The tragedy of Ralph Milne’s untimely death at 54 has not been allowed to dilute the rich memory of this footballer among those of us who feasted on Scottish football in the 1980s.

For fans of Dundee United – a particularly privileged group from that period in British football – the past 24 hours have been a time for some unstinting Milne nostalgia and, more than that, a huge feeling of gratitude.

This isn’t the place to itemise where ‘Ralphie’ went wrong in his life. Everybody knows the truth of that, and the ruin it brought upon him. His self-destruction has been painful, but what Milne once had and offered to us was close to magical for quite a few football seasons.

I watched again today the footage of that moment in the Olimpico in Rome on April 24 1984, when Ralphie blazed his shot from 10 yards high over the Roma bar with the goal gaping in that European Cup semi-final.

I couldn’t help smiling now, though at the time I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday our reaction: football fans all over Scotland who were willing Dundee United to do the impossible were crestfallen at that miss. United’s fans, their heads in their hands, sank back into their sofas as the inevitable capitulation to Roma ensued.

This random memory testifies to the heights that Milne, Jim McLean and Dundee United reached during those heady days. Eleven months earlier Milne’s exquisite chip at Dens Park had helped seal United’s 1982-83 title triumph, wherein he cemented himself as a cult-hero among the United support.

That afternoon in Italy, Ralph presumably saw the fleshpots of Rome in front of him, and the blood rushed to his head. Trying to utterly leather the ball with his left foot (his best), he skied his shot atrociously.

It is all forgiven now. Milne, in fact, earned forgiveness in bucketloads.

He was a pin-up among Arabs, in part because he was so “mercurial”. This is a word that can accommodate sin as much as greatness, so it might best be appropriated for Ralph Milne. He drove the tyrant McLean to distraction: arguably one of his finest and funniest feats.

Milne the footballer, to coin a suitable phrase, was terrific. He had skill and pace to burn, and when he married the two he was found to be unstoppable. He had maybe five seasons of intermittent brilliance in the livid tangerine of Dundee United, when teams across Scotland and Europe found him impossible to thwart.

The Herald:

His famous goal at Dens on May 14 1983 absolutely captures him. In those seven or eight seconds from first receiving Paul Sturrock’s pass, Milne required poise and balance and derring-do in order to advance with the ball on Dundee’s goal before delivering that exquisite finish.

In that moment we have captured for posterity the brilliance of Ralph Milne. In its skill and execution it was a goal that would have graced any league in Europe.

Milne’s waywardness inevitably caused the puritanical McLean’s tinpot-tyranny to snap. He left Tannadice still aged just 25 to go south to play for Charlton Athletic in 1987. Short of lining him up against a wall and shooting him – a reprimand even McLean fell short of – there seemed no other scenario for him at Dundee United.

Much has been made of Milne’s swansong in his career: an abrupt two-year stint at Manchester United starting in 1989 when Alex Ferguson signed him from Bristol City for £175,000.

In England, Ralphie’s arrival at Old Trafford caused bemusement. David Lacey, writing in The Guardian, called it “the most mystifying Manchester United signing in many a long year”. To this day Red Devils fans refer to Milne as Ferguson’s worst-ever signing.

It was a view mired in some ignorance. For one thing, Ferguson, that renowned dunce of football, had seen Milne in all his glory while he had been the manager of Aberdeen, and knew as well as anyone what he could do on his day.

For another, Milne had actually resurrected his career at Bristol City, recapturing his flying days of old and scoring goals into the bargain. In a brief four-month period, too, Manchester United actually revived with his arrival amid those early, tortured Ferguson years at the club.

Manchester United fans are perfectly within their rights to disparage Milne. They saw him and can form a healthy opinion. But Ferguson had seen Milne in the form of his life in Scottish football, which remains the body of evidence cherished by all Dundee United fans.

I saw Milne play many times for Dundee United, sometimes in the flesh, but repeatedly on TV’s Sportscene or Scotsport in those days. Those of us who were not fans of Dundee United, I think, simply took him for granted: this skilful, maverick figure who could terrorise opponents. We knew Milne was good, but scarcely gave him a second thought.

Not so if you were an Arab. Ralph Milne was idolised, and with very good reason. He was a lightning-rod in a Dundee United team which achieved magnificently.