OPPOSITION players were instantly filled with dread when they spotted Graeme Souness rampaging towards them during the brilliant but volatile Scottish midfielder’s heyday.
After Souness moved into management at Rangers, it was not a sight which referees or journalists particularly relished either.
Yet, when Archie Macpherson was accosted by his wild-eyed compatriot following a 2-0 defeat to a Gheorghe Hagi-inspired Steaua Bucharest in the first leg of the European Cup quarter-final in Romania in 1988, the exchange proved to be more enlightening than frightening.
“I was standing in the airport in Bucharest waiting to catch my flight home after the game,” said the former BBC commentator earlier this week as he chatted about his latest book, Touching the Heights.
“Souness had just come off the team bus and was heading for the departure gate. I can still see him coming towards me now. He stopped, leaned over and said: ‘How can I win anything in Europe playing only 11 Jocks?’ It was brutal, but it was true.”
The brief encounter provided an insight into the ambition and mindset of a firebrand who was in the process of transforming the game in this country forever by bringing in expensive signings from England - ruffling more than a few feathers at the same time.
It is just one of many tales contained within the pages of Touching The Heights – which profiles 13 individuals who left an indelible impression on Macpherson during a broadcasting career that spanned six decades.
There have been myriad articles and numerous books written about Jim Baxter, Tommy Docherty, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jimmy Johnstone, Jim McLean, Ally MacLeod, Souness and Jock Stein – who are among those placed around a “fantasy dinner table” by their literary host - over the years
Indeed, the author himself penned an excellent biography of the former Celtic and Scotland manager Stein.
Yet, the personal memories, anecdotes and reflections of a man who enjoyed close working relationships, and often formed enduring friendships, with many of those who were at the forefront of a golden age in Scottish football and sport make Touching the Heights a fascinating and enjoyable read.
“Towards the tail end of my time in commentating, managers and players, sportsmen and women in general, became more remote,” said Macpherson. “Before that, though, there was a degree of intimacy. It varied. But essentially you got through to them and they got through to you.
“The men and women I write about are the ones who I had the strongest bond to. I had watched them in action in the flesh. I met them, was touched by them, was close to them. That is the link to them all.”
Souness, whose remarkable reawakening of Rangers after years of underinvestment, disappointment and failure became known as “The Souness Revolution”, may ultimately have failed to emulate the accomplishments of Ferguson, McLean and Stein in Europe.
Early on, Macpherson predicted, correctly as it turned out, that his combative nature would one day bring his tenure in Govan to an end. Still, having a ringside seat as the Liverpool icon resurrected the fortunes of the dormant Glasgow giants in his own inimitable fashion proved exhilarating.
“Graeme was hugely interesting,” he said. “He stirred, annoyed, provoked. It was heartening to see in this small football parish of ours. But I could virtually, not because I have a sixth sense or anything, forsee his downfall. It was inevitable. He always gave me the impression he was climbing the North Face of the Eiger.
“His attitude was very much ‘bugger everybody else!’ I took him to one side once and said: ‘Look, think what you think, but handle the Press better!’ He treated some of his interviews with utter disdain.
“But in many ways he was likeable. If you got Graeme in a setting where he was dealing with you man-to-man he could be good to talk to, enjoyable company, knowledgeable about the game. He had this public persona, which he seemed to want to live up to, of being cavalier and unthinking. But he certainly wasn’t.
“Many pundits would say: ‘Rangers are going the wrong way’. But Celtic had to follow. The talent in this small pool was never going to be good enough to compete in Europe. I remembered him years later when Martin O’Neill had an entirely non-Scottish Celtic side.”
Macpherson savoured his interactions with Ferguson, another combustible and driven personality, at Aberdeen too. He spent countless hours speaking to his fellow Glaswegian in the Pittodrie boot room and was unsurprised by his subsequent successes at home and abroad and rise to the very pinnacle of his profession.
“I would look forward to going up to Aberdeen,” he said. “Not just for the game, but for the chance to sit down with Fergie, as he was then, and discuss all kinds of matters. I felt I was trusted because nothing that he told me intimately ever left the room. And we really did discuss intimate matters.
