J A MOWAT of Burnside, as the listings always had him, died yesterday.
He was 88.
He must certainly rank among the top three Scottish referees since the
resumption of football in 1945.
His war service with the Royal Air Force, in which he was a flight
lieutenant, had brought on his refereeing and while stationed in
Northern Ireland he had officiated at several important Irish League v
Combined Services matches.
Once he became a grade one referee, his rise was swift and unbroken.
By the time his career ended, he had taken charge of seven Scottish Cup
Finals (including four in succession) and six League Cup Finals.
Rather donnish in manner, he had the knack of maintaining discipline
without resorting to over-stringent measures and, indeed, often claimed
never to have sent a player from the field. Whether he could have got
away with that in today's less deferential times is debatable but he
certainly had considerable presence and a natural authority.
He was associated with two famous matches at Hampden, Celtic's 7-1
victory over Rangers in the League Cup Final of 1957, and his glorious
swan-song, the European Cup Final of 1960 between Real Madrid and
Eintracht Frankfurt.
The latter, his last game, has never been equalled in Scotland for
sustained brilliance from both sides and Jack Mowat's willingness to let
play flow contributed greatly to a quite unforgettable occasion. The
football authorities did not need to contribute anything to him because
his match expenses amounted to a mere six pence and he graciously waived
them.
Behind a somewhat formal exterior he was easy to talk to and genuinely
helpful. He took the work of supervising referees very seriously and
devoted much of his later life to it. Not as flamboyant as Tom Wharton,
not as obvious a martinet as Bobby Davidson could be, he was by any
standards a referee of world class.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article