Читать книгу Ally McCoist - Rangers Legend - Alistair Aird - Страница 7

In 1962, the 24th of September fell on a Monday. The players and staff of Rangers Football Club were on their travels, destination Seville, for the second leg of their first-round European Cup-Winners’ Cup tie against the local side. They arrived in the Spanish city in fine fettle, defending a four-goal lead from the first leg at Ibrox and having thrashed Hibernian 5-1 at Easter Road in the Scottish League Championship two days earlier.

This was a Rangers team maturing into one of the club’s greatest-ever sides. Under the astute stewardship of James Scotland Symon, they had reached the last four of the European Champions Cup, the continent’s premier club competition, in the 1959/60 season (where they lost heavily to Eintracht Frankfurt), and had become the first British side to contest the final of a major European tournament when they lost 4-1 on aggregate against Italian cracks Fiorentina in the 1960/61 European Cup-Winners’ Cup.

At that time, Rangers boasted players of the calibre of Jim Baxter, Davie Wilson, John Greig, Ralph Brand and Jimmy Millar, and while they had not won the League Championship in 1961/62 (they were runners-up, finishing three points behind Dundee), they had secured the Cup Double by winning the Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup. The current season, 1962/63, would witness the reclamation of the championship and the retention of the Scottish Cup, but the following season would surpass all of those achievements, as Symon’s men went on to sweep the board in Scotland to complete the domestic Treble for only the second time in the club’s ninety-year history.

Away from football matters, the early autumn of 1962 saw Elvis Presley topping the UK singles chart with his rendition of ‘She’s Not You’, while boxing fans were at fever pitch as they looked forward to the world heavyweight title fight between champion Floyd Patterson and the fearsome Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston on 25 September. Elsewhere in 1962, cinema-goers willing to part with the equivalent of 14p were able to take in the blockbuster movies Dr No, Cape Fear and Lawrence of Arabia, although all the talk in Hollywood was of matters off-screen following the death on 5 August of the iconic actress Marilyn Monroe, who passed away after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

Oblivious to all these goings-on was a new arrival into the world. At Bellshill Royal Infirmary in North Lanarkshire, proud parents Jessie and Neil McCoist announced the birth of their second child, a son they named Alistair Murdoch McCoist. Little did anyone know at the time, particularly the Rangers people in Seville, but the arrival of young Mr McCoist would ultimately prove an extremely significant event in the history of Rangers Football Club. The new addition to the McCoist family shared a birthday with the famous American author F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, who were born on this day in 1896 and 1936 respectively. McCoist’s birthday also coincided with the anniversary of the world’s oldest horse race, with the St Leger Stakes being run at Doncaster for the first time on 24 September 1776, thus providing an early indication that the ‘Sport of Kings’ would play a significant role in the life of the new arrival.

Incidentally, Rangers’ pre-match confidence was somewhat misplaced, as they got an almighty scare in the city famous for its orange crop. The Light Blues lost by two goals to nil in the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan stadium, but still managed to progress to the next round 4-2 on aggregate. The tie was marred by an ugly brawl that unfolded in the closing stages. All twenty-two players were involved in the fracas, prompting the referee to call time on the match before the ninety minutes had elapsed. Elsewhere, in the boxing bout, Liston ruthlessly hammered Patterson, knocking him out inside two rounds to become world heavyweight champion, a crown he would hold until a young upstart named Cassius Clay took it from him some three years later.

The McCoist family were from East Kilbride, the first of Scotland’s ‘new towns’. Prior to the Second World War, the city of Glasgow was overcrowded and poor housing standards were rife, so the Clyde Valley Regional Plan was drawn up in 1946 with the purpose of alleviating the congestion through the building of satellite ‘new towns’. East Kilbride, located approximately ten miles south of Glasgow, had swelled from a small village to a large burgh in 1930, and became one of the sites chosen to handle the overspill. In 1947, it was the first town to be awarded ‘new town’ status and set the benchmark for the others that followed in Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Livingston and Irvine.

McCoist’s parents, Neil and Jessie, set up home in the Calderwood district of the town, one of the largest areas of East Kilbride and one which is famous for being the birthplace of two of the eighteenth century’s medical pioneers, the Hunter brothers, William and John. Both were outstanding anatomists, with John, in particular, credited with innumerable medical advances, and sited at the place of their birth today is the Hunter House Museum.

McCoist’s father worked as a fitter with Weir Pumps of Cathcart, while his mum was a secretary. Ally and his older sister Allison, who completed the family unit, enjoyed an excellent upbringing, with their parents grafting hard to provide a comfortable life for them. ‘My dad did constant night shifts for twenty years to provide for me and my sister,’ said Ally some years later. ‘We [he and Allison] were brought up to appreciate the value of money.’¹

Both parents were also hugely supportive of Ally’s early football career. Neil eventually took over the running of the local boys’ club that McCoist played for, but there was no favouritism where his son was concerned, with young Ally being treated the same as the other players in the team in a bid to ensure that he kept his feet firmly on the ground. Jessie also lent a hand by providing some much-needed sustenance for the aspiring footballers after games and training sessions, and the McCoist residence would often double as a dormitory for the players. After McCoist elected to pursue a career as a professional, Neil and Jessie would also make regular trips to watch their son in action, with Jessie still a regular in the Ibrox stands every other Saturday.

