Tangled Up in Blue

by Stephen O'Donnell

  Only the Glasgow Herald, a publication which only condescended to cover football fleetingly alongside such minority sports as cricket, yachting and bowls, offered a dose of reality, suggesting that the enthusiasm of the reception was out of all proportion with the team’s accomplishments, with the paper’s editorial making the salient point that it had been, ‘A good successful tour. But it was not, say, the European Cup’, before adding in parentheses, ‘A British team has yet to win that, and it may be time enough for unprecedented welcomes when one does.’

  Perhaps aware of his club’s increasing favour among the Scottish public, Symon moved to add a touch of sparkle to his squad in June 1960 when he signed the talented youngster Jim Baxter from Raith Rovers for £17,500. The transfer was a gamble not only because of the fee, a Scottish record at the time, but also because Baxter, with his idiosyncratic swagger, was not a typical Rangers signing. In Scottish parlance, Baxter was ‘gallus’, an elusive quality somewhere between confident and arrogant, a kind of man-of-the-people’s version of egotism, perhaps best illustrated by the cocky way the midfielder taunted England by juggling the ball during Scotland’s 3-2 victory over the ‘Auld Enemy’ at Wembley in April 1967.

  Most divisively of all though, as far as the Rangers dressing room was concerned, Baxter was a rebel, an anti-authoritarian maverick. Happy-go-lucky, ready to take on the world, a bit of a joker on the pitch, his attitude seemed to set him on a collision course with many of his more strait-laced team-mates, who inhabited a Rangers dressing room which was still at the time, in the words of David Leggat, Symon’s biographer, ‘a bastion of tradition, conservatism and respect for authority’. In another break with the standards of the day, Baxter had at least as many friends in the Celtic squad as he had in his own, and he associated freely with rivals Pat Crerand, Billy McNeill and Mike Jackson, often running up huge bar tabs, which he would then bill to his employer. He never allowed these friendships to affect his performances on the field, however, and for the big ‘Old Firm’ derbies, Baxter would always have his game head on, and he produced many of his best Rangers performances in the fixture. During his first five years at the club, Rangers lost only two of 17 games against Celtic, and he also gave the team an extra dimension in the new arena of European football.

  Ever since he had taken over at the club, Symon had strived to continue in the Struth tradition, with much of the old methodology at Ibrox during his tenure harking back to the distant 1920s. Symon, like Struth, refrained from offering any tactical advice to his players beyond the perfunctory: work hard, win the tackles and give the ball to Jim Baxter. On matchdays, again following the ancient custom, Symon would sit in the directors’ box, suited and booted, maintaining an apparent emotional distance from the events unfolding on the pitch, but it is tempting to see the signing of Baxter as an effort by the manager to adapt to the modern, changing world of the early 1960s, as well as adding a touch of genuine class to his functional team.

  When Symon started to indulge Baxter and his errant ways, however, the rest of the dressing room reacted against it. Players such as Eric Caldow, ‘captain cutlass’ Bobby Shearer and ex-soldier Harold Davis couldn’t stomach Baxter’s non-conformity and lack of discipline, but their contempt was reserved in particular for the manager, who in their eyes failed to get a grip on the situation by forcibly bringing Baxter into line, the way he would with any other player. Things became worse when Baxter broke his leg in December 1964, after which he started drinking heavily during a four-month period of recuperation, and he was eventually transferred to Sunderland in the summer of 1965. The Rangers board had refused to break their wage structure for the player, and when the Wearsiders offered to double his salary, from £45 to £90 per week, Baxter was off, without Symon even being consulted. It is said that, when he learned the news of his most gifted player’s unexpected departure, Scot Symon had a tear in his eye.

