Saturday Interview: Johnston on a wing and a prayer as he bids to clear his name

IT IS the morning after the night before. A slight figure in an Argentina-blue coloured jersey is rummaging through a cupboard in a bar at the far end of the Lang Toun. This is place of refreshment called the Port Brae, although it might as well be named Willie Johnston's Bar, since he has grown so synonymous with the grog-house where he has occupied various roles – from humble, thirsty customer to mine host – for more than 40 years.

Here on Kirkcaldy's esplanade were his glories toasted; here, too, were his downfalls mourned.

Wallace Mercer, the former Hearts chairman, had a part to play in Johnston finally gaining ownership of the Port Brae. But that's another story, one of many to be found in Johnston's latest book. Although his son, Dean, now runs the bar, even an invite to last season's Uefa Cup final, to see former club Rangers take on Zenit St Petersburg, could not drag Johnston away from the comfort of its surroundings. Neither could Wednesday's friendly match with Argentina, the country with which Johnston will be forever associated. There is an air of seclusion in his retreat here, as well as mystery, and, it cannot be denied, also some disgrace.

He was asked to attend the match at Hampden Park by Tartan Army supporter officials, but though he travelled through to Glasgow for the pre-match party on board the Renfrew Ferry, he was back behind the bar at the Port Brae before kick-off. "I love Scotland, but Argentina? No thank you," he says, when we meet the following day. "I read big Terry Butcher's comments about not shaking Maradona's hand. I got sent off in Argentina and then sent home from Argentina – what's he complaining about?"

Johnston is unloading the contents of a cupboard beneath the television set, around which had sat the Port Brae regulars the previous evening as Scotland fell to Diego Maradona's side. All manner of bric-a-brac spills out (though not, alas, the mislaid letter from Eric Clapton, offering to help with Johnston's 'drug-problem' – of which more later). Has this purging been inspired by the visit of Argentina to these shores, and the inevitable memories stirred? The time is right to revisit the 1978 World Cup, hosted by Argentina. Thirty years have now passed since Johnston became headline news across the world, sent home after failing a drug test following Scotland's disastrous opening game with Peru.

It wasn't his first expulsion in Argentina. Tears had also flowed 12 months earlier when, while on a South American tour with Scotland, Johnston was sent off during a match against Argentina. His disciplinary problems are something else he struggled to overcome, and he couldn't even write a book without causing upset – his first effort, On The Wing, saw him fined by the Scottish Football Association. But in Argentina there was more sympathy when he was red carded for having had the temerity to be punched in the kidney by an opponent.

The following summer the outrage was perceived to have been committed by him, although Johnston again insists this was unfair. Most now are of the same mind. The Reactivan pills he took were for hay fever, although, unbeknown to him, they also contained a banned stimulant. "I should never have played," he says now. "If I had any sense at all I should have missed it. I was ill. But I wanted to play in the World Cup, especially in Argentina. If I had been English, Dutch, German, Italian or Argentine the world would never have heard of Willie Johnston. It would all be hushed up. I was innocent.

"I still get it (hay fever] bad now. Even when I am walking the dogs. If I am walking and someone is cutting their grass it looks like I have gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. I just suffer it now – or stay in."

The episode is complicated by Johnston not even having been initially selected to take the drug test. Archie Gemmill was meant to join Kenny Dalglish in providing a urine sample, but could not due to dehydration. "He should have taken it, and I would still have been there for the next two games," he sighs.

In the ultimate irony, Johnston admits that despite ingesting the apparently performance enhancing stimulant, Fencamfamin, he had a poor game. He might conceivably have been dropped for the next match against Iran, where Scotland hardly fared any better. By then Johnston was home, preparing for a life of suspicion and ill-informed comment. Heartbreakingly, his grandchildren understandably struggle to comprehend the subtleties: "They look at me: 'You took drugs?' I never took drugs. I might smoke and drink, but..."

Johnston wants to be freed of the stigma. Together with Tom Bullimore, the co-author of his new book Sent Off At Gunpoint (a reference to another red card, this time in the States), Johnston has begun petitioning Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive. They are bidding to have the rather arbitrary life ban from the Scotland international team lifted, even if, at 61 and with his ankles shot, Johnston might be unable to create the same mayhem he did on the wing in his heyday. He became a marked man for clubs including Rangers, West Bromwich Albion and Hearts, and, together with 22 caps for his country, collected 22 red cards – a record for a Scottish player. "Ach, it works out as only one a season," points out Johnston, who played his last senior game in April 1985. "That's a no' bad average.

"There were a few I definitely didn't deserve, but if you lift your hands up and have a kick at someone, then that's you gone. There were a lot of times when my reputation went before me. Even in England they knew me already, because I had played a few times down there. They were just waiting for me. They were kicking me, and centre-halves and full backs got away with murder."

Drama seems always to have followed Johnston. Just weeks after he signed for Rangers his father was killed in a car crash. It shook Johnston terribly, and perhaps contributed to an at times dissolute lifestyle, although he insists he was never a rogue. "I was maybe a rascal on the park, but not off it," he points out, and it's possible to believe him. He is still happily married to his childhood sweetheart Margaret. He has also sustained many close friendships from his time in football, including Sir Alex Ferguson. They played together at Rangers, and, in the foreword to Johnston's latest book, the Manchester United manager notes that as well as being blessed with a gift for bamboozling defenders, he was also an "absolutely likeable person".

Johnston recalls: "He phoned me on the Monday they were going to Moscow for the European Cup final. They were flying at lunch-time and he phoned me at 9.30 in the morning. I was out in the back garden. My wife said: 'who is that phoning the now?' It was early on Monday morning. Mondays are always bad for me. But my wife said: 'Quick, I think it's Fergie'."

His infectious character meant people wanted to be with him, and this was not always of benefit to Johnston himself. Time and time again Scot Symon, his first manager at Rangers, told Johnston to steer well clear of Jim Baxter, although this proved difficult since they travelled to training together from Fife. Johnston was never at a loss for drinking buddies, or mad-cap ideas. Sensing the end of his second spell with Rangers, he proposed a buy-out of the then struggling Hearts. "There were five boys – Peter McCloy, Alex Miller, Sandy Jardine, myself and Doddie (Alex MacDonald]," he recalls. "I said, 'look we can get the club for a song. £250,000, that's £50,000 each. And we can all go and continue playing.' Then Wallace Mercer got it for sweeties."

Although he's from the mining village of Cardenden, Kirkcaldy has become Johnston's kingdom, where he can be the host with the most in the bar where he had his first pint. "This is home. They'll take me out in a wooden box," he says.

"This was always my local, when I played for Rangers. I used to always come here on a Saturday night, or a Sunday. I have been coming here for 45 years. My pal Snowy has been coming here for as long, but there's a few of them deid."

He never played for local side Raith Rovers, though came close. Johnston was chased out of the club as a teenager when they heard, wrongly, that Johnston had signed for Manchester United, while a proposal to finish his career at Stark's Park also floundered due to then manager Gordon Wallace's reluctance.

He finally wound up an extraordinary career at East Fife. "There's been highs and lows," he says with a smile, aware of the drug reference. But the gravelly voice, betraying evidence only of cigarettes, alcohol and a life well lived, protests his innocence as strongly as it did back in the summer of '78.

• Sent Off At Gunpoint – the Willie Johnston story (Know the Score books, £17.99).