Peter Cormack made a huge Hibs impression on me and Bill Shankly 'jigsaw' praise said it all about Easter Road legend

Scottish football has lost a real diamond following the sad passing of Peter Cormack this week. He was a legend at Hibs. A legend of the Scottish game.

Peter made a big impression on the youngsters at Easter Road when I was breaking into the first team even though he wasn’t on the staff. He would often come to games and into training because he was friendly with Alex McLeish. Big Eck was great at bringing the icons in to speak us. They were randoms to us at first because we’d not read up on our history. But we soon got to know all about guys like the Famous Five, Pat Stanton and Peter Cormack.

Peter was a lovely man and his playing career speaks for itself. Like scoring for Hibs in a win over Real Madrid, being signed for Liverpool by Bill Shankly and winning league titles and UEFA Cup. Imagine a manager of Shankly’s stature describing you as the “final piece of the jigsaw” at Anfield ahead of a period of success. Praise of the highest order.

He had a tremendous scoring record for a midfielder playing at the highest level too. It’s phenomenal stuff but you would never have known it when you spoke to Peter. He was so humble. You would never have thought he had achieved so much simply because he never mentioned it. He just seemed like a normal guy off the street.

That shows you the humility of the man. He never spoke about his career - he was more interested in how we were getting on as young players coming through at his old club. A club he loved dearly.

I met Peter a few times over recent years at various functions. He was battling dementia and it was a real shame to see him struggling. It’s a real horrible illness. Awful for his family and my thoughts are with them at this sad time. He was a lovely, lovely man and