Bobby Williamson’s Rangers story: Wallace, McCoist and Souness tales

Now 61, the former Kilmarnock and Hibernian boss, who went on to have an African adventure as national team manager of both Uganda and Kenya, has beaten cancer and lived a football life less ordinary.

Here in the first instalment of a two-part interview with Iain King, Bobby looks back at his days starring in the jersey of the club he grew up supporting.

Signed by Jock Wallace, broke his leg after an infamous night out on a pre-season tour down under, scored an Old Firm winner with an overhead kick, bombed out by Graeme Souness.

Bobby Williamson only spent two and a half years of his compelling football career as a Rangers player, but you can’t say he didn’t cram a lot in.

Tomorrow afternoon the former Kilmarnock manager Williamson, who has jetted back to Scotland from his home in Kenya for a short holiday, will be in the stand to see Michael Beale’s side take on the club he led to the Scottish Cup in a 1-0 Ibrox final win over Falkirk back in 1997.

Bobby knows the memories will flood back as his mind rewinds to a truly life-changing transfer.

Wallace was back as Rangers manager for the second time to try and revive a struggling club starved of transfer cash, with a stadium under reconstruction.

That meant scouring the marker for bargains like the quicksilver striker who was making headlines at Clydebank. When he was not working on the building site that is.

“I was a bricklayer and I wasn’t a very good one, to be honest, I was going into my last year and I had just been putting the windows in," Williamson grins. 

“I remembered I chinned one of the gaffers on the site and asked him to put me on a squad so that I knew how to lay a brick!

“I was playing part-time with Clydebank and there were all these romantic stories going about that I threw my tools in the skip and headed for Ibrox that day I signed but that was nonsense.

“The Rangers legend Bobby Shearer was the head man on our site and I told him I was chucking it and joining Rangers full-time and he gave me some words of wisdom on my last day which I have always appreciated.

“It’s true that was the last I saw of my tools, though, and it’s just as well. I was hopeless.”

In Wallace’s first reign as boss – when he claimed two trebles in three seasons in 1976 and 1978 – his genius in the transfer market had seen him bring in Davie Cooper, Gordon Smith and Bobby Russell alongside the experience of some Barcelona Bears to mould a memorable team.

Russell was another part-timer, plucked from junior football at Shettleston, and big Jock hoped Williamson would make the same sort of impact. Bobby struggled at first, though.

“I thought I would adapt easily to life as a professional player because I was used to getting up at 6am to get to work at 8am then graft until 4.30pm before heading to Kilbowie for training," he says.

“I’d leave there at 9pm, get home to Easterhouse for 10pm get to my bed, sleep and do it all over again.

“We trained twice a week as youths and once with the first team on my way up but I found the physical stuff hard under big Jock.

“He liked sit-ups, press-ups in the dressing room and a lot of gym work and I just wasn’t used to that.

“It took me time to get to their levels but I eventually adapted and played my part.”

Williamson is in the midst of writing his autobiography and has enjoyed the process of reflecting on a colourful career as both a player and manager.

READ MORE: Gordon Smith on Jock Wallace, Juventus & painful Rangers departure

The inside story of how he broke his leg on the way back to the Beachcomber Hotel in Surfer’s Paradise after that infamous night out on an Australian pre-season tour will finally be told in those pages.

“There were only four of us there, me, Coisty, Craig Paterson and Ally Dawson and we were all sworn to secrecy," Williamson grins.

“I told Jock the story of what really happened and then I said I felt we should say to the journalists that I was trying to jump over a fence.

“It’s 38 years ago now and Jock has passed on so I think there’s no harm in me telling the truth now but I’ll keep it for the book!

“That injury set me back big-time, though, because I had only been at the club for six months and now I was out for a year.

“I missed so much development and it took me a long time to get back to my best.

“My tibula and fibula were fractured right through and I had to have a plate inserted.

“Then the plate had to be removed because it was too big and it was restricting my ankle movement. It was a major blow.

“When I look back on it now, I was lucky that I managed to make a living out of the game after that.”

He did way more than that.

On April 21, 1984, in the midst of a tight and tense Old Firm derby, Cooper’s corner swirled in, bounced up and Williamson launched into a superb bicycle kick that nestled in the corner beyond Pat Bonner. A winner against Celtic, every childhood Rangers fan’s dream.

“The great thing about that goal was that it was Peter Grant’s Old Firm debut and it meant he had to recall it every time he was asked about his first game against Rangers," Williamson smiles.

“Seriously, I remember the ball bounced and Ally was shouting: 'Take a touch!' I knew I had it in me to pull off the overhead and luckily it worked again.

“We weren’t the best Rangers team, the club were rebuilding the stadium at the time and that’s where the money went.

“They paid 100k on the likes of Stuart Munro from Alloa and me from Clydebank. That was their average spend at the time.”

Bobby’s opening half-season at Ibrox saw him notch eight goals in 20 appearances. Then came the leg break and the comeback before his final campaign gleaned 12 strikes in 31 matches.

