Nutmeg Issue 1

1 

Issue 

The Scottish Football Periodical 

Including: Stuart Cosgrove on Scottish football & the new economy. / / The making 

of Pat Nevin. / / Jonathan Wilson on the Scottish roots of tiki-taka. / / Why we should 

love our referees. / / Neil Forsyth on Ralph Milne. / / Goalkeepers as managers. 

Michael Tierney on the last game with his father. / / The curious case of Islam Feruz. 

The rise and rise of Robert Rowan. / / Gerry Hassan on the 2016 cup final aftermath. 

The day time stood still in Dundee. / / Adrian Searle on Football Manager addiction.

Welcome 

THE NUTMEG 

By Daniel Gray 

The nutmeg. Impudent, cherished, 

ornamental. Arrogant, even. It is an act of 

rebellion and a splash of art. It awakens 

the humdrum match and embroiders the 

turf with glitter. It is a playground aim and 

a wistful thought about baggy-trousered 

evangelists conjuring and beguiling on 

sepia afternoons. It is a status symbol 

flaunted by the gifted winger, and a 

Molotov Cocktail hurled boldly through 

the eye of a needle. It is hedonism and 

affection in a cruel cruel world, a glowing 

thought that footballers can still shake 

free from order to enlighten and entertain. 

Here is a spontaneous act of disobedience. 

The crowd seldom sees it coming, 

the defender is in a different time zone. 

He is flummoxed and befuddled, a toddler 

lost in a supermarket. The nutmegger 

has twisted him and turned the pitch 

hazy. He is humiliated and defeated, a 

flailing leg reacting late and hanging 

in the air like a suspended drawbridge. 

Beyond a hefty turn and chase in pursuit 

of his tormentor and his dignity, the only 

escape is a crude killjoy foul. A full-back’s 

arm and shoulder are locked rigid and 

thrust between creator and ball, the flame 

snuffed. Two arms aloft claim innocence, 

a sprawled victim cries murder. 

Yet that full-back has his own variation 

on the theme, for the nutmeg is varied 

and motley. He is the methodical 

practitioner, a father in the back garden 

preparing and executing the nutmegging 

of a son. His chunky version will rarely 

be enacted, and certainly only on one 

of those ambrosian Saturday afternoons 

when everything clicks. He is closeddown 

by some apathetic winger, shapes 

to clout the ball but instead scrolls it 

beneath his jumping opponent and meets 

it on the other side. The crowd cheer like 

guests at a surprise party. It does not rank 

high in the pantheon, but a nutmeg it is. 

As such, it is as valid as the side-stroking 

of a pass between tree-trunk legs, and 

the stellar vintage that is spooling a ball 

through a goalkeeper’s bent knees. 

Majestic beyond these, though, is the 

deft nutmeg which anticipates a tackler’s 

every breath and defies trigonometry. 

Here, the slight player has the whip 

hand and draws most blood, enticing an 

opponent close and rolling the ball with 

an inner heel deployed like the flipper bat 

on a pinball machine. He smuggles that 

ball through an impossible angle, a cave 

wrought from a golf hole. It is majestic 

and argues poetically why this game is an 

art form and not a science. 

This treat sustains, its appeal base 

and intrinsic – hark the young cries of 

‘Megs!’ across park and field. It helps that 

‘nutmeg’ is such a pleasing, gallus word 

that can be rolled around and savoured, 

and a treasured entry among those valueleaden 

football words that bond fans 

across interminable weddings and hellish 

sales conferences. The nutmeg is a rare 

delight to luxuriate in. l 

September 2016 | nutmeg | 3

Contents 

Issue 1 

Welcome to the first issue of Nutmeg. 

Our aim is to offer something new in 

Scotland - a football publication that is 

all about the writers, the writing, and 

great stories told at length. 

We want to free writers from the 

restrictions of a news-driven agenda 

and the pressures of imminent 

deadlines to cover topics they care 

about and at the length and breadth 

the stories deserve. 

When we started planning Nutmeg 

the main question we were asked 

was: why print? Why not digital? The 

answer is that we believe print offers a 

very different reading experience, one 

that enhances the enjoyment of good 

writing. And we take great pleasure 

in the experience of receiving a 

publication through the letterbox and 

reading it at our leisure. 

Scottish football is known for many 

things; some good, some bad and 

some downright rotten. But we have a 

proud history and we still have people 

who care deeply about the game and 

its future. We count ourselves among 

them. 

There is no shortage of great 

characters, fascinating stories and 

important issues, all of which deserve 

to be written about at length and by 

some of the best, most informed, most 

entertaining and most illuminating 

writers. 

We hope that you will have faith 

in our ambition and will continue 

to subscribe to Nutmeg. It will be 

published four times a year, and we 

would be delighted if you could help 

us by spreading the word via social 

media – or good old word-of-mouth. 

Most of all we hope you enjoy the 

first issue. 

6 Finding my identity 

My football story is different. This is how 

it all began, and where it ended. Words 

and pictures by Colin McPherson 

16 The Nutmeg Essay: Crushed by the 

wheels of industry 

Scottish football and the new economy. 

By Stuart Cosgrove 

FAMILY TIES 

28 The Last Game With My Father 

A postscript to his book The First Game 

With My Father. By Michael Tierney 

37 BvB and Me 

How Borussia Dortmund became a part of 

my life. By Hugh MacDonald 

40 East End Boy 

I should support Hibs. My soul belongs to 

West Ham. By Alastair McKay 

DUNDEE UNITED 

42 Remembering Ralph 

Ralph Milne was many things; above all, 

he was great company. By Neil Forsyth 

51 14 May 1983: The day time stood still 

in Dundee 

One of the most remarkable climaxes to a 

football season. By Richard Winton 

56 Why I celebrated Dundee United’s 

relegation 

I know it’s wrong. But I can explain. 

By Alan Pattullo 

60 The making of Pat Nevin 

The journey from Easterhouse to 

Stamford Bridge. By Simon Hart 

70 Glasgow, 1872: the birth of tiki-taka 

Pep Guardiola’s debt to Queen’s Park. By 

Jonathan Wilson 

74 Photo essay: Day 1 of the league season 

By Alan McCredie and Daniel Gray 

THE MANAGERS 

86 David Moyes: One year in a hotel 

A home defeat in Spain. By Euan McTear 

4 | nutmeg | September 2016

89 Owen Coyle: Rover’s return 

He was seen as the ideal Scotland boss. 

What now? By Chris Tait 

94. The legacy of Bill Jeffrey 

The Scot who humiliated England in 

the World Cup. By Ian Thomson 

103. Goalkeepers as managers: 

The Wrights and wrongs. 

A study of goalies as gaffers. 

By Paul Forsyth 

BEYOND THE GAME 

106. SPL TV: A television soap opera. 

Feuds, brinkmanship and wheeling and 

dealing. By Paul McDonald 

114. Why we should love our referees. 

Abuse from players, fans and managers. 

No problem. By Craig Fowler 

118. The rise and rise of Robert Rowan 

From a Rosyth bank to Brentford’s football 

mastermind. By Richard Winton 

THE PLAYERS 

122. What’s up with Tony Watt? 

Will it finally happen for a dazzling talent? 

By Heather McKinlay 

129. The curious case of Islam Feruz 

The ups and downs of a potentially 

supreme Scottish talent. By Chris Collins 

134. No regrets 

Playing with God, naked sauna parties, 

kangaroo courts: Grant Smith has seen it 

all. By Paul Brown 

OBSESSIONS 

138. ‘How do you get rid of three Dave 

Bowmans?’ 

A football sticker-collecting addict writes. 

By Alasdair McKillop 

144 I confess 

What could I have achieved in the time 

I’ve spent on Football Manager? 

By Adrian Searle 

OPINION 

148 A question of empathy 

Thoughts on the aftermath of this year’s 

Scottish Cup final. By Gerry Hassan 

154 Offensive and unjustified 

Supporters are being unfairly victimised. 

By Chris Marshall 

158 Stand up for your rights 

The family-friendly match-day 

experience obsession is ruining Scottish 

football. By Martin Stone 

TALES FROM THE MEMORY BANK 

162 The Heartbreaker 

The story of an unfulfilled Norwegian 

genius. By Nils Henrik Smith 

167 Scotland’s last genius? 

The case for Davie Cooper. By Rob Smyth 

170 Our national debt to Nasko Sirakov 

Euro 92 and all that. By Andrew Galloway 

THE BACK FOUR 

176 Tactics: The history makers 

Inverness Caledonian Thistle 

made history as the first club from the 

Highlands in the SPL. Who deserves 

credit? By John Maxwell 

184 Statistics 

Three years of Scottish Premiership 

penalties. By Thom Watt 

188 Strips 

Top marks. Would you like vomit on your 

shirt? By John Penman 

190 Poetry 

Commemoration By Stephen Watt 

Cup Final Day by Stephen Watt 

192 Contributors 

If you like what you read and you 

want more of the same, then you 

can subscribe here... 

www.nutmegmagazine.co.uk 

Full details on Page 192. 


A group of people watching Edinburgh City’s away match at Eyemouth United, 1995. 

FINDING MY 

IDENTITY 

Words and Photographs 

by Colin McPherson 


The Edinburgh City management and substitutes watch on as the club host Cove 

Rangers in the Scottish League 2 play-off semi-final at the Commonwealth Stadium. 

The Commonwealth Stadium, my home for more than two decades. 


Finding my identity 

IDENTITY IS THE CRISIS, CAN’T YOU SEE 

IDENTITY IDENTITY 

We live in an age of multiple identities. 

Confirmation of this lies with the 

ongoing political upheaval nationally and 

globally. Mass migration means people 

born in one location often end up living, 

working and dying in another place. They 

adapt, change, assume different habits, 

customs and passports – and identities. 

In Scotland, the dichotomous nature of 

our nation means we define ourselves 

as being some combination of Scottish, 

British, European or from other ethnic 

and cultural backgrounds. Gender, race, 

sexuality, nationality: all up for grabs and 

open to negotiation, part of some ongoing 

personal journey. 

But what of football fans? Typically, the 

average supporter will follow one club 

throughout his or her life. That we are 

programmed to support a particular team 

seems almost pre-ordained. Lifelong, 

unbending allegiance is formed through 

location, family, habit or occasionally 

chosen preference when too young to 

foresee the consequences of that choice. 

These bonds never break and the colours 

never run. A lifelong commitment; a life 

sentence. Either way, most fans are stuck 

forever with their favourites. 

My story is different. An uncharted 

voyage through Scottish football, starting 

at the top, crashing to the basement and 

finding redemption – and confirmation of 

my current footballing identity. 

This is where it all began… 

Hibernian 5, Morton 0; Scottish League 

First Division, 2nd November 1974, 

Easter Road Stadium. 

Flecks of rain drip solemnly from an 

unleavened sky. A powerful wind swirls 

down the street, whipping up minitornadoes 

of rubbish, blowing everyday 

8 | nutmeg | September 2016 

detritus across our paths. Tall, dark 

figures hunch against the November 

chill, pushing against the gusts, their 

hum and chatter barely audible on the 

cacophonous breeze. 

The shops are closing or already 

shuttered. It is Saturday afternoon, and 

trading has ceased for the weekend 

everywhere except in the bars which 

throw sickly, yellow illuminations across 

the sodden pavement. The air is thick 

with gloom. The sound of cavalry, a shuffling 

mass of humanity, announces our 

gathering. A group of younger lads breaks 

off to the right and heads away towards 

a narrow bridge. We carry on and take 

the next street. After a few paces it comes 

into view at last: Easter Road stadium. My 

place of worship, my spiritual home. 

I’m 10 years old, and this is the birthday 

treat: my first-ever football match. More 

importantly, my first-ever Hibs match. 

The smell of beer-on-breath, the waft of 

cigarette – occasionally pipe – smoke entices 

us towards the turnstiles. Before I can 

draw breath, my dad squeezes me through 

the cold, wrought iron, the click-clicking 

accompaniment announcing our arrival 

inside the ground. There’s no sunshine on 

Leith today but in my heart there’s joy. 

The dense, wooden seats of the main 

stand. The grumbling men behind me. 

The occasionally volcanic eruptions of 

frustration. The juice and Wagon Wheels 

at half-time. And my heroes. Turnbull’s 

Tornadoes, bedecked in that unique uniform, 

the plain green top with matching 

cuffs divided by trademark white sleeves. 

Was it the strip I first fell in love with? 

Or the name? Or the players? Stanton, 

Blackley, Edwards and Alan Gordon – tall, 

languid and deadly in front of goal. How 

could it have happened that this little lad

By Colin McPherson 

A young Hibby on Easter Road in 2015. It could have been me in 1974. 

Little changed since 1974 when I attended my first game, here photographed in 2015. 



from the other side of Edinburgh, none of 

whose family had ever shown an interest 

in Hibernian Football Club, became a fan? 

I didn’t know then and I don’t know 

now. All I recall is that this club, this 

place, these supporters, they were me 

and I was them. My identity. Unshakable, 

unflinching, unbending. Forever. A Hibby. 

The match flickers in my memory. 

Details are hazy and my impression of the 

day still centres on the feeling engendered 

by the occasion, rather than its significance 

or the scoreline. We won 5-0, the 

record books show. I cannot remember 

any sense of elation at the result, but I 

recall with vividness the thrill of being 

there. It was like being born all over 

again. 

From that dank autumn day, a passion 

awoke inside me. I would cajole, nag and 

plead to be taken to every game. The logic 

in my young mind was simple: without 

a television set in our house, going to a 

match was the only way I would have of 

seeing football. It worked often enough, 

but as soon as I was old enough to be 

trusted, I started going to home games 

on my own. It felt like a small rebellion, 

true independence. Doing it for myself 

and self-reliance, traits and habits which 

would infect my life until the present day. 

But in that innocent age of flared denim 

and cascading hair, something else was 

stirring. Through the miasma of puberty I 

was searching to express the inner rebel. 

Like every teenager, I was looking for 

something else. Soon I found it and it had 

a name: Meadowbank Thistle. 

Brechin City versus Meadowbank Thistle, 

Scottish League Division Two, 7th May 

1983, Glebe Park. 

Sometime between the Sex Pistols 

implosion that marked the end of punk 

and the nascency of Joy Division which 

heralded its lovechild New Wave, Poly 

Styrene, the inspirational singer of 

X-Ray Spex screamed at me over the 

airwaves: “Identity is the crisis, can’t 

you see?” I could see. I was 14 after all, 

and about to embark on a regime of 

torn-t-shirts and self-cropped hair. Gone 

was the soundtrack to my childhood, 

fuzzy pop crackling over the medium 

wave, replaced now by a gathering vinyl 

collection of spit-and-vomit songs, 

deafening exhortations to anarchy and 

change. I stumbled out of my teenage 

crisis and into Edinburgh’s third Scottish 

League club. Physically, this curious 

football journey shifted my allegiance 

barely one mile as the crow could fly 

across the city, yet it transported me into 

another footballing universe and allowed 

me to assume a new, fresh identity. 

Meadowbank Thistle, Meadowbankfucking-Thistle, 

the laughing stock of 

Scottish football, a club cobbled together 

on a compromise to stop the Highland 

advance on the Scottish League, serial 

bottom-feeders of Scotland’s lowest 

division with no history and little support. 

Pitied by many, loved by few. It was here 

I discovered the modern world. Easter 

Road had become segregated, bitter and 

angry, Hibs a team in decline in a rotting 

atmosphere. They sent in the clowns with 

George Best as ringmaster, a grotesque 

annihilation of everything the club once 

stood for, and got what they deserved. By 

then I was out, savouring instead the long, 

clean lines of the Commonwealth Stadium, 

the rows of neat, upturned seats at a venue 

built on Olympian hopes and dreams, 

since bequeathed to a football team. It 

was like no other Scottish ground and the 

club’s small band of followers were like no 

other supporters. 

I discovered away days, pushing 

boundaries well beyond my comfortable, 

suburban life in the capital by visiting 

some of the goriest places imaginable. 

With Thatcher’s Britain as a backdrop, 

I learned that despite the eponymous 

train station, there was no sunny side to 

Coatbridge. A trip to Rutherglen risked 

encounters with unreconstructed Teddy 

Boys and if you weren’t lying on the 

 



Banned fans prepare to watch Meadowbank Thistle’s last-ever match from outside the 

ground, May 1995. 

Two Meadowbank Thistle supporters watching as their team take on Brechin City away at 

Glebe Park at the start of the club’s last season before being franchised to Livingston. 



floor of the supporters’ bus as it reached 

the top roundabout in Dumfries, your 

reward would be a brick hurled towards 

you. Boys openly sold Bulldog, the racist 

propaganda of the far right, whilst almost 

every opponents’ support seemed to consist 

of cast-off mobs from the Old Firm. 

Meadowbank fans were just a scruffy collection 

of soulful young rebels. We didn’t 

just endure the countless defeats, we 

positively enjoyed them. If you can laugh 

at your own misfortune it makes the 

victory celebration all the more joyous. It 

was win-win, all the way home. 

I travelled with fellow disciples whose 

friendship I would come to cherish and 

value to the present day. Lads who shaped 

my attitudes not only to football, but to 

politics, music, relationships and life in 

general. It was the punk mentality which 

captivated me: not arrogant, but alternative. 

Change things, don’t destroy them. 

Laugh at ourselves and with others. Do it 

yourself, your own way. Whilst the Tory 

government was using gang-sounding 

acronyms such as YOP and YTS as ways of 

keeping Britain’s youth occupied, across 

Scotland and beyond football supporters 

wanted change and we were doing 

something about it: organising, writing, 

publishing, campaigning. A revolution 

was at hand and even fans of the smallest 

teams could be part of it. 

To some extent, being involved with 

football teams at Thistle’s level meant that 

your support was comparatively more 

important than at a bigger club. It was 

invisibility against visibility. If I missed 

a Hibs game, nobody cared. There were 

plenty to take my place and the few quid 

I handed over every fortnight was neither 

here nor there. At Meadowbank, if one 

of the regulars didn’t show up, questions 

would be asked. A family occasion 

more important than last week’s goalless 

draw with Montrose? A cold or the ’flu 

preventing you from making the away bus 

to Methil? Holidays? During the football 

season? Put bluntly, the pound you spent 

at Meadowbank had to go further by far. 

I viewed my primary identity now not 

just as a football fan, but as member of 

a particular sub-species of the human 

race: a Meadowbank Thistle football fan. I 

belonged. And with that came obligations. 

So we arrive at Glebe Park, Brechin 

standing in the pale, spring sunshine, 

bathed in optimism. It’s deep into injury 

time and finally, after an aeon of agony, 

the referee blows his whistle to mark the 

end of the game. In breathless excitement 

we vault the perimeter fence and run. I 

can feel the unbridled joy of it still to this 

day. The pitch seems like it is a thousand 

miles long as we sprint, sprint, sprint towards 

the halfway line. Coming the other 

way is a bigger army clad in red, arms 

outstretched, faces contorted in emotion. 

We meet in the middle, two tribes not at 

war, but united in glorious celebration. 

The result has brought promotion for both 

teams. Fans collect in front of the tiny 

main stand and demand an appearance 

from their respective squads of heroes. I 

am 18 years old and feel 18 feet tall. I wave 

my black and amber scarf above my head 

uncontrollably. Around me my friends are 

jumping and cavorting, revelling in the 

sheer impossibility of it all. In one glorious 

and improbable season, Meadowbank 

Thistle had flipped Scottish football on 

its head and the small band of diehards, 

of which I was one, could celebrate like 

other fans for the first time. 

Morton 0, Meadowbank Thistle 3; 

Scottish League First Division, 2nd 

December 1990, Cappielow Park. 

The 1980s was a blissful, creative and 

golden era for Meadowbank Thistle fans. 

We luxuriated in the team’s successes. 

The Commonwealth Stadium became 

a footballing fortress where many of 

Scotland’s most illustrious clubs were 

beaten to a pulp by a team marshalled 

from the vast open spaces opposite 

the grandstand by the singular and 

diminutive generalissimo Terry Christie. 



The club came within one league 

reconstruction – all the rage during that 

decade – of reaching the domestic game’s 

highest level. Although we felt cheated 

out of promotion in 1988, away from 

the games we were at the forefront of a 

phenomenon which gave fans a voice and 

a way of expressing themselves: fanzines. 

Although some claim you can trace 

the lineage of fanzines back to the cave 

drawings of Neolithic man, their evolution 

really began in the late-1970s with 

homespun publications dedicated to 

punk music. This inspired football fans to 

follow their creative instincts and by the 

middle of the following decade a welter 

of did-it-ourselves magazines allowed 

fans to express their news and views in 

an undiluted and uncensored way. The 

bile and boke of Scottish football was 

laid bare on photocopied pages, as fans 

began to organise and agitate. Tribal, 

yes, but the camaraderie which exited 

between fanzines brought supporters 

together at a time when violent disorder 

was never far away from most football 

grounds. Meadowbank Thistle fans had 

had a dummy run with a publication 

named Cheers but in 1986 its bastard 

offspring hit the terracing. Produced in a 

mouse-infested, subterranean shebeen by 

a cluster of underemployed reprobates, 

AWOL was an uncompromising attempt 

IT WAS LIKE NO OTHER 

SCOTTISH GROUND AND 

THE CLUB’S SMALL BAND OF 

FOLLOWERS WERE LIKE NO 

OTHER SUPPORTERS. 

to bring together in words, photos 

and cartoons three of our most-loved 

pastimes: football, music and shoplifting. 

We showcased local bands, reviewed 

galleries, films, bars and indeed anything 

else we could sneak in to undetected. We 

refused to take advertising to fund the 

fanzine and drank most of the proceeds 

anyway. We were outsiders, nonconformists, 

defiant desperadoes during 

those dislocated, dysfunctional days. This 

was the way we were. 

It seemed as if nothing could touch us. 

On a chilly pre-Christmas day on the tail 

o’ the bank, Thistle cut hosts Morton to 

pieces with a display of counter-attacking 

bravado which typified Christie’s cohorts. 

Three goals, two points and once again 

the summit was visible. We laid bets in 

bookies that we were going up and the 

usual dreich retreat from the soggy west 

coast was enlivened by an assortment of 

celebratory songs and what is these days 

referred to in footballing circles as ‘banter’. 

What we weren’t to know then was that 

our club’s board of directors contained a 

Trojan horse in the shape of the largerthan-death 

figure of local businessman Bill 

Hunter. He was already sowing the seeds 

of our destruction. Within five years, after 

a convulsive and at times repulsive campaign, 

Hunter had wrestled Meadowbank 

Thistle out of Edinburgh and existence and 

presented it to the bewildered residents of 

a new town in West Lothian, to do with it 

what they wished. 

It was a sorry episode, one which 

Thistle supporters fought to prevent 

using every manoeuvre available to a 

group of average football fans. Our pleas 

fell on the deaf ears of authority, our 

cause not helped by a media infatuated 

with the money flowing into Scottish 

football during the Souness-era. In 

a mirror image of the club’s decline 

on the pitch, supporters were either 

banned or abandoned their team and 

the Commonwealth Stadium, detested 

and derided by opponents, was largely 

 



forgotten on match days. When the end 

came for Meadowbank Thistle in 1995, it 

felt like a mercy killing. Stripped of my 

club, shorn of my identity, I was forced 

to watch the final home game from 

outwith the stadium’s perimeter as the 

owner presided over a celebration of the 

club’s achievements in a last, grotesque, 

Soviet-style act of ignominy and orgy of 

vainglory. It was a case of identity theft, 

which left me bereft and turning away 

from football. 

Edinburgh City 2, Peebles Rovers 2, East 

of Scotland League First Division, 4th 

November 1995, Fernieside Recreation 

Ground. 

It’s six month later. My legs are grazing 

against a rope which surrounds a sloping, 

bumpy cabbage patch masquerading as a 

football pitch. Rain permeates the space 

between my neck and collar. We stand 

along one touchline in a single, uncovered 

row, craning to see the action as tackles 

fly and the ball bobbles and dribbles 

harmlessly beyond the goal. Earlier, I had 

watched nets being flung over goalposts 

and dog mess being scraped off the pitch. 

Players of assorted sizes, shapes and 

weights wearing a collection of ragged 

training gear haphazardly pinged balls 

about in what passed as a pre-match 

warm up, before re-emerging from a 

cramped Portakabin to join in battle. 

Welcome to Edinburgh City, as a sign 

might have read had there been one at the 

ground. But in this anonymous corner 

of Auld Reekie, perched on its southern 

slopes in a ground hemmed in by 

housing, with no visible sign indicating 

the presence of senior football let alone a 

half-time pie, I suddenly rediscovered my 

love for the game. 

The setting may have been redolent of 

a pub match, but the standard was far 

higher, and the interest and intensity 

there to see. Within a few short months, 

my friends and I were the ones doing the 

spadework, laying foundations which 

would eventually see Edinburgh City 

scale the highest peaks, first in the East 

of Scotland League, then as two-times 

champions of the Lowland League before 

gloriously reclaiming a place in the 

Scottish League, vacated by the club of 

the same name a decade before I was even 

born. 

But to get to those exalted reaches, 

relentless toil and commitment were 

required. We turned from ordinary supporters 

into committee men overnight. 

Scarves were swapped for shirt-and-tie. 

It was our club and our responsibility to 

ensure that players turned up, their kit 

cleaned, the post-match food was hot and 

that sufficient scratch cards were flogged 

to ensure we could pay the petrol for players’ 

cars to away games at Hawick Royal 

Albert and Eyemouth United. We applied 

the same rules which had served us as 

fans in our previous incarnation: we can 

do this on our own. We don’t know how, 

but we’ll give it a go. We’ll learn from 

our mistakes and try never to fall out 

with each other along the way. Punks in 

blazers, doing it our way, again. We stuck 

together even if we fell out with players 

and managers. Dammit, we actually had 

to appoint managers. How grown-up did 

that make us feel? We took the club back 

to our alma mater, becoming tenants at 

the Commonwealth Stadium, erstwhile 

ground of the doomed Meadowbank 

Thistle. Home. In time, and through 

persistence and bloody-mindedness we 

built a club we could be pleased with and 

a new identity of which we were proud. 

For us, non-League was better than 

Champions League any day. 

East Stirlingshire 0, Edinburgh City 1; 

Scottish League Two Play-off Final, 

Second Leg, 15th May 2015, Ochilview 

Park. 

In 2013, by establishing the grandlysounding 

Scottish Lowland Football 

League, the game in Scotland shattered a 

glass ceiling: there would be promotion 



Edinburgh City fans react with delight and delirium as Dougie Gair’s penalty wins 

promotion against East Stirlingshire. 

to the Scottish League for the first time 

since its formation in 1890. This gave 

ambitious clubs previously perceived as 

beyond the pale the opportunity to claim 

a place amongst the likes of Brechin 

City, Stirling Albion and Elgin City. For 

me, and my fellow Meadowbank Thistle 

refuseniks, it offered the tantalising 

prospect of righting an historical wrong 

and proving that although money 

screamed until it was blue in the face, 

success could be achieved without 

being bought. On that sun-kissed day 

in Stenhousemuir, our hard work bore 

fruit. Captain Dougie Gair’s late penalty 

separated two clubs travelling in opposite 

directions and secured Edinburgh 

City’s place amongst Scotland’s elite. No 

jumping and fist-pumping like manic 

teens, rather handshakes and a feeling 

of quiet satisfaction and pride? No 

chance! Advancing years might rob us 

of the ability to dash across the pitch in 

a delirious invasion, nevertheless there 

were hugs and tears amongst friends who 

had metaphorically kicked every ball 

for more than two decades and got the 

club to where it is today. City players and 

manager Gary Jardine rightly received 

the plaudits, but it was us who took the 

spoils. 

In politics, we hear talk of the settled 

will of the people. It indicates that decisions 

have been made and life moves on. 

After a somewhat circuitous journey, I 

have finally come to my destination and 

to terms with my identity, one which has 

wider implications than simply being ‘a 

fan of…’ Irrespective of which division 

of league Edinburgh City play, there will 

be no more changing colours and no 

more turning away: As they sing on the 

terraces: “I’m City ’til I die”. l 

Words and images © Colin McPherson, 

2016 all rights reserved. 


The Nutmeg Essay 

CRUSHED BY 

THE WHEELS 

OF INDUSTRY 

SCOTTISH FOOTBALL 

& THE NEW ECONOMY 



Where were you on March 31, 1990 as the 

sun scythed down on Scotland, burning 

necks and blistering dreams? 

It was the day when a remarkable 

match unfolded and history slipped 

quietly by. The game was featured 

on Sportscene and Dougie Donnelly 

disbelievingly introduced it as “quite 

simply one of the best ... we’ve covered 

for a very long time”. All that was at stake 

were three humble points, the weekly 

wish of every football fan, but it turned 

out to be Scottish football at its compelling 

best. The final score was St Johnstone 

3-1 Airdrie. Unmemorable to many, but 

those that witnessed the game will never 

forget its endless twists and turns, and 

unconsciously, in the deepest recesses of 

their memory, they will measure every 

other game disappointingly against it. 

More than 10,000 people crammed into 

MacDiarmid Park, the first purpose-build 

ground of its kind in Scotland, with the 

home team needing a win to keep their 

flickering title hopes alive. Airdrie just 

needed to turn up. It was one-way traffic 

from the outset, St Johnstone hit the bar 

four times and were defied by a series 

of spectacular saves by the Diamonds’ 

madcap keeper John Martin. Then suddenly 

the script was ripped up. Against the 

run of play and all reasonable justice Stevie 

Gray fired Airdrie into an unlikely lead. The 

huge travelling support from Lanarkshire 

appeared to surge forward as one, engulfing 

the net, sensing that a victory would 

bring them closer to the title. Then it 

turned again. The reliable and nerveless 

Mark Treanor equalised from the penalty 

spot. Roddy Grant headed St Johnstone into 

a precious lead and as Airdrie threw everything 

into the quest for an equaliser, Kenny 

Ward’s injury-time goal on the counter 

attack unleashed a frenzy of bottled-up 

emotions around three sides of the ground. 

St Johnstone won the game and soon after 

the old First Division title. 

The final score not only wrecked 

Airdrie’s title bid but viewed from the 

wider sweep of history did untold damage 

to the very future of the club. Seen 

retrospectively, it was a game that tells us 

more about Scottish football than many 

more famous games. History had crystallised 

into a pulsating ninety minutes; and 

Airdrieonians had been crushed by the 

wheels of industry. 

St Johnstone’s victory came in the warm 

spring of 1990, at the height of Glasgow’s 

historic reign as European City of Culture. 

The tectonic plates of the Scottish 

economy had been grinding into a new 

gear for several decades and in the face 

of international disbelief Glasgow woke 

up to the clamouring realisation that not 

only had heavy industry gone, but its citizens 

watched with bleary enthusiasm as 

the uncertain ballet of post-industrialism 

unfolded. Football had played a small 

part in the city’s transformation. On the 

night of May 12, 1976 the European Cup 

final had brought the fans of St Etienne 

and Bayern Munich to Hampden Park and 

in an enlightened policy initiative, the 

City of Glasgow granted a special drinks 

licence which allowed bars and cafes to 

open late into the night. It was a small 

but significant epiphany - like glimpsing 

Barcelona through rusting turnstiles. 

Glasgow’s journey to a new economy 

divided the city at first but not in any ancient 

sectarian sense. The forward-looking 

wanted to re-brand the city and sandblast 

the harsh soot of the past away. Others 

clung frightened to the life they knew, 

weaving myths and repeating the reassuring 

clichés of ‘no mean city’. The Tramway, 

which had once housed the city’s clanking 

trams, was now a world-class centre for 

experimental theatre, and the old Govan 

shipyards, once the place where liners 

were built and fitted, now played host to a 

stunning site-specific theatre extravaganza 

by the Welsh company Brith Gof. 

Despairingly, most football discourse 

lent towards the past and many opportunities 

have been missed. Many years 



Crushed by the wheels of industry 

on, some still see the game through the 

dispersing smoke of industrialism unsure 

of the present let alone what the fearful 

future holds. Our national game has often 

been circumscribed by narrow thinking, 

short-termism and baseless myth. Casually 

we have come to describe the sport in 

short staccato periods: the Jock Stein era, 

the Souness revolution, nine-in-a-row, the 

New Firm in the 1980s, the Bosman era, 

Armageddon and the Offensive Behaviour 

Act. All of them important but very short 

chapters in an epic and sprawling novel. 

Unusually, I want to break with shorttermism 

and look back over a 100-year 

span, to try to make sense of what is happening 

now, in part for my own club, and 

to understand the challenges it faces in the 

Bildungsroman of the Scottish game. 

Ask anyone to name the greatest year 

in Scotland’s football history they will 

instinctively say 1967, when three unprecedented 

events coincided: Celtic won 

the European Cup, Rangers met Bayern 

Munich in a European Cup-Winners Cup 

Final, and Scotland beat the newlycrowned 

world champions England at 

Wembley. That’s it, three games, 270 

minutes plus a wee bit of extra time in 

Nuremberg, all over in a few precious but 

over-remembered weeks, mostly based on 

European matches, in competitions that 

were little more than a decade old. What 

if we were to break with type and go back 

beyond our own times and give a different 

answer – what if we said the greatest era 

was in the first years of the 1930s in the 

troubled days of the Great Depression. In 

the first full season of the new decade, 

Motherwell won the league leaving Rangers 

and Celtic in their wake. Leith Athletic 

were relegated and went down a division 

to joust with local rivals Hibernian. The 

Queen Mary was about to be launched 

and its gigantic ocean-going hulk sat 

majestically in the William Denny Yards 

in Dumbarton. A small immigrant group 

of Italian designers hired to fit the first 

class cabins moonlighted around Glasgow 

and helped furnish Rogano’s impressive 

art-deco interior. Swollen by the Irish 

poor and the discarded Highlanders, 

Glasgow’s population was about to reach 

an all time high. In all, 1,088,000 jostling 

souls lived cramped together in Britain’s 

second largest city, ‘the second city of the 

Empire’: home to shipbuilding, heavy 

engineering and brutal poverty. It was 

a time of romantic stars: Neil Dewar, a 

trawlerman from Lochgilphead, was one 

of Scotland’s most exciting strikers and 

scored a hat-trick against France in the 

Stade Colombes in Paris. Nine different 

clubs competed in Scottish cup finals 

across the decade, East Fife, Clyde, Hamilton 

and St Mirren all taking silverware 

back to their communities, where coal, 

shipbuilding and textile manufacturing 

reigned. The first Junior Cup winners 

of the 1930s were Glasgow Perthshire, a 

team originally founded by Perthshire 

agrarian workers who had been drawn 

to Glasgow to work in heavy industry 

but as the decade unfolded shipyard 

teams like Yoker Athletic and Govan’s 

ACROSS THE DECADE SEVEN 

DIFFERENT CLUBS BROKE 

THEIR HOME ATTENDANCE 

RECORDS AND THE 

NATIONAL STADIUM ALSO 

OUT-REACHED ITSELF, IN 

1937 OVER 140,000 WATCHED 

CELTIC BEAT ABERDEEN IN 

THE CUP-FINAL. 



Benburb came to dominate. It was a time 

of unrivalled drama and cathartic tragedy, 

most notably the death of John Thompson 

from the mining town of Cardenden, the 

young Celtic goalkeeper and evangelical 

Protestant who died after a collision at 

Ibrox in 1931. It was the decade of Jimmy 

McGrory’s titanic 408 goals for Celtic, and 

Dally Duncan’s mesmerising hat-trick 

against England. A total of 1,333 goals 

were scored in the 1932-33 league season 

alone, and Falkirk, who narrowly avoided 

relegation from the top league finishing 

third from bottom, still scored an 

astonishing 70 goals. Scotsport cameras, 

which had yet to be invented, missed all 

of them, so we can only imagine their 

daring significance. Europe existed but it 

was a place of wars not tournaments. 

For those that still see crowd sizes as a 

phallic proxy for success, this was the 

decade that out-reached everything 

before and since. Rangers broke their formidable 

home record, attracting 118,000 

to Ibrox for a game against Celtic. Celtic 

had already broken their home record, 

attracting 88,000 to Celtic Park. In 1933 

Hearts played Rangers at Tynecastle in a 

Scottish Cup game and 53,396 turned up. 

Hearts then went on to help smash Hamilton 

Academical’s record crowd when 

28,690 squeezed into Old Douglas Park. It 

was a quite remarkable cup contest won 

eventually by Celtic when a single Jimmy 

McGrory goal was enough to see off Motherwell 

and in an era for records, Alloa 

broke their ground record when a match 

against Dunfermline attracted 13,365 to 

Recreation Park. Seen from today’s vantage 

point these are outrageous crowds. 

Across the decade seven different clubs 

broke their home attendance records and 

the national stadium also out-reached 

itself: in 1937 more than 140,000 watched 

Celtic beat Aberdeen in the cup final. 

It was an era of mass spectatorship 

across society. Benny Lynch’s fights at 

Shawfield, Celtic Park and Cathkin Park 

attracted tens of thousands, Wild Bill 

Hickok’s Travelling Wild West Circus took 

up residency near Duke Street in Glasgow 

in an amphitheatre that held 7,000 and 

performed three shows daily, attracting 

bigger crowds to sharpshooting than 

Celtic today attract to low-key league 

games. Rowdy musical hall theatres like 

Aberdeen’s Beach Pavilion and Glasgow’s 

Alhambra drew crowds that would please 

many SPFL clubs today to watch the best 

of Scottish variety - the gawky Glaswegian 

Tommy Lorne, the ‘Laird of Inversnecky’ 

Harry Gordon, character comedian Will 

Fyffe, and the ‘Scottish Charlie Chaplin’ 

Dave Willis. 

Football was the king of crowds. We 

have all seen the sepia pictures of huddled 

masses, everyone wearing flat-caps, 

woollen overcoats and grim faces; we 

have seen the gentle swarm of white 

handkerchiefs flocking like seagulls above 

the heads, trying to attract medical help to 

the wounded. It was a time of impending 

war first in Spain and then across Europe. 

If attendances are a measure of anything 

– and it seems to be a measure of virility 

to the online supporters of Scotland’s 

bigger clubs – then the mid-1930s can lay 

claim to being the most popular period of 

Scottish football. Today we blame televised 

football for the decline in crowds but the 

most sudden decline came with the loss 

of heavy industry, as urban areas reliant 

on heavy manufacturing became depopulated, 

emigration soared and the new 

manufacturing and service economies 

offered more diverse lifestyles and choices. 

Industrialism is a complex central 

character – generous and cruel in equal 

measure. It provided Scotland with work, 

with pitiful income and with a global 

reputation for engineering. But industrialism 

had calloused hands and brought 

with it poverty, disease and malnutrition, 

social stigmas that have yet to be chased 

from the internal organs of modern 

Scotland. The slums that pock-marked 

 




our major towns and cities were a fertile 

breeding ground for great footballers 

but gave oxygen to anti-Irish bigotry, 

to squalor and to thwarted ambition. It 

bequeathed a certain strand of football 

mythology too, allowing a miscalculation 

to take root. The 1930s misdirected us into 

two lingering beliefs: that the deprivation 

gave birth to footballers with supreme 

skills and that the rancid waterways of 

sectarianism infused Scottish football 

with a unique ‘sporting rivalry’ that 

supposedly we cannot survive without. 

Those opinions are slowly passing but the 

progress has been glacial. You frequently 

hear people today bemoan the loss of the 

industrial legacy - the tanner-ba’ players, 

the red-blaize pitches, the back-court 

tactics, midfield hard-men and changingroom 

bullying. In the mangled logic of 

memory some think that to compete on 

a world stage we need to return to the 

past. It stops short of saying ‘bring back 

poverty’, but only just. 

Another by-product of the shadow of 

industrialism is that it shaped the 

management skills of our most successful 

football managers. That is also a myth 

that creaks beneath the weight of closer 

analysis. Sir Alex Ferguson was the son of 

a plater’s helper and for 18 months was 

a shipyard worker in the Govan yards 

where he participated in apprentice 

boys’ strikes. By the age of 19, he had 

signed his first professional contract 

with St Johnstone and travelled daily to 

Perth by train. Miles removed from his 

famous disciplinarian demeanour, he 

proved to be an ill-disciplined and surly 

recruit. Ferguson left the Perth club in 

disgrace after breaking a management 

curfew and going on holiday to Blackpool 

with two teammates. Much as Ferguson 

loathed it in others, discipline was not 

a prominent feature of his young life, 

and the leadership skills he acquired 

on his way to Manchester United, and 

subsequently Harvard Business School, 

were learnt across a lifetime, many miles 

from the shipyards of Govan. To ascribe 

Ferguson’s towering career to a very short 

spell in the shipyards is retro-engineering 

in the extreme. Bill Shankly also left 

home aged 19 to join Carlisle United. By 

the time he had left home, Glenbuck in 

Ayrshire, where he grew up, was already 

near derelict and on its way to becoming 

a ghost village. The local mine had closed 

down and mines in the surrounding areas 

of Lugar and Eglinton were facing extinction 

too. In his biography Shankly admits 

that the skill he acquired in his brief time 

as a miner was not character-forming 

discipline but theft, stealing vegetables 

from Ayrshire farmyards to help sustain 

the family. Despite the now virulent 

myth, Bill Shankly never played for the 

romantic Glenbuck Cherrypickers. They 

had already folded and as a young man 

Shankly spent more time in the Royal 

Airforce than he ever did as a miner. Of 

Scotland’s great industrial triumvirate, 

only Jock Stein can point to a significant 

time working in heavy industry, spending 

ten years underground in the Lanarkshire 

pits before joining the Welsh club Llanelli 

as a full-time professional footballer. 

Taken as an aggregate Stein, Ferguson and 

Shankly spent less than 15 years in heavy 

industry, less time than Shankly alone 

spent at Preston North End. But such is 

the powerful sway of heavy industry in 

Scottish football that the myth of ‘dressing 

room discipline’ and ‘industrial camaraderie’ 

endured long after the shipyards 

and mines had closed their gates. 

Industrialism has spun many yarns. 

One of the most robust among them is 

the fallacy that poverty was a breeding 

ground of great footballers. It has been 

handed down to us as a patented truth 

but test it closely and again it folds under 

scrutiny. To back up the theory that it 

was the poverty and social deprivation 

of the industrial era that bred talent you 

have to ignore Denis Law and Martin 



Buchan (Aberdeen), Dave McKay and 

John White (Musselburgh), John Greig 

and Sandy Jardine (Edinburgh), Billy 

Bremner (Stirling), Bill Brown (Arbroath), 

Alan Gilzean (Coupar Angus), Colin Stein 

(Linlithgow), Charlie Cooke (St Monans), 

and in more recent times, Gordon Strachan 

and Graeme Souness (Edinburgh), 

Paul Sturrock (Pitlochry), Ray Stewart 

(Stanley), Colin Hendry (Keith), Callum 

Davidson (Dunblane), and John Collins 

(Galashiels). Even as post-industrialism 

settled on Scotland, most of our capped 

players of recent times, have not been 

from traditionally deprived areas. Darren 

Fletcher (Dalkeith), Kenny Miller, Craig 

Gordon, Steve Whittaker and Gary 

Naysmith (Edinburgh), David Weir 

(Falkirk), Gary Caldwell (Stirling), Kieran 

Tierney (Isle of Man), Shaun Maloney 

(Malyasia), and any number of Scottish 

internationalists born in England who 

qualified due to their grandparents. Taken 

as a list, that is a formidable register of 

players, and it offers a powerful counterargument. 

Many of Scotland’s greatest 

talents came from communities where 

heavy industry was at best peripheral or 

in some cases non-existent, some drawn 

from agricultural areas, many more 

INDUSTRIALISM HAS SPUN 

MANY YARNS. ONE OF THE 

MOST ROBUST AMONG 

THEM IS THE FALLACY THAT 

POVERTY WAS A BREEDING 

GROUND OF GREAT 

FOOTBALLERS 

from small towns, and as the decades 

unfolded increasingly they came from 

settled middle-class families, Scotland’s 

new towns and the aspirational suburbs 

manicured around the big cities. In the 

current Scotland squad, only Robert 

Snodgrass from Glasgow’s Calton area 

is from an upbringing that could in any 

measurable sense be described as socially 

deprived. Ikeya Anya almost makes the 

cut. He was brought up in the sprawling 

Castlemilk housing scheme, but was 

the son of a Nigerian research scientist 

and a Romanian economist, and moved 

with his family to home near Oxford 

University after primary school. We live 

in markedly different times. 

Despite powerful evidence to the 

contrary we still cling to the shaky 

reassurance that football and industrial 

deprivation are somehow linked. Maybe 

in a complex way it was one of the 

reasons we were so slow to build modern 

facilities, naively believing that the backstreets 

would suffice. The myths cling to 

our game like asbestos and we have yet to 

fully shake off the hangover of industrial 

decline. In 1983, there were 170 working 

coal mines in the UK; by the time Graeme 

Souness came to manage Rangers, there 

were only four, and now there are none. 

At its epic height, Scottish iron production 

produced 540,000 tons a year, nearly 

30 per cent of British iron production. 

