Britney Undersold It As Scottish Fitba Gets Hit four More Times

THE GREAT GRAHAM SPIERS once accused me of being “hermeneutically challenging” in my writing. For the benefit of those among us who, unlike “Britney” didn't abandon a Divinity degree at the University of Glasgow in favour of a lengthy, lucrative and distinguished career on “The street of shame” - to be hermeneutically challenging is to not believe the Gospels – in my case, the Gospels according to the Scottish Football Writers Association.

I began as a zealot, but, over the decades I have back-slid, via agnosticism to athiesm; today I am, as I outlined in my last posting, a follower of the Prophet Renton, with a nod to the sub-prophet Groundskeeper Willie.

It really is shite being Scottish. It's particularly shite being involved in Scottish Fitba and we don't help ourselves by being a fractous nation who have ensured that damned Scots have ruined Scotland.

AMONG THE somewhat lengthy list of books I would like to have written is one on the Captains of Scotland – the 156 men from Bob Gardner in 1872 to Scott McTominay in 2023, who have led out the Scotland international team. I actually started that one, but, could not interest a publisher in it, so, it lies there, unfinished, cluttering up my archive.

Now, in the early days of international fitba, the Scottish Captaincy was something of an after-thought, for every Charles Campbell or Walter Arnott, who brought some gravitas to the job, there would be three or four guys, occasionally winning their first cap, who got the job on a sort of MacBuggins' Turn basis.

But, in time the likes of Jimmy McMullan and more-specifically George Young had almost the power of an England Cricket Captain in how they did the job. I recall a lengthy chat with Eric Caldow – himself one of the great Scotland captains (15 times) – who told me Young was not so much Scotland Captain as Scotland Player-Manager, mind you, that status didn't stop the pygmy-minded stumblebums of the then SFA International Committee humiliating him in Spain in 1957, at the end of his career.

Young was not only a great international captain. He was a great Captain of Rangers, in which role he succeeded an other icon, Jock 'Tiger' Shaw. With Team Manager Bill Struth growing old and suffering poor health Young had pretty-much to hold the fort at the club, then deal with the change-over when Struth retired and the younger Scot Symon – a former team mate took over.

I often wonder what might have happened to the international side, had Young, rather than Ian McColl, got the call from Park Gardens in 1960, to become Scotland Manager. However, given several of the 'blazers' who had arranged Young's removal in 1957 were still on the International Committee, that one was never going to fly.

Young arrived at Rangers as a centre half during World War II and, with Willie Woodburn on active service, he was quickly blooded in the first team, making his debut as a 19-year-old against Hamilton Academical, in November, 1941. However, when Woodburn was available, Young was switched to right-back, where he succeeded the long-serving Dougie Gray. While he filled-in at centre-half for both Rangers and Scotland if Woodburn was unavailable, it wasn't until
“Big Ben” was harshly suspended sine die in 1954, that he moved permanently to centre-half, to play out his career there.

I think of Young when I look at the situation of the current Rangers Club Captain, James Tavernier. Now, although he has been with Rangers for over a decade and has been Club Captain since 2018, I honestly have never considered him “Rangers' Class”. That, however, should not disqualify him from wearing the armband, Bobby Shearer is revered as a former Rangers Captain, yet I always felt he was, at best, the third-best full-back at the club; he was never as good a player as contemporaries Caldow (whom he had displaced as Club Captain) or John Little.

Shearer, who like Tavernier played right-back, for all his limitations, knew how to defend, a skill which appears totally alien to Tavernier. Tavernier is now 33, the age at which Young moved permanently to centre-half. This season, with the new manager apparently not trusting him on the flanks, he has increasingly come on in central defence, where his defensive limitations have been cruelly exposed.

He has played some 650 first team games, for 11 clubs (8 of these being while on-loan); he may score a lot of goals for a full-back, a wing-back even, but, in those positions, the first job is to defend, a skill in which Tavernier has repeatedly demonstrated failings. To me, he is a liability and the fact he has played over 500 games for the club, to my mind demonstrates how far standards have fallen at Ibrox in the past decade and more. Mind you, BBC Shortbread's Tom English has come out, post-match with a puff piece about Tavernier's leadership and about the team's terrible defending. If James Tavernier is the antidote to terrible defending – Rangers are in more bother than we think they are.

MIND YOU, so much media content these days is generated in London' thankfully for Rangers, no sooner had the final whistle sounded in Brugge than they were thrown a diversionary lifeline – when Manchester United fell to lowly Grimsby Town in some minor English cup competition.

'The Mariners' sit 56 places below United in the English League standings, but half the world away in media exposure or interest. Not it has to be admitted quite the gulf between Celtic and their midweek conquerors, but, far enough for those of us whose allegiances are with some “Diddy Team” to have a laugh at the suffering of the Entitled.

By the way, I did enjoy the Paddy Power video clip which had a right go at Grimsby, for needing penalties to beat Manchester United – suggesting a half-way competent team ought to have had the game won in 90 minutes.

No word on Aberdeen and Hibernian, I hear you say. Well, 'tis one thing to mock the Entitled, such as Celtic, Rangers and Manchester United – one does not mock the afflicted and disadvantaged.

And, in the Great Studio in the Sky, The Saint and Greavsie turn to each other and agree – they called it correctly all those years ago. This week has clearly demonstrated: Football Is a Funny Old Game.