Free-scoring player who was part of finest Rangers team of post-war era
THE “Old Warhorse” has gone. Jimmy Millar, who has died aged 87, was a key member of the great Rangers team of the early 1960s that is regarded by many to this day as the finest Ibrox side of the postwar era. He also gave sterling service to Dunfermline Athletic and Dundee United.
Edinburgh-born Millar was training as an apprentice plumber while turning out firstly for Milton House then for Edinburgh juvenile side Merchiston Thistle, with whom he won his first winner’s medal in the Stevenson Cup. He quickly attracted the attention of senior clubs and Dunfermline manager Bobby Ancell persuaded him to sign at the age of just 17.
He was 18 when he made his debut, scoring in a 2-1 win over Hamilton Accies on January 31, 1953. Playing at insideforward, he would go on to net 17 goals in 19 league appearances in the old Scottish League B Division.
Equally at home at either wing-half or inside-forward, Millar’s form at
Dunfermline (22 goals in 43 appearances) soon attracted interest from other clubs and, on January 12, 1955, after turning down Preston, he was transferred to Rangers for a fee of £5,500. He made his debut in a 2-1 league defeat to Dundee at Dens Park.
No sooner had Millar landed at Ibrox than he was called up for national service with the Royal Scots Fusiliers in Cyprus, which seriously restricted his availability for Scot Symon’s team. Indeed, it would be season 1957-58 before he fully established himself in the team, making 39 first-team appearances (including a first taste of European competitive football in the European Cup) that yielded nine goals.
He was still being utilised principally as an inside-forward or wing-half at this stage, but a close-season visit to Copenhagen in May 1959 would change the course of his career when, in the opening fixture of a two-game tour, he came on at half-time as a substitute for Max Murray and scored all the goals in a 4-0 win.
Three months later, when the opening game of the season saw Rangers play Hibernian at Easter Road, he again lined up at centre alongside inside-forwards Ian
Mcmillan and Ralph Brand. Rangers ran riot, winning 6-1, with Brand scoring four goals and Millar one.
Jimmy would make the centre-forward position his own during the next five years, with only injury keeping him out. A deadly striking partnership was formed with Brand that would endure for that period, the “M & B” duo becoming the stuff of legend, with the two friends travelling together to Glasgow from Edinburgh by train accompanied later by John Greig.
Rangers enjoyed mixed fortune during season 1959-60, finishing third in the league behind Hearts and Kilmarnock, but at the same time reaching the European Cup semi-finals before losing to Eintracht Frankfurt.
Millar was a key figure in that European campaign, netting three goals in seven appearances. He also finished as the club’s leading scorer, with 40 goals in 54 games.
Jim Baxter’s arrival in the summer of 1960 transformed the Ibrox side into a superbly gifted outfit. For all that Baxter was unquestionably a player of the highest class, for many observers of those halcyon days their favourite member of the team was Millar, a player who led the line well and was greatly appreciated by team-mates.
Standing just 5’8” and stockily built, Millar was an intelligent, courageous player who possessed exceptional positional sense and was a prolific scorer in the air, underlined by his four headed goals in the Scottish Cup finals of 1960 and 1964, the latter triumph securing the much sought-after Triple Crown.
In 12 years at Ibrox, Millar played 353 games, scoring 178 goals, winning three league championships, five Scottish Cups and three League Cups. His Scottish Cup goals tally of 30 is a post-war record, matched in later years by Derek Johnstone.
In European campaigns, 31 appearances yielded 12 goals and included runs to the 1960-61 Cup Winners’ Cup final (where his absence from the first leg through injury arguably cost Rangers the trophy). He revelled in Old Firm games, netting 13 goals in total. In the traditional Ne’erday fixture he twice scored the only goal of the game, in 1960 and 1964, at Celtic Park, while arguably his finest game in Light Blue came at Ibrox one year earlier in a 4-0 win.