Big Jock by David Leggat

Author:David Leggat
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845028503
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2014-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

11

MADE TO WAIT

WHEN Jock Wallace left for his annual family holiday in the summer of 1973, he could have been forgiven for believing that he was on the brink of the big breakthrough.

Certainly that is what most Rangers fans thought was just over the horizon as they spent those months of June and July reliving the drama, excitement and ultimate triumph of the Scottish Cup final, thinking it was the start of a trail which would be blazed to title glory. The League Championship, last captured by Scot Symon’s brilliant Treble team in 1964 – the era of Greig, McKinnon and Baxter – was something those supporters genuinely believed was a realistic probability as they savoured the prospect of a new campaign and an assault on a Celtic side which, under Jock Stein, had won eight consecutive crowns.

Wallace, as was so often the case, was certainly thinking the same thoughts, proving once again just how in tune he was with supporters. But Wallace was always much more hard-headed than the fans and he had based his optimistic outlook on what he believed to be the cold hard facts of how he saw the developing team, which now carried his own stamp. Of course, Wallace never indulged in any flights of fancy of psychological mumbo jumbo, but he did attach as much important to mental toughness as he did to physical fitness.

A decade later, Wallace told me, ‘It was not just the fact that we won the Scottish Cup against Celtic which impressed me, it was the way we won it by coming from behind against Celtic. At that time I always felt that if Celtic scored first we would not be able to come back, but that day proved that we could, and that was a big breakthrough for the team. There was also the way the team had knitted together and the players had become close during that great run in the second half of the season.’

Cup competitions had been good for Wallace right from his early days at Ibrox. The League Cup became the first trophy won by Rangers for four and a half years and it was captured within months of Wallace taking up his post as Willie Waddell’s right-hand man with that trainer-coach title. The next season came that long craved for by the supporters European trophy, the Cup-Winners’ Cup, a triumph which saw Waddell hand over the reins and make Wallace manager. Wallace repaid that faith by winning the centenary Scottish Cup final, the second time in a final at Hampden he had outfoxed Jock Stein to give Rangers fans the chance to see silverware paraded.

After so many campaigns during which Rangers had limped in well behind at the end of the marathon campaign which is the chase for the League Championship, there were at last signs that Rangers under Wallace had developed the stomach for the fight and the stamina to see it through.

However, due to a number of reasons, which included a slow

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