Gartsherrie in Coatbridge was the largest 

ironworks in Scotland, followed closely 

by Summerlee. Local team Albion Rovers 

fed on the success of the local works and 

in season 1933-34 – as Scottish football 

peaked with industrialism – they beat 

Dunfermline to the First Division title 

and spent most of the immediate pre-war 

period in the top league, where crowds of 

more than 20,000 were commonplace. In 

1936, 28,371 packed into Cliftonhill when 

Albion Rovers played host to Rangers, still 

a club record. The most famous player 

in the club’s history, Jock Stein, was then 

a young teenager. Local historians Peter 




Drummond and James Smith describe 

the decline. “The great Gartsherrie 

furnaces which for over a century contributed 

noise, smoke and verticality to 

the landscape, have now been completely 

covered over by a container storage and 

repair area and a small industrial estate, 

with only a couple of cranes to break the 

skyline. The Baird company’s tied housing, 

the cramped rows and squares that 

marked out Gartsherrie village, have been 

demolished.” In the 1940s the works were 

nationalised and by 1967 – the year now 

etched in Scottish football folklore – they 

had closed down for good. 

Industrial decline was inevitable, sudden 

and cruel. Shipbuilding began its decline. 

Between 1921 and 1923 the tonnage built 

on the Clyde went down from 510,000 to 

170,000. By the 1930s yards were closing 

as orders dried up and the hegemony that 

the Govan Yards had once enjoyed was 

living on borrowed time. Just after World 

War Two, manufacturing still accounted 

for 40 per cent of the UK’s economy. Now 

it is only a tenth of the UK economy and 

the services industry – the diverse and 

imprecise character of post-industrialism 

– is now 75.8 per cent. We can marvel 

now at the founding days of football when 

teams from Renton and Vale of Leven in 

Dunbartonshire were potent forces in 

the game and drew their players from 

shipyards and glass foundries. But flash 

forward to the glory days of the 1930s and 

we see the signs of even greater demise: 

eight of the league clubs of the decade 

no longer exist and six others have faced 

insolvency events that have seriously 

threatened their existence. Clydebank, a 

strategic town synonymous with shipbuilding, 

had been bombed into rubble 

during the war. At the end of the war it 

briefly flourished but soon joined the list 

of industrial casualties, their existence 

depressingly caught up in the chaotic 

history of Airdrieonians, who featured in 

that intense match at MacDiarmid Park – 

which must now rank as one of the great 

games of Scotland’s post-industrial era. 

So what is meant by post-industrialism 

and how does it shape Scottish football? 

Most sociologists agree that it is the 

stage of society’s development when the 

service sector generates more wealth 

than the manufacturing sector of the 

economy. New industries emerge and 

new types of wealth are generated. One 

good example – whilst Donald Trump 

campaigns noisily for the US presidency 

– is the phenomenal growth of Scotland’s 

golf tourism economy, buoyed by new 

courses, major tournaments, better 

facilities and increased numbers of 

high-value visitors. Direct comparisons 

are tricky but it would not be too bold 

an assertion to claim that a stretch of 

Scotland from St Andrews in north Fife 

to Carnoustie in Angus and westwards to 

Gleneagles in Perthshire now generates 

more income for the nation than the 

traditional steel manufacturing areas that 

once congregated around Ravenscraig and 

Dalzeil. In 2013, golf tourism generated 

£1.171 billion in revenues in Scotland and 

employed an estimated 1,480 people. 

When Ravenscraig closed it cost Scotland 

only 770 jobs – significant, regretful but 

probably inevitable. In another bitter 

paradox the Ravenscraig plant, once 

Western Europe’s largest producer of 

hot-strip steel, was nationalised in the 

spring of 1967 as Celtic fans prepared to 

leave home for Lisbon and the club’s most 

famous game. By the time local team 

Motherwell played their most famous 

game – the 1991 Scottish cup final against 

Dundee United – Ravenscraig’s closure 

had been announced and a pall of decline 

hung over the town. Despite a damaging 

insolvency event, the club has clung 

doggedly to its top-league status, defying 

the many odds that are stacked against it, 

and they are now navigating the difficult 

transition to fan ownership. 

The journey to post-industrialism 



captured so eloquently in Glasgow’s 

year as European City of Culture and the 

fallout of St Johnstone’s 3-1 victory over 

Airdrie in 1990 offer up harsh historic 

realities. The fortunes of the two clubs 

on that day could not be more different. 

St Johnstone have spent successive 

seasons as a top six club, have regularly 

played in Europe with some very decent 

results, and have won the Scottish Cup 

for the first time in their history. Airdrie 

by contrast have been a basket case and 

their decline spectacular. An industrial 

club writ large, in 1926 Airdieonians FC 

were runners-up to Celtic and competed 

for the league title throughout 

the decade, regularly playing in front 

of crowds of 20,000. Now professional 

matches in Airdrie attract a meagre 800 

fans. Many are not even sure who they 

are supposed to be watching: the club’s 

name has morphed with misfortune and 

only the iconic diamond tops show any 

connections with past glory. In 2000, 

the auditors of KPMG moved to liquidate 

the club and made Airdrie’s playing 

staff redundant after Rangers chairman 

David Murray reclaimed an outstanding 

debt to one of his teetering network 

of companies. Much has been made 

of the irony of that intervention, but 

Airdrie had been breathing toxic fumes 

for many years before and had been a 

troubled club since they sold their old 

Broomfield Ground to the supermarket 

chain Safeway in 1994. Change had been 

brutal to the town. Even at the height of 

the industrial era 50 per cent of the male 

population was unemployed and traditional 

industries like weaving and coal 

mining had disappeared, leaving Airdrie 

pockmarked by ugly brownfield sites 

and dependent for work on a commuter 

artery that led to nearby Glasgow. The 

roads that took commuters to work were 

exactly the same road that took locals 

to Ibrox and Celtic Park. Unlike Perth, 

Dundee, Inverness or Aberdeen, Airdrie 

was simply too close to the powerful 

magnetism of the big two clubs and their 

growing self-importance. 

Compared to the recent success-story of 

community clubs such as St Johnstone, 

Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross 

County, Scotland’s industrial clubs have 

suffered disproportionately. Renton and 

Vale of Leven are now quaint anomalies 

from a bygone era. Third Lanark no longer 

exist. Clydebank folded and have been 

reinvented as a Junior club. Clyde F.C. are 

a feint shadow of their former selves and 

have struggled for years to escape from 

the lowest division. Greenock Morton 

have yet to fully recover from their 

demotion in 2001 when they were placed 

in administration, and have been out of 

the top league for 16 years. Although the 

town has been battered by the decline 

of shipbuilding, Greenock is curiously a 

place that has characteristics that may yet 

allow it to surf through the post-industrial 

era: it has a long vantage onto the River 

Clyde, it has cavernous old buildings 

ripe for reinvention, the first wave of 

warehouse lofts have already been sold 

and a small arts hub has flourished 

around the Beacon Theatre quadrant. 

But set back from the stunning riverside, 

Cappielow is in dire need of refurbishment. 

As older generation die away only 

fans in their mid-thirties and older can 

remember when Morton last played in the 

top division. There are only so many great 

Andy Ritchie goals to remember before 

you yearn for success in the present tense. 

In 1986, Clyde, Morton and Airdrie 

were all playing in a division above 

St Johnstone and were broadly seen 

as ‘bigger clubs’. More dramatically, 

Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross 

County had yet to join the Scottish 

League. Frequently seen as poorly 

supported clubs, Ross County (4,171) 

Inverness (3,940) and St Johnstone 

(3,624) now easily exceed the average 

attendances of the industrial clubs 

they have ‘displaced’: Morton (2,907), 

 




Airdrieonians (844), Clyde (564) and 

Clydebank (200). Bizarrely, it is commonplace 

to hear fans of Central Belt 

teams, especially Celtic fans, bemoan the 

travelling distance to the Highlands, as if 

Inverness and Ross County have no real 

right to be in the top league, and no right 

to challenge the wheezing status quo. It is 

one of the many casual defamations small 

clubs have to suffer in Scotland and yet 

much of it is premised on past mythology. 

Inverness is Scotland’s fastest-growing 

city, comfortably bigger than Motherwell, 

Ross County one of the best-resourced 

community clubs and Perth a more populous 

city than Greenock and now served 

by a motorway network that makes it 

more easily accessible than in the past. 

It was in 1974, as Scotland were due to 

face Brazil in the World Cup at Frankfurt’s 

Waldstadion that the term ‘post-industrial’ 

first entered the vocabulary. It was the 

summer that a Harvard sociologist called 

Daniel Bell published his groundbreaking 

book The Coming of Post-Industrial 

Society. It was a term that baffled people 

at first but soon surged in usage and is 

now used interchangeably with other 

related terms such as ‘the knowledge 

economy’ and ‘the information society’. 

All of these concepts have impacted 

on Scottish football. The exchange of 

knowledge is now crucial to a game that 

draws on the expertise of nutritionists, 

sports scientists and physiotherapists. 

The study of all of those new disciplines is 

growing within our education sector and 

the campus of Stirling University, where 

several professional teams train, is a centre 

of excellence in sports management. The 

knowledge economy is vital to the growth 

of data-crunching companies such as Prozone 

and Football Radar and the myriad 

of metric-analysts that now populate 

football. Many younger managers in the 

game - Derek McInnes, Robbie Neilson, 

Paul Hartley and Ray McKinnon - have 

grown up in an era of shape, systems and 

analytics. This is not simply superficial 

modernisation: it is a fundamental break 

with the management of the past and 

reflects societal change in Scotland. 

McInnes manages a club situated next to 

Scotland’s oil and off-shore engineering 

industry; Robbie Neilson works in a city 

which hosts one of the most progressive 

nanotechnology centres in the world, and 

when Paul Hartley goes for a drink in the 

café bar at the Dundee Contemporary 

Arts (DCA) he looks out on Tay Street the 

epicentre of Dundee’s thriving computer 

games industry, where Minecraft and 

the underlying code of FIFA Manager are 

everyday conversations. FIFA Manager is 

a great bellwether to how radical change 

has become. It was first marketed by 

Electronic Arts in 1997, the year that Celtic 

and Scotland’s Kieran Tierney was born. 

Electronic game play is an essential part of 

the world Tierney grew up in and he has 

probably learnt more about football from 

its sub-culture than playing games with 

jackets as goal posts. Rather than bemoan 

that change we have to face up to it and 

shape a football culture that can live with 

the disruptive changes yet to come. 

We now live in a global football world. 

Scotland is currently struggling in the 

FIFA rankings, our clubs are in danger 

of being excluded from the Champions 

League and players from virtually every 

nation in the world have played here 

in recent years. But globalisation is not 

the only determinant of post-industrial 

society. We live in an era of bifurcation 

where the local and the global co-exist. 

Many new businesses have thrived by 

stressing the values of ‘localness’: organic 

food, micro-brewing and stay-at-home 

vacations are all examples of robust and 

innovative localness. It is not too big a 

leap to see Scottish football through this 

bifurcating prism. The announcement 

of Celtic’s summer exhibition game 

against Barcelona in Dublin speaks to 

global ambition, but the vast majority 


of Scottish clubs derive their sustenance 

from localness: their core fans, their local 

sponsors and their economic community. 

Each has to find its own ignition and 

there is increasing evidence that smaller 

town and cities, if they are well run 

locally, can draw on the strength of community. 

Ross County’s recent success in 

the League Cup is a case in point and far 

from being propped up by bigger clubs, St 

Johnstone have thrived on localness. The 

club’s stadium, on land bequeathed by a 

local farmer and lifetime fan, is happily 

situated next door to Tayside’s biggest 

crematorium. By offering affordable 

packages and free parking, the club now 

derives more net income from selling 

funeral packages to the bereaved than 

it does from the amortised income of 

visiting fans on a Saturday. They can sing 

“What a shitey home support” until the 

cows come home, but St Johnstone fans 

just smile back ghoulishly, in the knowledge 

that the club profits from death, an 

industry that will never fade. 

Reflecting back on Glasgow’s tumultuous 

year as European City of Culture and 

IT IS NOW COMMONPLACE FOR 

SCOTTISH FOOTBALL FANS 

TO ADMIT AN EMOTIONAL 

INTEREST IN ONE OF THE 

BIG GLOBAL TEAMS, OFTEN 

BARCELONA, BUT ALSO 

MAJOR ENGLISH CLUBS THAT 

CAN BE EASILY REACHED BY 

TRAIN OR PLANE 

what the era of post-industrialism has 

meant for Scottish football it is clear that 

some clubs have benefitted from the collapse 

of heavy industry whilst others have 

suffered. We can also be fairly certain that 

some clubs - notwithstanding periods 

of serious financial stress Celtic (1994), 

Rangers (2012) are now listed clubs that 

are answerable to share-holder value and 

overseas based investors, so they are keen 

to benefit from scale and fear losing out 

in the globalisation of high-end football. 

Others such as Aberdeen, Ross County 

and St Johnstone have placed greater faith 

in regional community entrepreneurship 

or localness. Others such as Stirling 

Albion, Hearts, Motherwell and St Mirren 

and have lent more heavily towards 

fan-ownership models of success and 

survival. What is not yet clear is how the 

various demands of post-industrialism 

will impact in the decades to come. We 

are already seeing one self-evident threat: 

that however strong a football club’s 

connections with its local economy 

are, global forces may drain emotional 

memory and financial loyalty away from 

the local game. It is now commonplace 

for Scottish football fans to admit an 

emotional interest in one of the big global 

teams, often Barcelona, but also major 

English clubs that can be easily reached by 

train or plane. Weekend football tourism 

– travelling to, say, the Milan derby – is 

now on many people’s bucket-list. Almost 

every week I read forum posts where a 

dedicated fan is missing out on a game 

because of securing tickets to Manchester 

City, Liverpool or Arsenal. This is a 

phenomenon that is helped by extensive 

television coverage of football and the 

concentration of super-talent in a small 

number of the top leagues. It is a reality 

every bit as formidable and threatening as 

the closure of the local yards and the pain 

of the P45. Only 100 years in the future 

will we really be able to say how Scottish 

society and its football clubs rode the 

rough tackles of post-industrialism. l 


If you like what you’ve read and 



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FAMILY TIES 

oviet Ill_layout_v4.indd 1-2 12/07/2016 22:2 

28 

Michael Tierney on 

his last game with 

his father. 

“In truth this is not a story 

I wanted to write. Ever. 

But I knew I would have to 

some day. A postscript of 

sorts to a book about the life 

of my father, and the only 

football match we had ever 

attended throughout our life 

together.” 

37 

Hugh McDonald on 

an unlikely bond 

with his ‘other’ 

team. 

“There is no signing of 

forms, no application for a 

season ticket, no taking of 

oaths or sharing of blood. 

I become a fan simply by 

suddenly realising I care.” 

40 

Alastair McKay 

on why his soul 

belongs to West 

Ham United. 

““Supporting a football 

team is not a rational choice. 

If it were, I would be a 

Hibernian fan.”” 


Family ties 

THE LAST 

GAME WITH 

MY FATHER 

A POSTSCRIPT TO HIS 

BOOK THE FIRST GAME 

WITH MY FATHER 

By Michael Tierney 


Here’s a memory. It was summer and a 

blistering hot day and I was in the back 

garden of my parent’s house, sitting 

alongside my father, John, who sat crosslegged 

in blue jeans and a white vest. 

Tanned and handsome, he ran his 

large hands through his curly black 

hair, and sipped from a mug of black tea 

while eating on a cheese and onion crisp 

sandwich. He was quiet as an Irish bog, 

but smiling. He looked a little worn out. I 

must have been about 12 years old. 

Down at the bottom of the garden, with 

the Campsie Fells in the background (we 

called them the Campsie Hills), were 

some of my sisters playing badminton 

over a rickety fishing net held up with 

bamboo sticks, and my brothers playing 

football. It was a very big garden, and part 

of a large house, in Bishopbriggs, on the 

outskirts of Glasgow, that my father had 

bought when it was rundown. We needed 

a big house: my parents had nine children 

and not much else to contain them. 

We sat talking, mostly about football 

and Celtic. And Ireland. For my father 

Celtic and Ireland was basically the same 

thing. If you said one it was the same as 

thinking the other. Everyone knew that. 

We were Celtic to the core. Celtic and 

Ireland together, like a pot of old stew and 

two red carrots. 

We had Ireland in our bones. And Celtic 

was in our DNA, though I didn’t really 

know what that was so he added that it 

meant we had bits of Celtic growing inside 

us, like green, white and gold strands. 

And it was inside him too and his father, 

and his father before that, and it would be 

inside our sons and daughters as well. 

We were connected to Ireland by birth, 

he said. We were connected to Celtic, by 

Ireland. You couldn’t get the grin off his 

face with a blowtorch. 

But we also talked about Barra, my 

mother’s family’s island home in the 

Illustration by Kathleen Oakley 

Outer Hebrides: a place he secretly loved 

more than Ireland but would never admit 

it. We would have talked, I’m sure, about 

what I was going to do when I grew up 

(play centre forward for Celtic, naturally), 

and that I should think of studying the 

law because it would mean that I might 

infiltrate the Establishment and all the 

nefarious and hidden powers-that-be. 

I nodded enthusiastically in agreement, 

but didn’t really know what the 

Establishment was, nor anyone nefarious 

for that matter. I knew some of the neighbours 

were for the watching but that was 

about it. I inherited his suspicion, like 

someone inherits a chair. 

My father would have been in his late 

30s, only a young man compared to what 

I am now (two years shy of an impossible 

50). We chatted a bit longer and 

then almost inexplicably he was silent. I 

caught him staring again at the Campsies, 

blowing smoke rings from his Benson & 

Hedges cigarettes. 

When he died, he said, in a voice driven 

to sadness, I had to bury him in the 

garden and not to fuss at all about paying 

for funerals and coffins and wakes. I’d to 

bury him near the gooseberry bush, or 

one of the crab apple trees or maybe even 

somewhere under the hedge beside his 

shed. There would be none of that funeral 

nonsense. None of that malarkey, son. 

Waste of good money and then some. His 

words were as clear as the directions for 

putting on a sock. 

And I nodded while he kept staring at 

the Campsies, a fug of smoke around him 

like a halo, and wondered how I’d tell my 

mother and brothers and sisters about 

the whole burying out the back carry-on 

and him being deadly serious about not 

spending a brown penny because why 

on earth would a man want to pay good 

money for a funeral if he was dead? 

Besides he liked the view from the 

kitchen window, peering out through the 

net curtain, and down past the shed and 

 


Family ties 

The last game with my father 

the Christmas trees he’d rescued from the 

living room every winter before planting 

them after the festivities were over. 

So I’m 12 years old, quiet as a box of 

eggs with arms that couldn’t lift two 

stamps, and him going on about the dying 

stuff while eating his crisp sandwich and 

me thinking about the foxes that came in 

every night from the quarry, with their 

hungry, yellow eyes, and how they’d dig 

him up and eat every last part of him, 

dead or not. I winced. 

‘But it won’t be for a long time?’ I 

asked, holding back wet, salty tears. Even 

now, in my memory, I can feel them welling 

once more. 

He paused and looked at me. ‘Not 

the now, son. Don’t worry.’ He rubbed 

my head with his rough hands, while I 

breathed in his scent of tobacco and stale 

sweat. ‘I could look at those Campsie Hills 

all day…’ 

Even now, more than 30 years later, I still 

wonder if he really did want me to bury 

him in the garden. And, sometimes, I still 

find myself wondering if we actually had 

that conversation. 

So it’s a story that might be true. And I 

think it is. I know, for sure, that I want it 

to be. But such is the impossible nature of 

memory that we cannot always reliably 

recall the truth. Yet our memories give 

flesh and bone to words and meaning. 

And, of course, they give each of us a 

place in the world. 

We invent things to keep other things 

alive. Just as my father did. 

He was the son of a British soldier 

named Michael, who I was named after, 

and who had died in the Second World 

War. For much of my father’s life he was 

searching for the father he had lost, and 

the way for him to do that was by looking 

at where he came from, and many of 

his family came from Ireland. So that 

informed his identity which, in turn, 

formed mine. 

Things are passed on, but they’re 

not necessarily true. Most of my life I 

believed my grandfather was Irish, even 

though he was born in Maryhill, like my 

father. We invent ourselves: our past and, 

sometimes, our future. We all do. It’s the 

remembering that makes it real. 

Fast-forward more than 30 years. On a 

good day the decision we made seemed 

right. Not calling my mother, Catherine, 

home seemed sensible because she was 

on her way to Barra, to bury her sister 

who had died only a few days earlier. 

On a bad day I am haunted by my 

reluctance, our reluctance (my sister’s 

and I) not to call my mother on time and 

have her return to the hospital where her 

husband, my father, lay dying. 

I think I knew he was dying. I think we 

all did. Really dying. But I didn’t want it to 

be true so I convinced myself in the hospital, 

that he would be fine. My mother 

would only be gone for a few days and, 

by the time she returned, he would have 

picked up a little. If not completely better 

he would have been as ill, at least, as he 

had always been. He had been seriously ill 

for more than a decade. 

In 2002 he had suffered a devastating 

stroke that rendered him unable to walk 

or talk for most, if not nearly all, of that 

time. More recently, I had even written 

a book about it – The First Game With 

My Father – that was published in 2014. 

It was a story of love, loss, football and 

family. 

It was a story about Celtic and identity 

and community and history and memory. 

It was about the first football match I 

attended with my father, against Sporting 

Club do Portugal in November 1983. That 

night, watching Celtic overturn a 2-0 first 

leg deficit with an emphatic and exhilarating 

5-0 victory, was my 15-year-old self, 

along with my brother, Iain, and my father. 

I remember his white, rusting Volkswagen 

van taking us along Kirkintilloch 



Road, through Springburn and past 

the high flats that looked like sentries 

on parade. A cold dark of winter had 

settled over Glasgow. The city looked big 

and sharp, with needles coming out of 

cathedrals and churches and halls. 

I carried my Celtic scarf. My father had 

brought it home to me one day when I 

was much younger. It was old and tatty 

even then, and I told my mother it would 

be fine after a wash and that I could sew 

on my new Celtic patches by myself. And 

I did. And they’re still there now. 

Celtic Park smelled of cheap tobacco and 

stale lager and the trapped air of something 

burning. We ate chips till we were as 

full as a fat lady’s sock. The faces of men 

and boys were just like he had promised. 

Just like ours. The colour of wet cement. 

The noise, meanwhile, was unlike anything 

I had ever heard before, as if a latched 

cage had been opened and something 

monstrous had been let out. I’d waited a 

long time for this. I’d waited a long time to 

see my father’s face. I knew he was worried 

about the cost. My mother said it would 

be fine. And anyway, if they could put a 

man on the moon he could find a few extra 

pounds somewhere on earth. 

WE SAT TALKING, 

MOSTLY ABOUT 

FOOTBALL AND CELTIC. 

AND IRELAND. FOR MY 

FATHER CELTIC AND 

IRELAND WAS BASICALLY 

THE SAME THING 

By the end Celtic destroyed Sporting. 

And my father was smiling. We all smiled 

together, in the joyful brutality of the 

football arena. But I knew that he was 

already thinking of other things. He was 

thinking about work. And the house. 

And my mother. And his mother. And my 

grandfather. And how much petrol cost 

and how much brake pads cost and what 

was the price of a new exhaust. And he 

thought about his nine children. And how 

he would get them through it all. 

We drove home, through the High 

Street. It looked sinister and dark, what 

with the cathedral and the enormous 

gravestones of the medieval necropolis 

and the oldest house in Glasgow nestled 

at the side of the road. 

‘There’s the Royal Infirmary,’ he said, 

pointing. ‘You wouldn’t want to be going 

in there with toothache, boys. They used 

to wheel the bodies in there on a horse 

and cart years ago. The fellas were never 

the same when they got out.’ 

My brother and I looked at each other. 

‘I used to run electric cables in they 

hospitals,’ he said. ‘Can’t stand the 

places.’ 

Celtic remained a constant throughout 

that time, like wallpaper. It was the 

background of all our younger lives. It 

constantly changed, but it was always 

there. Yet, it would be 30 years later, 

in November 2013, before the three of 

us returned to Celtic Park, when Celtic 

played Dundee United. 

I had planned a big European night for 

my father, like the one we had attended 

against Sporting, but my mother said he’d 

never make it past seven in the evening 

and she was right. The Dundee United 

game fell exactly thirty years to the day 

since our memorable visit to Celtic Park 

all those years ago. It was perfect. 

So much time had passed. So much 

football had come and gone too. I had 

friends who attended every match 

without fail, home and away, taking up 

 


Family ties 


all their time. Taking up their life. I’d 

gone to games sporadically over the past 

few years. I became like my father. The 

radio and television suited me. It was a 

reflection of our times, I supposed. Too 

many distractions. Too many trips away 

with work. I used to go so much more 

often in my 20s but that was such a long, 

long time ago that I didn’t even know that 

person any more. 

But the strand of Celtic, the threads 

of the same cloth, was still weaving its 

way through our lives. The memory was 

still warm from the first time. All the 

things he’d ever spoken about had made 

their mark, in one way or another. The 

pond had rippled. Celtic had come to 

represent many of the things I held dear. 

Togetherness. A community. 

He looked forward to the match even 

though he couldn’t say so. We drove 

through Springburn and into town and 

along London Road as we had done all 

those years ago. Sometimes it seemed as 

far away as the silver moon. 

I brought my daughter, Mahoney, with 

me and she wore the Celtic scarf I’d had 

from childhood. It was a totem. I always 

wanted to believe that it kept my father 

alive. As long as I had that scarf he’d be 

safe. It was ridiculous, of course. The 

scarf was made of wool. And I had lost it 

a hundred times. It did nothing for my 

father’s survival. Still, that was what faith 

was. Believing in something so utterly 

preposterous that it must be true. 

I took my father to that match in his 

wheelchair, wrapped like an old man 

against the biting rain and sleet, a shell of 

his former self: freezing, brittle hands, a 

lopsided grin as a result of his stroke and 

a partly crushed skull where bone had 

been removed to allow him to survive. 

It felt good to be here again with him, in 

front of Celtic Park. It felt right. Kerrydale 

Street in the bright daylight. I clasped his 

shoulder and watched his body slip back 

and forth on his wheelchair, like a buoy 

rolling on a rainy Barra tide. 

He was smiling now, at the lights and 

the streets and the fans walking with 

their scarves and the vans selling chips 

and pies and hot dogs. Mahoney fixed his 

scarf for him. The area around Celtic Park 

had changed. It took him a while to take 

it all in. He stared at the Velodrome that 

had been built beside the stadium for the 

Commonwealth Games. With a quivering 

finger he pointed it out. It looked like a 

spaceship had landed quietly and stayed. 

His face recoiled in wonder more than 

anything. And I think he saw the death of 

something too. 

The man at the entrance to the disabled 

access area opened the large, vaulted 

gate. We pushed my father through the 

entrance and then stopped for some 

photographs. There he was, smiling in his 

wheelchair, wrapped against the cold. We 

took turns having our photographs taken 

and he smiled in each of them and looked 

amazed when he heard the noise inside 

the ground. 

All those years ago, standing on the 

terraces of Celtic Park, I had no idea at 

the time that it might be the only match 

we’d ever attend together. Back then it felt 

like a miracle. The only thing that really 

mattered to me was Celtic. I could recite 

all the players as if recalling the ten-times 

table. I could barely remember them now. 

They had faded, once more, like a song. 

He always said it was never about how 

often you went to watch football, it was 

about what you brought when you did. 

The singing grew louder and louder. 

‘The Fields of Athenry’ was sung with 

gusto and we joined in with the rest of 

the crowd. I could feel myself getting a 

little emotional and tried to bury it in my 

throat. It wasn’t the song. It was my father 

sitting in his chair, with a hood covering 

his head against the rain. He was freezing. 

He tried to fix the hood but his hands 

didn’t work as fast as the rain did. He 

wouldn’t let me fix it. He got soaked. 

Yet, even in his chair, he still had poise. 



The rain was soaking us through. Celtic 

attacked. The ball moved from left to 

right. From the back of the stands the 

fans shouted and screamed. Mahoney 

smiled. I loved that she was there with 

her grandfather. He rubbed his skull and 

felt the missing bone. I watched as she 

took his hand and held it for a minute or 

two. 

We give expression to our lives through 

little things, and the little things in our 

lives give expression to us. A book. A 

memory. A smell. A football match. 

All those years ago the little things in 

my life quickly became the biggest thing. 

I was obsessed by football. I played it 

every day after school for hours on end 

in the garden, way past my bedtime: and, 

sometimes, in summer, way past my 

parents’ bedtime too. 

But my father didn’t take us to matches 

because, quite simply, he couldn’t afford 

I BROUGHT MY 

DAUGHTER, MAHONEY, 

WITH ME AND SHE WORE 

THE CELTIC SCARF I’D 

HAD FROM CHILDHOOD. IT 

WAS A TOTEM. I ALWAYS 

WANTED TO BELIEVE THAT 

IT KEPT MY FATHER ALIVE. 

AS LONG AS I HAD THAT 

SCARF HE’D BE SAFE. 

it. With nine children to feed, clothe, raise 

and support together with my mother, it 

was never highest on his list of priorities. 

And yet football was always there. Celtic 

was always there. And it always would be. 

The book became much more about my 

father than Celtic. The real reason I wrote 

it was, I think, fairly simple. I knew he 

was dying and I wanted to keep him alive 

in a story. So I wrote the book principally 

for this reason: to give my father a place 

in the world. To give him a place in that 

world. It’s why I still write about him 

now. To preserve him. 

In truth this is not a story I wanted to 

write. Ever. But I knew I would have to 

some day. A postscript of sorts to a book 

about the life of my father, and the only 

football match we had ever attended 

throughout our life together. 

The morning of my father’s death I 

was in Glasgow at the passport office, 

enjoying the cool, grey air of June, having 

just returned for a brief break from Qatar 

where I was working on the World Cup 

2022 project. A week earlier I visited my 

parents’ house and watched as the carers 

hoisted him, yet again, from his bedroom 

to the living room where he would sit 

quietly in front of the TV. They would 

return him as usual to his bed at night. 

It has always been awful to watch my 

father like this and worse, of course, 

for my mother. The years have passed 

unexpectedly quickly since 2002 and I 

have watched her getting a little older 

and a little more tired with every passing 

day, yet always gracious and graceful. I 

still don’t really know how she did it. Or 

maybe I do. Maybe the hardest questions 

have the simplest answers. She loved my 

father more than anything. More than 

anything. That’s all. And she always has 

done. 

And my father? Although he couldn’t 

speak, I knew this much for sure. His 

wound was never his stroke. It was his 

inability to talk to my mother, to say a 


Family ties 


simple hello and goodbye: and to hold her 

every single day. 

The mobile phone rang out again. 

My sister, Catherine, called a couple 

of times but I had missed them while I 

chatted to the amiable lady behind the 

passport counter. When I answered I 

knew then that something was wrong. I 

held my face in my hands. He couldn’t die 

that day. Please, God, no. Of all the days 

over the past fourteen years it could not 

be that day. 

My mother was already on her way to 

Barra for Mary’s funeral. 

That morning she left him with a kiss 

and a promise she’d be gone for only a 

couple of days. My father had been his 

usual self, a little sick, unable to articulate 

whether he was in real pain or just a bit 

uncomfortable. He had regular infections 

but nothing more or less than he had 

experienced before. 

We would go to Barra in summers as 

children, to the house belonging to my 

grandmother, El, though sometimes my 

father had to stay in Glasgow where he 

worked as an electrician. Even though he 

would be staying at home, when he drove 

us all from Bishopbriggs in his precious 

old van to Oban for the ferry, I don’t 

think I’d ever seen a happier man, then 

or since. And he always promised that he 

would make a boat out of the old van, rust 

and all, to help speed our return. 

He also joked with my mother that he 

would build her a boat that they could 

both sail away on. Perhaps, that morning, 

as my mother left for Barra, he believed 

that it was finally ready. 

We all reassured my mother that she 

should go. 

I counted the days in my head that she 

had been away in all those years: once, to 

visit my brother in Ireland and another 

time to Barra, to see Mary. Perhaps fourteen 

days out of more than four thousand. 

It couldn’t be now. 

It shouldn’t be now. 

The phone rang again. Catherine gave 

another update in an anguished tone. 

He had an infection but was having 

problems breathing. I walked quickly 

along Killermont Street towards the Royal 

Infirmary, where he was being taken, still 

alive, but slipping in and out of consciousness. 

With every step the day was 

already marked on my private calendar of 

grief, stamped in my new passport. 

As I walked I remembered the journey 

through the High Street all those years 

ago coming back from the Sporting 

match, and the hospital at the top of the 

road. My father’s voice ringing in my ears. 

God help the poor bugger who went in 

there. They’d never get out the place what 

with all those experiments and scientific 

malarkey that the surgeons carried out 

on the poor. They were still doing it, mark 

my words. He’d shake his head and offer 

a long whistle. The last place you’d want 

to send a man and no mistake. 

When the ambulance pulled into the 

bay I could tell from the faces of my 

sisters what lay ahead. He was quickly 

MY GOD, CHILDREN… 

THIS IS THE LIFE. WHO 

WANTS A GAME OF 

FOOTBALL? COME ON, 

I’LL BEAT THE LOT OF 

YOU! NINE AGAINST ONE. 

COME ON. BIG CELTIC 

AGAINST WEE CELTIC! 



taken inside and, after a few minutes, a 

young doctor appeared telling us that my 

father was a very ill man and did we want 

to contact anyone else? 

I looked at the ruins of my father’s 

body as he lay in his hospital bed, startled 

by the marble beauty of his hands, and 

thought of my mother heading to Barra to 

bury Mary in Eolaigearraidh, on the other 

side of the island. He would be happy she 

was there. 

Remember Barra, Dad? 

The boys, squashed up the back of the 

van like dead pigeons, had our footballs 

and second-hand Celtic jerseys and the 

girls with their vanity cases and magazines. 

Now and again my mother would 

talk to my father in Gaelic and he would 

grin, desperately wishing he understood 

her native tongue. 

Then him singing the Mingulay Boat 

Song for my mother and my great-grandfather 

who had grown up on that other 

hardy, solitary island, and my mother fretting 

over whether she had enough food 

and money for all of us for the six weeks 

we would spend in Els house. 

Soon we’d be in Tangusdale or be walking 

over the croft, trying not to get lost, 

but usually did, as the mist descended. 

And we’d climb Ben Heaval right to the 

very top, where the statue of Our Lady 

Star of the Sea stood like a protectorate 

over our dead ancestors in the waters of 

the Minch and the Atlantic – the same 

way my mother had stood protecting over 

my father these past years. 

I can still see my mother with her black 

tea looking out of the window at El’s 

waiting and worrying if we’d all return 

safely, amid the great croft and the burn 

and the rocks. Sometimes we’d sit outside 

in the evening waiting for the ferry to 

arrive with fresh milk and bread, each of 

us secretly hoping to see if my father was 

finally coming off the ferry. My mother 

wished it more than any of us. Just to see 

and hear him. 

That’s what she missed most about him 

over the years. Being able to hear his 

voice. In the past, as we shared stories 

in the loft, he always talked about my 

mother. Quietly, gently and with all the 

admiration of the saints. 

We’d be sitting up talking again, and 

me barely a teenager, about Ireland 

and football and Celtic and, eventually, 

he would get round to my mother. He 

talked about meeting her in Crinan 

while she worked as a chambermaid. 

Their first date at a local cinema in 

Lochgilphead and my father picked her 

up on his Norton motorbike (we still 

have it even now) and my mother rode 

pillion, scarf in her hair like a movie star. 

And he talked about my mother in 

Barra and about all the children they 

were going to have. And he showed me 

photographs from then and she was 

beautiful. Not beautiful in my imagination 

or my memory. But she truly was. 

It’s a simple fact. And still is. 

As my father lay dying my sisters and I 

managed to convince each other that it 

would be fine. My father would survive. 

It was just another one of his episodes. 

We held his hands. We tried to bring 

him back to life with a word, or a smile. 

We tried calling my mother but there 

was no signal on the ferry to the islands. 

But he couldn’t die anyway. God could 

never be that cruel. 

My mother arrived after midnight. 

My father had already left. We pulled 

the curtain and closed the door. Bathed 

in the soft yellow light of the room, she 

stroked his cold arm over and over and 

talked and wept gently into his remains. 

She left him with a warm kiss for his 

journey. 

My brothers and I carried my father 

from his home, as my mother, sisters 

and the grandchildren stood reverently 


Family ties 



in the front garden as he left for the very 

last time. 

I can still see my mother’s face, like 

a broken porcelain plate, her hands 

clasped, her thumbs touching her lips in 

prayer. She recited her words quietly and 

with great dignity and, right there, God 

was an inescapable fact of her existence. 

She never doubted His presence. Nor 

would she. 

Tears in our eyes, pain in our hearts, 

but more pride than I could ever have 

imagined, we walked him to the hearse. 

Despite the hurt, I smile at the memory of 

it even now: my father finally leaving his 

home and his garden. 

His coffin, the wooden-boxed boundary 

between the living and the dead, was 

filled with little things, mementoes from 

his family: a flower, Rosary beads, some 

coins (he loved the weight of one pound 

coins), hand-written notes from his 

grandchildren, a drawing, a copy of my 

book and some photographs. But mostly, 

it was filled with love. And, of course, the 

weight of all our sorrows. 

I close my eyes. Here he is, my father, 

not old, but vibrant, powerful (immensely 

powerful), handsome and wearing his 

blue jumper with holes at the sleeves. 

Here he is on his Norton motorbike, 

cigarette in hand, smiling at something 

unseen. And again, this time just as a boy, 

dressed for communion while growing up 

in Ruchill and Maryhill. 

And in another, I see him collecting 

autographs of great Celtic players, 

including Sean Fallon, Bertie Peacock 

and Bobby Evans, and players from other 

teams, including Tommy Ledgerwood, 

Frank Pattison, Colin Lidell and Tommy 

Baxter. I picture him going to Celtic Park 

or Firhill as a youngster, on his bicycle or 

by bus, and the players tipping their flat 

caps and saying, of course, son, when my 

father asked them to sign. 

I just can’t let these memories go. 

I see him taking me to our house for the 

very first time. I must have been seven. 

My father rubbed the grey stone with the 

edge of his thumb, holding the weight of 

the building like Atlas held the celestial 

sphere. 

That morning we went round to the 

garden at the back and the snow was so 

heavy. It was stunning, really beautiful. In 

the background I saw the majesty of the 

Campsie Hills for the very first time. And 

he lifted me up on his shoulders and said 

he was buying the house. There are days 

when I remember it all. 

But the picture I see most of all is my 

father in Barra, so happy to be around 

his nine children. He is lying back in the 

grass, wearing his Aviator sunglasses 

and sporting sunburned arms. My God, 

children… this is the life. Who wants a 

game of football? Come on, I’ll beat the 

lot of you! Nine against one. Come on. Big 

Celtic against wee Celtic! 

And we all ran to his arms on Barra. 

I close my eyes for the final time. Now I 

see my mother, in her 70s, strong and true 

as the croft of her childhood, nestling in 

the foothills of old age. She misses him as 

only she can. She moves gracefully to the 

next stage of her life, without him for the 

first time in decades. But if you love you 

grieve, and there are few exceptions. 

We buried our father in a grave facing 

the Campsie Hills where he took us all as 

children. There is a B&Q store across the 

road. He used to shop there every single 

week without fail, a packet of nails, some 

paint or a new hammer. 

It’s a perfectly ordinary spot for the end 

of a football story. But looking out to these 

hills of his youth and of my childhood, 

stretching gently from Denny Muir to 

Dumgoyne, it’s a perfect spot to finish a 

love story. When I’m home I sometimes 

visit him in the light, grey dawn. Other 

times, if I’m lucky, it might also be a 

warm afternoon, the verdant grass 

beneath my feet. It’s our own patch. Our 

own pitch. It’s where I remember the last 

game with my father. l 


Family ties 

BVB AND ME 

How Ballspielverein Borussia 

09 e.V. Dortmund became a 

part of life for me and my son 

By Hugh MacDonald 

It is April in Stuttgart. It is damp, cold and 

grey. We stand in a concrete bubble, surrounded 

by hundreds of people in bumble 

bee yellow. It is slick underfoot with rain, 

spilled beer and other mercifully unspecified 

liquids. It is a scene that is the stuff of 

an anxiety dream or the result of taking 

the wrong mushrooms with one’s well 

done bratwurst. It is, though, reality. 

It is about 5pm on a dismal Saturday in 

the Mercedes-Benz Arena and Borussia 

Dortmund have just defeated Vfb Stuttgart 

with some ease and with considerable 

style. My son, Ally, and his mate, Andy, 

are briefly lost in the jumping, thrashing, 

mewling mass as I stand transfixed by 

the aftermath of a match so one-sided it 

cannot be called great but demands to be 

described as memorable. 

I am swathed in a Borussia bobble 

hat, my Borussia scarf and my Borussia 

heavyweight jacket (with fetching yellow 

badge and trim). We have flown in for the 

weekend for the sole reason of watching 

Borussia Dortmund, though as football 

fanatics we spend hours on the train the 

next day travelling to and from Munich to 

watch 1860 play Eintracht Braunschweig 

in a second division match. We are not 

immune to glamour, after all. 

But it is all about BvB. It is all about 

seeing them in the flesh yet again, it is all 

about savouring the Bundesliga experience 

that has, in our deeply prejudiced 

souls, the unspoken need to be garnished 

by BvB sauce. 

The drama, the clamour of my immediate 

surroundings does not surprise 

me. Standing amid hundreds of fans 

proclaiming their allegiance to BvB, I 

feel no distance emotionally from their 

exuberance. The Borussia experience was 

once a bit of a lark for me, an occasional 

rush to a plane, then a tram or subway 

to a stadium, and an ever so slightly 

detached view of a vibrant, enterprising 

side playing in front of an extraordinary 

support, home or away. But this has 

changed. Somehow I have become a 

Borussia supporter. Not in a renaming my 

son Burki Mkhitaryan Weigl Aubamayang 

Kagawa Gundogan Reuss MacDonald sort 

of way. Not even in a pledging my life to 

BvB and having a tattoo on the extensive 

free space on the top of my bald napper 

sort of way. But a supporter, nevertheless. 

Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e.V. 

Dortmund have somehow become part of 

my life. The interior of the Mercedes Benz 

Arena bounces ever so slightly, the noise 

resounds off its walls, the damp seeps 

slowly but into my boots. The dance goes 

on, accompanied by cries of Heja BvB, 

Heja BvB, Heja, Heja, Heja BvB. This can 

be crudely translated as ‘Come on, BvB’ 

though this deprives it of its innate exuberance. 

I smile. I even take what passes 

for a video on my phone. I am elated. I am 

happy. I am 60 years of age. 

It is Anfield. But first it was Annfield. The 

story of how Ally and I ended up supporting 

Borussia Dortmund requires an 

explanation. It is Anfield, April 16, 2016, 

about a week before our trip to Stuttgart. 

The dash to Liverpool has been born of 


Family ties 

BvB and me 

a need that has contempt for the normal 

imperatives of finance and rationality. We 

have paid the equivalent of the combined 

SPFL premiership transfer budget for two 

seats at the back of a stand at Anfield. 

The money bothers us naught. The 

fragility of the Dortmund defence is 

deeply vexing, however. Famously, and 

predictably, BvB play spectacularly well 

for large chunks of the match, mesmerising 

Liverpool with their pace and passing. 

With a carelessness that would be 

shocking if it were not so traditional, the 

defence conspires to donate four goals. 

From 3-1 up, BvB sink to 4-3 down, the 

fatal goal being scored in time added on. 

You may know this. It was in the papers. 

The walk back to the centre of town 

prompts a period of reflection that has 

something to do with the power of momentum, 

the fragility of a largely callow 

side and the sheer tumult of Anfield. But, 

more importantly, it references Annfield. 

It is the late summer in the late 

eighties. Ally is three years old and as 

calm as Jamie Vardy on speed. He needs 

to be walked like a nervous thoroughbred 

and tonight’s journey takes us past 

Annfield, big and brick and bold and the 

home of Stirling Albion. 

“What happens in there, Daddy?” 

“The big men play football,” I lied. 

The next day we were inside the ground, 

kicking up dust on a deserted terracing, 

watching 22 men assault a ball on 

a piece of artificial grass. I was gently 

amused, even slightly entertained. Ally 

was smitten. His sister, pricking her ears 

at the mention of pies and sweets at the 

post-match conference in the living room, 

decided to join us on future trips. We were 

regulars at Stirling Albion for 10 years. 

From Annfield to Ochilview to Forthbank. 

Ten soddin’ years. It was a punishment on 

the weans that should have attracted the 

attention of social workers. But they survived. 

Catriona wandered away from football, 

Ally took up with Celtic. The latter is 

a family illness and he was infected when 

Albion were fixture-free and he went to 

a Celtic match with one of my mates. He 

returned with tales of might, bedlam and 

glory. He was lost to the Albion. 

