Rangers and Hearts 'Miracle Man' tells his story after cruellest of blows
One-time starlet was forced to retire twice during career
At first, Billy Mackay’s mobile phone is not playing ball. But a little more button pressing, a little more angling towards a window, and reception strengthens and he’s able to play the footage.
A diminutive, red-haired figure, wearing a classic Rangers No 7 shirt, flickers on screen taking a corner. The whereabouts are immediately recognisable as the old Beach End at Pittodrie stadium. It’s August 1977. He is only 16- years-old.
So much promise. The company he is keeping underlines the achievement of a teenager breaking into Jock Wallace’s team for this league opener against Aberdeen. Rangers were desperate to make up for the disappointment of finishing runners’ up to Celtic in both the league and Scottish Cup the previous season.
Mackay’s corner is missed by Colin Jackson and then is picked up on the edge of the box by Bobby Russell, who had joined that summer. When his shot is blocked another new signing Davie Cooper flicks the ball back into Russell’s path, and the midfielder applies the finish. Mackay is spotted joining the celebrating throng before the clip cuts out. In the blink of an eye, it’s over.
“It’s surreal,” Mackay says now, over lunch in Blairgowrie. “Looking at something that took place 49 years ago. In some ways it is so clear in the mind. I remember, it vividly. But it’s 49 years…”
The promise was extinguished in savage fashion. It’s tempting to put it down to Mackay simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except he wasn’t. He was in the process of scoring a goal for Rangers reserves against Motherwell at Ibrox. He was in the right place. It’s just his standing leg was not. The Motherwell goalkeeper and a defender tackled him from opposite sides. Mackay’s left leg was caught in the middle. The goal was his last-ever kick for the Ibrox club: 31 March, 1984.
It’s gladdening to report that it has become easier for Mackay to process from a vantage point of over 40 years later. For a start, we are talking in Blairgowrie, where he met his wife Margot and raised a family having originally moved to nearby Meikleour to escape the demons. “When was Live Aid?” he asks, seemingly apropos of nothing.
Er, July 1985 I think.
“Well that was when I was not very good,” he says. “I remember watching it and thinking, ‘I am going to have to do something – I am not right’.”
Depression, not as willingly diagnosed then as it is now, had clearly set in. The sight of thousands of people singing along in the sun at Wembley flicked a switch. “I made a decision to come up here,” he says. “I felt this would be good for me.” His grandfather, a blacksmith, and grandmother had moved to Perthshire to retire in the mid-1960s. It was a place he associated with carefree childhood holidays.
He got to know the owners of the Meikleour Hotel and was asked to join the darts team. Another switch flicked. Although he’d never played darts in his life, it reignited his competitive spirit. “Somebody wanted me to play,” he says. “I began to feel ….normal.”
He had already started to so some running through the woods at Meikleour. “I’d time myself and I was getting better every day.” His knee was feeling good.
By the mid-1980s, the numbers flocking to Berry Town, as Blairgowrie is known, from Glasgow for seasonal soft fruit picking work had begun to tail off. Working initially in a bar in the town, it’s still a wonder that Mackay’s recent past as a Rangers player—once dubbed the new George Best by Jock Wallace—did not cause more of a stir. “I melted into the background,” he explains.
The return to football with Hearts
There was a commotion, nevertheless, when he pulled his boots back on, this time for a short stint with Hearts. Former teammate Alex MacDonald had recruited him to do some scouting for the Tynecastle club, which led to him helping in some training sessions. Before long he was kicking as ball again. He scored five minutes into his comeback match for Hearts reserves against Motherwell. “Alex, who was also playing, just burst out laughing,” he says.
“Miracle man!” as one newspaper described Mackay, hence the title of a fascinating new book. We all know about Allbert Kidd, but whatever happened to one of the other three substitutes at Dens Park on that May afternoon in 1986? Mackay, wearing the No. 14 shirt, replaced Iain Jardine with five minutes left. Kidd had already given Dundee the lead on a seismic afternoon. Hearts were now desperately trying to score the goal to save the Scottish title now slipping out of their hands.
