Aye, and so you should take pelters.
Ronnie McKinnon was an excellent Centre Half, a cool, composed, determined, intelligent player. He tackled fairly and often, he had fantastic pace, a thing not often considered back then for a Centre Half, though he also knew when to kick the ball clean out of touch, to yon folk up there in the seats.
McKinnon was very good in the air. He read the game very well, and did his job with precision, rarely exposed, he would collect that ball, feed it to Baxter, McMillan, Greig or Dave Smith, and let them do the rest.
It was Jock Stein (Whilst manager of both Celtic and Scotland) who gave Ronnie McKinnon his International debut, at the expense of his own Billy McNeill.....and this was no meaningless Friendly, to bring in the untried, this was a must win World Cup Qualifier at home to Italy, widely regarded as one of Hampden's greatest nights ever, which Scotland won 1-0.
Despite the competition around at the time, Billy McNeill, Jackie McGrory, Ron Yeats, Ian Ure, Frank McLintock etc. Ronnie McKinnon was above all of them, and would get the nod in 17 of the next 19 Internationals that Scotland played between that World Cup qualifier v Italy in Nov 65' until the WCQ v West Germany in April 69'.
In what many consider Scotland's greatest ever victory, a 3-2 annihilation of World Champions England in their own back yard in 1967, it was Ronnie McKinnon who was the best player on the park.
McKinnon faced some of the best forwards in the World during that period, in Pele, Eusebio and Greaves, to name but three, and never looked out of place.
There was some impressive Half Back Lines in Britain throughout the 1960's
Blanchflower, Norman, MacKay, at Tottenham
Smith, Yeats, and Stevenson, at Liverpool
Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, at Leeds
Crerand, Foulkes, and Stiles, at Man Utd
Murdoch, McNeill and Clark at Celtic,
but there was none better than
GREIG, McKINNON, BAXTER