Big Business Has No Time For Scottish Football - Fact

YESTERDAY, I was at Scotstoun Stadium for the launch of BT Sport's lucrative new sponsorship of Edinburgh's and Glasgow's - the SRU's two full-time professional rugby teams' shirts for the next four seasons.

 

Being well-brought-up rugger chaps, neither my media colleagues or I asked the assembled "suits" to put even a ball-park figure on the worth of the deal, suffice to say it dwarfs even the Celtic and Rangers cider deals and perhaps demonstrates that, when it comes to sports sponsorship, really big companies are happier dealing with civilised sports such as rugby or golf, rather than football.

 

The BT Sport deal is the sort which, if Scottish football had any commercial value and the correct public profile, one might see going the way of the Old Firm, however, as things stand - dream on boys.

 

 

 

ANOTHER thing which struck me on my trip to Scotstoun was, the difference in attitude between footballers and rugby players. As I made my way from the car park to the media suite, I could see the Glasgow players, in the well-equipped gym inside Scotstoun, at 9.45am on a Monday, doing their pre-training warm-up.

 

Gordon Reid, a six-foot-two by 18 stones prop, was doing a passable Chris Hoy impression on one of the bikes; Scotland player Sean Lamont was doing strides, with a massive weights bar on his shoulders, while the other players were, unsupervised, getting themselves ready for the important outdoor session of the morning.

 

Even British Lion Ryan Grant, who could still, if he so wished, be resting after his extended season, was in there doing a bit of voluntary training.

 

Up close, the four Scottish internationalists who were put-up as media fodder: backs Stuart Hogg and Tim Visser and forwards Al Kellock and Ross Ford, are seriously-impressive physical specimens; they glowed with health and well-being to an extent which you wouldn't find with four Scottish football internationalists.

 

I used to cover one of our top football teams; one which had, unusully, its own, fully-equipped, in-house gym and, even more unusually, a manager, who had qualifications in sports phisiology and knew the benefits of a proper fitness regime.

 

He encouraged the players to use the gym facilities - very few did and, when they did, their "work" tended to be little more than "hey, look at my gorgeous body" posing for some of the local ladies who were gym members.

 

As I recall, only three of the Scottish players, plus ALL the foreigners, really put-in the work in that gym and, within five years, only these three Scots were still playing SPL football or had gone to England - the poseurs had all either been retired or had dropped into the lower leagues or the juniors.

 

Ten years down the line, I still don't see Scottish "professional" footballers giving as much importance to physical conditioning, proper diet and rest and giving themselves a real chance of competing at the top level as do their rugby counterparts.

 

"Fail to Prepare - Prepare to Fail" is one of those slogans which is often trotted out. Well, Scottish footballers haven't been preparing properly for years, and Scottish football has regularly failed over these years.

 

When I played, all those years ago; by and large, Scottish rugby forwards couldn't handle their ball and Scottish football defenders couldn't trap theirs. Today, while even prop forwards, who never used to even get to touch the ball, can take and give a pass like a back, Scottish football defenders still struggle to trap a falling bag of cement.

 

The top Scottish rugby clubs, not just the two full-time outfit, but also the better semi-pro club sides such as Ayr, Gala, Melrose and Stirling County, today insist on good individual skills from the "donkeys" in the front five of the scrum as much as the Brylcreem Boys in the backs. If you're a Scottish footballer, you can still get bye on passion and the ability to propel a fancy-Dan foreigner into a reverse, two-and-a-half somersault, with pike, and only get a yellow card for your trouble.

 

Rugby only went professional in 1995, in the 18-years since, that game in Scotland has progressed further than its round-ball cousin has in the nearly 125-years of so-called "professional" football in this country.

 

Of course, the guys running the SRU have all played the game - something which cannot be said of their equivalents on Hampden's sixth floor.

 

The SRU has made mistakes over these 18-years, but, not nearly as many as the SFA has. Time for a culture change. 

Psst - Wanna Buy A Flat In McLeod Street, Gorgie?

THE real dangers of allowing foreign owners to take over our football clubs just might be about to come home to roost. The Lithuanian gangs - whoops! sorry! "businessmen", who own what is left of Hearts are, apparently, none too impressed by the offers which administrators BDO have received for the club.

 

If they don't accept whichever deal BDO can cobble together, then, I am afraid, Hearts will be history and liquidation inevitable. I believe, as I did with Rangers, this is what it will come to. There is no sentiment in business; it may well be that Tynecastle is worth more as a devdelopment site than as a functioning football ground, in which case, it will be ta-ta Jambos.

 

Realistically, for all the hidden agendas, speculation and nonsense which surrounded Rangers, that club was still liquidated, so, why should Hearts, who are not in the same class as a business or as an "institution", survive?

 

The good thing about the Rangers farago was, it all hapened during the close season and, there was a will to cobble together a deal which kept "Rangers" in Scottish football. The Hearts situation is different. The club, still in administration, could stagger over the start line, minus the 15 deducted points, into the new season, then, through events in far-away Lithuania, be liquidated shortly thereafter. And, where will that leave the all-new, shiny, SPFL?

 

I cannot see any "Newco" Hearts being cobbled together and allowed to continue in the SPFL Premiership, and it would surely be a task too-far for the feeble minds on Hampden's sixth floor, to come up with an answer which would allow any newco to slot into the bottom tier of the league.

 

I fear, it will all end in tears. Anyone fancy a penthouse flat in Dave Mackay House, McLeod Street, Gorgie, Edinburgh?

