This weekend Dundee take on Aberdeen in front of the SKY Sports cameras at Dens so today we feature a player to play for both clubs, Robert Connor
The early Eighties were often a tough time to be a Dee but one man who tried to change that was classy midfielder Robert Connor who would score the winning goal in a derby and become Dundee’s only full Scotland internationalist throughout the whole of the decade and the decade after.
Born in Kilmarnock on August 4th 1960, Bobby would start his footballing career as a left-back with Ayrshire neighbours Ayr United for whom he would make 223 league appearances and win two Scotland Under-21 caps after gaining recognition at youth level.
Amongst his cup outings for the Honest Men was the two-legged League Cup semi-final against Dundee in 1980 in which The Dee progressed to the Final 4-3 on aggregate.
Four years after that semi, Robert found himself at Dens when he was among a number of inspirational signings that new manager Archie Knox would bring to Dens. These included John Brown, Stuart Rafferty, John McCormack and later Jim Duffy and after seven years at Somerset Park, Robert signed for Dundee for a £50,000 fee and immediately brought skill and creativity to the Dark Blue midfield.
‘Roger’ as he was known to his friends made his debut for Dundee on the first day of the season at Pittodrie where The Dee lost out 3-2 to Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen and in the next few weeks the newcomers showed a lot of promise despite some disappointing results.
That promise came to fruition in the best possible way on September 8th 1984 when The Dark Blues went across the road to Tannadice and defeated their neighbours 4-3 in a never-to-be-forgotten derby. Dundee were ahead three times through McWilliams, McKinlay and Harris but when John Brown powered in a header with a quarter of an hour to play, there was no coming back for the Arabs this time as The Dee held on for a famous win.
Despite scoring four goals it wasn’t the front men who were the revelation but the midfield of Rafferty, Connor and Brown who ran the show, with Bobby often dictating the tempo.
Rab’s first goal for the club had come a fortnight earlier in a 3-0 League Cup win at Dens over Hamilton, while his first league goal came at home against Aberdeen in October but it was his ninth and final strike of the season which became his most celebrated when it came as a solitary strike in a derby.
Dundee had failed to defeat United at home for almost six years but in front of 14,000 fans, packed in for the last game of the season, Dundee laid that hoodoo to rest when Bobby scored the only goal of the game after half an hour. It came after Stuart Rafferty had gone on a lung bursting fifty yard run out in the right and when he sent in a well placed, low hard cross into the box, Bobby was on hand to ran the ball home.
Dundee had been chasing a U.E.F.A. Cup spot going into the game and when Bobby Geddes saved his fifth penalty of the season from a Tommy Coyne effort, the euphoria only subsided when it was heard that St Mirren had also been victorious to clinch that last European spot.
Dundee did have the consolation of the derby day win and a finish to a season which had seen Dundee defeat the Arabs twice in a campaign for the first time in a season since the inauguration of the Premier Division. For Bobby, his winner catapulted him instantly into a Dens Park legend.
Hopes were high that the following season might see Dundee make that European breakthrough but while Dundee were pipped again on the last day despite denying Hearts the Championship with Albert Kidd’s two goals, Bobby did make a breakthrough of his own by getting a call up to the full Scotland side in May 1986.
By then Alex Ferguson was in charge of Scotland for the build up to the World Cup in Mexico, running both the national side and his club team Aberdeen following the death of Jock Stein in Cardiff the previous September and he called Bobby up for a friendly against the Netherlands in Eindhoven.
Bobby started the match to become the first Dundee international since Bobby Robinson in 1975 and at the same time earn the first of his four caps for Scotland. It was however his only cap during his time at Dens an it would turn out to be the only time a Dundee player would play for Scotland throughout both the Eighties and the Nineties.
Despite losing the match 1-0, Ferguson must have liked what he saw of Connor for although he didn’t take him to the World Cup, he did sign him for The Dons in August for a fee of £275,000 plus Ian Angus who had been on the bench when Aberdeen won the European Cup Winners Cup in Gothenburg three years before.
At Pittodrie Bobby would become part of the double cup winning side of 1989/90 which was co-managed by Jocky Scott who had been forced to watch Connor move north just two games into his Dens Park managerial career and he would play against England at Hampden in the 1989 Rous Cup.
Connor returned to his native Ayrshire in 1994 to turn out for first his hometown team Kilmarnock and then Ayr United and he returned to Somerset Park for a third time in 2005 when he managed them for the next two years.
Since finishing his playing days, Bobby has also worked in the media, writing for The Mirror newspaper amongst others and in May 2010 was warmly invited back to Dundee to take a seat at the legends table at the Player of the Year Dinner. Connor was a popular guest who had a busy evening as he was bombarded with requests for photographs with the man who had sunk the Arabs on a warm sunny afternoon almost 25 years to the day.
Honours at Dundee:
Scotland full cap: 1
Appearances, Goals:
League: 71, 9 goals
Scottish Cup: 9, 1 goal
League Cup: 4, 1 goal
Totals: 84, 11 goals
