Gowanhill Utd
Alex Smith recalls Billy’s recruitment to Gowanhill United
Alex Smith, born in 1939 in the small mining village of Cowie, is a retired professional footballer who played for Kilmarnock, Stenhousemuir and Stirling Albion, before turning to football coaching and management. He was the first manager of Stenhousemuir in 1969, then the youngest manager in the Scottish Football League. He worked under Bob Shankly, brother of the Liverpool legend Bill, at Stirling Albion before becoming their manager in 1974. He went on to have an illustrious career in Scottish club management including terms at St. Mirren with whom he won the Scottish Cup in 1987; Aberdeen, winning a cup-double in 1990; Clyde; Dundee United; Ross County; Scotland U21s; and was latterly technical director at Falkirk. In 2017, he had a spell as caretaker manager of Falkirk, which at the age of 77 made him the oldest serving manager in European club football.
Alex, three years older than Bremner, has recounted in numerous press interviews the day Billy turned up to play football for Gowanhill United aged 13. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two, Alex becoming Billy’s best man at his wedding to Veronica “Vicky” Dick in 1961.
In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2007 Alex recalled when he first met Bremner rode up on his green bicycle ringing his bell asking for a game and the immediate impact his football talents had on local youth football:
We had just finished training and were about to have a game […] Then this wee fella, who I didn’t know but seemed to know me, shouted over: “Alex, any chance of joining in?” I said I’d ask our trainer, George McDonald, but George looked at Billy and said: “He’s too wee, we don’t want to take any chances.” The boy was desperate, though, and we only had 15 players. So I asked again and George finally said: “Well, OK.” Billy ended up on the same side as me and was unbelievable, the best player on the park. At the end he said: “See ya again” and, eventually, he signed for us.
Alex Smith
In another interview for The Sun in 1997 Alex revealed more about the thirteen year-old’s talents among boys much older and bigger than he was:
He never showed any fear when he played. He wasn’t the tough tackler that he became at Leeds in those days, he was just a wee guy with amazing ball control and appetite for the game. He’d grown up in a tough part of Stirling and had one aim in life – he wanted to be a footballer. He was going to do everything he could to make it and when you saw him play you knew why.
Alex Smith
Speaking of Bremner’s talent in a more recent interview for The Times in 2018, with fifty years experience in football management, Alex continued to hold Bremner in the highest regard:
He was 13 or 14, playing under-21 football and always outstanding, one of the best I’ve seen at that age. If you combined Roy Keane and Paul Scholes, you might have Billy Bremner. That’s as accurate as you can get. He’s sometimes seen as a ball of barbed wire [a famous Sunday Times headline referred to him as such], but was far more that that. First of all, he was a footballer of great talent.
Alex Smith
John Digney recalls seeing Bremner while still only thirteen or fourteen turning up for a game versus Cornton Rovers who played on the site of Cornton Vale open prison (borstal) in the 1950s on what he recalls was a “beautifully cut” park with nets on the goalposts and showers for after the game. Playing well above his age things didn’t always turn out the way Bremner expected:
The Cornton started the juvenile team, so I was playing with them and we played a friendly first against Gowanhill. Gowanhill were a well-known juvenile team at that time. And we were all in the same dressing room and Billy was playing, he was putting his strip on, he’s a wee laddie, he’s only 13 or 14 and he’s putting the strip on, quite happy. But as I say, the guy Jimmy Elliot, he was a painter, he was nearly 21. This was his last season with Gowanhill, so he was late and he turned up. So Billy had to take his top off. He was nearly crying, like, you know he took his strip off
John Digney
Nevertheless, Bremner’s talents soon shone through while playing with and against players much older than him. Kenny Robertson notes how if Bremner was playing he changed the nature of the match:
Well Billy – Billy Bremner was a player in a team who were well respected [and] who respected Billy Bremner because we knew he had talent. The team I played with, we played against them quite regular. If Bremner was playing that [gave the game] a different complexion. We hadn’t much chance of winning because he was so good, he was above the rest of them.
