An Off-Piste Suggestion To A Scottish Sporting Icon

 

The following is an OFF-TOPIC post

An open letter to a Scottish sporting hero

 

 

Dear Sir Andy,

I pen this post, with a heavy heart. What I am about to suggest will probably not meet with your approval, but, I encourage you to give serious consideration to what I am about to suggest.

I believe it is time for you to announce your retirement from front-line tennis.

Your legacy is assured. When it comes to football for instance, you will get an argument in any pub in Scotland, as to who has been our greatest player; the usual suspects will be trotted-out: Dalglish, Law, Baxter, Johnstone, Bremner, Souness and so on.

The same situation arises in Rugby: Andy Irvine, Gavin Hastings, Ken Scotland, John Rutherford etc. In motor sport, take your pick between Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart. Athletics – Liddell, Wells, McColgan – discuss. Indeed, apart from your fellow knight of the realm – Sir Chris Hoy in cycling, I can think of no single individual who stands for any sport the way we Scots identify tennis with you (with all due respect to your mother and elder brother).

Like every other Scot, I find it hard to watch your ongoing struggles against the fading of your sporting life, your battered body and your seeming determination to keep going.

It is one of the absolute truisms of any sport – the hardest decision a participant has to make, is when to call it quits. Few sporting greats ever get it right. The fire within cannot be dampened. We lesser exponents have become used to hearing the legends insist, they still have one-more big day inside them.

I get the impression, that is how you feel, I can, I think, well understand why you feel like this. However, I think, now would be a good time to if not finally call it quits – to get off the tread mill and enjoy some Me time.

Your playing legacy is assured. I assume you have been well-advised and managed throughout your career. Your, and your families financial security is (as far as any of can be secure) guaranteed.

You have a young and growing family. You have business interests, including a hotel which surely will, when the current pandemic eases, quickly begin again to pull-in customers.

You will be 34 in May. Might now not be a good time to get off the tournament treadmill, spend some time at home with the family – enjoy Wimbledon (should it go ahead) without having to actually play, do some media work. Chill-out and allow your body to recover.

Then, you could come back and enjoy yourself in the shallower waters of the Seniors Tour. Have a bit of fun, keep the competitive juices flowing but, without having the target on your back for younger, fitter players, who you would have swatted away like annoying flies, before your body failed you.

You have nothing left to prove. Relax and enjoy yourself untilt he day comes, when you hang up your racquet for the last time.

Think about this.

Your admirer,

Socrates MacSporran.

ANDY MURRAY'S struggles against injury, and his determination to keep playing – his intense love of his sport, compares most-favourably against the attitude of so-many of our over-paid, over-rated footballers.

The latest bunch to have me wondering if they even have brains in their feet, are the five Rangers players to get into bother with that Covid restrictions ignoring house party.

What were they thinking? Mind you, when, like our football teams, particularly the Big Two, you carry too-big a playing staff, you are going to end up with bored fringe players.

I honestly do not think any of the five are what my old Hun of a Faither would have termed: Rangers Class. None of them are household names in their own households.

Their actions, at a time when it all seems to be going well for their club, after the turmoil of most of the past decade, are simply unfathomable.

I had a chuckle at a suggestion from one of my fellow Kilmarnock fans, as we discussed the incident tonight. He thought, now that Celtic have caught up with Rangers in terms of fixtures played – the fitba powers that be should penalise Rangers for their players breaking the Covid protocols, by deducting them 15 points.

The two clubs would then be level on points, with nine games to play – game on. Who knows, we could end up with another Helicopter Sunday.

Junior Football - Real Fitba, With Real Characters

“IN EAST AYRSHIRE, real men play junior fitba, if you play anything else – you're a poof, and if you play a game which involves wearing padding, you're definitely a poof.”

These words, or something like them – since I cannot dig-up the actual article and my memory isn't what it was – were written by one of the giants of Scottish local journalism: Allan Crow of The Fife Free Press. The Crowman, or Lord Affleck, as that great supporter and servant of Cumnock Juniors, Jim “Buller” Reid dubbed young Allan, when he was a junior reporter with the Cumnock Chronicle, some 40 years ago, lang syne switched from junior football to ice hockey coverage, but, he retained a healthy respect for the strictures of Ayrshire Junior Football.