Annfield was bulldozed. Forthbank was 

given a bodyswerve worthy of Maradona 

on ephedrine and Ally followed Celtic. 

I, meanwhile, had surprisingly fallen 

into a job as a sportswriter with all the 

pre-meditation of walking along a busy 

road and stepping into a manhole. I was 

50 and going to games with my son was 

now in the past, except, of course, for the 

assignation at the main steps of Hampden 

or before Brother Walfrid at Celtic where 

I would hand him tickets. Football was 

no longer a fully shared experience. There 

would be the odd night sharing a sofa and 

a pizza (the pizza was invariably tastier) 

and watching a match. But these evenings 

were rare. 

I worked on big sports nights. It is what 

editors want sportswriters to do. The 

football bond now existed through text, 

email or chats pre or post-match. The experience 

was diluted. We could be at the 

same football match – often were – but he 

would be high up the stands and I would 

be in the press box. He would then go 

for a pint. I would, meanwhile, be trying 

to persuade some footballer to explain 

precisely how he and his mates won/lost/ 

drew a match. 

I was missing in action when Borussia 

came along. Like many romances, it 

began quite innocently. I noticed he 

was referring regularly to the Bundesliga, 

most specifically to Dortmund. It 

deepened quickly to Echte Liebe, the 

true love proclaimed in banner and song 

by BvB fans. His moment of epiphany 

came when watching Dortmund play at 

Manchester City in 2012. He had followed 

with interest the career of Jurgen Klopp, 

he had become intrigued about the Wall 

that stood and throbbed at the Westfalen- 


By Hugh MacDonald 

stadion and he had been captivated by 

how BvB had come back from financial 

meltdown to build a club that valued the 

support rather than patronised it. This is 

a club with more than 100,000 members 

who seek to influence how it is run. 

Ally looked at the Eitihad and saw 

that BvB supporters had filled an end, 

snapping up released tickets as City fans 

declined to buy them. He was smitten. 

His casual affair immediately became 

something more serious. He started flying 

to Germany, accompanied by his wife, 

Jill, whose tolerance is saintly, heroic. He 

would bombard me with information 

about BvB, about the Bundesliga, about 

the genius of Klopp and the perfidy of 

Bayern, the diabolical Munich force. He 

was a BvB supporter. This, to me, was 

delightfully odd and gently fascinating. 

It suddenly became something more. It 

became personal. I became a BvB fan too. 

It is May in Berlin. The mass of fans in 

the centre stand of the Olympic Stadium 

have drifted towards the exit. I remain 

in my seat. To my left, the BvB support 

sings loudly as if to scare away the reality 

of defeat. Ally has walked down to the 

mezzanine, brandishing his scarf, not in 

surrender but in defiance. It is Klopp’s last 

game as BvB manager and he – and we 

– have watched his side lose 3-1 to Wolfsburg 

in the DFB Pokal final. Borussia, of 

course, offered hope, taking the lead and 

then scorning a chance to build a solid, 

perhaps unbridgeable gulf. Instead, they 

slip carelessly and fecklessly to defeat. It 

is a night that is almost emblematic of a 

disappointing season for Borussia. It is 

also the night I become a BvB fan. 

There is no signing of forms, no application 

for a season ticket, no taking of oaths. 

I simply, suddenly realise I care, that BvB 

have the facility not only to entertain me 

in some louche fashion but to hurt me, 

sharply and surely. It comes when Ilkay 

Gundogan, a midfielder of guile and 

energy, shirks a tackle on the halfway line. 

Craps it. Jumps up and out of the way as 

if he has stepped on a land mine. I am 

outraged. I rise and shout, Ally roaring at 

my side. Those on sponsors’ tickets look 

at us with mild disapproval. I do not care. 

Gundogan has let his team down. He has 

let his supporters down. He has let me 

down. I am, after all, one of them. 

This visceral reaction is followed by the 

undeniable realisation that I am now in 

thrall to yet another team that has the 

capacity to wound me. As BvB meander to 

defeat, I am aware of how much it hurts, 

how much it matters. Yet I also know that 

it matters little. The physical presence 

of my son is an unnecessary reminder 

of what counts and what does not. The 

genius of football is that it can seem 

important when it simply is not. 

But that is not to deny its potency or 

even its significance. In the aftermath of 

the cup final defeat, Ally slipped away to a 

BvB bar in Berlin. I was glad just to make 

it home to the hotel on a night when the 

transport system conspired to create a 

hearty joke about Teutonic efficiency. It 

was 1am when I flopped down on the 

bed, my legs done but my mind racing. 

In the calm after the Sturm und Drang, 

there was a clarity. I saw how football was 

not just a link with my son but a faithful 

witness to our shared passions, even 

obsession. I saw that his love for a team 

was built on it having values that I, well, 

valued. I saw how the game had taken us 

over Scotland, throughout Europe. It had 

now given us another love, one that led us 

to know other cultures, other people. It 

had helped us know each other. 

In a room on Alexsanderplatz, I 

glimpsed something else. I had given 

football to Ally in the late eighties. He had 

given it back to me. He and Jill are having 

a wean. I have not will not offer recommendations 

to them on a name for my 

first grandchild. But on those nights when 

an old man finds sleep elusive I amuse 

myself by thinking that, boy or girl, Heja 

BvB MacDonald has a certain ring to it. l 


Family ties 

EAST END 

BOY 

I should support Hibs. But I 

love Celtic. And I look out for 

Brechin. However my soul 

belongs to West Ham United. 

By Alastair McKay 

Supporting a football team is not a 

rational choice. If it were, I would be a Hibernian 

fan. It was, after all, the Hibs team 

of the early 1970s that my dad took me 

to see, and those evening games at Easter 

Road formed my love of football. The 

games are now statistics, but fragments 

of memory remain. I remember the walk 

from the car as we journeyed to Easter 

Road, the view over the stands towards 

the Calton Hill monument - Edinburgh’s 

Disgrace - and the glow of cigarettes in 

the darkness. One game was a 4-2 victory 

over Hajduk Split in the 1972-3 European 

Cup Winners’ Cup. The internet tells me 

Hibs won 4-2, before contriving to lose 

the second leg 3-0. The following year, 

I saw a scoreless draw against the great 

Leeds team led by Billy Bremner. 

I don’t remember the details. I 

remember the floodlights. But I know I 

loved those trips to Easter Road. I even 

remember the frisson of embarrassed 

excitement when I tried to encourage 

Hibs’ winger Eric Stevenson with a shout 

of “Stevie Wonder”. I’m not sure my 

dad found it funny. He wasn’t a shouter. 

Neither was I after that. 

And here we come to a distinction 

between liking a team and being a fan. I 

liked Hibs to the extent of adopting Pat 

Stanton’s lucky habit of tying his right 

shoelace first. (I still do). But Celtic had 

my heart. Why? Because young boys don’t 

gamble. They like to win. But also because 

of Jimmy Johnstone. In Wee Jinky, Celtic 

had a footballing genius who looked like 

he had stepped out of The Beano. He was 

five feet four, with freckles and red hair. 

At least I think it was red. The television 

was black-and-white. So I supported 

Celtic. I was too young to cheer their 1967 

European Cup win, but I remember crying 

in the solitude of my bedroom when they 

lost the 1970 final to Feyenoord. 

But here’s the thing. I still look for 

Celtic’s scores. I want them to be better 

than they are. But my soul belongs to West 

Ham United. Why? It’s a complicated 

question with a simple answer. Although I 

have a Scottish name, a Scottish education, 

Scottish parents, and Scottish skin 

that burns before it freckles at the thought 

of sunshine… Although my introverted 

passive-aggressive personality is calcified 

around the flinty Calvinism of the North 

East… Although I suffer an aversion to 

pleasure in all its forms (my other Scottish 

team is Brechin, because my grandad used 

to take me to Glebe Park, and my mum’s 

Auntie Elsie, who wasn’t her Auntie, 

used to wash the team’s strips, and the 

joke about Brechin was that they were 

the strongest team in the Scottish league, 

because they held all the rest up)… 

Although all of that, I grew up 

understanding that I was a Cockney. My 

dad, who was from Montrose, used to 

school me in basic rhyming slang. Apples 

and pears, plates of meat. For a while, he 

was an economic migrant, marooned in 

London. I was an EastEnder, having been 

born in my mother’s bed in Harold Wood 

on a Saturday, just as the football results 

were being read out. Inauspiciously, West 

Ham lost 3-2 to Sheffield Wednesday, 

before an Upton Park crowd of 26,453. 


My support of the Hammers wasn’t 

always pure. Children are emotionally 

promiscuous, and I tried to increase my 

chances of success by also following Leeds 

and Manchester City. The only English strip 

I had in childhood was a Man City change 

strip which made me look like a Miss 

World contestant. When Leeds wore little 

pendants on their socks I had those, with 

the number 7. But underneath, I was West 

Ham. They had Bobby Moore, who won 

the 1966 World Cup (and Geoff Hurst, who 

baffled the Russian linesman). Four years 

later, Bobby Moore’s performance against 

Brazil was like a footballing moon landing. 

The satellite pictures had an extra-terrestrial 

tint, and David Coleman sounded 

as if he was was commentating into a 

Cresta bottle, but the beautiful game was 

never more other-worldly. On YouTube, 

it is possible to re-live the moment where 

Jairzinho ran the length of the field, only 

to have the ball stolen from the tips of his 

toes by Moore in what is now considered 

to be “the perfect tackle”. Imagine that. 

The art of defence, made beautiful. 

Bobby Moore came from another planet. 

And yet, a couple of years after that World 

Cup, my primary seven class went on a 

week-long trip to London. We did the 

sights: the changing of the guard from 

inside the gates of Buckingham Palace, 

the zoo, Heathrow, Westminster Abbey, 

St Paul’s (through the bus window) and I 

didn’t believe any of it was real. London 

was a place on the television. I was impressed 

by believable details - the Nestlé 

chocolate machines on the Underground 

- and I remember the sense of longing, 

as we imagined getting it on with, or 

perhaps just talking to, the exotic girls 

from another school who were staying in 

the adjoining room of our dormitory in 

deepest Essex. We scratched at the door 

while “Popcorn” by Hot Butter played 

on the radio. The next morning, the bus 

drove through Chigwell, and the driver 

announced that we were going past the 

street where Bobby Moore lived. It was 

amazing, because Bobby Moore didn’t 

live. He was a phantasm in claret and 

blue. 

So much for childhood. Since moving 

to London 12 years ago - an economic migrant 

- I have been a season ticket holder 

at West Ham. It has been an education: 

often boring, occasionally thrilling, frequently 

exasperating. There have been moments 

of exhilaration - the 2006 FA Cup 

final in Cardiff which was stolen in extra 

time by Steven Gerrard (and lost when 

an exhausted Marlon Harewood couldn’t 

nudge the ball into the Liverpool net); the 

2012 play-off final at Wembley; the false 

prospectus of the Icelandic owners and the 

(dubious) signing of the Argentine superstars 

Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano 

(who couldn’t displace Hayden Mullins 

in the West Ham side). There was the 

boredom of the Alan Curbishley years, 

the self-harm of the Avram Grant period, 

the aesthetic betrayals of Fat Sam. And 

then came Slaven Bilic, bringing with him 

Dimitri Payet and Manuel Lanzini as the 

club staged a year-long farewell to the 

famous old stadium that my dad had visited 

in the months before I was born. There 

was a lot of talk over that year about family 

tradition, sons remembering their dads, 

and the places where they used to sit. 

I wish I could have gone to see West 

Ham with my father. But I go to see them 

without him, and every time I hear the 

crowd launching into a chorus of the 

Irons’ pessimistic anthem “I’m Forever 

Blowing Bubbles”, I remember what my 

dad used to used to say. 

“The pitch was a lot closer to the fans 

back then,” he’d tell me. “When someone 

took a corner, you could reach out and 

touch them.” 

You can still do that at West Ham. 

You can still reach out. 

You can still dream, even as the 

chanting of the crowd reminds you what 

happens to dreamers. l 


Dundee United 

REMEMBERING 

RALPH 

Prodigiously talented, 

hard-drinking, headstrong, 

self-deprecating: Ralph Milne 

was many things. Above all, 

he was great company. 

By Neil Forsyth 


In the autumn of 2000 I was working for 

an advertising company off Tottenham 

Court Road. My job was to trawl through 

a labyrinthine piece of software and 

retrospectively confirm if clients’ adverts 

had been broadcast in the correct slots. 

I didn’t know how to work the software. 

My boss was called Brownie. He didn’t 

know how to work the software either. 

The days ticked by. After unproductive 

mornings, Brownie and I would retire to 

the Fitzrovia pub in Goodge Street before 

a short, frantic stop at the all-you-eat 

Chinese buffet next door. 

If you thought the mornings were 

unproductive, you should have seen 

the afternoons. Drowsy from lager and 

wantons, Brownie read Charlton Athletic 

internet message-boards and forcefully 

argued for the left-back Chris Powell to 

be selected for England (on the day it finally 

happened Brownie woke his brother 

in Australia to tell him, before chiding 

his brother, who must have felt he was in 

the midst of a nightmare, for not showing 

sufficient excitement). 

I spent the afternoons writing for football 

websites and diligently conducting 

business on behalf of The South London 

Tangerines, an ambitious Dundee United 

supporters’ club that I’d recently formed 

with other misplaced Dundonians. 

Sometimes, not often, I’d ask Brownie 

if we should perhaps ask for some 

assistance in working the software and 

he’d furrow his brow and say “tomorrow 

Brucie”. He called me Brucie in reference 

to the entertainer Bruce Forsyth. 

It was on one of those empty, thinning 

afternoons that I set about tracking down 

the members of Dundee United’s 1982/83 

Scottish Premier League-winning team. 

Most were still in the game and easy to 

find. Ralph Milne was harder. Eventually 

I found a community website for Nailsea, 

a small town outside Bristol. It said that 

Illustration by Duncan McCoshan 

RALPH MADE HIS UNITED 

DEBUT AT 18 AGAINST 

CELTIC, SCORED FROM 25 

YARDS AND WAS BRIEFLY THE 

YOUNGEST EVER SCORER IN 

THE PREMIER LEAGUE. 

former footballer Ralph Milne ran a 

local pub called The Queen’s Head. The 

Queen’s Head number was answered 

by someone with a Dundee accent and I 

asked if it was him. 

“Aye,” said Ralph. 

In his autobiography What’s It All 

About Ralphie? (Black and White 

Publishing, 2009, co-written with Gary 

Robertson) Ralph relays this phone 

call and how “at first I thought it was a 

wind-up by someone on the capers”. But, 

he clarifies, it was “the start of a bond I’ve 

kept with the South London Tangerines.” 

A few weeks after the call a dozen of us 

visited Nailsea for the weekend. We rolled 

into Ralph’s pub and formed a half-circle 

of appreciation around him. It was a 

little awkward, as we talked of the train 

journey down and Broughty Ferry. And 

then someone asked, “Here Ralph, tell us 

about the goal at Dens.” 

And Ralph relaxed, smiled and briefly 

put down his pint. 

Ralph Milne grew up in the Douglas 

council estate on Dundee’s eastern wing. 

A football prodigy, he’d already turned 

down Aston Villa when Dundee United 

manager Jim McLean sent word he’d be 

visiting the Milne household to sign the 

 


Dundee United 

Remembering Ralph 

14-year-old Ralph on schoolboy terms. 

Ralph’s father hung up the phone, panicked 

and ran to the off-licence. When the 

abstemious McLean arrived it was to the 

sight of a kitchen table straining beneath 

a carry-out as varied as it was vast. When 

the bewildered McLean left with Ralph’s 

signature, the youngster asked his father, 

“Fuck me Dad, what was that all about 

with the drink?” 

Ralph made his United debut at 18 

against Celtic, scored from 25 yards and 

was briefly the youngest ever scorer in 

the Premier Division. He was two footed, 

rapid and instinctive. Playing wide or 

through the middle, hanging low over 

the ball, he was a searing attacking force 

in a team heavy with ability. This was 

the United of Hegarty, Narey, Malpas, 

Gough, Bannon, Sturrock et al, and Ralph 

comfortably held his own in the club’s 

most successful team of all time. 

Under the borderline despotic leadership 

of McLean, United had won their 

first trophies, the Scottish League Cups of 

1979 and 1980, and Ralph arrived in time 

for the most important of all: the Scottish 

Premier League title of 1982-83 and the 

European years that followed. 

Off the pitch, his relationship with 

McLean deteriorated into a blizzard of 

fines which at one point saw Ralph work 

labouring shifts to pay his mortgage. On 

it, he created an anthology of moments 

that United’s fans of that vintage still 

cling to. 

There was the 4-0 European Cup 

victory over Standard Liege where Ralph 

scored two in what many believe was 

the best individual performance in the 

club’s history. There was a late volley at 

Parkhead which kept United in the 1982- 

83 title race, a goal against Morton where 

he beat four players from the halfway line 

and another against Rangers at Hampden 

where he outpaced their whole defence. 

In all, 179 games, 45 goals, including a 

club record 15 goals in Europe where 

Ralph thrived on being given more 

space to build up speed and dart late into 

the box. 

For United, and for Ralph, those were 

the good times. And the goal at Dens was 

the best. 

The goal came on the afternoon of the 

May 14, 1983, at Dundee’s Dens Park. It 

was the final game of the season and a 

win for United would bring the club’s 

first (and, let’s face it, probably only) 

Premier Division title. 

Standing in the Queen’s Head pub in 

Nailsea 17 years later, Ralph talked the 

rapt South London Tangerines through 

the goal. This was Ralph’s Everest, his My 

Way. I know the words because I’ve heard 

them so many times. Bit parts are played 

by Paul Sturrock (Luggy), Davie Dodds, 

Billy Kirkwood and the Radio Tay offices 

behind Dens Park. 

OFF THE PITCH, HIS 

RELATIONSHIP WITH 

MCLEAN DETERIORATED 

INTO A BLIZZARD OF 

FINES WHICH AT ONE 

POINT SAW RALPH WORK 

LABOURING SHIFTS TO PAY 

HIS MORTGAGE. ON IT, HE 

CREATED AN ANTHOLOGY OF 

MOMENTS THAT UNITED’S 

FANS OF THAT VINTAGE 

STILL CLING TO. 



“Two minutes before, Luggy had 

knocked it in the corner for me and I said 

‘Luggy, do you think I’ve got a fucking 

motorbike?’ So next time he hit my feet. 

I turned round and I had Doddsy on my 

left and Kirkwood on my right. Now, 

Doddsy’s left foot is for standing on and if 

I’d given it to Kirkwood he would have hit 

some poor cunt in Radio Tay. So I just hit 

it, and the rest is history.” 

The next day, we battled through hangovers 

to play a team of former Bristol City 

players led by Ralph. He stood chatting to 

spectators on the touchline before the ball 

finally came too close to ignore. Ralph 

took a touch, swept the ball 50 yards to 

a teammate at the far post then returned 

to his conversation. As far as I know, that 

was his last game. 

We brought him to London for our 

end-of-season awards. He handed out the 

prizes and sang Suspicious Minds on the 

karaoke. The next morning he said he’d 

seen Jesus in the steamed mirror of his 

Travelodge while lying in the bath. I said 

Jesus was probably telling his friends that 

he’d seen Ralph Milne in the bath. 

We went back to Nailsea and played a 

local side on Bristol City’s Ashton Gate 

before going on to a pub to celebrate 

Ralph’s 40th birthday. Brownie came on 

that trip. He was keen to discuss Ralph’s 

short stay at Charlton Athletic in the late 

80s. Ralph told Brownie that it had been a 

nightmare. Brownie agreed, with a caveat. 

“To be fair Ralph, you didn’t look well.” 

United sold Ralph to Charlton for 

£125,000 in January 1987, his battle of 

wills with McLean having been fought 

to an exhausting draw. The player who 

McLean had announced as “potentially 

the most exciting in Scotland”, had 

ultimately defeated the manager’s 

varied attempts to have Ralph accept his 

deadening discipline. 

In a last throw of the dice that gives 

an insight into his desperation, McLean 

charged a hypnotist with sorting out 

Ralph’s attitude, only for the session to 

be ruined by Ralph repeatedly dissolving 

into laughter due to the hypnotist’s 

resemblance to Worzel Gummidge. 

As a result, Ralph had found himself 

slipping in and out United’s team. He 

was unfit and unfancied. He didn’t go to 

Rangers, who had chased him for years, 

or the big English clubs who had made 

intermittent enquiries, or Brian Clough’s 

Nottingham Forrest against whom 

Ralph had scored two goals in McLean’s 

testimonial. Instead he went to Charlton 

who were in the English First Division but 

cash-strapped, playing their home games 

at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park, and 

endangered by relegation. 

Ralph arrived mentally drained. 

It didn’t help that United then drew 

Barcelona in the UEFA Cup and he was 

forced to watch their famous victories 

over the Spaniards in a London hotel 

room. And it didn’t help that, by his own 

admittance, his drinking was steadily 

escalating. 

Ralph played for Charlton at Wembley 

in the final of the short-lived Simod Cup 

before his season ended prematurely with 

a shattered cheekbone. He flew back to 

Scotland, picked up his parents, and took 

them to America for a month. It was a 

bucket list trip. His father was dying from 

terminal cancer. 

The 1987-88 season started and Ralph 

was out of favour. In a particularly 

Ralph touch, he writes in his book of his 

mystification at the lack of game time, 

then talks at length of the “AK47 batteryoperated 

water-pistol” he had taken to 

patrolling the training ground with and 

using at will against both players and club 

staff. Even when a coach, then manager 

Lennie Lawrence, then the club chairman 

demanded he refrain from the aquatic 

violence, Ralph indignantly refused, 

pointing out that “I bought it in America 

and it’s very precious to me”. 

Escape came through a loan spell at 

Third Division Bristol City. Ralph scored a 

 


Dundee United 


volley on his debut and it was the start of 

a resurrection. In his book, Ralph partly 

puts this down to the fact that while in 

Bristol he took to drinking in the afternoons 

rather than the evenings because 

– and he’s genuine in his warning – you 

can’t be a top-class athlete if you’re not 

getting enough sleep. 

City’s manager Joe Jordan showed unflagging 

belief in Ralph, as the team vied 

for promotion and Ralph’s form returned 

to historical levels. He had been there 

less than a year, but word of his revival 

spread. Ralph had spotted Aberdeen’s 

manager Alex Smith at a match and word 

reached him the club were preparing a 

bid. With his son now living in Dundee 

with his ex-wife, Ralph would have welcomed 

the move and when Jordan called 

him into his office in November 1988 he 

believed it had arrived. Jordan said he’d 

accepted a bid. Ralph thanked him and 

said he was ready to go home. 

Jordan said he wasn’t going home, then 

added, “You’ve got to call Fergie.” 

In 2002 I left advertising for journalism 

and Ralph was the only contact I had. 

It won me my first commission. The 

magazine Four Four Two told me to take 

Ralph back to Old Trafford and see what 

happened. 

Ralph and I met at the train station and 

got a taxi to Old Trafford. He found his 

name on the museum’s wall of former 

players and pointed out his proximity 

to his friend Frank Kopel. In the lift a 

steward said “You used to play here didn’t 

you?” and Ralph said yes, he was Ralph 

Milne, and a silence descended. 

In the dressing room, Ralph told a story 

about arriving on his first day and being 

given a peg between Paul McGrath and 

Norman Whiteside. “What fucking chance 

did I have?” he laughed. And then we went 

to the pub – an Irish bar in Deansgate 

where Milne, McGrath and Whiteside had 

once conspired to lose afternoons – and 

Ralph drank and told lots of stories. 

I sent in the article and the editor 

sent back a raging missive. “This reads 

like the Morning Star obituary for the 

thwarted career of the Undersecretary of 

the Boilermakers’ Union” (you remember 

the bad ones). He wanted me to twist the 

knife. I wouldn’t, so he did, but Ralph 

never read it anyway. In hindsight, I’m 

not sure if he wanted to go back to Old 

Trafford at all. 

At a League Manager’s Association 

dinner in the early Noughties, Alex 

Ferguson was asked who his worst ever 

buy was. “Ralph Milne,” he answered. 

“I only paid £170,000 but I still get 

condemned for it.” It was a clever answer, 

an easy laugh and with little judgement 

attached. The truth would have been 

more uncomfortable for Ferguson. 

Ralph played 23 games for United, 

scored three goals, and cost £170,000. 

There were many, many worse buys 

during Ferguson’s 27-year management 

of United. A brief selection – Bebe 

(£7m, 7 games), Wilfried Zaha (£15m, 4 

games), Massimo Taibi (£5.4m, 4 games), 

Zoran Tosic (£7million, 4 games), Dong 

Fangzhou (£3.5m, 1 game), Djemba- 

Djemba (£3.5m, 39 games, 10 cars, 30 

RALPH PLAYED 23 GAMES 

FOR MAN UNITED, SCORED 

THREE GOALS, AND COST 

£170,000. THERE WERE MANY, 

MANY WORSE BUYS DURING 

FERGUSON’S 27-YEAR 

MANAGEMENT OF UNITED. 



bank accounts, 1 bankruptcy). But infamy 

sticks and Ralph became “Fergie’s worst 

signing”. 

To be fair though, he wasn’t his best. 

In his book, Ralph’s account of his time 

at United is endearing. His surprise 

when Jordan told him about United’s bid 

never abated, he seems to have spent his 

two and a half years at Old Trafford in 

a state of shock. Later he would tell the 

Manchester Evening News that he would 

have signed for the club even if it meant 

“sweeping the terraces”. This self-deprecation 

shouldn’t have been warranted. 

Ferguson was right in judging that Ralph 

had the ability to be at Old Trafford, but 

Ralph’s mind was elsewhere. 

He had joined a Manchester United that 

today feels archaic. Ford Escort club cars, 

the old Cliff training ground, no European 

football because of Heysel, and Ferguson 

under pressure from the fans as he tried 

to patch together a winning team. 

Ralph was played out of position on the 

left after Ferguson told him his left foot 

was “better than Strachan’s”. He started 

well, scoring his first goal against former 

club Charlton, then another in a Boxing 

Day victory over Clough’s Nottingham 

Forrest (Ralph recalls ensuring he “didn’t 

over-do it with the drink” the day before). 

A week later, on New Year’s Day, Ralph 

played in a 3-1 win over Liverpool that 

bought Ferguson another few months. 

In the seven months that Ralph was at 

United that season, he played 22 games, 

scored three goals and Fergie thanked 

him for helping young left-back Lee 

Sharpe settle in behind him. 

Another archaic aspect of United at that 

time was the industrial drinking culture. 

McGrath and Whiteside would both 

ultimately be sold because of their part in 

it, and club captain Bryan Robson was as 

keen an advocate as any. Inevitably, Ralph 

became willing collateral damage. 

Amongst many other examples, 

his book details a hazy trip to the 

Cheltenham Festival with Robson and 

Steve Bruce, a pre-season tour of Japan 

where Ralph holed up in a karaoke bar 

with Mark Hughes and Neil Webb, and 

endless food-free “lunches” with McGrath 

and Whiteside. McGrath got the call from 

Ferguson to say he’d been sold while 

drunk with Ralph at Robson’s house. 

The new season started and Ralph 

was shuffled out the team, with Sharp 

pushed forward to left wing. Ferguson 

was in trouble. This was the era of the 

infamous “TA RA FERGIE” banner and 

the face-saving Mark Robbins goal against 

Nottingham Forrest. Ralph was injured 

for five months, had an unsuccessful loan 

spell at West Ham and was then bizarrely 

given a third year at United. 

That season saw him barely make the 

reserve team, his life increasingly dictated 

by drinking and gambling. He left United 

in the summer of 1991. There can’t be 

many Manchester United players who 

leave the club and have their house repossessed 

a couple of months later. 

His reputation in Britain somewhat 

troubled, Ralph went to Turkey and 

Denmark in search of a club before 

receiving a mysterious call. It was an 

Asian football agent asking if Ralph would 

trial for a club in Hong Kong. Ralph 

readily agreed. There was momentary 

confusion – Agent – “Meet me in Iraq.” 

Ralph – “Iraq?!” 

Agent – “No, Tie Rack.” 

A few days later, Ralph met the agent 

outside Tie Rack at London’s Victoria station. 

Ralph arrived with his training gear 

and his friend Gerry. The agent arrived 

ready for action and, as Ralph recalls, 

“must have made the journey in full kit”. 

A bewildered Ralph and Gerry were led 

by the agent to the nearby St James’ Park 

where, in the shadow of Buckingham 

Palace, Ralph changed behind a tree and 

the trial began. And, as Ralph told it – 

“The guy says, ‘You kick long ball’ so I 

hit one like a rocket and he took it clean 

in the face and decked it. When he went 


Dundee United 


down I was absolutely pishing myself 

and Gerry’s saying ‘dinnae laugh, dinnae 

laugh’. Then the bloke says, ‘OK, me and 

you, one on one’ so I nutmegged him and 

Gerry says ‘Fuck’s sake Ralph, dinnae 

take the piss’. We ended up in some 

underground place where I signed the 

contract.” 

Ralph lasted a year in Hong Kong, 

training on Happy Valley racecourse and 

drinking in a Scottish bar called Mad 

Dogs where he never had to pay. Just in 

case his lifestyle was threatened with improvement, 

Frank McAvennie rolled into 

town to play for a rival club and dutifully 

join Ralph in Mad Dogs. 

In 1993, Ralph came home to Bristol 

where by now he had a second son. There 

was a brief, three-week spell in Northern 

Ireland at Derry City, which was largely 

spent in a bar with fleeting teammate 

Luther Blissett, and then it was done. 

Ralph was an ex-player at 32. And then 

his Dad died. Ralph was without both his 

“best pal” and his livelihood. 

In 2005 Ralph moved back to Dundee, 

largely because of his mother’s failing 

health. I would see him whenever I was 

home and, initially, they’re cherished 

memories. 

For the 25th anniversary of the Premier 

Division win, Davie Dodds had a function 

in his Dundee pub and I found myself in 

a room full of heroes. Late in the evening, 

Richard Gough asked me “where’s busy?” 

Ralph, myself and the Californian-based 

Gough found ourselves in the Mardi Gras 

nightclub, where Ralph and I watched 

in unbridled delight as the following 

ensued: 

INT. MARDI GRAS NIGHTCLUB. NIGHT. 

The nightclub is largely empty. 

Tatjana’s Santa Maria blasts the 

threadbare crowd. Ralph, myself 

and Gough stand at the bar. Gough’s 

hair, once ginger, is now golden. 

His face is a deep mahogany. He 

looks magnificent, and he knows it. 

A MAN approaches, a little unsteady 

on his feet. 

MAN 

Are you Richard Gough? 

GOUGH 

Correct. 

MAN 

What you up to these days big man? 

Gough flicks back his golden hair. 

GOUGH 

Surfing. 

MAN 

(presuming he’d misheard) 

Surfing? 

GOUGH 

Surfing. 

MAN 

Surfing? 

GOUGH 

Surfing. 

MAN 

(with growing confusion) 

Surfing? 

GOUGH 

Surfing. 

The man looks around the dark, empty 

spaces of the Mardi Gras. As Santa 

Maria reaches a crescendo (Santa 

Maria, Santa Maria, Oh, Oh, Santa 

Maria…) his whole life flashes before 

his eyes. He thinks about choices 

made, turnings taken, opportunities 

missed. He revaluates the very core 

of his being as everything he has 

ever known to be true retreats in 

front of him. He grips the bar, as 

to find some semblance of solidity 

in a world suddenly void of reason. 

He turns back to the golden-haired 

Gough, his body crumpled, his 

eyes pleading for escape from the 

escalating existential crisis, his 

voice cracked and full of pain… 

MAN 

Surfing?! 



Ralph had returned to Dundee in a blaze 

of glory – settling into a flat, getting a job, 

becoming a celebrated fixture in Broughty 

Ferry’s pubs and making “wee cameos” 

in the bedrooms of starstruck Dundonian 

women. His company was as rewarding 

as ever. 

There was his 50th birthday party in 

a packed Broughty Ferry pub where 

Ralph worked the room like Sinatra 

and Dave Narey stood silently in the 

corner like Clint Eastwood. There was a 

pre-season friendly for United against 

Newcastle where Ralph chose to stay in 

the social club and I picked him up again 

afterwards. 

There was his autobiography launch at 

the Waterstone’s in Commercial Street. 

I met Ralph beforehand in the Hansom 

Cab pub. He was with his childhood 

friend Andy McPhee, a loyal, kind man 

who played, often with great difficulty, 

a steadying role in Ralph’s life. Ralph 

signed my copy “To Neil, who amazed me 

sometimes”. 

When United played a pre-season 

friendly against Barcelona they held a 

Parade of Legends at half time. No Legend 

enjoyed it more than Ralph. He strode 

RALPH WILL BE 

REMEMBERED FOR THE 

AFTERNOON OF MAY 14, 

1983. YOU SHOULD LOOK IT 

UP. IT’S ON YOUTUBE, JUST 

SEARCH ‘RALPH MILNE 

LEAGUE WINNING’. 

majestically onto the pitch and soaked 

every second from the ovation. It was a 

last hurrah. 

By now I had known Ralph for a decade. 

There had been a thread to our meetings, 

to my glimpses of his life, but I ignored 

it. It was easy to do so, until the Dundee 

Evening Telegraph quietly reported 

that Ralph was in Dundee’s Ninewells 

hospital. By the time I spoke to him he 

was discharged and defiant, summarising 

the medical advice as “stick to beer”. 

But things started to change and 

darken. There was talk of fallings 

out, mutterings of pub barrings, and 

(later dropped) assault charges. There 

was no job. Ralph had a combustible 

relationship with his new girlfriend 

which culminated in a brutal, drunken 

and frankly exploitative interview in a 

Scottish tabloid where Ralph and his 

girlfriend were photographed looking sad 

in front of a table full of booze. 

Seeing Ralph in this period was a 

different experience. A little sadder, and 

tinged with guilt. Every round bought 

came with a chaser, a lurking thought 

and an accusation to the self. You’re 

making this worse. 

In 2013, Ralph was the subject of 

an episode of When the Floodlights 

Fade, a documentary series on former 

Manchester United players for the club’s 

TV channel. Ralph took the film crew 

to Douglas and talked with genuine 

warmth and a welcome pride of his time 

at Old Trafford. The programme ends 

with Ralph interviewed at Broughty 

Ferry harbour with his friend Andy 

McPhee. 

Andy and Ralph talk vaguely about 

Ralph having recently been through 

hard times. “Things can only get better,” 

says Ralph, then adds, “D-Ream.” And 

then he thanks Andy for his friendship 

and says: “I’ve got no regrets, I’ve had a 

great life.” It’s an unsettling moment. 

He’s only 51. 


Dundee United 



In the summer of 2015, 15 years after I 

phoned the Queen’s Head pub in Nailsea, 

my mobile phone showed a missed call 

from Ralph. I live in the country and 

have to go outside to get a signal, so I 

walked my dog and called Ralph back. 

He was in ebullient mood. As I walked 

over fields, we talked about how long it 

had been. Ralph said it had been years. 

There was more to it than that, but it had 

and I felt guilty. 

He was calling because he had a 

pension maturing later that year. “Big 

money,” he said. He and his girlfriend 

wanted to go to New York, where I had 

lived for a period, and he wanted hotel 

recommendations. He was funny and 

lucid. I told him how good it was to hear 

from him. He said he would visit me. 

A few weeks later, I received a text 

from Andy McPhee. It said: “He’s not 

hurting anymore.” 

And that was it. Ralph was dead. 

I tried to help him. Not nearly as much 

as others I’m sure, but I did try. Ralph 

was right that we hadn’t spoken for a 

couple of years but he didn’t know, or 

had more likely forgotten, that when he 

was hospitalized the first time myself and 

others put together an escape plan, to a 

specialist English clinic, that Ralph didn’t 

take. It was too late. Maybe from me it 

was too little. But addiction is a state of 

mind where friends look like enemies 

and help looks like a trap. It’s hard to 

know your role in the story. What’s 

clearer is that it’s just all so fucking sad. 

Ralph told me a story once. Over a 

pre-match meal in the 1990s, Ralph’s 

manager asked if he could do a job 

that day on the left of midfield. Ralph, 

who had presumed he wasn’t playing, 

gratefully agreed, but when he got to 

the dressing room the number 12 jersey 

hung waiting on his hook. “He must have 

smelt the drink off me,” Ralph 

flatly concluded. The manager was Sir 

Alex Ferguson, the club Manchester 

United. This happened at Old Trafford. 

He told these stories unprompted, 

offering them as trinkets to grateful and 

perhaps guilty pub audiences, myself 

included. But it’s not those stories he 

should be remembered for and it’s not 

those stories which caused a shrine to be 

built by strangers at Tannadice after his 

death. It wasn’t those stories that saw the 

stadium packed for the next home game 

for a sorrowful minute’s silence. And 

it wasn’t those stories that saw Ralph’s 

tearful old teammates come to the 

funeral without cars so they could give 

their friend the send-off they knew he’d 

have wanted. 

The outpouring of appreciation for 

Ralph’s life was because of more wholesome 

treasures, and it is for them that 

he will rightfully be remembered. All 

those runs, all those goals, European 

nights under the lights. And, more than 

anything, Ralph will be remembered 

for the afternoon of May 14, 1983. You 

should look it up. It’s on YouTube, just 

search ‘Ralph Milne league winning’. 

Narey plays the ball out of defence 

to Sturrock. He slides it on to Ralph, 

who barely looks at the ball as he glides 

across the rutted, end-of-season grass. 

He looks instead at the goal, and the 

positioning of Dundee’s goalie Colin 

Kelly. Thirty yards out, Ralph coils and 

flicks his left foot. The ball rises and 

rises as Kelly flaps hopelessly beneath it. 

Behind the goal, a penned mass of flesh 

and tangerine watch as, almost too late, 

the ball dips down into immortality and 

Archie MacPherson shouts “Absolutely 

unbelievable!” 

As half of the ground erupts, Ralph lifts 

his arms, smiles and turns southwards. 

Then a thought flashes over his face and 

he turns to look at United’s fans in the 

main stand. He’s looking for a man who 

ran through the streets of the Douglas 

council estate to buy a carry-out because 

Jim McLean was on his way round. He’s 

looking for his Dad. l 


Dundee United 

14 MAY 1983: 

THE DAY TIME STOOD 

STILL IN DUNDEE 

The story of one of the most 

remarkable climaxes to a football 

season – as remembered by 

those who played in it 

By Richard Winton 

Amid the haze of time and of booze 

that has obscured their recollections, 

the one thing they all remember is the 

clock. Even 30 years on, Paul Hegarty 

swears it stopped at 4.30pm, while the 

Dundee derby veteran Hamish McAlpine 

confesses it was only that afternoon 

that he first noticed it hanging above 

the tunnel at Dens Park. It is no longer 

there, having apparently been removed 

for safety reasons, but it retains a special 

place in the memories of the players who 

earned Dundee United their solitary top 

tier title. 

It was on 14 May 1983 that Jim McLean’s 

side won the league at Dens, beating their 

city rivals 2-1 to hold off the challenges of 

Celtic and Aberdeen. An Aberdeen side, 

lest we forget, who had hoisted the Cup 

Winners’ Cup three days earlier against 

Real Madrid in Gothenburg and would go 

on to secure the Scottish Cup under the 

command of Alex Ferguson the following 

weekend. 

It made for a remarkable climax to the 

campaign, the top three being separated 

by just one point having scored 256 goals 

between them and with the prospect of a 

play-off to decide the champions remaining 

alive until the final few seconds of the 

season. As it was, United’s victory ensured 

that they were the ones flying the flag, 

Aberdeen’s 5-0 skelping of Hibernian and 

Celtic’s 4-2 triumph over Rangers at Ibrox 

being rendered moot by the Tannadice 

side’s 24th league win of the campaign. 

While the venue of their coronation 

made it more special, their succession 

only came after a fraught finale in front of 

29,106 fans wedged inside a heaving Dens 

Park. “It was very tense and nervy and 

was a game I didn’t enjoy,” says the winger 

Eamonn Bannon. “And I remember just 

being physically and mentally drained. 

You see players go mental after they win 

leagues but I was very subdued. We didn’t 

play well and it was a real anticlimax for 

me. I just felt shattered.” 

Such emotions are understandable 

in the circumstances but the game had 

 


Dundee United 

14 May 1983: The day time stood still in Dundee 

started better than the league leaders 

could have hoped. Ralph Milne marked 

the weekend of his 22nd birthday with 

a goal so breathtaking that it has since 

become immortalised in song. 

On the 14th of May, 1983, 

Six minutes into the half, 

The ball soared over Kelly’s head, 

And it was Happy Birthday, Ralph. 

The lyrics do not do justice to the 

moment. Davie Narey won the ball in the 

United half and guided it into the centre 

circle for Paul Sturrock, who pivoted and 

shunted a pass into the path of Milne. The 

winger almost reluctantly assumed possession 

near the halfway line and casually 

shuffled past Stewart McKimmie before 

ambling forward, his strides lengthening 

as he advanced. Eventually, he seemed 

to tire of such exertions, glanced up and 

nonchalantly chipped the ball over the 

goalkeeper Colin Kelly from 25 yards. 

The bloated and broken figure of Milne 

that Neil Forsyth recalls elsewhere in 

these pages bore scant resemblance to the 

lithe, if somewhat scruffy, talisman upon 

whom the United players converged that 

day in 1983. Usually deployed on the right 

– although equally adept at playing off 

a central striker – the Dundonian was a 

key tactical pawn in McLean’s innovative 

formation, something Sturrock describes 

as an early 4-5-1 in which many of the 

components were adaptable. “Jim McLean 

was a genius as far as I was concerned,” 

Sturrock once said. 

“His training was revolutionary and his 

coaching transformed me. When I joined 

the club, I was a running-type striker, all 

left foot. He said I had to do extra work 

on crossing and shooting with both feet 

and getting the ball fed into me. I worked 

so hard on it, three afternoons a week 

for three or four years, that I could run 

you into the channel, I could come short 

or I could turn you. I was probably three 

ONLY 14 MEN PLAYED 

MORE THAN FIVE TIMES 

OVER THE COURSE OF 

THE CAMPAIGN; SIX WERE 

NATIVE TO THE CITY; 10 HAD 

COME THROUGH THE YOUTH 

RANKS; AND TRANSFER 

FEES WERE PAID FOR JUST 

TWO, A SUM OF £192,000 

BEING LAVISHED ON 

HEGARTY AND BANNON. 

strikers rolled into one. A lot of players 

will be very thankful for the work wee 

Jim did with them. As for his manmanagement 

skills? Well, that’s another 

debate.” 

McLean, after all, withheld his side’s 

£50 entertainment bonus after a 7-0 

win over Kilmarnock in the December 

of that season, reasoning that, having 

scored five times before the interval, they 

did not do enough in the second half to 

keep the crowd engaged. “We weren’t 

best pleased but that’s just the way he 

was,” says McAlpine, chuckling. “We’d all 

played together for a few years and our 

success was built on that spirit. We were 

all on the same wages, which I think was 

the lowest in the league, but the bonuses 

were great so you had to win to get some 

decent dosh.” 

It was not the first time, and neither 

would it be the last, that the manager 



employed such a tactic. However, such 

methods helped foster a togetherness 

among his young squad, who banded 

together against a manager whom they 

all respected but very few actually liked. 

Take Bannon, for example, a favourite 

target for McLean’s ire. He was too clever 

for his own good, the manager thought, 

and too willing to defend himself when 

criticised; so much so that former teammates 

recall jostling for seats to the 

winger’s right because of the manager’s 

habit of working round the dressingroom 

in an anti-clockwise direction when 

berating his players. 

McAlpine recalls that during the 

interval that day at Dens, Bannon was upbraided 

for missing a 17th-minute penalty 

kick, even though he reacted quickest to 

lash the rebound past the prone Kelly. “I 

was never nervous taking penalties,” the 

winger says. “But I remember having to 

wait three or four minutes to take it and 

there was all sorts going on around me. I 

made the mistake of changing my mind 

and the keeper saved it but I was lucky it 

came back to me and I whacked it in.” 

Regardless of such fortune, the twogoal 

advantage appeared to confirm 

that the title was heading to Tannadice. 

But there was still time for a twist. Iain 

Ferguson – who would score the winner 

for United when they came from behind 

to beat Barcelona at Camp Nou four years 

later – rifled past McAlpine before the 

break to haul Dundee back into the game 

and set United nerves jangling. “It really 

rattled us,” says Bannon. “We got anxious 

and starting booting the ball rather than 

passing it.” 

The game remained delicately poised. 

“Your deadliest enemies could stop you 

winning the league; can you imagine the 

pressure? You had to live in the town; if 

they had been able to do that, it would 

have become folklore,” said Sturrock, 

speaking before Dundee added their own 

chapter to the tale by officially confirming 

United’s relegation from the Premiership 

with a 2-1 win at Dens in May this year. 

