A LIFE LESS ORDINARY
Rangers legend Ronnie McKinnon reflects on his glory days at Ibrox and playing with and against some of the global superstars of his era
HE played against Pele and Gerd Muller, won every honour in the Scottish game and became an unofficial World Champion.
Slim Jim was both a team-mate and a roguish off-field companion. He lost one European final and had another snatched away in the cruellest possible fashion.
He experienced disaster at Berwick but found redemption and enduring love on the sun-kissed coast of South Africa.
Almost 50 years since his tornado of a career finally blew itself out, Ronnie McKinnon reflects on it all from the calm of his home on the Isle of Lewis.
‘It’s always been really nice and peaceful up here,’ the 80-year-old tells Sportsmail. ‘Even more so since lockdown. Anyway, I think I deserve that much...’
The Outer Hebrides have been home to the Rangers legend and his South African wife Elizabeth since the turn of the century.
Although he and his twin brother Donnie, the former Partick Thistle defender, are sons of Govan, Lewis was the backdrop to much of their upbringing.
‘My mother was born in a place called Carloway on the island,’ he explained. ‘Donnie and I were born in Govan but we first went up there during the Blitz as it was safe. You’d no chance of getting shot. After the war we used to go up there on our holidays.’
His physical stature belied his toughness and natural fit as a centre-half. Although 6ft tall, he weighed little more than 150lbs. It was his blistering pace and aerial ability that saw him graduate from junior football with Benburb and Dunipace to Rangers.
In 1961, the Ibrox side were on course for the title and an ill-fated meeting with Fiorentina in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup final. Populated by names such as Eric Caldow, Bobby Shearer and Ralph Brand, only exceptional talents could become part of manager Scot Symon’s plans.
‘To play for Rangers you had to have ability,’ McKinnon added. ‘If you played one great game then a couple of bad ones, you might never play again. You had to prove it to yourself, the fans and the manager that you had what it takes to be in the team — and then you always had to prove that you deserved to stay in it.’
He did just that. His knack of anticipating the play combined with his athleticism quickly cemented his place in that fabled side of the early 1960s. He won two Scottish league championships, four Scottish Cups and three League Cups, with the Treble being claimed in 1963-64.
Asked for his personal favourite and the reply is disarmingly blunt: ‘Just winning. Any time.’
Given the calibre of company he kept, his contribution to Rangers’ success in that period was overlooked by some but not those he played with. John Greig, who broke into the side that same season, described McKinnon as the best centre-half he ever took a field with. Greig would become Rangers’ record appearance maker, but no player pulled on the Light Blues’ jersey more times in the 1960s than McKinnon.
‘I’m not one for statistics but I’m glad of that one,’ he added. ‘I loved playing for Rangers. I gave my all whenever I was on the park. To play well and win a game was some feeling.’
Victories in those days usually came with a distinctive swagger. ‘At times you felt as if there was only one player in the team,’ McKinnon said. ‘Jim Baxter was world class. Nothing bothered him. He stood up to everything.
‘He would come up to us before we went out to play and say, “Look, if you are ever in trouble just give me the ball, no matter where I am and I’ll sort it out for you”. As a team-mate that was wonderful, you just passed it to
McKINNON ON BAXTER He was world class, he got the ball and things began to happen
him knowing things would then start to happen. He went dancing away with all his skills. It felt like you didn’t see it for half an hour.
‘He was a very confident person. Off the field he wasn’t too good. He’d one or two drawbacks….’
This was Scottish football’s golden age. In 1967, the year that Celtic won the European Cup, Rangers narrowly lost out to Bayern Munich — Muller, Franz Beckenbauer et al — in the Cup-Winners’ Cup final. Dundee won the title in 1962 and Kilmarnock in 1965. The roll call of Anglos included Denis Law and Billy Bremner.
Scotland defeated Italy 1-0 in the qualifiers for the 1966 World Cup thanks to Greig’s goal at Hampden but still failed to get there. To this day, the sense of an opportunity lost lingers.
‘That’s the million dollar question,’ added McKinnon. ‘If we’d had Baxter and Greig playing with all of those other guys, it would have been brilliant. We would certainly have had a great chance of really doing something if we’d qualified.’
The consolation was quite considerable. In June 1966, some 75,000 crammed into Hampden to watch holders Brazil finalise their preparations for the tournament.
Celtic’s Stevie Chalmers fired the Scots into a first-minute lead with Servilio levelling soon after for a side which included Gerson, Jairzinho and Pele.
‘That was one of my favourite games,’ McKinnon reflected of a 1-1 draw. ‘Brazil played the kind of football I loved. To play against Pele and all these guys was an experience money couldn’t buy.
‘In every single position, they were first class. But Pele was just electric. He could bring the ball down with either shoulder, he could head it, do anything he wanted with his feet. He was the complete footballer.
‘But he had to get the ball in order to play, so we made it our job to ensure he didn’t get it.’
Hungary and Portugal had done their homework too and ensured that the South Americans didn’t even make it out of the group stage in England. When Scotland travelled to Wembley the following April, it was for a meeting with the new world champions. What transpired under the twin towers would cast doubt over the ownership of the title.
A 3-2 win came courtesy of Law, Bobby Lennox and Jim McCalliog goals with Baxter, by then of Sunderland, providing the crowning moment with an audacious keepie-uppie.
‘Has there ever been a better performance from a Scotland team?’ McKinnon asked. ‘I think not.’
That triumph in Dark Blue would have been matched by one in his club colours had fate not cruelly intervened as McKinnon broke his le gina 50/50 challenge during Rangers’ match away to Sporting Lisbon en route to the 1972 Cup-Winners’ Cup triumph. He would receive a medal but it was scant consolation for having his time at Ibrox cut short. ‘It was horrible,’ he recalled. ‘With any leg break, it all depends where it is. To try and get back in the team was a hell of a job. It knocked me back to square one. ‘It all just felt so unrewarding. It showed that you are in the hands of the Gods. But I got a good offer to play for Durban United in South Africa and I loved it out there.’ It proved to be a cathartic experience. With his new wife in tow, he returned to Scotland a year later with an eventual move to Lewis the long-term plan. Bestowed the title of Ambassador of the Lewis and Harris Rangers Supporters’ Club before his bags were even unpacked, annual pilgrimages to Ibrox were made before the pandemic took hold. ‘The Rangers fans up here took to me right away, which got my life up here off to a good start,’ Mckinnon (left) added. If an armchair view of this season has been far from ideal, watching his beloved team win the title in indomitable style has recalled days of yore. ‘Steven Gerrard has said the real star is the team and I know what he meant by that,’ McKinnon added. The wise man of Lewis has spoken and his approval of the restorative job being done at Ibrox is perhaps the ultimate endorsement.
McKINNON ON PELE He was just electric, he was the complete footballer