 

 

 

I AM reliably told that the man who is now, following Lawrie Reilly's death, seen as The Greatest Living Hibbee, was seen slipping out of Easter Road, after the third Malmo goal went in last week. The hot sweepstake in Scottish journalism circles these days is - pick the date on which Pat Fenlon gets sacked. One seasoned observer of Hibs matters, tells me to put my money on the morning of the club's agm. Sacking the manager will, apparently, lift any pressure off Rod Petrie.

 

 

 

COMFORTABLE enough win for Rangers against Albion Rovers yesterday. Well, did you expect anything else?

 

Similarly, did you expect, given the fact the game was televised live, not to hear Ra Peepul going through all the old favourites in the club's song book. That's both sides of the Great Divide have now been on TV this season; and, on both occasions, we've been treated to some sparkling renditions of the same old, sad songs, which have no place in Scottish football.

 

Like the Poor, apparently the Lunatic Fringes will always be with us.

 

 

 

  I HAD to laugh today, when I read English Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore saying this week that, it wasn't his members' fault that England was shit internationally.

 

Aye right, you believe that if you like Richard.

 

Mr Scudamore says it's all the FA's fault, ignoring the fact that it is the Premier League clubs who all but run the FA. It's the same up here, the SPL, when it was going, also used the "Nuffink to do wiv us Gov" defence, whenever they were fingered for Scotland's decline - conveniently ignoring the fact that the SPL was the most-influential stakeholder group within the SFA.

 

Scudamore, Doncaster, their board members - self-seeking, self-important, selfish, the lot of them. What did we do to have such numpties running our game?

Scotland - Small Pond, Small Fish

IN A moment of weakness this week I agreed to cover a pre-season friendly. Now, like kissing your cousin (outwith certain Ayrshire, Fife and Lothians mining villages) watching a pre-season friendly isn't the real thing. However, occasionally, when such a game is an Anglo-Scottish affair, it almost becomes vital.

This wasn't quite the case with Kilmarnock v Carlisle United; the game lacked real bite, but, it was fairly enjoyable, with a lot of good football played. I do hope, "Magic" Johnston and "Sandra" Clarke encourage young Chris Johnston, who impressed down Killie's right flank to keep doing what he did in this game - get to the bye-line and cut the ball back. If they do, Paul Heffernan could rake-in a lot of goals this season.

The game finished all-square, at 2-2. Now, some might use this as another stick with which to beat Scottish football: "Couldnae beat a team frae the English third tier", I hear the critics moan; this would be wrong.

Carlisle come from a town which is bigger than Kilmarnock, they certainly have a bigger fans' catchment area; they too are full-time. One of my cousins is a Carlisle legend, he played an awful lot of games for them over a near 20-year senior career, throughout which, he maintained, if United played in the Scottish League, they would have qualified for Europe every year.

On Friday night's evidence, he had a point. It's easy to be a "big" team if you only operate in the small pond which is Scotland - out there in the  big, wide world, we are small beer, albeit with a guid conceit o oorsels.

I HAVE this week been reading Jonny Wilkinson's autobiography - a riveting read it is too; he's a strange chap is Jonny.

He admits to Obsessive Compuslive Behaviour - the way he trains, trains and trains again; the manner in which, if he doesn't successfully kick 20 successive penalty shots in training, he has to start again and keep going until he does; the attention to detail.

Perhaps he goes too-far; maybe he is misguided inhow he conducts himself. Who knows what mental anguish he might suffer when the day comes for him to hang up his boots.

But, that said - how I long for even a single Scottish footballer to appear who is that obsessive, and becomes that good. That Rugby World Cup-winning team in which Wilko starred got some fairly bad press. They were dismissed as "Dad's Army" reviled as one-dimensional, unentertaining and criticised for being efficient.

They did win a world cup overseas, being the host nation in the final and in Wilkinson, they had a single player who could and did regularly punish opposition errors. We Scots didn't particularly enjoy the way they won, but, in a significant line from his book, Wilkinson mentions a message he got from his fitness trainer, which, to paraphrase, said that Wilkinson's greatness lay in how he made the England fans feel - which was, in a word: brilliant.

We Scots haven't had a single footballer who made us feel brilliant since the days of Baxter and Law. Nobody since, and I include Jinky is this, ever collectively lifted the Tartan Army the way the Slim One and the Lawman did - aside from that surge we got and still get when they show the Gemmill Goal.

I don't know, but, if we ever see the emergence of an OCD suffer who is Scottish and can win us games the way Wilkinson did for England, we might start going places.

I Thought Hibs Would Lose - but - That Was Embarrassing

BIG country Sweden; they may have twice our population, but, they have many things in common with we Scots. Mind you, I've yet to meet a Swede I didn't like - but there are a few Scots whom I give plenty of body swerve room (and I suppose who reciprocate).

 

My favourite Swede was actually Norwegian, but, that's enough about Annafried, the red-headed one out of ABBA. Sweden is one of those countries we Scots tend to think we should beat more-often than they beat us, whereas the reality is somewhat different - some supposedly good Scottish teams have lost to Swedish opposition and, internationally, their record is a lot better than ours, with frequent tournament appearances at the sharp end.

 

So, I for one, wasn't at all surprised when Malmo dumped Hibs our of the Europa League last night. That said, I was a wee bit surprised at the aggregate score line. The fact Hibs were, in effect, still in pre-season training mode, while Malmo were in mid-season has to be taken into consideration, but still - a two or three-goal win for the Swedes would have been acceptable and understandable, but nine goals.

 

Wake-up up there in Hampden's sixth floor - we're going down the stank even faster than we seem to realise.

