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Davie Cooper 20 Year Anniversary


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Good articles.

 

Definitely my first 'Well hero. Met him and got my picture taken with him in the players lounge at Fir Park in the last few weeks of the 90/91 season '91 and vividly remember how brilliant he was with me. Still got the picture.

 

Top man, top player. A true legend, and like far too many associated with our club, taken far too early.

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Was mesmerised by him as a bairn and didn't really know about his Rangers history until I got the super cooper video one Christmas.

 

Will always mind my mum turning up at the school gates with a tear in her eye to tell me the news. Such a sad loss and 20 years on, yet to see such a special player at close quarters.

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He came to our school once but he was a Rangers player then so I didn't like him then!

 

The funny thing is he didn't have the best game in the cup final but I think everyone knows that without him we'd never have won it. To have a talisman like Cooper in your team totally lifted us to a new level.

 

In that sense I think he's probably the most important player in Motherwell's history since the 1950's. He might have been gone for 20 years but I think our recent high league finishes are still very much part of the Davie Cooper Era.

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"Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."

 

A true inspiration for Motherwell. From almost the moment he arrived his teammates tried to emulate him, and they did not a bad job of it! As someone who witnessed his early training sessions said at the time, "It's as if skill was contagious".

 

The years go by so fast, but the memories will never fade..

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Aye, I remember I was reading the Evening Times waiting for a train at Argyle Street when I read he had signed. Was delighted as it seemed more likely he was going to Hearts at the time.

 

Wee Tommy had been building his team from the back, which wasn't pretty at times, but it was effective. Signing guys like Cooper & Russell (whose contribution is sometimes overlooked) was when he started building an attacking force on that foundation. As much as Davie's skills impressed, I always enjoyed watching his positioning too. He had an uncanny knack of watching 2 players challenging for a ball and standing in exactly the right place to collect it when it broke. You can't teach that.

 

Always gave me the fear when he was taking corners and free kicks against us, so was delighted to get the benefit of that for a few years.

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The game has changed in those twenty years since he passed away. You wonder if a genius like Cooper would fit in.

As such, the game of today is not what it should be.

RIP Davie. You made me smile with what you could do on a football park, thanks for those memories.

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R.I.P. Coop.

 

Not sure if I would even be a Motherwell fan if it wasnt for this guy, given the Celtic and Rangers influences in my family...I was 8 when he signed and took Motherwell to a new level, not just on the pitch, but off it too....Suddenly we were being noticed by the media, solely because of his influence.

 

Can still vividly remember the phone call I got from my Papa to tell me that he had passed away.

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Rangers fans will quite rightly claim Coop to be one of their own. He did after all play for them for more than a decade and supported them but whilst I'm obviously biased I believe it's vital not to underplay the significance of his time at Motherwell.

 

His career was after all going nowhere at Ibrox when he came to us. He'd already reached veteran status and with each big money buy Rangers made, like Mark Walters for example, he was being pushed further and further down the pecking order.

 

The move to Fir Park revitalised him and was a perfect marriage of player and club. It must surely have been beneficial for him to come in and work under trusted former colleagues like Tommy McLean and Tom Forsyth and alongside former team-mates Craig Paterson and Bobby Russell. Not quite perhaps a home from home but would he have enjoyed the same familarity, understanding of his capabilities and belief in him that those guys had, had he went elsewhere? Who knows.

 

Whatever the case as has already been said in the thread he really moved us on a level as a club. We gained so so much from his ability on the park and on the training ground. And we certainly gained a warmer media profile that we hadn't had before.

 

But Motherwell were good for Davie too. He got a Scottish Cup winners medal when he probably expected he'd long since lifted his last piece of silverware. He also got a return to the Scotland side after a couple of years and but for injury would have represented Motherwell at Italia 90. As I say a perfect match that was mutually benifical.

 

One of my best memories of him playing is actually the one Flow has recalled in his Evening TImes piece but perhaps the thing that makes me smile most is the tale of his apparent childlike glee at being able to parade the Scottish Cup around the streets of Motherwell on 19th May 1991, that for obvious reasons had been denied him when played for Rangers. Something quite special about a man that made so many people happy sharing one of the happiest experiences of his playing career with those very people.

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Coop was my first hero, a true legend.

 

I grew up across the street from ONeils40yarder, there was actually 3 of us 'well fans in a square 50 yard area. Quite a rare thing in Bellshill. I mind us all chatting about Cooper once, Think it was after the 91 final. I would have been 7.

A few other 'well fans in the street Busta, and 1 or 2 others arrived after you moved up in the World (to Mossend)...but aye, you're right probably an unusually high well fan ration in our wee part of Bellshill in the 80s.

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