Kenny Robertson
Many of the interviewees noted there were many good players in The Raploch and Stirling at the time, but Bremner became far more successful. As Kenny observed:
We did have one player in our team who I thought was every bit as good as Bremner at that age, but he didn’t come through like Billy Bremner came through. Maybe the school, the school helped Billy Bremner and the priest, I think the local priest at that time pushed Billy Bremner as well. But they had a senior team and a juvenile team and Billy Bremner played with the senior team before his age group, if you know what I mean, he was a stick out. He was obviously the man they were going to play.
Kenny Robertson
As a professional at Leeds Bremner developed a tough side to his game. Our interviewees all signalled that while in Stirling Bremner was known for his skill and talent rather than his fiery temperament. Kenny remarked:
I only played against him and even although the games could get a wee bit rough and tumble here, he never rose to the to the debate. If you know what I mean? As far as I know, never ever. There was a lot of guys characters in the team that he played with who were rough and ready and you had to watch what you were doing and what not, but he was never like that. He was just unassuming, would go on with the game and obviously had huge influence in any game he was playing.
Kenny Robertson
Shell Park
The provenance of the name “Shell Park” is not found in any archives, but from those we spoke to one anecdote is that the site was named after a Shell fuel depot that was adjacent to the open field which became home to Gowanhill United.
The aerial shot of Raploch (below) reveals the location of Shell Park on the south eastern fringes of the Raploch Estate, directly adjacent to the steep buttress of Gowanhill, the site of Stirling Castle.
A large part of the area in the immediate post-war era was taken over by the army in the ‘Back-O-Hill’ barracks. The barracks included a highly manicured parade and sports ground which was fenced off from public access. The public park included the pitch where Gowanhill played, as well as the areas identified by Billy’s contemporaries as the area where they had small-sided games and kick-abouts. The public pitch is just visible in the top of the photograph below, although our interviewees noted that this pitch moved around on the site and was sometimes located running alongside the railway track on the northern side of Shell Park.
Willie McQullian explained there were two parts to the park:
The Shell Park there’s were two parts. The Shell Park – you know it was called after, there was a shell garage there. That was a depo it wasn’t a garage a depo for big tankers. That’s why it was called Shell Park. The park just outside it was all grass. That was quite a good park. For them days, it wasn’t a great park by any matter of means. The other one was further on as you come towards where the new houses are. There was a new park there that was really it was ash, real real ash from coal. You knew it was ash. And that was the two parks but between them there was Argyle Park. But it had a big fence around it. It was under the castle but it was Argyle camp, and the Argyles were in the castle at the time so it was their park, and we had always wanted to play there but it was locked and we could never get in. But some of us were lucky and we got a game there. Me for one I got a couple games there but a lot of the guys wanted to play there, we didn’t have a flat park.
Willie McQullian
Our interviewees noted that Shell Park was the main area of green space to play football in Raploch. It always had grass and goalposts up year round to play a game. For many years teams had to change in a local farm just off Ivanhoe Place. Willie describes what it was like:
It was called the Raploch Farm and it was sort of closed down. There was still some stuff among the barns and things, but the big house was there, but it was sort of condemned. You couldn’t go up the stairs in it. You weren’t allowed to go up the stairs it was barred off. But down the stairs, Gowanhill United, they used that as a dressing room. Willy Gordon who ran Gowanhill United he ran it from that, you had to go from there to walk by Ivanhoe Place across the Drip Road, across the railway to get to the park. Which was when you think about it, nowadays they wouldn’t do that. But that’s what you did. That’s where the Gowanhill got changed and when Billy played with them that’s where he would change. In there. And that was Ivanhoe Place.
Willie McQullian
John Digney later signed for Gowanhill and played his final year as a juvenile for the club and he remembers going into the farmhouse by Ivanhoe Place where the team changed before heading over the railway line to Shell Park. Neither the farmhouse which was condemned, nor the kit were much to write home about: “It was an old farmhouse and they had old strips hanging up, these smelly old strips hanging up.”
