Holding Out For A Hero

I TOOK my late wife to Hampden twice during our 40 years together. In June, 1966, we went on a Saturday night to see the best number 10 in the world play. We did, his name was Jim Baxter and on that night he over-shadowed Pele, who was wearing the Brazilian 10 shirt. Mind you, Baxter didn't have wee Bremner kicking him at every turn, then, if he got past him, John Clark waiting to pounce. The second time I took her to Hampden it was to see The Eagles - both times we were well-entertained, which doesn't happen every time you walk down Sommerville Drive.

Baxter was a genuine, 24 carat, diamond-encrusted, platinum-plated Scottish football her0. For me, he was the ultimate Scottish footballer, undisciplined, gallus, a terrible trainer who pissed his God-given talent up against a wall; aye, we've produced a few of those, but, we worship them for what they could make a ball do. Ten minutes of Baxter, or Jinky Johnstone, or Davie Cooper, a Denis Law goal, a Dave Mackay tackle - these make-up for what we suffer in everyday life for the crime of being Scottish.

But, for all they gave us on the park, in reality our football heroes such as those named above were dispensible. When they could no longer cut it on the park, they were allowed to go. After football - Jinky worked digging ditches, Baxter ran a pub, Coop, like Slim and Jinky passed-on far too soon. Mackay coached, certainly, but not with the authority he showed on the park, Law played golf and occasionally pontificated.

That's the thing with football - the greats very-rarely get to actually run the game. By run the game, I don't mean manage, I mean govern. Get into the game's corridors of power and guide its progress, amend the rules, make a difference.

I had a quick look at my copy of the SFA's centenary book: '100 Years of Scottish Football', written in 1973 by John Rafferty of The Scotsman. This book lists all the SFA presidents since 1873. Bob Gardner, the very first Scottish internationalist - our goalkeeper in that inaugural international against England on St Adnrew's Day, 1972 held the post five years later. The great Charles Campbell, like Gardner a "Spider" was president in 1889-90. Since then, only Tommy Younger, the great Hibs, Liverpool and Scotland goalkeeper of the 1950s, has swelled the ranks of great players turned administrators and reached the top job in the SFA.

In football, certainly in the British Isles, there is almost a them and us situation - players play, administrators administrate and there is little or no cross-over.

It is largely the same in Europe: certainly Michael Platini is now running UEFA, "Kaiser" Beckenbauer is a major player in Germany, but these two icons of the game are rarities.

Sepp Blatter was, I think, an ice hockey goalkeeper - says it all really.

No, what we need in a world dominated by self-serving, corrupt officials, is for a genuine gootball hero to switch seamlessly from patrolling midfield to patrolling the game's corridors of power and to make a difference.

It happens in other sports, Ian "Mighty Mouse" McLauchlan is the current president of the SRU, Andy Irvine is a previous holder of that post, and they are not the only former playing greats to have ascended to such high office. If rugby can keep at least some of its playing greats involved and shaping the way forward, why cannot football?

Mind you, guys like McLauchlan and Irvine were university-educated, the guys who run football prefer their players thick, we maybe have first to develop players whose brains are in their heads rather than their feet, then, in time, they will hopefully put this intellectual power towards helping the game - but we might have a long wait.