Gers Mourn Kinnear

[ian1964 10,386]

RANGERS have been saddened to learn of the death yesterday of Davie Kinnear who was an influential figure both on and off the field in nearly 24 years of service to the club.

 

Kinnear, who was just 18 days short of his 91st birthday, joined Rangers from Raith Rovers in 1934 and spent 10 years as a player.

 

He also spent 14 years with the club as Trainer and Physiotherapist between 1956 and 1970 when he worked with the great team put together by Scot Symon, a former team mate at Rangers.

 

Scot Symon and Davie KinnearThe Fifer played as an outside left and had the arduous task of following in the footsteps of the legendary Alan Morton who had retired in 1933.

 

However, he took part in three championship winning campaigns playing 109 times and scoring 32 goals.

 

His most profitable campaign was 1936/37 when he only missed one of the 38 league matches and scored eight goals as Rangers beat Aberdeen by seven points for the title.

 

Kinnear was also a key protagonist in the game that set the all-time Ibrox record attendance of 118,730 when he scored along with Alec Venters in the 2-1 defeat of Celtic on January 2, 1939.

 

That attendance remains a record for a league match in the UK and will surely never be beaten.

 

Kinnear's competitive playing career was cut short by World War Two and he was one of many Rangers players - including Willie Thornton, Eddie Rutherford and Willie Paton - who saw active service.

 

He played for Third Lanark and then Dunfermline and then left football to work as a physiotherapist in hospitals.

 

Kinnear was brought back to Ibrox in 1956 by Scot Symon to become the trainer and physio after Symon replaced the peerless Bill Struth as manager and he was a popular man.

 

It was during his time in hospital that he worked with Harold Davis, who had been severely injured in the Korean War, and then recommended him to Symon who signed him.

 

Symon was not a tracksuit manager so Kinnear would take all of the training sessions and then work on the injured players in the afternoons along with close friend Joe Craven who did the same for the reserve team.

 

Rangers were hugely successful in the early 1960s, of course, and many of the team remember Davie fondly.

 

He went on to work for Davie White when he replaced Symon in 1967 and left in 1970 when Willie Waddell took over and brought in his own backroom team.