Bremner the fan

The local heroes of Stirling Albion

Like all young people who watch and admire footballers when they develop an interest in the game, Billy Bremner had his own heroes.

Bremner attended local matches in Stirling to watch Stirling Albion, a club founded in his lifetime in 1945, who played at their home ground Annfield, to the south of the city centre. As a young teenager Bremner was a ball boy for the club, nicknamed ‘The Binos’, and an image of Bremner in his tracksuit (far right) survives in a private archive.

Bremner (far right) as a teenage ball boy for Stirling Albion (photo John Digney)

Willie McQuillian recalls many youngsters in the area would go along to watch Stirling Albion play:

Football back then was entertainment. We used to go up to Annfield the home of Stirling Albion, Tom Ferguson ran them at the time. He used to open the gates at half time. So we’d hang around till half time to go in. But when you were in there, you got entertained. There was five forwards, five defenders and a goalkeeper, and he did that job, so it was end to end football, which was great, absolutely great […] Billy was an Annfield man he went up there often. Billy was at Annfield a lot of times, he was the ball boy there. So he got in that way as well. He volunteered to be ball boy and I used to volunteer to sell programs. I always had them all sold before the game and I got in for nothing and watched the whole game.
Willie McQuillian

One big attraction for youngster was ease of access into Annfield, just a relatively short walk away:

It was a lovely situation because it was a two-minute walk from the town. Easy to get to, you didn’t have bus fares. You could get enough money to get in and in them days the most I paid was a juvenile which was six pence, which is two and a half pence now.
Willie McQuillian

First big football hero: Johnny Haynes

Bremner also frequented games in Glasgow at Celtic Park, Ibrox and Hampden. He just lived and breathed football and footballers. In some of Bremner’s biographical writing he often mentions players he saw as a teenager. In Billy Bremner’s Books of Football No.2, he mentions going to Hampden to watch Scotland’s home internationals.

It was during the 1950s he saw one of his first heroes of the game Johnny Haynes of Fulham and England (See Pathe newsreel above).

In 1972 Bremner wrote:

When I was a lad in Stirling my first big football hero was Johnny Haynes. I thought he was brilliant when I used to watch him as a schoolboy. I saw him play for England at Hampden and he was a very quick thinker: not the speediest of players, but he was a tremendous reader of situations. And he was so accurate when he passed the ball.
Billy Bremner

These traits were later echoed in Bremner’s game, and in his early career at Leeds he saw first-hand how great his hero was.

Later, when I grew up and played against some of the men I adored from a distance as a kid, I was often disappointed. But I was never let down when I got a closer look at Johnny Haynes
Billy Bremner

Loving the characters in football

Bremner was a big fan of Celtic, although on alternate weekends would also watch Rangers at Ibrox to get his fix of football. Bremner also liked the light-hearted side of football, and enjoyed seeing players bring what he termed “character” to the game. In this mould, one player he admired was Charlie Tully of Celtic and Northern Ireland who played at Parkhead for a decade in the post-war period.

He was a character and the game could do with more like him today. Crowds love to see characters like Charlie. Charlie once took a corner several yards short of the corner flag and put the ball straight into the net. The referee made him take the kick again from the correct spot – and he promptly put the ball straight into the net again without another player touching it.
Billy Bremner

In this newsreel footage of Northern Ireland v England in 1952 Tully also scores from a corner, and secures a win for the Irish at Windsor Park.

The hero of the early Revie era: Bobby Collins

Another former Celtic player who was eventually Bremner’s predecessor as Leeds United’s club captain was Bobby Collins, another diminutive Scot with arguably a fiercer reputation than Bremner’s. Collins was both a hero of the teenage Bremner when he played for Celtic, but also a mentor during his early career at Leeds.

Bremner’s praise for what Collins brought to the club is significant in revealing how he mentored the younger players and was integral to Leeds United’s promotion to the First Division in 1964:

I had seen him playing before he joined Leeds, but I could never imagine playing with him because he was one of the greats in my eyes. Bobby always says he reckoned he was on the way down when he left Everton, but he never saw it that way himself. I think in a way joining Leeds and helping to bring on a bunch of youngsters was a bit of a lift for Bobby. What a hero he was when he became our captain. I just hope the Leeds team think of me as I used to think of Bobby. The little fellow didn’t have to play well for us – he just had to be there on the park to make a difference.
Billy Bremner

Bremner’s words are prophetic in many ways, as his own heroic status at the club subsequently grew year on year. In 2020 during the club’s centenary year Leeds United produced this short feature on Collins as part of their ‘Centenary Stories’, echoing the words of Bremner as to how important Collins was to Don Revie’s transformation of the club.

Smokers in arms

Bremner’s school friend Ian Pow’s favourite story recalls when he and Billy went to see the Real Madrid team arrive at Glasgow ahead of a friendly with Celtic. Still only seventeen and having completed his first season as a professional player, Bremner joined thousands of Scots to watch some of the world’s greatest players including Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskas. Willie McQuillian recounts Ian’s account for him:

Billy smoking. Billy ran about with a little guy who played football, he was a good player as well. I got a wee story from. ‘Carrots’ was his name, Ian Powell was his right name. It’s ‘Carrots’ he got called and it was Billy Bremner that gave him that nickname. Imagine, Billy with red hair calling someone carrots because Ian had red hair! Well Ian said, Real Madrid’s come up to play a friendly against Celtic. Said we’ll go to the airport. And they were only what – 15 or 16, if they were that. They went to the airport, and then Di Stéfano came off, came off the plane coming down the stairs, and he lit a cigarette up and started smoking a cigarette. And Billy Bremer says “Carrots, if it’s good enough for Di Stéfano, it’s good enough for me”. And that’s how they say he started smoking. And he did like a cigarette. I know that.
Ian Pow