The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

Well with no birthdays today I thought I would do one of these again. The photo is of course of Gordon’s greatest moment in a Scotland jersey as he towers above the English defence and bullets an unstoppable header past Ray Clemence. This was at Wembley in June 4th, 1977 in one of Ally MacLeod’s first games in charge. The timing was perfect; two minutes before the break and Dalglish would add a second in 61 minutes and although Mick Channon would score with a penalty in the last few minutes, the day was ours and bedlam and a pitch invasion followed.

It was a bit of a surprise when Gordon was picked for the 1974 World Cup squad by Willie Ormond as he had yet to earn his first cap but had made good progress in the Leeds United team in season 1973-’74. Gordon’s first cap came in a World Cup warm up game against Belgium in June ‘74 in Bruges. Scotland lost the game 2 -1 with Jimmy Johnstone providing the Scots goal.

Gordon didn’t play in any part in the World Cup that year and sadly due to injury he never played in the 1978 World Cup despite travelling as MacLeod hoped to have him fit for the later stages of the tournament. Sadly, we all know what was wrong with that scenario.

Gordon would play for Scotland from 1974 until 1981 winning a total of 30 caps (17 of which were with Leeds, the other 13 from Manchester United) scoring five goals; which is a goal every six games, if only some of our centre halves or even forwards could achieve that today we’d be fine.

His first goal would be a last minute equaliser in Bucharest, Romania in a European Championship Qualifier in June 1975. This would be Gordon’s only game as team Captain rather surprisingly. Prior to the England game of 1977, Gordon scored against Northern Ireland at Hampden three days before, in between two Dalglish goals to give Scotland a 3-0 win.

Gordon would then score in Ally MacLeod’s last game in charge, a 3-2 European Qualifier defeat to Austria in Vienna. Andy Gray would get the other as Scotland staged a late comeback from 3-0 down. His final Scotland goal came in the same competition as Scotland under Jock Stein humbled Norway 4-0 in Oslo with goals from Joe Jordan. Kenny Dalglish, John Robertson and the last one from Gordon.

As to Gordon’s Focus On; there are some wee gems of answers. His favourite other team is Kilbirnie Ladeside, even though Gordon was born and bred in the Ayrshire village of Kilbirnie; it’s still a great answer. His biggest thrill was Captaining Scotland and biggest disappointment was missing the 1975 European Cup Final through suspension. (The article was written in 1977 and with missing the 1978 World Cup perhaps that would have been superceded.)

He has went for the classic shaving as a miscellaneous dislike but likes “Going home to visit friends in Scotland.”

Finally, his professional ambition was “To win the World Cup with Scotland”. Oh dear.

David Stuart

Yep, here it is in glorious colour an issue of Look-In magazine from June 1978 with Kenny Dalglish in glorious colour in the front. Inside there’s more not only colour pictures of Big Roughy, Willie Johnston and Gordon McQueen but others there’s also the chance to meet Scottish Superstar Dalglish. All you had to do was identify six Scottish goalscorers from the past. I will post them later and give you the chance to identify them only without the letter clues.

There’s also an On The Ball section where Brian Moore assesses Scotland’s strengths with players like Souness, Gemmill, Dalglish mentioned. As if that’s not enough Scottish gems in the Young Cooks Club Dalglish and Asa Hartford are asked about their pre-match meals for Kenny it’s tea and toast three hours before the match with Asa not really revealing his choice of foodstuffs. Oh well.

As if that’s not enough, there’s features on The Incredible Hulk TV show and the French band Sheila B. Devotion as well as cartoon strips featuring Benny Hill, Logan’s Run, The Man From Atlantis, Bionic Woman and the Six Million Dollar man and to top it all an advert for a Texan Bar. (“Now hold on there, Bald Eagle”) Ah, perfect what’s not to love.

David Stuart

Happy Birthday to Bobby Moncur, who will be 71 on January 19th. Bobby is most famous for being captain of Newcastle United in the late 60’s, early 70’s. In over 300 games for Newcastle Bobby only ever scored 8 goals but three of them were in the two legged final of the Inter-City Fairs Cup, which was the Europa Cup in old money before it was the U.E.F.A. Cup.

Bobby played for Scotland 16 times and captained his country 7 times.

His first cap came against Netherlands in a friendly in May 1968 in Amsterdam, along with four other players making their debuts; Doug Fraser and Bobby Hope of West Brom, George ‘Dandy’ MacLean of Dundee in his only Scotland game and Jimmy Smith of Aberdeen who would team up with Moncur at Newcastle the following season. The game ended in a nil nil draw.

