Sandy JARDINE

William Pullar Jardine (he was given the moniker 'Sandy' because of his crop of hair of the same colour) was one of the few Rangers players that profited from the cataclysmic Scottish Cup defeat at the hands of Berwick Rangers in January 1967. Just seven days after that debacle, Sandy donned a Rangers jersey for the first time, and for the next fifteen years (see photo above contesting the ball with Tommy Burns in 1982) he was a mainstay in the first XI.

Brought up in Edinburgh in close proximity to Heart of Midlothian's Tynecastle Park, Sandy was just sixteen when Scot Symon signed him for Rangers in 1964. After a couple of seasons toughening himself up in the reserve team, Jardine eventually graduated to the top team on 4 February 1967, taking his first-team bow at the age of eighteen in front of 34, 307 fans. Ironically the team that Rangers faced at Ibrox that day were Hearts, the team Sandy had followed as a youngster, but the newcomer showed his idols no mercy as he played his part in an emphatic 5-1 victory, a result that helped to soften the hammer blow that had been delivered seven days earlier in Berwick.

Sandy wore the number 4 jersey on his debut and played at right-half, one of the many positions that he would occupy in the Rangers team before he made the right-back position his own in 1970. In a remarkable display of dexterity, Jardine, who had been signed as a midfield player, turned out as an inside-forward, left-back, and even had a spell at centre-forward in 1968/69!

The reason why Sandy fitted so seamlessly into so many positions was down to the fact that he was a skilful player with an abundance of stamina, but it was the astute eyes of Willie Waddell that identified Jardine's strongest position, deploying him at right-back at the start of the 1970/71 season, and Sandy was rarely absent from that berth in the team until he left the club twelve years later.

He was tailor made to be a full-back. Cultured, strong and stylish, he was a modern day full-back, who enjoyed marauding forward. He was blessed with an excellent turn of pace, which meant that he was rarely caught out of position, and over the course of the next decade he emerged as one of the finest players to grace that position, not just for Rangers but for Scotland too.

Sandy won his first senior honour in 1970/71 when he picked up a Scottish League Cup winners' medal following a 1-0 victory over Celtic. The following season, he was an ever-present, as Rangers stormed their way through to the Final of the European Cup Winners' Cup, with Jardine netting the crucial opening goal of the semi-final second-leg against Bayern Munich at Ibrox with a rasping left-foot drive. This was sweet revenge for Sandy, who had been part of the Rangers side that had lost out to the West Germans in the Cup Winners' Cup Final five years earlier. This time around, though, he got his hands on the trophy, as Rangers defeated Moscow Dynamo 3-2 in Barcelona to lift the Club's first, and to date (2008) only, European trophy. (Alistair Aird, Author of Ally McCoist - Portrait of a Hero)

Although dogged by injury in 1975/76, Jardine still managed to make thirty-seven appearances, as Rangers claimed the domestic Treble, and when they repeated the feat two years later, he missed just five of the forty-nine matches that Rangers played in.

Under the stewardship of his close friend John Greig, who succeeded Jock Wallace as Rangers manager in the summer of 1978, Sandy added to his extensive medal collection when he was part of the side's that won the Scottish Cup in 1979 and 1981 and the League Cup in 1978 and 1981, but he was now part of an ageing Rangers team that was beginning to decline alarmingly.

After making 674 appearances for Rangers (only John Greig has played more often for Rangers in the post-war era), Sandy left Rangers in the summer of 1982 and joined up with former team-mate Alex MacDonald at Hearts. However, rather than simply wind down his playing career, Jardine enjoyed something of an Indian summer in Gorgie. He played as a sweeper and, in 1985/86; he came within a whisker of adding another two medals to the array of baubles he collected whilst at Ibrox. Hearts seemed set for the 'Double' in that particular campaign, but they were robbed of the achievement when they lost to Dundee in their final league fixture, which allowed Celtic to pip them to the title on goal difference, and Aberdeen thwarted their attempts to win the Scottish Cup by winning the Final by three goals to nil.

Sandy's consistent displays that year saw him crowned Scottish Footballer of the Year for the second time at the grand old age of 37, and he reached a phenomenal milestone in the closing stages of his career when he played in his 1,000th senior match.

He finally hung up his boots at the end of the 1987/88 season whereupon he became MacDonald's assistant manager. He was then joint-manager before he left Tynecastle in 1988. Still a Ranger at heart, Sandy Jardine retained strong links with his first club, and was gainfully employed in the Club's Marketing Department. (Alistair Aird, Author of Ally McCoist - Portrait of a Hero)

On 17 November 2012, Rangers announced that Jardine was being treated for cancer.

He died on Thursday 24th April 2014, aged 65.

He played football for  Scotland 38 times between  1965 and 1988, including three World Cup Final

matches in 1974.