 

Watching up there in the celestial Easter Road, Lawrie Reilly's soul must be asking, have I come to heaven or hell? Or maybe thinking - phew! just got out in time.

 

 

 

BUT, well done St Johnstone. Apparently they were running on empty by the final whistle, however, they saw off Rosenborg and are into the next round. Norway, then Belarus - ah! the glamour of Europe. Let's hope they and Motherwell can salve the gaping wound of Hibs' exit.

 

 

 

I looked in on my native village this week, the first time in a long time I have walked the streets - usually I drive through, wearing a hat and dark glasses, as rapidly as scant regard for the speed limit will allow. I stopped because I saw one of my boyhood friends standing outside his house and we had a nice wee chap.

 

My friend is a Rangers fan, an Ibrox season-ticket holder these past 30-40 years and he is not a happy bunny. He launched into a tirade about how "They" had it in for Rangers; that Rangers had done little or nothing wrong and were being unjustly punished.

 

I left saddened. If this guy, who, until his retirement was one of the top men in Scotland in his trade can think like this - it is clear: they still don't get it.

 

 

 

AS well as touching again the green, green grass of home, this week I made a pilgrimage to Glenbuck, cradle of footballers, not least Wull Shankly - that's what my Uncle called him and the fact they worked as a pair at the pit surely entitles me to use the name as well.

 

Glenbuck is still on the map; there is a sign-post on the A70, about 200 yards on the Ayrshire side of the county line with Lanarkshire which indicates the road to the village. Only, the road stops about 200 yards later, just past the one-time entrance to the long-demolished Glenbuck House.

 

At the gate the Shankly memorial stone stands, festooned in Liverpool scarves, left by "pilgrims", lovingly cleaned each week by a Muirkirk resident who walks or cycles the two miles out there.

 

Fifty yards further on, there is a massive gate, padlocked permanently to deny the curious entry to a now derelict opencast coal site. I ducked through the gate and walked the half-mile uphill to where Glenbuck is, or was.

 

Today, apart from a couple of walls and some crumbling kerbstones, and a tarmaced road rapidly being won back by the weeds, there is nothing to indicate that a village which has attained almost mythical status in Scottish football history even existed.

 

Burnside Park, home ground of the legendary Glenbuck Cherrypickers always had a reputation as a bit of a bog - today, it is a bog, whereon, hopefully, the ghosts of the five Shankly brothers, of Sandy Brown and the other Cherries kick a ball around in the night.

 

My native Ayrshire is festooned by derelict and in many cases vanished mining villages - Baryta, Burnfoothill, Lethanhill, Darnconner. Re-instating the worked-out opencast sites will, we understand, cost some £60-90 million, and that's before they start to some of the old pit bings, which have blotted the landscape since even before the National Coal Board was formed in 1947.

 

They will, hopefully, eventually, return Glenbuck to green fields, except, as has so-often been the case, they will do the cheapest possible job in the shortest-possible time. 

 

Glenbuck deserves better, but, I doubt if it will get it. Shanks thought football was more-important than life or death. reinstating our countryside apparently isn't.

 

 

 

 

 

  

A Good Player But - A Poor Man's Dave Mackay

YESTERDAY, the second-best player ever to come out of Carrickvale School was wheeled-out to address the massed ranks of the MSM (Mainstream Scottish Media). Graeme Souness was the man chosen to front the small issue of the day - the names of the four tiers of the SPFL - which, remember, one cynic once dismissed as standing for: Standards Plummeting, Fans Leavinng.

 

To extrapolate Shakespeare: A Scottish senior division by any name is still shit - so, who better than Souness, one of the men who hastened the demise of Scottish football over the last three decades, to be at the naming ceremony.

 

Not that Souness has to take all the blame, after all, it's nearly a quarter of a century since, having in some two and a bit years back hame amangst his ain folk, reminded himself maybe why he left for London aged 15, he shot the craw back to Liverpool, and, in the prophetic words of his Chairman, committed professional suicide.

 

Liverpool, Galatasary, Torino, Benfica, Southampton, Dukla Pumpherston - naw, none of them come close to Rangers - Murray was right.

 

When Souness arrived at Ibrox he inherited a playing staff which included 11 players who were, or would become Scotland internationals. A couple of these, Derek Johnstone and Peter McCloy were admittedly due to be put out to pasture. I accepted a degree of team-re-building was necessary and accept, getting the likes of Chris Woods, Terry Butcher and Jimmy Nicholl into the team was a good move.

 

But, Souness, in re-modelling the top flight in Scotland by spearheading the purchasing of English players, was also the first to buy-in rubbish - he recruited some very average players - Colin West, Terry Hurlock, Dale Gordon anyone?

 

He also, rather than sitting them down and reading the riot act to them, or dragging them back for afternoon sessions, managed to piss-off some promising young Scottish talent.

 

The decline in Rangers' ability to breed in-house started under Souness and has never been checked. The rest saw what was happening at Ibrox and tamely followed. Twenty-five years down the line, well, internationally we are mince and at club level, we are dog mince.

 

I cannot blame the decline wholly on Souness. David Murray, Campbell Ogilvie, Walter Smith, various other club chairmen and managers should be in a very crowded dock alongside him, but, I still say Souness and Murray are the main men in the decline and faster fall of Scottish football.

 

So, why give the guy house room, as the SPFL did yesterday?

 

A very good player - but, he surely had a touch of the Napoleon Bonapartes about him - apres moi le deluge and all that.

 

And, by the way - still a poor man's Dave Mackay. 