Instead, Kidd got a second. Mackay wondered what on earth he was doing exposing himself again to a game where the emotional highs and lows are so extreme.
This feeling was compounded by defeat in the following weekend’s Scottish Cup final. Although again named on the bench, Mackay didn’t get on this time in the 3-0 defeat to Aberdeen. He remained involved the following season. He also spent an enjoyable month on loan at promotion chasing Dunfermline before feeling something go in his knee again while climbing stairs at home. “I knew it was over,” he says.
Footballers, they often say, are a long time retired. Forced to retire not once but twice due to the same serious knee injury by the age of 26, that’s particularly true in Mackay’s case.
Now 65, he might now be better known, certainly in the local area, for his calm reassurance as a funeral director with family firm David Scott Blairgowrie Ltd.
He was also the guiding force behind Blairgowrie Juniors FC for three decades. It means he has been involved with two of the best names in football. Not Rangers and Heart of Midlothian, but the Berry Pickers – as Blairgowrie Juniors FC are nicknamed – and, when he was younger, local side Glenrothes Strollers. His renown grew to the extent that he was invited to Liverpool on trial.
“They asked me down for a week,” he recalls. “I got a train down to Liverpool on my own. I was only 13 – 13! My father said to Willie Finlay, who had scouted me, to tell the chief scout down there, Geoff Twentyman, that I’d be carrying a white Adidas holdall, that was how to recognise me. Would you do that now? I doubt it.”
It was easy to establish the dates of this specific week because, at the end of it, on 12 July 1974, Shankly shocked the football world by announcing his resignation. It’s easy to get a sense of the widespread astonishment from watching the famous clip, still available on YouTube, where a reporter breaks this news to disbelieving locals on the streets of Liverpool. Mackay was already en route back to Fife.
“I didn’t know about it until I got off the train,” he says. “My brother, John, said, ‘Bill Shankly has resigned!’ I replied: ‘Eh?!’ He actually played in a five-a-side game we had when I was down there. He had played in goal – I scored past him!”
His new book, written in conjunction with journalist Graeme Strachan, contains many such delicious details. Although other clubs such as Aston Villa and Manchester City showed interest, Mackay ended up joining Rangers – who he already supported. He made his debut at Dens Park in a friendly against Dundee, with veteran Jimmy Johnstone having just signed for the hosts. Both wingers with ginger hair, it was easy for reporters to make the comparison – and they did, not unfavourably.
Even the inhouse Rangers magazine, Rangers News, used the former Celtic favourite as a marker: “Now the ’Gers have a Jinky!” it predicted – not something you’d read now given the bitterness of the Old Firm divide.
Although Mackay gave every indication he might reach somewhere near Johnstone’s heights, playing in some huge matches such as against Mario Kempes’ Valencia, he did not establish himself as a regular in seven years at Ibrox. “It just about happened,” he says, with reference to his Rangers career. “Not quite but just about.”
The parts of Mackay’s book dealing with a young player’s career being cut down in its prime are shattering. It might benefit from a sticker on the front cover advising caution when perusing the photographs. One, depicting the gruesome scar on his knee, merits an X certificate. “Rangers were brilliant,” he says. “Everybody was supportive.” Before a doctor had time to inform Mackay he would have to quit, Jock Wallace put another year’s contract in front of him and told him to sign it – quickly. He adored Wallace.
Mackay was awarded a testimonial against New Zealand, who were on tour at the time and keen for a game. They hadn’t been summoned from across the other side of the world. Nevertheless, Wallace was keen for an apprehensive Mackay to extend his heartfelt thanks to the opposition. Although in photographs he is sporting a splendid moustache as he leads the teams onto the pitch, the nervousness reflected how young he still was.
It was the equivalent of being badgered by a parent to write a thank you note after Christmas. “As I was hovering about after the game Jock issued an instruction: ‘Billy, you get into that dressing room and you thank them for turning up,’” recalls Mackay. “I was just a young laddie.”
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