On either side of the path that stretches in front of the Davie Cooper Memorial are football pitches; enclosed to the left, open to the right. The goalposts of the latter as bare as the trees this Thursday afternoon in early March.
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On Saturday mornings these fields will be full of footballers dreaming, perhaps, of being the next Davie Cooper. The soft ground beneath the trees are pocked by stud marks. But today the pitches are owned by Hamilton’s dog walkers and school kids mooching about before heading home for tea.
The statue was unveiled on March 18, 1999 by Tom McCabe then leader of South Lanarkshire Council and Cooper’s former team mate and friend Ally McCoist. A tribute to one of the town’s favourite sons, it underwent a clean-up last year.
If you want to get a measure of Cooper’s achievements the plaque attached to the memorial spells them out:
David Cooper
1956-1995
THIS STATUE WAS ERECTED BY SOUTH LANARKSHIRE COUNCIL AS A TRIBUTE TO FOOTBALL LEGEND DAVID COOPER
1974-1977 Clydebank FC
1977-1989 Glasgow Rangers FC
1989-1993 Motherwell FC
22 Full International Caps
3 Scottish League Championship Medals
4 Scottish Cup Winner Medals
7 League Cup Medals
It’s not a bad CV as these things go. But in the end I’m not sure that list of successes really captures what made Cooper so special. Mackay’s sculpture does a better job of that. In it you can see the grace, the balance, the poise of the man.
Cooper wasn’t the biggest, or the fastest, and his right leg was only for balancing on, but when he was playing he had an artistry to him. You didn’t – I don’t – have to support the clubs he played for to enjoy that artistry. The Dutch footballer Ruud Gullit – who could play a bit himself – was a huge admirer (“one of the best players I have ever seen,” he once said of Cooper).
Andy Scott, the man behind the Kelpies in Falkirk, was working alongside Mackay at Scott Associates when the statue was first proposed.
“As the only bluenose in our group I remember writing the submission document for the project,” Scott, now resident in the United States, recalls. “The submission document included an amazing quote describing Davie: ‘his feet had the deftness of a sculptor’s hands’.” (If memory serves, he thinks this was from the late football writer Kevin McCarra.)
For those of us who love the game of football it exists in our lives in a number of different ways. There’s the weekly – now daily, I guess – soap opera of it; the winning and losing, the VAR calls, the ludicrous offside decisions, the lucky victory, the latest abject defeat.
Davie Cooper in action for Rangers v Clyde at Ibrox Stadium, August 1985 (Image: Herald & Times Group / Shutterstock)
There’s the sense of identity some draw from it. On a pillar near the memorial in Hamilton you can see a sticker for “Union Bear on Tours” and another of the San Francisco 49ers, a tribute to the potential next owners of Rangers (it’s the hope that kills, etc, etc).
Then there’s the official record books. Those markers of past glories. But as those successes recede into history they become victories known rather than truly felt.
And then there is the way football exists in our heads. Those isolated golden moments that flicker in the static of memory; a flash of colour and movement, a passage of play, a moment of outrageous skill that continues in a constant action replay when we think about what we love about the game.
That’s where – 30 years after his death on March 23, 1995 – Davie Cooper still lives.
David F Ross, author and Rangers fan can testify to that. Ask him about the 1987 Scottish League Cup final, a 3-3 draw with Aberdeen which went to penalties before Rangers ultimately won and he’ll tell you about a goal.
“Cooper scored a free kick in that game. Still to this day I don’t think I’ve seen many players hit a ball like that. It’s arrow straight and hammered without any lack of conviction. It could only have gone past Jim Leighton into the top corner.
“I don’t think I’ve seen a ball hit with the power and accuracy before or since actually.”
He describes it as if it just happened yesterday.
And then there is the famous goal Cooper scored in the Drybrough Cup final in August 1979.
“It was a pre-season tournament, the Drybrough Cup,” recalls veteran broadcaster Dougie Donnelly, “and there was no proper coverage. Somebody obviously had a camera and it was taken from behind the byline. If it had proper match coverage with a big, wide camera it would still be getting shown.”
As it is, the grainy footage still gives a sense of Cooper’s chutzpah, as he plays keepy-up and knocks the ball over the heads of one, two, three Celtic defenders before firing the ball into the net. It is a goal that has a giddy magic to it.
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“It’s a magnificent piece of skill,” Donnelly recalls. “What a goal. And there were many of them. He created and scored so many great goals. What a player. He just caught the eye because of his outrageous skill.
“The goal he scored in the Drybrough Cup final against Celtic is up there with the best goal I’ve ever seen a Scottish player score. It’s up there with Archie Gemmill’s in the World Cup in ’78.”
You can hear the excitement in Donnelly’s voice as he remembers it.
This is how football, and how Davie Cooper, lives on in the imagination. Those moments in time when he did the impossible. It’s what we watch sport for.
