Full name John Brough Ritchie Name John Ritchie Playing position Role Footballer | Years Team Position Goalkeeper | |
Date of birth (1947-06-12) 12 June 1947 (age 68) Place of birth Auchterderran, Scotland | ||
John Brough Ritchie (born 12 July 1947 in Auchterderran) is a Scottish football player and manager, who played as a goalkeeper. He made almost 300 Scottish Football League (SFL) appearances for Brechin City over two spells, and also played for Cowdenbeath, Dundee United and English club Bradford City. He later managed Brechin between 1987 and 1993, winning the SFL Second Division title in 1990.
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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 Brechin City in 1967. After a similar length of time at Glebe Park, Ritchie moved south in the early 1970s to English side Bradford City, 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 when the club won Scottish Division Two 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 in April 2004, and later linked with the vacant Arbroath 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 F.C. and helped the club to the semi-finals of the Scottish Junior Cup in 2008. He currently runs his own coaching school, JR-Coaching.
Brechin City
As a manager: