Craig Brown - The Game of My Life. Craig Brown
down for the meal. Doug Houston, Tommy Mackle, George Ryden and I were the others involved, and of course Ian was always the best at it, so we hit on a scheme to wind him up a little bit. The four of us took to buying the early edition of the paper and getting the crossword mastered among ourselves – then we would go through the motions in the evening, taking it in turns to be the winner for the night. The big man, Ure, used to rage because we would keep an eye on him and, just as he was about to fill in the last answer, our ‘winner’ would say, ‘Aye, that’s me finished.’
Ian would jump up and shout, ‘Och, ye so-and-so!’ He got really mad about it. It was a long time before he realised the secret of our ‘success’.
Another of our little games with Ian Ure was to tear a piece out of the sports pages of a newspaper that he didn’t have and, when he asked us what it was, we would casually say, ‘Oh, it was just a piece about you going to AC Milan or somewhere. We tore it out to give to you in case the paper was lost.’ We would then discuss among ourselves what had been done with the cutting, each one saying that the other had put it for safe-keeping somewhere. Eventually one of us would go off to pretend to look for it, only to return with a shrug of the shoulders, apparently unable to find it. By this time the big man would be beside himself and would jump into his car and go off and tour the newsagents until he found a copy – only to discover that he had been conned again. He fell for that one only once. It is no reflection on his mentality that he did so – he was just far too trusting. We even used to get people to put on foreign accents and phone him, pretending to be from top foreign clubs like Juventus or Barcelona, and ask him if he would be interested in joining them. Yes, we certainly missed Ian Ure, who was a great guy and a wonderful defender for his clubs and his country.
Despite the loss of Ure and one or two other comings and goings, our season was going well. We recorded some very big scorelines and kept pace with the leaders, Kilmarnock and Rangers. Alan Gilzean was still finding the net regularly and, by the end of the season, he had broken Alan Stott’s record League goals tally in a season, which had been standing for nearly twenty years. Gillie scored 52 in the League that season and we had some great results, including a 9–2 home win over St Mirren and a 6–1 victory over St Johnstone. We scored a total of 92 goals in 36 league matches and, had our defensive record been a little better, we would surely have finished higher than the sixth place we finally occupied at the end of the season.
The biggest excitement was probably in our Scottish Cup campaign. We began by knocking Forres Mechanics, a very good non-League side, out of the competition with a 6–3 away win. Next we were drawn to play Brechin City away and we beat them 9–2. Our third-round tie was against Falkirk, at home for once. We defeated them 6–1 and were thus in the quarterfinals, having scored 21 goals in three games. Motherwell were our opponents for the next round and they provided quite a test, holding us to a 1–1 draw at home. Four days later we played them again in the return match and beat them 4–1 at Fir Park.
The four semi finalists were Rangers, Kilmarnock (then managed by Willie Waddell), Dunfermline (who had Jock Stein in charge in those days) and us. Dundee were to play Kilmarnock on the neutral ground of Ibrox. A look at the scoreline now will tell you that Dundee won 4–0 – but that was not a true reflection of the game. The two sides were even in the first half and it was really only in the last quarter of the game that supremacy was gained by the Dark Blues.
April 25th was the Hampden date for Dundee to play Rangers in the final of the Scottish Cup, and the whole of Dundee was excited because it was the first final appearance for the club since 1952.
It was an exciting time for Hammy and his Hamsters too! Yes, while all that had been going on we were still making a name for ourselves. It was decided that we would record ‘My Dream Came True’ on the new JM Records label. The song was a romantic number and we were backed by the Johnny Battersby Showband, who provided a tasteful melody line. On the ‘flip’ side – you see I was even into the pop jargon – was a much more up-tempo number with a great beat. It was entitled ‘She Was Mine’.
The recording session was held in a studio in Edinburgh and it took a lot of rehearsals and takes before we finally got it ‘in the can’. Murdoch Wallace knew his way around the publicity machine and the record was given a lot of exposure – especially since it was released just four days before the Scottish Cup Final. Although we were called Hammy and his Hamsters, everyone knew that we were Dundee players so, in a way, it was probably the start of the tradition of footballers recording songs before major events like cup finals, World Cups and so on.
It was a very busy time for us because there were the record promotional events as well as preparations for the Cup Final. Even on the day after the Cup Final – Sunday, 26 April – we were due to appear in a special show at Dundee’s Green’s Playhouse. Others in that show included Harry Douglas and the Deep River Boys, Stratford Johns, the actor, Eileen Keegan, compere Charlie Sim and the Johnny Battersby Showband. It was a great show and we enjoyed it – although we were not in the best mood for fun as Rangers had won the Scottish Cup by beating us 3–1. It was heartbreaking to see our opponents score twice in the last 90 seconds when it had looked as though a replay might be on the cards. The rain-soaked crowd of some 120,000 had enjoyed a thoroughly entertaining afternoon, and I don’t think our side let their fans down in any way. A lapse of concentration at the very end proved to be fatal.
Some consolation was provided by the fact that our record sold well and, even though we were losers on the pitch and Rangers had completed a clean sweep of the championship and both major cups, we were not down-hearted, because Dundee was still there among the top clubs in the country. Besides, if all else failed, we knew we could earn a living busking on street corners!
Dundee was at that time a fine example of how a football club should be. I believe that it was the best footballing side I’ve ever known, and the harmony among the players was exactly how I like my teams to be. There were stars, but not one of them ever elevated himself above anyone else. Even those, like myself, almost permanently on the edge of the first-choice eleven were considered to be a part of the team. You expect that these days with substitutes and a squad mentality – but in those days it was much more rare, and a credit to the manager and his coaching team.
It would be remiss of me if I did not give a further mention to Gordon Smith, who was a hero of that side and a famous outside right who, as I said earlier, had already won the championship with both Hibs and Hearts before doing the same with Dundee. He was a terrific example of fitness, and of courtesy. Bearing in mind that he was the wrong side of his mid-thirties when he was performing for Dundee, he was truly outstanding in every respect.
Gordon was also very encouraging to the younger, less experienced players like me. When we were on that trip to Iceland he gave me a lot of tips to improve my game, but he also weighed in with one or two other items of advice. He once asked me what kind of shaver I used.
‘I’ve got the very best kind of electric shaver,’ he told me – and, indeed, he had a top-of-the-range Ronson which, I have to confess, I admired.
‘Some day, when you’ve had a really good game, I’ll buy you a Ronson like this,’ he told me. I must admit that I didn’t take him too seriously and soon forgot all about it. Some time later, we were playing alongside each other against Kilmarnock. He had the No. 7 shirt and I had the No. 6 – which meant that we were next to each other in the dressing room. It was quite a good game and I managed to give a reasonable account of myself. A few days later we were at home to Rangers. I arrived at the ground and went to my place in the dressing room. There at my seat was a box – and in it was a brand-new Ronson electric razor, together with a note that read simply, ‘I thought you had an outstanding game last week.’
Gordon had not forgotten what he had promised, even though I had, and it was a magnificent gesture which was so typical of the man.
These were the halcyon years of Dundee and, in my present job, the experience that I gained with that club at the time has proved to be invaluable. The European experience and the coaching, preparation and methods were an education to me that money would have been unable to buy. Yes, of course, I would have liked to have been one of the regular eleven who were constantly at the forefront of the manager’s