Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

SUDDENLY, desperate for a good news story, perhaps to divert our attention away from the continuing, nay, increasing banality of the coverage of the Edmiston Drive soap opera, Scotland's mainstream football media at the weekend, got behind our women's football team.

 

Between Glasgow City's progress into the last 16 of the Women's Champions League, and the female international team's excellent unbeaten start to their Women's World Cup qualifying campaign, the girls are suddenly showing us men up.

 

Speaking as the father of four daughters - I can only say I am delighted for the girls. Women's football in Scotland, unburdened as it is by over a century of Ayebeenism and without the petty bickering which so characterises the men's game, is a breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp of the game up here. Let's hope the girls can see the campaign through and qualify for their shot at the Big Show.

 

 

 

I LIKE Kris Boyd, always have - and that isn't merely because his mother is from the village I now call home. Kris is the all-time top scorer in SPL history, out-shooting even the sublime Henrik Larsson.

 

Now, I would not be as crass as to suggest that this makes him a better player than the Magnificent Seven, clearly, Henrik was something very special indeed. But, for all his many great goals, he had the advantage of playing in some very good Celtic sides.

 

Would he have matched Boydie's goal-scoring feats with Kilmarnock? That we cannot say - probably yes, but, we cannot tell.

 

There again, might Boydie have scored even more goals for Rangers, had Walter had more faith in him. Boydie has had some bad press, he has been perhaps under-estimated, but, he has never said much - just gone out and do what he does better than any other Scot in the past 20-years  - he scores domestic goals.

 

Now, suddenly, on the back of his weekend brace against Hearts, a groundswell is building up to see his re-call to the national side. I don't see this happening, Gordon Strachan has been brought-up in the Scottish tradition in football which mistrusts out-and-out specialists, so I don't see him being prepared to tinker with the national team's system to make room for a guy who maybe will not work the opposition's back line when they are in possession; who (allegedly) doesn't track back, but who can and will, if allowed to simply concentrate on this most-essential part of the game, put the ball in the net with monotonous regularity, if he gets the right service.

 

 

 

SPEAKING of Hearts; devastating though it would be for the club and their huge fan base, I suspect it would be no bad thing were Hearts to be relegated at the end of the season.

 

For one thing, it would be good for their many promising young players, to enjoy a season at a slightly lower level, in which to find their feet. It would be good too, for the new owners, who will surely - since nobody else has shown the least interest in wishing to sift through the pile of manure they will take over - be fans, to have a chance to instal the right system of good governance in the Championship rather than the Premiership division in Scotland.

 

 

 

WHEN I was growing up in the 1950s, and television was still new in Scotland, the BBC used to put on a lot of variety shows, which always seemed to have on the bill an "entainer" named Dave King, who didn't sing too-well, couldn't dance and carried a tune with the applomb of an over-brudened Sherpa on the upper slopes of Everest.

 

The present-day Dave King, you know, that convicted tax evader from South Africa who wants to run things down Ibrox way, is far-more entertaining, certainly far funnier - don't know about his dancing abilities, however, but, I suppose he knows how to march during the season.

 

 

 

THE second round of the Junior Cup got underway at the weekend, and the mighty Talbot kicked off the defence of their trophy with a 7-0 hammering of Broxburn Athletic. I can already see win number 11 coming along - who can stop them?