JULY 2013 has been a sad month for football, not least from the loss over this past weekend of firstly Bert Trautmann, then "Last-Minute" Lawrie Reilly. That's another two of the good guys gone.
There is surely football in heaven - if not, is it worth going there. The Hibs' challenge in the annual Celestial Cup just got stornger with Reilly's sad passing. Can somebody up there please let me know how they fitted Reilly into the forward line alongside Joe Baker and the other four of the Famous Five? Reilly always said that Baker was the one Hibs player who had a chance of playing with the iconic forward line - his suggestion was to move Eddie Turnbull to right half and put Baker at inside left. What Turnbull said to this isn't recorded - the bleeper apparently broke down!!
To win 38 caps at a time when the Scotland selection was done by the SFA's Selection committee, with all the horse trading and mistakes that implies, speaks volumes as to Reilly's quality as a player. His record places him as Scotland's best post-World War II centre forward and probably only Hughie Gallacher rates higher internationally and Jimmy McGrory at club level.
Speaking as a journalist, he was always a joy to speak to when doing historical pieces; Lawrie Reilly had a joi de vivre which contrasts so-vividly with the: "Dae ah hiv tae speak tae that press c***s" approach of so-many of today's "Superstars".
Mind you, a "superstar striker" today is somebody who can regularly put the ball into an empty net from six yards. Over-hyped, over-rated and bolstered by the "top-spin" of the Sky, BBC, English Premiership, SPL and feuding red-tops media machine, some fairly-ordinary players are lauded to the heavens today.
Compared to them - Reilly was the real deal: a seriously-good, brave player, and a very nice man too. Rest in Peace.
WE WILL have forgotten all about it, until the Awards Season comes around in late November, but: am I alone in thinking the Chris Froome/Team Sky milestone, in winning the Tour de France, has lessons for football.
Froome is obviously a very special athlete. However, today athletes need a support team around them and Team Sky is surely, having got Sir Bradley Wiggins across the line first last year, and now Froom this year, a very special outfit.
I would like to think that our top football teams would be seeking out Sir Dave Brailsford and his team to find-out how they have so-consistently brought medals to British cycling, either as Team Sky or as Team GB in World and Olympic Championships. There are surely lessons to be learned there.
However, there is little or no chance of any of our top sides sending their managers round to pick Brailsford's brains - which is their loss. I just wonder what a Team Sky-type support group around Wayne Rooney might get out of him.
Look at Andy Murray; arguably the greatest Scottish athlete since Allan Wells or Liz McColgan. The Scottish Lawn Tennis Association can take little credit for his success; sure, his mother can, helping her boy find and build the support team which has got him to the very pinnacle of the game - more so, since he had the good sense to take Ivan Lendl on board as his coach.
But, a footballing Andy Murray, with the same talent and work ethic - would he have done as well had he gone to one of our top football teams? I don't think so.
GORDON Strachan has named his long squad, all 29 of them, for the upcoming "friendly" against England at Wembley. And, to nobody's great surprise, he has restored some of the guys who, for various reasons, body-swerved that unexpected but ever-so-welcome win over Croatia.
Fair enough, WGS is on a team-building mission towards the 2016 European Championships, but, I'd have thought, after that great win at the end of last season, it might have been nice to have given the same XI a vote of confidence.
Mind you: "Don't change a winning team", has never sat well with Scotland, whether the team is being run by a selection committee, or a Team Manager. So why change a system which has served us so ill over so many years.
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