Iwelumo - A Man Who Has Made A Lot From His Talent

I HAVE known Chris Iwelumo since he had hair. I was working for the Paisley Daily Express, when he signed, as a Fifth Year pupil at St Joseph's Academy in Kilmarnock, for St Mirren.

Lovely big kid, who has grown-up to be a lovely man; disgustingly good-looking, however - several ladies of a certain age used to become somewhat moist when he and his brother stepped onto the train at Kilmaurs, where the Iwelumo family lived of a morning. This, however, had nothing like the effect his young sister had on the men in the carriage.

Chris, it is fair to say, has never scored the number of goals he perhaps should have. However, playing in England, there is often more to being a striker than simply putting the ball in the net and I would suggest, if he and Stevie May can establish a rapport, the boy May will score a ton of goals off the big man's knock-downs.

I wish Chris well, mind you, if I was looking for a big veteran target man to set-up chances for a good, young striker, and bring the youngster on at the same time - I'd be trying to entice Kevin Kyle away from Ayr United.

Finally, you have to admire Iwelumo's chutzpah. He had the confidence to quit St Mirren at 18; he knew then he was a better player than Mark Yardley. Later on, he has never let that miss against Norway bother him that much.

ON THE Scottish football "anoraks" website - David Ross's excellent SCOTTISH LEAGUE site, there is much current discussion on crowds, and the current fascination with Celtic's attendances.

I have to admit a long-standing admiration for the loyalty of the Celtic following. I mean, if you were brought up on watching the Lisbon Lions, or those Quality Street Kids who did train-on to greatness: Hay, McGrain, Macari and Dalglish, it must be galling to watch some of the mince currently being served up by a team, which in Celtic terms isn't that good, but is still cantering away with the SPFL title.

Fair play to them for continuing to turn-up in the numbers they do. Even fairer play to the wee man in the bunnet, for invoking the season ticket culture which allows the current Celtic management to manipulate the attendance figures as they are doing.

This argument about having to count season tickets sold - even though most of the season ticket holders cannot be bothered turning up to see the mincde which passes as top-level Scottish football these days is shot down by the tale from an old press box friend of mine.

It was this gentleman's fate to be Editor of one of the local newspapers in Stranraer, which forced him to attend matches at Stair Park. This Saturday taks was only made tolerable by the "lineage" he accrued, covering the Stranraer games for PA, the various Sunday papers such as the Post, Mail, News of the Screws of blessed memory and so forth. A nice wee earner worth maybe £100 per Saturday on a good week.

Any way, our hero was taken to task over the crowd estimate he sent up the line one week. He was summoned before Stranraer's 20-plus member committee and censured, for not counting  the 250 season ticket holders into the attendance figure he gave.

He said nothing, until the next week, when he had to cover a midweek Reserve League West game, at which, he carefully counted the 35 fans who were there, and in his weekly paper report, he gave the crowd as 285.

This precipitated another summons before the committee, who objected to him giving a wrong crowd.

"Aye, but, I counted in the 250 season ticket holders, like you demanded", was his answer. There were no more complaints about the crowds he published.

Don't know if it would work with Celtic, however.

JUST a thought, but, I see there are five Scots among the eight quarter-finalists in the World Bowls Championships. Now, if we could only transplant the ethos which makes Scotland the top boolin nation in the world to our fitba team, the World and World Cup would be our oyster.

So, maybe the SFA should change the rules, so that every time an attack gets up to what they would have to term the club-house end, at each ground, the players would have to go inside for a wee hauf or two to keep them going.

They would then go back out, play another wee while, back in for a hauf and so forth. In no time at all we would have such a queue of would-be players, the clubs might have to open waiting lists and we'd be wall-to-wall with potential world beaters.

Mind hyou, given what I have seen of Scottish bowling - the national selectors would still manage to get it wrong when it came to picking a national team. Nothing new there then.