“It doesn’t matter what football team you support, every football fan loves skillful players and Coop was as skillful as maybe anyone we’ve seen in Scottish football for a long, long time,” Donnelly suggests. “He was bloody wonderful, wasn’t he? I know the right foot was only for standing on, but that left leg of his was just a wand. It was unbelievable.”
As for the man himself, he was, depending on who you listen to, either quiet or a moaner (Graeme Souness once suggested he was like Albert Tatlock in the dressing room; a comparison that is itself beginning to recede into history). The legend goes that he was a homebody, a man more interested in the horses than anything else.
“He was quiet in a lot of ways,” Donnelly agrees. “He was certainly not extrovert or showy or ‘I’m Davie Cooper of the Rangers’. There was absolutely none of that about Coop.
“He was always a Hillhouse boy. He always lived in Hamilton, he liked nothing better than a day at Hamilton races.”
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Is that how his team mates remember him? Gordon Smith played with Cooper at the start of his Rangers career. “He was the quietest guy, he was a lovely guy,” Smith says of his erstwhile team mate. “We were good friends. We used to go out for lunch most days.
“We got on great together. He was special to me.”
But Smith was also aware that Cooper’s early days at Rangers were something of a challenge. He had come from part-time football with Clydebank into a Rangers side that was still nearly a decade away from the Souness revolution.
“It didn’t start too well for him and I’ll tell you a story. It was a full-time football environment. I don’t think he had ever experienced before where the players were quite hard on each other at Rangers, giving each other a bit of stick. You had to fight for yourself.
“There was one day – it wasn’t going that well – and the kit man was putting out the kit and all of a sudden Sandy Jardine said, ‘Is that Coop’s pyjamas you’re putting out there?’
“I saw Coop’s face. He was taken aback and I had to take him aside and say, ‘Listen, it’s just banter. That’s what you’ve got to deal with at this level. You have to hit back, give a bit of stick back.’
“He learned from that and he became somebody who was good at that as time went on. He was the person who could give stick back.”
There’s a feeling among some Rangers fans that the then manager John Greig didn’t fully trust Cooper. He would also leave Rangers just as they began to truly dominate Scottish football under Souness and then Walter Smith.
But Cooper’s subsequent time at Motherwell was just as storied. There are many who reckon Cooper played his best football for the Steelmen before retiring in 1993; most notably helping the team win the 1991 Scottish Cup in a memorable game against Dundee United which finished 4-3 after extra time. “Still the best cup final I’ve ever seen,” Donnelly says, and he’s a man who covered 33 of them in a row.
Davie Cooper signing for Motherwell with management team Tom Forsyth, Bobby Russell and Tommy McLean in August 1989 (Image: Herald & Times Group / Shutterstock)
His Scotland caps aside, Cooper never played in England or abroad. He never had the opportunity to test himself against the best defences in England or Italy.
“Lots of people said he should have gone to Italy or should have gone abroad,” David Ross admits. “I get the feeling it wouldn’t have been the lack of football talent that would have meant he wasn’t a success in Italy. It would have just been the fact that he would have been a fish out of water in the context of where he was happiest.”
Gordon Smith isn’t so sure. When Brighton bought Smith from Rangers in 1980 the then Brighton manager Alan Mullery put in a bid for Cooper as well, but it was turned down.
“I didn’t tell him that Alan Mullery wanted him too because I wasn’t sure how he’d react,” Smith says now. “When I did tell him he said, ‘Oh, you’re joking. I would love to have come down there.’”
Instead, Cooper remained in Scotland, a gift to the Scottish game that perhaps meant he wasn’t appreciated elsewhere as much as he should have been.
Donnelly tells me a story that speaks to this. “I remember the editor of Grandstand, a fellow called Brian Barwick, phoned me when Coop died and said, ‘Look, I know him and I’ve seen him play, but can you get BBC Scotland to send me some footage for Football Focus? I know he was a good player, but just how important was he?’
“I waxed lyrical and arranged for the BBC in Glasgow to send him some footage. But he was the editor of Grandstand and he was a mad keen football fan, Brian, a big Liverpool fan as it happened, and he knew of Coop but he didn’t realise how important he was and what a player he was.”
When I tell Ross this story he says: “There’s maybe a nice way to look at that as well. That global fame that he didn’t get means that he remains ours.”
Davie Cooper earned 22 caps for Scotland (Image: Herald & Times Group / Shutterstock)
There is another – awful – what if in Cooper’s story. What if he had lived longer than he did? On March 22, 1995, Cooper collapsed while filming a training video with Old Firm rival Charlie Nicholas next to Broadwood Stadium in Cumbernauld. He had suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage. He was rushed to hospital but died the next day. He was just 39.
Gordon Smith was meant to meet him the day after he collapsed. “ I got a phone call from STV saying, ‘We’re doing a bit on Davie Cooper. Do you mind speaking about him?’ I said, ‘Oh aye, are you doing a documentary? And he went, ‘Have you not heard?’
“I said,’ no heard what?’ He said, ‘He’s died.’
