DAVID White died this week, aged 79. I trust he is at peace. Because, football dealt him a bad hand, when, with a wee bit of luck,he could have been a legend. White's story shows how thin the line between success and failure is.
He was, like so many good managers, an average player; always a part-timer in a decade of service to Clyde, who he had joined, at the relatively late age of 23 from Larkhall junior side Royal Albert. A hard-tackling wing-half, (that's a midfielder to the youngsters), according to the legendary Jim Baxter, he was: "'The Choir Boy Assassin; - Davie would kick you, then turn round and help you up, with a smile on his face".
But White was ambitious, one of the first players to gain coaching qualifications while still playing, which saw him, while captaining Clyde, promoted to player-coach. Then, when the SFA offered the poisoned chalice of the Scotland team manager's job - "but we selectors still get to pick the side", to John Prentice, White, aged 33 succeeded him as Clyde boss.
He immediately took the wee friendly club to third in the old 18-club First Division. Ths should have got them into Europe, but, the regulations of the time said two clubs from the same city couldn't compete in one European competition - Clyde were barred, because Rangers had qualified ahead of them - instead Dundee, who had finished a distant sixth, got in, and promptly reached the semi-final, changed days indeed.
But White still got into Europe, after being hijacked to Ibrox as assistant manager to the long-serving Scot Symon. The idea was apparently, for Symon to teach White the ropes, with a view to White in time taking over; while the younger man kept on his track suit and did the day-to-day coaching.
OK in theory, but theory went out of the window within six months. Somehow the idea surfaced in the Blue Room that Symon, who had sorted-out the torpor of the ailing Bill Struth's final couple of seasons, then seen-off the challenge of Tommy Walker's Hearts and Willie Waddell's Kilmarnock had suddenly become old-fashioned, out-dated, "yesterday's man" in the face of the challenge of the Jock Stein-rejuvenated, no, re-born Celtic.
While the track-suited Stein was pictured daily, out on the park, at the centre of things, directing training operations, Symon, suit-wearing, trilby on his head, pipe in mouth, watched from the side-lines.
Rangers needed a similar manager, suddenly, in November, 1967, even though his team was topping the league, Symon was history. There is a story that he was offered a move "upstairs", to the supervisory role of 'General Manager', with White taking charge of the team, but refused to take it and was gone.
Aged 34, White was Rangers' manager.
Going through the league unbeaten, until ambushed by Aberdeen, at Ibrox, on the final afternoon - to open the door for Celtic to overhaul Rangers and lift the title; and to lose to eventual winners Hearts and Leeds United at the quarter-final stages of both the Scottish and Inter-Cities Fairs Cups, and to lose just that one game in the league shows what a good team White's Rangers were. It wasn't his fault that Celtic, with the Lisbon Lions in their pomp, were better.
The following season, 1968-69 was a similar story, Rangers, with Colin Stein - for whom White had paid a Scottish record £100,000 - and Alex Ferguson scoring goals for fun up front, chased Celtic all the way in the league, but again came up short. Then came the 1968 Scottish Cup final, in which Celtic destroyed Rangers 4-0.
This debacle came on the back of another Fairs Cup exit, losing to eventual winners Newcastle United in the semi-final, the second leg of which, at St James's Park had been marred by some Rangers "fans", fuelled-up on a cocktail of "Newkie Broon" and Federation Ale - the dreaded North-East "rocket fuel", rioting.
The knives were now out for White, and sharpening them with a series of vitriolic articles, dubbing the Ibrox boss: 'The Boy David', was Willie Waddell, who had forged a reputation as one of Scotland's top football writers, since leaving Kilmarnock at the summit of Scottish football, as Champions in 1965, to join the Scottish Daily Express.
White soldiered on into the new season. He was rebuilding Rangers, Alex "Doddie" Macdonald was now on-board, while he had signed some promising youngsters, including future Rangers captain Derek Johnstone and Alfie Conn Junr.
