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Dave Mackay

RIP. Like many others on this site his playing career was before my time but we're all aware of what he did, what a legend he is, and how he came to personify the club as much as Billy Nic!

COYS!
 
A legend of the club like Bill nic. Sad to see the legends of our successful era starting to go. They were before my time but they bore a legend in the soul of all things Tottenham. RIP Dave.
 
Nicked from Guardian comments:

In football, the term 'legend' is used far too often nowadays. But Dave Mackay was a legend in every sense of the word.

One of Scotland's greatest ever footballers. An instrumental, indispensable key to Heart of Midlothian's greatest ever side (runaway league Champions scoring a record-breaking 132 goals in just 34 games) and Tottenham Hotspur's greatest ever side: which dominated the English league season from gun to tape, added the FA Cup for good measure, and played football which, in English terms, was revolutionary.

And as if all that wasn't enough, as a manager, he even won the league at Derby County: proving that, for a time, Brian Clough's enormous shoes weren't impossible to fill at all.

That famous picture of him and Billy Bremner? Mackay always deprecated the image - because it suggested something about him (and hence, about football of the time) which wasn't true. He was a true hard man: hard but fair. He was never dirty, and respected all the more because of that.

And as well as being rock solid and incredibly reliable, he was also a fantastic pure footballer. That aspect often gets forgotten; as it does with great latter day defensive midfielders too.

Yet throughout his life in football, Dave Mackay never forgot who he was: never lost his warmth, humility or approachability. That was his essence: he was every bit as great a man as he was a footballer, as all those who met him would testify to, I think.

Every Hearts, Spurs and Derby fan will feel a sense of huge loss right now - but so will football lovers all over the world. And as a Hearts man to his very core, there's something strangely fitting about his beloved maroons winning 10-0 in the final match played during the life of one of Gorgie's most favourite sons.

RIP Dave Mackay. They don't make 'em like that any more.
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But for years the best players have valued how ball mastery and the ability to showboat is an intimidating psychological weapon in the armoury.

The night before Scotland played Spain in 1963, a talented squad sat in the Bernabéu watching Spain's training session. After 10 minutes they were looking at each other in disbelief and ruefully muttering expletives.

The target of their cursing was a move being practised by Juventus's Luis del Sol, who hit five corners in succession with the outside of his foot. Each cross was met by Real Madrid's great winger Francisco Gento, who ran into the box as fast as the Road Runner, dived forward, executed a perfect hand-spring and belted the ball past the goalkeeper with both his heels. They knew the Scotland players were watching and put on a show of such discipline, skill and arrogance that the Scots assumed, according to Frank McLintock, that it was "largely to make us crap our pants".

An hour before kick-off the following day, both teams were milling around on the pitch when Jim Baxter decided to show them not all British footballers were clod-kicking mugs. "We all knew Dave Mackay's party piece," says McLintock, "and Baxter decided now was the right time to unveil it. Jim called over to his injured captain and shouted, 'Hey Marquis, see if you can catch this!'"

With that he tossed a coin 15 feet up in the air and Mackay thrust out his right leg, bent at the knee, and caught the coin on his toe. He stood there for a second then flipped it back up in the air, caught it on his forehead, knocked it back up and caught it in his left eye socket then rolled it down his shoulder into his open blazer pocket and waltzed off back to the dressing room to thunderous applause. Scotland won the match 6-2, a victory put down to Mackay's ability to fight Spain's psychological warfare in kind.
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This is a section from Sir Alex Ferguson's autobiography:

"A certain toughness is required in professional football and I learned that early on. Take Dave Mackay - I played against him at 16 years old. At the time I was with Queen's Park and playing in the reserves. Dave was coming back from a broken toe and was turning out for the reserves for Hearts, who had a great team during those years.

I was inside-forward and he was right-half. I looked at him, with his big, bull-like chest, stretching. The first ball came to me and he went right through me. In a reserve game.

I thought: 'I'm not going to take this'.

The next time we came together, I wired right into him. Dave looked at me coldly and said, 'Do you want to last this game?'

'You booted me there', I stammered. 'I tackled you', said Dave. 'If I boot you, you'd know all about it'.

I was terrified of him after that. And I wasn't afraid of anyone. He had this incredible aura about him. Fabulous player".
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parklane1 said:
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Great player, I saw him break his leg at O/T and I have never seen a braver player. RIP.
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I only found a couple of hours ago.
I'm still in shock ...you had to see him to realize what a special player he was.

