Don't Think - Do

JIM Greenwood died on Sunday, aged 81.

"Jim who?" you might say, unless you were something of a rugby anorak, because Greenwood was a classic case of a prophet without honour in his own land. A Fifer and an English graduate of Edinburgh University, perhaps like that other, later lad to come out of Fife - Gordon Brown - he was too-cerebral, too-intellectual for the tribal part of Scottish life in which he operated: rugby rather than politics.

Maybe it was the fact that he spent the greater portion of his working life in England, which saw him side-lined by Murrayfield. It was our loss, for here was one of the great original thinkers in his game.

His passing set me thinking. Greenwood wrote what many people in rugby today, across the world and particularly in the heartland of winning rugby, New Zealand rever as THE rugby coaching manual - his book: Total Rugby.

The theories he outlined therein have been successfully followed all over the planet, not least by Sir Clive Woodward, who is, if I can be mildly blasphemous here, Jesus Christ to Greenwood's God.

Greenwood wrote the book in 1978, some Scottish clubs today are still not following the guidelines he laid down then.

Turn to Scottish football. In the 1870s and 1880s, Queen's Park "cheated", according to their English contemporaries, by inventing the passing game. It worked for them and for Scotland, who were well-nigh unbeatable until, typically Scottish this, they stopped picking their best players, because so many of them had decamped south in search of that most-prized of all commodities by a Scot, English gold.

Of course, the English weren't daft, their clubs made it extremely difficult for their 'Scotch professors' to play for Scotland.

So, we forfeited pole position, also, as time passed, we forsook the passing game in favour of the power-plays of England's long ball game.

Today, while the likes of Spain pass opponents off the park, we cap players who canny pass wind.

But, we have also lost the knack of being inventive. Greenwood, in rugby, thought about the game and what it required of players. Nobody in Scottish football is that far advanced.

Jock Stein might have been an innovator, he tried-out a Caledonian form of the Dutch 'Total Football' before Rinus Michaels had even got as far as trying it in matches, but, for some reason, big Jock abandoned his plan. Of course he didn't need to innovate, simply by sticking to first principles of organisation and marrying together the skills of Murdoch, Auld and Johnstone, with the energy and running power of the likes of Wallace, Gemmell and Lennox, his team could win things with monotonous regularity.

His successors: Ferguson, McLean, Smith, Brown and Moyes for instance, have pretty-well followed the Big Man's blueprint.

Where in Scotland are the maverick coaches? The guys who will think outside the envelope; men who will try things: challenging their players and their opponents.

I cannot see anyone likely to warrant the "maverick" tag, because even the suspicion of being "different" is the mark of Cain in Scottish football.

Look at the John Collins experience: much-decorated player, vast experience abroad and in England, hotly-tipped to be the next big thing in Scottish coaching, gets the chance to do something at Hibs.

He wins a trophy in style, but wants more. He challenges his players to make changes to their lifestyle and demeanour; he challenges his club to change and modify. The players don't like it - they run, crying to the board and shortly thereafter, Collins is toast.

But, that's Scotland for you: small country, small minds, tribal, each tribe happy to strut about their ain wee middens. We cannot see the bigger picture for ignoring the small one.

And we let original and creative thinkers such as Jim Greenwood wile away his declining years tending his garden in Dumfries and Galloway.

Here's tae us.....wha's like us, right enough.