Alex Young, former footballer

Published Date: 03 January 2010
ALEX Young is a legend at Everton but his heroics for Hearts in the Edinburgh derby of 1 January, 1960 will never be forgotten. Paul Forsyth meets an all-time great
FIFTY YEARS ago, almost to the day, but Alex Young remembers it well. Meeting for their pre-match meal in a Princes Street hotel. Taking the team bus down to Easter Road. Crawling through a sea of fans, some 54,000 of them. A falling of snow, the pitch firm. Hearts in their white jerseys with maroon pinstripes. The supporters mixed together, as they always were in those days. Ne'erday 1960 was an Edinburgh derby never to be forgotten, at least not by the winners, who scored five to Hib

Hibs would be the league's top scorers that season, but they were stymied that day. By the weather. By their own Gordon Smith, now playing for Hearts in his last capital clash. And by the inside right who had eight on his back, and four in the net, if you count the one later described on radio as an own goal. "They said I scored three, but it was four," says Young. "Jackie Plenderleith, their centre half, was sort of sliding in, but I got there first. I toe-poked it in. I had an exceptional game that day. Everything went right. The pitch was hard, and I seemed to stand up better than the rest. The Hibs guys were falling down a lot, and I was sort of... floating through."

Young, now 72, and living in Penicuik, was good at that. Later the same year, he moved to Everton where they were so in awe of his graceful playing style that he was nicknamed The Golden Vision and immortalised in a Ken Loach film of the same name. In Scotland, he had to make do with the Blond Bombshell, which was apt enough. On 1 January, 1960, they couldn't take their eyes off him. "Don Revie, who was manager of Leeds at the time, was at the game, and he had a wee quote about me in the next day's paper. They asked him who he thought would do well in England. He said me and, I think, John Cumming. I was chuffed."

If that derby planted the seed for his move south, it also set up Hearts' second league championship in three years. They beat Celtic 3-1 the next day, and lost only once more all season. Young, whose 20 goals had helped them to the 1958 title, netted 23 this time. His £42,000 transfer to Everton, part of a £55,000 deal that also took George Thomson to Goodison, was a Scottish record. "I only realised that George was going when I saw him on the train to Liverpool."

Young had been six years with Hearts, five and a half of them part-time. In season 1957-58, he didn't miss a match, but you won't find him on the team photo. He was down the pit. The son of a Loanhead miner, he worked at the Burghlee colliery, a "hopeless engineer" who could train at Tynecastle only twice a week. In the early days, he would finish at 4.30pm, take a bus into Edinburgh, and catch another at the Tron Kirk. "There were always one or two on the Gorgie bus who recognised me. They'd shout, 'you're effing useless Young'. Stuff like that. That persuaded me to go and buy a car."

His first was an MG, but he wrote that off. "Not that I was driving fast. I was going to Tynecastle for training, and I saw my uncle at a bus stop. I stopped the car, or at least thought I did, but there was oil on the road and I went straight into a lamppost. I got an account from Edinburgh Council for breaking their lamp. Cost me about 20 quid."

His second was a black Volkswagen, registration SS9990. On matchdays, he would park it in the old brickyard near Tynecastle, and walk to the ground. "You would get there by two o'clock, and they would be flooding in already. There used to be about 40,000, 49,000 when it was Hibs. You were more or less in amongst the crowd, but nobody was going gaga or anything. You were just one of them. Nowadays, the players are aloof. They've got money, everything. For the first few games I played, I was getting £12 a week. We weren't going to move to the posh houses on wages like that."

Young didn't care much for the high life. His older team-mates went dancing at the Palais on a Saturday night, but he and Nancy, now his wife, settled for the Regal Ballroom in Bonnyrigg. Unless you fancied high tea in one of the big hotels, there was nowhere to eat late in Edinburgh save for one restaurant near the King's Theatre, the name of which escapes him. "If you met a girl, and you wanted to take her for something to eat, that's where you would go."

Here's hoping it was better than his pre-match meals. Every Saturday, Young's mother would make the same concoction. "She would give me the white of an egg whisked up with a drop of sherry. That was before every home game. They thought it was good for you, and it certainly worked. It made you feel sort of boosted up."

