Terry Butcher has opened up about the devastating loss of his son Chris, who died from post-traumatic stress disorder in 2017, and how charity work helped him find purpose again. The former Rangers captain, now 67, found his 35-year-old son dead at the family home in Suffolk on October 16, 2017 - a day he calls the worst of his life.
Chris, a soldier who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, had witnessed the full horrors of war. An inquest concluded he died from an abnormal enlargement of the heart, of uncertain cause, combined with the effect of drugs against a background of PTSD.
'It hits you right between the eyes'
Butcher released a documentary earlier this year, Butcher - Invisible Wounds, chronicling both his playing career and his life since Chris's passing. He has also signed up as a patron for Combat2Coffee, a charity raising awareness of mental health challenges faced by military veterans and their families.
"When you lose your son like that in the manner that happened, it hits you right between the eyes," said Butcher. "Everything that's gone before, including Rangers and Ipswich and England, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all."
He added: "I didn't have any purpose in life, I was just plodding along. Football had gone obviously. I didn't know what I was going to do. In the end, Combat2Coffee helped me enormously. It's helped us to talk about him."
Medals and memories at Ibrox
Butcher's charity work has taken him across Britain raising funds and awareness. Last year it brought him back to Glasgow, the scene of three league triumphs under Graeme Souness and a couple of League Cup wins during a four-year stay at Rangers.
He said: "I don't like showing my medals. When we did the documentary, they wanted me to get the medals out." But he added: "Yes, I am proud of my medals and I love to just have a quick look at them. They are there as a reminder, they are there for my family. It's lovely but I don't bang on about it all the time."
It is now 40 years since his signing launched the Souness Revolution at Ibrox. His header at Pittodrie on the final day of the 1986/87 season sealed the club's first league crown in almost a decade, carving forever a place in Ibrox legend.
Captaincy and the current squad
Butcher loved being Rangers skipper but insists he never dreamed of becoming boss at Ibrox. The former England captain moved into management after retiring, with spells in charge of Motherwell, Inverness and Hibs.
"No, I never thought that at all," he said. "I used to think, 'my God, that's mission impossible for me to get there'. I enjoyed my time at Rangers but I love being the underdog."
On the current squad, Butcher reckons new boss Derek McInnes could have done with having former skipper James Tavernier hang around for another year. "The goals he scored were unbelievable for a full-back," he said. "You need goals to win titles, you need goals to win cups. So there could have been a place for James if I had been manager in my team, especially with the experience he has got."
