The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

Douglas Kenney tagged the Scotland Epistles Magazine to a picture from the Football Memories League of Dixie Deans. I was going to post the picture and leave it, however being a sad sack I decided to locate my Dixie Deans book and read about his time with Scotland.
Dixie only won two caps and he was pretty aggrieved about that as he had been scoring goals for fun with Celtic from the early 70’s following his move from Motherwell in 1971. Dixie feels that he should’ve been picked by Tommy Docherty and Willie Ormond prior to his call ups in season ’74-’75.
However, he points the finger at Jock Stein and feels he was perhaps shafted by the Big Man, imagining coversations between Jock and Willie Ormond; “Ach, the boy Deans is carrying a few pounds” or “Dixie? Nah, he’s a good lad but if I were you, Willie, I widnae pick him.”
Dixie does suggest that Jock quite often put Celtic first, which is understandable and would pull players from squads to ensure their availablity for Celtic. Dixie is also quite damning about not being chosen for the World Cup in ’74 and in particular Denis Law’s inclusion for the game against Zaire when goals were needed. He is not disrespectful of Denis but perhaps rightly believes that in some ways sentimentality in playing Denis cost Scotland and feels he could have got the goals needed against Zaire but that’s strikers for you.
It was after World Cup and when Dixie feels he was not playing at his peak that he was called into the Scotland squad for a friendly against East Germany at Hampden. Dixie made his debut on 30th October, 1974 as did Graeme Souness who was with Middlesbrough at the time. Scotland won 3-0 with goals from Tommy Hutchison (penalty), Kenny Burns and Kenny Dalglish.

Although, Dixie didn’t score he did enough to merit a second cap and so faced Spain in Scotland’s opening game of the Euro Qualifiers at home a month later. Billy Bremner gave Scotland an early lead in front of a crowd of 94, 331, however Tommy Hutchison missed a penalty ( well, they were hardly going to give it to Dixie to hit) to give Scotland a comfortable lead and they would pay the price as the Castro scored two goals either side of half time and Spain went home with the 2-1 win. Scotland then played catch up after this in qualifying and ultimately failed to progress due to the home loss.
As for Dixie that was the end of his time with Scotland and he would soon move from Celtic to Luton Town and would end up playing in Australia.

David Stuart