It would be over a year later when Bobby gained his second cap coming in for a friendly against the Republic of Ireland at Dalymount Park, Dublin where Scotland drew one each with Colin Stein scoring for the Scots.

Bobby again had to wait until April ’70 for his next cap, in the first game of that years’ Home Internationals against Northern Ireland in Belfast where Scotland won with a goal from debutant John O’Hare; this was followed by non-score draw with Wales at Hampden. Although Scotland fielded a relatively inexperienced team against England that year with the likes of Moncur and players with only three caps and mostly all in the previous two games such as Derby’s John O’Hare, Coventry’s Willie Carr, Killie’s Billy Dickson, David Hay of Celtic and Hearts’ Jim Cruickshank in goal; they proved the equal to an English side with the likes of Banks, Stiles, Moore, Hurst and Ball in a rather dull nil each game. Of course, this game is famous for a stonewall of a penalty that was not given for Brian Labone upending Colin Stein in the box.

Scotland finished 1970 with a win against Denmark at Hampden in a European Qualifier with O’Hare again scoring the only goal. In the four games in 1970 Scotland never conceded a goal with Bobby in defence. Bobby was also given the Captaincy at this point with Billy Bremner out of the team but this was still a surprise as previous stand in captain John Greig was still in the team.

If 1970 was a reasonable year for a changing team; 1971 was a nadir for Scotland of this era. Scotland played 10 games, winning 2, drawing 1 and losing 7. The two wins would be with Tommy Docherty in charge and without Moncur also.

Of course, if it’s Belgium in Liege and European Championships of course it’s going to be a bad start as the Scots went down three nil in the mud of Stade Sclessin in February, then on to Lisbon to be beaten by Portugal 2-0 in April.

A nil nil draw at Ninian Park with Wales was the only relief that May as the Scots lost one nil to a John Greig own goal at Hampden against Northern Ireland, followed by a 3-1 defeat to England at Wembley. Moncur retained his captaincy even after Bremner was picked to play in this game as he did for his twelfth cap and further humiliation being beaten 1-0 by the Danish in Copenhagen.

Moncur did not play in Scotland’s seventh defeat that year and indeed, last game in charge for Bobby Brown; a friendly in Moscow where the Scots lost to the USSR by a solitary goal.

However, by April 1972, Tommy Docherty brought Bobby back into the fold for a 2-0 win over Peru at Hampden and kept him for the Home International Series where the Scots beat Northern Ireland 2-0 with two very late goals from Denis Law in the 86th minute and Peter Lorimer in the 89th. I wonder how many people left early. That would be Denis’ last ever goal for Scotland in his 44th International. Next up was a one nil victory at home against Wales with Lorimer providing the goal. A narrow one nil defeat to England at Hampden would prove to be Bobby’s last Scotland game.

That summer Docherty would go to Brazil with a squad for Independence Cup without Moncur. I honestly don’t know if Moncur declined the invite or was not picked but either way the pairing of Martin Buchan of Man. Utd. and Sheffield United’s Eddie Colquhoun was Docherty’s first choice for his remaining time in charge.

Of course, Bobby went on to play for Newcastle for a few seasons more before moving first to Sunderland and finishing up at Carlisle, where he became Manager before a time in charge at Hearts among others.

So here’s to Bobby, who must have commanded a great deal of respect when you can be picked ahead of John Greig and Billy Bremner and captained his country seven times.

All the best Bobby.

David Stuart

Happy Birthday to Peter Weir, who will be 58 today. Peter was a typical winger in that some days everything he touched was gold as he would easily glide past players and put in the perfect cross and on others nothing would go right for him. Peter gained six caps in total for Scotland and surprisingly 4 of them were in his time with St. Mirren rather than the majority being with Aberdeen.

His first cap came under Jock Stein in the 1980 Home Internationals against Northern Ireland in Belfast, Scotland’s first game there in ten years. Also making his debut that day was fellow St. Mirren player Billy Thomson. This team also contained three future Scotland managers in Burley, McLeish and Gordon Strachan. However, with all that talent on display Scotland were beaten 1-0 to a Gerry Hamilton goal.

Peter retained his place for the game against Wales at Hampden five days later as the Scots won 1-0 thanks to a Willie Miller goal. Yes, that Willie Miller, who with McLeish and Paul Hegarty playing was in a more forward role.

