Scottish Footballers And Alcohol - A Marriage Made In Hell

Gary O'Connor, who was daft, with Darren Fletcher - who wasn't

GARY O'Connor got a wee bit of media exposure on Friday in one of our supposed “serious” newspapers – with the shock disclosure, wee Berti Vogts allowed his Scotland squads to have “a wee swally” before games.

Now, a wee swally is a long-established part of Scottish football practice. Willie Ormond, great Scotland manager and a man who saw active war-time service in the Royal Navy was a staunch advocate of “a wee wet”, as he called it. Richard Gough explained Rangers' “nine in a row” as proof of the adage: “the team that drinks together wins together”, and, was it not a time-honoured tradition that a retired player bought a pub.

 Willie Ormond, enjoyed "a wee wet", as did some of his squad

However, we are talking about Scottish footballers here – there are always one or two who like the girl in Oklahoma – can't say no. Ormond's 1974 World Cup squad got a seriously-bad pre-tournament press from these staunch upholders of the cult of Holy Wullie – the Scottish Football Writers Association - after the two smallest men in the squad, Billy Bremner and Jimmy Johnstone, drunk not wisely but too well in Belgium and Norway.

Gough's squad included the daftest of daft boys, Paul Gascoigne, who was, of course, a Geordie: “a Scotsman with his brains bashed in”; but there was also “The Goalie” Andy Goram – a man who took the old notion that the glove-wearers are all daft to extremes.

All goalies are supposedly daft, but, The Goalie went a bit further

Then, we had “Boozegate” during George Burley's reign, while, one of my cousins told of, on his single exposure to membership of a Scotland squad. He and the other debutants, having gone to bed early, were up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed for breakfast the next morning, to find half a dozen multi-capped Old Firm stars – including Lisbon Lions and Barcelona Bears - crawling in, obviously the worse for wear and while perhaps they had been in a bed – they had not slept much.

So, O'Connor's bombshell announcement is hardly news to those of us with a knowledge of Scottish football history. Mind you, it does show, Berti obviously had not conducted due diligence on Scottish footballers. Imagine thinking a bunch of young, reasonably-fit Scots would have the self-control to ration themselves to just the one half-pint. Perhaps Berti, English, far less Scottish not being his native tongue, thought “a wee swally” was just that, a small drink.

Mind you, my old mate Tom Hendrie, the former St Mirren manager, always reckoned, footballers cannot drink. Hendrie, a Scottish Schools internationalist had the security of a clutch of Highers when he embarked on his football career with Dundee. So, when he didn't make the grade at Dens Park, he could seamlessly go to university, get a good degree and go into teaching.

 Tom Hendrie - "footballers cannot drink"

He always maintained students drank more than footballers, and with less adverse affects on them. Tom took a composite degree at Leeds University – Mathematics with PE; this gave him a good knowledge of sports physiology and his take was: footballers, being very fit, have a lower tolerance to drink and got under the influence faster than indolent, unfit “normal” students.

It was ever thus. One-fifth of Hibs' legendary “Famous Five”, was supposed to be a really heavy drinker. One of my uncles frequented the same Edinburgh pub in which this wonderful player supposedly got blind drunk every night. The reality was, the player came in twice a week, had one pint, played a game of darts, had some craic with the other regulars, before leaving. But, the word on the streets was he was a right soak who got legless every night.

Had that been the case, he could not have sourced the magic he and his four companions worked each Saturday.

So, maybe Gary O'Connor, Derek Riordan, Scott Brown, Andy Goram and the many other “daft boys” - those Scottish footballers, (not all ex-Hibs players) who have had their drink-fuelled indiscretions publicised by those guardians of moral rectitude – our media, weren't so bad after all.

I leave this sorry subject with the words of one of the daftest and greatest of all harum-scarum, hard-drinking, hard-living, Scottish footballers, the one, the only Slim Jim Baxter. I remember the gallus one telling me: “Ah wis never that intae fitba ken, bein guid at fitba, tae me, wis jist a wey o' gettin' tae shag better-lookin' burds”.

 The Slim Genius - football was a means to an end for him

But, my favourite story of all concerning inebriated Scottish footballers is about the young Rangers' player who: “had a 'mare” at Celtic Park and was directly responsible for a Celtic win. He tried his best to forget about it in various pubs that night, before, the worse for wear, staggering past the queue outside Glasgow's trendiest club, expecting, as usual, to be ushered straight in.

Not this time, the doorman would not admit him; whereupon the player stood on what little dignity he had left.

“Dis youse no ken wha Ah am?” he asked; only to be told: “Aye, you're the daft cunt that cost us the gemme the day, so ye're no getting' in. Noo, fuck-off hame and sober up”.

Lesson learned, he went on to amass a shed-load of caps in a very good career.