| Born in Belfast on 7 December 1955, John McClelland created a piece
of history when he arrived at Ibrox from Mansfield Town in June 1981 for
a fee of £90,000. Having already plied his trade in Northern Ireland,
Wales, and England, McClelland's move to Scotland meant that he became
the first player to play professionally for clubs in all four of the
home nations.
Already an established international - he made the first of
fifty-three appearances for Northern Ireland in 1980 - John made his
Rangers debut on 26 August 1981 against Raith Rovers in a 3-1 victory in
the League Cup, and made twenty-two appearances in his first season in
light blue. However, his considerable presence - he stood six foot two
inches tall and tipped the scales at over thirteen stone - failed to add
the rearguard solidity required to allow Rangers to sustain a
Championship challenge. For a second successive year Jock Wallace's men
finished third in the table, with the spoils of victory going to Jim
McLean's Dundee United.
McClelland's second season in Glasgow was a dire one. Rangers plunged
to fourth place in the final league standings and lost out to Celtic
and Aberdeen in the finals of the League Cup and Scottish Cup
respectively. McClelland, who was the only Rangers player to play at the
World Cup Finals in Spain, playing in all five of Northern Ireland's
matches, including the famous 1-0 victory over host nation Spain, missed
only one match all season, the penultimate league fixture against
Hibernian, and scored his first goal for the club in a League Cup-tie
against Clydebank in August.
When Derek Johnstone moved to Chelsea in the summer of 1983, John
Greig made the decision to appoint McClelland as team captain, and the
new skipper led the team to glory in the League Cup in March 1984 (see photo above, a delighted John parading the trophy)
when Celtic were beaten in the Final courtesy of an Ally McCoist
hat-trick. He failed to inspire the team to sustain a title charge,
though, with a lacklustre start ultimately proving Rangers' undoing.
They again finished fourth, fifteen points adrift of champions Aberdeen.
The 1983/84 season was John's last full season in Rangers colours. He
became embroiled in a bitter contractual dispute with the Rangers
power-brokers in the close season as he sought improved personal terms
that reflected his status at the club. Although at odds with the club's
hierarchy, McClelland remained a fixture in the team in the opening
matches of the season, but when he was stripped of the captaincy in
September 1984 it soon became apparent that a compromise solution on his
wage demands was unlikely to be reached.
He made his final appearance in light blue in a somewhat unorthodox
role in a vital UEFA Cup-tie against Inter Milan at Ibrox in November
1984. With Rangers looking to overturn a three-goal deficit from the
first leg, Jock Wallace elected to deploy McClelland as a centre-forward
alongside Iain Ferguson and Dave Mitchell. And the bold move worked as
the bulky presence of McClelland unnerved the Italian defence, and gave
rise to an epic European night at Ibrox. Two goals from Ferguson and one
from Mitchell threatened to haul Rangers back into the tie - they
trailed 3-0 after the first leg in Italy - but they were pipped for a
place in the next round when Altobelli scored a priceless away goal for
Inter.
A matter of days after the win over Inter, John McClelland left
Ibrox. After making a total of 153 appearances in a Rangers jersey, he
headed south to join Graham Taylor's Watford, flying high in the English
First Division at the time, for a fee of £265,000. (Alistair Aird,
Author of Ally McCoist - Portrait of a Hero)
|