IT HAS been a sad week for the followers of Scotland's two biggest football clubs, with the tragedy of Ian Redford's apparent suicide casting a pall of gloom over Ibrox, then the less-unexpected but no less solemn news that the Wee Barra, Bobby Collins, has died after more than a decade in the half-world of the Alzheimer sufferer.
I have not yet bought Redford's highly-acclaimed autobiography, which he published shortly before his death. However, from comments anent the book which I have read, it appears to be one well-worth getting, being somewhat apart from the usual written to a formula sporting autobiography. I will be buying it this week.
Redford certainly had his crosses to bear. He was perhaps unfortunate not to add at least one full cap to his half dozen Under-21 ones, but, at the time when he and the similarly uncapped Bobby Russell were strutting their stuff at Ibrox, Rangers were in decline and, it has to be accepted, Scotland was well-supplied with international-class midfielders. Lesser Rangers players, before and since, have won caps simply by being regulars in the Ibrox first team.
Redford also had a good spell at Dundee United, his is a sad loss.
COLLINS is a legend at each of his three main clubs. He was a wonderful winger, later an inside forward in a Celtic team whose undoubted talents were undone by Bob Kelly's interference in team management.
Just imagine what Jock Stein might have done had he been managing talents such as Collins, Willie Fernie, Bobby Evans, Bertie Peacock and Charlie Tully. There's half a team whose talents money couldn't buy today, sadly, none of them fitted into the necessary "spine" of a great team. With a better goalkeeper than Johnny Bonnar, a decent centre-half (Stein, for all his captaincy skills wasn't top drawer as a player) and a consistent goal-scorer, surely they could have run Rangers closer than they did in the two decades before Stein was finally allowed to run things.
We will never know, but, while there are rumours that Collins himself forc the move - frustrated by events at the club - it has also been suggested that "the four families" punted him and Fernie, at the time the club's two most-sellable assets, to finance floodlights at Parkhead. If this is the case, and I say, it is only a rumour, then it is yet another example of their mis-management of a great club.
He won nothing at Everton, but, he became one of the outstanding midfielders in the English First Division and the belief among older Evertonians is that Harry Catterick got rid of him before his sell-by date.
He then went to Leeds, where he, as much as Don Revie, laid the foundations of that club's greatest days. He taught Billy Bremner all he knew, indeed, Johnny Giles this week said: "Bobby was the professional's professional - every defeat was a personal insult."
He divided opinion in England, some non-Leeds supporters have tried to label him as a hatchet man - come on: Bobby had more skill in one toe than the legendary English hard men of the time - "Chopper" Harris, Norman "Bites Yet Leg" Hunter and so-on had in their entire, cololective beings.
I would hesitate to suggest Bobby ever started a battle, but, small though he was, he was still a soo-sider, if you kicked him, he would kick you back - harder.
I remember, back in the mid-seventies, watching him working with the Leeds United youth squad, whom he was coaching at the time. They ate up every word he said. Jimmy Armfield then managing Leeds was standing beside me watching and I remarked, something like: "Bobby's still got it, hasn't he?"
"I wish I could graft a pair of 20-year-old's legs onto him - we'd be Champions of Europe", was Armfield's reply.
Bobby never had much success as a manager, but, as a coach, particularly of kids - he was top drawer. He also was a very good player for Scotland, in spite of the frequent absences from the side which the SFA selectors' headless chicken approach to selection caused him.
Rest In Peace both players.
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