Templeton - A Rangers Man In Time Of Need

THE transfer window has now closed and our teams must, at least for the next four months "piss with the pricks they've got". Until January, or in Rangers' case, for the next 12 months, managers will have to manage with what they have in squad terms.

 

In poor, financially-challenged Scottish football, this simple premise ought to involve, hopefully, bringing through bright, shiny, new thrusting home-grown talent, the heirs to the great and in some cases mythical tradition of the "Scotch professors" who taught the world how to pass and move, and whose mastery of the "tanner ba" made Scotland a by word for football excellence - at least in Scotland.

 

However, though the numbers of home-grown Scots plying their trade in the SPL is rising, for me, it isn't yet high enough. Here we are, one week into September, already reduced to only one team in Europe, and that team barely has a home-grown Scot in their ranks.

 

If we are going to plod along in the margins of Europe, at least let's plod along with haun-knitted Scots players; you never know, they might learn something and imporove.

 

 

 

I DON'T know young David Templeton; I've only seen him play twice in the flesh and he impressed me both times. I appreciate he lacks consistency, but hey, he's in many ways an old-fashioned Scottish winger, a creature famed the world over for his inconsistency and ability to both delight and despair during any given 90 minutes. One need only think of the icon after whom young Templeton is named - the late, great and sometimes galling, other times glorious Davie Cooper.

 

I may not know David, but, ah kent his faither, the wonderful Henry Templeton, a man who often lit-up drab Somerset Park with his pyrotechnics on the wing for Ayr United.

 

Wee Henry was a free spirit, Ally MacLeod, whatever his failings as a manager, knew how to get the best out of mavericks such as Henry. In his first incarnation as a thrusting young boss, Ally allowed George McLean licence he did not give other key Ayr players, such as his other goal-scoring forward, one Alex Ferguson, and was rewarded with goals galore from "Big Dandy".

 

Likewise, as an older, but scarecly wiser manager, MacLeod kept a tight rein on John Sludden and Tommy Walker, who both scored goals for fun, whilst smiling indulgently at the antics of his third star striker of that team, wee Henry - it worked.

 

I would suggest to Ally McCoist, a bit of a free spirit himself as a player, to indulge David Templeton, should he have, as I suspect, have inherited some of his dad's outlook on football. The result might be glorious for the player and Rangers.

 

There has been much debate about the Templeton move. Does he lack ambition? Can he cut it at Ibrox? I suspect the answers to these questions are: 1), No; 2), Yes.

 

Templeton is "a Rangers Man" as his faither was. Rangers need "Rangers Men" to get them back to the top, which is why I feel they have boobed in releasing Kirk Broadfoot. Big Kirk was and is a better player than he is widely assumed to be. I accept, as a full-back/centre back, he is no John Greig, far less a George Young, but, he is and always will be "a Rangers Man" and if I was McCoist I would have kept him at the club.

 

A COUPLE of weeks ago the back page of the Cumnock Chronicle carried the shock news that Lugar Boswell Thistle was on the verge of folding. This grand old junior club has a special place in my heart. I grew up watching their great team of the mid-fifties and still today the names drop off my tongue: Jock Fraser, Davie Love, Charlie Cathie, Andy McEwan, Jim Baird, Jim Donnelly, Alex Bingham, Jimmy Collins, Sanny Sharpe, Hughie Neil and Eric Wilkie, plus the stand-ins: Jock Stirling, Jim Neil, "Kitch" McDonald - that was a team and squad.

 

Lugar invented the 2-3-5 formation of legend; the club produced legends such as Andy Kerr and Bertie Black, plus a whole host of greats back in the 1870s and 1880s.

 

Well, what do you know; the crisis has been averted for now and this week, the "Well" are sitting proudly atop the Ayrshire District League. More power to secretary Kenny Young and his committee, to keep this grand old team going.