“I realised straight away that he was an outstanding talent. He was fully aware about what that specific managerial job at Pittodrie meant. He made them anti-west of Scotland. South of Dunblane? Hate them! I appreciated what he did.”
Macpherson was unable to develop a similar rapport with McLean down the A90 at Dundee United. He felt that nobody could get close to famously lugubrious Scot. But he was no less admiring of his feats at Tannadice.
“McLean was without doubt one of the most interesting men I met in life let alone football,” he said. “He always gave me the impression that he had an invisible shield around him which you could never penetrate.
“There was a real contrast between the man who was a brilliant football thinker and the man who seemed to think that society wasn’t constructed for his kind of personality. He was totally funereal at times when he should have been enjoying himself.
“In the book, I talk about the time United beat Rangers 3-0, their first win over them in nine years. Afterwards I asked him: ‘Are you going out to enjoy yourself?’ He said: ‘No, Doris (his wife) and I are going to do the books tonight’. That was his Saturday night entertainment. He was an incredible character.”
As was Ally MacLeod. He whipped Scotland supporters into a frenzy after winning the Home International Championship in 1977. The Tartan Army travelled to the World Cup in Argentina the following summer fully expecting, not just hoping, to see their heroes lift the trophy.
Macpherson – who commentated on all 18 of his country’s matches at the six finals they were involved in between 1974 and 1998 - has affection and sympathy for a man who went from national hero to Public Enemy No1 in the space of nine tumultuous days as they lost to Peru, drew with Iran and crashed out of the competition.
He got to know him well when he chaired a series of sponsored evenings around the country and had no qualms about including him in Touching the Heights despite his notoriety. “Ally was a likeable man, someone you wanted to succeed in life,” he said. “He was charming, pleasant, gregarious.
“But he became intoxicated with the ardour of the nation and began to think in ways he shouldn’t have been thinking in the World Cup. He became romantic, out of touch with the hard realities of the business he was in, of the things which he had to face up to in Argentina.
“I did get annoyed with him at times. He should have handled the Press better. I think in his head he thought: ‘What’s the point of speaking to you lot?’
“But what really annoyed me was those journalists who turned on him. Before Argentina they had raised him like a demigod. One man who wrote for a popular newspaper, who I won’t name, totally denigrated him after two games out there. He obliterated him. You could see him slowly deteriorate.”
Jackie Paterson, the world flyweight boxing champion, Eric Brown, the Ryder Cup golfer and captain, Bill McLaren, the much-admired rugby commentator, Tommy Docherty, another former Scotland manager, and Dr Richard Budgett, the gold medal-winning Olympic rower, all receive honourable mentions in Touching the Heights.
Sandra Whittaker, the former Scottish sprinter, is a slightly incongruous inclusion at Macpherson’s dinner party. But the Bellshill girl deserves her invite. He openly admits she was responsible for making him re-evaluate his outdated attitude towards women in sport when he attended his first Olympic Games at Los Angeles in 1984.
Witnessing the 21-year-old reduced to tears after failing to qualify for the 200m semi-finals by one hundredth of a second had a profound impact on him. Particularly when her fellow Great Britain athletes Kathy Cook and Joan Baptiste went through after recording slower times in their races.
“I used to sit around a pool with Ron Pickering and David Coleman and chat,” he said. “They were great commentators and great men. Pickering especially. Like me, he was a Labour supporter and very socially aware of the conditions people had to face up to.
“He alerted me to Sandra. I only gave women two-and-a-half cheers for anything they did in sport at that time. I suppose I was a rugged west of Scotland male! I looked down condescendingly on women in anything. If I gave them credit it was done in a patronising way.
“She is not the most famous Scottish athlete ever. But she left a mark on me, made me aware of the difficulties women had not only getting to that stage, but being accepted. That was driven home to me on that occasion. It changed me.”
Everyone in Touching the Heights did in their own way. It would quite an evening to sit with Jim Baxter, Eric Brown, Jimmy Johnstone, Bill McLaren, Jim McLean, Graeme Souness, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jock Stein and their fellow diners over a few bottles of red and hear their stories. Archie Macpherson has a few worth listening to as well.
Touching the Heights by Archie Macpherson is published by Luath Press and costs £14.99.
