Gordon Smith on Jock Wallace, Juventus & painful Rangers departure

In a game now dictated by numbers it’s frightening to think what a midfielder who scored 27 goals in his debut season would fetch in 2023.

In Part One of a Rangers Review interview, the former SFA Chief Executive and Gers Director of Football talks Jock Wallace, the ’78 Treble, beating Juventus, his biggest regret and his hurt and anger at his Ibrox departure.

YOU are the final piece of the jigsaw.

Gordon Smith sat in Jock Wallace’s manager’s office at the head of the famous staircase in the hallowed halls of Ibrox and hung on every word.

It was August 1977 and Smith had been plucked from Kilmarnock to be handed a starring role with his boyhood heroes.

Nine months later he was a part of one of only seven Rangers teams in the club’s 151-year history to win a domestic Treble.

“Big Jock said: ‘Welcome to Rangers, that’s taken a while but at last you are here.’

“He saw the bewildered look on my face and explained he had been trying to sign me for four years.

“I knew nothing about it but I had to clear my head and think of the present and I knew Gers had just signed Davie Cooper.

“I asked Jock why he bought me when he had Coop for the wing and he explained when he first saw me I was in central midfielder and that’s where he wanted me to play.

“He had a system in his head and he needed a runner from midfield who could score goals to complete it.

“He said and I will always remember this: ‘You are the final piece of the jigsaw.’”

Three years later the skipper of Smith’s Treble-winning team John Greig would railroad him out of Ibrox for a then club record of £440k to Brighton.

Yet back in that whirlwind summer of ’77 the man who would go on to become Chief Executive of the Scottish Football Association and Director of Football at Rangers in his life after playing was in dreamland.

Gordon recalled: “I had finished my University degree in Business Studies and I had only just started my job working for a packaging firm, I was 10 days into it.

“The Kilmarnock manager Willie Fernie phoned me at my work and asked me if I was far from Ibrox and I said: ‘No. Why?’

“He said: ‘I have just sold you to Rangers.’

“Then he said he would meet me at Ibrox in an hour! I was on Paisley Road West anyway so I told my boss I had to nip out for a bit.

“Jock Wallace was waiting for me when I got there and I didn’t even look at the terms to be honest. Rangers were my club, so I signed.”

There is a tendency now through the lens of history to view Wallace as this one-dimensional guts and glory figure.

His National Service with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers in Northern Ireland and the jungles of Malaya in many ways defined his character.

That famous quote: “We’ve got the battle fever on” before the 1984 League Cup Final when Ally McCoist’s hat-trick in a 3-2 win demoralised Celtic lives large in the supporters’ psyches even now.

Yet Smith paints a picture of a manager who had carefully thought out how he could piece together a team to win a second Treble in three seasons.

He explained: “We played 4-3-3 with Cooper and Tommy McLean wide and Derek Johnstone as the no9.

“To this day people who only watch highlights on YouTube think I was the striker in that team but I wasn’t. I was, in modern day terms, the no.10.

“I scored 27 goals in my first season and with those numbers people don’t think you are a midfielder - but I was.

“I played in there alongside Alex MacDonald and Bobby Russell in that Treble Team and no-one else was playing that system with one striker in 1977.

“Big Derek was a great target man and a superb header of the ball to play off.”

We have just emerged from Michael Beale’s January transfer window of midfield reconstruction.

Todd Cantwell from Norwich City and Nicolas Raskin from Standard Liege feel like landmark signings, foundations of what the team will be built on for years to come.

Smith came in to his own Ibrox story from Killie, who were by far the biggest of the clubs of the trio of signings Wallace banked on to rejuvenate Rangers.

Gordon smiled ruefully: “That ‘78 Treble Team was McCloy in goal with Sandy Jardine and John Greig as the full-backs and Tom Forsyth and Colin Jackson in central defence.

“Midfield was MacDonald, Russell and Smith with McLean, Johnstone and Cooper up front.

“What a team that was, myself, Coop and Bobby were the new boys but we had a group of Barcelona Bears who had won the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1972 alongside us.

“We were lucky to have mentors and leaders around us who knew the demands of Rangers.

