Everything about Jim Baxter totally explained
James Curran Baxter, (
September 29 1939 –
April 14 2001), was a
Scottish football player.
Born in
Hill of Beath,
Fife, he started his career at
Raith Rovers before moving to
Rangers for a Scottish record transfer fee £17,500 aged 20 in
1960. He spent five years at Rangers before moving to
Sunderland Two years later, in
1967, he joined
Nottingham Forest However by this time he was becoming more known for his off-field antics. He briefly returned to Rangers in
1969 before retiring from football in
1970 aged only 30. He also won 34 caps for
Scotland.
Baxter is particularly remembered for his inspirational role in Scotland's famous 3-2 defeat of England in 1967. After a sensational performance, Baxter infamously began playing "
keepie uppie" or ball juggling during the match in an effort to torment the opposition. As Scotland were the first team to beat England after the
1966 World Cup, the
Tartan Army proclaimed themselves
world champions.
Baxter himself regarded his performance in the 1963 defeat of England at Wembley as superior to the 1967 game. Scotland played most of the game with 10 men as Eric Caldow's leg was broken in a tackle early in the game, and in the early 1960's there were no substitutes. Remarkably, Baxter scored Scotland's first after winning a tackle. He scored the second from a penalty. Caldow was the designated penalty taker, and Baxter stated in 2001 that he "had never taken a penalty in my life before".
Once, later in his life, asked if having been paid the huge sums of money footballers in later decades received would have made a difference to his lifestyle, he famously replied, "Definitely. I'd have spent £50,000 a week at the bookies instead of £100."
Despite his off-pitch behaviour of womanising, frequently getting drunk and gambling he's remembered as one of the greatest Scottish players of all time and there's much surprise that he won only 34 caps.
Baxter lost a long battle against
cancer when he died April
2001.
The
Tartan Army unsuccessfully attempted to get the new Wembley footbridge named after him just to annoy the English, with many Scots flooding a poll held by radio station Five Live.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jim Baxter'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://jim_baxter.totallyexplained.com">Jim Baxter Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
