In an exclusive interview with The Scotsman, Gough discusses his club and international career

Have you heard the one about the time the last two Scotsmen to score headed winners at Hampden against England ending up in bed together in South Africa circa 1974?

In fairness, not many have. And in truth, one of them was still to thrill a nation. Richard Gough was just 12-years-old when he woke up and spied a balding head poking out of the end of his bed, near where his feet were. ‘What the hell…?’ was his natural reaction.

Gough takes up the story. “I whipped back the covers and ran to tell his dad: ‘Erm, dad, there’s some guy in my bed….’" His father scolded him. “That isn't ‘some guy’,” he said. “That is a Scottish legend.”

“Who?” replied young Richard. “That is Alan Gilzean.”

Gough senior, a Glaswegian, had just retired after a stint at Highlands Park, the Johannesburg-based club Gilzean briefly joined following a stellar career for Dundee and Spurs. The pair hit it off over a few whiskies.

"My dad was very sociable," Gough explains. "He had a bar in the house." Rather than risk driving home, Gillie was invited to stay over at Chez Gough on this particular night, hence the ad hoc sleeping arrangement.

I first heard this amusing story from Gilzean himself shortly before he passed away in 2018, so it's good to have it corroborated during an entertaining couple of hours over lunch with Gough earlier this week at the buzzy Larachmhor Tavern in Pittenweem.

What is it about the East Neuk and Rangers nine-in-a-row legends? The last time I was in this part of the world was to interview David Holmes, the former Ibrox chairman who now lives in Crail, just a few corner kicks – or perhaps more appropriately, a few 9-irons – up the coast from Pittenweem. Indeed, Gough had popped in to see Holmes, now 89, the previous day.

At 62, the trim-looking Gough – who orders breaded fish, no chips - remains recognisable enough to cause a stir in the vennels of the fishing village. He’s adamant that this is entirely down to being “the older brother of Jamie Gough”, which is how he says he is introduced these days.

Jamie is the swing coach for several golfers, the most relevant of whom currently is Glaswegian Ewen Ferguson, who lifted the Munich Open title last weekend. Richard's own credentials are nevertheless impeccable. He is a revered former Rangers skipper, 61-times capped Scotland centre-back and recently named ninth in The Scotsman’s greatest international players of the last 50 years series, which ran before the Euros.

“I saw that,” he says. “I was very honoured.” He might have been higher still had his international career not been prematurely aborted, something he says still niggles. This wasn’t the intended start point for this interview, but, with the most recent major finals disappointment still fresh in minds, and England possibly on the cusp, what about Scotland, Richard?

He watched all three games and bemoans the lack of quality. It was different in his day.

"The only thing I would regret is the way my Scotland career came to an end," he says. "That’s the only thing. Because I could have been clever enough or someone should have grabbed me and said: 'Richard, don’t say anything'.

"But that was my downfall. I needed to express my feelings. Andy Roxburgh and I never saw eye to eye. And then he made me captain. And I was like: 'Why is he making me captain? He does not like me'."

Initially, Roxburgh hadn’t made him captain. "I can remember coming up in the car with him from Everton. I was the captain of Tottenham. He had just taken over. It was late '86. I was with Graeme Sharp, he was playing for Everton that day and he (Roxburgh) had come down to see us play. "

It was post-Mexico '86. Gough thought he stood a good chance of being named successor to Graeme Souness. "Roxburgh turned to me and said: 'Oh by the way Richard, I am going to make Roy Aitken captain of Scotland’. And I said: 'Why’s that?' He said: ‘Because he plays in Scotland’. Sharpy just looked at me … it wasn’t a great start."

Roxburgh did make Gough captain following Italia ’90, by which time he was at Rangers. He led Scotland at Euro '92 in a fiercely difficult group. Still, unlike this summer, Scotland equipped themselves well. Gough was named in a best group stage XI.