Sturrock had been unable to train during 

the previous couple of months because of 

a pulled hamstring, but played every game 

during the run-in until the muscle finally 

ruptured that day. “It felt like another 90 

minutes,” he recalls of the half hour he 

spent watching from the bench. “Every 

time the ball went in the box you were 

cringing. I couldn’t watch the last couple 

of minutes, it was so nervy.” 

So much so that, even United’s 

phlegmatic goalkeeper was panicking. “I 

kept shouting to the dugout ‘how long to 

go?’ because we were hanging on,” says 

McAlpine, a penalty-taking, crossbarswinging, 

cult hero. “The final few 

minutes seemed like an eternity.” 

That it took until the last few moments 

of the campaign for such doubts to creep 

in were a consequence of United thinking 

their title hopes were over after losing 

2-0 at Celtic Park in April. That defeat 

left them three points off the pace with 

another trip to Parkhead pending. “At 

that point, I honestly believed the league 

was beyond us,” McLean later admitted. 

“In fact, it’s a miracle that we’ve won this 

title. At the start of the season, I certainly 

didn’t believe we’d be champions, simply 

because we have no depth of pool. Twelve 

players – the 12 who played against 

Dundee at Dens – have achieved this 

tremendous success.” 

The manager was being a little disingenuous 

with his claim, given 20 different 

players made league appearances for 

United that season, but the statistics were 

remarkable enough to need no exaggeration. 

Only 14 men played more than five 

times over the course of the campaign; 

six were native to the city; 10 had come 

through the youth ranks; and transfer fees 

were paid for just two, a sum of £192,000 

being lavished on Hegarty and Bannon. 

McLean had spent 12 years building a 

team to win the championship and spent 

a further decade attempting to emulate 

 


Dundee United 

14 May 1983: The day time stood still in Dundee 

them, but in that one glorious season it 

all fell into place. “That United team, it 

was an exceptional side,” says Sturrock. 

“People forget that the following season 

we got to the European Cup semi-final 

against Roma. We beat them 2-0 at 

Tannadice and lost 3-0 in Italy, then found 

out that the referee had taken a bribe. So 

we could have been in the final against 

Liverpool. I mean, Dundee United? It’s 

incredible really.” 

The same could be said of the conclusion 

to their campaign. United’s shallow squad 

roused themselves to win their final six 

matches and overhaul both Celtic and 

Aberdeen. Each of those games, including 

three consecutive 4-0 wins ahead of the 

decider, were vital but one in particular 

stands out: having lost at Parkhead in 

April, United returned to Glasgow and 

secured a surprise 3-2 victory, despite the 

dismissal of Richard Gough. “That was 

the turning point, a real game-changer 

because it put us a point ahead having 

been written off,” insists Bannon. “All of a 

sudden we had our noses in front and we 

kept winning from there on in.” 

For all that he recognises its importance, 

Bannon’s recall of the game is sketchy. “I 

remember the pitch being like a beach, 

big Goughie getting sent off and Ralph 

scoring a great goal but beyond that… did 

we get a penalty?” They did. And Bannon 

scored it, adding to Hegarty’s opener 

before another virtuoso effort by Milne, 

who took a cross on his chest and lashed 

a 25-yard volley past Packie Bonner. The 

winger had also scored twice before being 

sent off in the win at Pittodrie a few weeks 

earlier. “Ralph, that season, was fantastic,” 

says Hegarty. “There were games that 

either he or Paul Sturrock won almost by 

themselves.” 

The triumph in Glasgow moved McLean’s 

men within a point of Celtic and they 

went top for the first time that weekend, 

towsing Kilmarnock while Celtic were 

HALF THE PLAYERS 

COULDN’T STAND UP. THEY 

HAD BEEN DRINKING ALL 

NIGHT. WE WERE PISHED 

OUT OF OUR MINDS. 

losing to Aberdeen, who were four behind 

with two games in hand. The failure of 

Alex Ferguson’s side to win at Easter Road 

seven days later, coupled with another 

thumping United win at Morton, ensured 

it was in their own hands. “It clicked for 

me that we had a right good chance with 

about five games to go,” says McAlpine. 

“But that game at Cappielow is the one 

that stands out for me because I remember 

the club organising buses for the fans.” 

“Aye, that was a nice move by Wee Jim,” 

adds Bannon. “It was like rent-a-crowd 

and it made a massive difference because 

our lack of away support meant we were 

at a disadvantage compared to Rangers, 

Celtic and Aberdeen and really had to win 

games off our own back. That makes it 

even more remarkable.” 

So, too, does the fact United played a 

chunk of that match without a recognised 

goalkeeper after McAlpine went off 

injured. “I got a stud above my hip, which 

left a hole above the bone and seized me 

up a bit,” McAlpine recalls. “But I hung 

on until we were 3-0 up before I went 

off and we always knew Heggy was more 

than capable anyway…” 

“It didn’t feel that way at the time,” 

says Hegarty, who pulled on the gloves 

and maintained United’s clean sheet. “I 

was almost as nervous as the day at Dens, 

worrying about what Wee Jim would say if 

I let one in…” 



By then, the superstitious McLean was 

already riven with anxiety, the tension 

having built to such an extent that he 

steadfastly refused to arrange any official 

celebrations before the title was won. 

Hegarty recalls the players leaving Dens 

and wandering the 100 yards or so down 

Tannadice Street for a drink in the United 

boardroom, before being obliged to attend 

a supporters’ function in Coupar Angus, 

then retiring to Frank Kopel’s house, the 

defender and his wife having decided to 

host an impromptu party that continued 

until the early hours. 

Bannon was there, too, but still nurses 

a sense of regret that “Wee Jim was too 

miserable to rent a place” for a proper 

party. “It was very subdued afterwards 

and everything was off the cuff and a bit 

low key,” he recalls. “I wish there had 

been an organised event as a club. Years 

later, when I was a coach at Hibs, we lost 

the League Cup final to Rangers but still 

went back to a hotel in Edinburgh and 

had a great night. I wish we had done 

something like that.” 

Not everyone had such a restrained 

evening, though. Sturrock has a hazy 

memory of the manager, dressed in his 

pyjamas, kicking him out of his house 

at 7am; something that McAlpine also 

remembers. “Ken this, I couldn’t tell you 

most of what happened because we had 

a right few bevvies,” he says. “God knows 

where we went but I know we were in 

Wee Jim’s house for a while and Luggy 

reckons he was given a swearing.” 

“I know this much,” Sturrock adds, 

grinning. “We partied big time. For about 

four days solid, we were never home.” 

The party continued at Station Park 

the following afternoon, McLean having 

committed to taking a strong team to 

play a benefit match for Billy Bennett and 

John Clark. Almost every member of the 

league-winning side played some part 

despite many of them being barely able to 

stand, never mind run, with the injured 

Sturrock despatched by his hungover 

team-mates to find food to soak up the 

alcohol. “I was sent to find a man who 

had a shop that sold bridies,” Sturrock 

said. “Some boy told me where the guy 

lived so I knocked on his door. I don’t 

know if he was the baker, but he had a 

key, and he went round to heat them up. 

That was my job for the day, bringing 

back pies and bridies for all the players. 

The subs were even eating them in the 

dugout. 

“We lost the game 2-1 and Wee Jim 

wasn’t too happy. If I remember rightly, 

he picked near enough every player that 

had played the day before. It was quite 

incredible. Half the players couldn’t stand 

up. They had been drinking all night. We 

were pished out of our minds.” 

“I don’t think I played...” says McAlpine, 

hesitantly. “But I was so bevvied that I’ve 

no idea. I do remember Wee Jim asking 

at half time if anyone wanted to come off 

and everyone put their hand up.” 

Bannon was one of the few absentees, 

nursing his own hangover while being 

kicked up and down Easter Road by 

John Brownlee in a testimonial for Jim 

McArthur. “I was hungover and it was 

unbelievably wet; the roads were flooded. 

John was on trial for Hibs that day 

after breaking his leg at Newcastle and 

was right up for it. Two minutes in, he 

clattered me, which was the last thing I 

needed because I was just trying to get 

through it.” 

Meanwhile, in Forfar, his colleagues 

were suffering just as much. “There were 

one or two thick heads and bleary eyes 

but I don’t think anyone would begrudge 

us,” says Hegarty, who remembers 

surviving the 90 minutes. “I dunno how 

we got on, to be honest… but I don’t think 

we did particularly well. Just like the 

game the previous day, it seemed to go on 

for ever.” l 

This article first appeared in The Blizzard 

www.theblizzard.co.uk 


WHY I TOOK SOME 

PLEASURE FROM 

DUNDEE UNITED’S PAIN 

I know it seems vindictive 

to get such satisfaction from 

the misfortune of someone 

else, and I know I’m not the 

vindictive type. But I can 

explain. 


May 2, 2016. If I am being honest, the 

realisation of the fairytale that was 

Leicester City’s Premier League title win 

annoyed me a little, as much as I was 

cheered by the achievement itself. 

What anguished me was the timing. 

Chelsea’s late equaliser against Spurs 

which confirmed Leicester’s success, 

came just a few minutes after 18 year-old 

Craig Wighton’s in-my-eyes rather more 

significant winning goal for Dundee 

against Dundee United. 

And what a story: a teenager, one who 

grew up supporting Dundee, scoring 

the last-minute winner to send Dundee 

United down under the noses of their 

own supporters. (Disappointingly, 

trepidation served to keep the number 

of visiting fans down when, ideally, they 

would all have been there to take their 

medicine.) 

That, surely, would merit the full Sky 

ticker-tape treatment. Breaking: Dundee 

relegate rivals Dundee United – boyhood 

fan side-foots home last-minute winner. 

But when I eventually got back to the 

Phoenix bar in Dundee’s west end – after 

a quick tour of pubs nearer Dens Park – 

to toast a memorable evening, ears still 

ringing after the full South Enclosure 

experience, it was like this historic event 

had never happened. 

Instead, it was wall-to-wall coverage of 

bloody Leicester City’s first-ever English 

bloody title win. 

Big bloody deal. 

For me, and a few thousand others, the 

big deal was Dundee putting Dundee 

United down. That is what 2/5/16 will 

forever mean to those of the dark blue 

persuasion. 

Indeed, it might well remain all that 

ever matters for I am not hopeful of 

seeing Dundee lift a major trophy in my 

lifetime. Those wishing to know my age 

can calculate it by simply noting the last 


time Dundee won a major cup, now 43 

years ago and counting. 

Which is one of the reasons why 

Dundee supporters, particularly ones of 

my 1973 vintage, got so worked up about 

the prospect of getting something fairly 

significant over on United. I have heard it 

uttered that putting United down could 

be as good as winning a major trophy; 

perhaps better. I think I understand this. 

Yes, I know it wasn’t a Dundee success 

as such. I know it seems vindictive to get 

such satisfaction from the misfortune of 

someone else. 

Even my dad, my gracious, sensitive 

and sports-mad dad, was surprised by 

my insistence that Dundee being the ones 

to administer the final blow to United’s 

survival hopes meant everything. He 

noted I wasn’t the vindictive type. And I 

like to think I am not. 

But this is football. And where would 

the game be without petty rivalries. 

As W. Somerset Maugham – or was it 

Ally MacLeod? – said: it is not enough 

to achieve personal success, one’s best 

friend must also have failed. Well, I’m the 

first to admit Dundee have not enjoyed 

anything like Dundee United’s success in 

the last 40 years. 

So hoping a nearby ‘friend’ fails is 

about as good as it gets, hence the scenes 

(including a tangerine-coloured coffin 

being carried through the streets) on that 

Monday night in May. 

Not that I’d wish anything terminal on 

United. The two-teams-on-a-street scenario 

is something I cherish; without the 

rivalry I wonder if I’d feel the same about 

Dundee FC. I actually don’t think enough 

is made by the city of the clubs’ closestfootball-grounds-in-Europe 

status. 

There should, in my eyes, be a visitor 

centre somewhere on Sandeman Street/ 

Tannadice Street celebrating this shared 

history, one which would I concede have 

to chronicle the team down the road’s 

remarkable emergence from the shadows 

as well as Dundee’s own storied past. 

So yes, there’s a basis for the bitterness. 

Not all Dundee fans are psychotic enough 

to wish relegation pain on United for its 

own sake. It is revenge. It is payback for 

the city upstarts becoming top dogs, often 

at Dundee’s own expense. 

But it also – and this is the rationale 

which predominantly accounts for how 

I feel – offers Dundee the longed-for 

chance to re-establish themselves as the 

premier team in town. 

Not since the 1959-60 season have 

Dundee been able to say they are in a 

higher league than their rivals. The club 

has have not been slow in seizing the 

opportunity to do so in their close season 

commercial activities. Season tickets are 

not just for Dens Park. They are for Dens 

Park – “home of the city’s Premier team”. 

And quite right too. 

An exorcism had taken place there 

a few weeks earlier. Every Dundee fan 

will have their own personal film reel of 

flashbacks, some more gruesome than 

others. I was fortunate to avoid witnessing 

Dundee United winning their second 

major trophy, which happened to be 

against Dundee. At Dens Park. Where 

they had also won their first major 

honour a year earlier. 

I was also fortunate to miss their first 

and so far last Scottish Premier League 

title win. Which happened to be secured 

against Dundee. At Dens Park. 

There is, you might notice, a theme 

developing. 

But I did witness countless derbies in 

the 1980s and early 1990s when a talented 

United side invariably swept Dundee 

aside. Not always, granted. In fact, 

Dundee often fared better against United 

than they had any right to. 

But I can still remember when Dave 

Smith applauded United off the park after 

an embarrassingly one-sided 3-0 win 

over Dundee, again at Dens. That’s right, 

Dave Smith. The Dundee manager. 

 


Dundee United 

Why I celebrated Dundee United’s relegation 


He didn’t last much longer. 

I was there for the ridiculous cycle of 

torment that was being knocked out of 

the Scottish Cup five years in a row by 

Dundee United, between 1987 and 1991. It 

was unusual enough to be drawn against 

the same team for five straight seasons. 

But to lose, eventually (there were at 

least some replays involved), every single 

darned time? 

The first exit, at the semi-final stage, 

was particularly harrowing. Up 2-1 at 

half-time against a United side that 

reached the final of the Uefa Cup a couple 

of weeks later, I can remember plotting 

with my sister our travel arrangements 

to get to Hampden for the final. Cue a 

second-half turnaround that I am now 

old enough and damaged enough to 

realise was always likely to occur. 

But back then it led to a sustained 

period of teenage gloom. Head bowed 

against the window of a Stagecoach bus, 

the trip back to Dundee from Edinburgh 

– the SFA, in their wisdom, had decided 

to play the game at Tynecastle, despite 

both clubs’ agreement to toss a coin to 

decide on a venue in Dundee – seemed to 

drag on even longer due to the number of 

Dundee United supporters’ buses whizzing 

by with their cargo of joyous fans. 

We haven’t even done the 1990s yet. 

Fortunately, Jim McLean’s powers had 

begun to ebb. United were as poor as 

they had been in a generation but still 

managed to lift their first Scottish Cup, 

the one significant claim to superiority, 

other than seniority, my beloved Dundee 

had left by then. 

I remember studying for my finals at 

university in Dundee in a flat along the 

Perth Road. My pen scraped involuntarily 

down the page as the cheers of the fans 

gathered in the city square for the trophy 

parade drifted west along the Tay, sending 

jolts of pain shuddering through my body. 

Even when United were relegated the 

following season it was hard to derive 

too much pleasure: Dundee were already 

down. On the day United’s demotion was 

confirmed we were in Stranraer trying 

hard to look on the bright side after missing 

out on promotion by a couple of goals. 

But I tend to defer to author Jim Wilkie, 

an eminently sensible Dundee FC fan, 

when it comes to footballing matters 

in Dundee. After all, he wrote the book 

on the subject – the brilliant Across The 

Great Divide. He confirmed my suspicion; 

it might well be an age thing. In the 

run-up to what Dundee fans dubbed the 

“Get Doon” derby, I gave him a call. “So 

Jim, what about this Dundee/Dundee 

United dynamic – are you hoping Dundee 

pull the trigger? Is it churlish of Dundee 

fans to dearly wish for this to happen?” 

A pause down the phone line, perhaps 

even a little sigh. “Times have changed,” 

the sage began. “You are considerably 

younger than me. But we once watched 

the teams week about. When Dundee 

play United, there is a slight ambivalence 

for me. Even today I do not want United 

to go down – and I think there will be an 

unpleasant experience if it is the deciding 

game. 

“Of course, I wanted United to win 

when they won the league [at Dens]. I am 

I WAS THERE FOR THE 

RIDICULOUS CYCLE OF 

TORMENT THAT WAS BEING 

KNOCKED OUT OF THE 

SCOTTISH CUP FIVE YEARS IN 

A ROW BY DUNDEE UNITED, 

BETWEEN 1987 AND 1991. 


a Dundee fan. But I watched the United 

team that was promoted from the second 

division, with players like Ronnie Yeats 

and Dennis Gillespie, I do not follow their 

fortunes but I found it quite easy to go to 

European games for example and support 

them.” 

“When it comes to the crunch, I want 

to see them do well rather than badly. I 

am slightly distressed by the thought of 

Dundee fans singing ‘the Dees are having 

a party’, or whatever the song is, if their 

demise is confirmed by Dundee. How 

stupid! I am uneasy with it.” 

So some Dundee fans, it’s clear, are still 

influenced by burnished memories of 

skipping from one side of the street to the 

other to watch games. Back in the 1950s 

and 60s, United were not perceived to be 

a threat to Dundee’s status as top team in 

the city. 

But the majority of Dundee supporters 

now are of an age to have only lived 

through the anguish of Dundee’s decline, 

which was bad enough without United’s 

simultaneous emergence as a European 

force. Like woodworm in the old Dens 

Park main stand, bitterness began to bury 

deep into pores. It’s only natural. 

Which is why I was surprised by the 

high number of people, many of them 

football literates, including Tam Cowan 

on Off the Ball, who seemed genuinely 

surprised to hear a Dundee supporter 

might welcome the prospect of United’s 

Waterloo coming at Dens. 

My United supporting friends, by 

contrast, expected nothing other than to 

be placed under siege on social media by 

a gloating Dee. They knew they’d given it 

out – and more – to me over the years. 

Although I have to confess something 

else: as I scanned the upcoming season’s 

fixture list to locate the derby dates there 

was a brief, if acute, sense of loss upon 

remembering there will be no league 

derbies for at least 12 months. But hey, 

we’ll live. l 

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September 2016 | nutmeg | 59 

The Scottish Football Periodical

THE MAKING OF 

PAT NEVIN 

Pat Nevin has always been 

a man apart, as a footballer 

who loved the arts and a tricky 

winger with a phenomenal 

appetite for the hard graft of 

defending. Now one of the most 

respected pundits, he recalls his 

early journey from Easterhouse 

to Stamford Bridge. 

By Simon Hart 

Pat Nevin is telling the tale of the night 

the great Jock Stein decided to test his 

mettle. It was early 1985 and Nevin had 

been making waves in his debut season in 

the First Division with Chelsea. His creative 

powers had earned him the Player of the 

Year award at Stamford Bridge the previous 

spring, but the spotlight was burning with 

extra intensity on Nevin for something else: 

his offbeat off-field interests. 

Here was a footballer who dressed like 

a student, went to the ballet and wrote 

record reviews for NME at a time most 

of his peers – to judge by the old Shoot! 

magazine Q&As – seemed to be 

Illustration by Matthew Childers 


listening to Phil Collins, Lionel Richie 

and Diana Ross. In contemporary photos 

Nevin – with pale, elfin features and 

big, New Wave hair – resembles an early 

prototype for a Tim Burton anti-hero. He 

was a little bit different. An oddity. 

Stein – manager of Celtic’s 1967 

European Cup-winning team and now 

in charge of the Scotland national side 

– wished to find out more and chose an 

Under-21 fixture in Spain as the occasion 

to do just that. 

Nevin takes up the story: ‘I was wearing 

a beret and into my weird music and 

very different from the norm. Jock didn’t 

know me, so we played in this game 

and half-time came. The manager, Andy 

Roxburgh, was about to start his team talk 

when the door opens and Jock walks in. 

He walks past everybody and stands right 

in front of me and gives me the whole 

works. This is Jock, a godlike character, 

and he is calling me a selfish, ignorant, 

arrogant, little you-know-what and I just 

got battered with it. 

‘He then walked out and smashed the 

door and the whole place was silent. 

Nobody even wanted to speak to me 

because it was like the Pope telling you 

you’re an arse. I thought, “I’ll show him,” 

and I went out and absolutely worked 

my socks off. I came off at the end and I 

needed a wee bit of oxygen. 

‘On the coach afterwards, Jock walks 

up, ruffles my hair and goes, “Brilliant, 

wee man – from start to finish.” Then 

it dawns on you – he sees this unusual 

person and wants to know if you’re strong 

enough to stand up to him because he is 

thinking of putting you in the first team. 

And I did. I showed him.’ 

It is a terrific anecdote and Nevin tells it 

well, his sentences an infectious stream of 

colour and detail. It is easy to see why he 

is not short of work as a media pundit. If 

any Everton player from the 80s was going 

to end up as a regular on Radio 4’s Today 

programme – and he meets me fresh from 

a visit to Broadcasting House – the smart 

money back then would have been on 

the politically conscious, intellectually 

curious, indie-music-loving Nevin. 

During his Everton days, his favourite 

haunt in Liverpool was Probe, the independent 

record store, and it comes as no 

surprise when Nevin reveals that his first 

memory of arriving at the club in 1988 is 

of the music playing on Colin Harvey’s 

car stereo on their way from Manchester 

airport. 

‘We’re driving along and music is 

on in the car and it’s the Cure,’ Nevin 

remembers. ‘“Oh, good song,” I said. The 

next song comes on and it’s New Order. I 

thought, “I like this guy a lot.”’ It was one 

of the compilation tapes that Harvey’s 

daughters would make for their dad. ‘You 

can smell honesty a mile away and that’s 

Colin,’ he adds. 

Unfortunately, Nevin’s ensuing Everton 

career was not as successful as either man 

would have wished. He was 24 when he 

arrived in summer 1988, and a seemingly 

key component in Harvey’s rebuilding 

plans, along with fellow new boys Tony 

Cottee, Stuart McCall and Neil McDonald. 

He scored the goal that got Everton to that 

season’s FA Cup final but his four years at 

the club would see Harvey’s efforts hampered 

by a divided dressing room, and his 

own ambitions hindered by a manager 

who did not rate him, Howard Kendall. 

When he left for Tranmere Rovers in 1992, 

his top-flight career was over at just 28. 

The enduring perception of Nevin as a 

man apart makes him a doubly intriguing 

subject. He cites Harvey’s words in 

the aftermath of a much-publicised fight 

between Martin Keown and Kevin Sheedy 

on one particularly damaging squad 

night out. ‘Colin did a team talk and 

said, “There are two cliques in this team. 

There’s you boys and you boys. Actually, 

there are three – there’s Pat as well.”’ 

Nevin had known the same already at 

Chelsea. His team-mates took to calling 


The making of Pat Nevin 

him ‘Weirdo’ because of his appearance 

and interest in the arts. ‘That was one of 

my nicknames but they didn’t turn on me,’ 

he remembers. ‘They found it funny. They 

tried to wind me up mercilessly and got 

confused when it had no effect whatsoever.’ 

The sight of him listening to his 

Walkman and reading NME on the team 

bus led to the popular prank of ripping 

up the magazine. Nevin got round that by 

keeping a second copy hidden elsewhere. 

‘I did have a secret compartment in my 

bag. It became a running joke that my 

NME would get trashed but I always had 

an NME to find out what was going on.’ 

Nevin’s love of music and technology 

meant he would put together videos to 

play for his team-mates on their bus journeys 

to matches, as he explains: ‘I learned 

how to make videos and copied The Tube 

and Top of the Pops if there was a decent 

thing on. I’d splice them together and put 

on three or four songs that I could put up 

with and that I knew they’d put up with 

too, and then try to sneak in a track by the 

Fall as well. Then I started making videos, 

which would be music with a comedy bit, 

and they’d watch it on the coach.’ 

There is a thread here to the present 

and his work as a football analyst. Nevin 

COLIN DID A TEAM TALK 

AND SAID, “THERE ARE TWO 

CLIQUES IN THIS TEAM. 

THERE’S YOU BOYS AND 

YOU BOYS. ACTUALLY, THERE 

ARE THREE – THERE’S PAT 

AS WELL.” 

describes enthusiastically a BBC website 

feature he produced using a programme 

that allowed him to appear on a CGI 

Goodison Park, walking among the players 

as he explained where Everton were 

going right and wrong. 

Expanding on his work today, he says: 

‘Away from football, I don’t have a massive 

competitive instinct. I do a lot of TV and 

radio, but do I want to be a top man on the 

telly? No, it’d be a nightmare because you 

can’t walk about the streets. The technical 

stuff is much more interesting – it’s 

creative, it’s informative, it’s educational.’ 

It is at Stamford Bridge, his other home 

as a top-flight footballer, that we meet. 

Outside Fulham Broadway station, a man 

in red trousers offers a sartorial signpost 

that this is southwest London. Just 

beyond the Britannia Gate that marks the 

entrance to the stadium, the faces of Eden 

Hazard, Diego Costa, Thibaut Courtois 

and Cesc Fàbregas smile out from a Delta 

Airlines billboard ad: ‘From Stamford 

Bridge to Brooklyn Bridge’ is the tagline. 

The Stamford Bridge of today seems a 

world apart from the ground that Nevin 

knew. Then there were National Front 

thugs in the Shed End and a chairman, 

Ken Bates, who erected a twelve-foot 

electric perimeter fence to deter the 

hooligans (albeit it was never switched 

on, thanks to the intervention of Greater 

London Council). 

But for Nevin, a twenty-year-old college 

student from Glasgow, this was the place 

where he made his name in English football. 

‘It wasn’t a great stadium but there 

were twenty thousand people turning 

up and a good atmosphere around here. 

They’d been a big club and I was aware 

of that. And for some reason the fans just 

took to me.’ 

They still do, judging by the middle-aged 

woman who refers to him as ‘Lege’ as we 

pass her on our way to the Chelsea Health 

Club and Spa at the back of the stadium. 

Nevin, a regular visitor for his work with 


By Simon Hart 

the club’s TV channel, was even applauded 

once by the Chelsea crowd after scoring 

a goal here for Everton in April 1990. ‘I 

rounded the keeper and rolled it in and the 

Shed did applaud. I often get asked, “Who 

is it, Chelsea or Everton?” and the truth is 

there was a real peak for me at Chelsea – 

Player of the Year twice – and it just never 

quite happened at Everton, I would argue 

for a variety of reasons. 

‘But I have a lot of time for both of them. 

With Moyesie [David Moyes] being there 

such a long time and Robbie [Martinez] 

being an old mate of mine at Motherwell, I 

still have loads of feeling for Everton.’ 

A recent encounter in the Goodison car 

park with the famously musically erudite 

Leighton Baines only added another layer 

of affection. ‘He was somebody I’d feel 

comfortable spending time with, talking 

about music and anything else,’ says 

Nevin, though he stresses that he and 

Baines are not the only two music obsessives 

to have worn Everton blue. ‘Barry 

Horne very much had a hinterland and 

he was probably the closest thing to me 

musically. He is stunningly knowledgeable 

about indie music.’ 

Today, at 52, the wispy-haired Nevin has 

the air of an academic with his frameless 

spectacles, cotton jacket and Breton top. It 

takes no leap of the imagination to picture 

him holding spellbound a lecture hall full 

of students. Indeed, of his five siblings, 

two became headteachers and another a 

college lecturer. ‘There are six of us and 

I’m the only one without a degree so I’m 

the family failure,’ he smiles. 

In truth, Nevin’s success as a footballer 

was something of a family effort. A 

labourer on the railways, his late father 

Patrick was the man whose study of 

Celtic’s training techniques led to his son 

gaining the skills to build a professional 

career. ‘He missed less than a handful 

of games in my career and considering I 

played over eight hundred, that is damn 

good going for a labouring man,’ he begins 

warmly. ‘He was a bit of a hero for me.’ 

On Saturdays, Patrick Nevin Sr took his 

son to Parkhead to watch Celtic play and 

then spent the rest of the week putting 

him through the same drills as Jock Stein’s 

players. ‘My dad and all my family were 

Celtic supporters so we’d go to the games 

but, more than that, my dad trained me 

every day. He’d get home from work and 

I had to be ready with my boots to go out 

and work on skills – specific things he’d 

learned by going down and watching 

Celtic train. Celtic’s manager was Jock 

Stein, who was not a bad guy to copy. 

He’d watch people like [winger] Jimmy 

Johnstone and their techniques and pass 

them on to me so by seven or eight, I was 

playing at Under-11 level. Even though I 

was small, it wasn’t a problem. 

‘If anyone knows about the Wiel 

Coerver methods, they’re almost a 

modernised version of what my dad was 

doing,’ he adds of Coerver, the former 

Dutch footballer, who in the 1970s 

devised a skills-based teaching method 

for boys aged five and upwards to instil 

in them a mastery of the ball. In Nevin’s 

case it was an hour or more a day and 

he was ‘very much the only boy in the 

neighbourhood doing it’. 

‘My dad read a lot of books about 

coaching,’ he continues. ‘He’d been a 

boxer but he wanted to know as much 

about the technical side as possible. He 

gave that opportunity to all the family – I 

was the one who stuck with it. 

‘My dad might have had it in his mind 

for me to play professionally but I just 

loved the skill side of it. We lived in a 

tenement in a rough part of Easterhouse. 

Fortunately there was a school round the 

back so we could go there and train. I 

never played on grass until I was eleven 

or twelve. It was always on black ash. So 

when you played on grass, it was incredibly 

easy.’ 

Nevin refers to the writer and thinker 

Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000-hours 

concept as he highlights the impact of that 



daily programme on his development. ‘If 

you do anything for ten thousand hours 

you’ll become incredibly proficient. I was 

well into ten thousand hours very early 

on. What my dad was trying to teach me 

was to always keep my head up – I’d get 

sticks in the ground and dribble around 

them, trying to never look at the ball. 

‘After a while you never look at the ball 

and it’s a massive advantage. I thought 

everyone could do that and as the years 

went by I thought, “Actually, everyone’s 

looking at the ball!” What a waste that 

is when you don’t need to, when you 

know exactly where it is. It gave me this 

big advantage and was what made me 

good enough to become a professional 

footballer actually – getting that base.’ 

Easterhouse, where Nevin grew up, 

was the site of a huge post-war housing 

scheme on the eastern side of Glasgow, 

built in response to the problem of urban 

overcrowding. Its name became synonymous 

with deprivation. ‘It was known as 

the roughest housing district in western 

Europe,’ reflects Nevin, but he remembers 

a happy childhood. ‘My parents were interested 

in keeping us healthy – they were 

fanatical walkers and never had a car. But 

education was absolutely paramount so 

homework always had to be done.’ 

It was a Catholic upbringing too and 

Nevin retains what he describes as a 

‘Labour, Christian attitude’. He expands: 

‘Although it was Catholic, for us it was 

more morality and a socialist morality, and 

we were all indoctrinated with that as well 

– just caring for your fellow man. And I 

didn’t need a religion for that. I thought 

you could be moral without it. I think you 

can be a nice person. It wasn’t drummed 

into us by my mum and dad. They just led 

by example, as fabulously honest people.’ 

His father’s footballing lessons began 

to pay off as Nevin signed for Celtic Boys’ 

Club, having shone in an Under-12s 

competition. ‘I’d played for Blue Stars 

Under-12s, a street league team from the 

rough East End of Glasgow. We were a 

bunch of kids from ten streets and we 

won the Scottish Cup. In the semi-finals 

we beat Celtic Boys’ Club and the Celtic 

manager walked in afterwards, congratulated 

everybody, then walked over to me 

and said, “You’re playing for us next year.” 

‘I went to the boys’ club and from there 

Celtic Football Club saw that Dundee 

United were going to sign me and so they 

signed me up as a schoolboy. I trained 

with them but still had no concept of 

making it as a footballer – I was too busy 

enjoying it. I was a centre-forward or a 

number ten. I never played in a wide area. 

I was scoring around eighty goals a season 

and playing for representative teams, 

but this was all secondary because I was 

studying for my O levels and my Highers, 

which were much more important.’ 

In November 1979 Nevin received the 

award for the boys’ club’s Under-15 Player 

of the Year. The previous summer he had 

travelled with them to the Isle of Lewis in 

the Outer Hebrides. On the same trip was 

an older, flame-haired defender called 

David Moyes. ‘Moyesie was the captain of 

the team above me. I played for the composite 

team sometimes – I would be the 

youngest player and Moyesie the captain.’ 

The leadership skills – and intensity – of 

the future Everton manager were already 

quite evident. ‘There was one game 

that always jumps out,’ says Nevin. ‘We 

were playing Eastercraigs one day and 

they were our big rivals and they basically 

kicked the shit out of me. I scored 

a couple of goals and we were winning 

at half-time but as I walked off, Moyesie 

came over and grabbed me and said, 

“Don’t you ever duck out of a tackle.” I 

said, “He was going to kill me, he wasn’t 

going for the ball.” “Never show a weakness,” 

he replied. I was thinking, “You’re 

just the captain,” but he was right.’ 

For Nevin, it was the perfect place 

to learn and at the heart of it were the 

teachings of Jock Stein. ‘Everything about 


By Simon Hart 

AFTER A WHILE YOU NEVER 

LOOK AT THE BALL AND IT’S 

A MASSIVE ADVANTAGE. 

I THOUGHT EVERYONE 

COULD DO THAT AND AS THE 

YEARS WENT BY I THOUGHT, 

“ACTUALLY, EVERYONE’S 

LOOKING AT THE BALL!” 

WHAT A WASTE THAT IS 

WHEN YOU DON’T NEED TO, 

WHEN YOU KNOW EXACTLY 

WHERE IT IS. 

how you should play and the way of life, 

it came from Jock and filtered straight 

down to the boys’ club, and we tried 

to be exactly the same. Everyone who 

worked under Jock learned something, 

so if you see Jock you understand Sir Alex 

[Ferguson]. If you know Jock, you see 

David Moyes. The line is obvious for those 

of us who were inside it.’ 

Nevin, despite his player-of-the-year accolade, 

was not inside it for much longer. 

At sixteen, he was released by Celtic. ‘They 

said, “You’re not good enough, you’re too 

small.” I think my dad was eternally a bit 

disappointed but he never said anything.’ 

For Nevin, his interest in education ensured 

a soft landing. He simply focused on 

his Scottish Highers. ‘English was my favourite. 

I was a fanatical reader.’ The sight 

of a book squeezed into his jacket pocket 

suggests nothing has changed. ‘I had my 

favourite authors. At school they were 

classics but quite heavy – Dostoevsky, 

French stuff as well. I am going backwards 

because I have got lighter and lighter. P.G. 

Wodehouse is my hero now. 

‘I was fortunate I had good English 

teachers because then you get interested 

in the theatre. For my family and people I 

knew, being interested in theatre and the 

arts generally was normal. And then you 

become a footballer and people go, “He’s 

weird,” and I think, “No, I’m not, I’m 

normal.”’ 

At the same time as Nevin embarked 

on a BA in Commerce at Glasgow College 

of Technology, he also began a double life 

as a footballer. He was playing for a local 

club, Gartcosh United, when Craig Brown, 

later manager of Scotland, invited him to 

play for Clyde, then stationed in Scottish 

football’s third tier. ‘We played a game 

against his Clyde side and he said, “Do 

you want to come and play for us?” I said, 

“I study, sorry.” He said, “Well, do it parttime 

and we’ll give you a couple of quid.” 

‘It was only Clyde but we kept on getting 

more successful. We won the league. I did 

the first and second year of the degree 

while I was at Clyde. It was easy because 

Clyde only trained twice a week in the 

evenings and I was a student – I wasn’t 

doing medicine so it was very doable.’ 

In his first season with Clyde, 1981/82, 

he scored thirteen goals to help the club 

achieve promotion as champions, his 

efforts also earning him the Scottish 

Professional Players’ Association’s Second 

Division Player of the Year award. 

At this stage, Nevin was still trying to 

keep the two sides of his life separate but 

his on-field success made this increasingly 

difficult – not least after his impact at the 

1982 European Under-18 Championship. 

‘I had a girlfriend at the time,’ he recalls, 

‘and we were mad for each other but I 

didn’t really want her to know I played 

football.’ Before departing for Finland 

with the Scotland squad he told her he 

 



needed to get his head down to prepare 

for exams. ‘I made the mistake of getting 

Player of the Tournament and winning the 

tournament,’ he continues. ‘We were on 

the back pages of all the papers. When we 

came back she just went, “Studying? You 

should have mentioned it.”’ 

It was not just his girlfriend learning of 

the feats of Clyde’s little Merlin. ‘After the 

first season with Clyde, Chelsea came in 

and tried to buy me. I thought, “I’ll lose the 

fun of it,” so I turned them down.’ There 

was interest too from Billy McNeill, the 

manager of Celtic. Nevin’s career might 

have unfolded differently had McNeill 

actually stayed in his seat until the end of 

one particular game when scouting Nevin. 

‘For my style of player, plastic pitches 

and icy pitches don’t work, as you can’t 

turn. That night we were playing at Alloa 

and it was rock-hard and I was having a 

total stinker. Billy McNeill had come to 

see me to buy me for Celtic, which I’d 

have loved, but I couldn’t kick a ball or 

run with it until with ten minutes to go 

when I got the ball and started to dribble. 

‘There’s no video of it but I did go 

through a lot of players and the keeper 

and somebody on the line and then 

tapped it in. I jogged back and then had 

a wee look up to Billy McNeill, but he’d 

gone. It was a wee moment of fate. Lots of 

Clyde fans still talk about it. Celtic came 

in for me twice during my career and it 

never happened. At the same time, the 

players at Clyde were a good bunch and I 

learned very quickly.’ 

It helped that, with his parallel life 

as a student, he felt no pressure. ‘Celtic 

releasing me made me realise that I could 

just do this for fun and I immediately 

improved. I was never nervous in my life 

about it. What I promised myself when I 

finally did leave Clyde to come down here 

was to not forget that. Chelsea bought me 

for ninety-five grand, which was buttons 

at the time, and I still did not think at 

all I’d be a professional footballer. I was 

taking a two-year sabbatical.’ 

The Chelsea Football Club that Nevin 

arrived at in 1983 was quite unlike today’s 

rouble-driven powerhouse. In those days 

there was no health club serving the 

lemon and polenta, and chocolate and 

beetroot cakes which Nevin and I are now 

tucking into. 

Then Stamford Bridge had a three-tier 

East Stand, built in the 1970s, but the 

rest of the ground was a ramshackle 

place with a greyhound track circling the 

pitch and cars parked behind the goal on 

a match day. Moreover, Chelsea were a 

Second Division side. 

When Nevin turned up at Euston station, 

he threatened to take a train straight 

back to Glasgow on hearing the club 

wanted to put him in digs with the youthteam 

players. ‘I had to go and find a place 

to rent. It was a fleapit in Earls Court and 

was costing me a hundred quid a week. I 

was earning one hundred and eighty quid 

a week, I was paying tax and had twenty 

quid a week to live on. I just got lucky 

that I was in the team right away and the 

fans took to me immediately. 

‘If I had to guess why, it was because I 

was playing well but I worked my socks 

off. I was an incredibly hard-working 

player as well as the other stuff and you 

had to have both of them together. With 

people who have a bit of skill and flounce 

about, they can take you or leave you 

sometimes. But if you put that effort in 

and you have skill on top, you’ve got a 

chance. My time down here, from the 

start, was just about a dream. The fans 

were great and I had a manager who rated 

me and utterly trusted me.’ 

This was John Neal, a softy-spoken 

County Durham man with a shrewd 

football brain and an appreciation of flair, 

who had previously managed Wrexham 

and Middlesbrough. ‘Very early on in the 

first season he does the team talk and at 

the end of it says, “Give the ball to Pat and 

you’ll win.” John Neal basically said to me, 

“Play on the right wing but do what you 

want because I know you’ll defend when 


By Simon Hart 

HE MUST BE THE ONLY 

FOOTBALLER IN THE WORLD 

TO HAVE ASKED HIS MANAGER 

TO SUBSTITUTE HIM BEFORE 

THE END OF A PRE-SEASON 

FIXTURE SO HE COULD GET TO 

A COCTEAU TWINS CONCERT. 

you need to.” He trusted me absolutely so 

I was able to go and find pockets and play 

in the hole when it was vacated.’ 

Prior to Nevin’s arrival, Chelsea had 

narrowly escaped relegation. Now he 

was at the creative heart of a team with a 

new-look spine, comprising goalkeeper 

Eddie Niedzwiecki, centre-back Joe 

McLaughlin, midfielder Nigel Spackman 

and striker Kerry Dixon. Dixon would 

score 28 league goals as they won promotion, 

but Nevin, his chief supplier, was 

the club’s Player of the Season. Of their 

partnership, Nevin says: ‘I completely 

understood what he wanted, where he 

liked to score. He was lightning-quick. He 

wasn’t a great footballer but his finishing 

was phenomenal. There was a good 

understanding and we liked each other 

but we had nothing in common – he was 

listening to his Wham! records.’ 

Nevin’s reputation for doing things 

differently was quickly noted by the press. 

‘I was asked by the Sun what I liked doing 

after one of my first games and I said, 

“Going to gigs.” From that the NME did an 

article on me and suddenly I was Mr Post- 

Punk Footballer. But I was just normal.’ 

He may say that but he must be the 

only footballer in the world to have asked 

his manager to substitute him before the 

end of a pre-season fixture so he could get 

to a Cocteau Twins concert. 

These extra-curricular interests led to 

him befriending John Peel, the BBC radio 

DJ and champion of alternative music. ‘If 

I had a hero it was John and it was one of 

the real joys of my life to have had John 

as a friend. On Wednesday nights I would 

be on the Peel Show. Now and again he’d 

say, “We’ve got the famous footballer in 

tonight.”’ 

It was music too that forged a bond between 

Nevin and Paul Canoville, Chelsea’s 

first black player. ‘I’d go and make tapes 

for him,’ says Nevin, who provided rather 

more than compilation cassettes for his 

team-mate, defending Canoville publicly 

after he became a target for abuse from a 

section of the club’s supporters. 

At the time Stamford Bridge was 

a magnet for right-wing extremists; 

Canoville had bananas thrown at him 

on his debut against Crystal Palace and it 

was after another fixture against Palace, 

on 14 April 1984, that Nevin spoke out. ‘I 

scored the winner and I walked off just 

fuming,’ he recalls. ‘Paul had been booed 

on by a bunch of our fans and I came 

out afterwards and said, “I’m not talking 

about the game, I’m disgusted with these 

people who pretend to be Chelsea fans. 

There’s no place for that.” 

‘There were a lot of hooligans at the time 

and I’ve no time for the retrospectives 

people are doing about the casual movement 

now. It had a very negative effect, 

particularly on the careers of players and 

on fans who couldn’t travel because of the 

dangers. They were thugs and they ruined 

people’s lives and I think they used places 

like this. Chelsea is not in any way a racist 

club. Everton is not a racist club. These 

people wouldn’t even go into the games 

half the time, they’d go for the ruck.’ 

The Chelsea chairman, Ken Bates, 

was unhappy with Nevin’s stance. ‘The 

 



chairman got me in and said, “What the 

hell do you think you’re doing, saying 

things against our fans? It’s not your 

fight.” I said, “Yes it is, of course it’s my 

fight. I play for this club.” The next week 

I walked out with Paul and they sang his 

name, which was great.’ 

It was not just Bates who confronted 

Nevin, who says he received letters from 

the National Front. ‘I wrote back and said, 

“I’ve read the leaflets and I don’t agree 

with you.” I also met somebody who 

purported to be NF in a hairdresser’s on 

King’s Road. He was shaven-headed and 

he wasn’t very pleased with me. I had to 

talk my way out of it.’ 

Nevin’s campaigning continued after he 

became an Everton player. Six months 

before his arrival on Merseyside, a banana 

was thrown at Liverpool’s John Barnes 

during the FA Cup fifth-round derby at 

Goodison Park. Nevin was involved with 

Barnes and Steve Mungall of Tranmere 

Rovers in the subsequent Merseyside 

Against Racism campaign that followed. 

As chairman of the Professional Footballers’ 

Association from 1993–97, he did 

more of the same and these efforts led, in 

2012, to his receiving an honorary degree 

from the University of Abertay. 

Amid all this, Nevin never lost focus on 

his football. After morning training with 

the Chelsea squad, he would do extra work 

at Stamford Bridge in the afternoons on 

‘the technical stuff my dad had taught me’, 

sometimes with a full-back from the youth 

team. Nevin would also go jogging in the 

evenings and his passion for running 

endures – these days he takes to the hills 

near his home in the Scottish Borders. 

Colin Harvey remembered Nevin doing 

much the same during his Everton days – 

‘He wasn’t like a professional footballer but 

he was very professional,’ he told me – and 

this work ethic reaped rich rewards during 

his first season in the old First Division, 

1984/85, when Chelsea finished sixth. 

