Football loses the man who knew so much

It was his manager at Hibs, Eddie Turnbull, who famously told the university graduate in front of his dressing-room colleagues "the trouble with you, Gordon, is that your brains are all in your head."

With the retelling of the story, the original wit of the remark has been lost. Turnbull and Gordon often exchanged verbals in the halcyon days of Turnbull's Tornadoes, as the great Hibs side of the early 1970s was nicknamed, and the manager frequently told the player that they were the two cleverest men in the dressing room before the famous quip was made.

"I meant it as a joke," recalled Turnbull in his memoirs, "a reference to his considerable learning but occasional tendency to let the side down by trying to do something on a football pitch which he was not capable of doing. I dare say that the only two people in the room who got the joke were Alan and I."

Turnbull, 86, was deeply upset to learn of Gordon's death yesterday morning: "I was outside my house putting out the refuse when a passer-by told me. It was a terrible shock because I only found last Wednesday from Jimmy O'Rourke who played alongside him in the Tornadoes that Alan was ill and in a hospice. That was bad enough, but then to find out that he had died was just dreadful.

"It's a tragedy, a huge loss. He was a fine big man and a great player, one of the finest headers of the ball that we've ever seen."

Turnbull recalled that he signed Gordon from Dundee United for 12,000 with Hibs director Gregor Cowan taking the player onto the staff of his accountancy firm so the player could finalise his qualifications in the profession in which he remained for the rest of his working life.

Gordon played for Hearts, pictured below, at the start of his professional career, signing for the Tynecastle club at the age of 17 straight from George Heriot's School.

It was there he came under the tutelage of the legendary Willie Bauld, as former colleague, goalkeeper Jim Cruickshank, revealed last night.

"Alan was a good player with a really good left foot, but he became known for his heading ability," said Cruickshank. "It was Willie Bauld who taught him that. I well remember Willie taking Alan aside at training and giving him extra heading lessons."

Gordon scored 49 goals in 111 matches for Hearts, but Cruickshank recalled the one that got away: "The one I always remember was him missing from about six yards in the game against Kilmarnock which decided the league in 1965!"

Had it gone in, Hearts would have won the league, but instead lost on goal average to Kilmarnock.

All has been long since forgiven, however, and Cruickshank said Gordon's death was the second blow to hit that 1960s Hearts team inside a week: "It's terrible, because Willie Polland died only the other day."

Gordon moved to South Africa briefly after leaving Hearts in 1967, before returning to Tynecastle and later signing for Dundee United.

His time at Hibs lasted less than three years but he notched 51 goals in 84 matches for the Easter Road club, including two in the 7-0 demolition of Hearts on New Year's Day in 1971.

He also won a League Cup winner's medal with Hibs in 1972, before he signed for Dundee in 1974. He is believed to be the only man to have played for all four major sides in the two cities.

Gordon's greatest disappointment was that he never played for Scotland. He was selected to play against England in 1973 but missed out through injury.