Sad news: Roger Hynd has passed away

[SteveC 150]

Mac, I saw big Derek pull off exactly the move you described at Ibrox against Ajax . Was it called the super-cup or similar ?

I very much doubt that Roger, steady centre half that he was would have chased one of his own punts. He was far too disciplined to do that.

 

It was the Super Cup. the first year of it - that Cup was largely our idea. I remember the incident you are talking about as though it was yesterday. it was an astonishing piece of football against Europe's finest. He nut-megged someone that day , too. He was immense that night, the total centre-half.

Edited February 20, 2017 by SteveC

[Yorkshire Bear 0]

R.I.P. Roger.

At one time it was players from an earlier time that passed on,now it's players of my time.

[alexscottislegend 2,328]

It was the Super Cup. the first year of it - that Cup was largely our idea. I remember the incident you are talking about as though it was yesterday. it was an astonishing piece of football against Europe's finest. He nut-megged someone that day , too. He was immense that night, the total centre-half.

 

I remember it too, you weren't dreaming. What would we give for a centre back like that today. As for Roger, not the greatest player but a 100% man. RIP

[les186 271]

I was at that European final in Nuremberg. Scott Symon wouldn't allow Jim Forrest or George Mclean to play again after Berwick. Instead Symon played the two Smiths, Alex and Dave, as the inside forwards with Roger Hynd as the centre forward. We had Willie Henderson and Willie Johnson as the wingers so we did create chances against a Bayern Munich side containing Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller. Unfortunately big Roger did miss a sitter but he was a centre half! I remember his mum defending him! RIP Roger.

[compo 7,051]

R. I . P. Roger , a player who played with more heart than the 11 who took the field yesterday

[BrahimHemdani 1]

My dad moved heaven and earth to ensure that him, me, my granda, my grandas pal and that guys son could all go to the final. I was only 11 at the time. We'd been to the Berwick game too.

In my mind there is no doubt that Rangers would have won the ECWC that year had Berwick not happened.

Jim Forrest was the most clinical finisher I ever saw and given how the ECWC match went Jim would have got at least two.

 

Davie Smith (speaking at a Gersnet Dinner) shared your view that we would have won with Jim Forrest at CF.

[BrahimHemdani 1]

DJ was moved to that position at his own request. His main failing was that evenings spent in the bar at the Normandy Hotel in Renfrew were catching up with him.

He was a great centre half. But imo, rid of the Kris Boyd malaise could have turned out to be one of the greatest centre forwards we ever had.

 

I happened to be staying at the same hotel as DJ in Benidorm, in the summer of 1978. I told him that I would be moving up to referee the reserves and that if he kept up the vodka lemons he would be coming down to join me in the reserves. And so it came to pass.

[pete 2,499]

I happened to be staying at the same hotel as DJ in Benidorm, in the summer of 1978. I told him that I would be moving up to referee the reserves and that if he kept up the vodka lemons he would be coming down to join me in the reserves. And so it came to pass.

 

He was definitely a vodka man although I thought it was Vodka and orange and a half pint of lager I served him. There were stories in Renfrew (Where I lived) that he used to have vodka drinking competitions in the Ferry Inn. I heard these stories from my ex-b-in-law who was also a regular at the Ferry Inn. I never seen it myself. As I was +\- 20 then your 1978 would have been about the same time I worked in the Normandy.

[BrahimHemdani 1]

He was definitely a vodka man although I thought it was Vodka and orange and a half pint of lager I served him. There were stories in Renfrew (Where I lived) that he used to have vodka drinking competitions in the Ferry Inn. I heard these stories from my ex-b-in-law who was also a regular at the Ferry Inn. I never seen it myself. As I was +\- 20 then your 1978 would have been about the same time I worked in the Normandy.

 

I wouldn't swear to what he was drinking for breakfast but at night in the Scotsman Bar IIRC it was the old vodka lemon. One night he was so pissed he signed an autograph "To the greatest Partick Thistle Supporter in the World, Derek Johnstone, Rangers FC." The guy said he would hang it in his bar at Partick Cross.

