With 13 title wins in 16 years, was Meiklejohn greatest Rangers player of all?

He spent 16 of them at Ibrox and had 13 league winner's medals to show for his efforts.

A giant among men, he was arguably the greatest player in the history of Rangers.

Of course, a fans' poll in 1999 awarded that accolade to John Greig - but a new book challenges that decision.

Titled The Greatest Ranger Ever? Davie Meiklejohn: The Case for the Original Ibrox Legend, it puts forward the argument that the man born and raised in the shadow of Ibrox was the best.

Meiklejohn came through his first big test the day he was born in 1900 when he survived the deadly Bubonic Plague, after more than 100 cases were reported locally in Govan.

He first made his mark as a gifted right-back at Maryhill before Rangers secured his services in 1919 for a transfer fee of £10 and a corrugated iron fence for the Junior club's Lochburn Park ground.

He made his debut for the Light Blues in a league match at Aberdeen's Pittodrie Stadium in March, 1920.

His day began by catching a morning train with his team-mates from Glasgow to the Granite City.

Then the Gers stars were required to walk from Aberdeen station to the ground to "stretch their legs".

The youngster started off with a victory and landed a league winner's medal at the end of his first season.

Sadly, the campaign ended in tragedy when manager William Wilton drowned on a friend's yacht just hours after celebrating the title win.

The gloomy incident cast a shadow over the club but, in Bill Struth, Wilton's replacement, Meiklejohn found a man who would go on to play a massive role in his career.

The new Ibrox boss moved his powerful defender into the heart of his half-back line, where Meek went on to collect league titles like others collect stamps and play a pivotal role in Rangers' 1928 Scottish Cup success - their first win in the tournament for 25 years.

Their lack of success in the competition had become a music-hall joke, but a then- record crowd of 118,000 turned up at Hampden to see them take on Celtic in the final.

It was a tense affair until 10 minutes after half-time when captain Meiklejohn slammed a penalty past Hoops keeper John Thomson for the first goal in an eventual 4-0 rout.

Three years later triumph again gave way to tragedy when Thomson lost his life in a league match at Ibrox.

The young Celt - who had played with Meek in a famous Scotland victory over England just months earlier - had lain prone after diving at the feet of Gers forward Sam English.

Some home fans thought he keeper was play-acting and started jeering but Meiklejohn instantly realised the severity of the situation and appealed for calm. The Ibrox terraces fell silent immediately.

THE Rangers skipper later read a lesson at a memorial service for Thomson.

Six years earlier the man who lived his entire life within a 10-mile radius of Ibrox had survived his own brush with death within sight of the famous stadium.

Meiklejohn was on his way back from a night out when he was involved in a horrific bus crash not far from his home in Copland Road.

He had been travelling with team-mate Willie Hair along Paisley Road when the driver was forced to swerve violently to avoid an oncoming vehicle.

The bus careered straight through the front window of a grocer's shop, leaving seven people seriously injured.

Meiklejohn escaped with a knee injury that forced him to miss a couple of games but he was soon back on his feet.

And the first official engagement he was able to take part in after the terrifying crash was the club's annual dance at the city's Grosvenor Hotel.

Apart from making 563 league and cup appearances for Rangers and captaining his only senior club, Meek also won 15 caps for Scotland.

A stalwart at the heart of defence, he put the shackles on legendary England centre-forward Dixie Dean on two occasions, paving the way for famous victories over the Auld Enemy at Hampden.

After hanging up his boots in 1936 he worked for a while as a sports reporter, but returned to the game 11 years later as manager of Partick Thistle.

Sadly, he died in 1959, after suffering a heart attack in the directors box at Broomfield just moments after his Jags side had lost a League Cup tie to Airdrie. He was 58 years old.

Written by Jeff Holmes and published by Pitch Publishing, the book costs £18.99; each comes with a limited-edition Davie Meiklejohn bookmark.