Rangers footballer known for ill-fated appearance in league cup final against Celtic

Born: March 13, 1930;

Died: February 17, 2019

JOHN Cheyne Valentine, who has died aged 88, was a footballer with Queen's Park, Rangers and St Johnstone who was best known for his ill-fated appearance at the 1957 League Cup Final, where he played centre-half for the team which lost 7–1 to Celtic.

Valentine was born in Buckie, where he shone academically and on the football field, wearing the famous green and white hoops of Buckie Thistle. Perhaps his footballing prowess – he was playing in the Highland League as a teenager - might have taken him south, but in actual fact it was his brains, as he left Buckie for Glasgow University.

In the dear green place, he gravitated towards Hampden Park, making his Queen's Park debut in 1953. His timing in this respect was first-class, as the Hampden squad of that period was full of Olympians and others who would become Hampden legends – Frank Crampsey, the great Bob's goalkeeping brother, Bert Cromar, Charlie Church, Junior Omand, Bert McCann, who would go on to win full Scotland honours with Motherwell and Max Murray, who would leave to score goals for fun for Rangers.

Over a century and more of games for Queen's and for the Scotland Amateur team, Valentine would prove himself a classy centre-half, dominant in defence, but, also able to play a bit of football.

The Rangers team of the time was changing. Suspension had cost them Willie Woodburn, the outstanding pivot of his generation. To replace him, they switched club and national captain George Young to centre-half, but Young was in his mid-thirties, such a move would be short-term, and when Young indicated he would be hanging up his boots at the end of the 1956-57 season, and with the younger Ibrox centre-halves judged to not be up to the task of replacing a legend, the search was on for his successor.

Rangers did what they had done so often in the past - they raided Hampden and, as soon as his amateur contract expired, in April, 1957, they signed Valentine, whom they had identified as perhaps the Scottish player best equipped to replace Young.

He made his Rangers debut, against Queen's Park, at Hampden, in the Glasgow Merchants Charity Cup final, on the 6th May, 1957, Rangers winning 2-0.

Valentine wore the number five shirt for the opening game of the following season, a

6-0 win over St Mirren in the League Cup, but, as the League Cup campaign went on and the league began, all was not well.

He was in and out of the team, and first impressions were not good. After his first Old Firm match, a 2-0 Ibrox win in the Glasgow Cup, on 19 August, in his Herald report, Cyril Horne wrote: “Valentine, rarely resembling the great Queen's Park centre-half, was a vulnerable point in Rangers' defence.”

By the time of his third Old Firm game, the League Cup Final, on 19 October, Celtic centre forward Billy McPhail, who had enjoyed some success in their clashes when he was with Clyde and Valentine with Queen's Park, was convinced, he had Valentine's measure, and he told his team mates as much.

What followed is written into Scottish football folklore – Celtic won 7-1: “Oh Hampden in the Sun” as the game has become known, with McPhail doing irreparable damage to his immediate opponent's reputation with a hat-trick.

Horne's match report was damming: “Valentine, not long ago a commanding figure on this same ground, was a forlorn, bewitched centre-half on Saturday, repeatedly beaten in the air and on the ground in a variety of ways, and the disintegration of the Rangers' defence undoubtedly stemmed from McPhail's mastery. But, it did not begin with Valentine's plight.”

Perhaps only Frank Haffey – vilified for his role in England's 9-3 Wembley win in 1961 – has been as individually criticised as was Valentine after that final.

His Rangers career was effectively over that day, after a mere 11 games. He was banished to the Reserves and, at the first opportunity, he was moved on, to St Johnstone. The damage of 7-1 could never be undone, but he enjoyed some success at Muirton, captaining the Perth Saints to the Second Division title in 1960, before, aged just 30, hanging up his boots, after fewer than 200 senior games.

He had a good university degree from Glasgow, and was beginning to make his way in the civil service, in the department of agriculture, where he rose through the ranks to become a principal land officer, based in Inverness, and being well spoken of, both in the service and in the wider agricultural community.

Eric Caldow, another player scarred by 7-1,whose post-football career saw him working in the agricultural field, was a welcome visitor in Inverness and, some 40 years on, when they met by chance in an Inverness supermarket, Valentine and George Niven, Rangers' goalkeeper that day, finally took the chance to get the game out of their systems over a coffee.

Valentine married twice. He was pre-deceased by Mairi, before marrying Maureen, who survives him along with son Sandy, daughter-in-law Donna and grandchildren Christen and James.

John Valentine accomplished much in his professional life and there was much more to him than to simply be the scapegoat for an embarrassing Rangers defeat. Perhaps he was, in truth, a Queen's Park man, a gentleman who played the game for the game's sake.

MATT VALLANCE