We Gotta Get Out Of This Mess

ONE of my oldest friends in sports journalism opened a right can of worms yesterday on another football website - when he suggested it might be no bad thing for Scottish rugby, were Hearts to fold in the face of their current crisis.

 

He was, of course, playing Devil's advocate and will be horrified should the worst-case scenario unfold down Gorgie way, but, Scottish football cannot go on as it has these past few decades. We have had various clubs in administration, we have had Rangers in liquidation, then re-born in a new guise which strikes me as being pretty-much the old guise, but with new spivs in control. We still have too-many clubs, employing too-many inadequate players, chasing an ever-shrinking share of a stale cake.

 

We still have our national game administered by a self-perpetuating elite, who make the Muirfield membership look enlightened. We are going to hell in a hand-cart, so, my frield reasoned, if the failure of the third-biggest club in the land happens - and God forbid that it does, might it not make people stop and think: "Hey, isn't there another way out of this mess?"

 

 

 

RANGERS and Celtic do tend to treat the Mainstream Scottish Media (MSM) with disdain. You try asking for a one-to-one interview with any of the current "stars" of either club, for a Scottish media outlet, and you get very short shrift. The inner thoughts (no tittering there) of the first-team stars are only for exposure in the two clubs' respective (and respectful) in-house publications.

 

[By the way - can anyone tell me: Celtic View and Rangers News - which is Pravda and which is Isvestia? And, I know, that's a very old joke]

 

But, if they have a mass of strips or tickets to shift, they will wheel-out one of their big guns to speak to the massed media - who, instead of saying: "No thanks, sell your own tickets or strips through your own media outlets", turn-up as ordered to lob easy questions at them.

 

Yesterday it was Rangers' turn, with wee David Templeton rolled-out to face the press. Now his more-talented Dad, wee Henry, of blessed Somerset Park memory, was a hard guy to interview; wonderful player, but a right harum-scarum character. I wish young David no ill-will, but, hey, ah kent his faither.

 

David did make one interesting point, however; he revealed that he was well-aware, when moving from Hearts to Rangers, that he was kissing good-bye to full Scotland caps for the forseeable future. Indeed, he might never play for the Scotland A team, but, he wanted to play for Rangers.

 

This is a pull which Rangers - and Celtic - have always had for some Scottish kids. Hopefully, the two clubs always will have it, for, they, more than most clubs, need fans on the park.

 

The likes of big Greigy, Bomber Brown and nowadays Lee McCulloch at Rangers and Roy Aitken or Peter Grant at Celtic, were never great players, indeed, had they played elsewhere, they'd never have received the acclaim they did, but, they played for the jersey to an extent you do not seem to find elsewhere.

 

I think David Templeton demonstrated yesterday, that pull is still there. The two clubs have to nourish it. Rangers have a real chance to do it, if they cannot get young, Scottish, Rangers-daft youngsters through the ranks and into the first team during their current exile from the top-flight they never will. Sadly, I can see the newco management making the same mistakes made in the Murray madness - paying over the odds for non-Scottish dross.

 

As for Celtic; ok, the Wanyama sale seems to show their: buy young cheap foreigners then sell them on, management model working. But, they, perhaps more than Rangers, have a captive home support who will walk through fire for the club.

 

All those teachers and janitors in the Roman Catholic schools, whose ambition in life is to produce just one boy good enough to wear the Hoops, all those boys who have the desire to do this - if they are to find they can get so-far - the Under-17s, Under-19s, the odd outing off the bench, but, ultimately they are only good enough to be alternatives to bought-in non-Scots, who are not of the "Celtic Family", well, Celtic risk pissing-off that vital hidden army, having a "family at war" and possible disaster down the road.

 

 

 

 SOME years ago, in support of my claim for a pay rise, I produced figures which I laid before my then editor, proving that I, as a one-man-band sports desk, produced five times the work in one week of a news reporter. I further demonstrated that, when I took my annual holidays - it took the combined efforts of seven of my colleagues to cover for me, and that within a reduced sports pagination.

 

I didn't get as big a rise as I thought I deserved - but, I kept-on doing the work, fool that I was, until realisation hit and I got a worth-while package to take early retirement. That paper's two-man sports department is now producing roughly three-quarters of what I produced on my own.

 

But hey, that's progress in the written media. Budgets are departmental numbers are being reduced, and it shows. Not that long ago, the Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times might each have a staff man at a Partick Thistle game - today, one guy  will do it for all three titles, same thing across in the east for Falkirk, Dunfermline or Raith Rovers games for the three Scotsman titles.

 

Increasingly midweek sports coverage, the Thursday and Friday pre-match press briefings by clubs other than the Big Two, are covered by PA and the decreasing numbers of independent freelances, where once the national titles would staff them.

 

Then there is the fillers - those "Sports Digest" pages towards the back of the sports pages. Some days you can learn an awful lot about what is happening in sports other than football, outside Scotland, but, not a lot about what is going on in these sports inside Scotland - because, it is easier for the sports subs to pick-up agency copy as it floods in, that to engage with the enthusiasts who run these "minor sports" inside Scotland and don't sadly too-often, have the media savvy to get their sport coverage.

 

It's easier for the guy who runs maybe a handball team, or a basketball club, to moan that the local paper, or the Glasgow or Edinburgh-based daily or evening paper: "are only interested in football", than for he or she to establish a contact within that paper's organisation and feed them stuff.

 

Working in a local paper, I was once told by the guy who ran a very big boys club, with teams from Under-10 right up to Under-21 that: "You're a propoganda sheet for Club X", Club X being their big local rivals. I replied that, since Club X took the trouble to make sure that the coach of every team supplied them with at least a score and scorers from their weekend game, then passed that information on to me - I would print it.