Peter wasn’t picked for the England game a few days later with Roy Aitken of Celtic being brought in to bolster the midfield for the England game. This plan went awry as the English won 2-0 at Hampden. Roy incidentally is the last player to be capped for St. Mirren as he won his final cap as a Buddie in 1991.

Scotland played a couple of friendlies after the Home International series, Peter played in both; coming on as a sub in a 1-0 defeat to Poland in Poznan and playing the whole game in a 3-1 defeat to Hungary in Budapest.

It would be three years before Peter got his chance again with John Robertson returning to international action and it would be as an Aberdeen player. Peter played in the game against Switzerland in a Euro Qualifier at Hampden in March 1983 which is famous for Charlie Nicholas’s goal on his Scotland debut.

Peter’s last game would be in December, 1983 and it was a case of back to where it all started as Scotland played Northern Ireland in Belfast. Once more the Scots were defeated, this time two goals to nil. Playing in his one Scotland game that night was Doug Rougvie of Aberdeen.

And so that was that, for Peter as Davie Cooper began to feature more and more in Jock’s plans. Peter would continue to play for Aberdeen up until 1988 and after a short time at Leicester City, return to St. Mirren and finally end his career down at Somerset Park with Ayr United.

Happy Birthday Peter and all the best.

David Stuart

Happy Birthday to Craig Beattie who will be 32 on the 16th Jnauary. It’s fair to say that Craig has played for one or two clubs since he left Celtic and seems to have become a “have boots will travel type of player” currently playing with Stirling Albion.

Craig was capped seven times for Scotland with his first coming under Walter Smith in a World Cup Qualifier against Italy at Hampden in September 2005, coming on as a sub for goalscorer Kenny Miller just after the Italians had equalised to make it one each, which was to be the final score.

A few days later, the Scots beat Norway 2-1 with Craig coming on in the 72nd minute for James McFadden. This is the game where Miller scored two goals in the first half and looked as though he would score a barrow load until he was injured shortly before half-time.

It would be March 2007 before Beattie would get another chance and this would be Alex McLeish’s first game in charge and indeed would be memorable for that one Craig Beattie moment we all recall, as he scored in the 89th minute to give us a victory over a stubborn Georgia team in a Euro Qualifier. Craig had come on for Kris Boyd, who had given Scotland an early lead only for Shota Arveladze to equalise before half time and the second half seemed an endless, torturous one until Craig’s golden moment.

Another sub appearance and his last as a Celtic player at the Stadio San Nicola, Bari followed four days later with the Scots losing 2-0 through a double from Luca Toni.

His first game as a West Brom player was in August, 2007 when he and Kris Boyd came on as a double substitution in the 68th minute in a friendly against South Africa at Pittodrie. It would be Boyd, three minutes later who would score the only goal.

Another struggle at Hampden in September, 2007 as the Scots were drawing 1-1 with Lithuania in a Euro Qualifier and Beattie and Shaun Maloney are brought in the 76th minute; Maloney had one touch ten seconds later and from the resultant cross Stephen McManus scored. A James McFadden goal a few minutes later made it look a better score than it really was.

Craig’s final game would be against Georgia in Tbilisi, where like last year there would be no moment of magic for the Scots as we lost 2-0 and our chances of qualifying from the group went oot the windae as they say.

So Happy Birthday Craig and although your Scotland career was all as a substitute for that one moment where Hampden exploded with joy. Thank you and all the best.

David Stuart

Eddie will be 66 on January 17th. Eddie gained a measly twelve caps for Scotland; which is incredible when you think of it. Voted as the 3rd best Leeds United player of all time behind Billy Bremner and John Charles and yet 12 caps. I know we didn’t play as many games back then, the competition for places was great and Eddie did suffer some injuries over the years but 12 caps.

Eddie was a major part of the successful Leeds United team of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s along with fellow Scots Billy Bremner and Peter Lorimer and latterly Joe Jordan, David Harvey and Gordon McQueen.

Eddie was first capped under Bobby Brown in 1969. Due to an injury to Charlie Cooke, Eddie was thrown in at the deep end for his debut, facing England at Wembley in May. Unfortunately Scotland lost 4-1 with Colin Stein scoring the Scots goal from a cross by Eddie, after he had taken on the English full back to hit the bye-line.

