John Brough Ritchie (12 June 1947 – 2 June 2018) was a Scottish

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player and

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities o ...

. Ritchie played as a goalkeeper and made almost 300

Scottish Football League The Scottish Football League (SFL) was a league featuring professional and semi-professional football clubs mostly from Scotland.One club, Berwick Rangers, is based in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is located approximately 4 km south ...

(SFL) appearances for

Brechin City Brechin City Football Club is a Scottish football club based in the townDespite the name of the football club, Brechin is not an official city. Brechin was historically known as a city because it has a cathedral. of Brechin in Angus. The club w ...

over two spells, and also played for Cowdenbeath, Dundee United and English club

Bradford City Bradford City Association Football Club is an English professional football club in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The team competes in League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system and are currently managed by Mark Hughes. Th ...

. He later managed Brechin between 1987 and 1993, winning the SFL Second Division title in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

Career

Ritchie began his career in the mid-1960s with Cowdenbeath and went on to play over 100 matches for the Central Park side before moving to

in 1967. After a similar length of time at Glebe Park, Ritchie moved south in the early 1970s to

, where he averaged around 20 league matches in each of his three seasons. A return to Scotland in 1974 with Dundee United brought no games and Ritchie returned to Brechin shortly afterwards, completing another six years before his retirement in 1981. Overall, Ritchie played in exactly 450 league matches. Upon retiring, Ritchie stayed with Brechin as a member of the coaching staff, assisting

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

when the club won

Scottish Division Two The Scottish Football League (SFL) was a league featuring professional and semi-professional football clubs mostly from Scotland.One club, Berwick Rangers, is based in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is located approximately 4 km south ...

in the early 1980s and becoming manager later in the same decade. Winning Division Two in the 1989–90 season, Ritchie left in 1993 to take up a coaching position with Hibernian and moved to a similar role with Dunfermline Athletic in 1999. Made redundant from

East End Park East End Park, currently named KDM Group East End Park for sponsorship purposes, is a football stadium situated in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland with a seating capacity of . The stadium plays host to the home matches of Scottish Championship sid ...

in April 2004, and later linked with the vacant

Arbroath Arbroath () or Aberbrothock ( gd, Obar Bhrothaig ) is a former royal burgh and the largest town in the council area of Angus, Scotland, with a population of 23,902. It lies on the North Sea coast some ENE of Dundee and SSW of Aberdeen. The ...

job, Ritchie returned briefly to Glebe Park in 2004–05 in a coaching capacity. Ritchie was on the coaching staff at Scottish Junior club Thornton Hibs and helped the club to the semi-finals of the Scottish Junior Cup in 2008. He then ran his own coaching school, JR-Coaching. Ritchie died in June 2018, aged 70.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritchie, John 1947 births 2018 deaths Scottish men's footballers Cowdenbeath F.C. players Brechin City F.C. players Bradford City A.F.C. players Dundee United F.C. players English Football League players Scottish Football League players Brechin City F.C. managers Scottish Football League managers Men's association football goalkeepers Footballers from Fife Scottish football managers People from Cardenden Association football coaches