Don_Kitchenbrand
Don Kitchenbrand
South African footballer
Don Kitchenbrand (also Kichenbrand; born 13 August 1933) is a retired South African football player who played in Britain for Rangers and Sunderland in the mid to late 1950s.
Nicknamed The Rhino by the club's fans,[1] Kitchenbrand was one of very few players of the Catholic faith to play for Rangers between the 1920s and 1980s, between which times an unwritten rule was in effect; he was advised not to disclose his religion when signing.[2][3][4] In his first season in British football (1955–56), he scored 24 goals in 25 league appearances to help Rangers win the Scottish League title.[5] That goal tally included the only goal in a 1–0 win over Old Firm rivals Celtic on 2 January 1956,[6] and a five-goal haul in an 8–0 rout of Queen of the South at Ibrox on 7 March 1956.[3][7] Kitchenbrand didn't feature much for Rangers after that first season,[5] having lost his place in the side to Max Murray,[8] and left for Sunderland in March 1958.[8]
He played 54 competitive games for Sunderland, scoring 28 goals.[9] In November 1958 he scored a hat-trick in a 4–0 win over Rotherham, the first hat-trick a Sunderland player had achieved in two years.[10]
He returned to his homeland in 1960 to play for Johannesburg Wanderers[8] and a number of other teams,[11] before coming back to Scotland two years later for a brief spell at Forfar Athletic.[3][12]
He played once for his country in March 1956, featuring in a South Africa representative side all consisting of British-based players and including Kitchenbrand's Rangers team-mate Johnny Hubbard. They played against a Scotland XI at Ibrox, losing 2–1.[3][13]
As of 2019, Kitchenbrand and his wife were living in an elderly persons' complex in Benoni, Gauteng.[3]