Dave Mackay

RIP

great player

That's very sad. He was a wonderful player and hard as nails.

an absolute legend at hearts, spurs and derby. one of the very best players scotland have produced

Agreed Kenny. A warhorse of a player. Played alongside a player who was the complete opposite but silky smooth:-
Danny Blanchflower
Now that was when Spurs had a team
hennigan
poker forum(when we had one :) )

Tremendous player,must have been in his late thirties when he went to Derby & clough built his team around him,certainly a hard man,he was only 5ft 8",  but his positional play was excellent,in the Bobby Moore class.That photo of him threatening Bremner when he was still at Spurs was iconic

I was lucky enough to see him play his final games for Derby and then saw him return as manager in difficult circumstances. He was a nice bloke and very approachable, spoke to him a few times as he used to come into my local as his assistant manager at Derby was the landlord. Helped to develop Roy Macfarland into an international class centre half and also spent many hours after training sessions tutoring a young Nigel Clough and his brother Simon.

loved the photo od dave sorting out billy bremner,billy looked very scared and he was tough enough

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RIP Dave Mackay

In a separate magazine interview, Mackay revealed the reasons behind his volcanic reaction.

He said: “He was a brilliant little player but a dirty little b******. He kicked me in the leg I’d just come back from breaking twice. If he’d kicked the other one, I could have accepted that. But he kicked the broken one and that really annoyed me. I could’ve killed him that day.”

Mackay was probably being unduly harsh on himself - not least because the idea of any player, even one as fearsome as Mackay, "bullying" Billy Bremner seems scarcely credible.

And what of the fall-out from the incident? If it were to happen today, a confrontation between two of the foremost players of their age would provoke Twitter outrage, days of hand-wringing and FA inquiries. But back in 1966, it did not even merit a red card.

"In the end the referee just gave us a talking-to, for which I was relieved," Mackay told Abrahams. "I had got away with it and was so happy, because it maintained my record of never having been sent off. I may have been dirty sometimes, but I never got sent off in my whole life, even as a schoolboy."

Hardly anyone ever got booked back in them days, let alone sent off.  When they say stuff like so and so never got booked in their entire career it doesn't really mean much imo.

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Kevin Keegan (Liverpool) discusses the issue of fair play with Billy Bremner (Leeds Utd).



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Mike England (Tottenham Hotspur) explains the law on tackling from behind to Billy Bremner (Leeds Utd).

I can remember Bremner kicking me in the tunnel before one Leeds-Spurs match. I asked: What did you do that for, Bill? and he said: 'Just cos I f***ing felt like it'. He wouldn't have kicked Dave Mackay in the tunnel, though!"

Jimmy Greaves

r.i.p. Dave Mackay

A member of that great Spurs double winning side

He was the hard man in midfield, Danny Blanchflower was the creative one

Breadnbutter

Bertie Auld picked out Dave Mackay as the player he'd like to have played with at Celtic.

I've watched a lot of games from the late 60s and early 70s recently and I reckon Billy Bremner is one player from that era that would do fantastically well now. He'd have to tone it down a bit but he was terrific - never stopped running, passed the ball well and broke up play. A total pest and a great player.