My battles with Jock Wallace GORDON SMITH
DAY 1 OF A THREE-PART SERIES
GORDON SMITH has always marched to the beat of his own drum.
Never the footballer who would spend his afternoon in the bookies or the pub, this elegant attacking midfielder with a background in accountancy carved out a successful career on both sides of the border and was one of the few of his era to take his talents abroad, with a spell in Austria.
But the man who would go on to become an agent, pundit and eventually chief executive of the SFA before an ill-fated appointment as Rangers director of football under Craig Whyte in 2011, remembers most fondly his playing days at Ibrox.
And in particular, the single season he had working under Jock Wallace in 1977/78. It may have been only one campaign but Rangers won the Treble, Smith scored the winner in the League Cup Final against Celtic, and established himself as a vital cog in the engine room of a team full of legends who had won the European Cup Winners’ Cup earlier in the decade.
Wallace may have been a fearsome character and at first glance, Smith’s skill set wouldn’t have appeared to be an obvious match for the former jungle fighter. Quick, graceful and not particularly fond of a tackle, the 22-year-old arrived from Kilmarnock as a left-winger but didn’t play there under Wallace.
“Rangers had just signed Davie Cooper, so I asked Jock why he wanted me as well,” Smith said. “He told me he’d first seen me play in the middle of midfield and that’s where he wanted me to play for Rangers. I was delighted – that’s where I wanted to play.
“He also told me that playing for Rangers, and it was the same at Celtic, it wasn’t just about ability. You needed that plus character. You had to be able to deal with playing for the Old Firm because the pressure is there all time. That has never changed.
“Jock had this fearsome reputation and there’s no doubt he could be a right hard man but there were many sides to him. He was great with me and I loved playing for him. As a man-manager he was great. He knew how to get the best out of you. He could also terrify the life out of you. I scored a lot of goals after joining and was playing really well but we were playing St Mirren one day and we were losing 1-0 at half-time.
“We all came in and Jock started having a go. But I was sitting thinking: ‘I’ve done fine,’ and he must have seen a look on my face because the next thing I know he’s hauled me up by the strip and is in my face saying: ‘See when I say we’re not playing well, I’m talking to EVERYBODY in the team.’ That was a message to me that it was a team game and I was part of the team.
“A few months later I was having a bad game and he did the same thing – he grabbed my shirt. I thought: ‘Here we go’, but he said: ‘See if you give me the effort you’ve given me today, you’ll always be in this team.’ So he could pick you up when you were down and could slap you down when he thought you were getting ideas above your station.”
Kilwinning-born Smith scored 27 goals from midfield in that season, fully justifying the £65,000 outlay. And finally allowing him to admit to his
Kilmarnock-daft Ki dad Bill that he’d always alw been a Rangers fan. “My family were we steeped in Killie,” he said. “My grandpa, gr Mattha, played in two Sco Scottish Cup-winning teams for them and the connection was obvious.
“But I became a Rangers fan after becoming bec a big fan of Jim Baxter. Growing Gro up, I loved watching him play. play I loved how elegant he was on the ball and that’s how I wanted to play. But I didn’t tell my dad – he would have been raging. In fact, until the day I signsigned for Rangers he didn’t know.
“I hhad the chance to sign for Rangers, Celtic Celti or Kilmarnock at 14. My dad told mme I was going to Kilmarnock and it wawasn’t because he was a Killie fan. He wwas convinced I would get more of a chachance and if I made it, the bigger clubs would come back in for me. He was absolutelya right. It was great advice.
“I wwas 22 when I signed for Rangers. Jock signed me and when he shook my hhand he said to me: ‘Welcome to the cclub, Gordon. It’s taken a while.’ He told me he’d been trying to buy me twice a year for the last four years. Kilmarnock Kilm hadn’t said a word!”
Smith, Sm Cooper and Bobby Russell were the three new arrivals in the summer of ’77 and he admits gaining the trust and respect of a dressing room containing so many legends was crucial, but difficult.
“The nucleus of the ’72 team was still there,” he said. “John Greig was still playing. Peter McCloy, Sandy Jardine, Colin Jackson, Derek Johnstone, Tommy McLean, Derek Parlane, Alex MacDonald – all great players – and it was daunting walking in there.
“It was a hard place to go. People would say it was banter, but they could be very, very critical, especially of us younger ones. I had to take Davie Cooper aside one day because it was getting him down a bit. I was more used to it, having come from a dressing room full of experienced, hardened pros at Kilmarnock.
“Coop was getting a bit of stick from some of the players and I could see he was taking it seriously. I told him: ‘Coop it’s just banter but you need to give them some back. Talk up your level of ability, tell them to try some of the things you can do then get back to you.’
“Coop was quite a quiet lad but he did it and gradually came out of his shell and started getting involved in the banter and he started to feel a lot better about being in there.
“We won the Treble in that first year. The League Cup Final was a fantastic memory. It was my first cup final and to score the winning goal two minutes from the end of extra time to beat Celtic was a career highlight.
“Jock actually injured me after the game with the hug he gave me. He grabbed me round the neck and I felt something go – it was bloody sore!
“But beating Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup meant everything to me because my grandpa had won it. I look back differently now but at that time, the Scottish Cup was the one I wanted to win most. I wanted to emulate him and even winning the league didn’t mean as much to me that season as the Scottish Cup.”
TOMORROW
We should have beaten Clough to European glory