But, he had further alienated some of the board by re-signing a now failing Jim Baxter, who was well set on the self-destruction road which would eventually kill him. The board had been only too glad to off-load the hell-raising Baxter when he was in his international prime, bringing him back didn't enamour White to his board, and the move was criticised by the constantly carping Waddell.
The end came quickly. Rangers were second in the league, but already out of the League Cup, when they were dumped out of the European Cup-Winners Cup, 6-2 on aggregate, by the Polish "unknowns" Gornik Zabrze.
In truth, Gornik - who went on to lose to the Joe Mercer/Malcolm Allison managed Manchester City in the final. Ironically, before Allison developed delusions of grandeur, this was the blueprint for the sort of management team Rangers had perhaps envisaged when they united Symon and White - was a bloody good team.
In the tie, Rangers were very unlucky; Gornik's second goal in Poland was a classic call for goal-line technology: Rangers goalie Gerry Neef went to his grave convinced the ball never crossed the line. Then, in the dying seconds a rare Kai Johansen mistake handed Gornik a precious third goal.
In the second leg at Ibrox, Rangers missed enough chances to win two games, before, late in the game, the frustrated players chucked it and Gornik scored a couple of late goals to complete the rout.
The team was booed off the park, the Bears chanted: "White must go" and, on the morrow, he went.
Less than a fortnight later Waddell, White's harshest critic, was the new manager and, for as long as he was connected to the club, life-long Rangers fan White refused to set foot inside Ibrox.
After over two years out of the game, he again succeeded Prentice, this time as Dundee boss. At Dens, he finally put one over on Stein, by leading Dundee to the 1973-74 League Cup; he also got them into four Scottish Cup semi-finals, where they generally lost to Celtic, and twice into Europe. He also gave Gordon Strachan his first team debut.
Reading this record, it is clear, White was a better manager than some guys we could name, who went on to manage Scotland, for instance. But, boy, was his timing bad - to take-over as manager of Rangers, at a time when the greatest club set-up Scotland has ever seen - Bob Kelly pulling the strings in the corridors of power, Jock Stein waving his magic wand as manager and getting the best out of more than half of the all-time Celtic dream team: McGrain, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Johnstone, Dalglish, Auld and Lennox - that's enough to give any football man from outwith the Celtic Family nightmares.
You have to wonder, what might have been, had the Rangers board held their nerve; had they been able to persuade Symon to become say Director of Football and mentor White the same way as Walter Smith mentored Ally McCoist. And here, I have to say, from his record at Clyde and Dundee, it has to be argued that White was a better manager than Ally.
Might not Rangers, like the Mercer/Allison at Manchester City, have pulled the tail of the dominant force across the city. Of course, it might, as happened in Manchester, all have gone pear-shaped, except, I suspect White lacked Allison's self-destructive streak.
There wasn't that much between Stein's Celtic and White's Rangers. Who knows, maybe, a Symon/White pairing could have perhaps denied Celtic at least a couple of their nine-in-a-row titles. Maybe, had White been allowed to serve a longer apprenticeship under Symon, Rangers might not have collapsed as they did in the second half of the 1970s.
You know, when you consider his part in White's dismissal, and you leave aside the somewhat fortunate Barcelona success against Moscow Dynamo, maybe Willie Waddell wasn't the icon some Rangers Men think him to be.
Sure, he was almost Stein-like in his Machievellian machinations, his vision in pushing for the re-building of Ibrox has to be acknowledged; but, his bad-mouthing of White, allied to his efforts to air-brush George Young out of Rangers history, and what some see as his failure to properly acknowledge the part Jock Wallace played in Rangers successes in the early 1970s, point to a Willie Waddell who had feet of clay.
But, all that is history and speculation. What we should recognise, as we remember Davie White is - he was a good manager, who simply didn't enjoy much luck when it mattered. And as Napoleon believed of his generals, but never said out loud: "Better to be lucky than good".
TO COME right up to date - well done St Johnstone on Thursday night. Now boys, don't undo all the good work in the second leg.
Scotland expects - oh shit, isn't that a recipe for disappointment?
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