Simply the best player ever for our club.
I'm too sad to write anything really...

The only he could be stopped and they saw to it ..was to break his leg..
there was a second break on his come back..I don't think he was quite the same Mackay after that.[would you be!]
John White was killed by lightning ..not long after his first break..and that tore the heart out of our great side...

More than anything I remember his supreme skill on the ball...RIP...Dave.....
 
Sad news. RIP

Here is Alan Gilzean talking about Dave Mackay, from the 23rd minute:


And here is the first of a series of interviews:

 
There truly never has been another player like him. He towered like a colossus, a one-off who played powerfully but fair. I can vouch for this because I watched him often enough and just don't recall a single incident that could be described as nasty. Yes he would let players know if they tried it on and by jove the next tackle would probably go right through them but it would be brilliantly timed and he would come away with the ball.

He projected this air of impenetrability that no one else I have ever watched has quite paralleled, he was quite simply a brick wall that could not be pierced. I don't know how but whenever a player tried to dribble past him he pretty much always seemed to pick the ball out like some kind of consummate locksmith, he had that skill of homing in on it despite the trickery of the opponent. And he did it time and time again.

That double-winning side was packed with magicians, the wily Danny Blanchflower, the ghostly John White, the curiously underrated Les Allen who though sometimes frustrating could so often pull a rabbit out of the hat, the tricky Terry Dyson who had this knack of nipping at speed past, around or through the opposition down the flank to deliver quality crosses time and again, and of course the flying Welsh wizard Cliff Jones.

But it could be argued that the main reason we won the double was because of the presence of Dave Mackay, that barrel-chested indomitable presence that infused iron confidence and belief throughout the side.

RIP Dave, and thanks for the treasured memories.
 
He were truly a great player, hard but fair , he were also my first Spurs captain. R.I.P. sir.
 
Hard man image is overplayed above all he was a fantastic footballer who had to win.

RIP Dave, thanks for the memories.
 
RIP

Love the old pictures that are knocking about on Twitter. What a magnificent team, oh to have been alive in the sixties!

Saying that, I was hungover for about 3 days after the Arsenal game, I think witnessing us do the double would be the end of me.
 
Not old enough to have any recollection of seeing Dave Mackay play, but I've always enjoyed the old Pathe reels he's appeared in. I recall sitting in my granddad's sitting room in Belfast watching Spurs play in black and white and listening to stories about Spurs, who he adored, and Mackay was one of his favourites.

My dad's club was Hearts of Midlothian. When Mackay went to Spurs, he took his interest with him. Between my granddad's admiration of Danny Blanchflower and my dad's enthusiasm for Dave Mackay, it was only natural I'd be a Spurs fan, too.

Being left footed and not fond of playing in defence, left wing was the natural position when I played as a boy. After a good run or a good tackle, I'd pass by my dad on the sideline and hear a quiet "Och, aye, Dave Mackay."

And now, as a photographer frequently shooting sports, that amazing image of Mackay and Bremner has been a familiar image to me for decades. I have it on my office wall, an iconic image and a reminder to stay focused.

So farewell Dave Mackay and thanks for being such an inspirational figure, on and off the field.
 
RIP.

Jealous of those of you who had the chance to watch him play.

Hope some of his attitude can be instilled in some of the current team.
 
Would any of you who were lucky enough to see him play be willing to share some memories? I'd like to try pulling a few of them together for an article.
 
Rest in peace, Mr.Mackay. I never saw you play, but you were the embodiment of the type of players I always wanted to see at the club - hard but fair, aggressive but honest, and both brave and technically skilled.

The memories of 1961 have grown just a bit dimmer today.
 
And for all the praise for his strength in the tackle, he was reportedly 5' 7".

From Mail online :-
Mackay is remembered as a giant, but in reality he stood the same height as Jermain Defoe. Jimmy Greaves, a team-mate at Tottenham Hotspur, recalls that, sitting on bar stools, he and Mackay would regularly win money in pubs from mug punters, who would bet that Mackay was the taller of the two. When they climbed down and took off their shoes, it became obvious that Greaves had a good inch on him. It was the way Mackay played that fooled them; as if he was enormous. Harry Redknapp, a schoolboy on Tottenham’s books when Mackay was in his prime, says he once watched him plough through the West Bromwich Albion team, tackle after tackle, up-ended opponents lying in his wake.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2978133/Dave-Mackay-hated-picture-no-bully-giant-game.html#ixzz3TP77V5JY
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