“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t even do the piece after that because I was so taken aback by that. Especially when you’re meeting a close friend the next day and you’re told on the phone he’s died. I was totally shattered by it.”
Three decades on you can still hear the emotion in his voice.
“I went to the funeral,” Dougie Donnelly recalls. “We went out to Hillhouse and everybody in Hillhouse turned out. The streets were lined.”
Tributes at Ibrox (Image: Herald & Times Group / Shutterstock)
It can catch you out when your heroes die. “I’ve never been one that’s been critical of people who get overly emotional about the deaths of people who are important to them,” David Ross says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Davie Cooper or David Bowie.
“It’s because a little bit of yourself has died, whether it’s a wee bit of your identity or a wee bit of your history, or a recognition that mortality is something that is going to affect you. It’s totally understandable, I think.
“It does bring together people who wouldn’t give each other the time under normal circumstances and in a footballing context as sometimes difficult and poisonous as Glasgow I think that says something about the individual.”
All lives come to an end. Memories live on though. In David Ross’s head Davie Cooper is still dancing down the wing, beating one player and then the next. Cooper is still the player he wishes he could have been himself.
“When I was younger that’s who I wanted to be, before Paul Weller came on the scene. For me, he’s the Paul Weller of football.”
The Player’s Tale
Gordon Smith played with Davie Cooper at Rangers at the end of the 1970s before joining Brighton. He went on to play for Manchester City, Oldham Athletic and FC Basel among others, before becoming chief executive of the Scottish Football Association for three years between 2007 and 2010
“Davie was tremendous. He could beat a player easily, he could turn and keep possession of the ball.
He had the ability to see people, but I learned quite quickly not to make my run right away because he liked to have his touches on the ball. When the ball came to him he would keep it, turn, beat a man. He hardly ever played a first-time pass.
“When I went to Brighton Alan Mullery the manager said, ‘I was interested in you both.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’
“’I tried to buy you both. I put an offer in for you both. John Greig said you can only have one. You’ve got to choose which one.’ He said, ‘I’ve chosen you.’
“And I said to him, ‘You’ve got the wrong one then.’
The Fan’s tale
David F Ross is an architect and the author of seven novels, the latest of which The Weekenders was published last month by Orenda Books
“A lot of things that are important to me get wrapped around the personal. 1979, the Drybrough Cup final. I went to that game. I was about 15.
“My mum died when I was really young and we had at one point lived in the flats on Bolton Drive right on the edge of Hampden, right up in Mount Florida. My dad had remarried and we’d come down to Ayrshire. That was the first time I’d gone back to Hampden and back to where we lived and where she died.
“I went with a few mates. The whole thing was a bit of an odd day actually. Getting off the train at Mount Florida and walking past the house and not being prepared for what that would make me feel like.
“And then of course there is that goal. I remember seeing that goal and thinking, ‘That was unbelievable.’
“Fast forward. It’s about 15 years later and I am an adult – or as much of an adult as I’m going to get. My first child Nathan was born about two weeks before Davie Cooper died and again that associative memory of something that is really new and unique and then the absolute and utter shock of hearing my favourite player – because he was – had died at 39. I couldn’t get my head around it.
“And the first thing I thought illogically was, ‘Ah, Nathan’s not going to see him playing’. Not thinking that he doesn’t play for Rangers any more. It was just that shock.
“You pick your heroes and you aspire to be like them even if it’s only in your head, whether it’s still now at the age of 60 trying to play football in sevens on a Saturday. I’m still in that mindset that thinks I’ve just done something that maybe Davie Cooper would have done.”
The Commentator’s Tale
Dougie Donnelly covered Scottish football for more than three decades for the BBC. He now commentates on golf on the Asian tour.
“Around about the time of that famous Cup Final, the Motherwell-Dundee United one in 1991, I was with the BBC and they knew that I knew [then Motherwell manager] Tommy McLean quite well. The gaffer said, ‘Look, do you mind phoning Motherwell and and try to get a hold of Tam?’ I said yeah I’ll do that.
“So I phoned Motherwell Football Club. This was just before mobiles. A man answers the phone. ‘Hello, Motherwell Football Club.’ I said, ‘Hello, it’s Dougie Donnelly here. I’m wondering if I might get a chance to speak to the manager?’
Cooper celebrating the Motherwell Cup Final win in 1991 (Image: Newsquest)
“‘Nah, nah, no, sorry.’ I said, ‘Oh, is he busy?’ He said, ‘No he won’t want to speak to you. What’s it about anyway?’ I thought, this is a bit strange. I said, ‘Well, we were hoping he might come in to do the Scotland game on Wednesday.’
“‘Naw, he’ll not do that. He doesn’t like you.’
“I am completely flabbergasted. I am stuttering, and I said, ‘Who am I speaking to?’
“‘It’s Coop you daft bastard.’ He’d been sitting in the office and the girls must have been doing something else and the phone rang and he answered it. That was so Coop. That was Coop’s sense of humour.
“It’s a lovely memory and in the end we did get Tam.”