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The National (Scotland)

Sport

[email protected] | Matthew Lindsay

Former Rangers and Hearts winger on how he became Scottish football's 'Miracle Man'

B’ Rangers Hearts Jock Wallace Football Ibrox Celtic Jock Stein Scotland SFA

Former Rangers and Hearts winger Billy Mackay in the Ibrox dressing room earlier this month (Image: Promotional)

Billy Mackay has returned to Ibrox to watch his beloved Rangers in action on a few occasions in the past couple of seasons whenever his son Martin has been able to get tickets through the My Gers loyalty scheme he is a member of.

Being back at the ground where he spent eight years at as a player during the late 1970s and early 1980s is always an enjoyable and emotional experience for him regardless of what transpires on the park.

Even if his presence goes completely unnoticed.

“When I get to my seat in the stand I just sit there, look about the stadium and try to take it all in,” said Mackay during a chat about his new autobiography Miracle Man earlier this week.

“I always say to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is what I did at one time’. But the ginger hair of my youth is long gone now and nobody has ever recognised me when I’ve been at a game, not once, never.”

His anonymity begs a question. Why would fans of the Glasgow club want to read the memoir of a man who can sit in among them on match days without causing any ripples of excitement whatsoever?

Mackay, who was the hottest property in British football as a teenager and was tipped by his first manager Jock Wallace to become “the next George Best” and represent Scotland at the World Cup, struggled to fulfil his enormous early potential in the professional game and eventually had his playing career cut short in his mid-twenties by a serious knee injury.

But he still has an incredible, improbable, unique story to tell. Those Bears who are blissfully unaware of who he is will find a great deal to pique their interest in the pages of his engrossing tome.

The boyhood Rangers fan from Glenrothes was at Ibrox alongside some legendary figures during a halcyon era, had a ringside seat at some memorable triumphs and contributed to their cause whenever get got the chance.

His brief spell at Hearts, too, was remarkable. He turned out for the Tynecastle club two years after he had been told by a surgeon that he would never play football again and during the season they came within a draw of lifting the Scottish title.

Billy Mackay during his time at Rangers (Image: Newsquest)

But more of that later. It was the distinct misfortune of Mackay, a blisteringly fast and superbly skilful winger as a youth, to join the Glasgow club at a time that three of the greatest wide men in their entire history were on the books, Davie Cooper, Willie Johnston and Tommy McLean.

He has, though, never rued his decision to spurn the advances of the English giants who were queueing up to secure his services.

“I first became aware of Rangers during their European Cup Winners’ Cup run in the 1971/72 season,” he said. “I remember watching them beat Bayern Munich in front of 80,000 at Ibrox in the semi-final on television and then defeat Celtic in the Scottish Cup final the following year. My love for them just grew from there.

“Aston Villa, Liverpool, Leeds United, Manchester City and Manchester United were all interested in signing me when I was a kid and I went down south for several trials. Once I got through to Rangers, though, that was it for me. I just knew it was where I was going to be.

“I’ve never had cause to regret my decision. I'm a great believer in what's for you won't go by you. I had some great times, I had some hard times, but I was a Rangers player and I loved that.”

Mackay continued, “Tommy, Bud [Johnston] and Davie were all in the squad when I was there and they were all outstanding professional footballers. They could have played anywhere they wanted. The level of competition was through the roof.

“Yeah, it was a daunting task trying to dislodge them. But they were all great guys. There was a really good camaraderie between us all at the time. Bud and I had a strong connection because we are both Fifers. We struck up a close friendship.

“I said to him one day, ‘I'm from Glenrothes, you're from Kirkcaldy, how about I pick you up and take you in to training?’ He was pleased with that because he didn’t drive and it saved him getting the train. He loved to tell a story and certainly had some great stories to tell. I found him fascinating.

“He was such a positive character. His attitude was spot on. He loved football and he knew how to train. He had hardly an ounce of fat on him, he was a fabulous athlete.

“He started to encourage me to go to the gym and introduced me to weight training. He felt I needing to put a few pounds on and improve my strength. I responded well, I really did. But he gave my confidence more than anything. He rated me as a player and the self-belief just surged through me because of that.”

Billy Mackay in action for Rangers (Image: Newsquest)

Mackay and his fellow Rangers players needed to be fit with a formidable taskmaster like Wallace in charge. But the youngster found the former King’s Own Scottish Borderer to be far, far more than just a strict disciplinarian. His admiration for Big Jock shines through in Miracle Man.

“Jock had a tremendous loyalty to his players,” he said. “He would always defend them to the hilt. I was a young player and wasn’t a first team regular, but he really looked after me. I wasn’t alone.

“One day he called me into his office and said, ‘Are you struggling a bit with your eyesight?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think I am’. That afternoon he took me in to a contact lens clinic in the city centre and got it sorted. He did that himself. I found him a thoroughly decent man and respected him greatly.

