By Alistair Aird
If you walked into a bookshop a couple of years ago looking to browse the football section, as a Rangers supporter, there would be slim pickings. Titles focussing on the club or players that had played for the club were dwarfed by a plethora of publications on other clubs, notably from the other side of Glasgow.
Thankfully, due to the hard work and endeavour of the likes of myself, David Mason, Martyn Ramsay, David Herd and Ian Stewart, that is no longer the case. The shelves are creaking under the weight of the new capacious tomes that cover the illustrious history of our club and the careers of some of the legendary figures that have had the privilege of donning the royal blue jersey over the years. And one of the most recent releases, penned by messers Herd and Stewart, covers the life and times of a chap called Torrance Gillick, one of the finest forwards ever to play for Rangers.
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Gillick has always been a figure that fascinated me. One of only 14 players to score more than 200 goals for Rangers, he was signed twice by the totemic Bill Struth and can lay claim to the unique achievement of having won the Scottish Cup before hostilities started for World War II and also after a ceasefire was declared. He was also a league champion north and south of the border and scored a hat trick in an 8-1 win over Celtic too.
But like so many players that played in the same era as Gillick, there is so much more to know about them both on and off the park. And that’s why I was eagerly anticipating Ian and David’s book being released. Would it paint the detailed picture I was looking for? Would it tell me things I didn’t already know? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes.
The book features forewords by Peter Waddell, one of Willie Waddell’s sons, and one of the celebrated Three Bears, John Gilligan, and is broken down into 10 chapters before being concluded with a brief statistics section. If I am being picky, I would have liked to have seen a more detailed breakdown of Torry’s remarkable stats, although in fairness to Ian and David, each and every one of the goals he scored and trophies he won over the course of his career are covered in depth within the text itself.
As you would expect, Gillick’s achievements on the pitch are quite rightly lauded, from the breathtaking start to his career at Petershill, to the two glorious spells at Ibrox, and the trials and tribulations of his time on Merseyside with Everton. Ian and David also put Gillick’s Scotland career under the microscope and there is mention too of his brief spell at Partick Thistle where he played under his former team-mate, Davie Meiklejohn. If there is anything you want to know about Torry Gillick the football player, this book is the place to go as a superb stand-alone source.
But this is so much more than just a book about a footballer.
Ian and David have spoken with the Gillick family and taken time to find out about what Torry was like away from the limelight. They reflect on a loving family man who enjoyed fishing – something he picked up from his father, Lawrence, and his Uncle Bob – and they have dedicated a chapter to his relationship with Molly Williamson who would in later years become Molly Gillick.
This chapter is particularly poignant as it focusses on some terrible tragedies like the death of Molly’s beloved mother and father and also the passing of Torry’s own father the day before the first-ever Scottish League Cup Final against Aberdeen in 1947. Torry showed great strength to play the next day – he actually made history by becoming the first player to score in the League Cup Final – but his world would be turned upside down again a few months later when his daughter, Isobel, was diagnosed with leukaemia. She was only six years old when she died in February 1948.
This must have been a tough chapter for Ian and David to write. But these events are part of Torry’s story, and the duo have covered them showing great sensitivity throughout.
This section of the book also covers an event that almost cost Gillick his life and prepares the reader for the next stage of Torry’s football journey, his move to Everton in 1935. From a football perspective, this was a part of the book that I was most intrigued about. I had a decent knowledge of what Gillick had done at Rangers, but I was hoping to learn more about his time at Goodison Park. And once again, Ian and David didn’t let me down. Thanks to what must have been countless hours of research, they have managed to show why Gillick was revered by the Everton fans as much as he was by the Rangers followers. The depth and detail, as it is throughout the book, is exceptional.
I was surprised to find out that Gillick wasn’t capped more often for Scotland. He won just five caps in peacetime football, but Ian and David have done some digging to allow them to detail wartime internationals which means the reader gains an all-encompassing view of Torry’s time in dark blue.
My favourite section of the story, though, is the one that details the football Torry played during World War Two. This is often an era that is glossed over, perhaps because achievements, games played, and goals scored are often excluded from the record books. But Ian and David give it the focus it deserves which not only shows what Gillick did between 1939 and 1945 but also highlights just how successful Rangers were.
And that is something that comes across throughout the book too. David and Ian haven’t simply written a book about Torry Gillick, this is more than that. The depth of their research and the detail of their writing means that this book actually doubles as miniature histories of Rangers and Everton in the eras that Gillick played for them.
Torry – The Life and Career of Torry Gillick, A Football Great is up there among the best books I have ever read on Rangers, and if you were to look at my bookcases at home you would see that I have read plenty. David and Ian deserve all the praise and accolades that will come their way. They have invested considerable time and effort to pen this brilliant biography, and I know from posts on social media that Torry’s family, particularly his daughter, Molly, and granddaughter, Jacqueline, are extremely proud of what is ultimately a lasting legacy for a man whose electrifying performances thrilled so many throughout his football career.