 

My moaning friend sorted his club out, that was two clubs getting weekly publicity. Then a third club had a moan, same result - within a season my one page per week of local boys club match reports had become three pages per week. If wee Jimmy or Hughie from Club X scored a hat-trick, his Mum, his three Aunties and both his grannies bought the paper - up went the circulation, result, win-win all round.

 

So, the moral of this story for poor, hard-done-by, at-death's-door Scottish football is: instead of blaming all your problems on the media, sort yourselves out, be pro-active, tell us your good-news stories, and, maybe, just maybe - the fight-back can begin this season.

 

And, for the Scottish media - get your fingers out of your arses and start working, and you might still have a job in ten year's time.

 

Rant over.

Scottish Fitba Will Never Flourish Until We Ignore The English

MY OLD NUJ mucker John Nairn, a fine journalist and tradeunionist once famously said: "Scotland will never be free until the last minister is strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post". John, like a good few of us, had little time for the Unca Guid.

On the same track, I would say: "Scottish fitba will never flourish until we ignore the English".

This will be hard. For the first 75-years of the body's existence, the SFA and by definition the body of the kirk obsessed over the Auld Enemy across the Solway. Remember, the SFA's attitude to the embarrassing 0-7 loss to Uruguay at the 1954 World Cups was: "Ach, as long as we beat England, it'll be all right". Only, it wasn't.

To a Fife miner, or a trawlerman from Aberdeen's son, Dr Johnson's much-quoted: "To the Scotchman, there is no finer vista than the high road to England", wasn't the witterings of an English xenophobe, but, Gospel.

England has always been richer than Scotland, thus, Scots seeking to better themselves, in whatever walk of life, if lacking the ambition to go west - to North America, or south to Africa, the far east or Australasia, would turn first to England. This was as true in football as in any walk of life.

Once the English realised the passing game of the Scotch Professors of the 1870s wasn't cheating, but rather, the way to play the game - domestic Scottish football was on the slippery slope.

In the seven decades between St Andrew's Day 1872 - when international football began, and the outbreak of World War II, Scotland had the upper hand over England. Only during the 1890s, when the SFA turned their faces against the new-fangled professional football and refused to select those Scots who were being paid to play in England, did the English have the better of the annual match between the supposed best of the two nations.

The rest of the world didn't matter. The Uruguayan squad which won the Olympic Games in 1928 and the inaugural World Cup two years later would surely have given the Scots a game - but, Johny Foreigner didn't matter.

Hugo Messel's brilliant Austrian Wunderteam did indeed give an admittedly weak Scotland team a doing in the early thirties, as did the Italian team which won the 1934 and 1938 World Cups, but, these reverses didn't matter, neither opposition was England, and so long as Scotland could beat them at Hampden and get the odd result at Wembley - all was well with the world.

Then came the war, followed quickly by the British re-entry into FIFA and the World Cup. England got organised and Sir Walter Winterbottom, a man who has been, so-far, scandalously treted by football historians, began to persuade the "blazers" who still picked the side, th have a bit of consistency. Winterbottom also preached coaching and if one of his biggest and most-influential disciples was a Scot named Matt Busby, the idea of a team manager was anathema to the SFA "blazers".

Since WWII, in six decade-long periods of Anglo-Scottish football rivalry, only during the 1960s, when Scotland went unbeaten between the 1961 Wembley debacle and the only slightly-less-embarrassing 4-1 reverse of 1969, have the men in blue had the better of things.

Pre-WWII, we won nearly 50% of the matches; since WWII we have won just over 25%, and, of the last ten meetings, we have won a mere two - 20%.

On the basis of these facts, perhaps it might be a good idea to resume hostilities, or maybe not.

IF WGS can demonstrate that Scotland has a good chance of reversing the dismal run of results over the last 70 years or so; IF things can get better, then there might be just cause for resuming relations.

However, my take is: over these 70-years, we have all but abandoned the traditional "Passing Game" of those Scotch Professors and embraced England's "Long Ball" game. We side-lined our tanner-ba players, opting for English-type power players. Well, if we cannot beat the masters of that type of football - which is in any case now out-dated - why should we bother.

Also, for all their continued presence in the upper echelons of the FIFA rankings, are England all that good? Yes, they've got a better World Cup and European Championship record than us, but, they've won nothing since 1966, indeed, they have been going backwards over recent tournaments.

Sure, it would be nice to have bragging rights over our neighbours. But, what use are bragging rights when you are living in adjacent streets in a sink estate? And, that's where England and Scotland are in international football terms.

Bringing England back into play might go down well with the lunatic fringe of the Tartan Army, but, I don't think it would prepare us for facing the big guns - Spain, Italy, Germany or Brazil.

Then there is the down-side - the English media. I've read English reports of every Scottish win over the men in white. In English eyes, we never win because of our superiority, there is always the rider - roughly summed-up as: "This losing England team was quite the worse one since the last losing England team".

Praise for Scotland was always tempered by: "Of course, the Scots didn't have to play all that well - so poor was the English challenge".

I have long felt, a Scotland v England match as a single entity, has no benefit for Scottish football. A return of the Home International Championship - preferably if it was to become an Under-23 or Development tournament - would have some good, as a bridge between the Under-21 and full squads.

But, for bragging rights - no, forget it. Concentrate instead on boosting our FIFA ranking and getting up into the First Pot for tournament draws. Playing England regularly would soon became an unwelcome distraction.

However, that said - it is great to beat them.