One high point of their campaign was 

a 4–3 victory at Everton on the Saturday 

before Christmas. In what proved Everton’s 

last defeat until the following May, Welsh 

striker Gordon Davies hit a hat-trick and 

Nevin provided two assists. The Observer 

newspaper, in its match report, lauded his 

‘magical dribbling’ and described how ‘the 

little man [. . .] had four men going four 

ways when he delivered the ball to [Colin] 

Pates for the third goal’. 

Nevin remembers little of that first visit 

to Goodison Park but a match he does recall 

is a 4–1 home win over Manchester City 

a month earlier when he took a penalty 

described by an indignant-sounding Barry 

Davies, commentating for the BBC, as ‘the 

worst penalty I’ve ever seen at this level 

of football’. Taking just one step forward, 

Nevin rolled the ball at a snail’s pace 

straight at City’s Alex Williams. ‘I got fined 

that day by the manager for missing a 

penalty – not for missing the penalty but for 

laughing as I was walking back afterwards.’ 

Looking back, Nevin had reason to play 

with a smile on his face. ‘For two years 

in a row we came sixth and we scored 

a bunch of goals and were exciting to 

watch. It could have grown into something 

big but John Neal got ill and then 

the magic was broken a little bit. The team 

broke up quite quickly afterwards.’ 

Chelsea’s relegation in 1988 was the 

cue for Nevin to depart. He had a choice 

of Everton or Paris Saint-Germain. Nevin 

was on holiday in Corfu with Annabel, 

his future wife, when a call came through 

to the hotel from his flatmate back in 

London. ‘My friend Peter told me, “Colin 

Harvey has been on and says Everton want 

to sign you.” “OK, tell him we’ll sign.” I 

said to Annabel, “It’s Everton.” She asked 

me if I was sure about saying no to Paris. 

I said, “Why would I go to Paris? That’s 

about lifestyle, not about football and you 

can’t turn down the football.”’ l 

Here We Go: Everton In The 1980s: The 

Players’ Stories by Simon Hart. 

Published by deCoubertin Books (£18.9) 


PUBLISHING WORLD-CLASS SPORTS BOOKS SINCE 2010 


GLASGOW, 1872: THE 

BIRTH OF TIKI-TAKA 

Scotland can lay claim to 

having invented modern 

football, through a line that 

stretches from Queen’s Park 

in Victorian days to Pep 

Guardiola’s Barcelona 

By Jonathan Wilson 

When did football begin? There will 

be those who make claims for games 

played with a ball by the Chinese or 

Amazonian tribes several millennia 

ago, but realistically the game we know 

today had its origins in the mob game 

of medieval Britain, which around 150 

years ago developed through the English 

public schools into something resembling 

modern football. 

But the game had many forms, dependent 

on tradition and environment: those 

who grew up playing on vast muddy 

fields played a very different variant to 

those who played on tight flag-stoned 

cloisters. When pupils from different 

public schools got to university, they 

found every game had to be preceded by a 

discussion on which school’s rules to play 

under. In 1848, an attempt at drawing up 

a unified code was made at Cambridge 

University and those laws posted on 

Parker’s Piece, an area of open grassland 

in the centre of the city where sport is 

still played. Finally, in 1863, in a meeting 

at the Freemasons’ Arms between Covent 

Garden and Holborn in London, the 

Football Association was founded, drawing 

up a list of 12 laws that form the basis 

of the modern game. 

Over the following couple of decades 

the laws underwent numerous revisions, 

instituting a crossbar and something approximating 

to our offside law. However 

perhaps the single biggest event that 

transformed the sport into the modern 

game of football was what happened 

at the West of Scotland Cricket ground 

in Partick on November 30, 1872. An 

unfancied Scotland side held England to 

a 0-0 draw in the first ever international 

fixture, but what was important was they 

way they did it. They passed the ball. 

Passing, the basis of the modern game, 

the key aspect of the great central stream 

of tactical thought, began as an expedient 

Scottish ploy to frustrate England. 

The early game in England had largely 

been focused on dribbling because of 

the mentality reflected by Law Six, the 

forerunner of the offside law: “When 

a player has kicked the ball,” it stated, 

“anyone of the same side who is nearer 

to the opponent’s goal-line is out of play, 

and may not touch the ball himself, 

nor in any way whatever prevent any 

other player from doing so, until he is 

in play…” Going backwards or sideways 

would have been subtlety too far for 


an English culture obsessed, as David 

Winner observes in his book Those Feet, 

with the notion that anything subtle was 

somehow unmanly. So players charged 

at opponents, as described by Geoffrey 

Green, the late football correspondent of 

The Times, quoting an unnamed writer of 

the 1870s in his history of the FA Cup: “A 

really first-class player … will never lose 

sight of the ball, at the same time keeping 

his attention employed in the spying out 

of any gaps in the enemy’s ranks, or any 

weak points in the defence, which may 

give him a favourable chance of arriving 

at the coveted goal. To see some players 

guide and steer a ball through a circle 

of opposing legs, turning and twisting 

as the occasion requires, is a sight not 

to be forgotten… Skill in dribbling … 

necessitates something more than a goahead, 

fearless, headlong onslaught of the 

enemy’s citadel; it requires an eye quick 

at discovering a weak point, and nous 

to calculate and decide the chances of a 

successful passage.” 

Even after Law Six had been amended 

in 1866 to follow the convention pursued 

at Eton and permit a forward pass provided 

there were at least three members 

THEY MET ENGLAND’S LOP- 

SIDED 1-2-7 FORMATION 

WITH A 2-2-6 AND DECIDED 

TO TRY TO PASS THEIR WAY 

AROUND THEIR OPPONENTS 

OR, AT THE VERY LEAST, TO 

DENY THEM POSSESSION 

of the defensive team between its recipient 

and the opponent’s goal when the ball 

was played (that is, one more than the 

modern offside law), the dribbling game 

prevailed. 

Or that’s how it was in England. When 

the Queen’s Park club, which soon 

became the game’s arbiter in Scotland, 

was established in 1867, the version of 

the offside law they adopted held that a 

player was infringing only if he were both 

beyond the penultimate man and in the 

final 15 yards of the pitch. That, clearly, 

was legislation far more conducive to 

passing than either the FA’s first offside 

law or its 1866 revision. Queen’s Park 

accepted the three-man variant when 

they joined the FA on November 9, 

1870, but by then some idea of passing 

was already implanted. In Scotland 

the ball was there to be kicked, not 

merely dribbled, as H.N. Smith’s poem 

celebrating Queen’s Park’s victory over 

Hamilton Gymnasium in 1869 suggests: 

The men are picked – the ball is kicked, 

High in the air it bounds; 

O’er many a head the ball is sped… 

That may have simply referred to long 

clearances, which would certainly have 

been part of the English game at the time 

as well. More definitive evidence comes 

from the report Robert Smith, a Queen’s 

Park member and Scotland’s right-winger 

in that first international, gave back to 

his club after playing in the first of four 

matches arranged by Charles W Alcock, 

the secretary of the FA, between England 

and a team of London-based Scots that 

were the forerunners to proper internationals. 

“While the ball was in play,” he 

wrote, “the practice was to run or dribble 

the ball with the feet, instead of indulging 

in high or long balls.” 

The England team Alcock brought 

to Scotland for the first international 

was physically much larger than their 


Glasgow, 1872: the birth of tiki-taka 

counterparts. Estimates vary, but there is 

general agreement that the English were 

at least a stone a man heavier on average 

than the Scots. In a running game, with 

players charging into each other, there 

could only realistically be one winner. 

Queen’s Park provided every player on 

the Scotland side and, perhaps because 

they were a club side, they were able to 

devise specific tactics for the game. They 

met England’s lop-sided 1-2-7 formation 

with a 2-2-6 and decided to try to pass 

their way around their opponents or, 

at the very least, to deny them possession. 

“The Englishmen,” the report in 

the Herald said, “had all the advantage 

in respect of weight… and they also had 

the advantage in pace. The strong point 

with the home club was that they played 

excellently well together.” 

A 0-0 draw seemed to prove the 

efficacy of Scotland’s method. Queen’s 

Park, certainly, were convinced and their 

isolation – they were able to find just 

three opponents in 1871-72, which was 

what prompted them to join the English 

FA – meant their idiosyncrasies became 

more pronounced. Playing practice games 

among themselves, the passing game 

was effectively hot-housed, free from the 

irksome obstacle of bona fide opponents. 

“In these games,’ Richard Robinson wrote 

in his 1920 history of Queen’s Park, “the 

dribbling and passing … which raised the 

Scottish game to the level of fine art, were 

developed. Dribbling was a characteristic 

of English play, and it was not until very 

much later that the Southerners came to 

see that the principles laid down in the 

Queen’s Park method of transference of 

the ball, accompanied by strong backing 

up, were those that got the most out of 

the team. Combination was the chief 

characteristic of Queen’s Park’s play. 

These essentials struck Mr CW Alcock 

and in one of his earlier Football Annuals 

formed the keynote for a eulogium on 

Scottish players, accompanied by earnest 

dissertations advocating the immediate 

adoption by English players of the 

methods which had brought the game to 

such a high state of proficiency north of 

the Tweed.” 

Alcock, in truth, was nowhere near 

as convinced as that, reflected a general 

English scepticism about passing. 

Although he was intrigued by the “combination 

game”, he expressed doubt in that 

annual of 1879 as to whether “a wholesale 

system of passing pays”. 

In Scotland, though, the much 

romanticised “pattern-weaving” approach 

spread, evangelised by Queen’s Park. The 

southward spread of the passing game 

can also be attributed to Scots, most 

notably Henry Renny-Tailyour and John 

Blackburn, who played for Scotland in 

their victory over England in the second 

international. Both were lieutenants 

in the army and both played their club 

football for the Royal Engineers, carrying 

the Scottish style with them to Kent. “The 

Royal Engineers were the first football 

team to introduce the ‘combination’ style 

of play,” W.E. Clegg, a former Sheffield 

player, wrote in the Sheffield Independent 

in 1930. “Formerly the matches Sheffield 

played with them were won by us, 

but we were very much surprised that 

between one season and another they had 

considered ‘military’ football tactics” with 

the result that Sheffield was badly beaten 

by the new conditions of play.” 

Through the 1880s, passing took hold. 

The Old Carthusians side that beat the 

Old Etonians 3-0 in the 1881 FA Cup 

final was noted for its combinations, 

particularly those between EMF Prinsep 

and EH Parry, while the following 

year the Old Etonian goal that saw off 

Blackburn Rovers, the first northern 

side to reach the final, stemmed, Green 

wrote in his history of the FA Cup, from 

“a long dribble and cross-pass” from 

ATB Dunn that set up WH Anderson. 

Once professionalism had been legalised 

in English football in 1885, and power 


By Jonathan Wilson 

IN SCOTLAND THE MUCH 

ROMANTICISED “PATTERN- 

WEAVING” APPROACH 

SPREAD, EVANGELISED BY 

QUEEN’S PARK 

switched to the northern cities, passing 

was instilled. Many areas of the north had 

had their own versions of the offside law 

anyway, and so hadn’t conformed to the 

pure dribbling of the public schools and 

the south, and once winning rather than 

playing the game in the ‘right’ way was 

prioritised, so the most effective way of 

playing naturally came to the fore – and 

that, evidently, was passing. 

In Scotland, this had been acknowledged 

for years. “Take any club that has 

come to the front,” the columnist ‘Silas 

Marner’ wrote in the Scottish Umpire 

in August 1884, “and the onward strides 

will be found to date from the hour when 

the rough and tumble gave place to swift 

accurate passing and attending to the 

leather rather than the degraded desire 

merely to coup an opponent.” 

It was a spring that would bubble 

into one of the great rivers of tactical 

evolution. In 1901, RS McColl – or Toffee 

Bob was he was nicknamed because of 

the chain of newsagents he ran with his 

brother – left Queen’s Park, which had 

remained amateur, to turn profession 

with Newcastle United. He took the pass 

and move ideal with him and Newcastle 

were transformed form a direct team 

to a possession side. In 1912 the winghalf 

Peter McWilliam, having suffered 

a career-ending injury, left the club to 

become manager at Tottenham. 

He promoted the same passing 

principles there, not only among the 

first team but almost among the reserves 

and the youth sides, even buying the 

non-league side Northfleet Town to use 

as a nursery side. Although McWilliam 

left in 1927, when Middlesbrough made 

him the best-paid manager in the game, 

he returned in 1938 to reap the benefits of 

the philosophy he had instilled, inheriting 

a side that included Arthur Rowe, Bill 

Nicholson and Vic Buckingham. 

Rowe went on to lead Spurs to 

promotion and then the title while 

Nicholson took them to the double. 

Buckingham remains West Brom’s 

longest-serving manager. He left the 

Hawthorns for Ajax, returned to England 

with Sheffield Wednesday and then went 

back to Ajax in 1964. There he found 

players eager to put his pass-and-move 

ideas into practice. He gave a debut to 

Johan Cruyff and prepared the ground for 

Rinus Michels before moving to Fulham. 

After a brief stint in Cyprus at Ethnikos, 

he took charge at Barcelona in 1970 and 

began to instil the ethos that Michels, 

succeeding him again, would bring to 

full fruition. It was Michels, of course, 

who inspired Cruyff, and Cruyff who 

plucked Pep Guardiola from the youth 

team to give him his debut. It is no 

coincidence that the last two Englishmen 

to manage Barcelona are also of that line: 

Bobby Robson was heavily influenced 

by Buckingham at West Brom and Terry 

Venables played under Nicholson at 

Tottenham. 

The modern Barcelona and tiki-taka, 

which has had a profound influence on 

how football is played, is the most recent 

iteration of a proud tradition stretching 

back through Ajax to Tottenham 

to Newcastle to Queen’s Park. Modern 

football looks as it does because of a tactical 

decision taken in Glasgow in 1872. l 


Central Park, home of Cowdenbeath FC. It is one hour before kick off and the turnstiles 

have just opened for the new season. 

GROUNDS FOR 

OPTIMISM 

The first day of the season. 

Photographs by Alan McCredie 

Words by Daniel Gray 


Grounds for optimism 


Pre-season is over, and in the home dressing room at Cowdenbeath’s Central Park the kits 

are carefully placed, ready for the upcoming season. 

Fixtured life recommenced 

on August 6. Daniel Gray and 

photographer Alan McCredie 

witnessed it in Cowdenbeath, 

Dunfermline, Alloa, Falkirk, 

Gorgie and Perth. 

August has come again. Football 

is back. Such words sprinkle a 

Christmas Eve feeling upon us all. 

Interminable, domesticated Saturdays 

have departed and familiar, fixtured 

life can recommence. Resumed are 

our sacred routines – scarves sifted out 

and returned to necks, lucky routes 

taken, matchday pubs invaded for 

the first time since May, fortnightly 

acquaintances greeted again with quick 

enquiries of holidays and health, and 

engrossed conversations about players 

sold and signed. 

Once more to the ground we go, 

inhaling sweet catering van scents as 

they hang in the air almost visible like 

the vapours in a Bisto advert. Back is 

the 50/50 draw and its faithful seller, 

and the neatly-piled club shop with last 



season’s away shorts in a £5 bin. The 

new shirt, modelled by full-kit child 

and corpulent granddad in crumpled 

weekend jeans, looks wonderful or 

awful and never in-between. Shortsleeves 

are trusted by the kitted and the 

rest, for the first day is always sunny, is 

it not? Even an angry God couldn’t drop 

rain on our August day of hope. 

In pastoral Dingwall and briny 

Arbroath, in remodelling Dundee and 

solid Mount Florida, at scholarly Ibrox 

and folksy Firhill, and at charming 

Somerset Park and surprised 

Meadowbank, the hopeful gather. 

We can’t see them, but we know that 

they are there. They share the same 

darting hearts that Alan McCredie 

and I witness on our nimble first day 

travels to Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, 

Alloa, Falkirk, Gorgie and Perth. For the 

football supporter, this is a carnival day. 

While the familiar comforts us, 

spying difference is a first day delight 

of its own. A revamped matchday 

programme with its cryptic, initialled 

and hashtagged new name comes with 

a 50p price rise. Fences, fittings and 

awnings have been painted, cherished 

turnstile lettering covered and superseded. 

Even a change at the food hatch 

is noticed – perhaps promotion has 

been met with a new pastry supplier, 

relegation with staff losses. Soon will 

come the joy of sighting the pitch once 

more, our Lincoln Green meadow, staggeringly 

vivid as if last season we were 

watching in black and white. Then, the 

appraisal of new signings, their gait and 

first touches evidence enough to make 

an absolute judgement. 

These themes are to be cherished as 

part of football’s universality. Across 

this country and others, we are all 

feeling the hope and sniffing the 

Dulux. Year and place are hardly of 

consequence, no matter the changes 

in the game, the world and our 

As the new season begins, the old one 

is honoured at Dunfermline’s East 

End Park. Fireworks and pyrotechnics 

accompany the raising of the League One 

championship flag. 

lives. In Dunfermline and Gorgie, the 

pulse quickens when a chant is called 

rustily back into use, just as it does in 

Southampton, Mansfield, Wolfsburg, 

Utrecht and Bologna. We have all come 

home. 

At Central Park, the 2pm shutters roll 

upwards and the turnstile girls arrive 

with their cash floats. The public address 

system croaks into life – Chumbawamba 

then Kaiser Chiefs, of course – and a 

lone pair of clanking palms groggily clap 

tracksuited players onto the pitch. Soon 

here, there and everywhere, football will 

begin again, and the week will once more 

have an anchor. l 



Cowdenbeath head coach Liam Fox (right) and his management team watch the early 

kick-off Rangers and Hamilton match before their own game against Elgin City. 

Where once 

fans asked for 

autographs, now it 

is selfies with their 

heroes. Outside the 

Falkirk Stadium 

Jason Cummings of 

Hibs poses with two 

young fans. 

 



Hand in hand up the Halbeath Road toward East End Park, Dunfermline. A sight as old as 

football as the old take the young to the match and the cycle begins again. 



Football fans don’t always wear their team’s current strip. Shirts from previous seasons 

and eras are always a favourite with the supporters, such as these at Dunfermline Athletic. 

Another top flight 

season begins in 

Perth as St Johnstone 

take on Aberdeen. 

For this young fan, it 

is also his first ever 

match. 



Losing 4-0 in the rain is not how the season should begin. A Peterhead fan leaves Alloa’s 

Recreation Park for the long journey home. 

What football is all about. The layoff is over and Alloa fans return to witness a perfect 

opening day’s victory over Peterhead. 



The club shop at Central Park, Cowdenbeath. The perfect antidote to those who have grown 

weary with the relentless commercialisation of football. 

Matchday is back and the doors are open once again at Marv’s Emporium and Tearoom in 

Dunfermline Athletic’s East End Park. 

 



The first penalty of the season is missed and the Dunfermline fans are not happy. All will 

be well in the end as they go on to defeat Dumbarton by the odd goal in seven. 

The match is over and the Wasps have stung Peterhead with a 4-0 win in the rain. 



Hearts merchandise seller near Tynecastle. Hearts 1 Celtic 2 

Ninety minutes before kick off at 

Tynecastle and the programme sellers 

are out in the Gorgie Road. 

Tucked away behind the tenements, 

Tynecastle welcomes back the fans for 

the first game of the season agains the 

reigning champions, Celtic. 


THE 

MANAGERS 


86 

Euan McTear on David 

Moyes’ time in Spain. 

“He remained resident at what is 

regarded as one of the smartest hotels 

in the whole of northern Spain” 

89 

Chris Tait on Owen Coyle’s 

US experience. 

“It’s what you do now that you 

are judged on. If it was going to be 

about the past, Claudio Ranieri would 

never have got the Leicester City job. 

In his last game for Greece they lost at 

home to the Faroe Islands.” 

94 

Ian Thomson on the 

man who masterminded 

England’s 1950 World Cup 

defeat against the USA. 

“The Scot was hailed as a hero in Brazil 

too as his team’s victory had virtually 

eliminated one of the host nation’s 

rivals and practically ensured that the 

trophy would be staying in Brazil or 

going to Uruguay.” 

103 

Paul Forsyth on 

goalkeepers as managers. 

“The unique perspective from which 

a goalkeeper watches the game gives 

him invaluable insight. He has time 

and space to think about the game as it 

unfolds before him.” 


ONE YEAR 

IN A HOTEL 

It wasn’t just poor performances 

on the pitch that led to David 

Moyes’ early exit from Spanish 

football management. 

By Euan McTear 

Every September the city of San 

Sebastián in the Basque Country of 

northern Spain hosts one of the world’s 

most prestigious film festivals. Since 

the festival was founded in 1952 it has 

premiered many Oscar-winning movies 

and has helped launch the careers of stars 

such as Pedro Almodóvar and Francis 

Ford Coppola. Known in the local Basque 

language as Donostia Zinemaldia, it is 

considered the premier film festival in 

the Spanish-speaking world, but it also 

screens English-language films and has 

over the years handed out awards to classics 

such as The Full Monty and Alien. 

It is little surprise that the city’s 

plushest hotel, the María Cristina, is fully 

booked with movie stars and directors 

come September time. It is nigh on 

impossible to reserve a room during that 

month unless you’re involved in one 

of the festival’s movies or if your name 

is Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks or Jennifer 

Lawrence. Or David Moyes. 

Illustration by Kathleen Oakley 

Last September the María Cristina hotel 

was filled as usual with movie stars. Only 

one room escaped the influx of actors 

and film-makers – that of David Moyes. 

The Glaswegian had been staying at the 

hotel ever since his move to San Sebastián 

in November 2014, when he became 

coach of the city’s beloved football team 

Real Sociedad following his sacking by 

Manchester United. 

Moyes has said that he had been 

searching for an apartment from the day 

he arrived in the city. Ten months later 

he had yet to find a home; he remained 

resident at what is regarded as one of the 

smartest hotels in the whole of northern 

Spain. Damningly, he was staying there 

at considerable cost to his new club – and 

unsurprisingly this did not endear him 

to the fanbase in San Sebastián. It is not 

overstating things to say that Moyes’ 

choice of address contributed to his early 

exit as Real Sociedad boss. 

It did not help Moyes that he was arriving 

as manager of a team whose fans had 

begun to take an increasing interest in 

the club’s accounts. They would still sing, 

chant and whistle the referee from the 

terraces like football supporters everywhere, 

but would become accountants in 

the most popular post-match bars afterwards. 

Fans were all too aware, therefore, 

of the club’s upcoming £31m stadium 

renovation – it would be no major surprise 

if some knew the exact cost of every 

nut, bolt and screw. That is why it they 

found it especially controversial that Real 

Sociedad would contribute to Moyes’ 

hotel bill just one year in advance of this 

pricey renovation. 

Given how much Moyes was earning 

from his basic salary, many supporters 

of the blue and whites were baffled that 

their club would contribute to his hotel 

bill. According to France Football’s annual 

report on player and manager wages, 

Moyes earned £5.1m in 2014 between his 

commercial deals and his Manchester 


United and Real Sociedad payslips, which 

put him joint-tenth in the world, alongside 

PSG’s Laurent Blanc. Put simply, he 

could have afforded any house in the city, 

and fans felt he was taking one too many 

cookies out of the club’s biscuit tin. 

Moyes is not the first – and nor will he be 

the last – footballing personality to live in 

a hotel. Carlo Ancelotti never moved out 

of his hotel in his two years of managing 

Real Madrid, while Zlatan Ibrahimović 

famously joked about buying the Parisian 

hotel he was staying in when he was 

struggling to find a house in the French 

capital. Yet the difference is that Ancelotti 

led Real Madrid to a Champions League 

triumph, while Zlatan has fired his name 

into the PSG history books by becoming 

their all-time top scorer. 

Moyes’ Real Sociedad tenure, however, 

was anything but successful. No goals. No 

goals. No goals. That was the story of Real 

Sociedad’s first three matches in Moyes’ 

first full season in charge. It had not been 

much better the previous campaign; Real 

Sociedad won nine of 27 league fixtures 

HE REMAINED RESIDENT 

AT WHAT IS REGARDED AS 

ONE OF THE SMARTEST 

HOTELS IN THE WHOLE 

OF NORTHERN SPAIN. 

DAMNINGLY, HE WAS 

STAYING THERE AT 

CONSIDERABLE COST TO 

HIS NEW CLUB. 

in 2014/15 after Moyes took over. Such 

uninspiring performances on the pitch 

did not bring Moyes the unquestioning 

loyalty of the supporters, which meant he 

needed to maintain his popularity off the 

pitch. Staying at a posh hotel at the club’s 

expense was never going to help. 

His relationship with the San Sebastiánites 

had started off well. In a match against 

Villarreal in January, 2014 – one of his first 

home matches in charge – Moyes was sent 

off for suggesting none too subtly that the 

referee should have gone to Specsavers 

by making the familiar glasses gesture. 

Unfamiliar with the stadium layout, he 

hopped over a fence and watched the rest 

of the match with fans in the main stand, 

even accepting some cheesy crisps from a 

nearby fan, much to everyone’s amusement 

and appreciation. 

His initial enthusiasm for his new job 

was obvious for all to see. Moyes tirelessly 

toured the north of Spain, scouting players 

and opposition. Reports of him being 

the first one in and the last one of the 

club’s Zubieta training ground appeared 

to be true and not simply the often 

trotted-out cliché. These were promising 

early signs, but the problem was that they 

never developed into anything more than 

promise. 

The team’s performances were a slight 

improvement on what had come before, 

making fans optimistic that further 

advances would arrive. However Moyes’ 

initial enthusiasm turned out to be the 

peak rather than beginning of an evolution 

into the role. 

Very quickly approval of their manager 

among locals faded, not helped by his 

continued residence at the María Cristina. 

A manager’s relationship with a Spanish 

club’s fanbase is as important and complex 

as the putting together of a Formula 

1 car: it can be ripped apart by the slightest 

bump in the road. Unfortunately for 

Moyes, the hotel issue was just the first of 

many hiccups. 


The Managers 

One year in a hotel 

By Euan McTear 

The manager started to openly criticise 

his players’ performances. He relegated 

to the substitute’s bench one star for 

addressing him as ‘David’. After a while 

he brought in his own British backroom 

staff, Billy Mckinlay and Dave Billows, 

rather than stick with the established 

local coaches. 

His lack of effort to learn Spanish also 

frustrated supporters, who took it as a 

sign of a lack of commitment to the club, 

to the league and, most significantly, to 

the city. No reasonable Real fan expected 

Moyes to learn the complex Basque language, 

but that he quickly gave up learning 

the more straightforward Spanish 

national tongue Castilian was poorly 

received. Despite beginning his Spanish 

lessons with great enthusiasm – even 

mustering up the courage to slightly awkwardly 

tell a press conference that some 

B-team players had been “training with 

me uno, dos, tres, cuatro times” – Moyes 

soon began to slack when it came to his 

Spanish homework and, unforgivably, his 

Spanish teacher eventually became no 

more than his interpreter. 

That was when the locals at the pintxo 

bars in San Sebastián began to think 

that Moyes was giving up. In return, they 

began to give up on him. “He’s a nice guy, 

but he doesn’t fit in and he isn’t trying 

to,” one local bar owner told me ahead 

of the first home game of last season. 

“Moyes? He’s weird,” one of the bar’s 

regulars chipped in. 

If you cannot achieve results on the 

pitch and if you lose the support of the 

barmen in a city as small as San Sebastián 

then your days are numbered. Even if 

the club president has your back. Jokin 

Aperribay, the president who made it 

his mission to entice Moyes to La Liga, 

continued to believe in the man he 

had hired despite seeing the team limp 

meekly towards Primera División survival 

in Moyes’ first season. 

With his number one fan conveniently 

also being his boss, Moyes should have 

been able to buy himself enough time to 

turn results around. Because Aperribay 

still believed that Moyes was a long-term 

project, the club even tried to tackle 

the former Everton and Manchester 

United gaffer’s unpopularity head on 

by addressing his continued stay in the 

hotel. In October 2015, as Tito Irazusta of 

local sports station Deportes Gipuzkoa 

explained, “Real Sociedad told Moyes 

that, because of the image it was giving 

off, he’d have to leave the Maria Cristina.” 

A week later Moyes confirmed that he 

would indeed be leaving the hotel for an 

apartment in the centre. 

For the fans it was too little, too late; 11 

months too late. The anti-Moyes sentiment 

was irreversible and when results did not 

approve, Aperribay had no choice but to 

listen to the supporters and send Moyes on 

his way 363 days after his arrival. 

Football is, of course, a results business 

and it was Moyes’ 29% win percentage 

that ultimately pushed him towards the 

exit. However popular managers are often 

afforded a few extra lives; Moyes’ poor 

standing among the fanbase accelerated 

his departure. That is why few supporters 

were distraught to see Moyes depart, 

although maybe the finance manager at 

the María Cristina Hotel will have been 

an exception. The local TV station Euskal 

Irrati Telebista showed an amusing sketch 

the week after Moyes’ sacking depicting 

half a dozen desolate hotel workers holding 

a banner which read ‘María Cristina 

Hotel Hearts Moyes’. 

Nobody loved Moyes, but nobody hated 

him. He simply didn’t fit in, and nor did 

he make much of an effort to do so. That 

sort of attitude was never going to buy 

Moyes much margin for error on the pitch. 

Every cloud has a silver lining, though. 

A couple of extra celebrities can now 

stay in luxury at the smartest hotel in 

town when they attend this year’s San 

Sebastián film festival. l 


ROVER’S RETURN 

Owen Coyle’s managerial 

trajectory once looked set to 

propel him from Falkirk to 

the very highest level. After 

17 months in MLS, he is back 

in the English Championship 

with Blackburn Rovers. Can a 

manager once regarded as a 

perfect fit for the Scotland job 

get his career back on track? 

By Chris Tait 

The midday Texan sun burns relentlessly 

overhead, beads of sweat collecting on the 

brows of the small audience which has 

assembled beneath a pitchside gazebo to 

observe drills undertaken by the Houston 

Dynamo players, themselves perspiring 

liberally. The session carries all the 

universal markers of football training, as a 

familial squad exchanges passes, coloured 

bibs and wry remarks. The tempo is 

controlled by a distinctly Caledonian 

cadence. It is September 2015, and this 

pitch on the fringes of Houston is the 

domain of Owen Coyle. 

Almost a year has passed and that patch 

of ground is once again under US jurisdiction, 

reclaimed in May by Dynamo 

following an agreement to part ways with 

Coyle. The announcement of his departure 

came a few days after a league defeat 

in Chicago and consisted of language 

customary to such occasions: the desire to 

separate was mutual, everyone involved 

deserves a pat on the back for their efforts 

and the fans can be commended on their 

support. No hard feelings and all the very 

best for the future. 

For Coyle that means restoring stability 

and success to Blackburn Rovers, having 

agreed a two-year contract with the 

Lancashire club eight days after stepping 

down in Texas. The swiftness of his 

arrival at the English Championship club 

speaks to Coyle’s eagerness to be closer 

to his family, who remained in England 

throughout his 17-month spell in Major 

League Soccer. But it also hints at another 

truth behind the 50-year-old’s exit which 

has not been acknowledged, at least amid 

the banalities of official club statements. 

It is easier to walk out of a club when the 

door is already being held open. 

At the Houston training sessions Coyle 

rules with a light touch and gentle 

humour, joining in with the banter 

as a player succumbs to a nutmeg in 

the middle of a small-sided game and 

when the coach joins in himself and 

sets the standard during shooting drills. 

Photographs taken from the sidelines as 

these scenes played out at Dynamo’s suburban 

base proliferated on the franchise’s 

official website and social media, with 

Coyle exuding visible contentment. 

His disposition however became overcast 

by indifferent form and an ignominious 

league position. Dynamo won only 14 

matches under the Glasgow-born coach, 

were bottom of the Western Conference 

and a long way off a place in the postseason 

play-offs when Coyle boarded his 

flight back to the UK. Quite a fall for a 

franchise that four years previously were 

finalists in the MLS Cup. 

It is the sort of form which unsettles 

 


The Managers 

Rover’s return 

club owners, and precipitated his departure 

midway through his contract in 

Texas. Coyle has taken to his new position 

at Ewood Park with typical alacrity but 

that enthusiasm will have been tempered 

by an experience in the States which in 

truth became a facsimile of his other 

unsuccessful spells in charge of Bolton 

Wanderers and Wigan Athletic. His work 

at each of his previous three clubs has 

been unavailing. Success at Blackburn this 

season will be essential for a man whose 

career path once appeared to heading to 

the very top of the British game. 

Much will depend on Coyle’s ability to 

bring in, or bring through, players who 

are capable of shining at the highest level. 

It is an ability which he regards as one of 

his strongest assets. 

“I’ve been very fortunate to have been 

able to bring some fantastic players to 

clubs that I’ve had,” says Coyle, who has 

replaced Paul Lambert as manager after 

the former Scotland captain exercised a 

release clause in his contract at the end 

of last season. “You think of the [Jack] 

Wilsheres and the [Daniel] Sturridges, 

boys that were at the Euros. I watched 

England’s friendly versus Portugal before 

the tournament and they had Gary Cahill 

playing as well, who was another player I 

had at Bolton. It’s great when you see these 

players you’ve worked with doing so well. 

“When I think back on some of the 

terrific young players we’ve had on loan 

at different times, players like [Benik] 

Afobe at Bolton, who have gone on to 

have brilliant careers. Even my last 

signing at Wigan has excelled, and if the 

players we bring in here go on to do half 

as well as that kid has done, then we’ll be 

delighted. It was Marc Albrighton, on a 

month’s loan, and I think it was for about 

a sixth of his salary. I watched him win 

the Premier League with Leicester City 

last season and it was brilliant. That’s an 

important avenue we might utilise with 

some elite clubs. 

“Opinions and perceptions of managers 

can change very quickly. When all’s said 

and done, it’s what you do now that you 

are judged on. If it was going to be about 

the past, Claudio Ranieri would never 

have got the Leicester City job - I think in 

his last game for Greece they lost at home 

to the Faroe Islands. 

“Nothing dissuades me from moving 

forward and getting this club moving in 

the right direction. Of course, if people 

have different opinions that’s fine. All I 

would say is, let us be allowed to get on 

to do our job and we will do everything 

in our power to make this a team to be 

proud of.” 

It is perhaps no coincidence that Coyle 

sought an opportunity close to the scene 

of one his greatest triumphs: leading 

Burnley into the Premier League seven 

years ago. His fortunes since leaving 

Turf Moor have been a pale reflection 

of that success and a time when Coyle 

was synonymous with a job well done 

IT’S WHAT YOU DO NOW 

THAT YOU ARE JUDGED 

ON. IF IT WAS GOING TO BE 

ABOUT THE PAST, CLAUDIO 

RANIERI WOULD NEVER 

HAVE GOT THE LEICESTER 

CITY JOB. IN HIS LAST GAME 

FOR GREECE THEY LOST 

AT HOME TO THE FAROE 

ISLANDS. 


By Chris Tait 

and realised ambitions. The one-time 

Republic of Ireland forward helped 

lead Falkirk to the First Division title 

in his first tour as a coach; reached a 

Scottish Cup semi-final as manager of 

St Johnstone; triumphed in the play-off 

final to earn promotion at Burnley; and 

safeguarded Bolton’s place in the English 

top-flight shortly after returning to the 

club he once played for. He helped to 

redress Wigan’s finances too after the 

Lancashire club was relegated from the 

Premier League. 

“We brought something like £20 

million into the club and I would be surprised 

if we spent more than £4 million,” 

he says of an otherwise uncomfortable 

stint at the DW Stadium. 

These achievements might appear prosaic 

when recounted in black and white, 

but they once amounted to a bottom line 

which appealed to club chairmen and 

national associations in need of a new 

manager. Coyle has been linked previously 

to vacancies at Celtic and Scotland, 

while he has also been considered a 

decent fit for Ireland. 

But if social media is an accurate 

barometer of Blackburn supporters’ 

feelings then the reception given by fans 

to news of the 50-year-old’s arrival might 

be described politely as “muted”. Local 

enmity – Blackburn and Burnley are longstanding 

rivals – might account for some 

resistance, as can the inescapable perception 

that he is the man wanted by Venky’s, 

Blackburn’s unpopular owners. But it is 

instructive that Coyle has thus been seen 

as an unimaginative appointment. 

This is the problem which faces the 

former Airdrieonians striker. He has been 

charged with improving a team which 

finished last season 19 points outside the 

promotion play-off places, and must also 

resuscitate his own career after being 

sacked from his previous two jobs in 

England. Coyle was removed by Bolton 

and then departed Wigan disillusioned, 

his tenure curtailed as a consequence of 

a fractious relationship with owner Dave 

Whelan. That disillusionment mean he 

declined offers from clubs in England 

before returning to the game having met 

what he called the “right people” in Texas. 

It was a move which was met with 

scepticism; MLS is not yet a universally 

reputable league. But Coyle discovered 

a new world across the Atlantic – albeit 

at a team which included former 

Derby County prodigy Giles Barnes and 

erstwhile Rangers defender DaMarcus 

Beasley – and is dismissive of the idea 

that working in North America has been 

detrimental to him. He was acquainted 

with MLS following a series of pre-season 

tours to the US with Burnley, Wigan 

and Bolton, and trusted the quality of 

American players having signed Stuart 

Holden for the latter club six years 

ago. The midfielder, who was born in 

Aberdeenshire but grew up in Texas, was 

voted Player of the Year at the conclusion 

of his first full season in England. 

Coyle has watched soccer improve 

incrementally and is confident that the 

domestic division is now comparable to 

many European leagues. “The English 

Championship is probably the fifth or 

sixth best league in Europe and MLS is 

certainly at that level,” says Coyle. “When 

you look at the players they have got in 

that league then, with all due respect, 

when you go into the Championship you 

are not going to find Kaka, David Villa, 

Stevie Gerrard and everyone else. England 

apart, MLS is way ahead of the standard 

you see in other countries. 

“I knew what the standard was like as 

I had taken my teams over before. Also, 

Dominic [Kinnear] had been the head 

coach there. Dom came to Bolton in 1993 

when myself and John McGinlay were 

at the club, and we took him under our 

wing for those two weeks or so. Bruce 

Rioch opted not to sign him ultimately 

but I always kept in touch with him, 

and when Dom left to go to San Jose 

 


The Managers 

Rover’s return 

the season before last, the president 

at Dynamo asked if the position there 

would be of any interest to me. I was very 

impressed. 

“It’s like any league in the world: they 

all have their top clubs. When you go to 

England it’s your Manchester Uniteds, 

your Chelseas, and those are your top 

clubs. Houston Dynamo are never going 

to have the wealth of LA Galaxy or 

Toronto – that’s not the way they run 

their business. But within that you can 

still be successful.” 

That appraisal might equally be 

applied to Blackburn, since the English 

Championship this season includes clubs 

such as Newcastle United, Aston Villa, 

Derby County and Wolves. The Ewood 

Park side were relegated from the top 

flight at the end of the 2011/2012 season 

and have toiled since then. A remarkable 

rate of managerial upheaval has been 

their most notable achievement in recent 

years. Coyle is the sixth man to be placed 

in charge of the team since they returned 

to the Championship, with two of his 

predecessors, Henning Berg and Michael 

Appleton, each lasting less than three 

months in the job. 

For a club which once pipped Sir Alex 

Ferguson and Manchester United to 

the Premier League title, this record is 

wounding. Yet as far as his new club has 

still to go, Coyle will be relieved that the 

journey does not extend to a 5000-mile 

round trip just to fulfil a league fixture. 

“When I played in Scotland, managed 

in Scotland, and also in England, when 

you played an away game you were back 

in bed that night,” says the former striker, 

who made stops in Airdrie, Dunfermline 

Athletic and Motherwell during a 

prolonged playing career. “At the Dynamo, 

if we played in Vancouver, Portland or 

Seattle then we left on a Thursday and 

were not back until the Sunday night. The 

logistics and travel are very different and 

I always equate it to us playing in Europe; 

we played in Europe every second week.” 

In contrast to the views of fans in 

Lancashire, Blackburn players have expressed 

optimism about the season ahead 

under their new head coach. Of course 

they are obliged to project confidence, but 

there does seem to be a genuine warmth 

between Coyle, who is always engaging 

company, and players he has coached at 

his previous clubs. Giles Barnes, who was 

the Dynamo captain under Coyle, has 

referred to his head coach as a “perfect fit”. 

There are echoes of his influence when 

national teams gather too, most pertinently 

at the European Championships 

during the summer. England trio Cahill, 

Sturridge and Wilshere all impressed for 

Coyle at Bolton, while Ireland’s James 

McClean grew as an internationalist under 

his guidance at Wigan. 

The coach also helped to establish Steven 

Fletcher as Scotland’s primary striker when 

the pair worked together at Burnley. A 

division of the Tartan Army remains critical 

of Fletcher’s capacity to perform on the international 

stage – the forward scored seven 

goals as Scotland failed to qualify for Euro 

2016, six of which came during the two 

matches against group minnows Gibraltar 

– but Coyle continues to be a committed 

sponsor of his former player. 

While Fletcher is targeted as a consequence 

of a modest goal return, Coyle 

talks instead about the Scotland’s striker’s 

hidden strengths; facets of his play which 

are often overlooked. “I’m obviously biased 

because I signed him, but he is a wonderful 

player and an outstanding young man,” 

says the erstwhile Burnley manager, who 

spent a club-record £3 million to recruit 

Fletcher from Hibernian seven years ago. 

“Steven Fletcher is a wonderful player 

and works his socks off for the team. You 

ask his Scotland team-mates and they will 

tell you how good a player he is, because 

of the work and the shift he puts in. That’s 

why Gordon [Strachan] picks him for 

Scotland – because he knows the quality 


By Chris Tait 

and occupies centre-backs, and does it at 

international level.” 

COYLE HAS BEEN LINKED 

PREVIOUSLY TO VACANCIES 

AT CELTIC AND SCOTLAND, 

WHILE HE HAS ALSO BEEN 

CONSIDERED A DECENT FIT 

FOR IRELAND. 

Steven Fletcher has. When you persevere 

with players like that, they always come 

good for you. People have criticised Fletch 

in the past for not scoring, but if a striker 

is not getting chances then what is he 

meant to do? If he is getting guilt-edge 

chances, real chances, then you can say 

that he should be putting them away but 

that is not what happened. You can have 

the best strikers in the world but you have 

got to give them service. 

“If Gordon had played Leigh Griffiths, 

say, and they lost that game to Georgia in 

the last campaign [Scotland were defeated 

1-0 in Tblisi, a result which crippled their 

qualifying campaign] then the people 

who want to have their opinions heard, 

and who know this and know that, those 

same people would be asking why Leigh 

Griffiths started when he is only playing 

in the Scottish Premiership. They would 

ask why Gordon hadn’t started with a 

striker who had been signed by a Premier 

League club for £15 million. 

“I would suggest as well that Steven 

Fletcher doesn’t have to score in games 

to contribute to the team. Sometimes you 

have out-and-out goalscorers and if they 

don’t score then you think, what did they 

do in the game? Steven Fletcher takes 

the ball in, he flicks it on, he harasses 

So what of Coyle’s chances of success 

with Blackburn? Owners Venky’s are detested 

by the Blackburn support, and have 

proven to be erratic and difficult to deal 

with. The company is also culpable for 

substantial financial losses at Ewood Park 

and a transfer embargo enacted under 

Financial Fair Play legislation which was 

only lifted in December. 

In Coyle’s favour, not only has he 

experience of working in the English 

Championship, but he has experience of 

dealing with a difficult owner. He had 

myriad confrontations with Wigan owner 

Dave Whelan. 

“The Wigan thing was quite simplistic 

for me; we didn’t leave Wigan because of 

football,” Coyle adds. “When a team loses 

their place [in the top flight] then they 

sell their best players. For example, they 

sold James McCarthy for £15 million to 

Everton on deadline day. But we brought 

in good players – look where James 

McClean is now, back in the Premier 

League – and certainly believe that we 

would have had them back challenging 

for a place in the Premier League. 

“But I have a way of working and if 

somebody is trying to put stuff on me, 

it’s not going to happen. I don’t work 

like that. It was never going to work out, 

that’s the best way I can put it, and when 

things happened at Wigan, it didn’t work 

out. Did I want it to go that way? No. 

But I have moved on and if Dave Whelan 

turned up here right now I would go over 

and shake his hand. 

“There has been a lot of instability [at 

Blackburn] and we certainly understand 

that. I’ve been at clubs where there’s been 

off-field issues. What I’ve got to concentrate 

on is on-field issues. When you can 

do that and get a team that the fans like 

to see, hopefully we can all move forward. 

That’s got to be the aim and what we’re 

focused on doing.” l 


THE ENDURING 

LEGACY OF 

BILL JEFFREY 

A native of Edinburgh who 

guided his team to victory over 

England and who’s influence is 

still felt on the college soccer 

fields of Pennsylvania. 

