By David Herd
Apologies for the strange title for this article, for those who don’t know where it came from it’s the name of a Proclaimers song from the 1980s. Don’t worry, there is nothing else in here about those tuneless Nationalist numpties.
The 80s may be a period in time I often think back about in my advancing old age, but thoughts right now are firmly on the run-in for the 2023/24 Premiership title. After being in pole position not that long ago, Rangers have shot themselves in at least one foot by dropping stupid points and conceding crazy goals. But with four matches to play, the gap is just three points, and that’s two points less than in the famous Helicopter Sunday season in 2005, when Celtic discovered a five point lead wasn’t enough. It’s most certainly not over yet, but there is no room for more Rangers error. And the first of the four must-win matches is this Sunday when Rangers entertain Kilmarnock.
They are a team enjoying an excellent season, with three home wins already over Old Firm opponents in league and cup as well as a deserved draw at Parkhead not that long ago. A fourth place league finish with European football to come at the start of next season looks a formality, with all this thanks to a former Rangers player in the dugout. Derek McInnes is the latest to have a link to both clubs, with the list of players who wore both Rangers and Kilmarnock colours a long one. The impressive Lewis Mayo will be in the visiting dressing room, a young defender signed from Rangers after he was unable to break into the first team at Ibrox. In recent times, there have been the likes of Chris Burke, Kirk Broadfoot and Jordan Jones who played for both teams, and you can go back throughout history to find more examples. Arguably the first superstar Rangers player, John “Kitey” McPherson started his career at Rugby Park before moving to Ibrox in 1890 from Cowlairs. His Rangers career saw him become the first man to score 100 competitive goals for the club, and be a huge part of historic teams who won the first league title, the first Scottish Cup and the incredible title win without dropping a point. He would go on to be a director at Ibrox.
In more recent memory, idols of the Rangers support like McCoist, Durrant, Boyd and Naismith wore Kilmarnock colours. The latter two were signed by Rangers from Kilmarnock, and that is the focus for this walk down memory lane. This article is also a poll, with the question “who is the best Rangers player signed from Kilmarnock”? That means the likes of McCoist and Durrant are ruled out, as are many others such as Colin Stein and Lee McCulloch. An alternative question would have been who was the best player to play for both clubs, but Ally would have won that award along with his golden boots, multiple medals, and football pundit of the year. As is being said elsewhere these days, better a competition than a coronation.
My shortlist for the winner has five candidates, all with a decent claim for consideration. The five won’t include Naismith, not because of him forever being despised by our support for his actions and words in 2012, but simply because there are five others with much more impressive Rangers careers than he had. Without saying who I would personally choose, here are the five players competing for the title of best signing from Rugby Park:
1/ DAVID MITCHELL
David Mitchell
Perhaps not a name familiar to most fans, but a giant in early Rangers history. A defender who excelled as a half back or centre back, Mitchell joined Rangers from Kilmarnock in 1889, at a time before league football existed in Scotland. The following summer, the first ever Scottish League season got underway, and when Rangers beat Hearts 5-2 at the old Ibrox on August 16th 1890 in the club’s first-ever league fixture, the captain was David Mitchell. He enjoyed an eleven-year career at the club, and it was full of firsts.
In season 1890/91, Rangers and Dumbarton were declared joint winners of that first league championship when a play-off match finished 2-2 after both teams were tied on the same points at the end of the season. This meant David Mitchell became the first Rangers captain to win the league. In season 1892/93, Rangers beat Celtic for the first time in a recognised competitive match in the Glasgow Cup final. It was also the first time Rangers lifted that particular trophy. David Mitchell was captain. And there were more firsts to come.
The following season, on February 17th 1894, Rangers won the Scottish Cup for the first time, beating league champions Celtic 3-1 in the final. Mitchell was skipper again. The first Rangers captain to win the league, win the cup, and beat Celtic. He went on to win 2 more Scottish Cups in 1897 and 1898, and was part of the invincible team of 1898/99 who won every league match they played over the season. When he played his last ever league game for Rangers in 1900, the team had retained the title for the first time ever.
His honours list would also include four Glasgow Cups and 1 Charity Cup, not national honours that are officially recognised, but competitions that were hugely important in the football calendar in those Victorian times. Mitchell was also an international footballer, back in days when Scotland mainly played only the other home nations. He was capped five times, all of them during his Rangers career.
David Mitchell is not a name mentioned when legendary captains of the club are talked about. Greig, Gough, Shearer, Young, Shaw and Meiklejohn won more silverware and were leaders of iconic Rangers teams. But they were all following in the footsteps of this first multiple trophy-winning Rangers leader. David Mitchell is not yet in the club’s Hall of Fame, he certainly should be in there.
