Dave Mackinnon on how losing a kidney led to Rangers move, choosing Dundee over Arsenal, and the heart scare that prompted a cause

David Mackinnon has learned to rationalise everything. Lose a kidney when just 24-years-old and on the fringes of the international side? It indirectly led to him joining Rangers.

David MacKinnon, who played for Dundee, Partick Thistle, Rangers, Airdrieonians, Kilmarnock and Forfar Athletic, launches his book - "Slide Tackles and Boardroom Battles". David is pictured at Gourock Waterfront, he currently lives in the Town.

Decide to move to Dundee while still under contract at Arsenal, something even Alan Ball implored him not to do?

MacKinnon argues that this set-in motion a chain of events that saw him granted a personal penalty masterclass from Tommy Gemmell, which in turn meant he was equipped to stroke home the penalty that clinched Kilmarnock’s promotion from the third tier under Tommy Burns in May 1990. The articulate Mackinnon even manages to make extravagant leaps sound entirely feasible.

Most impressively and importantly of all, he can identify reasons why tumbling down the stairs of an Edinburgh wine bar and coming drastically close to meeting his maker - he ruptured an artery to his brain - was a positive event in a storied and often challenging life.

Dave MacKinnon in action for Rangers in a match against Aberdeen at Ibrox in September, 1983.

For a start, it’s inspired Mackinnon, now 67, to chronicle his life to date in the pages of a book, Slide Tackles & Boardroom Battles, which is published next month.

In it he relates the connection between a diagnosis of tuberculosis in his right kidney, which meant it had to be removed, and moving to Rangers, the team he always supported. Signing at Ibrox in 1982 was, he says, the best day of his life.

“It was the best day in my father’s life, too,” he says. “For any kid, making your parents feel on top of the world that’s a great feeling. Although my Dad did also say to me that if I signed for Everton – as I had the chance to do – he wasn’t talking to me again!

“When I was in hospital for two weeks after getting my kidney out, I remember thinking about my career and my game and how I played the game and how I could get back to a level I felt I wanted to get back to,” he adds. “I remembered Alan Ball prompting me, ‘If you want to get noticed you have go out and, from the first minute to the last minute, run, tackle and shoot. Right from the start!’

Kilmarnock's Dave MacKinnon in action during season 1990-91.

“I had not been doing that to be perfectly honest. I had been allowing the game to dictate to me rather than me dictating to the game. I went back to Partick Thistle and my game changed. That got me a move to Rangers." Manager John Greig, who provides the foreword to Mackinnon's book, told him that he was signed because of his drive and enthusiasm. "Every time we played against you, you stood out," Greig said.

Mackinnon’s memoir also stands out among other more pedestrian footballer autobiographies. From the being the eldest son of a brave mother who suffered from acute postnatal depression to a diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is another belated blessing of that terrible fall 18 months ago. “I was a walking time bomb,” he says.

He is now intent on leading a charge to ensure mandatory heart-testing is introduced in Scottish football. He has learned that a heart condition caused his fall after a business meeting in Edinburgh one wintry day in February last year.

“I thought it was because of the snow that I slipped,” he says. “I cannot remember a thing. One great doctor at Inverclyde, she was incredible. She looked at the scan of my brain and saw a lesion. Other doctors said it was caused by the fall, but what happened is that I had walked up two flight of stairs - one inside, one outside - and my brain was looking for more oxygen and my heart could not provide it and it spiked.

"That is something called Arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat, and basically I had further tests to see if it was hereditary. I had never had a heart examination before that."

Genetic testing revealed he was also suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is a thickening of the cardiac muscle. “The way forward is getting a pacemaker or, in my case, a defibrillator fitted,” he says.

He has discovered that Arrhythmia is prevalent in former players. “One of the things I want to do is raise awareness in this,” he says. “I believe I survived the fall and the heart issue for a reason. If there can be some way players can be screened for this, and ex-players too….”

Having made a seamless transition from the pitch to the boardroom, where he has occupied various high office roles at several Scottish clubs, Mackinnon is used to getting things done. “Everything for a reason,” is his mantra.

He has the bit between his teeth on this latest crusade but the chance to reflect as he continued his convalescence helped him make peace with various decisions in his career that might otherwise have curdled to become deep regrets.

For example, he swapped the heated dressing room floor of Highbury for Dundee’s Dens Park, where he had to wash his own kit. It’s not everyone’s idea of career advancement. It certainly bewildered a World Cup-winning teammate. Manager Bertie Mee had already informed full-back Mackinnon that he was on the verge of a first-team breakthrough. Ball, too, was a fan.

“Alan saw something in me – maybe it was the ginger hair!" he says. "He was very emotional about me making that decision and tried many times to talk me me out of it."

He enjoyed his time at Dens Park – where he later returned as chief executive – but there is a particular episode that sticks in his mind all these years later and one he credits with playing a part in the Kilmarnock revolution of the early 1990s under Tommy Burns.

Another Tommy – Gemmell – welcomed him at Dundee.

“He was a guy I looked up to. I said to him you are the best penalty taker in the UK, maybe the world, what do you do? He looked at me with those Danny Kaye eyes, and said, ‘That’s good of you’. I asked him what the secret was. He said, ‘I run up to it and hit it as hard as I can. I have no understanding of where it is going…And if I have no idea where it is going, then the goalie has no chance.’” He demonstrated this after training one day. Just Mackinnon and a former European Cup-winner.

Fast forward 14 years and Kilmarnock are awarded a penalty in a last-day encounter against Cowdenbeath at Rugby Park. Mackinnon had joined, initially on loan, when they were the second worst team in Scotland. “Only East Stirling were below us,” he says. “Then Tommy (Burns) arrived and we started to creep up.” They required a point against the Blue Brazil to earn promotion to the First Division.

It is 1-1. Nine minutes remain. “I grab the ball and put it on the penalty spot. Just as I was walking up, I heard Tommy (Burns) say, you can’t miss this, Diamond – that’s what he called me. This is the turning point of this club. He then crossed himself!”

The other Tommy's words came back to him. “I put the ball on the spot and hit it as hard as I could. And it went in!”

He has used a photograph of him celebrating in front of the fans after scoring that promotion-clinching penalty for his WhatsApp profile. The roar of the crowd might have died away but Mackinnon remains admirably intent on taking responsibility.

Slide Tackles & Boardroom Battles by David Mackinnon is published on 2 November by Morgan Lawrence and is available at £15 from www.morganlawrence.co.uk/