By Ian Thomson 

Scotland manager Gordon Strachan will 

lead his side into battle against England 

this November with qualification for the 

2018 FIFA World Cup at stake. Not since 

1954 have the Auld Enemies clashed in 

such circumstances and the two nations 

have never met in the tournament finals. 

There is however one Scot, like Strachan 

a native of Edinburgh, who has lived the 

dream of every Scottish manager – leading 

his team to victory over England at the 

World Cup. 

Bill Jeffrey, who was raised in the old 

fishing village of Newhaven north of 

the capital’s centre, had established the 

men’s soccer program at Pennsylvania 

State College as the finest in America, and 

when the United States Soccer Football 

Association found itself scrambling for 

a head coach two weeks before the 1950 

World Cup in Brazil, they turned to the 

57-year-old Scot. Jeffrey answered the 

federation’s call to lead a group of unheralded 

semi-professional players to what is 

perhaps the most remarkable upset in the 

tournament’s history. 

At the time, the 1-0 triumph over 


Walter Winterbottom’s Three Lions in 

Belo Horizonte garnered barely a mention 

in American newspapers. The rising 

popularity of soccer in the U.S. has since 

seen the result pass into folklore for new 

generations of fans in much the same 

way that Scotland’s 3-2 win over England 

at Wembley Stadium in 1967 still fills 

Caledonian hearts with pride. 

Jeffrey’s impact on the game in the 

United States is immense. Efforts to 

preserve and celebrate his achievements 

are strongest in the small town of 

State College, hidden among the forests 

and Appalachian Mountains of Central 

Pennsylvania, where this trailblazing 

Scottish coach won nine national championships 

for Penn State during his 27-year 

tenure. 

Gridiron dominates sport in this part of 

the world. Penn State’s American football 

program has the kind of aura in its field 

that the Old Firm has in Scottish football. 

American universities engender a lifelong 

pride in their graduates that translates 

into passionate backing for their sports 

programs. Penn State can call upon more 

than 100,000 current and former students 

to fill their gigantic Beaver Stadium 

on game days. 

A more modest football facility lies 

across the car park in the shadow of 

Beaver Stadium’s upper tiers. The 5,000- 

seat venue was renamed Jeffrey Field 

in honor of the storied Scottish coach 

in 1972 while Penn State’s men’s team 

presents its annual player of the year with 

the Bill Jeffrey Award. 

“Old-timers like myself have great 

respect for what the people that came 

before us have done,” says Bob Warming, 

the team’s current head coach. “I’m a 

huge fan of the history of Penn State 

soccer and in particular Bill Jeffrey.” 

Jeffrey came to the United States in 1912, 

partly drawn by employment prospects in 

Pennsylvania’s booming railroad business 

and partly pushed by his mother. Jeffrey’s 

uncle had previously migrated to Altoona, 

about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, in 

search of work. The family connection 

helped to land Jeffrey a job as a railroad 

mechanic in the Altoona Shops, which 

at the time was one of the world’s largest 

facilities for the construction and repair 

of locomotives and railroad cars. 

Football had been a major pastime 

of Jeffrey’s in Scotland. He took a few 

months to settle into his new surroundings 

before helping to organise a works 

team that he would represent over the 

next decade while also enjoying stints 

for various clubs in the Pittsburgh area. 

The game’s origins in the U.S. followed 

a similar path to its early growth in the 

United Kingdom with esteemed academic 

institutions initially codifying football 

before the labourers of heavy industry 

spread its popularity. Pennsylvania-based 

Bethlehem Steel became the first notable 

American club with a cadre of Scottish 

steelworkers helping them to four of the 

first seven National Challenge Cup titles 

in the 1910s. Textile workers in Fall River, 

Massachusetts and Paterson, New Jersey 

formed similar company-sponsored 

teams that also found early success. 

Jeffrey became the player-manager of 

Altoona’s railroad factory team in 1923 

and his dazzling outfield play caught the 

eye of Penn State’s then athletics director 

Hugo Bezdek during a friendly against the 

school two years later. Bezdek would soon 

be looking for a new coach for his unsettled 

team. He asked Jeffrey to become 

the program’s sixth manager in seven 

years with the added incentive of steady 

work as an assistant instructor in the college’s 

Industrial Engineering Department 

during the long offseason. Penn State was 

rewarded with a legacy that inspires its 

coaches and student athletes to this day. 

College soccer has undergone significant 

development over the 90 years since 

Jeffrey took charge of the Nittany Lions, as 


The Managers 

The enduring legacy of Bill Jeffrey 

Penn State’s athletics teams are nicknamed. 

More than 200 men’s programs 

stretching from east coast to west coast 

currently battle for the Division I national 

championship with hundreds of smaller 

universities and colleges represented 

in Division II, Division III and in lower, 

junior competitions. The women’s game 

boasts more than 300 Division I programs. 

Successful teams will play about 

25 games between August and December 

in pursuit of regionalised conference titles 

and entry to a national knockout tournament 

that determines the country’s top 

team. Jeffrey’s nine national titles were 

largely selected by a committee of the 

former Intercollegiate Soccer Football 

Association (ISFA) that governed the 

sport, with its decisions being based on a 

much smaller body of work, typically six 

to eight games. 

Jeffrey’s Penn State debut ended in a 

3-1 loss to his former Altoona side as he 

prepared his players for the 1926 college 

season. They responded with five wins 

and a draw to earn Jeffrey his first ISFA 

championship, an honor that was jointly 

awarded to Harvard and Princeton. He 

won the school’s first undisputed title 

three years later with six wins and a draw 

to finish the season as the only undefeated 

team, and Jeffrey’s third national 

crown was awarded in 1933. 

That third title was shared with 

the Philadelphia-based University of 

Pennsylvania, the first real powerhouse 

of the college game. Penn’s head coach 

Douglas Stewart was another Scot that 

had migrated to Canada before settling in 

Philadelphia as a patent lawyer. Stewart’s 

share of the 1933 championship was his 

third in succession and his tenth overall 

since Penn first became champions in 

1916. 

Jeffrey had suffered personal tragedy in 

November 1932 when his first wife, Doris, 

was killed in a road accident in New Jersey. 

He rarely spoke about the incident; instead 

HE WAS ENTHUSIASTICALLY 

DEMONSTRATIVE IN HIS 

COACHING. STUDENT 

ATHLETES RESPONDED 

TO HIS WARM, PATIENT 

PROMPTINGS BY PLAYING TO 

WIN EVERY GAME FOR HIM. 

he would philosophise about life’s shortness 

and the need to make the most of 

it. He was a resilient character who often 

used eccentric methods to educate his 

young players. Jeffrey would regale them 

with anecdotes from his years of playing 

football or he would recite the poetry 

of Robert Burns in his native dialect to 

lighten the mood and build team spirit. He 

was enthusiastically demonstrative in his 

coaching. Student athletes responded to 

his warm, patient promptings by playing 

to win every game for him. 

Penn State’s burgeoning status on 

the football field was furthered in 1934 

when the Nittany Lions became the first 

American college team to travel overseas. 

Jeffrey, naturally, chose Scotland as the 

destination for an eight-game autumn 

schedule to give his players experience 

in preparation for the defence of their 

national title. School officials provided 

equipment for the trip, leaving Jeffrey 

and his players to raise about $150 each to 

cover traveling expenses. Some of them 

fell short of the target and had no choice 

but to stay behind when the party of 16 

set sail from New York City aboard the 

S.S. Cameronia liner. 

Jeffrey bolstered his depleted side by 



inviting along a Syracuse University graduate 

named John McEwan whose younger 

brother, Bill, was on the Penn State team. 

The journey allowed the McEwans to visit 

the land of their parents for the first time. 

John made an immediate impact, scoring 

four goals in the Nittany Lions’ opening 

game – although they lost the match 6-4 

to an amateur team from Leith). Gala 

Fairydean crushed the visitors 7-2 in their 

second game with the now 42-year-old 

Jeffrey forced to play up front. High scoring 

defeats piled up with Inverness Caley, 

Thurso Pentland and Falkirk Amateurs all 

putting double figures past the fatigued 

Americans. Kilmarnock Academical 

closed out Penn State’s tour with another 

heavy loss amid torrential rain. 

However those eight straight defeats 

in Scotland served only to harden 

Jeffrey’s students. Back in the U.S. they 

destroyed most of their opponents during 

the following college season, putting 

together six convincing wins and a draw 

to compile a record that should have 

earned them another national title. The 

ISFA’s committee, heavily influenced by 

graduates from the rival University of 

Pennsylvania, had other ideas. They failed 

to recognise Penn State’s achievements, 

stating that Jeffrey had broken college 

sports principles by fielding non-student 

athletes in Scotland. The politicking 

against Jeffrey continued into the following 

year when the ISFA selected Yale as its 

champion. Penn State had won all seven 

of its games without conceding a single 

goal and Jeffrey later deemed this his best 

ever side. The ones that followed before 

the onset of World War Two weren’t bad 

either. Five consecutive unbeaten seasons 

from 1936 to 1940 saw the Nittany Lions 

awarded five consecutive national titles 

as the ISFA backed away from its petty 

punishment. 

Those titles came in the midst of a 

phenomenal spell that saw Penn State 

put together a 65-game unbeaten run 

stretching over nine years. Only four of 

those games were drawn. The sequence 

began after John McEwan’s Syracuse had 

beaten Jeffrey’s side in the last game of 

the 1932 season and continued until a 

physical United States Military Academy 

team beat the Lions 1-0 in the fifth game 

of the 1941 season. Some 3,000 students 

and State College residents gathered in 

the town’s College Avenue that night to 

greet the team bus and to honour Jeffrey 

and his players for setting a record that 

has never been matched. 

“There’s no surefire formula for 

teaching soccer,” Jeffrey told a reporter 

from the Pittsburgh Press newspaper in 

October 1945. “If I have been successful, 

it’s just because I like the game.” 

The war years disrupted college soccer 

with no champion being crowned for 

five years, but Jeffrey’s passion had not 

dwindled for a game that he frequently 

joked he’d left Scotland to escape from. 

His standing as a coach and a leader of 

young men saw him being invited to Italy 

at the conclusion of World War Two to 

serve as a sports consultant training young 

American soldiers stationed at the U.S. 

Army’s central sports school in Rome. 

It took a few years for Jeffrey to rebuild 

Penn State into national championship 

contenders. Eight straight wins in the 

1949 season earned the Nittany Lions 

an invitation to play in the ISFA’s first 

“Soccer Bowl” as the governing body 

sought a fairer way to determine the 

country’s best team by pitting a traditional 

school from the east against opposition 

from the west coast where college 

and professional sports were beginning 

to blossom. Finding a champion was 

becoming a tougher job now that more 

than 100 schools were fielding teams 

as opposed to the 20 or so when Jeffrey 

began his coaching career. 

Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, Missouri 

was the site of the inaugural Soccer Bowl 

on New Year’s Day of 1950. Close to 5,000 


The Managers 


fans turned up to watch San Francisco 

take the lead before inside-right Harry 

Little levelled for Jeffreys’ side. The 

California Conference champions edged 

ahead again leaving Penn State to push 

for a late, late equaliser. The Nittany Lions 

were awarded a contentious penalty with 

10 seconds remaining when the referee 

spotted a handball. Little converted the 

kick to ensure a share of the national 

championship. It was Jeffrey’s ninth title 

as head coach. It proved to be his last 

although his crowning achievement was 

to follow six months later. 

Scotland should have been competing 

at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil while 

Bill Jeffrey should have been at home in 

Central Pennsylvania. The winner and 

runner-up in the 1949-50 British Home 

Championship were awarded berths for 

the tournament by FIFA as a concession 

to welcome the four home nations back 

into the fold after their self-imposed exile 

dating back to 1920. Yet Scottish Football 

Association secretary George Graham 

insisted that Scotland would only travel to 

South America as British champions. 

England won the group ahead of the 

Scots when Chelsea striker Roy Bentley 

notched the only goal in the final, decisive 

game watched by more than 130,000 

fans at Hampden Park on April 15, 1950. 

That result should have been inconsequential. 

But Graham stuck to his guns 

and England traveled to Brazil as the sole 

representatives from the British Isles. 

Graham wasn’t alone in baulking at 

the prospect of a month-long trip to 

unknown, faraway lands. The United 

States’ head coach Erno Schwarz backed 

out of the job a few weeks before the 

tournament forcing his football association 

chiefs into a panicked search to find 

a suitable replacement. Jeffrey ticked all 

the boxes. He’d enjoyed huge success 

within the college game and he had experienced 

the hardships of foreign travel 

with his Penn State team back in 1934. He 

accepted the challenge. 

The U.S. had finished third at the 

inaugural World Cup in Uruguay in 1930. 

Host and eventual winner Italy thumped 

the Yanks four years later, and the 

Americans joined the majority of Western 

Hemisphere nations in boycotting the 

1938 tournament in France. America’s 

domestic game had regressed during 

the 1930s for various reasons including 

the evaporation of corporate backing for 

works teams during the Great Depression 

and the growing support for baseball and 

gridiron. Football was a minority sport 

played largely by amateur migrants by the 

time the 1950 World Cup arrived. Jeffrey 

still had some hard-working, talented 

players to call upon, but they should have 

been outmatched against the professionals 

from Europe’s top clubs. 

Jeffrey’s men weren’t short of endeavour 

in their opening game against Spain 

in Curitiba. They harried and hassled 

their opponents in the early stages and 

scored an unlikely goal on a breakaway by 

Gino Pariani. Spain dominated thereafter. 

The retreating Yanks held out until 

Valencia’s Silvestre Igoa capitalised on 

a mistake and the Europeans’ superior 

fitness showed in the closing minutes 

as Barcelona star Estanislau Basora and 

THE SCOT WAS HAILED 

AS A HERO IN BRAZIL TOO 

AS HIS TEAM’S VICTORY 

HAD VIRTUALLY ELIMINATED 

ONE OF THE HOST 

NATION’S RIVALS. 



Athletic Bilbao’s Telmo Zarra struck to 

seal a 3-1 win. Jeffrey and his players 

were left to claim a moral victory. They 

had four days to recover before facing the 

mighty England, comfortable winners 

over Chile in their opener to solidify 

their position as one of the tournament 

favorites. 

Nothing raises the competitive spirit of 

a Scotsman like the chance to put one 

over the English. Jeffrey harnessed that 

inner drive by selecting Greenock-born 

Ed McIlvenny as his captain for the second 

game in Belo Horizonte. McIlvenny was 

a former Clyde shipyard worker who had 

migrated a year earlier to join his sister 

in Philadelphia. The legendary Wolves 

centre half Billy Wright lined up opposite 

McIlvenny as captain of a star-studded 

England side featuring Alf Ramsey in defence 

and a five-man forward line of Tom 

Finney, Wilf Mannion, Stan Mortensen, 

Jimmy Mullen and Roy Bentley, the striker 

whose goal had contributed to Scotland’s 

absence. 

U.S. goalkeeper Frank Borghi made an 

early save from Mannion before pushing 

Finney’s header over his crossbar. 

England squandered a host of chances 

to take a first-half lead, and those misses 

drew increasingly loud heckles from the 

10,151 fans inside the Independencia 

Stadium. The locals sensed that the 

English could be vulnerable to a counter 

attack. They were right. McIlvenny found 

his Philadelphia Nationals teammate 

Walter Bahr with a throw-in on 37 

minutes and Haitian-born forward Joe 

Gaetjens deflected Bahr’s cross-cum-shot 

past England goalkeeper Bert Williams. 

England’s territorial dominance 

continued after the interval with Jeffrey’s 

10 outfielders blockading the route to 

Borghi’s goal. Walter Winterbottom’s men 

grew agitated as they failed to create clear 

openings; when half-chances came along 

they screwed their shots wide. Going into 

the last 10 minutes Borghi made another 

save, this time from Mullen’s header, ands 

then Ramsey had to clear the ball off his 

own goal line when Frank Wallace broke 

away with the fight draining out of the 

English. The full-time whistle brought 

the Brazilian crowd storming onto the 

field to carry the two heroes, Borghi and 

Gaetjens, on a lap of honor. 

“Those Brazilians literally went wild 

when we licked the English,” Jeffrey told 

a reporter from the Pittsburgh Press after 

returning to State College. “They set off 

giant firecrackers when we scored, then 

broke through the police cordon to carry 

our boys off the field after the game. It 

was the noisiest demonstration I had ever 

experienced.” 

The Scot was hailed as a hero in Brazil 

too as his team’s victory had virtually 

eliminated one of the host nation’s rivals 

and practically ensured that the trophy 

would be staying in Brazil or going to 

Uruguay. One American Embassy official 

in South America later told the press that 

Jeffrey’s team had done more to promote 

U.S.-Brazil relations than anything else in 

years. 

A 5-2 defeat by Chile ended the 

Americans’ World Cup adventure at the 

group stage. As for England, they returned 

home to ridicule from journalists and 

football fans. Their exit caused members 

of parliament to introduce a ministry of 

sports to avoid a repeat performance. In 

America, Jeffrey predicted that his team’s 

result would elevate football’s standing 

in the country. It was not to be, however. 

Instead, he and many of his players would 

be dead before the U.S. sports media 

began to appreciate the magnitude of 

what had been accomplished. 

Jeffrey’s career wound down after that 

victory over the Auld Enemy. Penn State 

won another Soccer Bowl in 1951 before 

Jeffrey took his players on a goodwill tour 

of Iran as representatives of the United 

States government. He retired from Penn 

State in 1952 to accept a coaching and 

 


The Managers 


teaching post at the University of Puerto 

Rico. His final record with the Nittany 

Lions stands at 153 wins, 29 draws and 24 

defeats. 

Penn State’s link to that famous World 

Cup win was extended when Walter Bahr 

followed in Jeffrey’s footsteps to coach the 

men’s program from 1974 to 1987. He led 

the school to one national championship 

semi-final and three quarter-finals. 

Bob Warming became head coach of Penn 

State’s men’s team in 2010 with almost 

35 years of college coaching experience 

behind him. His achievements mark him 

out as one of the top managers in the 

circuit with more than 60 of his players 

going on to play professionally and at 

least one of his graduates being drafted 

into Major League Soccer in every year 

but one since the league began in 1996. 

Erica Dambach took over Penn State’s 

women’s program in 2007. She led the 

Nittany Lions to their first ever national 

championship game in 2012 and Penn 

State returned to the final last December 

to lift a first national title. Dambach 

has also served as an assistant coach for 

the gold medal winning United States 

women’s team at the 2008 Olympics 

in Beijing as well as the beaten 2011 

Women’s World Cup finalists. 

Warming and Dambach’s impressive 

coaching pedigrees don’t allow them 

to escape the legacy of their Scottish 

progenitor. 

“I feel very fortunate to have had a little 

bit of personal contact with some of the 

real legends of this sport,” Warming says. 

Warming chanced upon some of 

Jeffrey’s teachings when he moved into 

an office tucked away down a back corridor 

of Penn State’s Recreation Building. 

The old athletic facility displays framed 

pictures along its hallways that show 

Jeffrey’s ageing figure lined up alongside 

every one of his 27 teams for their 

annual photographs. Warming’s cabinets 

contained a 1963 book written by Jeffrey 

THIS SON OF EDINBURGH 

WHO HAD BEEN 

RESPONSIBLE FOR 

ENGLAND’S MOST 

EMBARRASSING FAILURE 

MISSED OUT ON WITNESSING 

THEIR GREATEST TRIUMPH 

WHEN ALF RAMSEY, A 

MEMBER OF THAT 1950 TEAM 

WHICH WAS HUMBLED IN 

BRAZIL, LED THE COUNTRY 

TO WORLD CUP GLORY AT 

WEMBLEY LESS THAN SIX 

MONTHS AFTER JEFFREY’S 

DEATH. 



called “The Young Sportsman’s Guide to 

Soccer”. It has become a treasured possession 

for the current men’s coach and 

one that Warming refers to when, like 

Jeffrey, he occasionally wants to lighten 

the mood with some poetry. The work of 

Robert Burns is not included in this publication. 

Rather it features Jeffrey’s own 

work with tales of inept trialists failing to 

impress the manager after claiming that 

they could play. 

Jeffrey’s influence is felt strongly by 

both Penn State’s coaches during every 

game at Jeffrey Field and every training 

session on the practice pitch adjoining 

the stadium. 

“We try to make Bill Jeffrey very real 

for our players,” says Dambach. The 

legendary coach’s accomplishments are 

taught to her incoming students every 

year to inspire them when they pull on 

the school’s blue and white uniforms. 

Dambach recalls one game early in her 

tenure at State College when the Nittany 

Lions were struggling for cohesion and 

trailed by a goal at half time. She and her 

assistant coach Ann Cook had drilled 

their players on the significance of Jeffrey 

and the pride that they should have to 

play on his field, one of the greatest college 

venues in the country. 

“There was a feeling that wins were just 

going to come,” Dambach says. “And so 

we’re playing really poorly in this game 

and Ann lost her mind on the team at half 

time. Her whole speech was about how 

we have this great home field advantage 

and we’ve got a lot of respect for what Bill 

Jeffrey did, but he wasn’t going to win the 

game for us. We still had to show up. 

“They all know that the Jeffrey in Jeffrey 

Field is an actual person, a very successful 

person, and that they’re defending something 

when they play here. It’s named 

after a historical figure that impacted this 

community in such a way that people 

fought to have a facility named after 

him.” 

Jeffrey returned to the State College area 

in 1959 after his stint in Puerto Rico. He 

had suffered tragedy again two years 

earlier when his second wife, Virginia, 

disappeared without trace. Jeffrey 

believed she must have accidentally 

drowned while going for her regular 

swim in the ocean near their home in 

Mayaguez. Now in his late 60s, he devoted 

his time to developing high school and 

amateur football programs and leagues in 

Central Pennsylvania. 

He was attending a convention for college 

coaches in New York City on January 

7, 1966, when he collapsed and died 

of a heart attack. He was 73 years old. 

Jeffrey’s third wife, Blanche, and his two 

children, Arthur and Margaret, survived 

him. This son of Edinburgh who had been 

responsible for England’s most embarrassing 

failure missed out on witnessing 

their greatest triumph when Alf Ramsey, 

a member of that 1950 team which was 

humbled in Brazil, led the country to 

World Cup glory at Wembley less than six 

months after Jeffrey’s death. 

“A couple of years ago, I raised money 

to put some wind screens on the outside 

of our stadium so it would be announced 

in big letters that this was Jeffrey Field,” 

says Warming as he discuss his drive to 

promote Jeffrey’s achievements at Penn 

State. That desire was further fuelled by a 

surprise email he received last 

summer from a retired University of 

Rhode Island teacher named Agnes 

Doody, the widow of Jeffrey’s son. 

Doody had written to inform Penn State’s 

incumbent head coach that Jeffrey’s 

six-year-old great granddaughter had 

played in her first football game. Warming 

has kept in contact with the family and 

is working with the Penn State athletics 

department’s marketing team to 

develop special events honoring Jeffrey’s 

life during the 2016 college season and 

beyond. 

“I just want to keep that guy’s name to 

the fore somehow.” l 

 


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GOALKEEPERS AS MANAGERS: 

THE WRIGHTS AND WRONGS 

The jobs of manager and 

goalkeeper have much in 

common. So why are there not 

more making the transition? 


Imagine the chairman of an ambitious 

football club, torn between two applicants 

for the managerial vacancy. The candidates 

have similar experience, identical qualifications 

and they share a determination 

to succeed. The only difference between 

them is that one used to be a goalkeeper. 

In an a ideal world, each would be 

considered on his own merits, but in 

the view of Campbell Money, football is 

not an ideal world. The former St Mirren 

goalkeeper who went on to manage 

Stranraer, Ayr United and Stenhousemuir 

says he is in no doubt as to which of the 

two options our hypothetical chairman 

would choose. 

“He will go with the guy that’s played 

outfield,” says Money, who is now a 

performance academy director with the 

Scottish FA. “That’s a fact. There is a perception 

out there that goalkeepers know 

less about the game than somebody else, 

which is very unfair. I never felt that. I 

had confidence in my ability to do the 

job. But some people would feel that way. 

I suppose it’s natural for people to think 

‘he’s never played outfield, what would 

he know about working with players?’” 

If that is true, it suggests that the old 

stereotype about goalkeepers still exists. 

They are different. They are crazy. They 

think too much for their own good. 

Otherwise why would Peter Shilton hang 

upside down from the bannister, John 

Burridge ask his wife to throw fruit at 

him and Albert Camus inspire the likes 

of David Icke and Pope John Paul II to 

turn the profession into a philosophical 

inquiry? 

Even if it is not true, there can be little 

doubt that the goalkeeper is still viewed 

as an ‘outsider’, which happens to be the 

title of both a Camus novel and Jonathan 

Wilson’s more recent study of their 

history. How else to explain the chronic 

shortage of them in management, a job 

that presents so many other professional 

players with a welcome opportunity to 

prolong their career? 

Yes, they are a minority in the dressing 

room, but not so small a minority that 

it explains their minuscule impact on 

the managerial game. At the end of last 

season, 17 of Scotland’s SPFL managers 

were defenders, 17 were midfielders 

and seven were strikers. Only one was a 

goalkeeper. That he is also one of Scottish 

football’s recent success stories only adds 

to the conundrum. 

Tommy Wright, of St Johnstone, was voted 

Ladbrokes Premiership manager of the 

year last season, a campaign that wasn’t 

even the best of his three at the club. 

With limited resources, he has guided 

them to three successive top-six finishes, 

as well as the 2014 Scottish Cup, the 

 


The Managers 

Goalkeepers as managers: The Wrights and wrongs 

first trophy in their long history. 

Like many of the goalkeepers who do 

find their way to the manager’s office, he 

was promoted from within. The Northern 

Irishman had been appointed as assistant 

to Steve Lomas in 2011, partly because 

he could double as a goalkeeping coach, 

but when Lomas left two years later, the 

board had no hesitation in asking the 

former Newcastle United and Manchester 

City player to step up. 

Wright is grateful to St Johnstone for 

recognising that goalkeepers are just as 

capable as outfield players of moving into 

management, and maybe even more so. In 

the same way that journeymen professionals 

make strong coaches because they 

have worked out what comes naturally to 

others, so are goalkeepers more inclined 

to break down and understand the 

mechanics of a team. 

“People maybe haven’t been given 

opportunities because perception plays a 

big part in football, but perception isn’t 

the reality,” says Wright. “St Johnstone 

gave me an opportunity after seeing me 

work as an assistant. They knew the 

qualities that I had to go and manage. The 

perception was that you had to be a player 

to manage, but Arsene Wenger didn’t play 

at a high level. Jose Mourinho hardly had 

a playing career at all. There are numerous 

coaches in the top leagues around Europe 

who have never kicked a ball at senior 

level, but they get opportunities because 

they have gone into coaching early and 

built up a resumé. Goalkeepers have 

probably been overlooked because there 

is a perception that they don’t make good 

managers, but Dino Zoff did well with 

Italy. Mike Walker was quite successful 

with Norwich City in the 1990s. And I like 

to think that I’ve proven you can be an exgoalkeeper 

and a pretty decent manager.” 

The goalkeeper’s potential has often 

been undervalued. Wright remembers occasions 

as a player when managers more 

or less excluded him from their team talk. 

“You were set apart,” he says. “It’s moved 

on from that now, but in those days, you 

were stuck away in the corner with two 

or three balls, probably the worst two or 

three they had in training.” 

In truth, the unique perspective from 

which a goalkeeper watches the game 

gives him invaluable insight. He has time 

and space to think about the game as it 

unfolds before him. A good one is brave 

when he needs to be, decisive under pressure 

and willing to live or die by his own 

instincts. Add to that the communication 

skills needed to organise his defence, 

as well as the thick skin that is almost a 

prerequisite of management, and it is clear 

that the two jobs have much in common. 

“Being an individual in a team sport 

means that you have to be strong 

mentally,” says Wright. “It can be a lonely 

place at times. When a goalkeeper makes 

a mistake, it ends up in a goal. It’s the 

same with management. When a team 

doesn’t play well, the manager takes all 

the criticism, especially nowadays with 

social media. Looking back, I would say 

that being a goalkeeper helped prepare 

me for being a manager.” 

Which perhaps explains why the 

pantheon of great coaches is not without a 

few former custodians. Zoff, who lifted the 

World Cup as a player, managed Juventus 

to the UEFA Cup and came within seconds 

of leading Italy to success at Euro 2000. 

Raymond Goethals guided Marseille to the 

1993 European Cup, although his achievement 

would later be over-shadowed by 

the Marseille match-fixing scandal. In 

Scotland, Jock Wallace helped Rangers 

to win three league titles, three Scottish 

Cups and four League Cups. 

On the face of it, fewer goalkeepers 

become managers now, but the one in 

Scotland who has bucked that trend cautions 

against portraying them as victims. 

In the absence of any evidence to confirm 

that they are overlooked for managerial 

vacancies, Wright suggests that too few of 



them apply in the first place. 

It is a view shared by Bryan Gunn, 

the former Aberdeen and Norwich City 

goalkeeper who went on to have a short, 

ill-fated spell as manager at Carrow Road. 

He says that, in years gone by, goalkeepers 

who wanted to remain in the game had 

little option but to try management. Only 

when Alan Hodgkinson took up a post 

with Scotland in the late 1980s was there 

such a thing as a goalkeeping coach. 

These days, there is scarcely a professional 

club that does not have a coach 

devoted to the position, which means that 

a plethora of jobs have become available 

to those who have hung up the gloves. 

“This is the era of the goalkeeping coach, 

which is maybe why so many are not 

going into management,” says Gunn. “It’s 

a great way to stay in football. The next 

best thing to being a goalkeeper is helping 

another one to achieve a clean sheet at 

the weekend. 

“There are 92 clubs in England, 42 in 

Scotland, and most of them will have a 

goalkeeping coach. A lot of these positions 

are highly paid, certainly in England’s 

Premier League and at the top end of the 

Championship. They are comfortable 

roles and the job security is maybe slightly 

THE UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE 

FROM WHICH A GOALKEEPER 

WATCHES THE GAME GIVES 

HIM INVALUABLE INSIGHT. 

HE HAS TIME AND SPACE TO 

THINK ABOUT THE GAME AS 

IT UNFOLDS BEFORE HIM. 

better than being a manager. A lot have 

gone down that route and been happy 

with it.” 

The good news is that the line between 

goalkeepers and outfield players on 

the coaching pathway is beginning to 

blur. UEFA now requires goalkeepers to 

complete a B licence before they reach 

the summit of their own coaching ladder, 

while many budding managers are keen 

to broaden their outlook by undertaking 

a course that specialises in goalkeeping. 

If they continue to occupy the dugout in 

such large numbers, it is surely only a 

matter of time before more goalkeepers 

are asked to step up, just as Wright did 

three years ago. 

The St Johnstone manager has achieved 

so much since then that it is a wonder 

more clubs have not tried to lure him from 

McDiarmid Park. While young, smoothtalking 

coaches are repeatedly linked with 

clubs north and south of the Border, the 

suspicion is that Wright’s profile is not 

what the average chairman is after. 

Maybe, at the age of 52, he is not regarded 

as up-and-coming. Or perhaps, at 

a club that is frequently under-estimated, 

his work has suffered the same fate. 

Surely, after all he has done, it cannot 

be that his history as a goalkeeper still 

counts against him? “Well, you would 

hope that is not the case, but you can’t 

help but think it’s possible,” says Money, 

who sees Wright as a trailblazer. 

“He is the model for any aspiring coach 

who also happens to be a former goalkeeper. 

What he has done is nothing short 

of amazing. With the greatest respect to St 

Johnstone, they’re not a fashionable toptier 

club, but he has taken them to the top 

six every season and he’s won the Scottish 

Cup. I’m sure, one day, he will move 

somewhere else. His time will come.” 

And when it does, the hope is that other 

goalkeepers will be inspired to show 

beyond any doubt that, when it comes to 

management, they fit like a glove. l 


Beyond the game 

SPL TV: A 

TELEVISION 

SOAP OPERA 

It had it all. The feuds, the 

brinkmanship and the 

wheeling and dealing in a 

small-screen drama. 

By Paul McDonald 

£8.5 billion. Not the annual budget for 

a department of the NHS, or an amount 

ring-fenced to construct social housing, 

but the sum commanded by the English 

Premier League for global TV rights over 

the next three seasons. The team finishing 

bottom of the EPL in 2016-17 can console 

themselves with the knowledge that their 

broadcast revenue will be in excess of 

£100m. In accountancy firm Deloitte’s 

annual Money League report, clubs such 

as Sunderland, Swansea and Stoke are 

positioned to overtake Italian institutions 

Inter, AC Milan and Roma in the world’s 

top 20 richest clubs. The marketability of 

the Premier League has fundamentally 

changed the football landscape; the concept 

of a super league of the super-rich, 

one that has been threatened for years 

but for a multitude of reasons has never 

materialised, has now arrived, albeit via 

the side door. 

Last September SPFL chief executive 

Neil Doncaster expressed his delight at 

an agreement reached with Sky and BT 

for the right to host Premiership games 

until 2020. From 2017, the 12 clubs will 

earn £18.75m per season, or £56.25m 

over the length of the deal. It’s perfectly 


conceivable that an English Premier 

League side will pay that amount on a 

single player before the season is out. 

And yes, comparing the riches bestowed 

upon the clubs south of the border to our 

modest returns is very often a meaningless 

exercise. But here it merely serves the 

purpose of highlighting how our paths 

have deviated in the past 15 years. 

Back in 2000, the SPL was halfway 

through a £46m, four-year deal which 

guaranteed exclusivity of live matches 

for Sky Sports. Sky had backed Scottish 

football as well as the English game as it 

looked to position itself in the market as 

the principal broadcaster of football in the 

UK and the deal at the time, while still 

dwarfed by the then-English Premiership’s 

£670m deal between 1997 and 

2001, was, in terms of market forces and 

relative size, something the clubs could 

work with. The league was expanded to 12 

teams for the 2000-01 campaign and with 

genuinely bankable talent featuring on a 

regular basis teams were financially competitive. 

Furthermore, ticket prices hadn’t 

extended into dubious worth and as such 

the average attendance saw around 3.35m 

head through the gates (for comparison, 

in 2011-12 when Rangers were last in the 

top flight, the number of paying customers 

was 25% down on this number). 

Not everything was rosy: Craig Brown’s 

failure to secure qualification for Euro 

2000 triggered the chain reaction that 

led Scotland to Berti Vogts and 20 years 

in the international dead zone, but there 

was a degree of stability, just waiting to be 

crushed by the most unorthodox series of 

events. 

November 2001. Chief executive of 

the SPL, Roger Mitchell, had been in 

discussions with Sky regarding a renewal 

to the current TV arrangement. Murmurings 

– in the media, but not perhaps in 

reality – suggested a grandiose range 

of numbers could be offered; £100m, 

£125m, even as much as £150m – in effect 

a 200% increase. Stewart Weir, journalist 

and editor at the Trinity Mirror Group at 

the time, recalls that Sky’s relationship 

was perhaps not as celebrated as some 

believed. 

He recalls: “The first match of the 

1998-99 season broadcast live was Hearts 

versus Rangers at Tynecastle, which drew 

excellent viewing figures, as did Aberdeen 

defeating Celtic at Pittodrie the following 

week. 

“However, the third match shown was 

Dundee against St Johnstone which barely 

drew 20,000 viewers. The numbers were 

similarly unimpressive when Motherwell 

played Dundee United the Sunday after, 

and from that point on Sky was wary of 

the potential of Scottish football beyond 

televising the Old Firm every week. 

“Sky had already decided by 2001 that 

they weren’t getting the value for money 

they had initially thought they would. I 

think Sky had sussed the Scottish game 

was all about four games a season – and 

so too had Mitchell, who was more 

realistic about the true net worth of any 

TV deal compared to some chairmen.” 

As such, when the renegotiations begun 

Sky informed Mitchell and the SPL that 

an extension would only be agreed on the 

same terms as before - £46m over four 

years. 

The timing was unfortunate, to say 

the least. The post-millennium dotcom 

bubble had yet to burst and so media 

rights in a variety of disciplines were 

being drastically oversold. In May 2000 

Sky paid £266m to purchase Sports 

Internet Group (SIG), whose main online 

property was Planet Football, a site that 

accumulated just 1.5m unique visitors 

and is effectively forgotten today. In June 

of the same year, English football broadcasters 

went into overdrive, with Sky 

renewing their Premiership contract for 

£1.1bn, almost double the previous agreement. 

ITV paid £180m for the highlights 

 



SPL TV: a television soap opera 

package, while the BBC responded to 

losing Match of the Day by agreeing a 

£400m long-term deal to screen FA Cup 

matches live. The eye-watering levels of 

the sums involved were all eclipsed by 

the newly-formed ITV Digital and their 

valuation of the English football league – 

i.e. everything below the Premiership – at 

£315m in August 2001. Just nine months 

later ITV Digital defaulted on £180m of 

that sum, leaving the football league clubs 

with a gaping hole in their budgets for 

the next season. Director General of the 

BBC, Greg Dyke, claimed: “There is hardly 

anyone running a television company 

who doesn’t think that they paid too 

much.” This inaccurate appraisal of the 

worth of TV rights impacted Scotland at 

precisely the wrong moment. 

Roger Mitchell and the SPL, well in 

advance of renewal talks with Sky, sought 

to find their own place in this volatile 

market. Mitchell explains: “For 18 months 

we had Mark Oliver and David Kogan, 

who worked as advisors to Richard 

Scudamore and the FA Premier League, 

independently value our rights and they 

produced a figure of between £60m- 

£80m per season. 

“No-one in the market thought that 

the valuation was unrealistic given what 

ITV Digital and others had paid, and so 

when our clubs heard this there was an 

almighty fight about who was going to get 

the money. 

“The Sky offer came in at £11.5m per 

year, precisely what they had offered for 

the previous four seasons. In December 

2001 the clubs had Oliver and Kogan’s 

detailed report in front of them and they 

informed me that they wanted to reject 

Sky’s proposal.” 

Oliver and Kogan’s analysis had not only 

taken into consideration the economic 

forces at play, but also that the Old Firm, 

with average attendances each in excess 

of 50,000, would be required to feature 

in the vast majority of matches in order 

to convince a broadcaster to subscribe to 

such a valuation. Any deal would need 

Celtic and Rangers totally invested in 

retaining their 40% share of the revenue 

for more than 80% of the TV time. 

Mitchell adds: “On the £60-£80m, 

when you come up with a valuation like 

that, you are required to granularly value 

each and every game to derive your numbers. 

So we worked it out and when we 

had finished it was clear that 70-80% of 

the matches had to involve the Old Firm. 

“I spoke to Rangers and Celtic just 

about every day at this point and they 

would say to me, ‘Roger, this report 

says that we are involved in 80% of the 

matches, but are only getting 40% of the 

income. Why is that? 

“Eventually Celtic and Rangers said, 

‘You have to change the distribution 

model of the SPL or we simply won’t sign 

[a new TV deal].’” 

What Celtic and Rangers began pushing 

for was a revenue distribution model 

in excess of how Spain’s La Liga has 

operated over the past decade. There, 

Barcelona and Real Madrid have collected 

anywhere up to 45% of the overall TV 

income; in 2014-15 the Spanish giants 

earned €320m of the €760m available, 

WHAT CELTIC AND RANGERS 

BEGAN PUSHING FOR WAS 

A REVENUE DISTRIBUTION 

MODEL IN EXCESS OF HOW 

SPAIN’S LA LIGA HAS 

OPERATED OVER THE PAST 

DECADE. 



while third-placed Valencia banked just 

€47.5m in comparison, ahead of Atletico 

Madrid (€41m). The folly of the disparity 

in Spain has destroyed the competitiveness 

of the league, particularly in the 

bottom half. Teams now treat a trip to the 

Camp Nou and Santiago Bernabeu with 

the same level of contempt the duopoly 

has shown them, and, in the main, 

merely put a cross through the fixture on 

the calendar. 

The Old Firm were pitching for 

considerably more than 45% of the pot 

as they sought to increase the viability 

of the SPL by ruthlessly destroying the 

ability of the other ten teams to compete 

on anything akin to a level playing 

field. But these discussions proved to be 

completely superfluous. Their stubbornness, 

complemented by the remainder 

of the clubs’ belief in the SPL’s ability to 

markedly increase its broadcast revenue, 

sat in juxtaposition to the only real fact 

available: the Sky bid had been rejected, 

and another, from them or indeed any 

other network, was not forthcoming. 

History has written Mitchell, perhaps 

unfairly, as the villain of this particular 

piece. The media were keen to portray 

him as the failed negotiator who had 

proven irksome enough that Sky weren’t 

willing to resubmit their offer. Indeed it 

was suggested that Mitchell’s relationship 

with Sky’s managing director, Vic Wakeling, 

had deteriorated to such a degree that 

the notion of the pair re-establishing a 

working relationship was unfeasible. 

But Mitchell has made it clear that he 

simply relayed to Sky the message that 

the clubs wanted transmitted. After that, 

there was only one route left to explore: 

launching a standalone TV channel for 

Scottish football. At that point, SPL TV 

entered the conversation and it was, in 

effect, the emergency option. 

“I wasn’t a visionary [for SPL TV],” he 

admits. “Did I know that people now 

would be discussing ingesting video 

online and all these other things? 

“No, but we had no option. The deals 

were off the table and I had people asking 

me, ‘is this a goer?’, and I would say ‘yes 

it is!’ based around the numbers, the appetite, 

all of the factors that come into it.” 

So, while interest from TV companies 

cooled, a straightforward model for 

SPL TV was devised. In the absence of a 

broadcaster willing to secure exclusive 

rights to SPL matches, the league would 

absorb the costs and logistics themselves 

and offer the final product via a subscription 

service. Granada TV were approached 

to produce highlights content in addition 

to ‘quarterbacking’ a minimum of two 

matches per week aired live on the station 

and SPL TV would be made available 

via Sky set-top boxes. (The network had 

piloted a similar idea in August 2001 

known as Premiership Plus, where the 

consumer could pay a one-off fee to access 

an additional 40 live games a season. The 

channel was disbanded in 2007.) 

Mitchell and his team worked through 

the marketing, production and subscription 

plans and re-enlisted Oliver and 

Kogan to derive a valuation of the fledgling 

channel. This time, their assessment 

was £40m-£50m per season; less than 

they believed could have been generated 

from major networks, but still substantial 

enough to represent a significant 

improvement on the Sky arrangement, 

despite the associated set-up expenditure. 

Oliver and Kogan were a hugely respected 

duo who, in addition to their experience 

with the Premier League, had provided 

consultation on various other media 

rights. Once again, their figures were 

taken as read; in January 2001 the clubs, 

including Celtic and Rangers, were fully 

on board, albeit largely due to an absence 

of alternatives. But as the days passed and 

the idea crystallised, the more unconvincing 

the calculations appeared. 

Celtic and Rangers, via chief executive 

Ian McLeod and chairman David Murray, 

 




publicly maintained the mirage of support 

but their private concern prompted 

a deeper inspection into the project’s 

legitimacy. In their book Football In the 

New Media Age, Raymond Boyle and 

Richard Haynes reference a review from 

accountancy firm KPMG that began to 

establish inconsistencies in the numbers. 

In it, the recommendation to revise 

subscription figures would reduce the 

expected income figure for year one down 

to £15m, which was expected to grow as 

subscriptions increased. In order to reach 

these expected targets, an ambitious 

total of 180,000 were required to sign up, 

extended to 300,000 by year three, at a 

cost of £7.99 each. 

Celtic and Rangers’ concern at this 

point wasn’t entirely down to the viability 

of the product; rather, according 

to Mitchell, their own long-term interests 

came into play. 

He states: “The fact of the matter was 

that for Celtic and Rangers, TV revenues 

only represented maybe £2m per year 

to them – a small amount compared 

to season ticket sales, merchandising 

and such. But to the other ten clubs the 

money they received, around £750,000 

each per season, was absolutely essential. 

“They [the Old Firm] would still have 

made something in the first year of SPL 

TV. It wouldn’t have been as much as the 

£2m they were earning, but in general 

terms it wouldn’t have been that much of 

a financial issue for them. 

“You need to remember that at the time 

the idea of moving our clubs – not just the 

Old Firm, but all of our clubs – to England 

had a lot of momentum. In fact [then- 

Celtic chairman] Brian Quinn said that it 

was ‘inevitable within the next five years’. 

People thought it would happen. And 

that’s where the full thing fell down.” 

Put simply, Celtic and Rangers were wary 

of being tied into a domestic TV arrangement 

that, should the English league 

follow through with their flirtation, could 

foil what they deemed to be their ultimate 

destiny. They were also acutely aware that 

under the SPL’s bizarrely skewed voting 

system at the time, an 11-1 majority was 

necessary to ratify any motion. With 

their two votes the prospects of the 

channel were completely at their behest. 

Alongside the KPMG report, the Old 

Firm’s scepticism had begun to pique and 

though they remained invested in the 

idea a pivotal moment arrived when, in 

March 2002, ITV Digital collapsed. 