Young signed for Hearts at 15, but was farmed out to Newtongrange Star, the Midlothian junior club that Dave Mackay had left only the year before. Mackay once described it as the first environment in which he had heard women swear. Young was called into the Hearts squad at 18, and within three years had helped them to the league title. Add another championship crown to that, as well as a couple of League Cups, and it seems remarkable that he was invited to leave at the age of 23.

Inexplicably, his languid style wasn't to everyone's taste north of the Border. He was a slightly-built, deep-lying forward who relied on inspiration. The end of his Hearts career beckoned when his manager, Tommy Walker, took exception to a performance of his against Dundee United. When Young was singled out for criticism in the dressing room, he broke the habit of a lifetime and retaliated ("no bad language or anything"). Within a week, he was called into Walker's office, and told he could go.

Young, who was capped only eight times, is as softly-spoken now as he was then, a model of humility. He was a confidence player, always grateful to Walker's assistant, John Harvey, who sought to convince him that he was a world-beater. "I always got dissatisfied if I wasn't playing better. I would lose confidence. Some guys made up for it by running about and putting in tackles, but it was different for me. It was only when I was strutting about that things started to happen."

Some had questioned whether he would make it in England, but when he scored 22 goals in Everton's 1963 title-winning season, another in which he was ever-present, the truth was out. Young was at Everton for eight years, but it's not the title, the 87 goals he scored in that period, or even the epic FA Cup triumph of 1966 that fans admired so much as the way in which he carried himself.

Listen to Evertonians talk about Alex Young, and it is as though he had supernatural qualities. He didn't kick the ball, he stroked it. He didn't run across heavy pitches, he glided. One wag said that, if he was playing today, he would be sponsored by Flymo. Jimmy Greaves described him as "Nureyev on grass". And to think that he was troubled all his career by blistered feet that had to be lanced at half-time on the treatment table.

He was, and is, nothing short of a Sixties icon at Goodison. Once, when he was dropped to make way for a young Joe Royle, the Everton manager, Harry Catterick, was jostled by angry fans in the Blackpool car park. When a team-mate accidentally injured Young in training, the culprit, Brian Labone, was booed in their next home game. "You were more like a star down there than you were in Edinburgh," he says. "They liked the way I played. I could play the same game with Hearts, but I wouldn't be liked in the same way. In Liverpool, they idolise their players. In Edinburgh, they criticise. That's the difference."

In May 1999, he was named among the Football League's 100 Legends of the 20th Century, together with Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and John Charles. The medal for that is among many he keeps in an old holdall. "I'm better known in England than I am in Scotland. I still get lots of mail from down south, but not from here. I was down at a game about two months ago, and it was great. They even have an Alex Young lounge. It's like a nightclub with all the lights flashing, and guys on the door. Whereas when I go to Tynecastle..."

There isn't much video evidence of Young in his Everton heyday, which makes Loach's film all the more important. Its name, said Danny Blanchflower, conveyed "the view every Saturday that we have of a perfect world, a world that has got a pattern and is finite. And that's Alex – The Golden Vision". The drama-documentary, which was shown as part of the BBC's celebrated Play for Today series, tells the story of an Everton-supporting family, interspersed with archive footage, and an interview with Young. He had a 25-strong film crew round at his house, with Nancy making cakes and coffee. An interview with his five-year-old daughter, Jane, provided the film's opening sequence.

"What does your daddy do?" she is asked.
"Plays football," she whispers in reply.
"Who for?"
"Everton."
"Is he good?"
"Yes."
"What's his name?"
"Alex Young."

Four decades on, Jane Young lives in Rosewell, with three daughters of her own. Alex also has two sons, one of whom lives just 50 yards from him. He thinks that Jason might have been a top player had it not been for the broken leg he suffered at 15. He had to content himself with a journeyman career at Meadowbank and Stranraer. Now, he and his siblings run the upholstery business set up by their father when he retired. Alex had planned a career in coaching, but poor hearing forced him to give up his first post, as player-manager of Glentoran.

Four years ago, he suffered a stroke. They feared the worst, but with Nancy's help, he fought back, rediscovering his sight, as well as the strength in his arms and legs. He is in good shape now, but he can't drive to Liverpool any more, and speech problems frustrate him. "I don't like that because I used to speak fluently. Now I sort of stagger along. I want to say something, and I can't get it out. I am searching for words." The mortals who watched him on the pitch will know how he feels.

Taken from the Scotsman