A HOMETOWN HERO AT LAST! Billy Bremner was hailed by Pele as one of the best players of his generation … but only now is the Scotland and Leeds legend being given the recognition he deserves in his native Raploch in Stirling

Weir Street in Stirling could be anywhere. Monoblock roads and pavements provide access to the kind of terraced, comfortable, mortgaged homes that have been built on the old council estates of yesteryear.

Take away the spectacular views of the castle where Mary Queen of Scots was crowned and there is nothing at all unusual about the place. Nothing, that is, except the identity of its most famous son.

In the summer of 1958, a young schoolboy, an international, left the coal mines and poverty of Raploch behind to begin his football career with Leeds United.

Billy Bremner won two English league titles, an FA Cup, a League Cup, two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups, a European Cup runners-up medal, was voted Footballer of the Year, captained Scotland at the 1974 World Cup, played 54 times for his country and was among the elite of players to secure a place in both the Scottish and English Halls of Fame.

Around Elland Road, Leeds United’s formidable home ground, Bremner’s legacy is hard to miss. A statue by sculptor Frances Segelman depicts the combative midfielder, arms raised in celebration, in full club uniform. The dedication on the plinth below marks his 771 appearances, 115 goals and status as the ‘inspirational captain of the great Don Revie team’.

With his red hair, hot temper, crooked teeth and gallus self-confidence, Bremner was the prototype of the Scottish footballer of the 1960s and 1970s. Even Brian Clough could not tame him.

As Bremner himself admitted in 1971: ‘I grew up in a place called Raploch, a rough district in my native Stirling. Perhaps that has something to do with the combative attitude I have adopted on the field over the years.’

And yet here, on the site of 35a Weir Street where Bremner grew up, Leeds fans gathered to pay tribute to their idol. However, they found nothing to indicate the presence of a minor footballing giant.

Beyond the clipped hedges, blue recycling bins and a sign reading ‘Private Parking’, there was no sign of the iconic footballer who learned the game playing 15-man matches in the local park and hitting a ball against the metal doors of the old Alexander Bus Garage.

In 2018, Leeds fans Chris Keene and Gary Edwards were swapping memories of family trips to Scotland and discovered they had something in common. Vigils to Weir Street had disappointed both men with the lack of a memorial to their boyhood idol.

They set up an action group and joined forces with the Scottish Football Supporters’ Association (SFSA), Stirling Community Enterprise, Tartan Army Magazine, Stirling City Council and Professor Richard Haynes of the University of Stirling.

An online university exhibition now explores Bremner’s journey ‘Fae Raploch to Elland Road’ in depth, while former Leeds team-mate Eddie Gray will join football greats John Blackley and Jimmy Bone at a ceremony on Wednesday morning to unveil a blue plaque at the site of the original 35a Weir Street.

“Gary and I were having a nice chat and he told me how he used to go to Oban on holiday every year,” Keene explains now.

‘Gary is a published author who has watched every Leeds United match at home and abroad since 1968, except when the pandemic disrupted fan attendance at matches.

‘He would stop at the Raploch regularly and go to Weir Street. I also had family in Scotland, in Aberdeen and Inverness, and I would also stop at the Raploch and go to Billy’s parental home.

‘We both stressed that there was nothing to indicate that this great Scottish footballer was born on this street. Then we started talking about doing something.

‘Billy was voted our greatest ever player by the supporters a few years ago and there is a statue at Elland Road.

“It seemed wrong that there was nothing in his hometown. And that was our starting point.”

The ultimate goal is a statue. Sculptor Kenny Hunter has begun planning a permanent monument near Weir Street and the Raploch Community Campus.

Leeds club ambassador Gray and former Elland Road captain and Scotland defender Liam Cooper have signed two replica 1974 shirts. One will be displayed at the statue, while the other will be auctioned to raise funds for the statue.

“If people were asked to produce their archetypal Scottish footballer, Billy Bremner would be the man,” Keene said.

“The red hair, the fiery personality. He was once described by the Ny Breaking as ‘ten bricks of barbed wire’. He took punches and he gave punches. He was tough, but fair.

‘Apart from the fact that he was a great footballer – and was recognised by Pelé, Johan Cruyff and Beckenbauer as one of the best midfielders of his generation – he was also very proud of his Raploch roots.

‘He was always humble and returned there whenever he could.

‘There was never the big “I am” of Billy. He was just Billy from Raploch when he came home and so it’s important to mark that journey he made from Raploch to Elland Road as a young schoolboy international.’

‘Fae Raploch to Elland Road’ represents every stage of Bremner’s journey from Gowanhill United to captain of Scotland during an unbeaten – if unsatisfactory – season reaching the 1974 World Cup final in Germany.

A combination of oral testimony, archival material, media archives and video footage covers every aspect of Bremner’s life and career.

For Haynes, a Stirling academic and lifelong Leeds fan, the project proved a labour of love and offered a chance to give Raploch’s battered image a coat of whitewash.

“A lot of young people don’t know who Billy is because he passed away in 1997 at the age of 54,” Haynes says.

‘And the memory that he was one of Scotland’s greatest players and captains of all time has also been lost a little bit.

‘What we want to do is make the wider Scottish public aware of his status, not just as a Leeds player but also as a Scotland international.

‘I have been researching Billy’s life in Raploch and through that I have met many people who were his peers, but also current residents of the area.

‘I think they are very aware that the estate has had a stigma for years.

“But they also want to promote it and say, ‘This is our home and we are proud of it.’”

‘It’s had its problems, being quite a deprived area in the past. But the artist Kenny Hunter also wants to send a positive message to the young people in the area, by reminding them of this boy who came from Raploch at the age of 15 and became one of the best Scottish players of all time, captaining his country to the World Cup final.

“That’s a message of hope. And it’s a message we hope to spread.”