The network’s commitment of £315m 

had led to its bankruptcy. The majority 

of football league sides had already spent 

revenue that never arrived. 

It was at this point that Celtic and 

Rangers flipped. Sensing an opportunity, 

McLeod and Murray withdrew their 

support for SPL TV because, as Roddy 

Forsyth references in the Daily Telegraph 

in April 2002, ITV Digital’s demise had the 

potential to create open positions in the 

lower divisions as clubs went to the wall. 

Their dissent commenced with specious 

threats and caveats to the conditions of 

membership to SPL TV; both wanted 

clauses inserted that could facilitate their 

swift exit should subscriptions not fall in 

line with forecasts. Then, their involvement 

was to be limited to a fixed term 

(yet to be agreed) where the success of 

SPL TV would be ultimately defined by 

whether Celtic and Rangers benefited 

from the arrangement. 

Finally, it was rumoured that the Old 

Firm had held clandestine talks with Sky 

regarding the potential of creating their 

own standalone channels to air home 

matches, and although this mini-rumination 

quickly disappeared, the green and 

blue tide had already turned. 

Mitchell recalls the day, April 7, 2002, 

when they eventually announced their 

withdrawal. “I met with both Celtic and 

Rangers every single day. Every single day 

I asked them if they were up for it, and 

they said ‘yes’, until the April before we 



I MET WITH BOTH CELTIC AND 

RANGERS EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

EVERY SINGLE DAY I ASKED 

THEM IF THEY WERE UP FOR 

IT, AND THEY SAID ‘YES’, 

UNTIL THE APRIL BEFORE WE 

WERE DUE TO LAUNCH WHEN 

THEY TURNED AROUND AND 

SAID ‘NO’. 

were due to launch when they turned 

around and said ‘no’. 

“The other ten clubs went absolutely 

berserk. They were asking, ‘who are you 

going to play?’ 

“It was clear that neither of the Old 

Firm wanted to be tied into a domestic TV 

deal while the idea of playing in England 

was an option.” 

Celtic chief executive Ian McLeod, 

backed by Rangers vice chairman John 

McClelland, went on record to explain 

their reasoning; the expected subscription 

base and, by association, revenue 

figures should have been reassessed to 

a more realistic level in the aftermath of 

ITV Digital’s demise, and cited a ‘lack of 

clarity’ in the SPL proposal. 

As Mitchell suggests, the remaining 

ten SPL clubs were indeed apoplectic at 

this insubordination. On the one hand, 

the Old Firm patently felt weighed down 

by the responsibility of supporting 

the smaller clubs by virtue of TV deals 

that were worth far less without their 

involvement. Conversely the Gang of 

Ten (as they collectively and boorishly 

became known) had long grown weary 

of the Old Firm’s self-importance and the 

manner in which they perceived playing 

in Scotland as a necessary chore until a 

better offer came along. That particular 

argument could just as likely take place in 

a boardroom next week, let alone 15 years 

ago, but at the time the Old Firm underestimated 

the Gang of Ten’s response to 

the SPL TV betrayal. They tendered their 

resignation from the SPL, commencing 

from the 2003-04 campaign, with 

officials from Aberdeen to Edinburgh 

spitting forth fury. 

Hibernian managing director Rod 

Petrie said: “The Old Firm killed this 

channel. They voted against it, undermined 

it and took a decision that meant 

the channel was massively damaged.” 

Aberdeen chairman Stewart Milne 

added: “I think they were quite shocked 

and taken aback. I don’t think they 

believed that the ten clubs would do that. 

Perhaps that was part of the problem. 

What we are seeking to do is get Scottish 

football into a position where the majority 

dictate the progress of the game - not 

the minority.” 

Chris Robinson, Hearts’ chief executive, 

was more diplomatic: “I think all of the 

clubs have got to do what they think is in 

the best interests of the game as a whole. 

The feeling is that they wanted us to go 

ahead and no longer be an oppressed 

majority.” 

With two sides so diametrically opposed 

in their objectives, the territorial positioning 

was unlikely to last for too long. In 

May reports leaked of conversations between 

Murray, Celtic shareholder Dermot 

Desmond and Keith Harris, chairman 

of the Football League, and amidst the 

fiscal chaos a 26-team first division was 

floated, with the Old Firm in tow. The 

Gang of Ten maintained their poker face 

and eventually the speculation receded; 

it soon became clear to all parties that a 




reconciliation of some kind was necessary 

to avoid the 2002-03 season descending 

into farce. 

In late May tentative steps were made 

to bring both sides to the table, the Gang 

of Ten only willing to reconsider their 

resignation if a change to the voting 

system, from an 11-1 to an 8-4 split, was 

endorsed. The Old Firm dug their heels 

in, and with each unsuccessful impasse 

the first fixture of the new season edged 

ever closer with no camera in place to 

capture the action. 

By the start of July, however, Celtic 

and Rangers came to the realisation that 

Scottish football, in the short term, was 

their only home and so conceded to a 

new voting structure, and a slight reduction 

in their joint television revenue. All 

they needed to do now was ensure that 

revenue represented more than zero. 

The recession in the media market, 

with ITV Digital the first domino to 

fall helping to create a Europe-wide 

re-examination of broadcast rights, 

meant there weren’t many offers. The BBC 

stepped forward holding all of the power. 

A two-year, £16m deal was agreed, £7m 

less than Sky’s initial offer and a lifetime 

away from the figures quotes by Oliver 

and Kogan. Reality had bitten. Hard. 

Doomsayers in the years since SPL TV 

was buried have correlated the events 

around its demise with an economic 

malaise that the league has never escaped 

from, but while the tittle-tattle and 

fantastical financials hardly helped, clubs 

were already chasing an undefinable 

dream. 

As these events unfolded, Motherwell 

entered administration, with owner John 

Boyle required to invest £11m of his own 

money to balance losses of more than 

£2m per season. Boyle cited the SPL 

TV collapse as one of the contributing 

factors, but Andy Goram, John Spencer 

and Ged Brannan had been tempted by 

unfeasible salaries long before SPL TV 

HOW WE CONSUME 

FOOTBALL IS CONTINUING 

TO EVOLVE AND SO IT 

WOULD BE OF NO SURPRISE 

IF THE CONCEPT OF SPL 

TV WAS TO INFILTRATE 

THE CONVERSATION ONCE 

AGAIN. 

was ever mentioned. The club’s wage bill 

represented 97% of their earnings and 

they weren’t the only ones involved in 

such recklessness. Dundee and Livingston 

held similarly unsustainable ratios, and 

the former followed Motherwell into administration 

a year later. But it wasn’t the 

SPL who signed Claudio Caniggia and operated 

with a 42-player first team squad, 

or who brought in Fabrizio Ravanelli and 

Craig Burley two months before administration 

arrived with the club losing in 

excess of £100,000 per week. Livingston, 

too, were naïve in expecting significant 

following for a club so freshly in existence 

given the tribal nature of supporters. They 

lasted until 2004 before the Royal Bank of 

Scotland came calling for unpaid debts. 

TV deals have also come and gone since 

– the decision to side with Setanta in 

2007 and reject Sky (once again) proved 

calamitous, with Setanta’s UK operation 

going bust in 2008 leaving an initial £3m 

debt unpaid and a TV contract worth less 

than nothing. But SPL TV was undoubtedly 

a turning point, primarily in terms of 

how Scottish clubs and, indeed, external 

influencers viewed what could be 



extracted from a league where only two 

teams can ever realistically compete. 

Mitchell has, for a decade and a half, 

denied that SPL TV was his vanity project 

but feels that it could have set Scottish 

football in the role of the ambitious 

trendsetter – for a short while, at least. 

“Do I think it was ahead of its time? 

100%. In fact I would say it was maybe ten 

years ahead. If it had happened I think 

we could have been seen as leading the 

field. In year three, if the marketing plan 

was right, we would have reached our 

subscriber numbers and other leagues 

might have looked at our model and 

wanted to follow. 

“But really, it also comes down to the 

size of the market. We would have got 

plenty of credit for being creative and 

innovative, but we would still have been 

small fry because there are only five million 

people in Scotland.” 

The ghost of SPL TV has reappeared in 

the corridors of power more than once 

since 2002, most notably in 2011 when 

chief executive Neil Doncaster unimaginatively 

made reference to “a number of 

European leagues going down this route 

or exploring the option [of their own 

dedicated channel]”, but with Rangers’ 

participation in doubt a deal was done 

with Sky in August 2012 on reduced 

terms. Perhaps SPL TV was just never 

meant to be. 

Could it have been a success in this 

day and age? Mitchell is of the opinion 

that the quintessential Scottish football 

supporter is far more interested in club 

rivalry than sustained quality and so, in 

that case, the model still works. 

“The fact is, does it matter that Henrik 

Larsson doesn’t play in Scotland? Is the 

appetite less?” Mitchell asks. “Some 

Scottish football fans don’t care about 

the quality on show, or whether they can 

hold on to a young player for longer than 

a season. It’s all about being able to turn 

up with your mates. The level of oneupmanship 

and bragging rights is more 

important. Therefore, if you have potential 

customers that are unconcerned by the 

standard of football, then the subscription 

numbers don’t need to be particularly 

different.” 

Stewart Weir, however, feels that by 

televising a number of Scottish matches, 

more people were exposed to the distinct 

lack of depth in the division. 

He states: “Archie Macpherson once 

told me he used to commentate on games 

during the 70s and 80s that were dire, 

and he wondered how anyone could edit 

fifteen minutes of highlights. But they 

did, and made every game, goalless or a 

5-5 draw, look like the best game ever. 

“With the Sky deal and so many live 

games, people sussed Scottish football – 

outside the Old Firm – wasn’t that great. 

After all, would you pay £150 a year to 

watch Scotland’s top flight?” 

How we consume football is continuing 

to evolve and so it would be of no surprise 

if the concept of SPL TV was to infiltrate 

the conversation once again, albeit with a 

refined prototype that places emphasis on 

online streaming, particularly on mobile 

devices. We want to consume content on 

our terms, when we want, in the length 

we want, from live matches to brief 

highlights. We don’t want to, say, wait 

until 10.30pm on a Sunday night to watch 

our team when the fixture finished 36 

hours previously. 

Concurrently, the value of our game has 

battled to find some sort of equilibrium. 

From the irresponsibility at the turn of 

the millennium through the collapse of 

Setanta and into our current deal, we 

finally seem to be in a more comfortable 

position. But sometimes you are left 

wondering; teams such as Hull, West 

Brom and Sunderland are no more palatable 

or watchable than a strong Aberdeen, 

Dundee Utd or Hearts. How different 

would our game look if SPL TV had been 

a successful venture? l 



WHY WE 

SHOULD 

LOVE OUR 

REFEREES 

They get abuse from the players, 

venom from the stands and 

criticism from the managers. 

And do you know who’s fine 

with all that? The referees. 

By Craig Fowler 

Almost six years ago Scotland’s referees 

embarked on drastic and never-beforeseen 

course of action to recapture the news 

agenda and show the country, and the 

wider world watching on, that systematic 

and relentless undermining of an official’s 

integrity would not be tolerated. Nonavailability 

day it was called by the officials. 

In layman’s terms, they went on strike. 

The incident that seemingly sparked 

the action took place in a Premier League 

match between Celtic and Dundee United 

at Tannadice. Referee Dougie McDonald, 

an experienced official within the game, 

awarded a penalty kick to Celtic before 

changing his mind. When Neil Lennon 

wanted answers for why his team had 

a spot-kick withdrawn, he was told 

McDonald had reversed the call on the 

advice of the linesman. It wasn’t true. 

McDonald had already made up his mind 

to reverse the call before consulting with 

his assistant. Once it came to light that 

Celtic were told an incorrect version of 

events, the club were incandescent and 

heavily criticised the officials. 

Things soon got out of hand. Contentious 

calls in the coming weeks added to the 

bubbling pot. Prominent figures in the 

game questioned the integrity of referees, 

clubs were openly critical, and managers 

weren’t shy in letting their opinions be 

known after matches. It was building to a 

crescendo. Referees in Scotland could no 

longer go about their daily lives without 

fear of reprisal for what they may or may 

not have got right on a football field. 

Some view the McDonald incident and 

subsequent fallout as the reason for the 

strike. It wasn’t. It was just the tipping 

point. Something had to change in this 

country and referees took decisive action. 

“Things are definitely better since 

then,” insisted John McKendrick, former 

spokesman for the Scottish Senior Football 

Referees’ Association and still a member 

of the union’s committee. He’s also still 

a category one referee. “That was a particularly 

poor phase we were in there. The 

disciplinary system from the SFA wasn’t 

quite as responsive as it is now. Because 

things weren’t dealt with quickly, I think 

managers could have the viewpoint where 

they weren’t punished for what they said 

last week. It allowed them to do it again 

and gave them a license to do it. 

“That was exceptional action. There was 

not a referee that enjoyed it. I was closely 

involved in it and it was not a pleasant 

time. It’s not the type of thing you want to 

be involved in, but it was required.” 

Officials on the whole still appear to 

be treated like a scourge on the game, 


ather than a vital part of it. Abuse rains 

down from the stands, managers act 

like tantrum-addicted toddlers on the 

sidelines, and players scream in their faces. 

It’s behaviour unbecoming of one human 

interacting with another and yet we accept 

it because, well, that’s football. And do you 

know who’s fine with that? The referees 

themselves. They understand it’s a part of 

the game. They just don’t want it to escape 

the confines of the stadium. 

“For most of the season we’re treated 

the way we should be: not ignored, but 

not the story either, because that’s not 

what football is about,” said McKendrick. 

“There will be time every season, a few 

weeks where referees are harshly treated. 

I don’t doubt it for a minute. It could be 

an individual referee but it’s more likely 

to be a couple of referees where they 

complain about the standard of Scottish 

refereeing in general. We’ll be harshly 

treated by people writing the stories, 

we may be more harshly treated by the 

players because they are more likely to 

react, and we’ll definitely be more harshly 

treated in the street because people will 

think we’re wrong. That’s what happens.” 

There’s evidence from the last three 

seasons to back up McKendrick’s observation. 

Last year the criticism occurred 

early with Stewart Regan and the SSFRA 

having to release statements as early 

as September 1. Two officials had been 

criticised in a single weekend, with 

Hearts boss Robbie Neilson revealing 

he’d prepared his players in anticipation 

of a red card from match official Willie 

Collum which, he said, they knew would 

come, a comment people took to be an 

insinuation the referee had a vendetta 

against the club. This finger-pointing 

juxtaposed the previous campaign where 

criticism peaked after the referee and additional 

assistant behind the goal missed 

Josh Meekings’ infamous handball in the 

Scottish Cup semi-final between Celtic 

and Inverness CT. In 2013, Andy Walker 

and other pundits slaughtered referees in 

the press after a couple of red cards were 

overturned on appeal. 

The waves of criticism would be fair, but 

only if they were true. This isn’t even a case 

of defending our officials by looking at the 

bigger picture in context, where we point to 

the population as an excuse for our football 

woes. Five million people isn’t a huge population 

and it is a commonly-held believe 

that in the age of football globalisation this 

affects our ability to produce a consistently 

competitive national team. If this was a 

legitimate factor, we could use the same 

reasoning to apply to our whistlers too. 

Instead, the reality is that our referees do 

terrifically well in spite of the shallow pool 

from which to select them. 

There are 28 referees on UEFA’s list of 

elite officials. These are the guys that are 

handed fixtures in European competitions 

and considered for the Euros and World 

Cup. There are 18 different nationalities. 

This is hardly surprising: the governing 

body want a wide range of officials from 

around Europe, and while Scottish fans 

probably don’t think about it too much, 

this would probably be their answer if 

asked why there are two Scottish referees 

among the top group. However, there are 

only six countries with more than one 

referee in the top 28. Scotland is one of 

them. The others are England, Germany, 

the Netherlands (all with two), along with 

Spain and Italy (both with four). Those 

countries make up the elite of football in 

Europe, minus France, who only have one 

official in the 28. Scotland is better than 

France. If only our national team was as 

“terrible” as our referees, we’d be a much 

more successful football country. 

“We always seem to do well at the 

top level of competition,” McKendrick 

pointed out. “Hugh Dallas was fourth 

official at a World Cup final. Craig 

Thomson refereed a World Cup final at 

youth level. Willie Collum is at the 

Euros. These are not run-of-the-mill 

 



Why we should love our referees 

Journalists – this writer included – have 

been complicit in the ill-treatment of 

referees, partly because officials don’t 

speak to the media. We’re reliant on managers 

for stories. This not only applies to 

post-match press conferences or previews 

of big games, it also goes for other aspects 

of the job. A manager can give a journalist 

he trusts a heads up about a player about 

to be signed, and so forth. There is no 

such relationship with referees. If a manager 

criticises a referee unfairly it would 

take a brave writer to challenge him on it. 

Besides, it’s the business of news reportgames. 

These are massive appointments.” 

It is nothing more than insularity 

which stops us from recognising the fact 

that our referees are not among the worst 

in the world, and that the real culprit is 

the nature of football itself. The season 

before last, former Hearts full back Adam 

Eckersley was interviewed on fans’ 

podcast We Have No Cares. Having played 

in Belgium, Denmark and England prior 

to his time in Scotland, he was questioned 

about the standard of refereeing 

in Scotland, and whether he agreed they 

were “incompetent”. “There’s been some 

interesting decisions this year, but I’ve 

seen some interesting decisions abroad as 

well,” was Eckersley’s political answer. 

“English fans think their referees are 

terrible as well,” insisted former category 

one referee Mike Tumilty. “Having been at 

Old Trafford as a season ticket holder the 

last two seasons, I can tell you that English 

fans don’t have any more respect for 

referees than Scottish fans do for theirs.” 

A common demand of referees is that 

they explain their decisions. If a mistake 

is made, supporters and managers want 

to know what happened. They want to 

know what a referee was thinking when 

he crushed their hopes and expectations. 

While this is understandable in the case 

of supporters – after all, when you’re 

feeling incredulous, words like “why?” 

and “how?” are the first things that spring 

to mind – it is ironic when trotted out by 

football clubs. Surely fans also want to 

know why and how a defender cost the 

rest of his team with a back pass from 

hell, or when the midfielder put his side 

down to ten men with a ridiculously 

over-the-top foul, or when the striker 

put the ball over the bar when it seemed 

easier to miss. Yet, when it comes time 

for these villains of the piece to face the 

media, unless the players specifically 

request otherwise, they are protected by 

their clubs. If a 25-year-old professional 

footballer needs protecting from uncom- 

fortable questions, why doesn’t a referee? 

“In an ideal world a referee should 

explain their decisions,” admitted 

McKendrick. “There have been times 

where I’ve been desperate to talk to the 

press to explain my decision, but the 

reality is journalists only want to talk 

to referees when we’ve made a mistake. 

They’re not interested in finding out the 

right interpretation because that’s not 

the story. The story is the controversy, the 

mistake, the error, the person with his job 

on the line. They are the stories, not the 

rational explanation. 

“What most people want is for the referee 

to come and apologise for a mistake that 

he made. They say they want a referee to explain 

his decisions but mostly aren’t really 

interested. They’ve made their mind up.” 

IF ONLY OUR NATIONAL 

TEAM WAS AS “TERRIBLE” 

AS OUR REFEREES, WE’D BE 

A MUCH MORE SUCCESSFUL 

FOOTBALL COUNTRY. 


By Craig Fowler 

ing. If a manager calls a referee “useless”, 

that is news, regardless whether he’s right 

or wrong. It has to be reported. 

This occurs mainly in the print media, 

so what about live broadcasts? “Some 

journalists are phenomenal. They’ll 

explain it and ultimately try and articulate 

what the referee has done,” says Tumilty. 

“There are others who are just disparaging, 

whether it is right, wrong or indifferent. 

Then there are others who just play 

back what’s been said and don’t attempt 

to intervene or point out any fallacies.” 

Then there are those who either 

don’t fully understand the rules of the 

game or don’t appreciate a referee’s 

role. Incredibly, a number of those are 

ex-player pundits, men who operated 

on the same field as officials their entire 

careers and should have a greater sense of 

empathy toward the man in charge. 

The football rule book is extremely vague 

when it comes to fouls. For instance, there 

isn’t any mention in the laws of the game 

of “playing the ball”, which is one of the 

most commons phrases in all of football. 

Instead, the rule book tells a referee to call 

for a foul if a player “trips, kicks, jumps 

at, charges, strikes, pushes or tackles” an 

opponent in a manner which is “careless, 

reckless or uses excessive force”. You can 

scarcely get more ambiguous. A group of 

referees could look at one incident and 

have a 50/50 split on whether it constitutes 

a foul or not. Instead of this being a part 

of the football consciousness, we always 

try to make things black and white. Is it a 

foul? Yes? No? There is no maybe. 

“There should be no empathy if the 

referee is in the wrong place. Part of the 

referee’s job, part of his DNA, is to get in 

the right position on a consistent basis 

to make a decision,” said Tumilty. “If 

that’s not right then there should be no 

empathy, but ultimately if you’re in the 

right place at the right time and it’s just 

so difficult [to make the right call] that’s 

when you’re looking for empathy, for sure. 

“It’s almost an impossibility for a referee 

to go through 90 minutes without making 

an error. The volume of decisions that you 

have to make, regardless of the size of the 

team of referees, it’s just mission impossible,” 

McKendrick added. “Referees need 

to be empathetic as well. We always need 

to try and give the correct decision, but we 

understand that when a team is dropping 

out of the division or whatever, that the 

fans are going to get more upset and show 

an overreaction, even if the referee has got 

the decision right.” 

That’s the overall takeaway that comes 

from talking to two experienced officials. 

They don’t even want much to change. 

Football players shout, swear, harass, crowd 

and – sometimes – do their best to intimidate 

the man in the middle. Onlookers see 

the disturbing behaviour and compare it 

with that of rugby, where referees are fully 

respected, and say ‘why can’t it be like 

that?’ Perhaps one reason is the culture 

of both sports. Partisanship in football is 

higher than it is in rugby and that brings 

heightened emotion. And when tensions 

are running high it doesn’t take much to 

tip a supporter, player or manager towards 

either unbridled joy, deep despair or vitriolic 

anger. The referees don’t want that to 

change because, above everything else, they 

are fans of the game. It’s not a profession 

you can get into if you don’t have a deep 

love for the sport. Why would they want it 

altered? Instead, they stand up to the abuse, 

remain confident in their decisions, explain 

it clearly to those who are willing to listen 

and get on with their jobs. 

“You need to be thick-skinned as a 

referee, especially at the top flight,” stated 

McKendrick. “You need to have confidence 

in your ability and understand people’s 

reactions to what you’re doing. Most of the 

abuse is 90-minute abuse. Even players 

who, to the punter in the stands, is being 

aggressive towards the referee, 99 times 

out of 100 the same player is shaking your 

hand at the end of a game.” l 



THE RISE 

AND RISE 

OF ROBERT 

ROWAN 

How does a guy working in a 

bank in Rosyth end up as head of 

football operations at Brentford? 


“I was sitting in a toilet cubicle in a bank 

in Fife listening to Brentford’s director of 

football talking about salaries, contracts 

and start dates...” 

Robert Rowan slipped his phone back 

into his pocket and returned upstairs to 

his desk at the Rosyth branch of Lloyds 

Bank. The customers whose loan application 

he had been dealing with when Frank 

McParland called had left, having been hurried 

out of the door when the answerphone 

message flashed up on Rowan’s screen. 

It was August 2014. The Fifer had been 

working in the bank for three months and 

was beginning to consider it his career until 

two interviews in the space of two days 

rekindled his hopes of a job in football. “I’d 

told the bank I needed a day off because I 

had an interview with the English FA,” he 

recalls, conspiratorially. “But the Brentford 

thing was on my day off…” 

The “Brentford thing” involved a trip to 

Blackpool on a Tuesday night. The West 

London club were playing Blackpool in a 

Championship fixture and asked Rowan 

to meet them pre-match and join them 

to watch the game. “The problem was, I 

was working the next morning so I had 

to drive down then leave pretty much 

straight away after the chat,” Rowan 

says. “I remember heading up the road 

to Kirkcaldy really hoping I’d get the job 

but at the back of my mind I was thinking 

‘fucking hell, I’ve got work in the bank 

tomorrow morning’.” 

He did get the job as Brentford’s scouting 

co-ordinator, as confirmed in that illtimed 

answerphone message a few weeks 

later. But how does a guy working in a 

bank in Rosyth get a job in the English 

Championship? 

“I told them I’d only do it if I could be the 

sporting director, but Stenhousemuir 

had never had one before…” 

He might only have been 23 at the time, 

but Rowan already had five years of senior 

football experience to his name. Celtic, 

Bolton, Rio Ave, Eskisehirspor and the 

Scotland national team had all leaned 

upon his scouting talents; he had coached 

in Sweden; and he was combining his role 

in the bank with a position of prominence 

at a Scottish League One club. 

His spell at Stenhousemuir came about 

purely by chance. Much of his work with 

the Scottish FA had involved doing analysis 

for the national teams at all levels and, 

through that, he developed a relationship 

with Scotland under-17 coach Scott Booth, 

who had just been appointed manager 

of the Larbert club. “He asked me to get 

involved and got me in front of the board 

of directors. That’s when I made the 

‘sporting director’ pitch,” Rowan explains. 

“I didn’t think for a minute it would 

work and, actually, I don’t think the 

club were ever convinced they needed 


me, but they let me have a go at it.” 

While filming games, showing clips to 

players and holding analysis sessions may 

not seem revolutionary, it was entirely 

alien to a squad being asked to turn up 

for an additional third training session 

every week. Then there were the continual 

clandestine phone calls from a Rosyth 

bank toilet. “A strange way of working,” 

Rowan concedes, of trying to combine 

two distinct careers. “That went on for a 

couple of months, but it was probably a 

mistake getting involved in the first place.” 

On reflection, Rowan recognises he was 

too hasty in accepting the Ochilview opportunity. 

It had been a few months since 

his position at the Scottish FA had been 

made redundant following the dissolution 

of the recruitment team and came just as 

he completed his probationary period at 

the bank. It felt like his last chance. 

And it felt like a long time since the 

day a couple of years earlier when he was 

asked to meet Craig Levein’s chief scout, 

Mick Oliver, at a Premier Inn beside the 

Kincardine Bridge. “I’d been at Celtic for a 

year when he got in touch,” Rowan recalls. 

“I was given this footage of a Slovenia side 

that Scotland were due to play and he 

asked me to do a report. It must have been 

okay because he gave me a job.” 

That job entailed tracking players from 

other countries, looking at potential 

Scotland internationals and recruiting 

performance school pupils who were only 

a few years younger than the 20-year-old 

Rowan. Quite a responsibility for someone 

whose football experience consisted of a 

few months at Celtic. 

“We decided to walk to Celtic Park but 

it was hosing down and our £1 umbrella 

wasn’t big enough…” 

Rowan had never been to Glasgow on 

his own before. In fact, he hadn’t been 

to many places. He was 18 and was at 

college in Fife. Little wonder he was a bit 

bewildered as he stepped off the bus at 

Buchanan Street station. 

Several weeks earlier, encouraged by 

the internet leak of a scouting report 

Andre Villas-Boas had compiled for Jose 

Mourinho’s Chelsea, Rowan resolved to 

author one of his own on the Champions 

League final between Manchester United 

and Barcelona in Rome. “I sent it to every 

club in England and Scotland. I just got a 

bunch of envelopes and addressed them 

to ‘The Manager’,” he says, laughing. 

“Thinking back, I wouldn’t do it that way 

again.” 

Remarkably, Nottingham Forest, West 

Ham and Celtic replied, with the latter 

inviting him to meet with David Moss, the 

then head of academy recruitment. Hence 

the bus trip to Glasgow. “My mate was at 

university in Glasgow so he met me and we 

decided, for some reason, to walk to Celtic 

Park. By the time we got there we were 

soaking and when I was speaking to David, 

I could see my mate outside in the car park 

huddled under this cheap umbrella.” 

Despite this shambolic scene, Moss 

was impressed enough to invite Rowan 

to help with Celtic’s youth and under-21 

sides, scouting opposition teams. “I was 

young and naive and there was nothing 

too complicated about them – it’s just 11 

v 11,” he says when asked what gave him 

the belief his reports were good enough. 

“I wasn’t cocky but I had nothing to lose 

and wanted to give it a shot.” 

“I loaded up my car and drove down to 

London – it was a classic hippy scene…” 

There was plenty to lose when it came to 

moving to Brentford, though. The promising 

career in the bank. His project at 

Stenhousemuir. Girlfriend Suzanne, who 

was staying in Kirkcaldy for the short term 

at least. “My wee Corsa was loaded up with 

stuff, bits hanging out of windows, at 4am 

and it wasn’t until I got halfway down the 

road that I starting thinking ‘what am I 

doing here?’ It was a 10-hour drive and I 

didn’t really know where I was going so I 

headed straight for the training ground.” 

The underwhelming nature of 



The rise and rise of Robert Rowan 


Brentford’s base also came as a shock 

to a man more used to the luxury of 

Lennoxtown, but a familiar face helped 

ease the transition. Rowan had become 

friendly with assistant manager Davie 

Weir through their work with the Scottish 

FA and it was the former Falkirk, Hearts, 

Everton and Rangers defender who 

acted as his flat-mate during his first few 

weeks in London. “After that, I ended up 

flatsharing in the same building in with a 

guy from Dunfermline who I’d never met 

before,” says Rowan, who had hitherto 

never lived outside Kirkcaldy. 

His living arrangements are now more 

conventional, with Suzanne having joined 

him in Ealing, but Brentford pride themselves 

on being apart from the norm. 

Owner Matthew Benham is a former 

hedge fund manager and professional 

gambler who made his money by building 

statistical models to exploit mistakes in 

bookmakers’ odds. That adherence to 

mathematical modelling informs everything 

the Championship club does, with 

more than 20 PhD holders and around 50 

analysts employed in Benham’s Smartodds 

company to identify the flaws in football’s 

prevailing wisdom for the benefit of 

Brentford or Danish side Midtjylland, 

which Benham also owns. It could be 

strategies to maximise set pieces, what 

type of players the club should be signing 

and from which markets, or even the style 

of play deployed. No convention is sacred. 

Rowan is an enthusiast disciple and 

insisted on spending one day a week 

studying at Smartodds throughout 

his first year at Brentford. But Weir, 

McParland and manager Mark Warburton 

were not so convinced. The trio had 

guided Brentford into the Championship 

play-off places halfway through the 

2014-15 season only to reportedly be told 

that the analytics suggested that, were it 

not for good fortune, they would be 11th. 

Understandably, a schism opened, with 

the Fifer stuck in the middle in his new 

role as head of football operations. 

HE MIGHT ONLY HAVE BEEN 

23 AT THE TIME, BUT ROWAN 

ALREADY HAD FIVE YEARS 

OF SENIOR FOOTBALL 

EXPERIENCE TO HIS NAME. 

“That was a tricky time for me personally 

but I’ve learned a lot and I’ve done a 

lot,” Rowan says. “In a way, it was good 

for me to be thrown into that situation 

because I just had to get on with it and 

it’s given me the kind of experience that 

very few people my age have, in whatever 

industry they work in.” 

Indeed, his daily remit now is more 

akin to that of a director of football. Be it 

arranging pre-season, having significant 

input in to the club’s recruitment, analysing 

opposition, managing the training 

ground or developing relations with clubs 

such as Manchester City, Barcelona and 

Liverpool, Rowan has a hand in almost 

everything that goes on yet is still only 25. 

The fact he looks like he’s had a tough 

paper round helps hush some of the 

carping about his age. So, too, does his 

eight years of experience at international, 

Champions League and Championship 

level – something that was at the forefront 

in the minds of those at Celtic when they 

approached him in April about returning 

to Scotland to work with their first team. 

“It was difficult to turn them down as you 

don’t get the opportunity to work for such 

a big club often but I’ve now got a clear 

vision of where I want to go and how I 

will get there.” 

Safe to say, this time it won’t be in a 

clapped out Corsa, Stagecoach bus or by 

walking through torrential rain. l 


THE 

PLAYERS 

122 

Heather McKinlay 

on Tony Watt 

“The goal which 

plucked the lad from 

Coatbridge-obscurity 

into the European 

spotlight; the goal which 

reduced Rod Stewart 

to tears; the goal which 

enthused commentator 

Ian Crocker to anoint 

the scorer as an instant 

legend; the goal which 

has seemingly become an 

ever-increasing-burden 

on the itinerant player’s 

shoulders” 

129 134 

Chris Collins on 

Islam Feruz. 

“He displayed his full 

repertoire of skills and 

feints with craft, guile 

and precision, completing 

his performance with 

a sublime chip over the 

Welsh goalkeeper for the 

winning goal. It was a 

startling demonstration of 

his potential” 

Paul Brown on 

Grant Smith 

“My day would be training 

at night and then we’d all 

go for dinner, all the single 

boys, and we’d be out all 

night, then we might have 

a lie-in, go to the beach, 

chill, go to the gym and it 

was nice. It was just a great 

lifestyle” 


The Players 

WHAT’S 

UP WITH 

TONY 

WATT? 

Hearts is the latest destination 

for a player who once seemed 

to have everything. Will it 

finally happen for him? 


The young striker repeatedly twists 

and turns by the corner flag, the ball 

seemingly glued to his feet, hypnotising 

two defenders, deftly using a team-mate 

as a decoy. His unexpected Cruyffstyle 

change of direction catches the 

referee by surprise, forcing the official 

to hop sideways. Enough is enough: the 

infuriatingly skilful craftsman is hacked 

down. Then again. And again. Three wild 

fouls, two yellow cards for the opposition 

and a couple of throw-ins later, his team 

are two minutes and 22 seconds closer 

to a vital 2-1 win. The chants of the 

crowd ring out more loudly with every 

passing second: “Olé, olé, olé, olé, Tony 

Watt, Watt, Watt.” Then comes the novel 

addendum in an exaggerated South East 

London twang, “You wot, you wot, you 

wot, you wot, you wot?” Now hobbling, 

but encouraged by his fans, Tony Watt 

of Charlton Athletic is double-footedly 

taking on the injury-time clock as well 

as Nottingham Forest. The only hoops on 

display are the red and white ones on his 

socks. The official CAFC clip of Watt v The 

Clock has become a YouTube hit, watched 

almost 400,000 times. 

The scene described above took place 

in March 2015, almost 28 months on 

from that goal; the goal which plucked 

the lad from Coatbridge-obscurity into 

the European spotlight; the goal which 

reduced Rod Stewart to tears; the goal 

which enthused commentator Ian 

Crocker to anoint the scorer as an instant 

legend; the goal which has seemingly 

become an ever-increasing-burden on 

the itinerant player’s shoulders. While 

some of his high school pals may have 

celebrated their coming of age by swaggering 

into the offy to buy booze legally 

for the first time, this precocious 18-yearold 

danced his way into the headlines: 

teenage Tony Watt – once again to quote 

Crocker – “taking his place in Celtic 

folklore” as Barcelona-giant-slayer. 

The question persists: is Tony Watt 

destined to follow the journeyman’s 

downhill path of other fledgling Celtic 

flair players? The list is a lengthy one: 

Andy Ritchie, Owen Archdeacon, Stevie 

Fulton, Gerry Creaney, Simon Donnelly, 

Mark Burchill, Liam Miller. All glimmered 

with early promise. Most went on to 

light up grounds for more lowly teams 

around Scotland and the rest of the UK. 

None have managed to shine as brightly 

as Kenny Dalglish or sparkle like Charlie 

Nicholas and Brian McClair. Other 

recent prospects such as James Forrest 

and Dylan McGeouch are already being 

eclipsed by a new name: 16-year-old Jack 

Aitchison, the latest to score on his debut. 


One by one, they burst onto the 

Parkhead scene as the next great 

superstar hope. Like many of those before 

him, and now another after him, Watt 

undoubtedly possesses abundant natural 

talent. 

That much was obvious from his 

two goals within five minutes of first 

appearing as a Celtic sub in April 2012, 

having signed a year before from Airdrie 

for around £100,000. But eight clubs in 

six years, including three in the second 

half of last season, might suggest that this 

former Bhoy’s gift of magic feet comes at 

a frustrating cost. 

The Brothers Grimm once wrote of 

fairy-tale princesses under a spell to 

dance all night, wearing out a pair 

of shoes every time. Whilst no slur is 

intended on Watt’s masculinity, the 

resemblance seems more than cursory. 

On the ball, he is a livewire, a look of 

passion and determination on his face. 

Yet there is somehow an air that he is not 

in control of his own destiny, condemned 

to perform his magic in one place after 

another, having to start afresh on each 

occasion. 

In a corner somewhere lies his discarded 

heap of rainbow-singing football 

boots: red and yellow and pink and 

green, purple and orange and blue. In the 

Grimm fable, the king calls for a saviour 

to solve the riddle of the princesses’ 

endless dancing, promising fame, fortune 

and choice of bride to the successful 

contender. Prince after handsome prince 

takes up the challenge without success, 

each meeting the consequence of public 

beheading. Many of Watt’s mentors and 

coaches over the past few years, having 

failed to sort out the enigma of the dancing 

footballer, have lost their heads, albeit 

in less dramatic fashion. 

One of the first to try and tame Watt’s 

talent was Dutchman Stanley Menzo. 

Despite Watt’s explosive entrance onto 

the Scottish scene, by early 2013 the 

still-teenage striker found his Celtic opportunities 

limited. 

He showed maturity and commitment 

in wanting to play regularly by agreeing 

to a season-long loan for 2013/14 at Lierse 

S.K. in Belgium, a mid-table team in the 

top division. He hit the pitch running at 

his new club, scoring on his debut within 

a couple of minutes of coming on from 

the bench. However, while his skill could 

not be questioned, both his fitness and 

temperament were. Whether through 

homesickness, culture clash or a more 

direct personality clash with team boss 

Menzo, Watt’s foray into Flanders was 

tempestuous. 

Watching on from Glasgow, Neil 

Lennon admitted that the teenager 

should apply himself better to getting into 

physical condition while simultaneously 

questioning the need for this to play out 

in public. He also noted the potential 

psychological impact of the Barcelona 

goal. “The first thing I said after the game 

that night was that I don’t want it to be a 

millstone around his neck. Because he’s 

got the talent and has the raw ingredients 

to be a really good player. He just needs to 

polish those off. He will be remembered, 

forever maybe, for that goal, but it doesn’t 

mean he can’t go on to have a good 

career.” 

Concerns over a cavalier attitude to 

training have been publicly aired by a 

succession of coaches and managers since, 

none more bluntly than Mark McGhee. 

When Watt was an unexpected inclusion 

in the Scotland squad in March this year, 

the assistant manager proclaimed that he 

would like to smack him about and given 

the chance would have sent the lad off to 

army boot camp. Does the young striker 

need this kind of tough love to bring out 

his much-vaunted potential? A team-mate 

in those earlier days at Lierse, Frédéric 

Frans, felt that Watt would benefit from 

encouragement of a more positive nature. 

He told Belgian publication Sport/Voetbal: 


The Players 

What’s up with Tony Watt? 

“He wants to feel loved, then nothing’s 

too much for him. Sometimes he was a 

bit casual in the warm-up. Coach Stanley 

Menzo put a lot of store in that so then 

there was a big clash. He was only 19 and 

if you started to shout at him, he blocked 

it out altogether. He still needs to learn to 

take criticism. But in the end it is a joint 

problem. I felt that he was sometimes 

picked up too much compared with 

others. As a coach you shouldn’t pick on 

such a boy for the slightest thing. You’re 

that much older and need to be more 

understanding sometimes.” 

Towards the end of his loan spell, Watt 

was demoted to training with the reserves 

after an outspoken and unauthorised 

interview in which he accused Menzo 

of treating him harshly and lying. On 

returning to Celtic for pre-season training 

in July 2014, Lennon was gone and his 

fate lay in a new pair of hands: those of 

former school teacher Ronnie Deila. The 

Norwegian made his mind up quickly, 

berating Watt’s commitment compared 

to recognised internationals and senior 

professionals in the squad. Without much 

ado, the Hoops accepted a bid of just 

over £1m from Standard Liège and Watt 

signed until June 2018. The forward was 

once more packing his bags for Belgium, 

swapping chips, Mars Bars and Tennent’s 

Lager for the Low Country’s frites, 

chocolat and Trappist beer. 

In signing for Standard, Watt fell into 

the clutches of multi-millionaire Belgian 

businessman Roland Duchâtelet, who 

had recently undertaken a pan-European 

spending spree to acquire a network of 

football clubs: Carl Zeiss Jena in Germany, 

Újpest in Hungary, Alcorcon in Spain and 

Charlton Athletic in England. As well 

as Standard Liège, he also maintained 

a firm interest in another Belgian club, 

Sint-Truiden. 

Watt’s trademark is to make an instant 

impact. He achieved it on cue in Liège, 

winning a decisive penalty within 

minutes of stepping onto the pitch as a 

substitute. Just as predictably, the Scot’s 

flying start faltered. This time Watt 

seemed to be getting on well with his 

head coach, Guy Luzon, but Duchâtelet 

is not a patient man. Standard normally 

graced the top positions in the table but 

were struggling in the middle of the 

Pro League. The Israeli boss was soon 

packed off. Watt put up a message on 

social media wishing his brief mentor 

well, saying he’d learnt more from Luzon 

in two months than from anyone else 

in two years which can be taken as a 

swipe at both Menzo and Lennon. After 

a couple of goals in 13 appearances, Watt, 

too, was on the move once more, this 

time to the bright lights of London – or 

a rather mundane suburban corner of 

it at Charlton. The signing on 6 January 

2015 was announced as permanent at 

an undisclosed fee. Duchâtelet, owner 

of both selling club and buying club, 

presumably enjoyed negotiating that with 

himself. 

More upheaval followed. Within days of 

the Scot’s arrival in England, Duchâtelet 

sacked the manager, the Belgian Bob 

Peeters. His replacement was a welcome 

familiar face for Watt: Guy Luzon. Perhaps 

the Belgian owner had this masterplan 

in mind all along when he moved Watt 

across the Channel. Rumours had surfaced 

a couple of weeks earlier from Israel 

that Luzon had the Charlton role in his 

sights, given credibility by the fact he was 

still under contract within Duchâtelet’s 

network. 

Despite the fans’ cynicism at the appearance 

of another Liège cast-off – he 

was the fourth player in that season 

to take that route into the Charlton 

squad – Watt’s ability to stick the ball to 

his brightly-coloured boot, waltz past 

defenders and shoot into the top corner 

soon endeared him to the Valley faithful. 

Perhaps fate was finally conspiring for 

the magic feet to find a more long-term 



home? Watt turned in a string of 

man-of-the-match performances as the 

Addicks pulled clear of relegation danger. 

Simmering unrest among fans at the 

club’s lack of ambition, bizarre management 

methods and failure to communicate 

gradually cooled down. 

Watt seemed fit and in-form as the 

2015/16 season dawned so it came as a 

surprise to find him missing from the 

Charlton starting line-up for the first 

match of the season, against London 

rivals QPR. Word soon circulated that 

he’d been dropped to the bench for 

disciplinary reasons. There was talk of 

childish behaviour. The punishment had 

the desired effect: Luzon unleashed him 

in the second half and he turned his pentup 

frustration into tricks and treats with a 

goal and an assist as the Addicks toppled 

their recently-relegated neighbours. Watt 

scored in the opening three matches but 

as the autumn wore on, his form declined 

and Charlton also started to struggle. 

He fits the theoretical football business 

model of an asset Duchâtelet can buy 

WHEN WATT WAS AN 

UNEXPECTED INCLUSION IN 

THE SCOTLAND SQUAD IN, 

MARK MCGHEE PROCLAIMED 

THAT HE WOULD LIKE TO 

SMACK HIM ABOUT AND 

GIVEN THE CHANCE WOULD 

HAVE SENT THE LAD OFF TO 

ARMY BOOT CAMP 

cheaply, refine, put in the shop window 

somewhere within his network and sell 

on at a profit. However, this approach 

does not always succeed. Watt may have 

started his career as a Diamond at Airdrie 

United but several failed attempts to 

polish off his rough edges have made 

him one of the more challenging subjects 

of this Belgian experiment. He became 

more and more selfish in possession, 

head down, rarely looking for a pass or 

a team-mate, always trying to beat one 

defender too many and often losing the 

ball. His body language suggested a slump 

from cocky arrogance to self-obsession 

and, in an extraordinarily frank interview 

with Richard Cawley of the South London 

Press, his verbal language confirmed it: 

“I’ve been poor recently and I know I 

have. Huddersfield was the worst game 

of my career. If I went right then I should 

have gone left, if I went left I should have 

gone right. I got every decision wrong. 

I was poor in the Rotherham game and 

against Fulham I was terrible.” Such 

brutal honesty is rare from any sportsman 

and concerning when it remains 

unresolved. “I don’t know what’s up. I 

can’t put my finger on it and I know I can 

be so much better. It is killing me and it is 

killing the gaffer (Luzon). I can tell he is 

frustrated with how I’m playing because 

he knows I can be better.” 

