**SUNDAY MAIL EXCLUSIVE:** Shocking Revelations from New Book “Murdo Murdo” – Wife Mhairi Shares Emotional Journey and the Heart-Stopping Moment She Refused to Give Up on Celtic Legend Murdo MacLeod!
Twice in 12 years, I’ve been led into the same hospital room and told there was a chance my husband wouldn’t survive heart surgery. But my husband is Murdo MacLeod. During his nine years at Celtic, fans and teammates alike called him “The Rhino”—and there were good reasons for that nickname.
Murdo’s strength, resilience, and sheer determination gave him the iron will to overcome any adversity. We married when we were just kids and built a family we’re proud of. His talent, even as a part-timer at Dumbarton, earned him a spot at Celtic, where he won every domestic honor before continuing his career elsewhere.We even moved to a foreign country, adapting to the German way of life during Murdo’s time at Borussia Dortmund.
And then we returned home, where Murdo entered the next chapter of his life—winning trophies as a player at Hibs, managing Dumbarton, and most memorably, coaching under Wim Jansen when Celtic won the league title that stopped Rangers from securing 10 in a row.You don’t just stand by and let a man like that slip away. Not when we raised a family that formed a shield around him, refusing to accept that medical opinion would be the final word.
In October 2022, I gathered our family around me in a room at the Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, as the medical staff prepared to update us on Murdo’s condition.
In the room stood a female doctor and a male anesthetist. I remember thinking of them as doom and gloom. Neither truly understood The Rhino.We were asked if we wanted a husband and father, battling heart and kidney failure, to be put back on a ventilator and attached to a dialysis machine.
The doctors and nurses couldn’t wake Murdo, and the thin line between life and death was explained to us in stark, matter-of-fact terms. For him to come back to us, his brain needed to start functioning properly, but all forms of medication had failed. It was suggested that he wasn’t meant to wake up, and his chances of survival were slim.Murdo’s heart wasn’t working, his kidneys weren’t working—we were watching him walk a tightrope between life and death.
Our daughter Mhairi shifted the mood with a bold message to the medical staff, blending defiance with optimism: “We hear you,” she said, “but we’re just not listening to you. We’re ignoring you because that’s Murdo MacLeod in there.”We were not the kind of family to give up on life. Our daughters wouldn’t have let me even consider the idea.It felt worlds apart from when I worked part-time as a teenager at a petrol station near Dumbarton’s old home at Boghead.
The young hopefuls would stop by for the confectionery that kept them going, and Murdo was one of them. At first, I kept him at arm’s length—I was the older woman, nine months his senior—but he kept coming in with his chat-up lines.We got married on June 11, 1977. It didn’t take long to realize what life as a footballer’s wife would be like, as everything unfolded in full view of the public.
Murdo signed for Celtic on the same day in 1978 that a man had come to our house to measure the windows for Venetian blinds. He was the grumpiest man in the world as he went about his work. By the time he returned to fit the blinds, Murdo was on the back pages of every newspaper, holding a Celtic scarf high above his head to celebrate his signing for Billy McNeill.
The grumpiest man in the world had magically transformed into the friendliest. Before we married, I had only attended one match—Dumbarton at Boghead. Celtic Park was a whole different experience. Celtic clinched the league title at the end of Murdo’s first season, and the memory of that night they defeated Rangers to become champions still resonates with me.I became deeply invested and started to believe, just like my husband, that anything was possible for Celtic. It was the same feeling in the hospital in 2022. We understood the severity of Murdo’s condition and that we were being told there was nothing more that could be done to stop him from slipping away. Yet, deep down, we instinctively felt that he wasn’t done with life.
While his heart had taken a less severe toll on his body, it was a much younger man facing complications. When the valve was replaced 12 years later, complications arose, leading to eight weeks on a ventilator and all the circulatory issues that accompanied it. His operation took place on September 9, and Murdo regained consciousness the following week. However, on September 20—just four days before his 64th birthday—he went into shock, and his blood pressure plummeted.Murdo’s cardiologist, Professor Colin Berry, visited us during this low point. He suggested that we celebrate Murdo’s upcoming birthday by gathering messages from family and friends and playing them for him.
One of our grandchildren, Fergus, is a little Rhino himself. He loves football and adores his papa, and his heartfelt message urged Murdo to get back to having a kickabout with him.There was one song that meant the world to Murdo—“Don’t Give Up On Me” by Andy Grammer. The girls had it on their phones, recalling the moments when they held their devices to his ear in the hospital.One morning, we entered his room to find him sitting up in bed, engrossed in Wim Jansen’s book about his football life. It was an incredible moment.By the time Murdo finally left the hospital to go home, he had spent over 100 days bravely fighting for his life.
Age had only made him more stubborn in his determination to succeed. He fought—and he fought hard—even when it felt like he was down to his last breath.