THE FOOTBALL HISTORY books tell us, back in the days of leather T-balls, steel toe-capped leather boots with hammered-in studs, heavy woollen shirts and pitches which had been imorted from Paschendale, football team training consisted of laps of the track and sprints; they were not allowed to see a ball from Monday to Friday, to: “make them hungry for it on a Saturday.”
This approached continued for most of the first 100 years of the game, and the few who questioned it were seen as almost religious heretics.
Today, players are – we are told – athletes. Clubs employ Strength and Conditioning Specialists, Sports Scientists, Dieticians, Sports Psychologists, Video Analysists and Physiotherapists. 'Tis a shame the players they look after cannot, if the performances of our four Scottish-based teams in Europe this week is any guide, pass the ball more than five yards with a guarantee it will reach the intended target, trap a falling bag of cement, of hit a coo on the erse wi' a banjo – the traditional tests of the competence of a Scottish player.
Of course, most of the players in our so-called top clubs today are non-Scots. OK, I accept, ever since Jamie the Saxth high-tailed it down to that there Lunnun in 1603, The High Road to England has been, according to Dr Johnson: “the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees”. The dribble of Scottish noblemen and courtiers on the make who followed their monarch south quickly became a flood, then a tsunami as these House Jocks in the Sudentenland realised life was easier darn sarf; sheep were a better-paying crop than their clansmen back home and telt their factors to get rid of the natives.
The more-ambitious clansmen left, some for England, where they proved adept, clad in red coats, at subduing assorted Spear Chuckers, Towel Heads and Fuzzy Wuzzies. Others headed for the colonies, to colonise Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, the USA. The less-ambitious stayed closer to home, to expand our cities such as Glasgow. You might argue that with the stronger blood lines leaving Scotland, the quality of the gene pool we had left at home declined and, in our football as in so-many other aspects of Scottish life, we have brought-in foreigners, to improve our native blood lines.
I don't agree, I simply feel, the High Heid Yins of our clubs are taking their cues from the English. Now, your average Englishman doesn't like foreigners: “comin; over 'ere and takin; our jobs” - which includes being footballers. They never really minded the Jocks, Paddies and Taffs who were the backbone of their club teams for years – they could after all seak English, often better than the English themselves; their approach to black players – English-born or foreign - has been characterised as: “Yer, ok, E's black, but, 'E's OUR black” and they do have a soft spot for the exotic.
Our list of proscribed peoples is a bit more mixed – Catholics in one Lanarkshire town, Protestants in the one next door; Catholics again in certain villages in Ayrshire and other parts of Lanarkshire, The Working Class in parts of Edinburgh. The carry-over from the old Clan Wars can still be felt in other parts of the country, while, in the Borders, where men play with odd-shaped balls they cannot even live in peace in some single villages.
Aye, Principal Seymour Skinner was correct, we are a fractuous people. And perhaps it is our ability to “cause a fight in an empty hoose” which has brought about the influx of foreign talent – easier for our managerial class to deal with.
However, as I watched Aberdeen huff and puss in Bucharest on Thursday night, just as I had watched Celtic stumble in far-off Kazakhstan and Rangers' pratt-fall in Brugge, I thought: “has the nation which invented the passing game, the country of Gallacher, James and Morton, of Shankly and Walker, of the Famous Five, The Iron Curtain Defence, The Lisbon Lions, Denis Law, Jim Baxter, Kenny Dalglish; have we fallen so-far we cannot put Scottish-born and trained talent on the pitch to perform better than these over-paid, over-hyped, under-performing, badge-kissing mercenaries?”
Baxter could land a 50-yard cross-field pass on a sixpence, Law was like a cobra the way he took a chance in the penalty area, Dalglish could create from midfield and get into the box to finish with aplomb. We produced world-class defenders, midfield providers and crowd-pleasing wingers. I don't think the reservoir of talent has dried-up, but, I do think the modern cadre of club directors have simply decided, it's easier to buy-in ready-made foreigners than to grow out own.
My family background is in transport. My paternal grandfather was the ostler, in-charge of the Clydesdales at the local ironworks – my great-grandfather had been a cairter. My father was a pug driver, who ended up as the Area Transport Manager, I was brought up with trucks.
These were AEC, Albion, Atkinson, Bedford, BMC, Commer, Dodge, ERF, Foden, Ford, Guy, Leyland, Morris, Scammel, Seddon, Thornycroft – all British-built. Today, the trucks on our roads are Daf, Iveco, MAN, Mercedes, Renault, Scania and Volvo – all built abroad.
It's the same with our football teams. Now, I could tell you the tale of the Atkinson Borderer driver who ignored his boss's instructions as their convoy loaded up with steel at Ravenscraig: “let the new Scania go, if he pulls away from you, don't try to keep up” - only to blow-up the Atki's engine around Junction 36 of the M6. That's fair enough – the Scanias and Volvos whose introduction hastened the demise of the British truck indusry were light years ahead of the trucks they displaced, but, I have seen no evidence of any of the current foreign-imports into our domestic game being able to similarly-embarrass the few home-grown players who still get a game in our top division.
We need a total, ground-up restructuring of our game
We need to pro-actively promote home-grown talent
Bring-in the “eight diddies” rule for domestic games
Insist on a CAB – Collective Bargaining Agreement for the league
We need to trust in Scottish talent.
They may be too craven to openly admit it, but, the Scottish Rugby Union, who do admittedly own our only two full-time professional clubs: Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby have issued a directive, that they promote home-grown talent. This move has seen several popular and talented non-Scots not having their contracts renewed. OK, Murrayfield owns the clubs and can make this call, the high heid yins at Hampden cannot order the Old Firm to jettison the foreign diddies, but, it would be nice if they, and the diddy provincial clubs, followed the SRU's lead and created openings for home-grown talent.
But, it won't happen any time soon, because turkeys don't vote for Christmas, change might see them lose their spot on the gravy train and be denied access to the feeding trough, and in any case, it's easier to potter along in the slow lane than to get into the fast one.
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