GRAHAM Leggat died at the weekend. I mentioned his death to one or two younger friends, who had never seen him play - it was a case of: "Graham Who"?
Then I spoke to one or two of my contemporaries, it was a case of: "Some player, aye". Leggat, unfortunately, was of the generation brought-up to actually attend football matches. My contemporaries, and our elder brothers didn't have 24-7, wall-to-wall football available across council telly, Sky, BT Sport, Virgin, umpteen radio stations, clubs' own tv services and You Tube. So special talents such as Leggat didn't get the same exposure as some of the over-rated "stars" of today.
If we couldn't get to a game, if we were lucky, we got half an hour of Peter Thompson or George Davidson on the BBC's Scottish Home Service. Of course, later-on, we got the blessed Arthur Montford and the sainted Bob Crampsey - then Archie McPherson arrived and it all went downhill to today's mess.
In the decade after the end of World War II, there were three great arguments in football - in England, you were either a Matthews man, or a Finney one; in Scotland you were a Waddell man, or a Smith man, while there was a lesser argument about Lawrie Reilly and Willie Bauld, although, Reilly pretty quickly shut that one up.
But, for ten years the Scotland number seven shirt seemed to be permanently argued over, between the Establishment's man - Rangers' Waddell and The People's Champion - Smith of the Famous Five. Aesthetically and in terms of sheer footballing ability, it was no-contest, it had to be Smith. But, time and again the Gay Gordon was not played as Waddell got the nod.
Yet, at the end of the day, Waddell finished with 17 Scotland caps and 4 goals, Smith, who had a longer Scotland career, 18 caps and 6 goals. Mind you, all 17 of Waddell's games were in the 7 shirt, Smith also played centre-forward and outside-left for Scotland.
But, they set the standard for right wing excellence and you might be forgiven for thinking that the Scotland 7 shirt was too-big for its wearers between Smith's final cap in 1957 and the arrival of the Willie Henderson/Jimmy Johnstone rivalry a decade or so later.
And, that's where Leggat fits in and is overlooked. He too won 18 caps for Scotland, all wearing the 7 shirt, scoring 18 goals. In fact, in his senior career he scored over 200 goals in 400 matches - a goal every second game, and that is accepted as the benchmark for a very good striker. Except, wingers of Leggat's era weren't expected to be goal scorers. Their primary job was to supply the ammunition for the men in the number 8, 9 and 10 shirts - any goal the number 7 or 11 scored was a bonus.
So, the guy scored more goals than he perhaps should; impress me more. Well, he did score 13 hat-tricks in his career, 5 for Aberdeen, 8 for Fulham. One of his Fulham hat-tricks, against Ipswich Town in 1963, was the fastest ever scored in the top-flight in England, until beaten in last season's Stoke hammering of Liverpool in Steven Gerrard's farewell game.
Leggat went seamlessly from school, via Torry FP and Banks o' Dee to Aberdeen. He was in the first team as a teenager, while he was embarking on the course to become a PE teacher, at Jordanhill College and he played in a Dons' team which, scandalously over-looked today, was the first to take the League title to Pittodrie and was surely the equal of any team put out by Eddie Turnbull or Sir Alex Ferguson.
The Leggat, Yorston, Buckley, Wishart and Hather forward line was special - Leggat, Yorston and Buckley were full Scotland caps, Wishart won Scottish League and Under-23 "caps" and, had Jackie Hather been Scottish, rather than English, he would surely have been capped too.
They put six past an admittedly handicapped Rangers team in the 1954 Scottish Cup semi-final and won the League Cup in 1955.
Leggat played his full part in these successes, while only seeing his team mates on Saturdays, the rest of the week, he was on-campus at Jordanhill, doing his training.
He had a memorabe international debut, putting Scotland 1-0 up against England, at Hampden in 1956, with a terrific shot which dipped over the helpless Reg Matthews and under the bar. That goal looked like handing Scotland their first home win over the Auld Enemy in 19-years, but, two minutes from time, Johnny Haynes scored a controversial equaliser.
That was Leggat's first Scotland goal, his eighth and last was a similar dipping effort over the England 'keeper, in this case Ron Springett. This shot was something of a Leggat speciality - his winning goal in the 1955 League Cup final, over St Mirren 'keeper Lornie from 35-yards, was a similar effort.
The 1960 Hampden goal, as with his 1956 one gave Scotland a lead they couldn't defend and had Ian St John taken even one of the many chances Leggat provided for him that day, Scotland would have won rather than drawing 1-1.
Leggat came back from a broken leg to be in the Scotland squad in the 1958 World Cup finals, playing against Yugoslavia and Paraguay, and, after returning from Sweden, Aberdeen virtually gave him away to Fulham for £16,000 and he moved to Craven Cottage.
Fulham had a few stars at that time - principally the aforementioned Haynes. But, Leggat played in a formidable right wing triangle with Bobby Robson behind him at right-half and one Jimmy Hill inside him. Hill is on record as saying it was playing with Archie Macaulay at Brentford, then Leggat at Fulham which made him such a fan of Scottish players. The Fulham team also had a brilliant goalkeeper in Tony Macedo, who had succeeded Scottish international Ian Black, an England World Cup full-back in Jim Langley, and another one later in George Cohen, and an England centre-forward in Bedford Jezzard. But, they also had one or two duff defenders who could undo the good work of the good players.
He had eight years beside the River Thames, before short spells at Birmingham and Rotherham, a spell of being a Rank Xerox photo-copier salesman Monday to Friday and a Bromsgrove Rovers player on Saturdays, before, following an unrewarding spell as a coach at Aston Villa, be decided to head to Canada.
There, he found his niche, not as player-coach at Toronto Metros of the NASL, but, as the Voice of Canadian Soccer, firstly with CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, but later, for many years, with The Sports Network. Like erstwhile team mate Hill he commentated, commented and anchored his own Saturday night soccer show. Anything Hill did in England, Leggat matched in the less-fertile fields of Canada.
He was inducted as a "builder" - he built-up knowledge of and appreciation of soccer in Canada, into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame, in 2001 and in retirement, he continued to be an elder statesman of the game in that vast country.
Yet, back in Scotland, in the land of: "Him, a kent his faither", Graham Leggat is all but forgotten. This is wrong. Lesser players than he are in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, and, even more shockingly, in the Aberdeen one. He is in neither.
Let us hope, now that, aged 81, he has gone to the great pavilion in the sky, he can be properly remembered and appreciated.
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