ONE OF MY OLD neighbours, a man who had given a life time of service as player then committee-member, not to mention supporter, to our village's Junior fitba team shocked me one day, when he announced, because of his wife's failing health, they were moving into sheltered housing in nearby “Scumnock”.
“Steady-on Big Yin,” I cautioned. I recognised him moving to that place would automatically double the average IQ of the populace, but, feared for his long-time survival. Correctly too, he was struck by a particularly virulent strain of Dementia and was quickly headed for that great Junior field in the sky.
We take our Junior Fitba seriously here in God's County, local rivalries are not to be treated lightly. My big pal worked all his life in construction and he would suffer raised eyebrows in the tea hut on say the building of one of Glasgow's peripheral housing schemes when, in answer to the question: “Whit team dae you support Big Yin?” he would answer: “Glenafton Athletic”.
This almost always brought the supplementary: “Naw, naw Pal, whit team dae ye really support?” The questoner, invariably from either Greater Glasgow, or somewhere along the M8 corridor, clearly felt there were but two possible answers – to offer a third or fourth: say “Ayr United” or “Kilmarnock” and there was still a degree of disbelief.
Truth to tell, since God's County of East Ayrshire is occasionally referred to as “Orange County” there is a presumption of pro-Ibrox leanings across most of us natives; indeed, I can honestly say, if my old Alma Mater, the soon to be demolished “real” Cumnock Academy – the one at the foot of Barrhill for any fellow Academicals reading this – had had a school song, then that song would have been: “The Sash My Father Wore.”
Given that mythology, I was somewhat nonplussed when my eldest daughter's “Bidie-In” informed me on Sunday that efforts to give away free tickets for Saturday's Rangers v Alloa Athletic around his work-place in Cumnock met with more refusals than keen grabs. He also reported one “Bluenose” as saying: “No thanks, there are guys getting' a geemme wi' Rangers the noo who couldnae get a gemme wi' the Talbot.”
Given this scenario, I trust the Daily Rhebel's Sports Editor has the cracked Rangers crest graphic close to hand, ready for instant insertion into a page plan.
I watched the live broadcast of that Rangers' game, if only to confirm my long-held belief, there are guys on the park who never have been, are not and never will be: “Rangers Class”. It's embarrassing. Mind you, for as long as the troughers along the sixth floor corridor at hampden allow our clubs to flood their squads with third and fourth-rate non-Scots and ignore home-bred Scottish talent, then they are only hastening the day when the Scottish clubs are losing to clubs from the minor European leagues in the first qualifying round of the three European competitions.
Next up for Rangers is Club Brugge, at Ibrox tomorrow night. Now we Scots have a low opinion of Belgian football – always have. BUT – at International level, we have played the Belgians 20 times, we've only won 4 of these games and we haven't actually beaten them since 1987.
In European club competitions, Belgian and Scottish clubs have been paired together 36 times. The Scottish club has won 19 of these meetings – so hardly a ringing endorsement of our game being better. I should add, the only Scottish teams to have beaten a Belgian club this century are the usual suspects. I am not confident about Rangers' chances in this tie; so far in Europe this season, they have been “winning ugly” - I envisage another difficult watch tomorrow night.
I AM CURRENTLY working my way through Manchester City supporter John Leigh's biography of Bobby Johnstone – written in 2007 – some six years after Bobby's passing.
Bobby Johnstone died at a time when Manchester City were very-definitely the second team in their city. They had yet to move to The Ethiahad, Pep Guardiola's arrival and global domination was still a decade or more away. Perhaps, given the hype which has surrounded latter years City, Johnstone is now, to present-day City fans, perhaps a case of: “Bobby Who?” OK, he's seen as arguably the fifth member of Hibs; Famous Five; the last to join the club, the first to leave, but, his record deserves perhaps more credit than he has been given.
Google Bobby Johnstone, his carteer statistics will surprise you. His Scotland career lasted a mere 18 games, over five years, yet he scored 10 goals for the national side, while mainly playing as a midfielder, albeit an attacking one. We have lauded Scottish international strikers who have failed to match his 0.55 gols per game international scoring record, far less his overall record of 0.41 gpg (227 goals in 552 games). He never played for Scotland in a World Cup, after injury kept him out of the 1954 tournament – indeed, his entire career was blighted by a series of knee injuries.
However, he played for a Great Britain XI – scored in successive Wembley cup finals, when that game was the highlight of the English season – by any measure, Bobby Johnstone thoroughly-deserves his place in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame.
Bobby was 21 when he won his first Scotland cap, 26 when he was last capped. He won 13 of his 18 caps as a Hibs' player 5 with Manchester City. OK, his knee problems were already starting at the time of his final cap – the 1-1 Hampden draw with England, in April, 1956. However, it could be argued, he had more to give Scotland when his services were dispensed with.
However, back then, in the days of the Scotland team being chosen by a Selection Committee, it was far from uncommon for a player, capped while with a Scottish club, to quickly become useless once he was sold to an English one. Bobby himself always believed, since he had had a “difficult” relationship with Hibs' Chairman Hugh Shaw, it was no surprise that his selections for Scotland ended as soon as Shaw became SFA President.
The Johnstone biography is a tale of a bygone age, when the game in England was virtually run by Scots, but when players were woefully under-rewarded for their talent and treated as serfs by their clubs. The game has come a long way since then, and not always for the better.
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