That unstinting parental support was welcome, because it was apparent from an early age that young McCoist had a penchant for the game of football. ‘The Beautiful Game’ was popular in the family, as both his mother and father were avid football followers. Neil followed Rangers and was involved in the running of a local boys’ club team, while Jessie had been an ardent supporter of Hibernian in her younger days. She idolised Gordon Smith, one of the quintet that made up the Edinburgh side’s ‘Famous Five’ forward line that terrorised Scottish defences when Hibernian won the Scottish League Championship three times between 1948 and 1952, and had been a football devotee ever since her teenage years.

In those early years of his life growing up in East Kilbride, seldom was young McCoist seen without a football at his feet. His mum still has his first pair of football boots – ‘They’re so small they look like toys,’² she told Sue Mott in an interview for her son’s testimonial programme in 1994 – and she was sure from an early stage that her boy was destined for greatness. She wasn’t alone either. ‘I admit he looked like a budding star to me, but I might have been biased,’ she said. ‘I knew, though, that he had something special when a gentleman that stayed across our street in East Kilbride told me that when Alistair played with the ball he suddenly looked so much older and more capable than all the other children.’³

It was clear that Ally was a bit special, and he began to look the part too when, at the age of six, he won a competition in the local evening newspaper, the now-defunct pink paper called The Citizen. The first prize was a football strip of his choice, and it came as no surprise when young McCoist plumped for that of his favourite team, Rangers. The royal blue jersey at that time was the one with the famous crew-neck design with the large white RFC crest on the breast, and McCoist used to strut with great pride around the streets of East Kilbride, kicking a ball and sporting his new attire. Although Rangers were the team he followed, McCoist also had a soft spot for the all-conquering Liverpool side of that era who, under the astute leadership of Bill Shankly, would go on to conquer Europe over the course of the next decade.

In addition to enjoying regular kick-arounds in the streets with his friends, McCoist also played football at his primary school, Maxwellton, where the headmaster, a gentleman called Mr Petrie, ran the team and also refereed the matches. One of McCoist’s earliest football memories is of playing for his primary school in a crucial match against rival school, St Kenneth’s. If Maxwellton won the match they would win the league, but any other outcome would mean the trophy going to St Kenneth’s. With the game balanced on a knife-edge at 3-3 and with only a few minutes left on the clock, McCoist thundered in a shot from long range. He and his team-mates watched as it bounced once, twice and then for a third time. The third bounce took the ball out of the reach of the goalkeeper and into the goal, making the score 4-3 to Maxwellton. They were champions … or so they thought.

Amid much back slapping and congratulatory gestures in the dressing room, Mr Petrie came in accompanied by a teacher from St Kenneth’s and a spectator who was claiming that instead of bouncing under the crossbar, McCoist’s effort had in fact bounced over it. The pitch on which the school matches were played did not use goal nets, so confusion reigned before Mr Petrie, in his role as match referee, took the decision that the goal should not have stood and ruled that the final score was 3-3. His decision handed the title to St Kenneth’s, much to the disappointment of his own school, but while his verdict may have annoyed McCoist at the time, he would look back in later life and remark that he found his headmaster’s attitude refreshing, for Mr Petrie had no concern over whether his team won or lost, merely that his boys enjoyed themselves and got a game of football.

In addition to his school-team commitments, McCoist also turned out for a local boys’ club side called Calderwood Star, representing their Under-12 side at the age of nine. Albert England ran the team (McCoist’s father took over a few years later), and he gave McCoist his debut against Villa Star, handing him the number seven jersey and placing him in the outside-right position. It proved a very productive and lucrative debut, as McCoist claimed a hat-trick in a 3-2 win, a treble that earned him the princely sum of fifteen pence since his father had promised to reward him with five pence for every goal he scored. This financial incentive continued throughout his school days; although McCoist later renegotiated the deal to take into account the rate of inflation, earning himself a 100 percent raise to ten pence a goal!

On leaving Maxwellton, McCoist moved on to secondary school at Hunter High in Calderwood, East Kilbride. As a rising star in the game, football played a large part in McCoist’s time at Hunter, with his chemistry teacher, Archie Robertson, having a huge influence on him. Robertson, who had played for and managed Clyde and won five caps for Scotland, took charge of the school football team and nurtured his young protégé through his later school years. He died in January 1978, a few months before McCoist left school, and his passing at the age of forty-eight left his star pupil devastated: he regarded Robertson as one of the key figures to have inspired him to pursue a career in professional football. It was such a shame, therefore, that Robertson never saw McCoist fulfil his early potential and make the grade as a professional before going on to achieve such greatness in a glittering career.

