Bartley and May are aiming for Hampden joy

BETFRED CUP FINAL SPECIAL LIVINGSTON v ST JOHNSTONE

THE passing of the time has sharpened the particular profile of the old-time player. It was all much different back then.

Triumph and defeat are perennial accessories to any career in any age, but Gordon Whitelaw speaks to auld football with every articulated experience, every telling detail.

At 82, he is a veteran of St Johnstone’s League Cup final loss to Celtic in 1969. There is a story in that. But there is, too, a distilled history beyond that October day of the way it was once and is now gone in his reminiscence on the front line of 1960s football.

Whitelaw is, after all, a forward who graduated from the Sunday Post works team, through a stint in the Royal Signal Corps to professional football — at the advanced age of 21.

He is a player who scored in the Bernabeu against Real Madrid but would have traded the success of that 25-yarder against the ultimate failure from a similar distance against Celtic in the 1-0 League Cup final loss.

He was a basketball player who parked his Olympic dream because he could not afford to take unpaid holidays.

He was an intelligent, insightful footballer who walked away from the game in his early thirties to become a butcher.

‘Too many managers get the sack. I opted for business. It worked out for me,’ he says.

His beginnings are typical of a character born in Glasgow in 1938. This was the way it was. ‘We lived 50 yards from Firhill,’ he adds. ‘It was the usual stuff. Playing football in the streets, lampposts for goalposts.

‘We called the trolley cars The Silent Death. It was a wonder they didn’t kill us as we ran around chasing tennis balls.’

He became a linotype operator for the Sunday Post, playing in the works team before National Service illuminated his prowess at sport.

‘I was a good basketball player,’ he says. ‘I played in a junior Scottish Cup final in Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall, which we won. So I played at a good level back then.’

Basketball followed him into the army. ‘I also played football for the Royal Signal Corps at a very good level. Most of the players were professional. I played alongside Bert Slater (Liverpool and Dundee goalkeeper, among other teams). Other players were with English First Division clubs.’

The facilities were excellent, the grounds were good and Whitelaw (right) began to realise a potential that had largely been untapped. Army demob brought him to the attention of Willie Thornton at Partick Thistle in 1961. He was sold after one season. ‘I don’t know why,’ he says. ‘I was second-top goalscorer and thought I was doing well. I had given up a career in newspapers to become full-time with Thistle. I had to be persuaded to go part-time — with Airdrie.’ A substantial signing-on fee helped smooth the path to Broomfield but Whitelaw only found true satisfaction when joining St Johnstone in 1964. ‘It was too tight a pitch for me at Airdrie,’ he continues. ‘I was quick and liked the bigger pitches.’ The move to Perth was to prove a blessing. He was full-time again. He played for two Scotland managers in Bobby Brown and Willie Ormond. ‘Brown had watched me play for the Scotland amateur side at Muirton and remembered me,’ he says. But Ormond was the best. He worked with the players on the training ground and not every manager did

that then. His word was solid. If he told you something, you could believe it,’ says Whitelaw.

Ormond, of course, was to go on to take Scotland to the 1974 World Cup finals in Germany where they were undefeated, although they did not progress from the group stage.

Before that, he oversaw the growth of Whitelaw into a prolific and menacing forward, who scored 75 goals from 225 games.

The Glaswegian became part of a team that reached that League Cup final, only to be denied ultimate glory by a side that was to play in the European Cup final later that season.

‘We were a good side, plenty of goals,’ he declares. ‘We might have been underdogs but no way were we terrified of meeting Celtic in the final. We had beaten them not long before. I wasn’t nervous. I was fine against teams we weren’t expect to beat. It was the teams we were expected to beat that worried me.’

There was, though, a glitch to Whitelaw’s plans for victory. ‘I wasn’t picked,’ he reveals.

‘I scored two goals the week before and hit a hat-trick against Queen’s Park at Hampden in an earlier round. I was disappointed but Ormond had John Connolly back after injury and he was the star of the side. Wee Henry (Hall) wasn’t going to be dropped either. So I was 12th man.’

Whitelaw, however, came on after 25 minutes for the injured Bill ‘Buck’ McCarry. He had his shot at glory.

THERE is a pause for reflection. Two shots from 25 yards. Two different outcomes. One went in. The other was saved. ‘I wish it had been the other way round,’ he admits.

Whitlelaw says he has told the story of the goal against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu ‘a million times’. He is persuaded to tell it for the 1,000,001st time.

‘Henry Hall says it gets further back every time I describe it,’ he says. ‘But it was from outside the area. Put us one up but we could have had a penalty immediately. I was cut down in the box but the referee wasn’t going to give that against Real at home in a friendly.’

The match was preparation for Real’s match against Chelsea in the 1971 European Cup Winners’ Cup final. It was just a memory, albeit it a warm one for Whitelaw.

It has its edge, however. ‘In the final against Celtic, I had a shot from a similar distance. I hit it just as well but the goalie saved it. If I had my choice, I would have picked that one to go in rather than the goal in Madrid.’

He remembers that day’s disappointment vividly. ‘Celtic scored in the second minute (Bertie Auld) but we had a good chance even before that. We played very well and Celtic keeper John Fallon had to make some fine saves,’ he says.

The Celtic team of that day were stripped of the talent of Tommy Gemmell, dropped by Jock Stein because the full-back had been sent off for Scotland against West Germany in midweek. Jimmy Johnstone, nursing an injury, was 12th man but came on at half-time as the size of the challenge posed by St Johnstone became apparent.

‘At the end of the match, Jock Stein came into our dressing room to praise us. I suppose that is easier to do when you’ve won but fair play to him.’

Stein’s precise words are lost in the fog of time and dejection for Whitelaw. ‘I can’t say I was really listening,’ he admits. ‘I was tired.’

There was a feeling of a chance lost and, perhaps, an opportunity never to be repeated. Both were true for Whitelaw. He left Saints four years later without another final appearance.

He is, though, philosophical about this and much else. His other conspicuous tilt at sporting glory was also stymied.

He explains: ‘I played basketball for a good team in Maryhill and that set me up for basketball in the army. I played in trials for the 1960 Olympics in Rome for the GB team. I was picked as one of the final 12 for a pre-Olympic qualifying tournament in Bologna.’ He never went. ‘I was getting married and booked my holiday for my honeymoon,’ he says. ‘I asked the newspaper if I could have more time off and they agreed but it was to be with no wages. I couldn’t afford that as a young man about to be married. So I didn’t go.’

He was similarly clear-eyed when it came to deciding his future post-football. ‘My family had butchers’ shops and I had that fallback,’ he says. ‘It seemed a better route to me than going into management where you can get sacked at any moment.’

Asda had the biggest say in his next move. ‘They announced a store in Bearsden where we had a shop and I knew the way it was going,’ he says. He switched to the Post Office next door.

‘It was a significant investment but it brought a good return. I’m happy I did it.’

Happy, too, to have played a part in St Johnstone history.