 

The DJ is often in the press area diagonally in front of me if he's doing commentary, I'll ask him if he remembers you.

Edited February 21, 2017 by BrahimHemdani

[Uilleam 5,948]

Just noticed his obituary in today's Times.

 

OBITUARY

Roger Hynd

No-nonsense footballing nephew of Bill Shankly who unfailingly flung the kitchen sink at the other team

 

February 23 2017, 12:01am,

The Times

 

Roger Hynd had an indefatigable spirit

SCOTTISH NEWS AND SPORT

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In the 1950s and 1960s Scottish football thrived on the emergence of a conveyor belt from the collieries, epitomised by men in the mould of Jock Stein, Matt Busby and Bill Shankly; a tough-as-teak, take-no-prisoners triumvirate who escaped the grime of the mine shaft and subsequently instilled a mixture of fear, fervour and fanatical fitness in their sporting charges.

 

It’s no coincidence that the game was never more popular or successful than throughout that halcyon period and there were others, such as Roger Hynd, the nephew of the aforementioned Shankly, who both played and managed with sufficient success that he reached a European final with Rangers, was inducted into the Birmingham City Hall of Fame, and gained glowing reviews for the barrel-chested attributes he brought to Motherwell when he took charge of the Fir Park club in 1977.

 

Hynd, who has succumbed to cancer aged 75, was no shrinking violet, or certainly not while he was earning a living from his football labours. A former Lanark Grammar School captain, he was a member of the side that won the prestigious Scottish Secondary Schools Shield in 1959. Colleagues testified to his tenacity, resilience and vigour; they also added that, even as a student, he possessed leadership qualities and a refusal to be second best. Soon thereafter he was offered an opportunity at Rangers, which he grasped with both hands.

 

His career in Govan reached its apotheosis in 1967 when he was part of the Rangers collective that progressed to the European Cup Winners Cup’ denouement, only for the Scots to lose 1-0 to their formidable German opponents, Bayern Munich. It was a bittersweet and surreal experience for Hynd, a centre half, who was suddenly thrust into the role of centre-forward by his manager, Scot Symon.

 

As it transpired, he nearly justified his selection, suffering the anguish of having a goal disallowed. But the player, as honest as he was whole-hearted in his endeavours, never changed his opinion that he had taken the place of his team-mate Alex Willoughby without meriting it.

 

He declared: “I didn’t deserve to be there. I had only started three games that season, but Mr Symon must have had a hunch. I felt for Alex, I really did. I never wanted any favours in football: I was brought up to believe you had to put in the hard work and make things happen. But he never held it against me. In fact, we used to share a lot of fun about it.”

 

That philosophy underpinned Hynd’s exploits when he moved to Birmingham City and assisted the Midlands team in securing promotion to the First Division (the equivalent of the modern Premiership) in 1972. He made more than 200 appearances for the club and, as somebody who watched him recalled: “Roger was rugged as hell, a big beast of a lad, and he never went out on a Saturday without flinging the kitchen sink at the other team.”

 

That same indefatigable spirit was evident when Hynd, who is survived by his wife, Jane, graduated into management, appropriately enough with the Steelmen in Motherwell.

 

As Craig Brown, the former Scotland coach, said: “He called things as he saw them. These lads who came from the pits weren’t interested in soft soap. They were straight to the point and you had to be ready to accept that.”

 

Hynd’s peripatetic career — he also played at Crystal Palace, Oxford United and Walsall — reached its end in the 1970s and he returned to his alma mater in Lanark as a PE teacher, where he remained until his retirement in 2003.

 

Yet rather than slow down, he displayed a Stakhanovite attitude to seizing challenges by the collar. Even after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and started attending the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, he began creative writing in his seventh decade.

 

As he said: “I found it emotive, remembering things and connecting with all the people I had known, friends at school and college who had made an impression on me. There were a few times I was in tears, but I’ve found here [in the hospice] that tears don’t matter, they are almost expected, and nobody thinks of it as being embarrassing.”

 

He had an unswerving dedication to family first and football second, and those priorities never altered.

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/roger-hynd-t8wwls08v