Johnny Pattillo

Pattillo left St Johnstone in 1958 and retired from the game and died aged 79 in August 2002. In his six years at Dens he scored sixty-seven goals, making him twentieth on Dundee's all-time top goalscorers' list, putting him ahead of other high goalscorers Dens Park Tommy Coyne, Ray Stephen, Iain Ferguson, Nacho Novo, Juan Sara, Alec Stott and George Merchant.

That summer he moved back to his hometown team Aberdeen to take up a coaching role but in February 1953 he was appointed manager of St Johnstone and pulled on their light blue shirt eight times to become one of the first player/managers in Scottish Football history.

Pattillo played during a golden era at Dens, playing right in the heart of it as a prolific striker who won two winners' medals and two runners-up medals as well as scoring a goal in the 1951 League Cup Final victory to cement his place in Dundee's history.

The first of those appearances was in the League Cup Final of 1951 and Dundee's 3–2 win over Rangers is one of the best finals the National Stadium has ever seen. Pattillo scored in the 5-1 semi-final win over Motherwell at Ibrox but the real glory came for him in the final when he scored the second on sixty-nine minutes. Pattillo ran on to a Flavell through ball and shot high past Brown in the Rangers goal to put the Dark Blues 2-1 ahead.

Any hopes that the runners-up spot could be improved on were dashed early the following season with a number of disappointing reverses and incredibly for Pattillo, having scored fifty-five goals in the last three seasons, he now went the whole of 1949/50 season without scoring at all as Dundee finished a disappointing sixth. They had failed to get out of their section in the League Cup and were knocked out in the first round of the Scottish Cup and so clearly something had to change the following year for Pattillo and Dundee.

Born in Aberdeen in 1923, Pattillo joined his home town team in 1938 and, like so many players of his generation, had his career interrupted by the Second World War. He joined The Dons one year after their first Scottish Cup Final and left the year before they won the Cup again in 1947 but success was just around the corner for him at Dens. Before he left Pittodrie however he did finish as The Dons' top scorer and won the 1945/46 Southern League Cup against Rangers. The following summer he moved down the east coast to Dundee to join George Anderson's new look Dark Blues for £1,000.

Johnny Pattillo (17 October 1914 – August 2002) was a Scottish football player and manager. He played for Aberdeen, Dundee and finally St Johnstone in 1953. He managed St Johnstone for five years, initially performing both playing and management roles.