Euro 2020: Helensburgh's links to Scottish football legends past and present

With Scotland making their final preparations to take on the Czech Republic at Hampden on Monday afternoon in the first of their Group D fixtures, here we take a look at some of the Helensburgh links to the Scots’ appearances at major tournament finals past and present…

Scott McTominay

The only Helensburgh link (as far as we know!) to the current Scotland squad, the Manchester United midfielder was born in Lancaster but qualifies for Scotland through his Helensburgh-born father.

The 24-year-old, who now has 23 Scotland caps to his name, made his debut in Alex McLeish’s first match in charge of the national team, playing the first 57 minutes of a 1-0 friendly defeat to Costa Rica on March 23, 2018, and followed that with his first competitive appearance six months later against Albania.

McTominay’s grandparents still live in Helensburgh: shortly before winning that first cap in March 2018, his grandfather Frank described how it was no secret that his grandson, who came up through the ranks of the Old Trafford club’s youth system and made his United debut in May 2017, had always believed his international prospects lay with Scotland rather than England.

Murdo MacLeod

The former Dumbarton and Celtic midfielder was born in Milngavie but made his home in Helensburgh in 1983.

MacLeod had to wait until late in his career before winning the first of his 20 Scotland caps; he made his debut as a substitute in a 1-0 win over England at Hampden in May 1985, coming on in place of Chelsea striker David Speedie.

Ardencaple FC patron Murdo MacLeod at a cheque presentation with JJ Taylor of Babcock and Caple chairman Craig Holborn

He missed out on a place in the Scotland squad for the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, but was a regular in the qualifying campaign for Italia ’90, by which time he had moved to Germany to play for Borussia Dortmund.

MacLeod wasn’t named in the starting line-up for the first match of those 1990 finals, the infamous 1-0 defeat to Costa Rica, but he returned to the team for the next game, playing the full 90 minutes of the 2-1 win over Sweden.

He retained his place for the final group game against Brazil in Turin, but was substituted due to injury after 38 minutes of the match, which the Scots lost 1-0.

His last Scotland cap came in a friendly against the USSR at Ibrox in February 1991, when he came on as a half-time substitute.

MacLeod has remained an active supporter of football in the Helensburgh area and is a patron of Ardencaple FC.

Read more about Murdo, and his long-standing links with the Helensburgh community, in this article on the Helensburgh Heritage Trust website.

Walter Smith

The former Rangers boss, and Helensburgh resident, was appointed manager of the Scotland national team in December 2004, following the disastrous reign of Berti Vogts.

Ah, we hear you cry, but he never actually led Scotland to a major finals in his three years in charge. Well, no, that’s correct: but younger fans might not realise that Smith’s links with the national team go back rather longer than that.

He was appointed as coach of the Scotland under-18 team in 1978, helping them to win the European Youth Championships in 1982 before going on to coach the country’s under-21 squad, boasting several of the same players who had won that European title.

Walter Smith pictured with local minister Ian Miller at the launch of Ian's biography in 2016

In September 1985, Scotland’s full men’s team secured a qualification play-off place for the following year’s World Cup in Mexico thanks to a 1-1 draw with Wales in Cardiff. But the aftermath of the match was overshadowed by the sudden death of manager Jock Stein, who suffered a fatal pulmonary oedema at the end of the match and died shortly afterwards in the stadium’s medical room.

Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson was appointed interim Scotland boss after Stein’s death, and asked Smith to be his assistant. The Scots duly qualified for the finals in Mexico after a play-off victory over Australia, but failed to make it beyond the group stage following defeats at the hands of Denmark and West Germany and a goalless draw with Uruguay.

After the tournament, Andy Roxburgh was named as the new Scotland manager, and Smith, who had been named as Graeme Souness’s assistant at Rangers just a few weeks before the Mexico finals, returned to his club role at Ibrox, eventually taking over as manager in 1991.

Smith was named honorary president of Ardencaple Boys’ Club in Helensburgh in 2009. Both his sons, Neil and Steven, played for the club in their youth.

Read more about his career, and his Helensburgh links, in this Helensburgh Heritage Trust story.

Bobby Brown

Okay, so this one is a bit of a cheat, but bear with us…

Bobby Brown’s playing career lasted from 1939 until 1958; he made his debut as a goalkeeper for Queen’s Park in 1939, while still at school, and though his career was interrupted by the Second World War, he played for Scotland in five wartime internationals before making his full Scotland debut in a Victory International friendly against Belgium in January 1946.

He was the last amateur player to earn a full Scotland cap, and also the last to do so while a Queen’s Park player.

He won a move to Rangers at the end of the 1945-46 season and played 211 times for the Ibrox club, remaining as a part-time player alongside his career as a teacher before leaving for Falkirk in 1956.

Bobby Brown retired to Helensburgh after his football career came to an end

He retired from playing, and also left his teaching job, two years later, before moving into football management with St Johnstone, where he was in charge for 393 games over nine years.

In 1967 he was appointed as the first full-time manager of the Scotland national team, in the process becoming the first manager to be given full control over team selection, which previously lay in the hands of a Scottish FA committee.

And here’s the “cheat” bit: Brown’s first match as Scotland manager would also be his most famous, a 3-2 win over England at Wembley in May 1967. It was England’s first defeat since Sir Alf Ramsey’s squad won the World Cup the previous summer, and led to the Scots declaring themselves “unofficial world champions”.

Brown left the Scotland job in 1971, having failed to lead the national team to the 1968 European Championships or the 1970 World Cup finals, and retired with his wife Ruth to Helensburgh, where the couple ran a gift and coffee shop.

Brown died aged 96 in January 2020; his funeral, at the town’s St Michael and All Angels Church, was attended by many Scottish football legends, among them Walter Smith, Murdo MacLeod and former national team boss Craig Brown.

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