David Mitchell 241 Rangers appearances, 9 Rangers goals
2 league titles, 3 Scottish Cups
2/ ANDY CUNNINGHAM
Andy Cunningham
Inside right Andy Cunnigham had six seasons at Kilmarnock before joining Rangers in early 1915. He would become a mainstay of the great Rangers teams under both William Wilton and William Struth for the next thirteen years. As he signed during The Great War, his initial Rangers career was interrupted by military service, Cunningham reaching the rank of lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. He did play during the conflict when possible, but it was 1919 before he truly established himself in the team. He then swapped military medals for football ones.
He scored 23 league goals in season 1919/20 as Rangers won the title in Wilton’s final season in charge before his tragic death. He hit 24 in the title win the following season under Struth. In all, Andy Cunningham scored 162 league goals for the club before he left in early 1929 at the age of 38. Those goals were a big reason why Rangers won seven league titles with him in the side as part of a deadly right wing partnership with the great winger Sandy Archibald.
He scored plenty Scottish Cup goals too, but the trophy continued to elude him as Rangers suffered their infamous 25-year “hoodoo” in the competition. He hit 21 goals in 39 Scottish Cup games, but lost to both Partick and Morton in the final, the latter game ending early for him when he suffered a broken jaw and had to leave the field. In 1928, in the twilight of a glittering Rangers career, Cunningham finally got his hands on the trophy he wanted most when he played in the famous 4-0 final win over Celtic. He was a big game player, scoring twelve times against Celtic, with twelve also being his number of Scotland caps. He scored five times for his country.
His 440 competitive appearances puts Andy Cunningham in the top 30 for the club of all-time (this figure includes Glasgow and Charity Cups), with his 201 goals placing him twelfth across 151 years of Rangers FC. When he left Rangers, he joined Newcastle United where he became the oldest debutant in the English top flight. In January 1973, at the age of 81, Cunningham performed the ceremonial kick-off in the Ibrox centre circle when Rangers played the mighty Ajax in the first European Super Cup match, played to commemorate the club’s centenary. He passed away later that year.
Andy Cunningham 440 Rangers appearances, 201 Rangers goals
7 league titles, 1 Scottish Cup
3/ TOMMY McLEAN
Tommy Mclean
In the 1960s, Rangers had one of the finest right wingers in European football in the great Willie Henderson. Meanwhile, at Kilmarnock, their manager Willie Waddell (another of the great Rangers right wingers) had unearthed another wonderfully talented and diminutive wide man. Tommy McLean burst into the Killie side in 1964 as a teenager, and much like Henderson at Ibrox he enjoyed some amazing early success. He played a key role in Kilmarnock winning the league title for the only time in their history in 1964/65, and enjoyed some momentous European victories at Rugby Park in his seven years and 216 appearances. He also made nine Scotland appearances during his Ayrshire playing career. That career ended in 1971 when his old manager Waddell brought him to Rangers for a fee of £65,000.
Bought to replace the hugely popular Henderson, it took a while for the Rangers support to fully accept McLean, a winger who was far less explosive, but whose football brain and game intelligence allowed him to create danger more than pace and trickery. He was capable of accurate defence-splitting passes as well as being one of the best crossers of a ball ever seen at Ibrox. Over his eleven-year playing career in a Rangers shirt, McLean became a massively important creative figure in a team who made history at home and abroad.
Tommy McLean will forever be a club immortal as one of the eleven men who played in Barcelona 1972. That European Cup-Winners’ Cup medal was the first silverware he lifted as a Rangers player, but it certainly wasn’t the last. He would go on to win the Scottish Cup in 1973, 1976, 1978 and 1979, also playing in the first drawn match in the 1981 final. Most of these wins featured at least one goal from a McLean cross. He also enjoyed three League Cup wins in 1975, 1978 and 1979, with two of these being part of a treble success under Jock Wallace.
Those two trebles were preceded by the 1974/75 league title, Rangers taking the championship for the first time in eleven long years as Celtic’s quest for ten-in-a-row was crushed. McLean was a huge reason they were left disappointed, his display in the pivotal New Year 3-0 win over them at Ibrox as complete a performance as witnessed in an Old Firm game for a long time, and his 14 league goals that season was his most prolific campaign.
Goalscoring wasn’t his biggest strength, however, although his total of 59 goals for the club 459 appearances was a decent contribution. McLean played before assists were measured in football, fair to say that if they existed between 1971 and 1982 then he would likely be very near the top of the club’s all-time list. His last ever appearance was in the losing Scottish Cup final of 1982, after which he retired and became the club’s assistant manager. He would go on to enjoy a highly successful management career in Scottish football.
