The following is an OFF-TOPIC post
An open letter to a Scottish sporting hero
Dear Sir Andy,
I pen this post, with a heavy heart. What I am about to suggest will probably not meet with your approval, but, I encourage you to give serious consideration to what I am about to suggest.
I believe it is time for you to announce your retirement from front-line tennis.
Your legacy is assured. When it comes to football for instance, you will get an argument in any pub in Scotland, as to who has been our greatest player; the usual suspects will be trotted-out: Dalglish, Law, Baxter, Johnstone, Bremner, Souness and so on.
The same situation arises in Rugby: Andy Irvine, Gavin Hastings, Ken Scotland, John Rutherford etc. In motor sport, take your pick between Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart. Athletics – Liddell, Wells, McColgan – discuss. Indeed, apart from your fellow knight of the realm – Sir Chris Hoy in cycling, I can think of no single individual who stands for any sport the way we Scots identify tennis with you (with all due respect to your mother and elder brother).
Like every other Scot, I find it hard to watch your ongoing struggles against the fading of your sporting life, your battered body and your seeming determination to keep going.
It is one of the absolute truisms of any sport – the hardest decision a participant has to make, is when to call it quits. Few sporting greats ever get it right. The fire within cannot be dampened. We lesser exponents have become used to hearing the legends insist, they still have one-more big day inside them.
I get the impression, that is how you feel, I can, I think, well understand why you feel like this. However, I think, now would be a good time to if not finally call it quits – to get off the tread mill and enjoy some Me time.
Your playing legacy is assured. I assume you have been well-advised and managed throughout your career. Your, and your families financial security is (as far as any of can be secure) guaranteed.
You have a young and growing family. You have business interests, including a hotel which surely will, when the current pandemic eases, quickly begin again to pull-in customers.
You will be 34 in May. Might now not be a good time to get off the tournament treadmill, spend some time at home with the family – enjoy Wimbledon (should it go ahead) without having to actually play, do some media work. Chill-out and allow your body to recover.
Then, you could come back and enjoy yourself in the shallower waters of the Seniors Tour. Have a bit of fun, keep the competitive juices flowing but, without having the target on your back for younger, fitter players, who you would have swatted away like annoying flies, before your body failed you.
You have nothing left to prove. Relax and enjoy yourself untilt he day comes, when you hang up your racquet for the last time.
Think about this.
Your admirer,
Socrates MacSporran.
ANDY MURRAY'S struggles against injury, and his determination to keep playing – his intense love of his sport, compares most-favourably against the attitude of so-many of our over-paid, over-rated footballers.
The latest bunch to have me wondering if they even have brains in their feet, are the five Rangers players to get into bother with that Covid restrictions ignoring house party.
What were they thinking? Mind you, when, like our football teams, particularly the Big Two, you carry too-big a playing staff, you are going to end up with bored fringe players.
I honestly do not think any of the five are what my old Hun of a Faither would have termed: Rangers Class. None of them are household names in their own households.
Their actions, at a time when it all seems to be going well for their club, after the turmoil of most of the past decade, are simply unfathomable.
I had a chuckle at a suggestion from one of my fellow Kilmarnock fans, as we discussed the incident tonight. He thought, now that Celtic have caught up with Rangers in terms of fixtures played – the fitba powers that be should penalise Rangers for their players breaking the Covid protocols, by deducting them 15 points.
The two clubs would then be level on points, with nine games to play – game on. Who knows, we could end up with another Helicopter Sunday.
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