JOHN GREIG RANGERS LEGEND
Rangers hero Greig reveals the good, the bad and the ugly of five decades with Ibrox giants
I still get letters from fans who have never been back since that day
JOHN GREIG ON THE EFFECTS OF IBROX DISASTER
GREATNESS is rarely neatly packaged.
It comes in so many shapes and sizes and can straddle decades. It doesn’t have to be confined to one period in time.
John Greig’s is a greatness that refuses to fit in a box.
His is a story that extended beyond the boundaries of a football pitch and influenced wider Scottish society as it tried to deal with the most horrific of tragedies.
Greig was a giant in the ’60s, captaining Scotland to that never-tobe-forgotten win at Wembley in 1967 two years after scoring the last-minute piledriver that felled Italy in a World Cup qualifier at Hampden.
But he became more than just a footballer in the ’70s. The manner in which he dealt with the agonies of the Ibrox Disaster during that decade set him apart and even now, at 77, he remains part of the fabric of a club he first joined in 1959.
He admits the events of January 2, 1971, shaped his life and on every anniversary of the darkest day in Rangers’ history he lays a wreath at the foot of his own statue outside the Bill Struth Stand and adjacent to the names of the 66 fans who went to an Old Firm match and never came home.
Greig was the Rangers captain and took it upon himself to organise his team-mates – young men trying to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy – in visiting the families of the bereaved. And in attending so many funerals in the weeks that followed.
“The disaster will never leave me,” he admits. “Never a day goes by that it doesn’t go through my mind.
“I still get letters from guys who have never been back to Ibrox for a game since that day. I have taken some of them around the stadium for them to see what it is like now.
“The new stadium is, in fact, a testament to those who died. In the trophy room there is a beautiful picture of the old stadium up on the wall. For me it is one of the most important things in that room and I make a point of showing it to the people who go there.
“It’s important, especially for the young fans who have only seen the new stadium, that they know the history of this club, where we came from and why we came from that point.”
Greig wears that history on his sleeve. He is the only Rangers captain to have held aloft a European trophy, that Cup Winners’ Cup triumph coming only 16 months after the club’s darkest hour.
That he faced Moscow Dynamo in Barcelona’s Nou Camp while suffering a stress fracture of the right foot, says everything about the lengths he was willing to go for the cause.
He said: “I had watched the club’s first European final in 1961, played and lost the second [1967] and finally won it in the third. It’s always difficult to single out a career highlight but Barcelona is right up there.
“I should never have played in the final. It was an act of sheer folly.
“Because I was the captain, I get a lot of recognition that the other 10 players deserve. I needed help from all of them in that game because I wasn’t fit.
“The team didn’t get the credit it deserved because of the trouble after the match.
“It was a real blow to have to pick up the trophy in the stadium, instead of out on the pitch in front of tens of thousands of supporters who had paid a lot of money to get to the match.”
The celebrations at Ibrox on the squad’s return went some way to compensating but the ending of Celtic’s nine-in-a-row run in 1975 was just as significant.
That kickstarted a period of dominance that saw Greig captain his side to two Trebles in three seasons – the first of which, in 1976, saw him play every game in every competition – the only Rangers player to do so.
And when they completed the clean sweep again in 1978, Greig became the first player to have won three Trebles, having first done it in 1964.
His is a tale of longevity, no little ability and leadership. His 1978 testimonial at Ibrox, against the Scotland team that was about to go to the World Cup in Argentina, attracted a crowd of 70,000. Rangers won 5-0, which was perhaps a sign of things to come.
Greig didn’t know the Scottish Cup Final in that year, a 2-1 win over Aberdeen would be the last of his 857 appearances. He’d scored on his debut against Airdrie in 1961 and found the net on 120 occasions – not bad for a player who spent his career in defence or midfield.
When the final whistle blew at
Hampden, he’d won five league titles, six Scottish Cups, four League Cups and 44 Scotland caps. Throw in two Scottish Football Writers’ Player of the Year awards, 10 years apart, and an MBE for his services to football and some context can be placed on just how important Greig was to Rangers.
It wasn’t to end there either. He made the transition straight from dressing room to dugout when Jock Wallace quit after the 1978 Cup Final.
And although the general perception of his managerial career was that it didn’t hit the heights, Rangers won both domestic cups in his first season and came within three points – the margin by which Celtic won the league – from the Treble. He also guided them to the quarter-finals of the European Cup, taking the scalps of Juventus and PSV Eindhoven before losing narrowly to Cologne.
Even after leaving Ibrox in 1983, Greig couldn’t cut his ties. He returned in the ’90s to work in the club’s PR department and then formed a close relationship with Dick Advocaat when the Dutchman arrived in 1998.
He was later appointed to the Ibrox board but quit in the wake of Craig Whyte’s arrival in 2011, citing a ‘lack of transparency’ from the new owner.
That such an iconic figure would walk away should have set alarm bells ringing and it was only after Dave King restored stability that Greig returned to the club he loves as honorary president. His re-emergence provided reassurance to Rangers fans that the club was back in the hands of people who cared about it. If Greigy approved King and Co, that was good enough for the Ibrox faithful. That is the reverence with which he is held. It is a respect you don’t earn over a season or two. Greig has earned his over seven decades.
That is what greatness looks like.