You'll be well aware of his work.
With a haul of 19 trophies stockpiled over two decades, Richard Gough’s career came stamped with a shimmering silver lining. The sergeant major who led Rangers to nine-in-row under Walter Smith and a Scotland colossus with 61 caps, Gough was hardly a low-profile contributor to the game in this country. But up until now, only a handful of people had any idea just how close he came to throwing it all away before it had even begun during one of his first heart-to-hearts with the man who would later become his Ibrox mentor.
Speaking in the latest episode of our Off the Record podcast , Gough reveals how, as a homesick teenager in Jim McLean’s Tayside boot camp, he confided in Smith he had decided to hang up his boots for good and return to South Africa to embark on a career in the military. It was December. In Dundee. And a baby-faced Gough found himself scraping the mud off Dundee United’s first-team bus with freezing fingers as part of his duties as a youngster in McLean’s notoriously hard-knock school.
“It’s a good analogy – a sliding doors moment – because it really was,” Gough nodded as he recalled the moment he decided a future in football was simply not for him.
He went on: “When I was in my first year at Dundee United I went to see Walter Smith. I was cleaning the bus. I was 18 or 19 years old and it was Christmas time and I thought to myself, ‘I’ve had enough of this!’.
“So I went to see Walter Smith and said, ‘I’m retiring!’. He looked at me and said, ‘How can you retire, you’re only 18-years-old?’. Wee Jim McLean stopped me leaving but I just got on the plane the next day down to Johannesburg.
“Wee Jim was phoning my father every day saying, ‘Listen Mr Gough, I believe your boy will play for Scotland before he’s 21 years old. That’s how much faith I have got in him. But let him make up his own mind to come back’.
“I was young and all my mates had gone to the South African army. I wanted to go to the South African army with all my mates. If my father hadn’t been clever with me, it might have been different.
“He sent me to Durban, on the coast, to ‘go and find out what you want’ as he put it. I was walking on the beach and bumped into a few of my mates, who were going to join the army.
“They asked me how my football was going. They were so proud of me and that got me thinking. I told them I was back with an injury because I didn’t want to tell them I was homesick. I went back to Joburg and my dad told me I had to give it another chance in Scotland.
“My dad said, ‘just go back one more time and if you don’t like it you don’t like it’. I came back in February of 1980. It was a terrible winter that year and all the games were postponed.
“So I never missed a game even though I was away for six weeks. From the day I came back I was never out of the team. I was 18, 19 but Wee Jim put me in the team, whether I was left-back, midfield, whatever. I was in the team.
“My dad came back in the May and we went to watch the European Championships in Italy. And from that pre-season on I was flying.”
Given the scale of the achievements to follow, it’s incredible that Gough was on the verge of leaving it all behind. But he has revealed how, very quickly, he realised he was indeed destined for the top – on the day legendary Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough attempted to talk him into leaving Tannadice for the City Ground during McLean’s own testimonial.
He recalled: “Wee Jim used to hammer people but my father was Scottish, had grown up in Glasgow and was a soldier, so he was always quite tough on me. So Wee Jim shouting at me in the dressing room never used to bother me too much.
“It killed off a lot of players but that was just his way. He treated everyone the same. I can remember we played Forest in Wee Jim’s testimonial at Tannadice in August 1984. I’m 22 at the time.
“After the game we were in one of the lounges at Tannadice and Jim was giving a speech. During Wee Jim’s speech Clough comes up to me and says, ‘How tall are you?’. He backs up against me just to see how tall I was.
“Wee Jim is clocking all this and Clough says to me, ‘I’ll see you next week son in training!’ We had just beaten them 4-0, Clough’s son Nigel had made his debut that night and we hammered them!
“I’m looking at Wee Jim and I can see his face getting redder and redder! Clough is tapping me up in front of him – at his own testimonial! The next morning I walk into the dressing room and Walter says, ‘the manager wants to see you!’.
“So I go up to see Wee Jim and he says, ‘if that country bumpkin thinks he’s going to get you down there he’s got another thing coming’.”
Gough would eventually seal a deal to sign for Spurs in the summer of 1986, aged 24, after six years at United during which he helped the Taysiders to a historic top flight title and all the way to a European Cup semi-final.
In the podcast he tells how he phoned McLean on the night before he put pen to paper at White Hart Lane for one final conversation with the man who had turned him into one of the most wanted central defenders in British football.
Gough said: “I phoned him just to say thanks for your help. It was Saturday night and two bids had come in from Tottenham and Chelsea. So at the end of the call I asked him for his advice. He just said, ‘Listen, you’re leaving Dundee United. I don’t really give a f*** where you go!’. That was it. Brilliant!”
One year later he was on his way back across the border to sign for Graeme Souness at Rangers. And his life would change for ever.
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