“Hard training was something that I loved. But there was always a bit of trepidation going to Gullane Sands in pre-season because everybody knew what was coming. It ended on what they called Murder Hill. Jock would standing at the top bellowing at us.

“He asked everything of a player physically. But I loved it, a lot of the players did. And there was always the chance to go straight into the sea and cool off afterwards.”

Mackay upstaged another great winger when he made his first team debut for Rangers at the tender age of 16 in a pre-season friendly against Dundee at Dens Park in 1977 – Celtic and Scotland icon Jimmy Johnstone.

“Jinky was making his first appearance for Dundee the night I played my first game for Rangers and there was a lot of interest in him,” he said. “But I was just thrilled to be involved. I never gave it any thought that a legend was playing for Dundee. I had to get on with what I was doing.

“But, of course, it got picked up on by the media. There were two men there making their debuts, a young lad and a more experienced man who were both redheads, on opposite sides of the park. It was called ‘The Battle of the Redheads” in one paper. I ended up winning the Man of the Match award.”

The surprise and sudden departure of Wallace from Ibrox in 1978 – after he had overseen their second domestic treble in three seasons – shocked Mackay as did his choice of replacement as Rangers manager.

“One minute, John Greig was in the dressing room as a player and the captain, the next minute he was the manager,” he said. “That can’t have been easy. But I thought he did the job very well indeed.

Rangers manager Jock Wallace, left, with his Celtic counterpart Jock Stein in 1978 (Image: Colorsport / Shutterstock)

“He had quite an innovative outlook. He tried to shake it up a bit with his training and his methods. I thought he came very, very close. If he had got a break here or there who knows what would have happened.

“Derek McInnes is going through a bit of a tough time at the moment, but I'm sure that he's going to be a very, very good Rangers manager and enjoy success. I still have high hopes for this season. It would be brilliant if we could get back on top again.”

That was something that Mackay never quite achieved personally. “When I look back, I think I possibly had an inconsistency about my play,” he said. “Sometimes I could get to the levels that I needed to, but I couldn't do it on a consistent basis.

“When you're playing for a club like Rangers, you need to be an eight out of ten every week at a minimum. I could do it, just not often enough. That was probably what let me down. Top players are consistent. They find a way.”

Still, he had his moments. Being involved in the European Cup Winners’ Cup game against eventual champions Valencia, who fielded Argentinian striker Mario Kempes up front, at Ibrox in 1979 was a definite thrill. “He had single-handedly won the World Cup for his country the year before,” he said. “He was that good.”

Featuring in a classic Old Firm game, the 3-3 draw with Celtic at Parkhead in 1981, was another highlight. “Just shy of the hour mark, John Greig turned to me in the dugout and said, ‘Billy, you're going on’,” he said. “The intensity of the match was incredible, the noise level was through the ceiling.

“I can remember trying to speak to a team mate who was just five yards away from me. I was trying to shout at him, he was trying to shout to me. Neither of us could hear a word. The pace of the game was amazing too. It was frenetic.”

Mackay hoped the return of his mentor Wallace as manager in 1983 would help him to finally establish himself. But he suffered a horrific knee injury in a reserve game against Motherwell and never donned a light blue jersey again. It was the beginning of a dark period in his life. The scars, both physical and psychological, remain to this day.

“I got the best treatment that anyone could have got,” he said. “The medical team were very talented and they gave me the best procedure that was available. But the pain as soon as I came out of the operating theatre was excruciating and all I got offered was paracetamol.

“I was counting down every four hours so I could take some more. The two weeks after it were absolutely awful. The pain levels were high, no doubt about it. Eventually I came out the other side of it and my body started to settle and heal.

Miracle Man is former Rangers and Hearts player Billy Mackay's new book (Image: Promotional)

“But the worst bit maybe came eight weeks after the operation when they took off my plaster cast and I saw my leg. Because of the inactivity, the muscle was gone, it was just gone. I remember looking at it in the hospital and thinking, ‘How am I going to get that muscle back?’.

“The physio worked with me and I learned to walk again. But I went to see the surgeon who had performed the operation at Ross Hall one evening in the summer of 1984. I asked him, ‘Is it finished?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I would recommend finishing’. They feared I would become a cripple if I continued.

“I went in to Ibrox the following day and told Jock my career was over. That was quite an emotional moment. But Jock got off his seat, came round to me and gave me a hug. He was never far away after that, he always tried to help me however he could. He was a gentleman.

“But it was terrible, a truly horrible moment for me. Even all these years later, I can still feel all of the emotions that were surging through me at that time whenever I think back to it.”

Rangers arranged a testimonial dinner for Mackay as well as a match against a touring New Zealand side for him and he was touched when 5,500 fans turned up. But he sank into a deep depression in the weeks that followed. He worked in a newsagents shop in Glasgow for a while and then moved back in with his parents in Meikleour in Perthshire.

