Sir David Murray recently revisited the spot where a tyre of his purple Lotus Elite blew, sending him smashing into a tree and lying unconscious next to the wreckage, his legs so mangled by an impact which forced the engine into the driver’s seat that they would be amputated. The marks are still there at the base of the tree, nearly 50 years on, just as there are still purple shards of the car’s bodywork embedded in his upper leg.
It struck him, for the first time, that he’d so nearly avoided that life-defining catastrophe, on an overcast Saturday afternoon on a dual carriageway in East Lothian, after playing in a rugby match in 1976.
‘A few yards before the tree and a few yards after it there was nothing but green fields,’ he reflects. There is no trace of sorrow as he says this. The absence of self-pity in Murray is what always struck Graeme Souness, his friend and his first Rangers manager.
No regrets, the 73-year-old insists, from a seat behind his Edinburgh desk, crutches propped against the sash window behind him, because the crash took him into dimensions he would otherwise not have reached. ‘I wouldn’t have been as successful if it hadn’t happened because suddenly, I was focussed,’ he says. ‘Before, I’d been playing rugby, drinking pints with the boys, with a young family. Suddenly I couldn’t afford to fail.’
The sense of urgency extends to the many decisions he has taken, the most legendary being the disastrous sale of Rangers to dubious businessman Craig Whyte in 2011, which took the club into bankruptcy, purgatory, and ridicule and, Murray agrees, has damaged the legacy he thought he had built in bringing Rangers 35 trophies over 23 years. ‘We can all have degrees in hindsight but there’s huge regret,’ he says. ‘I’m not denying it. I was there.’
Before the storm, there was a hell of lot of sunshine; golden years after Souness, whom he’d got to know socially, had told him that Rangers were running out of cash and for sale, leading him to wrap up the purchase within 48 hours.
Sir David Murray recently revisited the spot where a tyre of his purple Lotus Elite blew nearly 50 years ago
He insists there are no regrets because the crash took him into dimensions he would otherwise not have reached
Graeme Souness (right), his friend and first Rangers manager, always noticed the absence of self-pity
A new autobiography Murray has written, called Mettle, a superb and breathtaking journey through an extraordinary life, captures some indelible moments on that Rangers rollercoaster.
The night Paul Gascoigne, whom he’d signed from Lazio for £4.3million, turned up at his front door in his house in Edinburgh and challenged him to an arm wrestle, leading Murray to take off his legs and get down on the floor to accept the challenge. ‘What?!’ was Murray’s immediate response to Gascoigne’s suggestion. ‘And then I said, “Just hold on, I’ll go to my bedroom and take my legs off.” I came through in a pair of shorts and asked, “Are you ready?”.
‘Over the years my shoulders have taken the strain that should have been on my legs so I have a strong upper body. I nearly broke his arm off!’
It was some risk Murray took in signing Gascoigne, a player who’d suffered two serious injuries and played only 47 games over three seasons at Lazio. Manager Walter Smith, who stepped up after Souness had left for Liverpool, worried about him and loved him in equal measure.
But the decision to buy him, with the huge impact it had on the profile of Scottish football, belonged to the gambler’s instinct in Murray – steel and property magnate before football club owner – which is the most strikingly consistent pattern in the book. ‘You are better off making decisions than not making decisions,’ he writes. ‘Don’t put it off. If it’s on your list to do today, do it today. You must make decisions, or it festers.’
Though Murray does not make the observation, there seems to have been a genetic inheritance here. His father, Ian, an entrepreneur just like him, took gambling to extremes, sending him on a downward spiral which ended with conviction for a minor fraud, and a 12-month jail sentence from which Murray says he never recovered. He was dead at 50.
Murray took a very different course, learning the steel industry from the bottom up, building a business of his own after leaving school with five O-levels and becoming one of Scotland’s leading industrialists. Few decisions seemed to make him flinch when he arrived in football.
