A PARTIAL LINE from “The Celtic Song': “If you know their history” came to mind as I read the Online Guardian on Saturday morning. Barney Ronay one of their football writers was waxing lyrical about the sudden emergence of wide players able to dribble and run at defences at speed.
Young Master Ronay, of course, belongs to that school of football writers who thinks the game of Association Football was invented in 1992, with the establishment of the English Premiership. Nothing which happened in the game for the 128 years before that – England winning the World Cup in 1966, Celtic winning the European Cup a year later, Liverpool's dominance of Europe under Bob Paisley, seemingly as relevant to Ronay and Co as the Roman occupation of Britain, the Norman Invasion, The Wars of the Roses, The Jacobite Risings and The Hanoverian Succession.
I began with the Hoops, so I now return there. Ronay is probably unaware that Defcon 1 in the Celtic manual of how to get out of a bit of opposition pressure in a European game was: “Gie the ba' tae Jinky and let him take it for a walk.”
The rest of the team knew, if they got the ball to Jimmy Johnstone, he was more than capable of holding on to it for a couple of minutes, driving three or four opponents to dizzy uselessness, until one of them fouled him and Celtic could, with the free kick, move 50 yards upfield. If that failed, they could always play it out to the left and allow Bobby Lennox to out-pace most defenders in another downfield run.
Fast wingers, able to dribble at pace, have long been a staple of the British game: Sir Stanley Matthews and Sir Tom Finney from England, Gordon Smith, and Alan Morton from Scotland, Billy Bingham and George Best from Northern Ireland and Cliff Jones and Leighton James from Wales, to pick just a few random examples.
What, one wonders, would such brilliant players have been able to do on today's pristine pitches, with the lightweight balls and equipment enjoyed by today's so-called stars. Or, to turn it around, how would today's big names cope with a sodden wet leather Thomson T-Ball, on a virtual ploughed field such as the old Baseball Ground?
They are never going to commission a statue of Phil Foden emerging from a virtual lake with the ball, as with the famous “Splash” statue of Tom Finney.
Football folklore tells us, Sir Alf Ramsey adopted his 4-3-3 “Wingless Wonders” formation, which won England the World Cup in 1966, as a kickback for the horrible afternoons he experienced at the hands of such Scottish wing wizards as Barnsley's Johnny Kelly – a childhood hero of Sir Michael Parkinson – and Liverpool's Billy Liddell.
Of course, the key moment in England's win over West Germany came when Alan Ball went on an old-fashioned run down the right, before crossing for Roger Hunt to score that wrongly-allowed third goal.
That's the trouble with modern football, coaches seem to be forbidding wingers from doing wingers' things. When last did you see a winger drop the shouilder, go round the outside of the full-back, hit the by-line and cross? It's like a hurricane in Hertfordshire – it hardly ever happens. Today's wide men invariably are on the “wrong” side – left-footers down the right and vice versa, encouraged to cut in on their good foot at every opportunity.
Some players such as Arsenal's Bukayo Saka or Rangers' Vaclav Cerny do this really well, but, I would suggest, the occasional reversion to old-fashioned ways, by going round the outside, would make even these fine players better.
THIS WEEK'S big match in Scotland will be Thursday night's “Battle of Britain” between Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League. It's a big game all right, as these cross-border clashes always are, and it will be particularly important for the Spurs'Manager. Losing to “The Jocks” just might be the end for Ange in North London.
This clash got me remembering the two clubs' first meeting in Europe, in the old European Cup-Winners Cup, back in the early 1960s. I was at college in Glasgow at the time and the tickets went on sale in the legendary and much-missed St Vincent Street shop: “The Sportsman's Emporium”. I got off my bus into ther city at Waterloo Street Bus Station, at 8.45am, joined the rear of the queue, which was stretching half-way down the Central Station frontage of Hope Street, and, by 10.30am, I had my two tickets for the game.
In truth, the game was a bit of a “dead rubber” - that legendary Tottenham team of all the talents: Scotland goalkeeper Bill Brown, England centre-half Maurice Norman, one-third of maybe the best British half-back line of all time, along with Captain Danny Blachflower and oor ain Dave Mackay; there was no relief up front, with John “The Ghost” White, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Smith and wonderful wingers Terry Medwin and Cliff Jones had thrashed Rangers 5-2 in the first leg at White Hart Lane.
The Rangers' team they thumped wasn't a bad outfit: Billy Ritchie; Bobby Shearer, Eric Caldow; Harold Davis, Ronnie McKinnon, Jim Baxter; Willie Henderson, Ian McMillan, Jimmy Millar, Ralph Brand and Davie Wilson.
Trailing 2-5 from the first leg, the second leg, for Rangers, was all about saving face. The game was called-off on the first due date, due to thick fog, but a week later, on 11 December, 1962, over 78,000 rolled into Ibrox, most hoping for a miracle.
That hope lasted a mere eight minutes, before Greaves made the aggregate score 6-2 to the visitors. That was the only goal of the first half. Ralph Brand equalised early in the second half, only for Smith to restore Tottenham's advantage on the night. Rangers weren't done, however and Davie Wilson scored a second equaliser. However, in the last minute, Smith scored again to give the visitors the victory and an 8-4 aggregate win.
The Press, as ever, went with the obvious and Smith's two goals as the highlight; but, for me, the big thing from the game was the way you hardly noticed John White, until he played the killer passes for two of the goals. His death, less than a year later, was a terrible blow to Scottish football.
Tottenham went on to win the competition that season. That was a very-special team. I don't know what will happen on Thursday, but one thing I do know, neither of the present-day squads from the two clubs has even a portion of the talent available to the two clubs 62 years ago.
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