Denis With Dementia - Devastating For Those Of Us Who Marvelled At His Playing

THERE IS, sadly, but one football story with which to start this blog – the devastating news that 'The King' - Denis Law has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Vascular Dementia, sadly being afflicted like his great friend and team mate Bobby Charlton, with whom he is pictured below, in 1965.

 

This is a crushing blow to those of us old enough to remember Denis in his pomp in the 1960s, when he was one of a clutch of genuinely World-Class Scotland players. That Scotland team of the early 1960s, with Law and Alan Gilzean or Ian St John to score the goals, Jim Baxter and John White bossing the midfield and Willie Henderson and Davie Wilson running riot on the wings was a joy to watch.

Sadly, though Ian McColl did a sterling job as manager, the side was picked by the butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers of the SFA's selection committee, most of whom couldn't pick their noses and wouldn't have known a player had Dave Mackay chosen to boot them up the bahookies, time and again came up with a duff selection to hamper our cause. Also, back then, if the big English clubs didn't fancy releasing their players for Scotland duty – they didn't.

Scotland were really good back then, with Law to the fore. I prefer to remember him, his long-sleeved shirt cuffs clutched in his fists, darting onto a through ball from Baxter, or getting on the end of a Wilson cross. He was very-special.

They say you should never meet your idols. In a professional capacity, I had the pleasure of talking to Denis once or twice, he was always a joy to speak with, utterly without side or arrogance. My thoughts are with his family as they come to terms with this terrible news and assess how to care for him going forward.

I AM old enough to remember the USSR – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – when it was on the go. Everything within that vast superstate was run and regulated by the Communist Party. This control went as far as the newspapers, of which there were two – PRAVDA and ISVESTIA.

PRAVDA – the official party of the Central Communist Party - meant Truth; ISVESTIA – the newspaper of the USSR government - meant news. The popular story was, you never found the truth in PRAVDA, and you never found news in ISVESTIA. Today, here in Scotland, The Celtic View is often referred to as PRAVDA, strangely, the same name has never been given to TRN. That title is fair enough for TCV, however, since it offers The Celtic Family the official thinking of the football club.

Rangers, of course, given the Hell the institution has been through since 2012, tends to play the media game somewhat differently from Celtic. Jock Stein, for instance, when managing Celtic, used to delight in releasing his best snippets to the newspapers on a Friday evening, to be certain of grabbing Saturday's back page Splash from Rangers.

Rangers, even when Willie Waddell, himself a football writer of some experience, was in charge, never played this game. As The Establishment Club they expected to get the Saturday sports splash as of right. In today's utterly-changed media market, that expectation no longer holds good.

I understand, in this 21^st century, if you want media access to The Rangers Football Club, you have to pay dearly for the privilege, and, they control what you get: which player or staff member you can speak with, when you can speak, and which subjects are off-limits. The concept of a free press no longer apparently holds good down Edmiston Drive. They are even at war with the SPFL over a sponsorship deal, agreed with ALL the clubs, but, which doesn't suit the business interests of the Rangers' Chairman.

This has been coming for some time. I remember, a decade or so ago, one of my pals, Chief Football Writer for a major Sunday paper telling me, he had less trouble getting to speak to European Footballers of the Year, with major foreign clubs, than he had getting a chat with some wan fittit “hammer thrower” (© Graeme Souness) who played for Rangers.

Somebody should maybe tell them: “You are no longer Ra Peepul.”

(A Wee Story) - About 25 years ago, when I was single-handedly running the sports desk of the UK's smallest daily newspaper, we had a strict pecking order on the Sports Desk:

1. The local football team

2. The local ice hockey team

3. Everything else.

The football team had to be first, 'twas ever thus, the ice hockey team were second, because that was their place and in any case the Editor was a fanatic. This position meant, for five of the six weekly editions of the paper, the fitba team got the back page, but, on a Tuesday morning, that position went to the ice hockey team.

All went well until I had a wee fa'-oot with the ice hockey team. I was chucked out of the rink mid-game. I was not an innocent victim in this, I will admit, but, and I have always been grateful to him for the stance he took, he backed me to the hilt – to the extent, he ordered me that week, rather than giving ice hockey the Tuesday back page, to cut their cover back from two mentions of the weekend games, one paragraph, detailing the two results.

This caused me a fair bit of angst – it was a lot of space to fill, but, we did it, and sat back to await developments. I got the first call at 9.01am, one of the ice hockey club's major sponsors. I passed him onto the Editor, they spoke for about two minutes.

Ten minutes later, the Editor summoned me to the inner sanctum – the ice hockey club had capitulated totally, normal service was resumed.

Now, I write this utterly convinced – it will never happen. But, I am prepared to believe, if ALL the media, all the newspapers, the television stations, the radio stations, the football magazines were to get together and decide, until they drop this ridiculous pay for access nonsense and go back to supporting a free press – the name Rangers will never appear anywhere in the Scottish media. I don't think it would take the club too-long to come down off their high horse.

For instance, Rangers and BBC Shortbread have been at war for at least the past two years, maybe longer – but, it's such a silly stair-heid rammy, I long ago lost the tiny interest I had in it. The BBC are apparently still not let into Ibrox. OK, why, lang syne, didn't the Head of BBC Scotland tell that club: “Either we get the same media privileges as everyone else, or the name Rangers is never uttered on BBC Scotland.” I bet the club would have capitulated very quickly.

There's another line the media could take with the club. Tell them, the days of free advertising are over, you pay us to cover you, or, we don't report on or broadcast your games. Again I don't think the club could let the media black-out last too-long.

They could, and probably would, try to get bye with the blue version of Scottish PRAVDA, but, I don't think the talent is there to make that work.

Sadly, we will never see this. Received wisdom in Scotland has it that the red tops rely on their racing coverage and their Old Firm coverage for sales – even their currently sinking circulations. Therefore, for as long as they feel they need to have Old Firm stories on the sports pages, they will suck it up and bow to the club's power.

After all, when even the “posh” Scottish papers have dedicated Celtic and Rangers reporters, you can see where the power lies. But, this does not help make for proper coverage of Scottish football. And the game is the poorer for this.