
Lawrie Smith
Club Historian Gordon Sydney has penned the following tribute to former physio Lawrie Smith, after his recent passing.
Lawrie started out with Dundee in 1959, and he was their physio when Dundee won the league in 1961/62 – and reached the European Cup semi-final the following season – and in 2012 he finally received an official medal from the SFA to recognise his part in that League Championship success.
One of the interesting “stats” about Dundee’s title-winning team that season was that they only had a squad of 15 players. Even allowing for the fact that teams back in those times tended to play their first XI unless injury forced change, that is still an inordinately small player pool, and a lot of the credit is very probably down to having an extremely competent physio dealing with the players.
In 1965, Lawrie decided to leave Dundee and football, and take a job as a sales rep with a firm of medical suppliers. However, he later accepted an offer to come back into football with Clyde, and he was very much part of the backroom staff during our very successful 1966/67 season, where we finished third in Scotland, reached the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup, and qualified for European football.
Lawrie stayed with Clyde until early December 1967, when he took the decision to move across to Ibrox, following Davie White’s identical journey a couple of months prior.
He remained with Rangers for around three years, until leaving Ibrox in the summer of 1970, whereupon he re-joined Clyde.
Lawrie stayed with Clyde until the early part of 1973, midway through our Second Division Championship season, when he left The Bully Wee to concentrate on building his own physiotherapy practice. That business was put on hold in August 1977, when he was persuaded to return to football with Motherwell, and he remained with the Fir Park team until May 1979.
So, when we scratched the surface, we discover that Lawrie has not only played his part in Clyde’s best season in living memory, but he was also very much involved with teams winning the Scottish First and Second Division titles – there’s many a player would take that on their CV!
The thoughts and condolences from all at the club are with Lawrie’s family and friends at this sad time.
Lawrie Smith
27 November 1933 to 10 October 2024