Kenny Robertson recalled that in the late-1950s, either 1958 or 1959, a Nissan Hut was eventually put up at the town end of the park, “that was glorious, that was like Hampden for us. It was roughly where MacDonalds is and that was luxury with running water”. John also noted he played against Bremner in the casual games on Shell Park where talents were evened out, “Well, he was obviously a special talent, but he was brought down to Earth and the Shell Park very fairly specific talents didn’t always help you.”
There were, however, stringent rules about the use of the pitch which forbid playing there on Sundays. On one occasion boys from the Raploch were chased by police for playing an unlicensed game of the pitch, many of them, including Kenny, received a summons to the local Sheriff Court. “It was alright to go over and just play kick a ball about that if you played an organized game with two teams they reported to the police and the police stopped the game, and we all had to go off.” Willie was also at Shell Park that day:
Yeah, well it was 1961 and we’re playing football over the Shell Park. It’s just over there. We played football in the Shell Park and two policemen come down the Drip Road. And of course, they came over and crossed the railway. So we thought they would just dispersed us, but no, they wanted all the names. Got them all lined up. So I done a runner. There’re never going to catch me, never catch me, with big coats and big boots on no chance. But the rest all stood and gave their names like robots, they all got charged and Kenny Robertson still got that summons to this day. Still got it. And they keep saying to me “there were 22 of us but there’s only 21 charged.” So he said, your name is not on it and I said I know, said I’m not getting charged. We could all run they would have never of caught us. But fair play to them they all stood there and took it. But we’re back there the next week, again in numbers, because the Raploch people are like that. Well, if they come back again, they’ll have to book about 40 or 50. They’ve not got enough time in the day to do that. So that’s the story of the mad Sunday. Got booked for playing football. When you couldn’t do nothing else. There was just nothing else you could do
Willie McQullian
As Kenny remembers, “We were all taken to court. And we all appeared in the court.” No charges were pressed but the story reveals the draconian way in which public parks were policed at the time.
The Scottish Secondary Juvenile Cup 1959
The competition was introduced in the 1922-23 season by the Scottish Juvenile FA (SJFA) for players under-21. Gowanhill United reached the final of the Scottish Secondary Juvenile Cup in 1959, although Bremner had by this time left the club. Bremner had begun trials with Leeds United youth team from age 15 in 1958, but continued to travel home and train with, and possibly play with, Gowanhill. Eventually, according to Joe Meldrum who played for Gowanhill at this time, Leeds stopped Bremner training with his local club for fear of injury.
In the final Gowanhill lost 3-1 to St. Andrews Swifts from Fife. Aside from Bremner, a significant number of players from both teams went on to the senior ranks of the game, which from Gowanhill included John Grant (Celtic), David McIvor (Stenhousemuir), Tommy Campbell (Dundee United) and Alex Smith (Kilmarnock) and for the Swifts goalscorer Bobby Waddell (Dundee), Tommy Carmichael (Celtic) and John Smith (East Fife).
There is little that survives in any archives on the event, but on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cup Final in 2009 a report in the Stirling Observer, followed up by the Daily Record and then Fife Today recounted the events of 1959.
Tommy Campbell played in the Gowanhill side, and in an interview with the Stirling Observer recalled how the team progressed to the final. “The Gowanhill team was run by Wullie Gordon but among his helpers was John Wynn, who was a very colourful character.” Campbell recalled how in the quarter final Wynn, acting as linesman, kicked a ball back into play without the referee’s knowledge which enabled Willie ‘Emmett’ McKenzie to cross the ball for Tommy Campbell to score the winner against a much-fancied team from Renton. Such skulduggery is arguably legion within youth and amateur football.
Campbell also mentioned Stirling Albion donated strips to the club and also allowed the team to practice on their Annfield pitch (demolished in 1993). This was most likely arranged by George McDonald then assistant coach at Stirling Albion who had worked with Gowanhill over a period of three years and had given Bremner his start in the team back in 1955.