Souness says that that he briefly spooked Murray by suggesting, in the second of their near three seasons together, that they sign a Catholic, Maurice Johnston, from under Celtic’s noses and bring down a sectarian barrier. ‘He just went ‘Yeah’ and then ‘Yeah’ again, as if he was reassuring himself,’ is how Souness remembers Murray’s response.
Murray agrees that his Rangers sale has damaged the legacy he thought he had built in bringing Rangers 35 trophies over 23 years
A new autobiography Murray has written, called Mettle, captures some indelible moments on that Rangers rollercoaster
He took a risk signing Paul Gascoigne – a player who’d suffered two serious injuries and played only 47 games over three seasons at Lazio
Souness says that that he briefly spooked Murray by suggesting that they sign a Catholic, Maurice Johnston, from under Celtic’s noses
But Murray says he had absolute conviction about it, gathering Rangers’ five directors and telling the one who challenged the decision that Rangers must leave the past behind.
The book relates the consequences, including five death threats – ‘phone calls saying, “You’re getting it”‘ – which led Murray to get his wife, Louise, and their two boys out of the country to the safety, as he saw it, of France. He writes of telling Louise, whom he lost to cancer in 1992, ‘You need to get the boys away here – this could either go badly or brilliantly.’ He covertly left by private plane for Jersey.
‘Graeme got eight death threats,’ Murray says. ‘They were burning football strips outside and you didn’t know which way it was going. Special Branch were checking under our cars for a couple of days. And thank God, it worked. If Maurice has been a failure as a player, there’d have been a reaction to us signing a west of Scotland Catholic who’d played for Celtic. But he handled it brilliantly.’
An approach which almost saw Murray own half of Manchester United at that time was a breeze by comparison. Businessman Michael Knighton had asked him for help because he lacked the money to buy half of United owner Martin Edwards’ share. ‘Of course. Why don’t we go 50:50?’ Murray said.
When it turned out that Knighton lacked the collateral to get the loans he needed, Murray went it alone and was so close to owing half of United and installing Souness as a successor to Sir Alex Ferguson in 1989 that he was even negotiating the former Liverpool captain’s Old Trafford contract.
Precisely how would have sacking Ferguson and installing a former Liverpool captain in his place have gone? ‘I’m confident it would have worked,’ he says. ‘It’s about the quality of the people you have around you.’
The Scottish Football Association’s insistence that cross-border dual ownership was not permissible – a rule now waived to allow Leeds United’s owners the 49ers to buy Rangers – meant the deal never happened. On hindsight, that sounds like a grievous blow to the then 38-year-old.
‘My approach to life hasn’t been like that,’ he counters. ‘It was just another deal wasn’t it? You can’t win them all. My life’s been a journey. An adventure to me. I put a pair of metal legs on this morning and I’m looking forward to meeting you. If you don’t have that spirit, don’t get out of bed. If you’re not up for the fight, go away.’
Murray was so close to owing half of United and installing Souness as a successor to Sir Alex Ferguson in 1989
He says: ‘My life’s been a journey. An adventure to me. I put a pair of metal legs on this morning and I’m looking forward to meeting you’
He certainly applied that philosophy to Rangers, spending millions on English players like Terry Butcher, Trevor Francis and Ray Wilkins – attracted by big salaries and the European club football denied them in the wake of the Heysel Disaster – and on international stars such as Brian Laudrup, Tore Andre Flo, Ronald de Boer, Jorg Albertz and Gascoigne. Rangers outbid Manchester United for Trevor Steven.
What days they were. ‘Graeme and I were of a similar age and both self-mase men with similar interests,’ he writes of the early years with Souness. ‘Although I want as much into Versace gear as Graeme was at that time.’
Some managers, like Dundee United’s great Jim McClean, growled at him as a newcomer. Others, like Aberdeen’s Dick Donald – ‘a class act’ – afforded him great courtesy as a businessman who had already achieved much.
And then there were the visits to Celtic. On his first as Rangers chairman, one Celtic fans shouted: ‘You dirty, Orange, cripple b****d.’ Souness asked him about this. ‘I told him it just made me more determined,’ he writes. ‘It was a case of ‘I’ll show you.’ Murray always found Aberdeen’s Pittodrie was a far more inhospitable and unfriendly place than Celtic Park.