Last-Minute Reilly - A True Legend

JULY 2013 has been a sad month for football, not least from the loss over this past weekend of firstly Bert Trautmann, then "Last-Minute" Lawrie Reilly. That's another two of the good guys gone.

 

There is surely football in heaven - if not, is it worth going there. The Hibs' challenge in the annual Celestial Cup just got stornger with Reilly's sad passing. Can somebody up there please let me know how they fitted Reilly into the forward line alongside Joe Baker and the other four of the Famous Five? Reilly always said that Baker was the one Hibs player who had a chance of playing with the iconic forward line - his suggestion was to move Eddie Turnbull to right half and put Baker at inside left. What Turnbull said to this isn't recorded - the bleeper apparently broke down!!

 

To win 38 caps at a time when the Scotland selection was done by the SFA's Selection committee, with all the horse trading and mistakes that implies, speaks volumes as to Reilly's quality as a player. His record places him as Scotland's best post-World War II centre forward and probably only Hughie Gallacher rates higher internationally and Jimmy McGrory at club level.

 

Speaking as a journalist, he was always a joy to speak to when doing historical pieces; Lawrie Reilly had a joi de vivre which contrasts so-vividly with the: "Dae ah hiv tae speak tae that press c***s" approach of so-many of today's "Superstars".

 

Mind you, a "superstar striker" today is somebody who can regularly put the ball into an empty net from six yards. Over-hyped, over-rated and bolstered by the "top-spin" of the Sky, BBC, English Premiership, SPL and feuding red-tops media machine, some fairly-ordinary players are lauded to the heavens today.

 

Compared to them - Reilly was the real deal: a seriously-good, brave player, and a very nice man too. Rest in Peace.

 

 

 

WE WILL have forgotten all about it, until the Awards Season comes around in late November, but: am I alone in thinking the Chris Froome/Team Sky milestone, in winning the Tour de France, has lessons for football.

 

Froome is obviously a very special athlete. However, today athletes need a support team around them and Team Sky is surely, having got Sir Bradley Wiggins across the line first last year, and now Froom this year, a very special outfit.

 

I would like to think that our top football teams would be seeking out Sir Dave Brailsford and his team to find-out how they have so-consistently brought medals to British cycling, either as Team Sky or as Team GB in World and Olympic Championships. There are surely lessons to be learned there.

 

However, there is little or no chance of any of our top sides sending their managers round to pick Brailsford's brains - which is their loss. I just wonder what a Team Sky-type support group around Wayne Rooney might get out of him.

 

Look at Andy Murray; arguably the greatest Scottish athlete since Allan Wells or Liz McColgan. The Scottish Lawn Tennis Association can take little credit for his success; sure, his mother can, helping her boy find and build the support team which has got him to the very pinnacle of the game - more so, since he had the good sense to take Ivan Lendl on board as his coach.

 

But, a footballing Andy Murray, with the same talent and work ethic - would he have done as well had he gone to one of our top football teams? I don't think so.

 

 

 

GORDON Strachan has named his long squad, all 29 of them, for the upcoming "friendly" against England at Wembley. And, to nobody's great surprise, he has restored some of the guys who, for various reasons, body-swerved that unexpected but ever-so-welcome win over Croatia.

 

Fair enough, WGS is on a team-building mission towards the 2016 European Championships, but, I'd have thought, after that great win at the end of last season, it might have been nice to have given the same XI a vote of confidence.

 

Mind you: "Don't change a winning team", has never sat well with Scotland, whether the team is being run by a selection committee, or a Team Manager. So why change a system which has served us so ill over so many years.    

 

 

He Was A Good German

A VERY good journalist friend of mine is having a difficult week - he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. This guy, like myself an old hot metal man, has a nice wee pension enhancer as a writer of sporting obituaries. He has written eight this week; nice work if you can get it - obituary writers will be the last sub-species of journalists to be laid-off through lack of work - but, sometimes a wee bit disheartening, if you are required to assess the life of one of your heroes. That's what I'm doing this morning, re-assessing Bert Trautmann, who has died, aged 89.

 

There is an exchange in Eric Williams' book 'The Wooden Horse', which tells the story of the author's legendary escape from Stalag Luft III - the Prisoner of War camp, from which also came The Great Escape.

 

Williams' legendary and unique escape plan was thought-up in the camp hospital and in the book, he tells of an exchange between a couple of bed-ridden prisoners and one of the German guards. The ward gramophone is playing a Beethoven symphony, enter the guard, who says: "Ah Beethoven - he was a good German".

 

"Yeh mate - he's dead", was the response from a Cockney prisoner, This sums-up the attitude of the time: the only good German was a dead one.

 

That was the attitude into which captured paratrooper Berni Trautmann marched, when he entered a POW camp in Cheshire in 1945. Trautmann, as a member of the Nazi Party and a Hitler Youth sporting hero was classified as a "Black" POW - a hard-cofre Nazi; however, he quickly realised the error of his ways, was re-classified as "Grey" - a Nazi with doubts and finally "White" - a repentant Nazi, prepared to work to undo the wrongs of National Socialism.

 

He had seen the errors of his ways and sought to make partial redress. Trautmann himself says the friendliness which he encountered when, as driver to the POW Camp Commandant, he began to learn English and mix with them outside the barbed wire, completely changed him.

 

He transferred from the POW football team, where an injury-induced switch from centre-half to goalkeeper unearthed the fact that, while Trautmann was a "good" centre-half, he was a "brilliant" goalkeeper, to non-league St Helen's Town, set him on the path to footballing immortality.