“Coop had come from Clydebank, Bobby from Shettleston Juniors and myself from Kilmarnock. It’s scary when you think about that now.

“I signed on the Monday and was on the bench on the Wednesday against Young Boys of Berne and Bobby was running the show in a European game. He was just out of the Juniors!

“I’d come from a league below which was tough enough for me but he came from Shettleston.”

Smith’s debut season would go down in folklore, getting off to a flyer.

In part that was down to the incredible engine he had to get up to feed off the peerless DJ yet he might have been kept in cold storage at the start if it hadn’t been for Coop’s love of a wager.

Gordon grinned: “I remember before my first game we had a running session and when it finished I headed for the shower.

“Then they called me back out and told me I was to have a race with big Peter McCloy on the track at Ibrox.

“So we had a half-lap race and I won and I was happy that Coop was cuddling me afterwards, I thought it was like an initiation test and I had passed.

“I should have known better, it turned out Coop had placed a huge bet on me winning!

“As I was leaving that day Jock Wallace shouted down and called me back up to his office.

“He said: ‘I watched that race out the window, how come you didn’t tell me you could run like that?’ I said he’d never asked.

“Jock admitted that he’d thought as a part-time player I would need time to get up to Rangers fitness levels and then he said: ‘Forget that, you’re starting Saturday!’

“We won on my debut at Partick Thistle and I scored twice in a 4-0 win which settled me in.

“I always hear people saying McCoist and Hateley and Johnstone and Smith in the same breath but it’s not the same thing.

“They were a partnership in the true sense but I was a no.10 coming from deep to support.

“I wasn’t a great defender but I was always available to make those forward runs.”

Smith’s fascinating insight into Wallace’s thinking behind the construction of that Treble team dispels some popular notions of what life was like inside Wallace’s Rangers.

Yet there were moments when this cerebral midfielder did see the bared fangs of the fabled jungle fighter.

Gordon shuddered: “I remember I was kind of comforting myself with the thought that Jock had always wanted a player with my profile and I got off to that flyer then scored twice on my Old Firm debut.

“I thought I had arrived and then we were down at half-time at St Mirren and I remember he pulled me up by the front of my jersey and jerked me right out of my seat.

“He roared in my face: ‘See when I say we are not playing well, that means EVERYONE in the team!’

“My face must have been telling him that I felt what was being said didn’t apply to me.

“I learned quickly to listen when he spoke to us in those sort of moments.”

Smith’s colourful playing career after Rangers would see him shine for Brighton in the run to the 1983 FA Cup Final against Manchester United when he, of course, famously missed a big chance to win the trophy for the underdogs with the game tied 2-2 deep in extra-time at Wembley.

The commentator’s words: ‘And Smith must score’ were hurled at him for years but he showed wry humour in titling his 2005 autobiography ‘And Smith did score’.

At the age of 68, he can barely believe how differently players are treated today in comparison with his time at the top.

He revealed: “Early in that first season we beat Aberdeen 6-1 at Ibrox in the League Cup and I scored a hat-trick.

“The Celtic legend Billy McNeill who was the Dons manager said afterwards: ‘I thought you were outstanding, well done. Why did you choose Rangers?’

“I was puzzled again, just as I had been when big Jock said he’d been chasing me for four years, and Billy told me that he had tried to sign me and so had Celtic.

“Kilmarnock never told me about the other two bids for me because they knew I was a Rangers fan!”

When Wallace rocked the football world by resigning in the wake of that ’78 Treble skipper Greig stepped into the job.

Over four decades on so much of the focus of his debut season as boss is trained on the fact that he lost the league title to bitter rivals Celtic in a final day decider when they had gone down to 10 men.

Smith winces at that memory yet there is a recollection from that season that pains him even more, missing out on the chance to be kings of Europe.

Gordon reflected: “There are only seven Rangers Treble teams and I am so proud to have been in one of them but it should have been TWO.

“We lost the league 4-2 to the ten men of Celtic on the final day of the season which hurt us all deeply.

“Yet, an even bigger regret in 78/79 was not winning the European Cup.”

