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Frank McLintock
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2009 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of The Football Hall of Fame, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Frank McLintock transformed the fortunes of every club he played for, turning previously mediocre teams into serious challengers for honours - and those same teams then suffered relative decline when he left. The pattern was the same: at Leicester City, Arsenal, and Queens Park Rangers.
As a young, dynamic wing-half, McLintock made his name at Leicester, winners of the League Cup and two-time FA Cup finalists in the early 1960s. Then, in later years, he utilised his extensive experience as ‘the spare man at the back’ when QPR came within one point of the championship title in 1975-76, a disappointment offset by the prize of playing in Europe for the first time in the club’s history the following season.
Of course, the competitive Scot made his greatest impact in-between times, as the captain of Arsenal who lifted the League championship trophy and the FA Cup ‘Double’ in 1970-71. His influence over the side was highlighted when the football writers voted him their Footballer of the Year.
The previous season, following his switch from midfield to central defence, McLintock led the Gunners to their first European triumph. Following defeat in the first leg of the Fairs Cup final against Anderlecht, it was the captain’s rallying cry that lifted the dented morale of his team-mates. ‘By the time we left the ground in Brussels nobody had their heads down.’ Bob Wilson, the Gunners goalkeeper, recalled. ‘He made us believe.’ No team had ever come back from a two-goal deficit to win a two-legged European final. But Arsenal did.
The then Arsenal coach Don Howe rated McLintock above the great Dave Mackay and Bobby Moore as a leader of men. ‘Frank is even more inspiring than either of them,’ Howe said. ‘I’m beginning to feel obsolete in the dressing-room. Frank is doing as much talking as I am – and he’s working wonders with his words. He lifts players up. His influence runs right through the team.’
All of which made his subsequent departure from Arsenal, in 1973, all the more baffling for many of his team-mates. Years later, Bertie Mee, the Arsenal manager, was reported as describing his decision to allow the transfer to QPR as ‘the biggest mistake of my career’.
McLintock had made his debut for Leicester in 1959, having earlier painted the crush barriers at Filbert Street as part of his work as an apprentice painter and decorator. In 1960-61, Leicester finished sixth in the First Division, the club’s best position since the late 1920s, and reached the FA Cup Final. At the post-match banquet, Bill Shankly tried to sign him for Liverpool, and another approach would follow from Don Revie of Leeds United.
That 1961 final against Spurs ended in defeat. Afterwards, McLintock hurled his loser’s medal across the dressing-room in disappointment. ‘Thankfully, one of my team-mates put it in my jacket pocket while I was in the tub,’ he recalled later. Three more Cup-final disappointments at Wembley would follow before McLintock finally led his side to victory, against Liverpool in 1970-71. In its match report, The Times stated: ‘McLintock has proved himself Arsenal’s big man by example and resilient leadership.’
It was a view echoed elsewhere: in 1979, Bob Paisley, the Liverpool manager, selected McLintock as his ‘player of the decade’; Alan Ball, a World Cup winner and Arsenal team-mate, meanwhile, described him as ‘the best, most forceful captain I have ever played under’.