Scotland's former captain won won two First Division titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup and two Inter Cities Fairs Cups at Elland Road
HE may have been just 5ft5in but what Billy Bremner lacked in height he more than made up for in skill, passion and desire.
As captain of a Leeds United team that won two First Division titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup and two Inter Cities Fairs Cups he was the midfield general par excellence and also won 54 caps for Scotland, captaining his country at the 1974 World Cup Finals.
He was also one of those rare players that could walk the walk and talk the talk and his motto ‘side before self every time’ perfectly encapsulated his all or nothing approach to the game…
When he made his debut for Leeds against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in, aged just 17, he helped United to a comfortable 3-1 win and earned praise from all corners.
One newspaper report even called him “10st of barbed wire” such was his tenacity in the tackle.
Captain of Leeds, skipper of Scotland and a player to engender loyalty from all of his teammates, Bremner was the lynchpin of the all-conquering Leeds United side of his era.
If you want some idea of just how good as he was, both as a player and a leader, you need look no further than his teammate, striker Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke.
"When Billy Bremner took us across the white line, whether it was at Elland Road or Anfield or Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, those players, my team, we died for Leeds United we died for that club,” he once reflected.
“Billy was the best player who ever played, they don't make players like him today."
Whenever Bremner travelled away with Leeds and stayed in a hotel, he would always have his breakfast in bed.
And, as his roommate Jack Charlton revealed, it was always the same thing.
“Beans on toast,” he says. “No matter where we were, on a Saturday morning Billy used to get it delivered on a tray in bed.
“He never used to get up with me and go down for breakfast.”
After training, the Leeds players would decamp to Sheila’s Café for their lunch, just across the road from the ground and, once there, they would play a game to see who would pay for the meal.
Ordinarily, Bremner wouldn’t bother with eating, preferring a cup of tea and a Kit Kat but if someone else was paying, he’d order three-courses and some extra Kit Kats for his kids back home.
More often than not, he wouldn’t even eat his meal and just get up from the table, laugh and head home.
During one of Leeds United’s European away days, the team travelled with the national press to the fixture and, on the flight, he noticed that one ageing reporter had fallen asleep.
In a flash, Bremner leant over and removed the journalist’s false teeth, hiding them in his bag and only giving them back at the end of the flight.
The Charity Shield (now known as The Community Shield) is the season’s traditional curtain-raiser, a generally amicable affair where the two sides don’t exactly bust a gut in pursuit of victory.
One rare exception was in 1974 when the League champions Leeds, under their new manager Brian Clough, took on the FA Cup winners, Bill Shankly’s Liverpool.
Clough had been publicly criticial of the overly aggressive style that the club had become known for under their previous manager Don Revie and was keen to show a new side to his talented team.
Fat chance.
As Kevin Keegan continually nipped at the heels of Johnny Giles, the Irish international snapped and landed a haymaker on Keegan’s jaw, sending him tumbling to the turf.
Remarkably, Giles was only booked for his moment of madness – but worse was to come.
With Giles now behaving himself, Leeds’ skipper Bremner took the baton and began his own spat with Keegan, culminating in another fight in the goalmouth.
It was the final straw for the referee Bob Matthewson who sent both men off – the first time any domestic players had ever been dismissed at the national stadium – and the image of the two players tearing their shirts off and storming off the pitch was one that lived long in the memory.
For the record, the game ended 1-1 and it was Liverpool that went on to win on penalties.
But nobody remembered that.
As a tough-tackling terrier of a midielder, he would have no issue confronting anyone and that included arguably the hardest man in professional football, Tottenham’s Dave Mackay.
On the first day of the season at White Hart Lane in August 1966, Bremner set about kicking lumps out of the Spurs’ legend but matters turned ugly when the Leeds skipper caught Mackay with a mistimed lunge on the leg he had ony just recovered from breaking.
The challenge prompted one of the most famous photographs in British football with Mackay grabbing Bremner by his shirt and the Leeds man looking more than a little terrified.
“He was a brilliant little player but a dirty little b******,” said Mackay later. “I could’ve killed him that day.”
Work hard, play hard, that was Bremner’s approach to life.
In his book Adventures in the Golden Age; Scotland at the World Cup, legendary Scottish commentator Archie McPherson even claims that it was a boozy session at a friendly against Norway in Oslo that cost Bremner’s drinking buddy Jimmy Johnstone his place in Scotland’s 1974 World Cup squad.
But not Bremner.
He went on to captain the team in every minute of Scotland’s undefeated campaign, although they still went out in the group stages.
The following year, Bremner would be banned for life from playing for Scotland after an altercation at a Copenhagen nightclub following a friendly against Denmark. The player denied the accusations but he would never play for his country again.
Trawl through any image library of Billy Bremner and you’ll inevitably see pictures of him with a fag on the go.
Yes, despite being the captain of the team of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bremner liked nothing more than sparking up once he was done training or playing.
“Oh, he liked his cigs,” said his teammate Jack Charlton. “Nowadays if you smoke, everyone looks at you in strange ways, but not then. Billy smoked, I smoked, a few of the lads did.”
That’s OK then.
The list of accolades on Bremner’s stellar CV is as long as it is impressive.
Not only has he been inducted into the English Football League of Fame and its Scottish counterpart but, in 2006, Bremner was voted Leeds United’s ‘Greatest Player of all Time’ and, in September 2013, voted as the Football League’s ‘Greatest Ever Captain’.
There’s also a bronze statue of him, arms aloft, outside Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium. Created by sculptor Frances Segelman, it was unveiled in 1999 and is a fitting tribute to the Leeds legend.
There’s also an inscription underneath: ‘BILLY BREMNER, 1942-1997, LEEDS UNITED, 1959-1976, 771 APPEARANCES: 115 GOALS, INSPIRATIONAL CAPTAIN OF THE GREAT ‘REVIE’ TEAM.’
That says it all.
