Remembering Bremner - But Omitting The Flaws

I HAVE just finished my bed-time reading for this week: Richard Sutcliffe's biography of Billy Bremner. I was disappointed in it. Sutcliffe, a Yorkshire journalist, produced a somewhat lop-sided view of the Wee Man. Sure, he spoke to some old team-mates: Peter Lorimer, Gordon McQueen, David Harvey and so forth, but, crucially in a biography - there were no differing views, it was like the Leeds United strip if you like - all-white, with little attention paid to the darker side of Bremner's character.

I suppose, deep down, we don't want to know about our idols' foibles - unless, as was the case with George Best, he was a serial shagger of beautiful women; so the top guys get an easy ride when it comes to recording their careers.

That Leeds United team which Bremner played in and captained, contained some of the top players of their era. If you were to name a contemporary team drawn from the English First Division (as it then was) players of the decade 1965 - 1975, while Bremner, Johnny Giles and Jack Charlton would get honourable mentions, they would not necessarily make the final XI.

Don Revie, like his successor Brian Clough, built one great team, a team which probably amoun ted to better than the sum of tis constituent parts, but, like Clough, he failed to build a lasting legacy in the way Bill Shankly did at Liverpool, Bill Nicholson did at Tottenham or Sir Matt Busby did at Manchester United.

Revie's managerial style was flawed, as was Clough's and Bremner's captaincy and playing style was flawed.

Back at the time of the Millennium, the Daily Record came up with an ide - to allow the Tartan Army to select a Scotland Team of the Millennium, the best of the best as it were. Bremner was named as captain.

Just this year the Herald came up with its list of the 50 Greatest Scottish Players of All Time - Bremner didn't make it into the Top 11 and, even allowing for that elite group containing one or two players who played in the same position, he wasn't in the Greatest Team, assembled by picking the top-rated player in each position.

And, he wasn't knocked off his lofty perch by successors, but by re-examination, without the hype, of his record.

Sure, he was a superb player - I still re-call an absolutely flawless demonstration of the sweeper's art which he gave in a European game against Hibs at Easter Road in the late 1960s. He gave his all and led from the front in West Germany in 1974, but, had the SFA committee grown a pair between them, after their misbehaviour in the lead-up, neither he nor the easily-led Jinky Johnstone would have played (not that Jinky did and I feel the then anti-Celtic SFA quietly made an example of him but let Bremner off the hook).

Just maybe, their absence could have been the difference between glorious failure and getting into the second stage, had the rest thought: "Hell, we'd better play here or we're out too".

Bremner was a working-class Scot, so perhaps pre-programmed to go off the rails easily. The biography mentions his liking for a drink, the anti-establishment side of his character, but these failings are mentioned in passing - a proper biography calls for greater depth.

We learn nothing we didn't know about the Copenhagen Affair. I'd like to have learned a wee bit more about his relationship with Bobby Collins or how he got on with Jackie Charlton and John Charles. We learn nothing about his Raploch background; Alex Smith has almost made a career out of being Bremner's Best Buddy - he's not mentioned in the biography for instance.

Naw, the book is a wee bit like Bremner, good, but not as good as it would like to be.

I sometimes feel, had the young Bremner picked his boyhood heroes Celtic, and come under the influence of Jock Stein as a boy; or, on getting his first Scotland call-up in 1965 aligned himself with John Greig, Billy McNeill or even Denis Law, rather than Jim Baxter, Scotland might have had a better record than the admittedly good one they amassed over the next decade - and Bremner himself might be on an even higher step in the pantheon of our football heroes.