You'll be well aware of his work.
With a haul of 19 trophies stockpiled over two decades, Richard Gough’s career came stamped with a shimmering silver lining. The sergeant major who led Rangers to nine-in-row under Walter Smith and a Scotland colossus with 61 caps, Gough was hardly a low-profile contributor to the game in this country. But up until now, only a handful of people had any idea just how close he came to throwing it all away before it had even begun during one of his first heart-to-hearts with the man who would later become his Ibrox mentor.
Speaking in the latest episode of our Off the Record podcast , Gough reveals how, as a homesick teenager in Jim McLean’s Tayside boot camp, he confided in Smith he had decided to hang up his boots for good and return to South Africa to embark on a career in the military. It was December. In Dundee. And a baby-faced Gough found himself scraping the mud off Dundee United’s first-team bus with freezing fingers as part of his duties as a youngster in McLean’s notoriously hard-knock school.
