Craig Brown - The Game of My Life. Craig Brown
‘Well, pal,’ I said, ‘you’re the mug because you paid to get in!’
Quick as a flash, he replied, ‘Aye! But you’ll be paying next season!’
It was a great answer and I felt very small indeed because I had absolutely no reply. It taught me never to try to mix verbals with the crowd, and the Dundee lads kept telling me that the guy was likely to be a prophet! It also taught me never to listen to Alex Hamilton again!
Talking about Alex Hamilton, he was the player who originated the back-handed insult that players today are often heard to repeat in jest. For instance, he called Ian Ure over once and said, ‘Well, Ian, you and I have got thirty-three Scotland caps between us – and I’ve got thirty-two of them!’ It is a much-used leg-pull between players, but it was Alex who started it. He was always joking, and not just with his teammates either. He used to love winding up the opposition, and especially enjoyed tormenting the stars of Rangers and Celtic whenever he got the chance. One of his jokes was to take a complimentary ticket and put it in his shorts. He pulled this stunt on both John Hughes, the Celtic winger, and Davy Wilson, the Rangers outside left. He waited until there was a lull in the game and would then go up to his victim with the ticket in his hand, saying, ‘Here, John, here’s a ticket for you to get into the game.’ He also used to joke with them that they ought to have paid to get in for the privilege of being a spectator watching him play!
There was quite a bit of humour at Dundee, with everyone getting his chance as well as being on the receiving end. During that 1962/63 season I was given my nickname of ‘Bleep’ or ‘Bleeper’. It originated during a game against Partick Thistle. The Jags goalkeeper, John Freebairn, sent a long, long clearance way down the pitch over all our heads and I chased after it. Because I had my back to the rest of the pitch, I decided to try a fancy overhead scissor kick as I had seen the continentals do. I completely mistimed it and, instead of the ball going back up the field, it just went straight up into the air like a rocket. It seemed to hang way up there for some time over our penalty spot, almost as if it had gone beyond our sphere of gravity. While we were all waiting for it to come down it reminded Alex Hamilton of the sound of the Russian Sputnik that was in the news at the time, and he began shouting, ‘Bleep bleep! Bleep bleep!’ That’s how I came to be given such a unique nickname.
We had another interesting excursion that season when we played against Arsenal in a testimonial match for Jack Kelsey. We played two games against them, both home and away, and I played in both matches. The Arsenal side had some very famous names – Geoff Strong, George Armstrong, Alan Skirton, George Eastham, John Barnwell and Eddie Clamp among them. We had two very good games, and it was a delight to play at a wonderful ground like Highbury. We drew there 2–2, with Alan Gilzean scoring both Dundee’s goals which, I think, led to his eventual transfer to Tottenham where he – quite rightly – became a hero.
On the eve of the Highbury game we all went to Chelsea to see them play Blackpool. Tommy Docherty was manager of Chelsea at the time, and I remember the game well. We stayed at the Mount Royal Hotel, which was in a noisy part of town but very pleasant nonetheless. It was an especially enjoyable trip because we were not there for a cut-throat competition and were therefore able to relax and enjoy the visit to London and two of the most famous grounds in the game.
It was a great honour for us to be invited to play in such a high-profile testimonial, and it shows the esteem in which Dundee was held after their European Cup and Scottish championship exploits. In 1997, Nigel Winterburn’s testimonial at Highbury produced a big crowd for the visit of Glasgow Rangers. It was a parallel with our 1962 visit. As many a Dundee fan has said in recent times: ‘Those were the days!’
AFTER OUR VISIT to Highbury there was newspaper talk of me signing for Arsenal. Ian Ure and myself were both in the frame, it seemed. I felt that I had performed well against the Gunners, but I could not imagine that they were seriously interested in me, although I could clearly see why they would be keen on big Ian. As it happened, I was officially told that there had been some interest in me, but as I had no wish to leave Dundee and the club were not particularly keen to unload me, I stayed where I was.
Dundee, like most clubs at that time, were in good financial shape. Players were earning nothing like the astronomical figures of today, and I believe it was to use up some surplus cash before the end of the financial year that the club would take us away for training. We were told that we would be staying at a pleasant hotel in Crieff or Pitlochry, and we would look forward to going because we would train in the mornings and then have the afternoons free for golf or some fishing. It was no more exciting than that because we were never taken to places famed for their nightlife.
On those trips, therefore, we had to amuse ourselves. Some players liked to play cards – but not as many as you might think, or even as many as nowadays. So we used to have a bit of a singsong in the evenings, and the old folk who would be staying in the same hotel as ourselves loved it. We would get round the piano and sing all their favourite songs. One or two of the guys were quite musical. Alex Hamilton played the piano, Hugh Robertson played the guitar, and a couple of the others could sing very well, and so we would stage an impromptu concert around that old piano, doing all the old-time songs as well as a few Beatles favourites.
As I said, the other people at the hotel would enjoy this immensely – and so did we. It was good fun and gave a great boost to our camaraderie and team spirit. I would like to think that it went a long way to helping Dundee to be successful on the pitch. After all, team harmony has often been the secret of many a club’s successes. It is something that I have always tried to foster in my various roles as coach, club manager and national team manager. It has always been my objective to make sure that there is a good relationship amongst my players.
So, there we were singing our heads off each evening, until gradually it developed into six of us becoming a singing group. A local musician, a guy called Johnny Battersby – who had a sixteen-piece orchestra in the JM Ballroom in Dundee – asked us if we would go into the ballroom and sing as a special attraction. We thought it might be a bit of fun, and someone wrote a couple of songs for us. It was hardly the start of any threat to Frank Sinatra, but it was certainly the start of an interesting diversion.
Murdoch Wallace Junior was the local businessman who ran the JM Ballroom, and he was in the process of forming his very own recording company. The pop business was really booming at the time and Murdoch was keen to have his share. We were becoming quite well known for our singing group, led by Alex Hamilton, but, really, we only thought of it as another way of amusing ourselves. We had started by singing in the bath, then progressed to the hotel lounge, and now the JM Ballroom. We had no plans for going any further than that – but Murdoch Wallace had other ideas.
Alex involved Kenny Cameron, Alex Stuart, Andy Penman, Hugh Robertson and me. For engagements we wore the club blazer and a bow tie, but it was a bit of a mouthful to try to introduce us all individually and so we became known as Hammy and his Hamsters. The gigs came flooding in and we could probably have taken up many more offers but, after all, we were essentially professional footballers just out for a lark!
All this was developing in the 1963/64 season. By now we had lost Ian Ure, who had fallen out with the club. He had refused another contract and attempted to go on the dole, before being given a sales job by John Bloom, the famous washing-machine tycoon – who was a keen Arsenal fan – and eventually signing for the Gunners just after the start of the season for what was then a record Scottish fee of £62,500. We missed Ian on the pitch and also away from it because he was always a good leg-pull. In digs, we tormented him constantly.
He was a very clever guy with an excellent education record at Ayr Academy. He had a wealth of general knowledge and liked to tax his mind with crossword puzzles. Each night in digs we had a crossword competition. We would each get a copy of the Dundee Evening Telegraph and, starting the puzzle together before