A tally of 20 in 51 games is a decent return against the backdrop of competing for a jersey with the likes of McCoist, John MacDonald, Andy Kennedy, Davie Mitchell, Sandy Clark and Colin McAdam.

Yet as the 1985/86 season drew to a close the bombshell news broke that Wallace would be leaving and his replacement would be Liverpool and Scotland legend Graeme Souness as player-manager.

The days of cut-price signings were gone, Bobby reckoned he was on the way out.

“I felt that if Souness didn’t want me then I should go and play elsewhere," he reflects. 

"I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him and end up changing in the away dressing room, which had happened to others.

“So when it came up I felt West Bromwich Albion was a good option and I thought: ‘Jimmy Nicholl is down there at least I will know somebody'. But it turned out he was signing for Rangers as part of the deal!

"I had worked with Walter Smith as he was looking after the team until Graeme arrived from Sampdoria. I didn’t have a serious conversation with Souness until the day I was walking out of Ibrox.

“I was saying my goodbyes and he came downstairs to speak to me and wish me all the best and said: ‘Good luck, they are a good club and it’s a good move for you. If you are ever back up the road you can use the facilities any time you want.’

“He must have seen the way I looked at him because he glared back at me with that way he has and said: ‘Listen, there will be a lot of players going out that door and they won’t all be getting asked back but I like you and you are.’

“I was taken aback, to be honest, my mind flicked back to pre-season in Germany when he’d told me I was going on at half-time in a friendly.

“Half-time came and went and he didn’t put me on then he turned around and said to me: ‘Why aren’t you on?’

“I just looked at him and said: ‘Was I supposed to make the substitution? That’s your job.’

“That awkward moment passed, I got on and we were battering them and Graeme asked their coach to switch keepers so Chris Woods could get some practice.

“I went clean through on Woodsy and I chipped him and he was raging. In the dressing room afterwards, he was cursing me and saying it would never happen in a real game!

“Looking back now I feel Graeme knew he was getting shot of a lot of us and he just didn’t want to build up a relationship with any of those who were surplus to requirements.”

READ MORE: The 1 from 9 injury and fitness fact that shows Rangers transfer woe

Rangers may have finished fourth in the Premier League during Bobby’s debut season in light blue, winning just 15 of their 36 league games, but they did win the League Cup with a dramatic 3-2 extra-time win over Celtic.

Sadly, Williamson had played for Clydebank earlier in the tournament and was cup-tied as Ally McCoist’s hat-trick sealed the trophy.

In his final season, the campaign before the Souness Revolution, they were a distant fifth. An unthinkable position these days even after the wretched depths the club have climbed back from over the last decade.

“It wasn’t great but, listen, there were a lot of decent teams in Scotland then with Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hearts and Hibs all strong as well as Celtic," Williamson admits.

“The gap just wasn’t like the way it is now and the Old Firm wages were about the same as the others, it was a level playing field. I was on 300 quid a week at Rangers and at one point it went up to 350 quid I think.

“Let’s just say when the likes of Woods and Terry Butcher started to arrive they were on a wee bit more than us!”

Williamson would go on to become a manager of note in his own right.

He should be lauded by the Killie fans inside Ibrox having delivered the club’s first Scottish Cup in 68 years and brought European football back to Rugby Park, during six excellent years at the helm there.

When he reflects on working under Wallace he admits he didn’t take many in-depth tactical lessons from their time together but stresses: “Jock was a great man-manager and I had a good relationship with him – even after my leg break.

“I liked working with him, coaching wise I didn’t learn much because it was all about desire. He knew how to deal with players, though, and get the best out of you.

“I’d been a fan as a kid and it meant a lot for me to play for Rangers and have memories like that Old Firm winner and playing with Coop.

"He was an incredible player and he just always seemed to be on the same wavelength as McCoist.

“I just couldn’t time my runs correctly with Davie, I’d always be in too early because I thought he was crossing it and then he would jink back out and beat the full-back again.

“So I had to recycle my run, clear the space and Coisty would arrive to score. Time and again!”

Rangers v Kilmarnock. It’s a game that will always be special to Bobby for so many reasons.

Yet as he witnesses the latest chapter he will reflect on a bizarre episode that left many Rangers fans cursing him even though they were hammering his Killie side.

It was May 12, 2001, and McCoist was on the bench for the Ayrshire club with the clock ticking down on his playing career and retirement looming.

Ibrox craved the chance to see the club’s greatest-ever striker, with 355 goals in 581 games, in action one last time.

With the game finished as a contest they beseeched Williamson to get Super Ally on and he was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Bobby sighs: “The home fans are howling at me to put him on and we were losing 5-1.

“I turned and said to Ally twice: ‘I just can’t do it, the Killie fans pay my wages and they don’t want to see me pandering to Rangers fans.' 

“I would have loved to have put him on and that’s the truth but there are some Rangers fans who have never forgiven me for that.

“Dick Advocaat didn’t help me after that match by saying he would have put him on, the truth is he wouldn’t have.

“That was a unique situation that to my recollection has never happened to any other manager but I suppose it had to happen to me.”