I plead guilty to helping perpetuate the myths:

• If it moves – kick it

• If it doesn't move – kick it till it does

• Nae bluid – nae foul

• If you lose in the Scottish Cup – get a protest

• If you want to get out of Auchinleck or Kilbirnie alive – don't win there

• The club linesman never gives the opposition a decision

• Ringers from Glasgow are allowed

Covering the Ayrshire Junior FA's disciplinary committee in the 1980s and early 1990s was one of the most-enjoyable periods in my lengthy career in sports reporting. During that period, I got some belters of stories to feed up to the nationals. I still value the support I got back then from the young Graham Spiers – we had a ball.

But, what I did learn back then was the love of the game which came out of the players, the managers and the committee men – particularly the committee men, without whom these clubs simply could not survive, far less thrive.

One of the rules, written on tablets of stone, in the juniors, is that: “The 'Village Idiot' gets his place on the club committee.” Junior football management really is a game for everyone, mind you, as I got into a lot of trouble for noting (tongue in cheek); the village idiot might get onto every committee, but only Cumnock ever makes him President. The disclaimer to this is, however, Cumnock doesn't have an actual village idiot – everyone takes their turn.

 

 

"Scoanie" Davidson being interviewed before the Junior Cup Final.

 

Just last week the game in Ayrshire lost one of its true giants, with the passing of “Scoanie.” His given name was Robert Davidson, but, everyone knew him as Scoanie - veritable legend in Kilbirnie, where he was “Mr Kilbirnie Ladeside.”

The Blasties were on the verge of going out of business in the mid-1960s, when Scoanie moved the amateur club he managed virtually en bloc into Valefield to rebuild Ladeside. He was manager for 35 years, during which he won two Scottish Junior Cups and a barrowload of local competitions, as he made Ladeside one of the leading junior clubs in Scotland.

He was also secretary, presiding over a hard-working committee of volunteers. He attracted lots of good players to the club, and, even in retirement, he was a familiar figure around the club.

Scoanie passed just days before his 81^st birthday and his passing came shortly after that of one of Ladeside's greatest players, Davie McIlroy.

Davie also gave years of service, on and off the park, to Ardrossan Winton Rovers, and, during his many eyars of service as a PE teacher in various North Ayrshire schools, he encouraged and coached many players who went on to star in the junior and senior ranks.

One of the nicest guys in football, Davie will be another huge miss.

My own wee Ayrshire junior team is Lugar Boswell Thistle. Thankfully, they will still be seen around Rosebank Park, hopefully for years to come, but, this week The Jaggy Bunnets announced that two legendary clubmen, Tam McSeveney and Bert Esquierdo were stepping down from their work with the club.

Tam and his wife Anna were both in my elder brother's class at Lugar Primary School, where another class-mate was Bert's big sister Basilia. Bert wore Boswell's maroon shirt with pride, but his real commitment to the club was to be as a long-serving committee man.

In recent years, Bert's particular forte has been to make the Rosebank surface one of the best in the junior game. I hope they get the chance to see Lugar back playing soon, then rise again to the status they enjoyed in the 1950s – their work for the club demands nothing less.

LUGAR is my first club – in spite of having spent more than half my live surrounded by Glenafton Athletic fans in New Cumnock; my senior club, however, is Kilmarnock.

So, while welcoming the arrival of Tommy Wright as our new manager, bringing with him years of experience and some small successes, with St Johnstone, I have my concerns.

I feel big Tommy, although a fellow member of the Goalkeepers Union, is a case of the Kilmarnock directors opting for the tried and trusted – or, making the same mistakes in the hope of a different outcome.

Sure, they haven't got much change out of trying something slightly different in their last two managerial choices, but, I don't see Tommy, for all his proven track record, bringing about too-much change.

I long for the day, one of the clubs other than the Big Two would try something really different, in terms of player development and recruitment and club organisation, to really have a go at two clubs who, for all their advantages in income, infrastructure and support, are not that good.

A properly run third force in Scotland, could well overtake and embarrass the big two, and perhaps encourage others to really have a go at them. We need an alternative to the constant success of the same two clubs.