This story links neatly with a memory from Alex Smith about Gowanhill training at Annfield in this period. According to Smith on one occasion Bremner started experimenting a new skill of a reverse pass. When asked what he was doing by Smith, Bremner apparently explained:
“I want to master this pass. I want to be going one way and play it the other. The vulnerable area is over there. If I can run that way and switch it as I’m running, there’s a scoring chance every time.” He was 13 or 14 and I was 15 or 16 and I thought, “Christ, you’re right.” It became a mark of his game. He had that tactical brain. I saw him doing it one night in a European game at Elland Road in thick fog and he found Eddie Gray on the left wing every time.
Alex Smith (interviewed in The Times, 4 March 2018)
The lead-up to the 1959 Cup Final was covered by the Daily Record on 6th June 1959. The headline “’30 bob’ team may become champs’ a reference to the donations the club sought from their matches. The article focuses on the emergence of Gowanhill United as a force in juvenile football of the period. Of note is the mention of former St. Modan’s school players among their ranks. Much of the success is given to the work of coach Jim Kerry and the club captain and centre-half John Grant then aged 18. Bremner is mentioned at the end of the article among Gowanhill United’s crop of talented players to turn professional.
Bremner did not sign a professional contract for Leeds until shortly after his seventeenth birthday in December 1959, several months after the Juvenile final in June, although the article clearly states his relationship with the Yorkshire club. Bremner’s autobiography You Get Nowt For Being Second recounts how he travelled with fellow Scottish schoolboy international Tommy Henderson on trial with various clubs including Arsenal and Chelsea (Bremner, 1971). They also trained with Celtic until the interest came from Leeds. What is unknown is the specific dates for his journeys to Leeds and when Bremner became a youth trainee with Leeds United which effectively ended his playing days with Gowanhill United.
John Wynn Select Eleven
The Daily Record article carries an image of John Wynn (1928-1978) of Raploch Road, who was well known in the Raploch as a newspaper vendor, selling the Glasgow papers and the special football late editions at the weekend on Station Road. Wynn notoriously had a Rangers and Celtic scarf which he would interchange depending on where he was selling the newspapers to prospective football supporters.
As the article notes, Wynn was a key figure within youth football in Raploch, he and his brother Barney were passionate about football, both as a coach and supporter of football in the town. John mentioned that Wynn ran a select eleven of youth players in the Stirling area which would play competitive matches against teams across the central belt of Scotland on Sundays. “John Wyn, he always made sure he had a good team”, he noted. John’s first encounter with Billy was in one of Wynn’s select teams. As he recalls:
I am a lot older than Billy and he was only 15 when he played with the John Wynn select and it was quite a thing to be picked for the John Wynn select team. We played a game and we won 13-0 and the reason for that was John was picking all the best players from round about and I scored a hat trick that day which I don’t normally do and Billy scored a couple.
John Digney
John Wynn was hugely respected in Stirling. In an article for the Stirling Observer in 2012 a friend of Wynn said that he “did as much work about the town as any social worker”. He died aged 50 following an accident on Drip Road, and hundreds turned out to pay tribute at the funeral.
Kenny remembers the last time he met Bremner, not long after leaving for Leeds, they were both witness to Wynn’s death.
John Wynn, a guy who used to run teams, was there walking up the road and we used to shout at him and he was shouting back and as he stepped off the pavement he got knocked down by a bus. And he was lying on the ground and the traffic was stopped and built up and there was an ambulance, and Billy Bremner was on the bus, one of the buses that was stuck in the traffic. And he got off the bus and he said to me “Hey Kenny, what’s happened here?” I says how I couldn’t believe how different his tongue was and he’d only been down in Leeds for about a year that he spoke with different accent.
Kenny Robertson
The John Wynn Cup is still competed for by local teams and was won recently by Cowie Colts.
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