  Regardless of any disharmony brought about by Scot Symon’s indulgence of his favourite player, the Rangers side of the early 1960s was one of the best and most successful in the club’s history, playing a style of football that was much easier on the eye and beyond the capacity of the team of bruisers which the manager had inherited. Orchestrated chiefly by Baxter at left-half and with winger Willie Henderson, so often the maverick’s partner in crime off the field, supplying the effective strike partnership of Ralph Brand and Jimmy Millar, by 1964 Rangers were masters of all they surveyed domestically. Unfortunately, Symon’s side often struggled to replicate their form on the European stage and there were some painful humiliations along the way for the Ibrox men, most notably a 12-4 aggregate trouncing by Eintracht Frankfurt in the semi-final of the European Cup, a team who were subsequently beaten 7-3 by Real Madrid in the famous Hampden final of 1960. For those who wondered about the scale of the potential disaster which might have unfolded had Rangers made the final, their answer came three years later when the Ibrox club suffered a 6-0 defeat in the Bernabeu against a Real Madrid team which was well past its best by then, on the back of a 1-0 home loss at Ibrox in the first leg.

  Rangers were also outclassed by the great Spurs team of the early ’60s, beaten home and away in the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1962, but there were some successes too, notably when the club reached the final of the same competition in 1961, only to lose both legs to the Italians of Fiorentina. Baxter’s signing had made a difference, and after their humbling by Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960, Rangers once again met German opposition the following season in the Cup Winners’ Cup. With ‘Slim Jim’ now orchestrating the midfield alongside the studious Ian McMillan, Rangers disposed of Borussia Mönchengladbach 8-0 at Ibrox. Overall though, their efforts in Europe in the ’60s could at best only be described as a qualified success, as many felt that two appearances in the final of the tertiary Cup Winners’ Cup, where they lost on both occasions, represented an underwhelming effort for the best team in the country. Scottish teams at the time expected to do well in Europe: Dundee reached the semi-final of the European Cup in 1963; their neighbours, Dundee United, beat Barcelona home and away in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1966/67 (then repeated the feat in 1987, leaving them with a current record of four wins out of four against the Catalans); even Celtic reached the semi-final of the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1964, and, as everyone knew, the Parkhead men were a shambles of a team at the time.

  Despite the occasional European misadventure, however, by 1964 Symon must have seemed almost untouchable in his role as Rangers manager as the Ibrox club collected a second domestic Treble. With a smattering of young players being added to the squad in cousins Jim Forrest and Alex Willoughby, as well as eventual club legends John Greig and Willie Henderson, the Ibrox men met their hapless rivals Celtic on five occasions over the course of the season, and won all five. The League Cup was secured with a 5-0 victory over plucky Morton of the second division in the final and the more prestigious Scottish Cup was added when Dundee were defeated 3-1 at Hampden. In the league, Rangers were chased all the way by Kilmarnock, then managed by former Ibrox winger, the gruff Willie Waddell, but the Ibrox side eventually triumphed by six points to complete the historic Treble as Symon celebrated ten years in the job.

  The following year, however, was not a happy one for the Ibrox club. The season began well enough with a 2-1 win over Celtic in the final of the League Cup, with Baxter, now captain, reprising his role as the Parkhead side’s tormentor-in-chief. There followed a 3-1 victory over Red Star Belgrade in a play-off at Highbury in the first round of the European Cup after the sides finished 5-5 on aggregate in the days before away goals and penalty shoot-outs, with Baxter again a key influence. But the talisman suffered a broken leg against the club’s next opponents, the victim of a cynical challenge from Rapid Vienna’s Walter Skocik, whom Baxter had tormented with a series of nutmegs. The injury occurred in the final minutes of the tie, with Rangers’ passage into the next round already assured with home and away victories, and although the quarter-final wasn’t until the followin
g spring, Baxter hadn’t recovered in time and Rangers lost narrowly, 3-2 on aggregate, to Inter Milan, the dominant force in European football in the mid-’60s. It was perhaps the closest Rangers would come to winning the European Cup.

  Nevertheless, the run in Europe, completed without Baxter, had shown what a formidable side Symon had put together by this point. The strength in depth of Scottish football overall was clear from a glance at the league tables, which showed that, by mid-October, this great Rangers team had managed to accumulate a mere seven points from eight games. The club eventually finished the season in a lowly fifth position, as the title that year was won by Kilmarnock, a team that had finished runners-up in four of the previous five campaigns. Needing a two-goal victory over league leaders Hearts on the last day of the season, the Ayrshire side finally managed to get their hands on the championship trophy, recording a famous victory over the Tynecastle men by exactly the margin required.