Although he focused the majority of his attention on football, McCoist also tried his hand at other sports during his school days, most notably handball and rugby. He enjoyed swimming too, and the pool was actually where young McCoist obtained the first of what turned out to be a vast array of sporting honours, picking up the bronze medal when he finished third in a school race. He was only six years old, and he maintains to this day that he would have claimed the gold medal had he not been hampered in his pursuit of first place when his water wing fell off, forcing him to alter his course to retrieve it!

In addition to his sporting achievements, McCoist, a highly respected pupil who was both a prefect and school captain at secondary school, also gained some respectable academic qualifications, leaving Hunter with Highers in English and Chemistry and O-Grade passes in Arithmetic, English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, French and Biology. ‘I was lucky my football never put me off my other subjects and I did well at exams,’⁴ he said. Although Ally boasted a decent scholastic record, the brains of the McCoist clan belonged to his sister Allison. She was recognised as being the conscientious student in the family, and would go on to gain a degree in mathematics and computing science. Like her younger brother, she had an aptitude for sport too, and she represented Great Britain at handball.

It was clear, though, that Ally McCoist had that ‘special something’ in the shape of his football ability. By now he had graduated from Calderwood Star to the East Kilbride District side and then on to Fir Park Boys’ Club in Motherwell. At that time Motherwell were managed by former Rangers utility player Roger Hynd and he was keen to tie McCoist to the Lanarkshire club on schoolboy forms. This was not something that interested McCoist, though. ‘I couldn’t then, and still can’t see the benefit of committing yourself to a club with an “S” form,’ he said some years later. ‘It is great for the club … they have the youngster well and truly tied up, but not so good for the player himself. I’ve heard stories of boys who have signed “S” forms and the managers haven’t even bothered to register them with the SFA, they’ve just stuck the completed form away in a drawer somewhere.’⁵

Instead of pledging himself to Motherwell, McCoist pursued other avenues, which included spending time training at Love Street with St Mirren under the watchful eye of their manager, who in those days was none other than Alex Ferguson (now Sir Alex, of course). Although McCoist did well in the trial matches he participated in, scoring in one game against Eastcraigs, he did not do enough to impress Fergie, who felt that McCoist was too small to make it as a footballer. Evidently Ferguson had not yet perfected the knack of spotting talented young players and this was the first of two rebuffs McCoist would suffer at the hands of the future Manchester United manager during his playing career.

Ferguson’s rejection did not discourage the determined youngster, though, and the next step for McCoist was to take up an offer to play in a couple of trial matches with Perth side St Johnstone. At the time, the Saints were struggling in the lower reaches of the Scottish First Division, having deteriorated badly since the early seventies when the club had enjoyed their most successful era. Their standing in the Scottish game bore little consequence to McCoist, though: he was simply on the lookout for the opportunity to showcase his talents in the hope that someone would make him the offer that would help to accomplish his mission to earn a living as a professional footballer.

Unlike his experience with the Paisley Saints, McCoist’s encounter with their Perth equivalents was much more fruitful. The sixteen-year-old made a real impression in the trial matches, prompting manager Alex Stuart to offer him semi-professional terms with the guarantee of regular reserve-team football coupled with opportunities to break into the first team if he made good progress.

McCoist was tempted with the idea of senior football. It was, after all, what he had dreamed about for as long as he could remember, but showing remarkable maturity for his age, and conscious of the massive step he was about to take, he asked the St Johnstone officials if he could take a couple of days to mull things over and discuss the offer with his family before reaching his final decision.

The conclusion drawn from that discussion was that McCoist would sign up at St Johnstone, but then, out of the blue, he received a phone call from a gentleman called George Runciman. Runciman was the scout for McCoist’s boyhood heroes, Glasgow Rangers, and he had watched him play for Hunter High in a Lanarkshire schools cup-tie against St Ambrose of Coatbridge. The match had ended 5-5, with McCoist netting four of Hunter’s goals and playing a part in the move that set up the fifth. Having been suitably impressed with McCoist’s display, Runciman telephoned the youngster and asked if he would be interested in coming along to Ibrox to talk to Willie Thornton, who at that time was assistant manager at the club. Thornton was a legendary centre-forward who had played for Rangers in the halcyon days of the forties and fifties, and he had played a significant part in one of the club’s great teams alongside players of the ilk of Willie Waddell, Jock ‘Tiger’ Shaw and Bobby Brown. However, the offer was only to go to Ibrox for a chat and there was no guarantee a concrete proposal like the one McCoist had received from St Johnstone would be made.

Whether there ever would have been will never be known: Ally McCoist had already made his mind up to sign for St Johnstone. The discussion with Thornton never took place. Instead, he decided to take the first fledgeling steps of his senior football career with St Johnstone at Muirton Park, Perth, under the stewardship of Alex Stuart. He signed on 1 December 1978 at the age of sixteen to open up the first chapter of his professional football career. The fairytale was only just beginning.