 

Perhaps he was lucky; it would have been almost impossible for an English or British goalkeeper to have succeeded Frank Swift when that England legend retired in the summer of 1949 - the German whom Manchester City signed in October of that year was sufficiently exotic to have a chance.

 

It is said 20,000 people beseiged Maine Road to protest at the signing of a former POW, when he left the club 550 games and 15-years later, 47,000 turned out for his testimonial match.

 

Trautmann was good, of that there is no doubt. As a young goalkeeper, watching him reach shots he had no right to get near on Pathe News newsreels, I was mesmerised. But, it was Trautmann's fearless disregard for personal safety which touched me most.

 

Back then, goalkeepers were not the untouchables of today. Centre forwards such as Bill Houliston, Nat Lofthouse, Don Kitchenbrand and BobbySmith had free rein to shoulder-charge goalies - a freedom which only began to be looked-on as unsporting after Lofthouse's controversial winning goal for Bolton in the 1958 FA Cup Final, when he put ball and Harry Gregg into the net with a charge which would today get the perpertrator a straight red card.

 

Trautmann's bravery was his undoing, yet making, when he suffered "a broken neck", diving at the feet of Birmingham City's Peter Murphy in the 1956 FA Cup Final. Like Monty Python's Black Knight - who dismissed the cutting-off of his limbs as: "Tis but a mere scratch sir", Trautmann climbed Wembley's famous 39 steps, accepted his medal from the Duke of Edinburgh, took part in the post-match celebrations, then, still discomforted, went back to Manchester and only thought on the Tuesday: "Maybe I should get this stiff neck looked at".

 

An e-ray showed he was badly-injured and millimetres from death - a legend was born.

 

Trautmann was an innovator. He made the accurate "torpedo throw" to an unmarked team-mate a great weapon in counter-attacking. He pre-dated Peter Shilton by his method of using his impressive physique to come off his line and take-on and beat strikers to crosses. He made acrobatic saves which were beyond other English League goalkeepers.

 

Lev Yashin, who was hardly the most self-effacing of men, insisted there had only been two great goalkeepers up until his time - himself and Trautmann.

 

He was Bob Wilson's hero; and, whatever you think of Wilson, who I believe is much mis-understood in Scotland, his thesis on the art and science of goalkeeping turned him from Robert Primrose Wilson BA to Dr Robert Primrose Wilson, PhD, BA and is the seminal work on goalkeeping.

 

Gordon Banks thought the world of him. If Yashin, Wilson and Banks rated him so-highly - who are we to dispute their views?

 

I think the GErman FA realised their: "home-based Germans only" cost them the services of a German goalkeeper deservedly ranked up their with Maier, Klos, Kahn and the rest, when Trautmann was at his peak. But, they made good use of him as a globe-trotting coach and ambassador, before he retired to live out his days in Spain.

 

In his love 'em and leave 'em approach to women, he perhaps deserves censure; but hey, that is seemingly a footballers' trait. Sure, he had faults, who hasn't. Apparently he had a quick and evil temper, but, his brilliance at his job is a good plea in mitigation.

 

Beating the Germans in the Heavenly World Cup just got harder.

 

Bert Trautmann - he was a good German. Certainly England's favourite.

 

 

David White - A Good Man, But, So Unlucky

DAVID White died this week, aged 79. I trust he is at peace. Because, football dealt him a bad hand, when, with a wee bit of luck,he could have been a legend. White's story shows how thin the line between success and failure is.

He was, like so many good managers, an average player; always a part-timer in a decade of service to Clyde, who he had joined, at the relatively late age of 23 from Larkhall junior side Royal Albert. A hard-tackling wing-half, (that's a midfielder to the youngsters), according to the legendary Jim Baxter, he was: "'The Choir Boy Assassin; - Davie would kick you, then turn round and help you up, with a smile on his face".

But White was ambitious, one of the first players to gain coaching qualifications while still playing, which saw him, while captaining Clyde, promoted to player-coach. Then, when the SFA offered the poisoned chalice of the Scotland team manager's job - "but we selectors still get to pick the side", to John Prentice, White, aged 33 succeeded him as Clyde boss.

He immediately took the wee friendly club to third in the old 18-club First Division. Ths should have got them into Europe, but, the regulations of the time said two clubs from the same city couldn't compete in one European competition - Clyde were barred, because Rangers had qualified ahead of them - instead Dundee, who had finished a distant sixth, got in, and promptly reached the semi-final, changed days indeed.

But White still got into Europe, after being hijacked to Ibrox as assistant manager to the long-serving Scot Symon. The idea was apparently, for Symon to teach White the ropes, with a view to White in time taking over; while the younger man kept on his track suit and did the day-to-day coaching.

OK in theory, but theory went out of the window within six months. Somehow the idea surfaced in the Blue Room that Symon, who had sorted-out the torpor of the ailing Bill Struth's final couple of seasons, then seen-off the challenge of Tommy Walker's Hearts and Willie Waddell's Kilmarnock had suddenly become old-fashioned, out-dated, "yesterday's man" in the face of the challenge of the Jock Stein-rejuvenated, no, re-born Celtic.

While the track-suited Stein was pictured daily, out on the park, at the centre of things, directing training operations, Symon, suit-wearing, trilby on his head, pipe in mouth, watched from the side-lines.

Rangers needed a similar manager, suddenly, in November, 1967, even though his team was topping the league, Symon was history. There is a story that he was offered a move "upstairs", to the supervisory role of 'General Manager', with White taking charge of the team, but refused to take it and was gone.

Aged 34, White was Rangers' manager.