Charlie Cooke came back for the next game a week later but Eddie retained his place which meant Cooke, Gray and Willie Henderson were all on duty to supply the front two; Gilzean and Stein. It was Eddie who scored the opener at Hampden against Cyprus in the World Cup Qualifier. Billy McNeill scored the second before Stein hit his four, then Willie Henderson and Tommy Gemmell finished the rout as the Scots won 8-0.

October ’69 and Eddie and Jimmy Johnstone would provide the wide play against West Germany in Hamburg in a vital World Cup Qualifier. Despite a great performance the Scots were to lose narrowly 3-2 and to miss out on Mexico 1970. Johnstone had scored 3 minutes into the game and Alan Gilzean had equalised for 2-2 with 26 minutes remaining. The Scots could not hold out for a point and lost a goal in the 81st minute. Worse was to follow as Tommy Gemmell was sent off for having a kick at one of the Germans in the final minute.

A 2-0 defeat to Austria in our final qualifier followed for our last game of the 1960’s. A period that promised so much but ultimately saw us fail to qualify for a major finals with some of our all-time greatest players being around too.

Eddie would not be involved until the Home Internationals of 1971 and was part of the team that drew nil nil with Wales in Cardiff and then lost one nil to Northern Ireland at Hampden in May that year.

Tommy Docherty would bring Eddie back in for his second game in charge; a one nil victory over Belgium in November ’71 and retained him for the 2-1 friendly defeat to Netherlands a month later in Amsterdam. George Graham scored for the Scots with Johan Cruyff among the Dutch scorers.

It would take almost another five years until Eddie was capped again, as Willie Ormond brought in back into the fold for the Home International series for the first game against Wales. This would be a scoring return for Eddie as he scored the third goal for Scotland. Willie Pettigrew and Bruce Rioch scored the others.

Eddie kept his place for the 3-0 crushing of Northern Ireland a couple of days later and would play against England at Hampden where the Scots won convincingly 2-1 with Don Masson and Kenny Dalglish supplying the goals.

Scotland’s fine form continued and Eddie got among the goals in a six nil rout of Finland in September ’76 at Hampden with Andy Gray hitting a double and one each from Rioch, Masson and Dalglish alaso.

Eddie would miss our first 1978 World Cup Qualifier as we lost 2-0 to Czechoslovakia but returned for the Home Qualifier as the Scots struggled to beat a stubborn Welsh team with an own goal from Ian Evans separating the teams. And that was that.

So what changed? Managers. In issue 1 of the Scotland Epistles magazine, Scott Cockburn writes in an excellent piece about the injustice of Hearts players getting recognised internationally only to move club and be lost to the Tynecastle faithful. However, at no point does he apologise for Hearts stealing Oor Wullie. I know Ally took us to Argentina but I do wonder sometimes what Willie would have achieved in his stead.

Eddie never played again for Scotland with MacLeod opting for Willie Johnston as his outside left but he went on to play for Leeds until 1983 when he finally hung his boots as Player / Manager having played over 500 games for the club.

Happy Birthday Eddie and all the best to you.

David Stuart

. (Thanks to Hamish Husband for writing this piece for our Page; if you want to write something please contact us.)

