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violent home, he believed that if his dad was proud of his son his mother might get left alone. So Gordon aimed high. He wouldn’t just stop at the school and county teams he had been targeting so far. Instead, he would fight his way into the family team back in Scotland. He made a vow to get signed for Glasgow Rangers. Surely nothing could make his dad prouder than that.
    At 14, Gordon took a huge step in that direction, starting to travel up to Glasgow every school holiday to train with the club in the hope of being taken on as part of the full Youth Training Scheme. He was entitled to wear an official club blazer on each visit and found out how it feels to run out into a stadium that can seat more than 51,000. But he didn’t get called back when the last of the holiday sessions were over and he braced himself for the disappointment, contempt or worse he knew he would see in his dad’s eyes at the news.
    What he didn’t do, though, was give up. He had fought his way into his school team years ahead of most of the other players and he carried the battle on until he represented his county as well. He then tried out and was signed for various local semi-professional teams as he prepared to leave school at 16. ‘I was naturally aggressive, a left-back and a cut-throat tackler. You may have got pastonce but there was never, ever a second occasion. And I was fast, a great 100-metre sprinter. I did well.’
    Well enough to catch Rangers’ eye again. A scout watched him play in a local youth game and called him back up to Ibrox for one final shot at the big time. As he walked back into the club grounds that day, Gordon knew the next few hours would be the most important of his life. Already coming up to 16, he was at the upper age limit if he wanted to break into the professional game. This was make or break time and he was going to give it everything he had.
    ‘Even if they didn’t like my game, they must have still liked my attitude,’ he told his uncle afterwards.
    But the Rangers staff had given him no clues about how well he had done, so he headed back down to Stratford to wait. And to wait. In the end, just over four weeks passed before a letter with a Glasgow postmark landed on the Ramsay doormat. Gordon says that at first he was too nervous to open it and the rest of the family were too nervous to force him. But, when he did, the news was good.
    ‘They had invited me to come to Glasgow on a year’s apprenticeship, then, if it went well, as a reserve-team player,’ he says.
    He wasn’t being given a contract or any real commitment. But he was on his way and he wasn’t going to be left on his own. Despite everyone’s objections, his parents decided that the whole family would have to leave their home, their friends, their jobs and their schools. Everyone would move back north to support Gordon. It turned out to be a decision that would ultimately destroythe family and leave Gordon repaying psychological debts for most of the next decade. And almost immediately the cracks began to show.
    ‘I was acutely aware of the responsibility I was carrying for the whole family having been uprooted and for the first three months I absolutely hated my new life. My mother wasn’t happy either and I could see that my father had a growing problem with alcohol now he was back in Scotland. He could no longer have just one or two glasses – he always had to finish the bottle. He would drink himself into a stupor and then the country and western music would go on. They were not good times for any of us.’
    The irony of this only intensified the depression and insecurity Gordon was already feeling. Just as he had finally started to do something he thought his father would have to be proud of, the older man started to retreat from the world and blot it all out. Far from halting the violence Gordon’s mother suffered at home, as her son had hoped, the move back to Glasgow seemed to have made matters worse. And things weren’t a