It was in qualifying for the next World Cup where it all went wrong, specifically on ‘the night a team died’ in Portugal in 1993. “We got beat 5-0 and the next day the papers were all full of 'Brian Irvine will play for Scotland, he is taking over from Richard Gough'," he recalls. "It seemed apparent Roxburgh had intimated that.

"I phoned Roxburgh up: 'I am your captain. Take that out of the paper. If you want me to play for you, you have to back me.' He never backed me. I lost the head a bit. I should not have lost the head.

"I did a book with Kenny Gallacher. I should have kept my pie hole shut. I would have got another 60 caps. I could have finished on 120-130 caps. I remember playing for Everton against Liverpool. England were playing Scotland (in the Euro 2000 play-offs) in a few weeks. We beat Liverpool at Anfield. I was 38, 39-years-old.

"I played against Fowler and Owen and they were playing for England! And in the papers, they were saying: 'Richard Gough is still the best Scotland centre-back by a mile, we are pleased he’s not playing in the play-off!'”

Craig Brown, Roxburgh’s successor and former assistant, had maintained the policy of not picking Gough. The defender was therefore unable to add to such exalted memories as scoring a towering headed winner past England ‘keeper Peter Shilton in 1985, something the aforementioned Gilzean did – past Gordon Banks in his case – at Hampden in 1964.

Esteemed former Spurs players and first-class practitioners of heading the ball, these G-men had other things in common, including making their way in the game in Dundee, albeit on different sides of the street. They also shared a burning desire to better themselves.

Gilzean threatened to go on strike to force through his move from Dundee to Spurs. Gough did likewise, effectively holding a gun to Jim McLean’s head when telling him he was willing to retire – again - if he stood in the way of a move to the same north London club.

It reminded me of another story I’d always wanted to verify with Gough, or at least discuss with him. It was one McLean considered was sufficiently significant and punchy to provide the conclusion for his autobiography, the endlessly fascinating and sadly now out of print Jousting with Giants.

Published in 1987, a few months after United had reached the Uefa Cup final, McLean was nevertheless still seething about Gough’s exit near the start of the previous season. I dig into my bag and retrieve the battered tome, written in conjunction with the aforementioned Gallacher.

Gough puts on his spectacles and reads the last lines, where McLean rails against the player for not staying at United to repay teammates who “took him through his apprenticeship” when he was “an ordinary professional being carried by the more experienced players around him”. He adds: “Richard Gough still had four years of his contract to run. If contracts mean anything then he should have been honouring that.” McLean concludes his book with a story where Gough has the audacity to phone him for advice on which offer to accept, with Chelsea having joined the running late after matching Tottenham’s offer. “I could scarcely believe it,” he writes.

Did it happen? According to Gough, he was always going to Spurs. The deal had already been struck with an unusual proviso. “(David) Pleat had told me, you’ll have to play the first three games of the season (for United),” he recalls, with the last of these being a memorable 3-2 win over Rangers at Ibrox, when United had come back from 2-0 down.

Even though he knew Gough was heading to London the following day, and the team had posted a remarkable victory, McLean blanked the defender afterwards. “I said to Lesley, my wife at the time, I am going to phone him up, just to thank him. So I phone him. About 8pm on a Saturday night. We have just beaten Rangers, remember! I said: ‘Mr McLean, it is Richard Gough here, I just want to thank you for the six years I have had and what I learned from you, and I wish you well’. He never said anything.

"'Oh, by the way, I was wondering if I could have a touch of advice from you...' – I still knew I was going to sign for Tottenham, it was a touch of devilment on my part. But I told him I had heard Chelsea had matched the offer, and asked: 'Who would you advise me to sign for?' He replied: 'I don’t give a f*ck who you sign with. You are leaving Dundee United, now f*ck off and don’t contact me again!'”

Nearly 40 years on, Gough can smile at this level of obsessive insanity. “He was proper crazy,” he says. “But that is who he was. If you were not with Dundee United, you were nothing.” He reads the preceding paragraphs, noting the four-years-left-of-his contact detail. “Four? I thought it was ten!” Gough jokes.

