Even when his voice was compromised by cancer of the larynx, Gordon McQueen could bang out a story with all the timing and the humour of a trained comic. It didn’t matter that we might have heard some of them before. Every time, he added a flourish.
Once, we showed him a picture of his famous goal against England at Wembley in the madcap summer of 1977, him towering high to nut the ball past Ray Clemence, a prelude to the tartan pitch invasion and the annexing of English goalposts.
“You’re soaring above everybody there, Gordon.”
“Aye, and that’s me on the way back down,” he replied.
“Clemence had no chance…”
“He didn’t even get it on the way back out.”
He then told a story about meeting the tartan masses in the aftermath of the chaos at Wembley, a yarn that served as a reminder of how different things were back then.
“I got the train home the next morning. Scotland fans everywhere. They were asking me to sign bits of turf. I said, ‘I can’t sign turf, it’s impossible’. They were going, ‘Just put your finger in it, big man. Scratch it, do something’.
“They all had these dollops of turf in their pockets. The boys hadn’t had much sleep.”
It’s a glorious image from an innocent time, a day when a top-class footballer got the train home after an international match.
McQueen played for two of the biggest clubs in British football, won 30 caps and became an icon, in part because of what he achieved on a pitch but in other part because of what and who he was away from it. He was accessible, fun and as normal as can be. He was a character.
But he suffered. In recent years he endured illness. There was the cancer in 2011 and a stroke in 2015. He accepted both of them with stoicism.
“Most of my playing contemporaries came from the tough council estates. It was a harder life which prepared me for what’s happened.”
What happened, in January 2021, was vascular dementia, which again highlighted the issue of what damage heading a ball for an entire career might have done to him and others.
McQueen scored more than 40 goals in club and international football and most of them were with his head. He was a giant defender whose calling card from 1970-71, when he broke into the St Mirren team, right through to 1984-85, when he played his last games for Manchester United, was his ability in the air.
We look at the goal at Wembley now and wonder how many other times in his life did he meet a cross in that same thunderous way, either putting one in the back of an opposition net or clearing it away from his own territory. Tens of thousands of times, for sure.
His brother Iain recently asked whether all that heading in matches and in training was worth it. It sounded like a rhetorical question at the time and it’s probably a question that will live on with McQueen’s wife Yvonne and their children Hayley, Anna and Eddie.
He will be mourned and remembered by so many. His presence reached far and wide, through his playing days, his life as a coach at Middlesbrough and through his media career.
McQueen was in the vanguard of an era when terrific Scottish players ran the show in the top league in England. He estimated that there were 17 Scots at Leeds at one time. Don Revie, the manager, loved the edge they brought, loved their personality and strength.
In his youth, McQueen had spells as a goalkeeper and an outside-left. He once recalled scoring nine goals in an 11-0 victory, an afternoon that somehow convinced his manager at the time that his future lay not as a prolific attacker, but as a doughty centre-half. Whoever that was, they knew their stuff.
It wasn’t long before storied managers started paying attention. Bill Shankly took him to Liverpool at 16, but the young McQueen wasn’t ready for England just yet. Jock Stein wanted him at Celtic, Bill Nicholson wanted him at Spurs, Bobby Robson wanted him at Ipswich, Instead, when he was ready to move, he joined Revie at Leeds.
McQueen joined a dressing-room dominated by familiar voices – David Harvey, Peter Lorimer, Frank and Eddie Gray, Billy Bremner, Joe Jordan. Lifelong friendships were forged there. Jordan was best man at McQueen’s wedding. McQueen was best man at Jordan’s.
In his first season, as a 21-year-old, McQueen played in a European final, coming off the bench in Leeds’ 1973 Cup Winners’ Cup final against AC Milan in Salonika. Five Scots saw game-time that night, but the Italians prevailed 1-0.
If you ever got McQueen talking about that final – and he didn’t need much encouragement, for good reason – then you’ll have heard some stories about bribery and corruption and dodgy refereeing. These were not wild accusations. The performance of referee Christos Michas was criticised by all neutrals. Uefa later banned him for life.
The whole episode gave the big man great material for talks and interviews, but a winner’s medal was what he was after.
He got one when Leeds won the First Division Championship in 1974 and looked like he might get another when scoring three goals in Leeds’ run to the European Cup final in 1975.
“We played Barcelona in the semi-final and we were 2-1 up going into the second leg in Spain,” McQueen recalled. “A few of their players said they were going to do me and Jimmy Armfield, our manager, told me to count to 10 if anything happened. The boy (Manuel) Clares spat in my face. I counted to 10 and then knocked him out. I was sent off. Missed the final.”
McQueen made light of that down the years but it must have pained him. With six Scots getting on the field in the final, Leeds lost 2-0 to Bayern Munich.
Controversy reigned that time too. Leeds should have had two penalties and Peter Lorimer had what looked like a legitimate goal disallowed. Rioting followed. McQueen spoke about all of that with a dry wit.
He was named Leeds player of the year at the end of that campaign and won the prize again in 1976-77.
He left for Manchester United in 1978. It was a contentious move, made all the more edgy by his comment that 95% of footballers in England wanted to play for United – and the rest are liars.
That summer was when McQueen could have been at the heart of Scotland’s World Cup campaign in Argentina. He was selected, but this time injury (not a referee or an act of retaliation) robbed him of a dream.
His seven seasons at United brought an FA Cup in 1983 and a near-miss in the league – second to Liverpool in 1980 (he scored nine goals). United were a giant club but titles were scarce.
As a player, McQueen deserved more trophies, not that he would have complained. He often said he had a whale of a time and wouldn’t have changed much.
He leaves an indelible mark on the history of the Scottish game, the big man with the huge personality.