THE Commonwealth Games has brought a feel-good factor to Glasgow and Scotland this Glasgow Fair. Even when it has rained, when we have endured the normal Fair Fortnight weather, so-eloquently described as: "Shit" by Mr Usain Bolt of Jamaica - and, really, only the combination of a Western Isles Wee Free such as Angus MacLeod and some East End of London burd, doing missionary work in the wild, untamed hinterland of North Britain would try to make a mountain out of that all-too-true molehill - (sorry, back on-track) the Games have brought us sunshine on Shettleston.
So, right on cue, just about the day Paw's brain began to switch from Saltcoats mode, back to the reality of: "next week is August and ma holidays are over", back comes the fitba to shock us back to reality.
That Aberdeen and St Johnstone should suffer first leg losses is disappointing, but, par for the course in Europe. We lang syne became accepting of failure on the bigger stage. We don't like it, but, until the usual suspects are lined-up on that impressive central stairway into the main door at Hampden, then machine-gunned, we will have to thole it.
However, Celtic losing in Poland - well, for all the Poles have a much-better recent record in Europe and on the world stage than the Scots - we didn't see that one coming. Sure, we could maybe have put-up with the Hoops bringing a one or maybe two-goal deficit back to Scotland; any half-way decent Celtic squad would fancy their chances of over-turning such a deficit back at Parkhead.
Except, this is a Celtic squad in the midst of turmoil and change, and, the one-goal automatic start which playing in front of a Parkhead full house gives Celtic, will not be available, at Murrayfield next week.
I've been going to Murrayfield for more than 50-years, Hell, I've had the good-fortune to play on the big pitch, back in the days when it was a vast, open bowl. I have been out there in the middle since it was re-developed, it should be an intimidating venue. However, the old place has only manageed that once, and 1990, when Will Fucking Carling, that Smarmy Git Guscott and the Pit Bull were sent homeward to think again, is a generation ago.
Celtic will not have 60,000 fanatics roaring them on next week. You can never say never, but, I would say, if they can overturn their three-goal deficit and win the tie, there ought to be a Stewards' Inquiry.
We dream of a Scottish team in Europe past Christmas. This season, the dream is of a Scottish team in Europe when the season starts. Can we fall any further?
ALEX Forbes died this week. Alex Who? I can hear the youngsters ask. For "Red" Forbes was one of that fabled generation of Scots in England, before big money ruined the game. He won 14 caps between 1947 and 1952, at a time when the queue of wing-halves and inside-forwards (midfielders to you youngsters) to get into the Scotland team was longer than the train queues at Mount Florida Station this week.
If the Scotland midfield didn't click in one international, the SFA Selectors, who picked the team back then, simply flung it out and put in another, every bit as good - heady, happy days.
Forbes came out of abject poverty in war-time Dundee to make his name at Sheffield United, before going on to win one FA Cup and two League Championships with Arsenal.
Received wisdom has it that Billy Bremner was the identikit Scottish midfielder - red-haired, small, thrawn, tenacious, aggressive, but with all the skills. Forbes was all of these things, but, his career was over before Bremner had left school.
They didn't have arterial cruciate or medial cruciate injuries back then, they had cartlige injuries, which would put a player out of the game for months, in those days before keyhole surgery - that's what did for Forbes.
Tjhey didn't have media pundits, once a player could no longer cut it, even in non-league football, with luck, a pub tenancy would be arranged, they were on their own. Jimmy Logie, another identikit Scottish midfielder, who was, with Forbes, the throbbing heart-beat of that Arsenal side, finished-up selling papers outside one of London's main-line stations.
Forbes, however, was one of the few who stayed in the game, he coached Arsenal's youth team, until, one sumer, 50-years ago, he took a squad to South Africa and liked the place so-much, he accepted an offer to emigrate and coach.
He spent 35-years coaching at an exclusive fee-paying Jewish school in Jo'burg. When he arrived there, losing by less than 10-0 was a good result, but, Forbes drove his charges on, until the became competitive.
He could easily have taken the money and lived the good life of a white man in pre-Mandela South Africa, living high on the hog on the back of apartheid, but, he, in his spare time, took the football gospel into the townships and to the company accommodation in the gold fields, where the transient black miners lived.
He taught them football and without Forbes and his ilk, spreading the gospel among their grand-fathers and fathers, so-many of today's big-name black African players might never have got onto the world stage.
All the time, Forbes never let-on how good a player he had been, he just got on with spreading the word.
It is said that the Scots, rather than the English, were the true empire-builders of the British Empire; that, the English had the big idea of what needed to be done, but, it was the Scots who made that big idea work.
In football terms, Alex Forbes was an empire-builder. He put more back into the game than he took out. I don'tthink we breed them like Alex Forbes these days.
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