Sandy Jardine fantastic footballer and decent human being

Ron Scott pays tribute to a Rangers legend.

If Rangers hadn’t crashed out of the Scottish Cup to Berwick Rangers in 1967 still regarded as the worst result in the club’s history Sandy Jardine’s Ibrox career would have remained on hold.

After that embarrassing defeat at Shielfield Park, then manager Scot Symon immediately promoted Jardine for his first team debut the following week and the player never looked back.

Mind you, given his qualities, Jardine was always destined to go to the very top. It was just a matter of when it happened.

Although he was an understanding man who would go out of his way to help anyone, his competitive spirit was second to none.

For example, in an attempt to increase his pace, he took to professional sprinting during the close season with Ibrox team-mate Willie Johnston, once winning £25 for a 200-yard victory in spikes.

Jardine would have played more than 38 times for Scotland if Danny McGrain had been moved to left-back sooner so both outstanding full-backs could be accommodated in the same team.

As his playing days were approaching the end during a spell as player/assistant-manager of Hearts, Alex Ferguson recommended Jardine to Aberdeen chairman Dick Donald as his replacement following Fergie’s move to Manchester United. The Dons went for Ian Porterfield instead, so we’ll never know if Jardine would have been as successful a manager as he had been a player. Instead, he concentrated on the commercial and administration side of the game on his return to Ibrox.

Walter Smith had played against him countless times for Dundee United, but it was as Rangers manager that he really got to know Jardine.

“During my first spell at Rangers, Sandy was with Hearts,” says Walter. “But he was back at Ibrox when I returned, and that’s when I discovered he was a proper Rangers man.

“After his family, he loved the club with a passion. Nothing was beneath him. He even took it on himself to look after the Trophy Room and make sure everything was in its proper place.”

Jardine was always trying to help others, and he phoned me out of the blue one day a few years back, hoping I could lay hands on pictures of fellow Rangers’ legend Sammy Cox from The Sunday Post’s photo files.

Cox played more than 300 times for Rangers and won 24 Scotland caps in the late 1940s and early 1950s before emigrating to Canada.

He recently turned 90, and is confined to a nursing home in Stratford, Ontario.

But Sandy was piecing together a scrapbook to send to Cox, which recalled his football career as it’s been shown such mementoes can help Alzheimer’s sufferers with their memory loss.

That was typical of the man. Yes, a fantastic footballer, but also a decent human being.