Symon, Scot

From RangersPedia

(Redirected from Scot Symon)
Jump to: navigation, search


Scot Symon


Personal Information

Full Name:James Scotland Symon

Height:0.00 meters

Date Of Birth:9/5/1911

City Of Birth:Errol

Country Of Birth:Scotland Flag of Scotland

Club Information

Shirt Number: 6

Position: Left half

Debut:24/9/1938 vs Arbroath (a) 3-3

When he was appointed, James Scotland Symon became only the third manager in the 80 odd year history of Rangers. Born in Perthshire, he had already been imbued with the Rangers’ ethos, having played at left-half for the club since joining from Portsmouth in 1938. As a determined, brave and classy player throughout his 9 years at Ibrox, he became a favourite of Bill Struth who probably recognised qualities in him that would lead to him becoming a very good manager after his playing days were over.


When he became the manager of East Fife at the age of 35, he immediately transformed the fortunes of that club. In his first season, he gained promotion for the Fifers to the top division. After that first season playing with the big boys, Symon’s side had finished fourth in the table behind Champions, Rangers. It was quite an achievement!


In his 6 seasons at Methil, Symon worked wonders and gave the fans some precious memories. His greatest achievement was no doubt winning the League Cup, having knocked out Rangers in the semi-final. A few months later, his team played Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final but lost out to a Gers side intent on avenging its earlier shock defeat. It was inevitable that a bigger club would covet the manager and Preston North End installed him to rejuvenate their club. In his only season at Deepdale, he took Preston to an English Cup Final at Wembley but, by then, Ibrox was calling him.


His old club needed him with the departure of the ailing Bill Struth. Indeed, he was practically hand-picked by Struth to be his successor. The Grand Old Man of Ibrox obviously wanted to ensure that the new man would continue with the traditions and successes that he had established over the previous 34 years. Struth said of Symon:


“He is a man of indomitable courage, of unbreakable devotion to a purpose, a man, indeed, who became a true Ranger.” Few doubted that this man, reared in the Struth Ibrox tradition, would fail his mentor.


In fact, under him, things continued as normal at Ibrox. He was truly a Struth apostle and did things the way they had always been done. While the trainers such as Davie Kinnear, worked with the players, Symon would stand on the sidelines, occasionally shouting instructions. Standing there in his hat and coat, he was to be one of the last of the “old school” managers. His methods worked throughout the 50s and early 60s but then a new type of manager was being seen more frequently – the “track suit” manager. Unfortunately, one particular “track suit” manager was Symon’s immediate opponent – Jock Stein who would revolutionise Celtic, making them the top dogs in Scotland well past Symon’s sacking.


Like Struth before him, Symon knew a player when he saw one and understood how that player should fit into his side. He believed that the main part of his job was to identify quality players, acquire them for the club and blend them with the other quality stars he had already. This policy bore spectacular fruits when the Rangers side of 1960-63 was at its peak. Many older Gers fans still believe that this side was Rangers’ greatest ever but more of that later.


Again, like Struth, Symon wasn’t a man of tactics. He left his players on the field to decide how the team should play, how they should deal with the opposition as the match unfolded. His job wasn’t to coach them or lay down tactics but to form a team pattern and supply the players whose quality would overcome their opponents. This he did admirably – until the arrival of Stein at Celtic.


Scot Symon was the opposite of Stein. Symon was a quiet, dignified, honest, seemingly rather aloof type of individual who kept his distance from his players and, crucially, the media. In his business suit, he looked every inch the middle-class “perfect gentleman” that his players respected. Meanwhile, at Celtic Park, a track-suited Jock Stein was coaching his players on the training ground and learning about modern tactics by visiting the training complexes of such foreign coaches as Herrera at Inter Milan. A working-class hero in the making, Big Jock would be lionised by the football press and become as much of a star as any of his players. The emergence of Stein and the ageing of the team of the first half of the 60s, in addition to the departure of Baxter, would combine eventually to lead to Symon’s downfall at Ibrox.


