Alan Gilzean
Scotland internationalist, Dundee hero, Tottenham Hotspur’s ‘King of White Hart Lane’
played for three months in South Africa, then hung up his boots. He was not a football fanatic and realised during three traumatic months as manager of non-league Stevenage Athletic that he had had his fill of the game.
Gillie then left the game, took a desk job with a transport firm in Enfield and, for more than three decades, he forgot all about football, although it had not forgotten him.
Where had he gone? Nobody knew. There were rumours of him living as a down-and-out in Weston-super-mare. The truth was more prosaic. The transport firm had become part of a bigger group and Gilzean, his marriage to childhood sweetheart now failing, transferred to their Avonmouth office, and bought a house in Weston.
He worked until 65, then retired, but, with the clamour to find Gilzean, journalist James Morgan, a Spurs fan, although based in Scotland, decided to find him. The result was his best-selling book: The Search For Alan Gilzean. Old team mate, goalkeeper Pat Jennings, got back in touch, and, after 40 years away, Gillie made an emotional return to Tottenham and a hero’s welcome home.
He was persuaded to join the match day hospitality team, Phil Beal picking him up at Weston in the morning, ferrying him to and from Tottenham, depositing him back at around midnight. This quiet, shy man even got to like the job.
Greaves was delighted to see him back, asking: “Where the hell were you?”
“Keeping away from you,” was the response.
Then, just a few weeks ago, came the shattering announcement of his brain tumour, followed, all too soon, by the news of his passing.
Alan Gilzean, who is survived by Irene, their sons Ian – a footballer like his Dad, and Kevin and their grand-children, has been lauded in his native Perthshire, in Dundee and in North London, but also, wherever Scotsmen meet to talk football.
He is rightly in the Dundee and Tottenham Halls of Fame, and in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. He was that good, a brilliant goal scorer, an all-round great player, but, perhaps more importantly, a very fine man indeed. MATTHEW VALLANCE