The phone rings. It’s Walter. He’s looking to wind up Sir Alex...

FIRHILL on Saturday and the legends of 1971 troop through the room as my phone trills. The voice is husky but unmistakable. ‘Walter Smith here. I wonder if you could do me a favour?’

The answer is swiftly in the affirmative. The task is straightforward, too. Walter wants a copy of an article I wrote on the international tour of 1967 where his friend Sir Alex Ferguson played for Scotland on what was then regarded as a B tour.

Sir Alex has subsequently been awarded full caps for his appearances. Walter wants to remind his mate of one incident.

The article contained a particular anecdote. Sir Alex said in it: ‘I was Scotland manager in 1986 when we went to Israel to play a friendly. The courier on the coach asked me if I had ever visited his country before. I said I played for Scotland against Israel in 1967. He said: “Ah, the B international”.

‘Walter (assistant manager) exploded in laughter. I was never allowed to forget that comment.’

It seems that Walter intended to make sure he never would, full caps or not. A copy of the article was to be sent to Manchester, post haste.

It was typical of Walter. The greatest testimony of love between two Glasgow men of a certain age is the extent to which they can slag each other mercilessly. The tougher the banter, the bigger the love. Sir Alex and Walter went in, studs up.

Sir Alex, in true Govan fashion, had got his retaliation in first when awarded the caps at the Israel match earlier this month. He phoned his former assistant, announcing himself thus: ‘It’s four caps Fergie here.’

This speaks to the distilled truth about Walter Smith. He scaled the heights in football but he never strayed far from the ‘sparky’ from Carmyle. He had values that were instantly recognisable. These were honed in a working-class home and sharpened by the reality that he had to work for a living. His trade as an electrician was left behind but never his adherence to a code of morals.

These could be easily summarised. He respected you until you disrespected him. He never avoided confrontation, but in later years sought to avoid it without compromising his integrity. He was true in good times and in the bad.

He was tough. The Walter Stare has frozen generations of journalists. I always suspected the makers of Doctor Who lifted it for the creation of the Daleks and the theory of instant extermination.

Walter, too, was always a Rangers man. He despised bigotry and lived his life in refutation of its baleful presence.

His father, Jack, supported Cambuslang Rangers. His maternal grandfather, Jack Rogerson, who came to stay with the Smiths on the death of his wife, initiated the young Walter in the way of Rangers.

‘My granda would tell us stories of Waddell, Thornton and the rest. It was a big part of my upbringing. He engendered something that is still with me to this day,’ he once said.

His football education, of course, was first undertaken at other clubs, notably Dundee United. He was self-deprecatory about his playing abilities. ‘I became a coach young because I couldn’t play,’ he would say.

But his outstanding coaching career owed much more to an innate intelligence and a humility that he carried within throughout life. He was of the generation that venerated education, particularly as it had been denied them in a formal sense. He was a quick study. Smith would listen and learn. Always learn.

He thus gained the respect of players who were more talented than him. They knew they were listening to someone who knew the score. He was physically intimidating in his prime but he ruled by inducing respect rather than inflicting fear, though he never shied away from the latter.

Players loved him. Most have a Smith story about how he influenced them on the field and in life. Most would tell it without undue prompting.

He was extraordinary company. A coffee would stretch to hours as he talked about football, books and music. He would listen then, too. He always wanted a recommendation of what to read next, who to listen to now.

He was passionate about all of this and more but he was at his best when one simply nattered about life, family and the madness of Glasgow. He could deliver a one-liner with devastating effect. He was good company.

This generosity of spirit made him a highly respected figure among journalists who are never easily impressed. There were inevitable fall-outs but they were almost always followed by fall-ins.

He knew the importance of football but was never seduced or subsumed by it. Walter knew there were bigger matters.

He worked with three geniuses of the Scottish game: Jim McLean, Alex Ferguson and Jock Stein. Yet he remained in their background, never pushing himself to the fore, never clamouring for recognition.

Indeed, he would dismiss his contributions to their triumphs. He would claim, under pressure, that ‘he did all right’.

Yet the dictionary tells me that a genius is one who exhibits exceptional intellectual ability or creative power. Experience tells me this applies snugly to Walter Smith.

I would never have told him this to his face, of course. That Walter Stare would have petrified me.

The tougher the banter, the bigger the love between the two