He and his successful managers – Souness, Smith, then Dick Advocaat – lived high on the hog as the trophies stockpiled at Rangers in the 1990s, with Murray delivering the money and his managers the silver. The double act with Smith worked again from 2007-10, even if Smith was given far less to spend second time around.
And then the roof caved in. The financial crash of 2008 devastated Murray’s steel and property businesses and, more significantly, sent Halifax Bank of Scotland, extenders of the credit, to the wall. The unravelling included the revelation that part of the enticement for all those big-ticket Rangers signings had been an aggressive tax avoidance scheme. Even Smith, Murray’s closest lieutenant, observed that Murray and his businesses had ‘a bit to answer for. There is obviously a responsibility there that they must take.’
The Inland Revenue’s investigations put Rangers on the hook for a £75m tax liability and for a time the club feared being stripped of titles won in 2003, 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The liability left the club almost impossible to sell.
It was amid that maelstrom that Whyte, who was later tried and acquitted on fraud charges, bought the club for £1 and an agreement – reneged on – to take on the debt. Murray found himself reviled and held partially accountable for the club’s demotion to the third tier.
Dick Advocaat was another of Murray’s successful managers and he splashed the cash on talent from England
The roof caved in when the financial crash of 2008 devastated Murray’s steel and property businesses
Rangers were put on the hook for a £75million tax liability and the liability left the club almost impossible to sell
Craig Whyte, who was later tried and acquitted on fraud charges, bought the club for £1
His book relates a previously unknown dimension in the background. The discovery during tests after Murray had felt he was about to black out while driving in 2009, that he had an aortic aneurism – a swelling in the artery carrying blood to his heart – which two years later and with the aneurism at a width of 5.5cm required a seven-hour operation. Murray did not disclose the diagnosis but handed up Rangers’ chairmanship.
He outlines, in immense detail, the extraordinary sums of cash that the bank, which crashed, was willing to extend to one of Scotland’s top industrialists before the crash. At one dinner, Peter Cummings, director of Halifax Bank of Scotland, which had already extended him £960m, offered him more. ‘Peter, I actually think we’ve got enough at the moment,’ Murray told.
All of his, he says, formed part of a perfect storm of events including the financial crash and a catastrophic defeat – four minutes from time – by Lithuanian side FBK Kaunas, in August 2009, which cost the club £30m in lost revenue.
He suggests that there are mitigating factors to avoiding tax which should have gone towards schools, hospitals and police. ‘I’m not trying to defend it, but we weren’t the only ones,’ he says. ‘There were 24,000 companies doing it but the Revenue decided that the high profile one was Rangers.’ The £75m liability was reduced to £33m in the final settlement. ‘If that figure had been £33m, we would have had people queuing up to buy the club,’ he says.
Wasn’t the spending dangerous? ‘We always pushed the envelope because money was not a concern then,’ he says. ‘It was accessible. Too accessible.’
Though his book is a story of far more than football – a remarkable life well lived, in the face of adversity – there is no doubt that these events, more than a decade old now, still haunt him – shredding, as they do, much of the collective memory of the near £80m he invested in the club during some extraordinary times. ‘I apologise,’ he says, of the club’s sale to Whyte. ‘Of course I do. It was a huge error of judgement in the middle of a financial crisis.’
Since the crash, he has rebuilt his business, now being run by his son David. He still sees Souness and his first Rangers manager – without whom he would perhaps never have entered the Ibrox fray – was the first to write some words for the book. ‘The way he refused to allow his accident to ruin his life provoked an immediate admiration on my part,’ Souness says. ‘It has no not impacted on him as it might have for many others. He still wants to compete in every waking moment.’
Mettle: Tragedy, Courage & Titles by Sir David Murray, published by Reach Sport rrp £22, is on sale Thursday 3rd July from Amazon and all good bookshops.
Preorder on Amazon here.
