A Pleasant Way To Pass A Sunday Afternoon

YESTERDAY, Sunday, afternoon was a pleasant one."Management" and I, as has become our want now we are both closer to 70 than 60, went out for our Sunday drive, and, on a whim I turned down the dead-end to Portencross, where, in the car park, with the wonderful view across the Firth to Arran, we halted.

After a hectic week of gardening and grand-son sitting, Herself merely wanted to recline the seat and close her eyes. I had BBC Radio Scotland on the radio, I listened to the splendid McIlvanney conversations, with the under-used Geoff Webster, before a round table discussion with Messers Jock Brown, Archie MacPherson and Chic Young.

Being another Ayrshireman, I am not obliged to subscribe to the cult of McIlvanney - "ah kent his faither" (I didn't as it happens), and all that. Indeed, my less than total devotion to the cult of Hughie is, probably, another example of what my old mate Graham Spiers describes as my hermeneutically-challenged approach to sports writing.

Yes, Hughie is a wonderful essayist on sport; he has a turn of phrase the rest of us would kill for, but, he has always had the twin luxuries, afforded the big names of the broadsheet Sunday newspapers - time to compose and space in which to display his thoughts. I also believe, he has never been the font of all knowledge he is held up to be.

Hughie's greatness is partly based on the sycophancy of some lesser Scottish sporting scribes - but, there can be no doubting his class when it comes to covering football, boxing and horse racing.

Take some other Scottish sports writers away from the Old Firm (as was) and Scotland and they flounder.

My sports-writing heroes are two very English Englishmen, sadly no longer with us: Frank Keating and Ian Wooldridge; Dougie Gillon, a fellow Scot, thankfully still penning the occasional piece for the Herald and Dougie's and my late boss on the Sunday Standard, the great Ian "Dan" Archer.

These four greats, unlike McIlvanney, were comfortable working to the much-tighter deadlines of the Daily newspapers - Dan Archer in particular is all but forgotten today, which is a great shame.

Any way, after the McIlvanney broadcast, we had an enjoyable wee vignette, as Brown, MacPherson and Young sat down and talked. There were no great insights delivered, but, it was entertaining - a football version of the sort of off-the-cuff nonsense the Test Match Special team delivers when rain intervenes in the cricket.

We learned little, but, on a slow, sleepy, sun-kissed afternoon in a car park on the Clyde Coast, it entertained. By the way, Portencross Castle is a hidden gem of Scotland - it is well worth visiting.



WHO has final approval on new Celtic strips - Stevie Wonder? I raise this question because, if the kit pictured in today's Scotsman is indeed, Celtic's new "European" change strip - it's horrible.

What was wrong with the classic Lisbon Lions' strip? Narrow green and white hoops, white shorts, white stockings - a great strip. Similarly, the Rangers strip of the time - a plain blue shirt with the broad white v-neck, the white shorts and the black stockings with red tops, and the obligatory one inch of black above the red, when Bill Struth ruled. These two kits, understated though they were, silently shouted - We are special teams.

The Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibs and Dundee strips of the time also stood for something timeless and solid. 

Then the image makers got involved, along came the commercial interests - the shirts sponsors, until, today, we have playing kits, such as the new Celtic one, which are veritable dogs dinners.

I never have liked sponsors' names and logos on strips. Major League Baseball, the NBA, NFL and NHL - arguably the three richest leagues in world sport somehow manage without having team its defaced by sponsors' logos - yes, they embrace sponsors, but, they never sully the playing kits. Only football and the lesser sports deem it necessary to have the players and, more-scandalously the fans who buy the replicas, as unpaid advertising boards for their sponsors.

Let's get back to plain kits - concentrate on the game, not the commercial interests, and let's be done with aberrations such as the new Celtic kit.