  And that was really that for Scot Symon’s Rangers. The manager was helpless to prevent Baxter being sold to Sunderland that summer and the club never again won the league under his stewardship. On 30 January 1965, Rangers visited Easter Road and lost 1-0 to Jock Stein’s Hibernian. Just a few days later, Stein was named the new manager of Celtic, although he agreed to stay on at Hibs until his replacement could be found. It wasn’t until early March that Bob Shankly, brother of Bill, who had managed Dundee since 1959, took over at Easter Road and Stein was free to assume his fated position as manager of the Parkhead club.

  Stein’s impact at Celtic was immediate and extraordinary; in January 1965, the Daily Mail had proclaimed that the Parkhead men were, ‘being left so far behind by Rangers that it is no longer a race’. Within a few weeks of the new manager’s arrival, however, Celtic had collected the Scottish Cup after a 3-2 victory in the Hampden final over Dunfermline Athletic, a team who finished well above the Glasgow side in the league that season and only missed out on the championship by a single point. The following season, Celtic won their first league title since Stein had captained the club to the Double in 1954, and the season after that they won everything, including of course the European Cup.

  It’s hard to overstate the transformative effect that Stein’s arrival had on Celtic. For the previous 20 years, the club had been managed by former player James McGrory; not a particularly well-known figure beyond the club’s fanbase, McGrory is, quite simply, the greatest goalscorer in the history of British football. Between 1923 and 1937, he amassed a total of 468 goals for Celtic from 445 appearances, including a remarkable 55 hat-tricks, a record eight goals in one game against Dunfermline in 1928, and another record in his total of 59 league and cup goals scored in 1926/27.

  In charge of the dressing room, however, McGrory seemed to epitomise the old cliché about being too nice to be a manager. In contrast to the regimented authoritarianism being successfully implemented by his counterparts at Ibrox, in the words of Pat Crerand, a former player who left Celtic for Manchester United in 1964 fed up at chairman Robert Kelly’s over-involvement in the running of the club, ‘Jimmy didn’t do discipline.’

  On one occasion, when McGrory was obliged to inform goalkeeper Frank Haffey that his wages were being cut, the manager burst into tears when Haffey complained, admitting that it was the chairman’s idea. Too compliant towards the boardroom, McGrory was not in charge of team affairs and this led to some ridiculous scenarios, such as on the occasion when the Celtic players, travelling on the team bus to Airdrie, spotted third-choice goalkeeper Willie Goldie making his way to the game in the club’s colours as a spectator. Chairman Robert Kelly immediately stopped the bus and invited the player on board.

  Kelly was so impressed with Goldie’s apparent dedication to the cause that by the time the bus arrived in Airdrie, he was in the team! The chairman was presumably anticipating the fairytale scenario of a fan-turned-player ending up as the hero of the hour, but what Kelly had failed to appreciate was that Goldie had been out drinking and dancing until 3am in the not unreasonable expectation that he would be having Saturday afternoon off. Needless to say, the rookie goalkeeper threw in a couple of goals, Airdrie won 2-0 and Goldie never played for his beloved Celtic again.

  The image of the happy-go-lucky, cheeky chappy Celts, playing the game with freedom and enjoyment, in contrast to the stern disciplinarians from across the city, was wearing thin. For the 11 years that McGrory and Symon were in direct opposition, Celtic didn’t win the league once, with the Celtic manager’s only title triumph in 20 years coming against a debilitated Struth in 1954. Stein’s arrival changed all that, however, as the new manager at Parkhead, tracksuited and now in sole charge of team selection, was able to get the best out of his squad by making relatively slight adjustments, such as asking them to play in their best positions.

