Nostalgia allows for important landmarks, doesn't it?

 

Older Rangers fans will vividly recall what occurred at Easter Road 40 years ago this week, when Colin Stein flung himself at a Bobby McKean cross to bullet home the header which secured the Ibrox club and Jock Wallace the 1975 league championship.

It was a typical Stein goal from a marauding, all-action striker, whose poaching instincts and physical bravery made him one of Scotland's most feared strikers for a number of seasons.

"I got goals, and I could also run all day back then," Stein recalled. "I had a tremendous stamina in my first time round at Rangers, and at Hibs before then. Some people used to laugh at Rangers going training at Gullane sands but it made us an incredibly fit team. We'd run over the top of opponents in the final 20 minutes."

There was a time when Stein simply could not stop scoring. The first £100,000 player traded between two Scottish clubs when Rangers bought him from Hibs in October 1968, he opened his Rangers career with two hat-tricks and a further two goals in his first three matches. Plus, there was that four-goal haul against Cyprus in a World Cup qualifier at Hampden in 1969, a record that still stands for a Scotland striker.

"I had a chuckle when I read in the paper today that Kenny Miller notched his sixth goal of the campaign for Rangers against Hibs on Sunday," Stein said. "It was a bit different back in my day.

"That being said, back then you certainly got the ammunition. We had wingers in those days - Willie Johnston, Willie Henderson, Tommy McLean - who would get past the defender and throw the ball over. So I got plenty chances. Nowadays a player gets a nose-bleed if he has to go past someone. There are no wingers now, are there?"

At Ibrox over four years Stein was a barnstorming centre-forward whose exciting Rangers career reached a thrilling peak and then a very abrupt end. Having scored the opening goal in Rangers' 1972 European Cup Winners Cup triumph over Moscow Dynamo, Stein would scarcely be at Rangers for a few more months before being flogged to Coventry City.

"In those days if you could understand the brain of Willie Waddell you'd be doing well," he says of his old Rangers manager. "He was a very hard man to talk to. There were some issues behind the scenes between him and me, which led to me leaving Rangers pretty quickly after Barcelona.

"I loved playing for Rangers, but my time was up. Waddell told me I was being sold, and he urged me to go talk to Coventry. In fact, I'm not sure that Rangers' Cup Winners Cup team ever played together again. A lot of us - me, Willie Johnston, Alfie Conn - were sold soon afterwards.

"That being said, I'd have run through a brick wall for Willie Waddell and Jock Wallace. So there was plenty respect there. Also, to be fair, Rangers had Derek Parlane and Derek Johnstone who could play my position, and they both went on to be terrific players for the club.

"I just felt I still had loads to give to Rangers. I was a really fit guy, I could run all day. And I had goals. But they wanted rid of me."

Stein played for three seasons for Coventry in the old English First Division, and finally became the team captain, before a cash crisis at the English club resulted in him returning to Rangers in March 1975. Weeks after "coming home" he crashed in that momentous header at Easter Road on March 29 to secure the point needed to confirm Rangers as league champions with four weeks of the season still to go.

Even then, it led to another dispute with the Ibrox club, and a heartache that lingers with Stein to this day.

"I never did receive a league championship medal that season from Rangers, and it still rankles," he says. "It remains the biggest regret of my career and I'll never get over it. I argued and argued with Jock Wallace about it, but he'd have none of it. We just stopped short of fisticuffs over it.

"I scored the goal that secured us the title that afternoon at Easter Road, but Jock's argument was that you had to play 10 games to get a medal. I played in eight after coming back from Coventry.

"I even offered to pay for a medal myself, and have it engraved, but Jock told me where to go. I remember asking him angrily: 'Do you get a medal? Does Joe Mason [the Rangers first-team coach] get a medal?' Oh, aye, they both got medals all right, but I was denied mine. It's water under the bridge now but it's the one big regret of my career."

Stein didn't last long at Ibrox second time around. After two more seasons in and out the team, he played on loan for Kilmarnock before hanging up his boots at the age of 31.

"I'd really enjoyed my career at Coventry, but I'd had hamstring problems which started to affect me. First time around I had been the fittest guy at Ibrox but when I came back to Rangers in 1975 I was never the 100 per cent fit player I had been before. And I knew it."

Some also claimed Stein had a temper, something that he is now keen to clarify.

"Retaliation was my thing," he says. "Quite a few defenders wanted to put me in my place after I moved for £100,000 from Hibs to Rangers, and quite often I'd retaliate. I probably got seven or eight red cards in my career. But I wasn't as bad as 'Bud' [Willie Johnston]. I once heard him say proudly: 'I played for 22 years and only got sent off once every season.' So I was nothing compared to 'Bud'."