Just a few minutes after our first edition hit the streets on Tuesday, July 15, Billy Stern emailed to say: “Blether with Brown featured a Dundee FC photo in today’s Tele.
“Player second from left is Billy McMillan.”
Tommy Mylles had sent in a photo of six Dundee FC players with manager Bob Shankly around the late 1950s.He wanted to know the names of the players.
Initially, I was able to name three of the six Bobby Cox, Pat Liney and Doug Cowie, with Tommy himself highlighting Albert Henderson in the photo.
There were quite a number of responses to this query.
Dundee historian Norrie Price took things on a bit further.
“As far as I can recall, this photo shows the great Bob Shankly being welcomed to Dens Park by some of the players on becoming Dundee manager in October 1959.
“Shanks, of course, welded a good side into a great one, winning the Scottish League Championship in 1962 and leading the Dark Blues to the European Cup semi-final the following year, then the Scottish Cup final in 1964.
“Yourself and Tommy Mylles have correctly identified four of the players.
“The others I believe are Bill McMillan and Ally Hill.
“I don’t know too much about Hill, a centre-forward from Clyde, who was with Dundee only for a short time.
“McMillan, however, was a pretty decent centre-half, who was at Dens Park for three-four years until 1962, and was later well-known in Angus footballing circles.
“He was, perhaps, unfortunate to be there when Dundee had players of the calibre of Jimmy Gabriel and then Ian Ure, who both went on to play for Scotland.
“I knew Bill from my days in Arbroath and understand he later went on to enjoy a good career in education.”
The most unusual confirmation came from the driver of a rather nice white Audi A7, who slowed down in Brook Street, Broughty Ferry, and bellowed in my direction . . . “Broon, the player on the extreme right is Ally Hill” . . . then drove off grinning.
I honestly don’t have a clue who he is.
Bob Scott got in touch to also confirm McMillan, then offered the final player as Ally Hill.
“I’m sure the player on the extreme right is Ally Hill,” said Bob. “Hill was a centre-forward at Dens in the late 1950s
“He played in the same team as wee Davie Sneddon.”
Bob revealed he used to go to games at Dens around that time as a schoolboy.
“One day, there was a Wednesday afternoon game, and I turned up at Dens straight after school to watch the match,” he recalled.
“Bill Brown was in goal for Dundee and he had just returned from starring for Scotland against England at Wembley in 1959 (England winning 1-0).
“Incredibly, he had an absolute stinker of a game. Even more incredibly, some Dundee fans started to boo him!”
Peter Ross, from Vancouver in Canada, gave a complete left-to-right of the players.
Jimmy Martin, Bob Flynn, James McPherson and Dode White also all came in with the correct names, with Ray Stern offering Ron Crichton for the player now identified as Ally Hill.
Ray did say, though, that he was not too sure on that one but “definitely Billy McMillan”.
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