Exhibition shines new light on life of footballing legend Billy Bremner

The life of Scottish football legend Billy Bremner is celebrated in a new online exhibition.

Bremner was born in 1942, in the area of Stirling known as Raploch, and went on to become regarded as one of the greatest midfielders of all time.

He signed for Leeds United as a teenager and later captained the team as well as playing for Scotland.

Working with pupils from his former school, St Modan’s High, and the local Raploch community, researchers at Stirling University uncovered a swathe of stories connected to Bremner.

This new material is now being shared in an online exhibition through the university website.

It includes a collection of anecdotes from former school friends, neighbours and team-mates, as well as photos, match reports and school records.

The online archive also shows a new “heritage trail”, created in partnership with St Modan’s pupils, which details sites significant to Bremner’s life in Raploch.

Sports heritage expert Professor Richard Haynes, of the university, said: “We were overwhelmed with the amount of material we collected for this project.

“We met close friends of Billy’s, who had grown up with him and remained life-long friends, who gave us new insight into his personality and character.

“Billy was a star of the 1960s and ’70s and so it was really important to capture these local stories now – as his peers enter later life, these memories were in danger of being lost for good.”

As part of the project, local pupils interviewed lifelong Leeds fans about what Bremner meant to them, and comedy TV writer Philip Differ, also a former St Modan’s pupil, recalled Bremner’s visit to the school in the 1970s.

“The school still has a photo of that event displayed outside the head teacher’s office,” Prof Haynes added.

A statue of Bremner, who died in 1997, was erected outside Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium in 1999 but no permanent memorial exists in Scotland to mark his achievements.

Legend Billy Bremner.