IN A moment of weakness this week I agreed to cover a pre-season friendly. Now, like kissing your cousin (outwith certain Ayrshire, Fife and Lothians mining villages) watching a pre-season friendly isn't the real thing. However, occasionally, when such a game is an Anglo-Scottish affair, it almost becomes vital.
This wasn't quite the case with Kilmarnock v Carlisle United; the game lacked real bite, but, it was fairly enjoyable, with a lot of good football played. I do hope, "Magic" Johnston and "Sandra" Clarke encourage young Chris Johnston, who impressed down Killie's right flank to keep doing what he did in this game - get to the bye-line and cut the ball back. If they do, Paul Heffernan could rake-in a lot of goals this season.
The game finished all-square, at 2-2. Now, some might use this as another stick with which to beat Scottish football: "Couldnae beat a team frae the English third tier", I hear the critics moan; this would be wrong.
Carlisle come from a town which is bigger than Kilmarnock, they certainly have a bigger fans' catchment area; they too are full-time. One of my cousins is a Carlisle legend, he played an awful lot of games for them over a near 20-year senior career, throughout which, he maintained, if United played in the Scottish League, they would have qualified for Europe every year.
On Friday night's evidence, he had a point. It's easy to be a "big" team if you only operate in the small pond which is Scotland - out there in the big, wide world, we are small beer, albeit with a guid conceit o oorsels.
I HAVE this week been reading Jonny Wilkinson's autobiography - a riveting read it is too; he's a strange chap is Jonny.
He admits to Obsessive Compuslive Behaviour - the way he trains, trains and trains again; the manner in which, if he doesn't successfully kick 20 successive penalty shots in training, he has to start again and keep going until he does; the attention to detail.
Perhaps he goes too-far; maybe he is misguided inhow he conducts himself. Who knows what mental anguish he might suffer when the day comes for him to hang up his boots.
But, that said - how I long for even a single Scottish footballer to appear who is that obsessive, and becomes that good. That Rugby World Cup-winning team in which Wilko starred got some fairly bad press. They were dismissed as "Dad's Army" reviled as one-dimensional, unentertaining and criticised for being efficient.
They did win a world cup overseas, being the host nation in the final and in Wilkinson, they had a single player who could and did regularly punish opposition errors. We Scots didn't particularly enjoy the way they won, but, in a significant line from his book, Wilkinson mentions a message he got from his fitness trainer, which, to paraphrase, said that Wilkinson's greatness lay in how he made the England fans feel - which was, in a word: brilliant.
We Scots haven't had a single footballer who made us feel brilliant since the days of Baxter and Law. Nobody since, and I include Jinky is this, ever collectively lifted the Tartan Army the way the Slim One and the Lawman did - aside from that surge we got and still get when they show the Gemmill Goal.
I don't know, but, if we ever see the emergence of an OCD suffer who is Scottish and can win us games the way Wilkinson did for England, we might start going places.
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