Going through the league unbeaten, until ambushed by Aberdeen, at Ibrox, on the final afternoon - to open the door for Celtic to overhaul Rangers and lift the title; and to lose to eventual winners Hearts and Leeds United at the quarter-final stages of both the Scottish and Inter-Cities Fairs Cups, and to lose just that one game in the league shows what a good team White's Rangers were. It wasn't his fault that Celtic, with the Lisbon Lions in their pomp, were better.

The following season, 1968-69 was a similar story, Rangers, with Colin Stein - for whom White had paid a Scottish record £100,000 - and Alex Ferguson scoring goals for fun up front, chased Celtic all the way in the league, but again came up short. Then came the 1968 Scottish Cup final, in which Celtic destroyed Rangers 4-0.

This debacle came on the back of another Fairs Cup exit, losing to eventual winners Newcastle United in the semi-final, the second leg of which, at St James's Park had been marred by some Rangers "fans", fuelled-up on a cocktail of "Newkie Broon" and Federation Ale - the dreaded North-East "rocket fuel", rioting.

The knives were now out for White, and sharpening them with a series of vitriolic articles, dubbing the Ibrox boss: 'The Boy David', was Willie Waddell, who had forged a reputation as one of Scotland's top football writers, since leaving Kilmarnock at the summit of Scottish football, as Champions in 1965, to join the Scottish Daily Express.

White soldiered on into the new season. He was rebuilding Rangers, Alex "Doddie" Macdonald was now on-board, while he had signed some promising youngsters, including future Rangers captain Derek Johnstone and Alfie Conn Junr.

But, he had further alienated some of the board by re-signing a now failing Jim Baxter, who was well set on the self-destruction road which would eventually kill him. The board had been only too glad to off-load the hell-raising Baxter when he was in his international prime, bringing him back didn't enamour White to his board, and the move was criticised by the constantly carping Waddell.

The end came quickly. Rangers were second in the league, but already out of the League Cup, when they were dumped out of the European Cup-Winners Cup, 6-2 on aggregate, by the Polish "unknowns" Gornik Zabrze.

In truth, Gornik - who went on to lose to the Joe Mercer/Malcolm Allison managed Manchester City in the final. Ironically, before Allison developed delusions of grandeur, this was the blueprint for the sort of management team Rangers had perhaps envisaged when they united Symon and White -  was a bloody good team.

In the tie, Rangers were very unlucky; Gornik's second goal in Poland was a classic call for goal-line technology: Rangers goalie Gerry Neef went to his grave convinced the ball never crossed the line. Then, in the dying seconds a rare Kai Johansen mistake handed Gornik a precious third goal.

In the second leg at Ibrox, Rangers missed enough chances to win two games, before, late in the game, the frustrated players chucked it and Gornik scored a couple of late goals to complete the rout.

The team was booed off the park, the Bears chanted: "White must go" and, on the morrow, he went.

Less than a fortnight later Waddell, White's harshest critic, was the new manager and, for as long as he was connected to the club, life-long Rangers fan White refused to set foot inside Ibrox.

After over two years out of the game, he again succeeded Prentice, this time as Dundee boss. At Dens, he finally put one over on Stein, by leading Dundee to the 1973-74 League Cup; he also got them into four Scottish Cup semi-finals, where they generally lost to Celtic, and twice into Europe. He also gave Gordon Strachan his first team debut.

Reading this record, it is clear, White was a better manager than some guys we could name, who went on to manage Scotland, for instance. But, boy, was his timing bad - to take-over as manager of Rangers, at a time when the greatest club set-up Scotland has ever seen - Bob Kelly pulling the strings in the corridors of power, Jock Stein waving his magic wand as manager and getting the best out of more than half of the all-time Celtic dream team: McGrain, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Johnstone, Dalglish, Auld and Lennox - that's enough to give any football man from outwith the Celtic Family nightmares.

You have to wonder, what might have been, had the Rangers board held their nerve; had they been able to persuade Symon to become say Director of Football and mentor White the same way as Walter Smith mentored Ally McCoist. And here, I have to say, from his record at Clyde and Dundee, it has to be argued that White was a better manager than Ally.

Might not Rangers, like the Mercer/Allison at Manchester City, have pulled the tail of the dominant force across the city. Of course, it might, as happened in Manchester, all have gone pear-shaped, except, I suspect White lacked Allison's self-destructive streak.

There wasn't that much between Stein's Celtic and White's Rangers. Who knows, maybe, a Symon/White pairing could have perhaps denied Celtic at least a couple of their nine-in-a-row titles. Maybe, had White been allowed to serve a longer apprenticeship under Symon, Rangers might not have collapsed as they did in the second half of the 1970s.

You know, when you consider his part in White's dismissal, and you leave aside the somewhat fortunate Barcelona success against Moscow Dynamo, maybe Willie Waddell wasn't the icon some Rangers Men think him to be.

Sure, he was almost Stein-like in his Machievellian machinations, his vision in pushing for the re-building of Ibrox has to be acknowledged; but, his bad-mouthing of White, allied to his efforts to air-brush George Young out of Rangers history, and what some see as his failure to properly acknowledge the part Jock Wallace played in Rangers successes in the early 1970s, point to a Willie Waddell who had feet of clay.

But, all that is history and speculation. What we should recognise, as we remember Davie White is - he was a good manager, who simply didn't enjoy much luck when it mattered. And as Napoleon believed of his generals, but never said out loud: "Better to be lucky than good".

TO COME right up to date - well done St Johnstone on Thursday night. Now boys, don't undo all the good work in the second leg.

Scotland expects - oh shit, isn't that a recipe for disappointment?