Born: 2 November, 1930, in Inverness. Died: 17 December, 2008, in Inverness, aged 78.
JOCK Macdonald, OBE was quite simply "Mr North of Scotland Football". Perhaps his lasting legacy has been Inverness Caledonian Thistle's rise to SPL membership and the club's continued existence in that league. He was one of the driving forces behin
d the difficult birth of the club, born when Inverness Caledonian and Inverness Thistle, Macdonald's club, put generations of local rivalry behind them to combine in search of the Holy Grail of a Highland League side's entry into the Scottish League.
Macdonald was one of the main midwives in the birth of the new club; his reward was to be its inaugural chairman, before being given the title of life president. It was a role he fulfilled with vigour, enthusiasm and the necessary gravitas. Even as the fledgling club played its first friendly games, there remained resolute pockets of resistance to its birth in Inverness. Macdonald, though, seen as a "Jaggie" or Thistle man to the core, never wavered in his determination that the amalgamated club should succeed, and his determination eventually won over the critics.
He had long been a champion of football in the North. He was president of the North of Scotland FA, chairman of the Highland League and life president of the Highland League. For many years after 1972 he travelled to Glasgow to represent the region in the SFA's corridors of power.
He gave sterling service to various Hampden committees, being in particular a champion of youth football and a firm but fair judge on the disciplinary committee. But it was as a member of the international committee in the mid-1970s that he was briefly to cast off his cloak of anonymity and become known to a wider audience.
Macdonald was one of the SFA "blazers" who accompanied the Scotland party to Denmark in October 1975 for a European Championship qualifier. A Joe Harper goal ensured a welcome 1-0 win, but after the match, Harper, Scotland skipper Billy Bremner, Arthur Graham and Under-23 players Pat McCluskey and Willie Young broke curfew to visit a nightclub.
Drink was taken, a minor international incident followed and, on their return to the team hotel in the early hours, there was an altercation between a fired-up Bremner and Macdonald before, back in Glasgow, the "Copenhagen Five" were banned from representing Scotland.
This brief spell in the spotlight greatly embarrassed Macdonald; for his service to Scottish football, he deserves better than to be remembered for that one ugly incident.
Apart from a brief spell playing for Edinburgh City and Peebles Rovers, while studying brewing at Heriot Watt University in the early 1950s, Inverness Thistle was his team for more than 40 years, as player – making his debut at outside-left in 1949, before settling down as a hard-tackling left-back – director and chairman, to which office he was appointed in absentia in 1967, while overseas on business.
As chairman he put the same energy and forward planning into the club as he did his day job as an executive and latterly managing director of Tomatin Distilleries and he led from the front as Thistle put years of under-achievement behind them with back-to-back Highland League victories in 1972 and 1973, the club's first such triumphs since 1936.
He always said his happiest day came in 1973, when, as chairman, he presided over Inverness Thistle's defeat of Ross County in a Highland League title play-off at rivals Inverness Caledonian's Telford Street ground. But surely his lasting legacy will be his championing of the amalgamation and his leadership of the successful Inverness bid for a league club. His many years of representing Highland football in Glasgow and the disappointment of Thistle losing out by a single vote to Meadowbank Thistle when a vacancy in the Scottish League arose in 1973 had taught him that Inverness had to put petty local rivalries to one side and go forward with a united bid if the town ever wanted senior football to come to the area.
When the opportunity arose to make the dream real in 1994, he approached the task with single-minded determination and in the end his vision carried the day.
That same determination and application had served him well in a lifetime in the whisky industry. The success of the Tomatin Distillery was in no small measure due to the hard work Macdonald put in over his entire working life; he succeeded his father as distillery manager and such was his stature in the company, that its Japanese owner, Takara, prevailed on him to remain on-board as a consultant post-retirement. That effort was rewarded when he was made OBE for his services to the whisky industry, while he was also an influential voice in general industry matters.
Macdonald was married for 49 years to Jeannie, who predeceased him four years ago. He is survived by his son and two grand-children.
The full article contains 840 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