Down to a solitary Pietro Virdis goal in the first leg, on an unforgettable Ibrox night clad in that trademark all blue continental strip, Rangers vanquished the Serie masters 2-0.

Smith saw Zoff somehow parry away a close-range chance but ‘Doddie’ MacDonald followed up to head home.

Then Gordon himself rose to bury a Tommy McLean free-kick and an incredible turnaround was complete.

Smith pointed out: “Juventus had the bulk of what would become the Italy 1982 World Cup team and they were the favourites when we knocked them out.

“They had the likes of Zoff, Cabrini, Scirea, Gentile, Tardelli, Causio and Bettega.

“They were world-class and the core of the Italy team that would be World Cup winners but we beat them and also knocked out a superb PSV Eindhoven side.

“There was a big shutdown in the winter that year with weather and we had a backlog of games and injuries by the time that the quarter-finals came around in March.

“We played the German side Cologne in the last eight and we were knocked out. When you think the final that year was Nottingham Forest vs Malmo we missed our big chance.”

Like every big personality in Scottish football, Smith will always have his detractors.

Yet throughout my years in journalism, he has always been an intriguing and engaging interview.

In my formative days in the local newspapers at The Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald, Smith was starring in Europe for first Admira Wacker in Austria and then FC Basel in Switzerland.

The Kilwinning-born star was a local celebrity yet he would never blank a call from a young up-and-coming journalist and would share fascinating insights into his adventures abroad.

These days, he remains a keen Rangers fan and analyst of current boss Beale’s process.

Gordon reasoned: “You need a contrast in a perfect midfield and myself, MacDonald and Russell were all very different players.

“We had different tasks, MacDonald was defensively excellent, Russell was a great passer and I could get up to support.

“I was the one tasked to run beyond and I think Jock Wallace’s managerial genius was in creating that mix.

“In intrigues me now watching Ryan Kent’s freedom with Michael Beale and how he is flourishing.

“I understand his frustrations when he was stuck out wide because I have been there and lived that.

“That annoyed me. Jock gave me what Michael is giving Ryan now. He is playing with the shackles off.

“When I look back that’s also what happened when Coop went to Motherwell and he was given a free role away from the wing.

“That’s what Rangers should have done in my eyes, he would have been a fantastic no.10.

“Davie remains the best player I ever played with and I think when you look back and see he was allowed to go to Well at 33 for £50k?

“Even Graeme Souness has confessed now that may have been one of his biggest mistakes.

“Ruud Gullit picked his all-time XI and Coop was in it. That’s some honour when you think of it.”

In these days of agents and players calling the shots as they run down contracts, Smith’s story of his Ibrox departure is a startling one.

It would create a rift between two men who were integral to that ’78 Treble and drive Gordon away from the club he loved.

And he sighed: “I didn’t want to leave Rangers, John Greig said he didn’t want to sell me but he wanted me to speak to Alan Mullery because he was a friend of his.

“I said I’d go and speak to him and they sent one of the coaches Davie Provan with me.

“I had just signed a new five-year deal with Rangers but the first Brighton offer was DOUBLE my wages and I still said no.

“The offer then got to three times my wages plus a massive signing-on fee and I was still saying no.

“Alan Mullery told me to go and have some lunch with Davie and we were both stunned by the package I was being offered.

“I still told Davie I wasn’t doing it and that’s when he dropped the bombshell. They’d already agreed the fee and the deal was done.

“I was raging and I phoned Ibrox and Greigy asked if I had signed and I said no and I wasn’t going to.

“He said: ‘You’re signing there, if you don’t then I will make your life hell and you won’t kick a ball in the first team again. We have accepted the bid.’

“I went back after lunch and signed and I had to go home and tell my wife Marlene we were moving.

“I couldn’t believe what had happened to me, I was forced out.

“I met Greigy after that and I told him two things. I said what you did to me was unacceptable but I also have to thank you for the chance I got at Brighton to experience playing against Liverpool and Manchester United.

“I don’t hold a great grudge now, right after I left they did three deals which I guess I financed and that’s football. It hurt me because I felt John wasn’t honest with me.

“In truth, though, the negotiations I did with Brighton back then made me the agent I was later in life!”