By 1967, Symon’s teams were struggling to keep up with Celtic. The writing was perhaps on the wall when the greatest shock defeat in Rangers’ history occurred in January of that year. Little Rangers, Berwick, knocked their more famous namesakes out of the Scottish Cup in the first round. The entire country was stunned but nobody more so than Scot Symon. He said that this defeat was “ the worst result in the club’s history”. Rangers’ two strikers that day, Jim Forrest and George McLean, for failing to at least equal the solitary Berwick goal, were made the scapegoats and told they would never play for the club again. They were later transferred to other clubs. Both, especially Forrest, were young men, not even in their prime and the decision to get rid of them was undoubtedly wrong but it is believed that there was pressure from the Board to take this course of action emphasising just how humiliating the Berwick defeat had been for the directors as well as everybody else at the club.


This particular decision came back to haunt Symon and Rangers a few months later. Despite a poor showing in the Scottish Cup, Rangers had been progressing well in the European Cup Winners’ Cup and actually made it to the Final in May, 1967. Unfortunately, this led to an even bigger disappointment than the Berwick debacle. It shouldn’t have been a surprise however as the odds had seemed stacked against Rangers from the start. They were playing Bayern Munich, about to become one of the top clubs in Europe. They were virtually playing them at home, in Nuremberg to be exact. They were playing them only a week after Stein’s Celtic had become the first British club to lift the European Cup adding to the pressure the club was under to be successful. What’s more, having got rid of their two top strikers earlier in the season, Rangers were forced to play a centre-half, Roger Hynd, at centre-forward and against the great Franz Beckenbauer at that!


Despite all these handicaps, Rangers took the final into extra time before a solitary strike saw the Germans lift the trophy. It was to be another 5 years before Rangers got their hands on that cup. Afterwards, thinking back on one glaring miss by temporary striker, Hynd, Chairman John Lawrence stretched out his hands and claimed that, but for that distance, he might have been awarded a knighthood in a similar fashion to Celtic’s Sir Bob Kelly after his club’s Lisbon triumph.


If that result cost Lawrence a knighthood, then, ultimately it would cost Symon his job. After Nuremberg, it was recognised that new training methods and tactics would be required at Ibrox so bright newcomer to management, Davie White, the Clyde manager, was hired to “assist” Symon but it was obvious that White was being groomed to be Symon’s successor. Nobody could have guessed just how soon!


The following season, Symon had used the money furnished by the Board to buy new blood for his team. Players such as Alex Ferguson, Orjan Persson and Eric Sorensen arrived but were limited successes. Ironically, when the axe fell on Symon, in November, Rangers were top of the table and looking a better side than the previous season’s one. When the Board terminated his contract, few Rangers fans objected to the action but they did query the way that it had been done. Instead of a face-to-face meeting, John Lawrence sent a businessman friend to speak to Symon at the businessman’s home, indicating the Board’s wishes. The dignified and appalled Symon felt betrayed and the majority of fans felt that a loyal club servant had been shabbily treated. Symon didn’t even get the chance to clear out his desk let alone say his goodbyes to the players. The only times he ever visited Ibrox from then on were in his capacity as Partick Thistle manager. Symon’s dismissal had not been one of Rangers’ finest hours.

Rangers Career Statistics

Season League Cup League Cup
 Minor
 Friendlies
Total
Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals
1938/39 22 3 3 - - - 3 - - - 28 3
1939/40 21 - 5* - - - 3 - 1 - 30 0
1940/41 22 - 5** - 9 2 2 - 1 - 39 2
1941/42 24 3 6** 1 6 - 5 - 1 - 42 4
1942/43 27 - 6** - 8 - 3 - - - 44 0
1943/44 30 - - - 8 - 4 - - - 42 0
1944/45 30 3 - - 7 - 6 1 - - 43 4
1945/46 22 - 7*** 1 9 1 1 - 4 1 43 3
1946/47 10 - - - 2 - 2 - - - 14 0
Total 208 9 32 2 49 3 29 1 7 1 325 16
  • *These games were Emergency War Cup
  • **These games were Summer Cup
  • ***These games were Victory Cup

Honours

Player

Manager

Images

External Links

Friends of Rangers

Retrieved from "http://www.rangerspedia.org/index.php/Symon,_Scot"