of a heart attack in Hislop’s arms when he was a teenager, and the subsequent death of Garry in a motorbike accident pushed him to the edge of the abyss, but he emerged from a drink-fuelled depression to enter and finish second in a newcomers race at the Manx Grand Prix in 1983, the year after Garry had won it.

Understandably, he was very much his own man with a tendency towards insularity, but he would go on to establish himself among the very best racers in the history of motorcycling, winning 11 Isle of Man TTs, as well as British 250cc and Superbike championships. Hislop died while flying a helicopter in 2003.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

There is a tragic parallel with Hislop’s rally-driving compatriot Colin McRae in that having survived countless hair-raising experiences when taking their machines to the edge of their capabilities, both died while routinely flying helicopters.

The clue to what amounted to the near reckless bravery required to win so many Isle of Man TTs was evident in the choice of sport ‘Hizzy’ pursued.

There cannot have been many lads of the Hislops’ generation who hailed from Hawick but wanted to find something that required more in the way of toughness than Borders rugby, but there was also local tradition in motorbike racing, harking back to the days of Jimmy Guthrie, an Isle of Man TT and Grand Prix champion of the twenties and thirties, who died competing in the 1937 German Grand Prix.

A statue has been erected in Hislop’s honour in the rugby-obsessed town, another stands on the motor cycling Mecca that is the Isle of Man speaks to his status, while a bend on the Oulton Park circuit in Cheshire was renamed in his honour, fitting memorials one and all.

58

BILL MCLAREN

The “Voice of Rugby” was forged from an upbringing in a town that defines itself through the sport, a life-threatening battle with illness which cost him his playing days and a warm, good-humoured manner underpinned by a peerless work ethic.

Having seen service in World War II, he was a good enough flanker to earn a Scotland trial in 1947, but subsequently contracted that illness, surviving only as a result of experimental treatment, but putting his time in recovery to a use that would serve him well as he began to learn what would become his art, by commentating on table tennis matches for hospital radio.

Recruited by BBC radio in 1953, he switched to television six years later and became one of sport’s greatest broadcasters, while also teaching PE to children in his native Hawick.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

There are other Scottish commentators of similar vintage to McLaren who have helped provide the soundtrack to their eras, such as football’s Arthur Montford and Archie Macpherson or golf’s Renton Laidlaw, but none was so fundamental to the promotion of their sport as that of the man frequently cited by All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies, as well as great players across the British Isles, as having played such a role in inspiring their love of a sport.

The only words he ever said that did not have the ring of truth were his oft-quoted wry observation that “a day out of Hawick is a day wasted”, because the sport simply would not be what it is without his evangelistic efforts.

His professionalism was, meanwhile, best demonstrated in his understated reactions to both son-in-law Alan Lawson’s performances for Scotland and former pupil Tony Stanger’s Grand Slam-winning try in 1990.

On a personal note, as The Herald’s chief rugby writer at the time, it was a privilege in his final season at the microphone in 2002, to mark his long association with the paper by conducting a series of interviews with him ahead of each round of Six Nations matches when, in spite of suffering from the early effects of Alzheimer’s Disease, he reminisced with the warmth, wit and wisdom that characterised his career.

57

DANNY MCGRAIN

Part of the Quality Street Gang that also included Kenny Dalglish, George Connelly, Lou Macari and Davie Hay, he first played for Celtic’s first team as a 20-year-old in 1970 and overcame major injuries, including a fractured skull and diabetes, in the course of a 17-year spell during which, after replacing Lisbon Lion Jim Craig as their first- choice right-back, he was an automatic selection throughout.

In the midst of that career in which he played an important part in the last two seasons of Celtic’s nine-in-a-row run, he contributed to seven league title successes, five Scottish Cup wins, two League Cup wins and, in a solitary end-of-career season with Hamilton, helped them win the first division title and promotion to the Premier League.

He played in two World Cups in the course of a nine-year international career, in West Germany in 1974 and Spain 1982, and it would have been three had he not been injured when the 1978 tournament took place in Argentina.

Kevin Ferrie reflections

The career of McGrain, who was voted into the greatest ever Celtic XI by the club’s supporters, coincided directly with the player considered to be Rangers’ greatest full-back, Sandy Jardine, who has a stand named after him at Ibrox.

The pair made exactly 100 Scotland appearances between them, McGrain 62 to Jardine’s 38. Like Dalglish, he was a Rangers fan as a youngster who signed for their greatest rivals and, indeed, like Jock Stein, the club’s first Protestant manager who signed both of them, went on to become one of Celtic’s most revered figures.

56

HIBS' FAMOUS FIVE

Individually they were highly talented players but, collectively, the forward line that became synonymous with the most successful era in Hibs’ history gained a reputation that will last as long as the game of football is played.

The quartet of Gordon Smith, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Willie Ormond were part of the title-winning side in 1948 but Bobby Johnstone’s emergence into the first team at the start of the 1949/50 season completed the unit and they went on to win further titles in the 1950/51 and 51/52 seasons, missing out by just a point in their first campaign together and on goal difference in 1952/53.

Turnbull would also go on to a fine career in management, finally enjoying cup success albeit ironically, given Hibs’ history with the Scottish Cup, he won that trophy as Aberdeen manager in 1970 before returning to Easter Road and steering the club with which is he is most associated to a League Cup triumph in 1971/72 as well as Dryburgh Cup wins in 1971 and ’72.

Ormond, too, went into management and, after taking St Johnstone into Europe for the first time in their history, took over as Scotland manager and guided the national team to the World Cup in West Germany in 1974 where, in spite of going out in the group stages, they were the only team to return home unbeaten, going out in the pool stages after a win over Zaire and draws with Brazil and Yugoslavia.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

A powerful argument can be made that one or more of the Famous Five would be worthy of inclusion on this list in their own right and in particular Smith’s achievement in winning Scottish titles with three different clubs, none of which was one of the Glasgow giants, will never be matched. However, it is as a group that they achieved iconic status and are most fondly remembered.