Tommy McLean 459 Rangers appearances, 59 Rangers goals
3 league titles, 4 Scottish Cups, 3 League Cups, 1 European Cup-Winners Cup
4/ GORDON SMITH
Gordon Smith
Gordon Smith came from a Kilmarnock football family, his grandfather winning the Scottish Cup twice with Killie as a player in the 1920s, the second of them as captain in a win over Rangers. His playing career started at Rugby Park in 1972 as a teenager, where he played as both a winger and an inside forward, impressing enough to be given five Scotland under-23 appearances. After 36 Kilmarnock goals in 161 appearances, Jock Wallace brought him to Rangers for a fee of £65,000 in August 1977.
Rangers had ended the previous season trophyless and started the new one badly, and many fans were starting to show signs of frustration. Smith was widely regarded as a winger, which confused the support as Wallace had only recently signed left winger Davie Cooper. But he saw Smith as an attacking midfielder, and gave him the “number 10” role. The new man made an immediate impact, and his goals helped turn the new season into a memorable one.
He hit six goals in his first five starts, these culminating in a second half double against Celtic with his winner capping an amazing comeback from a 2-0 half-time deficit. He would go on to hit the Celtic net four times in his debut season, with an opener in the New Year win at Ibrox and an unforgettable 118th minute extra-time winner against them in the League Cup final. That League Cup run included a Smith hat-trick in a 6-1 demolition of a very good Aberdeen team that manager Wallace described as the best Rangers performance of his time as manager.
Smith scored 27 goals in that first season as a Rangers player, with his 27th being the goal that clinched the title on the last day against Motherwell. A dream start to life at Ibrox was completed the following week, when he picked up the Scottish Cup in a 2-1 win over Aberdeen to complete a treble. His second season saw him now playing under John Greig, who utilised him in a slightly deeper role. That meant fewer goals, but he still managed 18, with one of them a winner against a star-studded Juventus team that contained the vast majority of the Italian national side who had just finished fourth in the World Cup.
Smith didn’t just add goals to his account in that second season, he also picked up more silverware. Both the League Cup and the Scottish Cup were retained, with a third of his season’s goals scored in the cup competitions. These would prove to be the last winner’s medals he won as a Rangers player, with season 1979/80 being a terrible disappointment and Smith sold to Brighton in the summer for a club record fee of £440,000. He scored in the FA Cup final for Brighton in 1983, this coming after a brief return to Ibrox in late 1982 when he started in the 2-1 League Cup final loss against Celtic.
Smith went on to play in both Austria and Switzerland, before a brief managerial career and then a prominent role in sports broadcasting and brief spells as Chief Executive of the SFA and Director of Football back at Ibrox. He can still be heard on match commentary on Rangers TV, and is a popular speaker at fan events.
Gordon Smith 160 Rangers appearances, 52 Rangers goals.
1 league title, 2 Scottish Cups, 2 League Cups
5/ KRIS BOYD
Kris Boyd
Sky TV’s often-lonely Rangers supporting pundit was also one the best goalscorers of his generation. Ayrshire born, Boyd scored plenty goals for Kilmarnock after making his debut for them against Celtic at the age of seventeen. He had hit 63 league goals for them by the end of December 2005, with 15 of them in the first half of that 2005/06 season. Killie accepted an offer from Rangers of £500,000 and he moved to his boyhood heroes on January 1st. Boyd hit a hat-trick on his debut in a cup win over Peterhead, and ended the season as both the Rangers and the Kilmarnock top scorer, a unique achievement.
Goals were what Boyd would go on to keep providing in his Rangers career. He would end top scorer in every season of his first spell at the club, becoming the all-time top scorer in the Scottish Premier League, overtaking Henrik Larsson, when he hit five goals against Dundee United in late 2009. When he scored his 50th club goal in 2007, only Jim Forrest had taken fewer games to reach that milestone since World War Two. He would hit 101 league goals in just four and half seasons, the last two of these being title wins. His 27 league goals in season 2008/09 have not been bettered by any Rangers player in the top division since.
His goals also made a difference in cup competitions. His first trophy win was in the 2008 League Cup, and he scored both goals against Dundee United in a 2-2 draw before hitting the winning penalty in the shootout. Later that season, he then hit another cup final double in the Scottish Cup as Queen of the South were defeated 3-2. Boyd would go on to win both competitions once more to go along with his two league titles, before leaving Rangers on the expiry of his contract in 2010 for Middlesbrough. By then, he had played 18 times for Scotland, scoring seven times for the national team.
Boyd ended up playing for Kilmarnock in three different spells and Rangers twice, although his second stint at Rangers is best forgotten in a season of few goals and utter shambles on and off the pitch in the Championship.
Kris Boyd 235 Rangers appearances, 138 Rangers goals.
2 league titles, 2 Scottish Cups, 2 League Cups.
Five signings from Kilmarnock, and five trophy-laden Rangers careers. But which one gets the title of our best ever signing from Kilmarnock?