“It all took a huge toll on me,” he said. “Before long you start to ask, ‘What am I going to do with my life now?’. You just have to find a way to keep going. I suspect that nowadays professional people, a counsellor or whatever, would have been assigned to me to try and get inside my head and help me. But it was what it was.”

His old Rangers team mates Alex MacDonald and Sandy Jardine eventually came to his rescue. They were manager and assistant-player-manager of Hearts respectively and they asked him to do some scouting work for them and then to help to coach the youth teams. The more he got involved in training and bounce games, the stronger he felt.

“Alex approached me one day and said, ‘How would you feel about playing in a reserve match against Motherwell tomorrow?’,” said Mackay. “He didn’t have to ask me twice. I scored 10 minutes into the match. Alex was playing that day and he was the first guy to come over to me. He had this huge beaming grin on his face.

“Not long after that I got asked to go in to Tynecastle one day to see Alex in his office. He asked me, ‘We want you to sign for us. How do you feel about it?’. They offered me a two year deal. My jaw hit the floor. There are no words to describe how I felt.

“Hearts discussed the legalities of me returning to play with Rangers and I was so pleased when they did not stand in my way. To go from where I had been to that moment was just incredible.”

Billy McKay, centre, signs for Hearts as manager Alex MacDonald, left, and assistant manager Sandy Jardine, right, look on (Image: Newsquest)

His official unveiling was as bizarre as his comeback was unlikely. He sat in a wheelbarrow on the side of the pitch as MacDonald pushed him around the snow-covered Tynecastle pitch and photographers took pictures. “I have no idea what that was all about or whose idea it was,” he said.

The back page headline in one tabloid the following day screamed “Miracle Man!”.

Mackay added, “It was a privilege to be at Tynecastle at that time. The players who were there had found form and consistency. Alex and Sandy manufactured an incredible team spirit. What a bond they all had!

“They were leading the Premier Division and on course to win the Scottish title. The crowd got behind the team and the atmosphere at matches was electric. My first game for Hearts was against Celtic at Parkhead in February. I came on as a substitute in a few of the games after that.”

One of them was the fateful final day match against Dundee at Dens Park. The visitors only needed a draw to be crowned champions for the first time since 1960. But on the morning of the game he got an early indication of what was about to unfold.

“I got on awful well with Craig Levein,” he said. “We travelled in to training together every day and we got friendly. He was a great guy and good company. When his wife phoned me and told me he had been up all night being sick and wasn’t going to make the match, I thought it was just Craig at the wind-up.

“But she got quite angry and I quickly realised she was serious. Of all the days for that to happen. A few of the players were laid low by a sickness bug and the team lost 2-0. I came on in the second half, but I couldn’t make a difference. It was just one of those days.

“It was a real hard one for everyone. I felt for Alex, Sandy, the players. They had given everything that season, everything, and ended up empty-handed. I was rooting for Hearts when they played Celtic on the final day last season. I knew how horrible it must have felt for them.”

Mackay was loaned out to Dunfermline the following season. But it was not long before he started to experience issues with his knee and he was eventually forced to retire from playing again. Strangely, he took the news in his stride second time around.

“I had known everything wasn’t right for a few months,” he said. “One day I was walking up a flight of stairs and something went. I got sent to see a specialist, he had a look inside my knee, we had a wee chat and decided that was it.

Hearts fans last season (Image: Stuart Wallace / Shutterstock)

“The surgeon said, ‘Look, you’ll be wanting to have a family and kick a ball about with your kids one day. Don’t risk anything’. But it was a completely different feeling.”

Mackay eventually became an undertaker with his father-in-law’s firm in Blairgowrie – where he was the manager of the town’s junior team for many years – and he found the profession to be every bit as rewarding as his football career had been.

“It was a fulfilling occupation,” he said. “It has been an honour to meet people and help them at a time when they really need help. It is a great community up here and it is nice to be part of it.”

But Billy Mackay has been promoting Miracle Man in the media and talking about his playing days in recent weeks and he enjoyed being invited on to talkSPORT by his old Rangers mucker Ally McCoist last week greatly.

“You lose touch with the people you played with over time,” he said. “Your lives take different paths. It was good fun catching up with Ally again. I hadn’t spoken to him for 40 years, but it felt like we picked up just where we left off.

“He was a breath of fresh air when he came to Ibrox. Nothing seemed to faze him. He was a confident man and that rubbed off on those around him. But he could play as well. He was an excellent footballer who could conjure up the goals. He is rightly regarded as a Scottish great.”

The same cannot be said of Billy Mackay - but few men to play for Rangers or Hearts have such an astonishing story.

Billy Mackay: Miracle Man by Graeme Strachan is published by Pitch Publishing and is available to buy now.

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