It wasn’t always a laughing matter although unlike some of the other captives at Tannadice, Gough held a trump card. He could go home to South Africa, where his parents lived and where he grew up enjoying a life of relative privilege, including having a swimming pool in the garden. That wasn't true of everyone at Tannadice (nor in South Africa).

Gough wasn't calling McLean's bluff. He actually did go home at Christmas 1981. He informed Walter Smith, McLean's assistant. “I went to Walter: ‘That’s it, I am away’. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘I am going back to South Africa. I am retiring!’ Walter said: ‘You can’t retire, you are only 18!'”

McLean phoned Gough's dad every day, telling him 'your boy will play for Scotland by the time he's 21'. "My dad was disciplined, an army man. He had also played the game. I wanted to stay at home. He said: 'Richard, don’t give up. Give it one more shot'."

He gave it one more shot and ended up playing 265 times for the club, scoring a remarkable eight league goals from right back as United won their first and only Scottish league title in 1983. They also reached the last four of the European Cup the following season, with Gough a vital component in one of the greatest-ever Scottish club backlines alongside Paul Hegarty, David Narey and Maurice Malpas.

So why did it take until 2016 before he was inducted in the Tannadice club's Hall of Fame, when his defensive colleagues were recognised years earlier? Gough knows why and it involves a trophy-laden spell in Govan, with a steep deterioration in relations between the clubs post 2012 hardly helping.

Still, a reconciliation between Gough and United appears to be firmly underway, underlined by an event being held in October in Dundee in conjunction with the Dode Fox Podcast entitled an Afternoon with Richard Gough. He is looking forward to re-telling some of these tales from the Tannadice frontline.

It’s heartening to hear McLean and Gough mended their relationship long before the legendary manager’s death in 2020. “When I came back latterly, right near the end when I was at Everton, I would always pop in and visit him," he recalls. "Doris would answer the door. Wee Jim would say: ‘Doris! Get the sandwiches!’ I’d sit there with him.

“He’d ask me questions about football, what Everton was like. There were no hard feelings. He told me: ‘I wish I had eleven players like you. It would have made my life a lot easier’." In Jousting with Giants, McLean concedes that if he had a team of winners like Gough then the team's Hampden Hoodoo under him would never have happened.

"You never forget your first club," says Gough. "Every Saturday, when I am in America or wherever I am in the world, I look for the Dundee United result, the Tottenham result, the Rangers result and the Everton result.

"Those are my teams," he adds. "But this is where it all started. I have a son and a granddaughter in Broughty Ferry." On stage at the club’s Hall of Fame dinner eight years ago, he was similarly impassioned. "You will always have a big part of me, always," he told the audience. "I know I went on to Rangers and won another 18 trophies. But this was the first one. Here. At this club. It will always be very special for me.”

Of course, it’s complicated when you become such a hero elsewhere. On the same Autumn weekend as the United event, Gough is doing one for Rangers fans in Bathgate. One would hope Rangers might be back at Ibrox by then but it’s far from certain, something chairman John Bennett acknowledged in a belated note to supporters on Thursday confirming a deal to make a temporary move to Hampden is close.

It’s fascinating to imagine how Gough would have reacted had this farce been played out while he was skipper. He remains a club ambassador. “At least, I think I am,” he says.

They took away his retainer during the pandemic and it’s not been restored but as he told the now departed CEO James Bisgrove: “I will always be an ambassador for this club, whether they pay me or not”.

These aren’t idle words – he works every table in the restaurant where we meet, charming tourists and regulars alike, including Celtic fans. He might now be Jamie Gough’s brother, but he’s done alright.

Hosted by the Dode Fox podcast, Richard Gough is appearing at an event at Clarks on Lindsay Street in Dundee on Sunday 13 October. Tickets on sale via Eventbrite or from www.thelongestforty.com

Exclusive:Richard Gough opens up on Scotland regrets, Dundee Utd return and unclear Rangers role

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