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Date: 25th July 2026
One afternoon in Dumbarton I saw a legend
By Donald C Stewart
Once I was a reporter on football and was in the single stand underneath The Rock at the Dumbarton Football Club. From there I gazed upon the warm-up. Tall, muscular, striking, out of place. There stood in the centre circle one Craig Gordon.
At the time we knew that Gordon had suffered a serious injury and was contemplating retirement. Managing to combine some coaching, advising with his recovery, as he attempted to gain the prowess that he once had through the many exercises that he was attempting to recreate. It had led him to Dumbarton Football Club in a place where they allowed him facilities to train – who wouldn’t when he came calling? At least that was the story. Just exactly how true that was didn’t matter because I, amongst many others, realised that we were in the presence of a legend.
He’d been at Hearts, gone off to Sunderland for £9 Million and he was now trying to get himself back in shape to sign a contract somewhere. History tells us that he went from there to becoming a league and multi-cup winner with Celtic and then returned to Hearts. There he almost became part of the Hearts squad that brought the very first league championship outside of Glasgow in 4 decades.
I was brought up in the shadow of legendary Scottish goalkeepers including McCloy, Leighton, Gorham and the like. Craig Gordon at the time had not managed to gain the status that he has now, but he wasn’t that far away from it. He was head and shoulders, quite literally, above other goalkeepers though Allan McGregor, Neil Sullivan, Dabid Marshall would be right to state their own cases.
For some people, not I, getting an opportunity to train with in Dumbarton felt like a step down, as though he’d fallen through a trap door and was disappearing off into the ether. Players get to a certain level, and it’s true in many sports, that they find that anything below the level at which they had been world champion, or a contender, or award winning or championship winning is beneath them, literally and metaphorically.
Literally falling through the leagues as once great servants of a Premier League club find themselves down in the Championship, then League One, falling into League Two, and even into lower league football, can often appear like a humiliation. It’s not.
For those who have earned riches in the game more out of their feet than they ever will out of their heads and their hands, that, in a sense, is understandable. They can talk about their love of the game, but it eventually only ever came with money attached. For those who have not earnt the millions, perhaps were on the fringes of Premier League squads, or central to some for a period of time, earnt sufficient money to feel comfortable, but that money begins to drift away, getting into lower league football is what they need and know. They’re footballers after all and perhaps gaining a wage from the East Kilbrides or the Gretnas or the Brechin Cities, what they’re also doing is they’re collecting their coaching badges, finding their feet to move from being on the pitch to being beside it.
With Craig Gordon, I cannot think of a better student of the game. He has been at the heights of both Premier Leagues – England and Scotland, won medals, been in teams who have tried their best to disrupt the normal pattern of expectation within Scotland and given as much as he can to single clubs, Hearts and Celtic.
He also could be a coach who would understand what it feels like when you’re not getting the opportunities or the breaks or finding your feet quite literally is a problem because they don’t work the way they used to since a UCL injury.
As an asset to the game, I hope that he will continue to be a part of a club. There are many former players finding roles as pundits and moving quite seamlessly, and at least for the next little while, to a role that fits their knowledge of the game or it fits an element of their knowledge of the game. I look at the World Cup pundits and particularly the likes of Ian Wright and Roy Keane have really impressed me.
There are a few like Ally McCoist on commentary. who sparkles with wit and repartee whilst having an innate knowledge of the game that shines when it needs to. Adding to these titans of British football perhaps there are places for more to become involved and I do enjoy my Saturday afternoons listening to Sportsound as the riffing from the various ex-players and Richard Gordon in the studio and Tom English at the side becomes heated.
Punditry is a skill.
It requires people in the seat who have an innate understandable knowledge of the game and people who can communicate who’ve never laced a boot.
You have to have both.
Only experts becomes increasingly technical and you lose your audience. Only observers or journalists it becomes less knowledgeable and authentic leading to people losing confidence in what is being said.
Craig Gordon has more than just a pundit in his hands and as he sails off to into whatever sunset he wants to go and do, whilst we’re all talking about who will fill his gloves, perhaps what is more important is where this incredible servant of the game is going to continue to serve further in another area.
But just know that afternoons in Dumbarton never reached the same heights ever again…
image BBC
Posted in: Fan's Blog, Latest News
Tags: Craig Gordon, Scottish football