  When they won the European Cup in 1967, only one of the 11 players who defeated Inter Milan in the Lisbon final had been brought to the club by Stein; the rest were either already there, or, as in the case of midfielder Bertie Auld, on their way back to the club when he arrived. Contrary to popular perception, however, Symon’s initial joustings with Stein were relatively even. In the new Parkhead manager’s first full season in charge, Rangers and Celtic played each other five times, with two wins each and one draw, as Celtic took the title and the League Cup, Rangers the Scottish Cup. The following season, however, Celtic completed their remarkable grand slam, winning every competition they entered, and Symon’s position was further weakened by a Scottish Cup defeat to lowly Berwick Rangers in January 1967, then under the stewardship of future Ibrox boss Jock Wallace. The ‘wee Rangers’ claimed a noted scalp in defeating their more celebrated Glasgow namesakes when inside-forward Sammy Reid, who had been Bill Shankly’s first signing as Liverpool manager in 1960, scored the only goal of the game after half an hour. In the aftermath, Scot Symon seemed almost paralysed with shame and embarrassment, describing the result as ‘the darkest day in Rangers’ history’.

  Initially the manager received the support of his chairman, John Lawrence, who was quick to point out those who were culpable for the debacle in his eyes, ‘The only people who can be blamed for the defeat are the players. The play of some of them made me sick,’ he fulminated. At most other big clubs, even the most successful, being the unfortunate victim of an act of giant-killing in the cup is considered an occupational hazard; it’s humiliating and embarrassing, but most teams eventually manage to put the defeat out of their system and move on. But at a club like Rangers, still with such an elevated sense of its own importance, there had to be consequences and by the following week the scapegoats had been identified and sanctioned, as strikers George McLean and Jim Forrest were dropped for the visit of Hearts to Ibrox. Neither man would play for Rangers again, and within weeks the pair had been shipped out the door, to Dundee and Preston North End respectively.

  Regardless of the circumstances, the treatment of both players by the club seems harsh to say the least. McLean had scored a commendable 82 goals in 117 games for Rangers, while Forrest, at the age of just 22, had already netted 145 times in just 165 appearances for the Ibrox side. Forrest, a forward of extraordinary potential, had already been a Rangers regular for three and a half years and in season 1964/65 scored a total of 57 goals in all competitions for the club – a post-war British record which still stands to this day – yet the youngster, in a team full of experienced internationals, was made to carry the can. It was a ludicrous, panicky decision by the Rangers hierarchy which, by the end of the season, they would have good cause to regret.

  Speaking years later, Forrest admitted that the treatment he received from the club still rankled with him, ‘We should all have taken equal responsibility when we lost… I was never given the opportunity to sit down and talk with the manager, or any of the directors, as to why I was being booted out. I still feel to this day that Symon owed me an explanation, but he took the coward’s way out and he simply wouldn’t discuss it with me.’

  The decision to dis
pense with two such valuable strikers came back to haunt the club when, on 31 May 1967, Rangers lost the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final to rising force Bayern Munich in Nuremberg. It was an achievement in itself just to reach the final, but Rangers went into the match in the Städtisches Stadion with the shadow of Celtic looming over them, after the Parkhead men had won the European Cup just six days previously, a result which seemed to be preying on the mind of everyone concerned with the Ibrox club in the build-up to the game in Bavaria. Celtic were being lauded all around Europe after their victory over Inter Milan, which had ended the Latin axis of domination of the tournament stretching back to the great Real Madrid team of the previous decade, and the manner of Celtic’s win, achieved with fluent, attacking football was seen as a defeat of the defensive catenaccio system favoured by Inter, whose pre-eminence on the stage of European football was effectively ended by Stein’s side that day. By contrast Rangers, in an inferior competition, couldn’t hope to match Celtic’s achievement even with victory, and this seemed to have had a negative effect on their preparation. It’s still astonishing to consider that a club would take to the field in a European final mentally encumbered by the success of a team from the same city just the previous week, yet the Rangers players of the day freely admit that this was the case.

  The Ibrox men were also hindered by the absence of any recognised forwards in their side, having dispensed too hastily with Forrest and McLean after the trauma of Berwick. With free-scoring Alex Willoughby, Forrest’s cousin, overlooked for unexplained reasons, Symon decided to draft in no-nonsense defender Roger Hynd as an auxiliary striker. The tactic backfired when Hynd, shortly before half-time, wasted Rangers’ best chance of the game, missing poorly from six yards when it looked easier to score, before the Germans, having survived such a scare, subsequently went on to net the only goal of the game in extra time. Rangers chairman John Lawrence later lamented that the converted defender’s shocking first-half miss had, in all probability, cost him a knighthood.