Sport Has A Different Meaning At Pacific Quay

WHEN sitting at my desk in what my children and grand-children call: “The Papa Cave” I generally have music playing in the background. On Monday afternoon, for a wee change, I had BBC Radio Shortbread on.

When John Beattie had finished with 'Drive Time' I kept the radio on and listened to 'Sportsound.' My normal intake of Shortbread sport tends to be 'Off The Ball' and listening to Peter Wright ranting on the station's PRO14 coverage. Listening to Sportsound was an eye-opener.

The first hour consisted of around 15 seconds of signing news, on the final day of the January Transfer Window – and 59 minutes and 45 seconds on the latest Celtic Crisis. This is what constitutes sports coverage on our national broadcaster – floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, 24-hours, 365 days per year, coverage of two football teams. Not very good coverage at that.

You could not make it up.

SPEAKING of the January Transfer Window, once again, on the final couple of days, when most of the deals were done, it seemed to be a case of Premiership clubs importing third and fourth-rate English players. This had me wondering: will the SFA ever remember, a major part of their remit, as the custodians of the game in Scotland, is to foster and support Scottish talent.

I honestly do not see us getting up among the leading nations in Europe, until we go back to what dear old Chic Young dubbed: “The eight diddies rule.” That is, enforce a rule where by a minimum of eight Scottish plaeyrs have to be the park, for each team, during games. Until we positively discriminate in favour of Scottish talent, we are going nowhere.

I HAVE just finished reading – and I got through it very-quickly, it was such a good read: 'One Life' the autobiography of the world's best woman player – Megan Rapinoe (pictured below) of the USA Women's National Team.

 

 

Ms Rapinoe has transcended her sport and is now one of the leading Gay Activists in the USA. She is an outspoken individual with views on lots of controversial subjects. She is the sort of lady who would easily qualify for the ultimate sign of respect from a Scotsman: “Ah widnae like tae tak a broken pay poke hame tae her.”

It's a terrific read, and there is one line in it which will appeal to every Scot, when she writes: “England's a good team, but, not nearly as good as Phil Neville thinks they are.” Back of the net.

Add the fact she got the better of Trump – she's some lady.

TUESDAY'S Guardian included an interesting piece about the Sporting Memories project, built around former England rugby full back Alastair Hignell. It is terribly sad, these stories of former sporting greats who, through the ravages of dementia, cannot remember their glory days.

One of the saddest stories I heard on this point was told me by Hibs and Scotland legend Lawrie Reilly. He recalled going to visit his perhaps even-more legendary Famous Five colleague Gordon Smith, then in the throes of dementia.

'The Gay Gordon' knew who Lawrie was, but, Reilly recalled, he asked me: Lawrie, did I really play for Hibs?” All those games, the league championships and European trips, and it had gone. That is desperately tragic.

WE DO tend, up here in Jockistan, to have a low opinion of our media – and at times they do justify this. Take Thursday morning, for instance. What was the big story in Scottish sport: Oh yes, I remember – Hamilton Academical had SACKED Bobby Bulloch, their “colour commentator” from Lanarkshire Sport Live.

His crime – he mentioned on-air that he had “gone for a jobby” at half-time and made light of his travails in the toilet. Of course, his case wasn't helped by having arch wind-up merchant Tony Haggerty as his co-commentator.

All I can say, is sacking him is a shite move by Accies, the boy's burgeoning media career has now gone down the toilet, Lanarkshire Live Sport now has a huge skid mark down its escutcheon, no amount of air freshener will clear the air, and, my final take on the whole thing – the Holy Wullies are still with us.

Never mind Bobby – I see a guest gig on Off The Ball coming your way soon.

I SEE Celtic's Swiss player Albian Ajeti has been charged with “simulation,” for allegedly diving to win the Hoops the penalty, which, when converted, put them 2-0 up against Kilmarnock on Tuesday night.

I refer to my pal “Wee Liam,” who holds the important post of “Token Tim” in this backward village of the in-breds deep in the eastern end of “Orange County.”

“Simulation, most of the bloody squad have been simulating being Celtic players all season,” was Liam's take on the matter.