Deutsche Demokratische Republik, now there was a nation of wonderful lady shot putters, some however may recall the most sensational game in the 1974 World Cup when they defeated the hosts 1-0 in Hamburg allegedly sending West German manager Helmut Schoen into a period of crippling depression that saw Kaiser Franz Beckenbauer take over the running of the world champions to be.
Scotland returning undefeated from the World Cup first played an October friendly against East Germany recording an excellent 3-0 win courtesy of a Tommy Hutchinson penalty, Kenny Burns and a certain Kenny Dalglish. Dixie Deans that prolific Celtic striker made the first of his 2 caps and my only memory of the game was seeing him struggle with high balls launched at him and more significantly was the last appearance for his country of the wonderful Jimmy Johnstone.
Ally Macleod was on his march to Argentina when we visited East Berlin for a 1-0 friendly defeat in September 1977,a result that somehow managed to motivate Scotland enough to annihilate the European Champions Czechoslovakia 3-1 a mere 14 days later at a euphoric Hampden. Leeds United Davis Stewart made his debut and earned his only cap.
Fast forward to 1982 and a Euro draw with another small tough group, Belgium and Switzerland joining East Germany our first home opponents in a 2-0 Scotland victory in front of 40,355, the biggest home gate of the group. Ipswich’s John Wark and sub Paul Sturrock scored in an optimistic opening to the doomed section. Captain Graeme Souness was at the heart of, to my mind a strong squad with rather surprisingly Alan Hansen and Willie Miller remaining as the central partnership in defence as it was our first game since their two to tango collision that saw the World Cup Russian elimination by Russia but 4 months earlier.
1983 was a poor year for Scotland as England demolished us 2-0 at Wembley and we were already out of the Euros when we played the last game of the group that would see us finish rock bottom, moved from the vast arena of Leipzig and instead to the smaller Kurt-Wabel Stadion, Halle.
My father, brother and sister and I drove across the Iron Curtain into the frozen communist world and snow covered autobahn verges littered with abandoned Trabants. The under 21 game was held in the Karl Zeiss Jena ground, a 0-0 draw in 2 feet of snow, Roy Aitken was the over-age captain. We were among a travelling band of 6 Scotland fans surrounded by local kids wanting to discuss Scottish football and the virtues of the decadent west and our capitalist freedom fighter, Mrs Thatcher.
We drove onto Leipzig and joined a small band of Scotland fans in relative luxury of a western style hotel that had separate bars accepting western money from visiting businessmen. Black market touts gave a far better rate than the official, the only problem was spending the DDR mark. A train journey to Halle, a town with such poor street lamps my father was reminded of wartime Glasgow. The locals were again friendly and were probably aghast at one our crew watching the game in a Scotland shirt in Baltic temperatures and worse our total lack of respect for our joke of an anthem ‘Scotland the brave’, several of us did mock highland flings.
We lost deservedly 2-1, Eamonn Bannon scored our consolation goal in front of a respectable 18,000 crowd, a beauty captured for future viewing on grainy U Tube and I have a memory of a blond Teutonic German wearing a home sewn kilt. It was a long, long drive home, passing through Checkpoint Charlie along with a small band of the Tartan Army, our car inspected with such vigour I envisaged the kilted German hiding under the bonnet escaping to freedom.

We had 2 more friendlies to follow, a 0-0 draw in October 1985, the first game to follow the sad death of Jock Stein and lastly a 1-0 Hampden defeat 2 months before we travelled to Italia’90. A certain Thomas Doll scored the winner in what proved to be their 295th fixture and 3rd last. It is worth pointing out that we played the game as world champs as we had beaten the then winners Argentina in the previous game. As in 1967 we held onto the crown for just one game.
Re-unification with West Germany had been agreed, the end of East Germany was imminent, and the Berlin Wall was no more. There remained 2 more games for the DDR, incredibly a 3-3 draw with Brazil in the Maracanã and finally a 2-0 win in the Anderlecht ground, Brussels, 12 September 1990. Only 14 players were willing to play in the last international, reserve goalie Adler was a 90 minute sub, never touching the ball for his only cap. Matthias Sammer, now Bayern Munich’s Director of Football scored their last ever goal and brought the curtain down on the DDR National Mannschaft. East German clubs struggled to compete in the Bundesliga as the stars went west and for years hooliganism and right wing politics were prevalent. Karl-Zeiss Jena have trawled the lower regions of the German leagues, FC Hallischer likewise.
There is no written record of the 1983 visit by a few hundred TA foot soldiers in the history of German re-unification, until today that is.

Hamish Husband.

Okay, so normally I post a photo and tell you all about it, but this time I don’t have a clue where this one came from. I imagine it’s a testimonial game for a Scottish Man United player perhaps someone like Stewart Houston, Lou Macari or someone else. So can anybody help with the details and even guess who is in the background? If it helps I think it’s from an annual from Christmas 1981 as the back of the page has Tommy Hutchison scoring an own goal in the 1981 F.A. Cup Final.

Of course, Bobby was born in Ashington in Northumbria and had he been born 50 miles up the road he would have been a Scot. Which given the amount of goals he scored in his time might have come in handy. He also scored against us on four occasions and three of them were decisive; twice to give England victory and a third time to make it a draw and of course England wouldn’t have won the World Cup without him due to his goals in earlier rounds. Of course it’s all conjecture and we can only dream about what might have been. There’s always a downside and we might have had to put up with his brother Jack too and that maybe is a step too far!

David Stuart

Ally McLeod, “Aw Christ Alan, take yer hauns oot yer bottoms, it looks like yer playin’ wi yersel. God, hunners a wee Glesca boays will be copying that fer years”.

Roughie, “Aye, you tae boss!”