His own description that when he’s good, 

he’s very, very good, but when he’s bad, 

he’s awful, would resonate with fans who 

have watched Watt over any length of 

time when he has been playing for their 

team. It’s the kind of self-awareness you 

would hope a sports psychologist or life 

coach would seize upon. Unfortunately, 

within the echo chamber of Charlton 

Athletic, his cry for help fell unheeded. 

Charlton used to be respected as a 

model club in the English league: how a 

stable approach could bring success on 

modest means under the careful stewardship 

of a manager such as Alan Curbishley. 


The Players 


Ten years on from the end of that reign 

and two years into the Duchâtelet era, 

anxiety over the intentions of the Belgian 

and his experimental network cum player 

farm approach has ballooned into full 

Hollywood horror. Despite initially trying 

to give him the benefit of the doubt, the 

vast majority of both Standard Liège and 

Addicks fans will now unhesitatingly 

describe Duchâtelet as a brooding, menacing 

and Grimm character. The fact he 

possesses a strong physical resemblance to 

Christopher Walken’s portrayal of Blofeld 

in the most recent James Bond film has 

not gone unnoticed. 

With Charlton hovering around the 

relegation zone by early November 2015, 

Duchâtelet’s axe fell once again on Luzon. 

Bizarrely, the businessman called upon 

unknown Karel Fraeye, coach of part-time 

Belgian third division club VW Hamme, 

to take over the reins of his multi-million 

pound English Championship squad. 

Fraeye was not a complete stranger to the 

South Londoners – he had been assistant 

coach for a few months at the end of 

Duchâtelet’s first season of ownership and 

he had remained on the businessman’s 

payroll ever since. Nevertheless, it seemed 

blindingly obvious to Addicks fans that he 

lacked the track record and pedigree to 

salvage the club’s season. He certainly did 

nothing to resurrect Watt’s form. The lad 

played just two games under the rookie 

coach. He was then abruptly booted out 

on loan to Cardiff. New club, new country, 

new manager equals new sparkle from 

the rough diamond. One of his early 

man-of-the-match performances was 

away at Bolton, prompting the Trotters’ 

manager Neil Lennon to spill the beans 

that Charlton had been touting the Scot 

to all and sundry, “I could have had Tony 

Watt – Charlton offered him to us and we 

couldn’t afford to pay him,” he told The 

Bolton News. “His wages weren’t massive. 

And if Tony would have been playing on 

the other side of the pitch today we would 

have won the game.” 

Back in south east London, debate raged 

among fans over the enigma of Watt 

and the folly or otherwise of peddling 

him to league rivals. “Madness to get rid 

of him. He can do things with the ball 

I can only dream of,” said one. “He’s a 

lazy know-it-all and not a team player,” 

came the counter attack. “He was really 

nice when I met him in McDonalds 

after a match once,” gossiped another, 

rather revealingly. Watt does not look 

overweight – indeed, he once ripped 

off his shirt when playing for Lierse 

to show-off his toned torso. However, 

evidence from multiple sources would 

suggest that he is not a hard trainer and 

not strict in his adherence to personal 

nutrition plans and fitness regimes. True, 

he doesn’t goal hang and shirk, often 

dropping back into midfield to collect 

the ball and demonstrating a sharp turn 

of pace over short distances. But, in the 

fans’ vernacular, he is usually blowing 

out of his arse well before half-time. 

He’s also rather adept at the dying swan 

act, reacting to a defender’s clatter by 

WATT’S TRADEMARK IS TO 

MAKE AN INSTANT IMPACT. 

HE ACHIEVED IT ON CUE IN 

LIÈGE, WINNING A DECISIVE 

PENALTY WITHIN MINUTES OF 

STEPPING ONTO THE PITCH 

AS A SUBSTITUTE. JUST AS 

PREDICTABLY, THE SCOT’S 

FLYING START FALTERED 



hobbling and clutching at one or other 

of his legs. This can be infuriating for 

spectators and for team-mates alike. Is it a 

diversionary tactic to lull the opposition? 

Is he really struggling from a knock? Or is 

he simply desperate for a breather? 

Under Russell Slade at Cardiff, Watt 

appeared to find a coach who could bring 

out his brio with more consistency. He 

looked set to make a permanent escape 

from the Charlton and Duchâtelet web, a 

deal already agreed in principle at around 

the figure originally paid to Celtic to 

acquire him for Standard Liège. Then the 

football gods made a last-ditch tackle: 

Cardiff were placed under a transfer 

embargo for breach of Financial Fair Play 

rules. The deal was off. Watt, reluctantly, 

returned to The Valley. The club had sunk 

into greater turmoil. Fraeye had departed 

ignominiously, having gathered two wins 

in 14 games. José Riga, Belgian of course, 

was the latest familiar face in charge. 

He had been Duchâtelet’s first Charlton 

appointment, successor to Chris Powell 

less than two years before. Despite a 

solid performance in securing the team’s 

Championship status in that first spell, 

Riga was not retained by the maverick 

owner, who preferred to give a younger 

man the chance – Bob Peeters, the one 

briefly in the driver’s seat when Watt first 

boarded the SE7 bus. No wonder fans call 

it a merry-go-round. 

Riga gave Watt a start for the Addicks at 

home to Blackburn and the forward put 

on a lively show in a 1-1 draw; enough 

to remind Rovers’ boss Paul Lambert 

of his talents, it transpired. No sooner 

had fellow Scottish forward Jordan 

Rhodes completed an £11m move to 

Middlesbrough than Watt headed to the 

North West, signing on loan at Ewood 

Park for the rest of the season. Once 

again, the prospect of a permanent deal 

was on the table. Riga, facing serious 

challenges in rebuilding a demoralised 

squad, had shown little inclination to take 

Watt under his wing. While recognising 

his quality, he questioned his will to 

commit to Charlton’s cause. Watt’s side 

of the story is that he already felt that he 

was being forced out at the time of the 

loan to Cardiff and that his relationship 

with the club’s senior management had 

broken down. He would not be the first 

to accuse the CEO or owner of broken 

promises. His form at Blackburn was not 

mercurial, with two goals in 11 games, but 

perhaps the itchy feet finally had a chance 

to settle down, a little closer to home and 

under watchful eyes. With Lambert as his 

club manager and Strachan and McGhee 

showing a keen interest, he was being 

taken in hand by some of the grandees 

of the Scottish game. The Scotland 

manager, with a hint of desperation, even 

proclaimed that Watt could be Scotland’s 

Lewandowski or Ibrahimovic. 

Then fate once again took a turn for 

the cursed: a couple of weeks after his 

12-minute full international debut, 

serious injury struck for the first time 

in Watt’s career. Blackburn packed him 

back to his contracted club, the relegation 

madhouse of Charlton Athletic. He found 

a club now viewed by its own protesting 

fans, sympathetic opposition fans, 

concerned past players and managers and 

the media as a laughing stock / basketcase 

/ soap opera (no need to delete as all 

are appropriate). Whilst others scrambled 

for the lifeboats, the Addicks sunk 

inevitably from the Championship into 

League One. 

Watt played no part; his groin injury 

required an operation, prematurely 

ending his season. At 22, he’s not quite 

in the last chance saloon but he does 

find himself at a crossroads with a lot 

to prove. So what’s next? Russell Slade, 

who clicked with Watt at Cardiff, has 

picked up the management chalice at The 

Valley. Perhaps he was looking forward to 

the striker’s tricks and skills terrorising 

defenders from the likes of Northampton 

Town, Fleetwood and Gillingham. But the 


The Players 


By Heather McInlay 

Charlton hierarchy had their own ideas, 

not keen to retain an expensive asset 

on their unhealthy League One balance 

sheet. A season-long loan deal has been 

sealed: now his home is where the Hearts 

are. The young maverick will undoubtedly 

come under much closer scrutiny back 

in Scotland, both on and off the pitch. 

On the other hand, he is back close to 

family, friends and girlfriend, providing a 

more stable support network. Meanwhile, 

having been tried for size by a whole host 

of managers, the hero’s mantle transfers 

to Robbie Nielson. Will the Jambos’ boss 

be the one who finally solves the riddle of 

the dancing footballer? 

Curve-ball time. When Andy Murray 

first emerged as a young professional, the 

teenage tennis starlet clearly possessed 

exceptional skill. He was also prone 

to public displays of moodiness, selfcentred 

outbursts and physical cramps. 

Even many years on, having reached 

the pinnacle of his sport, these traits 

resurface now and then when things 

are not going to plan. Murray can’t 

completely change his character but we 

are forgiving because he has a string of 

achievements as testament to realised 

talent. He continues to work hard and 

improve. He’s got a weighty monument to 

his success in the shape of a golden post 

box in his Dunblane home town. Watt, 

on the other hand, has a brief film of a 

Europe-shattering goal, an ephemeral 

moment, a few fleeting seconds. 

It’s easy to think of a footballer as a 

pawn on the chessboard of the beautiful 

game, plucked from one squad, plonked 

down into another. Watt’s career to date 

has certainly suffered more than most 

from that. His confidence has surely taken 

many hits with all the moving about and 

struggles to settle. At times he has been 

the victim of lousy circumstance. Having 

played this year for Duchâtelet’s Charlton, 

Vincent Tan’s Cardiff and the Venkys’ 

Blackburn, he’s better placed than most to 

tell tales about eccentric football owners. 

Yet on the pitch, he is a proactive player. 

He usually makes an immediate impact, 

often scoring on his debut and striking 

up a rapport with the crowd. His name 

is ready-made for chanting. You never 

come away from a game commenting 

that you didn’t notice Tony Watt. He never 

hides, he seeks the ball, he hogs the ball, 

sometimes he does amazing things with 

the ball. But the big questions remain 

unanswered. Will he ever do it consistently? 

Will he ever do it for Scotland, for 

a national team in dire need of firepower? 

In a Daily Record poll in March this year, 

39% thought he would become a Scotland 

star – not a majority, but a sizeable chunk 

still showing belief in his ability. 

The man from Coatbridge could do 

worse than study the dedicated and 

single-minded road to fame and fortune 

taken by Dunblane’s local hero. Watt 

is a talented 22-year-old athlete. By all 

accounts, he is a likeable person, a bit of 

a joker at times, quick-witted but also 

thoughtful and self-critical. He can be 

prone to mood swings. Andy Murray 

shares a lot of those traits. His way to 

channel things positively is to surround 

himself with trusted advisers - that 

onus, of course, is entirely on him as an 

individual sportsperson. Watt practices 

a team sport but that does not absolve 

him of personal responsibility. Could he 

be proactive off the pitch in assessing 

his own strengths and weaknesses, in 

seeking advice, maybe even finding his 

own mentor, be that a personal trainer or 

a sports psychologist? 

Perhaps it’s time that Tony Watt stopped 

itching for some club manager or coach 

to sort him out, stopped itching for it 

all to click into place in the right squad, 

stopped itching for some spell to be lifted. 

There really is no valid comparison with 

the Brothers Grimm and fairy-tales of 

Dancing Princesses. Perhaps it is time 

Watt took his fate into his own hands – or 

into his own magic feet. l 


The Players 

THE CURIOUS CASE 

OF ISLAM FERUZ 

Why is it that a potentially 

supreme Scottish talent is 

destined to wither on the vine? 

By Chris Collins 

People who know about these things 

caution against exaggerated judgements 

on any sportsman in the infancy of their 

career, no matter their potential. The type 

of hyperbole that leads Stevie Fulton to 

be compared with Roberto Baggio is to be 

avoided. 

However I am going to ignore all that. 

My theory is this: had Islam Feruz stayed 

with Celtic rather than move to Chelsea 

at the age of 16 he might by now be 

Scotland’s No.10 with Gordon Strachan 

arranging his team around him. 

A disclaimer. This assertion is based 

not on the underwhelming nature of the 

last two years of his fledgling career, but 

on the testimonies of those who worked 

with Feruz between the ages of 12 and 18 

and on the incredible potential displayed 

by the adolescent player before London, 

big cars and an unfortunate disregard for 

good advice came into play. 

The waves of excitement the prodigious 

young striker created among the 

Scottish football fraternity and beyond 

as he emerged through the youth ranks 

at Celtic have receded and the dwindling 

band of observers who retain an interest 

are left wondering if he will ever showcase 

his talent at the highest level. 

As he approaches his 21st birthday, 

Feruz’s career is still in its infancy. But 

his personal narrative could fill a book. 

His story so far is one of hope and 

identity, littered with small controversies, 

unfolding on a downward arc. At this 

juncture, the inescapable conclusion is 

that a potentially supreme Scottish talent 

is destined to wither on the vine. 

So far has his star fallen that the perception 

of him amongst football observers 

in this country oscillates somewhere 

between unfavourable and indifferent. For 

a player who ran the show at under-17 

international level when aged only 14, 

this is unfathomable. Aged 16, Feruz was 

Scotland’s youngest ever under 21 cap. He 

was coveted by English Premier League 

clubs and many major European clubs 

from the age of 12. 

Those who saw him break through 

believe that had he followed the path 

laid out for him at Celtic he would be on 

the cusp of national hero status by now, 

an asylum seeker contributing to the 

sporting and cultural life of the nation 

at the highest level. Yet in his truncated 

loan spell at Hibs last season he managed 

just six substitute appearances. Is there a 

coherent explanation? 

We begin in Somalia, the country of 

Feruz’s birth. Today, the East African 


The Players 

The curious case of Islam Feruz 

nation is inching towards something 

resembling stability. The chaos and 

violent disorder of the 1990s has largely 

dissipated although it ranks low on most 

quality of life indicators. 

Back in 1995, this nation of 10 million 

people was suffering from the worst 

excesses of a civil war which had begun 

four years earlier. Vicious factional fighting 

between armed groups had resulted 

in copious bloodshed; the country was 

a failed state with no central authority; 

regional control was exercised through 

barbarity. Even the United Nations 

seemed to have given up on Somalia, 

withdrawing from the country altogether. 

For most Somalis, the only hope for a 

decent life was to leave. 

Islam Salieh Feruz was born into these 

unfavourable circumstances on 10th 

September that year. There is little information 

about his very early life though 

we know Feruz was born to mother Aisha 

who had an additional three children to 

protect. Two of his grandparents had died 

in the civil war. He and his family moved 

from Somalia to Yemen when he was 

five years old – they may also have spent 

some time in Tanzania – before eventually 

coming to Castlemilk in Glasgow. 

The extensive post-war housing scheme 

on the south side of Glasgow, referred 

to by Glaswegians as Chateau Lait, has 

produced the likes of Alan Brazil, Ray 

Houghton, Jim McInally, Andy McLaren, 

and more recently the Irish internationals 

Aiden McGeady and James McCarthy. 

By the age of 11 Feruz was representing 

Celtic’s under-14 team with distinction. 

John Sludden, his youth coach at the club 

for three years and now the manager of 

East Stirlingshire, likened his ability at 

that age to that of Paul McStay and Charlie 

Nicholas. Sludden wanted to nurture and 

protect what he saw as a unique talent. 

Others had differing agendas. Agents 

from England and Europe were beginning 

to offer unsolicited gifts to the family. 

Celtic kept a watchful eye on such matters 

but there were other issues. Feruz was 

already on the radar of youth justice 

agencies around the city after various 

scrapes and misdemeanours. Perhaps it 

was just part and parcel of a young foreign 

boy assimilating to a new language, 

country and culture. It caused those in the 

youth set-up some concern and certainly 

spoke to a personality unaccustomed to 

deference. 

Five thousand miles from Somalia, on 

the day of Feruz’s birth in 1995, Tommy 

Burns was guiding his Celtic team to a 

3-2 victory over Aberdeen at Pittodrie. 

To the youngster’s good fortune, the pair 

would get to know one another because 

of Burns’ role in the Celtic youth set-up 

the mid 2000s. 

When Feruz and his family were 

threatened with deportation back to 

Somalia in 2007, Burns’ intervention was 

critical. He personally lobbied immigration 

officials on the family’s behalf, citing 

the contribution Feruz would make to 

Scottish sporting culture over the next 

few decades. The family were successful 

AGED 16, FERUZ WAS 

SCOTLAND’S YOUNGEST 

EVER UNDER 21 CAP. HE 

WAS COVETED BY ENGLISH 

PREMIER LEAGUE CLUBS 

AND MANY MAJOR 

EUROPEAN CLUBS FROM THE 

AGE OF 12 



and became naturalized UK citizens. The 

club moved them from Castlemilk to 

upmarket accommodation in the Charing 

Cross area of Glasgow. Feruz was attending 

Hillhead High School, and he became 

the first player to represent Scotland at 

youth level under new school qualifications 

rule, a home nations agreement 

ratified by FIFA which states that anyone 

who has been educated in the country for 

five years is eligible for the national team. 

The Celtic hierarchy, youth coaches, 

and Tommy Burns in particular had put 

everything in place for Feruz to thrive. 

Feruz left Celtic shortly after his 16th 

birthday. The club received £300,000. 

Then manager Neil Lennon went on 

record to say: “We have done everything 

in our power to keep the player and done 

more than enough to make him feel at 

home here. He does have other people in 

the background who are advising him. 

My take on it is that they are advising him 

wrongly but we seem to be powerless in 

that situation” 

Subsequent comments made by the 

player after he had moved to Chelsea 

about this period of his life explain 

1why Feruz is not exactly remembered 

fondly by Celtic fans. 

In 2012 Feruz tweeted: “Celtic did f*** 

all with me staying in this country, get 

your f****** facts right and stop going 

with the story you read in the papers.” 

The quote prompted a rebuttal from 

Gerry Collins, ex-Partick Thistle manager 

and lifelong friend of Tommy Burns: 

“It’s disgusting what the boy has said 

and shows a terrible lack of respect for 

everything Tommy did for him and his 

family. He hasn’t achieved anything yet in 

the game and I can tell him this, whatever 

he does go on to achieve in football will 

be down to Tommy Burns and he should 

be eternally grateful. 

“I remember Tommy telling me he had 

discovered a gem in Feruz but the family 

were facing deportation to a war zone 

JOHN SLUDDEN, HIS YOUTH 

COACH AT THE CLUB FOR 

THREE YEARS LIKENED HIS 

ABILITY AT THAT AGE TO 

THAT OF PAUL MCSTAY AND 

CHARLIE NICHOLAS 

and the issue became something Tommy 

fought tooth and nail to prevent. Football 

was a secondary issue, it was an act of 

humanity and compassion from Tommy, 

which was typical of the man.” 

Billy Stark, who delivered the eulogy at 

Burns’ funeral and was at the time the 

Scotland Under-21 manager was similarly 

disappointed at Feruz’ expletive laden 

tweet: “It’s hard to put into context the 

lack of gratitude this kid shows with these 

comments, it’s very sad.” 

Feruz was active on social media gloating 

about his role in the reaching the FA 

Youth Cup final with Chelsea, taking a not 

so veiled dig at the club that developed 

and nurtured him in the process: “Here’s 

a fact for you tweeps. 6-7 years at Celtic, 

n never reached a cup final. One year at 

Chelsea, what happens ??” 

Feruz regularly posted provocative 

remarks on social media in his early days 

at Chelsea, one of which included him 

sporting a Rangers shirt. His relationship 

with Celtic was now non exisitent and 

fans of the club who remained aware of 

his career were rarely to be heard wishing 

him well. It wasn’t always like this 

though. 


The Players 

The curious case of Islam Feruz 

There was a time when Feruz was hailed 

as the next Celtic and Scotland hero and 

for valid reasons. It is possible the majority 

of football watchers in Scotland have yet 

to see Feruz play, either in the flesh or 

on television. He never played in Celtic’s 

first team except for an appearance in a 

Tommy Burns memorial match aged 14. 

He is yet to make the breakthrough at 

Chelsea and was unimpressive in short 

loan spells at Blackpool and Hibs. His 

potential can only really be appraised on 

the basis of his reputation as youngster at 

Celtic, his Scotland youth international 

career and his appearances for Chelsea in 

the FA Youth Cup. 

However as a teenager he was that good. 

In the 2009 Under-16 Victory Shield match 

against Wales, 90 per cent of the half-time 

and full-time analysis on Sky Sports was 

devoted to Islam Feruz, who was the 

youngest player on the pitch and three 

years younger than many of his opponents. 

Despite his diminutive stature – he still 

measures only 5ft 4in at the age of 20 – he 

bulldozed his way around Ninian Park that 

evening, his temples moist with sweat on 

a cold night, felling opponents like skittles 

and harassing players into mistakes. He 

displayed his full repertoire of skills and 

feints with craft, guile and precision, completing 

his performance with a sublime 

chip over the Welsh goalkeeper for the 

winning goal. It was a startling demonstration 

of his potential. Anyone watching on 

TV that night would have heard comparisons 

with Wayne Rooney being aired for 

the first time. To this observer his style was 

more reminiscent of Sergio Aguero; Feruz 

looked every inch the intelligent frontman 

– well balanced, razor sharp, able to shoot 

with either foot with no advance warning 

and ice cool in front of goal. 

Fans in Scotland have seen their fair 

share of exceptional talents over the 

last 20 years but for the most part they 

have arrived from foreign shores. Purists 

long for the day another Johnstone, 

Cooper, Dalglish or Baxter will emerge. 

It explains partially why even those who 

did not achieve at a high level but played 

with skill and imagination – think Chic 

Charnley or Andy Ritchie – are revered 

as cult figures. More often than not, we 

bear witness to honest and adequate 

professionals, so when a genuine natural 

talent emerges, it quickens the pulse. 

From an early age Feruz looked like one 

of those players with the rare ability to 

soar above tactical orthodoxy at any level 

of the game. His credentials were further 

asserted with a perfect hat trick (left foot, 

right foot, header) in Scotland Under-19’s 

game against Switzerland. Yet again, 

playing years above his natural age group, 

Feruz was by common consent a superstar 

in the making, with one English Premier 

league scout remarking to Billy Stark that 

every serious club in Europe was monitoring 

him. At 17, Feruz was a potent blend 

of talent and purpose: short frame, quick 

feet, a mix of intelligent positioning and 

IN THE 2009 UNDER-16 

VICTORY SHIELD MATCH 

AGAINST WALES, 90 PER 

CENT OF THE HALF-TIME AND 

FULL-TIME ANALYSIS ON SKY 

SPORTS WAS DEVOTED TO 

ISLAM FERUZ, WHO WAS THE 

YOUNGEST PLAYER ON THE 

PITCH AND THREE YEARS 

YOUNGER THAN MANY OF 

HIS OPPONENTS. 



off-the-cuff spontaneity. Goalscoring to 

him seemed as natural as breathing. 

In 2012 his two goals for Chelsea in the 

FA Youth Cup final, where he played 

with vigour and skill throughout, further 

bolstered his reputation. Having already 

scored a blistering 25-yard goal at Old 

Trafford in the semi-final and twice 

against Nottingham Forest in the quarters, 

he was the star of the tournament, 

yet to celebrate his 17th birthday in a 

competition full of 19-year-old players. 

It was soon after he made his debut for 

Chelsea on a pre-season tour of the Far 

East that things began to stagnate. His 

loan spell at Blackpool was probably best 

remembered for an amusing if thoroughly 

unprofessional tweet he sent after a 

coming on as a sub in a 7-2 defeat to 

Watford at Vicarage Road. “This team take 

more kick offs than corners” he tweeted 

just hours after the loss. Unsurprisingly, 

it went down like a lead balloon with the 

Blackpool hierarchy. 

There is very little to say about his sojourns 

to clubs in Russia and Kazakhstan 

– for good reasons. Feruz went AWOL 

after one day at the Kazakh club’s training 

camp in Turkey, and returned to London 

after only 48 hours in Russia. In between 

times he irritated SFA officials by openly 

discussing his desire to play in the African 

Nations Cup, hinting that he could be eligible 

to play for several countries because 

of family connections. 

By 2015 he was no longer in the frame to 

represent Scotland at any level, no further 

forward in breaking through at Chelsea 

and underwhelming audiences when 

he turned up for various trials and loan 

spells in the UK and abroad. One positive 

detail from this disappointing period did 

emerge however: Feruz had purchased 

himself an £80,000 Porsche. 

At the time of writing there has been a 

warrant issued for his arrest. It is reported 

that Feruz failed to turn up at Glasgow 

Sheriff Court to answer charges of dangerous 

driving and conspiracy to pervert the 

course of justice by giving a false name 

when he was stopped in his Porsche. 

If Feruz is looking for positive sporting 

examples he could do worse than look 

at the experience of his fellow Somalianborn 

athlete Mo Farah. From late 2005, 

Farah lived in a house in London with elite 

Kenyan runners. “The Kenyans trained 

hard and I mean really hard. At the end of 

the session I was knackered. After their 

runs they would spend 45 minutes doing 

stretches. After food, they’d sleep. In the 

afternoon they trained again, it was an 

almost monk like existence. What was I 

thinking? How could I ever hope to beat 

the Kenyans in a race if I wasn’t taking my 

career as seriously as they did? It was like 

a switch had been turned on inside my 

head, I knew I would have to work even 

harder than before.” 

You hope a similar switch is flicked for 

Feruz before too long. To be fair, Alan 

Stubbs remarked on his talent and positive 

personality as his loan deal at Hibs was 

cut short last season and there is no clear 

evidence of a lack of training ground 

application. Murmurs about his general 

attitude have always been present however 

and his tendency to attract trouble, ungracious 

comments about Celtic’s role in his 

development, the entourage of advisors 

and propensity to flaunt his lifestyle on 

social media do not augur well. 

It would be a pity if Feruz’s explosion 

on to the international youth scene comes 

to represent the high point of his career. 

It should have been an opening chapter. 

History is littered with spoiled canvasses, 

unfinished symphonies and abandoned 

novels and if Feruz ever has cause to sift 

through the debris of a journeyman career 

he may live to regret his lack of focus. It is 

still within his gift to redefine his destiny. 

He may yet take a delayed, circuitous route 

to the top. Having followed his career 

from the outset, I certainly hope so. l 

 


The Players 

NO REGRETS 

From turning down Rangers 

to playing with God, via naked 

sauna parties in Helsinki and 

kangaroo courts in Swindon, 

Grant Smith has seen it all. And 

his story is far from over 

By Paul Brown 

They say Finns can be standoffish. A 

little cold. As he sits sweating in a little 

wooden sauna somewhere in the Finnish 

countryside, surrounded by naked girls, 

Grant Smith is beginning to disagree. 

It’s a far cry from the days when he was 

first trying to make it as a footballer, leaving 

Rangers to sign for Reading. But it’s 

as good a place to start as any with a man 

who’s had more clubs than most have in a 

lifetime, who has travelled half the world, 

and who is still only 36. 

Born in Irvine, North Ayrshire to dad 

Gordon, the controversial former Scottish 

Football Association chief executive, 

and mum Marlene, Smith ended up in 

Finland because he wasn’t getting a game 

any more at Dundee United under Craig 

Levein. He was offered a trial at Kotka, a 

city with a population of around 50,000 

in the south of a country known for its 

forests, lakes and Father Christmas. There 

he was spotted by former Tangerines striker 

Mixu Paatelainen, who was manager of 

Finnish club TPS at the time. “He was like: 

‘What are you doing here?’” says Smith. 

“He’d seen me play for Dundee United 

against Celtic about a month before. I told 

him I hadn’t signed anywhere yet and 24 

hours later I got a phonecall saying there 

was a game and they needed a midfielder, 

did I want to come? I said yes. I went to 

Helsinki and ended up signing for HJK. 

They were the biggest club in Finland and 

they were in Europe.” 

Known simply as Klubbi, which 

translates literally as The Club, HJK were 

and still are the powerhouse of Finnish 

football, with 27 championship titles 

to their name. Smith signed up in 2007 

during a rare barren spell when they went 

six years without winning the league. 

They finished seventh the season he was 

there, four places behind Paatelainen’s 

TPS, and Smith says he probably never 

played in front of a crowd bigger than 

10,000. But he loved every minute, 

despite initially feeling that he was being 

given the cold shoulder. 

“I loved it. And I loved Helsinki,” he 

says. “It probably wasn’t the best time to 

live there, from March until November. 

In the winter months it’s freezing. But I 

enjoyed it. There were a lot of good boys 

there at the time who went on to have 

good careers. Pukki went on to play for 

Sevilla before going to Celtic, and one of 

my team-mates was Markus Halsti, who 

ended up at DC United. 

“Helsinki was great in the summer. It 

even has a beach, which I didn’t know 

when I signed. Finns can be a bit strange. 

Scottish people are the opposite. They 

can’t do enough for you. It was funny 

because when I first got there, there was 

a holiday weekend and all the boys were 

talking about it in training saying they 

were going away, and they asked me what 

I was doing and I said: ‘Nothing’. But not 

one of them actually said well why don’t 

you come with us or something. I was 


thinking: ‘For fuck’s sake, what’s going on 

here?’ But they expect you to ask. It’s just 

how they are. Finnish people are kinda 

standoffish but once you make a friend 

you have a friend for life. After that it was 

fine and I used to get invited and stuff.” 

Once he’d made friends, it was in 

Helsinki that Smith was introduced to 

Finland’s sauna culture. “We had a couple 

of team nights out,” he says, “and we’d 

be in a private sports bar watching the 

Champions League, and there’d be a 

sauna in there and people would just walk 

around in their towels! It was strange. 

“It was a bit better when we went to 

people’s summer cottages and there were 

girls there. But it was strange with just 

the guys. The few days I spent at Kotka 

there was a sauna night, a kind of team 

bonding thing for all the players. They 

were just telling stories and getting drunk 

in this sauna with a splash pool and stuff. 

I kinda got a feeling for it early on. During 

midsummer we were in a city in the 

south of Finland, a party city and I met up 

with a girl and she said do I want to come 

and meet her friends, so I said okay. There 

were four girls and me and another guy I 

knew, in their summer cottage, and suddenly 

they’re like: ‘Let’s go for a sauna’ 

and they’re all getting naked and stuff. So 

we were like: ‘Ok, no problem!’ I’d never 

seen anything like it before. Finnish girls 

are pretty open, if you know what I mean. 

“The only thing was we didn’t really 

have a good team. They were playing me 

out of position, as more of a left winger, 

when I was more of a central midfielder. 

We didn’t get going and there were a few 

boys coming to the end of their contracts. 

It made it difficult. But I loved my time 

there, looking back on it. The summer. It 

was a good place. I was seeing a Finnish 

girl for about two and half years as well.” 

Fast forward a few months and Smith is 

sitting in the directors’ box at Goodison 

Park next to injured Everton defender Phil 

Jagielka, a good friend from his Sheffield 

United days. He is not happy. It’s late on 

in the 2008/09 season, a campaign in 

which he started just one game, and his 

life is about to take a strange twist. 

Approximately 12 months earlier, Smith 

had been a key part of a Carlisle team 

which lost in the League One play-offs in 

heartbreaking style. Leading their semi final 

with Leeds 2-1 after an away win at Elland 

Road, it all went badly wrong in the return 

leg. Jonathan Howson scored early to pull 

Leeds level on aggregate, before waiting 

until the 90th minute to hit the winner. 

Wembley for Leeds. Heartbreak for Carlisle. 

The beginning of the end for Smith. 

He wouldn’t play another full 90 

minutes for the club again, making just 

three more appearances for new boss 

Gregg Abbott, and by the time he ended up 

at Goodison as a guest of Jagielka he was 

desperate for something new. Smith had 

already played for 14 clubs by this point. 

He would go on to play for four more. 

But a chance meeting with a man named 

Graham Arnold that day on Merseyside 

would take him to the other side of the 

world, and ultimately help lead him to a 

whole new career as a football agent. 

“Jags is one of my best mates,” Smith 

explains. “He was injured and we were in 

one of the boxes. Tim Cahill was at Everton 

at the time and there was a guy in there, a 

typical Australian, casual T-shirt and a pair 

of jeans. We got talking to him and he was 

coaching the Australian national team! He 

was chatting away and I wasn’t playing 

at Carlisle. I was trying to get out of my 

contract and it was coming to the end of 

the season. 

“The year before we’d been beaten by 

Leeds. And this guy, he’d seen that game, 

because there were Australian guys at 

Leeds, and he said: ‘Oh I remember you. 

You’re left-footed aren’t you? There are no 

left-footed boys in Australia, I could get 

you out there.’” 

Smith was interested. But as with so 

much of his 13-year journeyman career 

 


The Players 

No regrets 

as a player, it would be far from simple. 

Arnold told him to keep himself fit, and 

in an attempt to leave Carlisle he went 

for a trial in Singapore. “I wanted to see 

the world,” he recalls. “I went over and 

it was a big mass trial thing where clubs 

watched you playing 11-a-side games. But 

it was terrible, a really poor league, with 

worse pitches. The money wasn’t great 

either. I think I had two offers but it never 

came to anything.” Instead, he ended up 

training with an old friend at non-league 

Droylsden, and even played for them 

in a friendly the day before he flew out 

to Australia to sign for former Rangers 

midfielder Ian Ferguson, the manager of 

North Queensland Fury – where he’d end 

up playing with Robbie Fowler, or ‘God’, 

as he’s known to Liverpool fans. 

“Each club had five visa spots,” he 

explains. “But they had four or five 

cruciate injuries that season and one of 

them was a foreign boy, so I got his spot. 

They said they’d sign me until the end of 

the season. It was perfect. I loved my time 

there, playing with Robbie Fowler. It was 

a good league.” 

Like so much of Smith’s career, it 

didn’t last long. “We missed the play-offs, 

and then the club went bankrupt!” he 

explains. “That kinda screwed it all. I 

ended up at Ross County. So I went from 

about 35 degrees to about minus 50. It 

was just disgusting. It’s one of the 

reasons I ended up chucking it in!” 

Just like his time in Finland, his spell 

Down Under came as a bit of a culture 

shock. “Australians were the opposite 

of Finns,” he laughs. “Sometimes you 

wished they weren’t quite so loud and 

brash… But a lot of the guys were funny. I 

ended up having an Australian girlfriend 

as well. It was a beach culture. I loved it. 

Because it was so hot we trained at night 

or early in the morning. My day would be 

training at night and then we’d all go for 

dinner, all the single boys, and we’d be 

out all night and have a lie-in and go to 

“I HAD SO MANY CLUBS IT’S 

EASY TO LOSE COUNT. MY 

WIKIPEDIA PAGE EVEN HAS A 

FEW ADDED I NEVER REALLY 

PLAYED FOR” 

the beach. It was a great lifestyle. 

“It was good playing with Robbie. But 

his wife and kid didn’t really take to it 

over there and they came home. He was 

on his own and you know what’s it like 

– a Scouser and a Glaswegian – we used 

to hang about together. We spent a lot of 

time together. It was a dangerous combination! 

But we had a good time. We were 

stressing too though because you know 

you’re not going to be there long, and 

there was always talk of the club having 

money problems. He could still play. He 

still had it. He was playing every game. I 

played with plenty of good young players 

who went on to have decent careers like 

Danny Graham at Carlisle. But as far 

as someone you play with that you just 

know is going to score, Robbie is up there, 

one of the best ever. Even in training his 

finishing was top class.” 

Fowler would have more of an impact 

on Smith’s career than he realised. He fell 

out of love with football at Ross County 

and started taking his coaching badges, 

looking for a new career in the game. 

“I was coaching the 15s at Rangers,” he 

remembers. “A few of them were asking 

me about agents and I was giving them 

advice about it, and then one of them 

said: ‘Have you never thought about 

doing it?’ A kid called Wladimir Weiss, a 

Slovakian, came to Rangers and I started 


By Paul Brown 

helping him out. Then I played a little bit 

for Airdrie because they’d let me look 

into being an agent on the side. But once 

I got my licence you’re not allowed to be 

affiliated with a club so I had to leave.” 

It was here that Fowler came in with 

an idea. “I actually started my first agency 

with Robbie,” Smith says. “He just said: 

‘Why don’t we start one?’ But he wanted 

to go into coaching so he did that instead. 

I’ve been on my own since then. Looking 

back now on my career as a player, I don’t 

really have regrets. I never stayed long at 

one club. But everything I did, it’s helping 

me in the job I have now. The connections 

I’ve got, players I’ve played with. There’s 

not many people I don’t know. 

“I’m not married. I suppose all the 

moving around made it difficult. My 

Finnish girlfriend lived over here for a bit. I 

always thought I’d go back to Finland but it 

never really happened. Then an Australian 

girlfriend, the same thing happened with 

her. She came over here in October or 

November and it was just stinkingly dark 

and depressing. It was summer in Australia 

and I just couldn’t make her do it. Things 

happen you know. It’s probably easier to get 

a girlfriend in Glasgow now.” 

Smith also ventured into a project called 

Starsboots, billed as football’s version of 

ebay, a website devoted to selling boots 

and gloves worn by current players, with 

a contribution from the proceeds going to 

charity. Fowler and Jagielka were among 

those who donated. But the company’s 

Twitter account has been dormant since 

2012 and its website is no longer in use. 

For now, Smith is concentrating all his 

talents on representing players rather 

than selling their gear. 

Looking back, the one regret Smith 

owns up to is the way he left Swindon 

Town. He spent two seasons there after 

signing from Sheffield United in 2003, 

where he’d played some of his best 

football under Neil Warnock. At Swindon 

he played for Andy King, a man he once 

described as “a poor man-manager who 

held grudges”. King played him at right 

back in a League Cup tie against Leeds, 

who were then in the Premier League, a 

game in which goalkeeper Paul Robinson 

scored the winner from a corner in the last 

minute. Much later, Smith one day found 

himself in Robinson’s house, where he saw 

a big picture of that goal mounted on the 

wall. He was in it, cowering somewhere 

underneath the goalscorer. His relationship 

with King soured when he was fined 

for being sent off against Notts County in 

an FA Cup replay at Meadow Lane in 2004. 

In a later interview, Smith said: “We had 

a kangaroo court and even though Kingy 

admitted it was a dive by the other guy, he 

fined me and said they wouldn’t appeal. I 

wasn’t that bothered as I was suspended 

for Boxing Day so I enjoyed my Christmas 

Day off.” 

He still feels he left under a cloud 

though. “The only regret I probably have is 

leaving Swindon,” he tells me. “But at the 

time, they were struggling and they offered 

me less money than I was on, a one-year 

contract because they were struggling for 

money. Bristol City were offering me two 

years, good money and they were going 

to be pushing for the championship. 

Swindon went down the next season.” 

Looking back, it was probably the right 

decision. But then Grant Smith’s story 

is all about making the right decisions, 

all the way back to his early days at 

Rangers. “I didn’t really want to sign for 

Rangers because it was too hard to break 

through at the time,” he says now. He 

went on trial at Wycombe instead because 

manager John Gregory was a friend of his 

dad’s, and got spotted by Tommy Burns 

at Reading, who signed him to his first 

professional contract. The rest, as they say, 

is history. “I had so many clubs it’s easy 

to lose count,” Smith says. “My Wikipedia 

page even has a few added I never really 

played for.” Apart from the phantom few 

on his online profile, you get the feeling 

he left his mark on every single one. l 

 



Obsessions 

‘HOW THE HELL 

DO YOU GET RID 

OF THREE DAVE 

BOWMANS?’ 

A reformed football stickercollecting 

addict considers some 

of life’s great imponderables. 


Illustration by Mark Waters 

The ringing of the school bell was 

the signal for the day’s trading to get 

underway. The goods would be removed 

from the pockets of grey trousers or coats; 

sometimes held together with a rubber 

band, sometimes not. Others would be 

liberated from their precarious existence 

in bags beside jotters wrapped in brown 

parcel paper or wallpaper discards. The 

trading invariably took place outdoors 

under the shelter of the overhanging roof 

where huddles of hagglers sparked up the 

day’s transactions. In the background, the 

red blaze pitch, so often the scene of great 

ebbing and flowing frenzies to which 

a football was almost incidental, stood 

empty. If there was any desperation in 

the air it probably had its roots in a 

variation on this problem: How the hell 

do you get rid of three Dave Bowmans? 

 


Obessions 

Three David Bowmans 

It was time to swap football stickers. 

The ethos in the playground was as much 

Berlin black market as Wall Street stock 

market. What was involved was a form 

of haggling with your contemporaries 

with few agreed rules or conventions in 

place to shape the whole thing. One such 

convention was that the run-of-the-mill 

stickers, that is those featuring football 

players, were intrinsically less valuable 

than so-called shineys. These were the 

sought-after stickers featuring club 

badges superimposed on a shimmering, 

hologram-like background. 

The effect of finding one of these rarities 

when shuffling through a packet of 

stickers was profound and enough to give 

even the badges of clubs you nominally 

despised or considered inferior a certain 

attractiveness. Unusual badges like those 

of Dunfermline appeared even more distinct. 

Questions about those squirrels on 

the Kilmarnock badge entered your head 

for the first time. Thus was the power 

of the shiney. If you had one or more of 

these in your doubles collection you knew 

you would hold the whip-hand in trades 

and there would be ample opportunity to 

indulge in the sort of cruelties at which 

children excel. Or to put it another way, 

you could adopt an imperial stance, like 

Britain after the Opium Wars, and impose 

your will on lesser classmates who 

didn’t have the sticker. It’s little wonder 

one school in West Yorkshire reportedly 

banned children from swapping stickers 

in the playground because doing so was 

resulting in fights. The school strenuously 

denied the claims of mollycoddling but 

I’d take little convincing such a thing had 

happened somewhere, sometime. 

Another widely recognised convention, 

although one that was prey to the full 

forces of subjectivity and partisanship, 

was that stickers of famous players 

were of more value than those featuring 

relative unknowns. The logic was fairly 

easy to understand: the more popular the 

IT WAS LIKELY YOU WOULD 

HAVE TO PONY-UP A GOOD 

FEW STICKERS OF PARTICK 

THISTLE OR FALKIRK 

JOURNEYMEN TYPES IN 

RETURN FOR A BRIAN 

LAUDRUP OR PIERRE VAN 

HOOIJDONK 

player, the more sought after were the 

stickers. It was simply demand operating 

on supply. It was likely you would have 

to pony-up a good few stickers of Partick 

Thistle or Falkirk journeymen types in 

return for a Brian Laudrup or Pierre van 

Hooijdonk. If a trader was in any way 

partial to film star good-looks or dashing 

heads of hair the likes of which had rarely 

been seen in the Scottish game, they 

would likely keep any doubles of Laudrup 

for their own purposes. If not, you should 

expect to trade in stickers the same 

amount of players Laudrup would skin in 

scoring the average goal. 

Accumulating doubles (or even triples 

and quadruples) was an inevitable 

consequence of the random distribution 

of stickers in the packets you would 

buy at newsagents or supermarkets. 

While potentially a source of frustration, 

being burdened with doubles 

encouraged the formation of social and 

economic relationships around what was 

potentially a solitary pursuit. As such, 

perhaps Karl Marx or Adam Smith would 

have interesting things to say about the 

collection and trade of football stickers. 



The obvious advantage of being part of 

a trading network was that, in theory, 

it would reduce your total outlay. A 

professor from Cardiff University’s School 

of Mathematics recently calculated it 

would cost the average collector £374 to 

complete Panini’s Euro 2016 album. This 

worked out at 747 packets of stickers at 

50p a go to get the 680 stickers required. 

The best case scenario, and the one that 

would be almost impossible to achieve, 

would be to buy 136 packets at a cost of 

£68 but this would require no doubles to 

be found. The professor calculated the increasing 

discounts that could be achieved 

by having more and more people to trade 

with but this was merely formulas confirming 

what any sticker collector already 

knows to be true. 

An obvious question arises: how does 

a child of primary school age come by 

the resources necessary to complete a 

whole album? Even taking into account 

the smaller number of stickers and 

reduced price of packets, it seems 

unlikely my mid-90s habit could have 

been sustained by entirely legitimate or 

dignified means. As a bare minimum, I 

must have become an expert at pestering 

and moaning, now natural survival 

skills for small children in our highlydeveloped 

consumer society. Additionally, 

scrounging for change was encouraged 

by packets being sold for 25p. Any baleful 

looks I received from shopkeepers would 

have been well-deserved considering 

the ratio of silver and gold to copper in 

the handfuls of smash I was regularly 

depositing. But it was worth it. Even 

buying, say, eight packets felt like taking 

delivery of a bonanza and all for only £2. 

Despite the financial pressures and an 

addict’s singlemindedness, with careful 

husbanding, even meagre resources could 

be made to stretch to some sugary or 

chewy A-bomb like the late Irn-Bru bar, 

Hubba Bubba or Anglo Bubbly. 

A form of conditioning took place and it 

is possible collecting football stickers plays 

an important role in the early stages of the 

development of active consumer identities 

for the young people involved. In no time 

at all you would find it impossible to 

enter a shop without naturally scanning 

the area around the till for evidence of 

those Panini stickers somewhere near 

the chewing gum or tobacco products, 

the latter offering more lethal forms of 

addiction. This was a form of reconnaissance, 

the gathering of intel potentially 

useful in the future but it’s likely most 

collectors had their trusted locals. My 

retailers of choice were the newsagents 

beside Oxgangs Primary School and at the 

top of Merkland Drive in Kirkintilloch. 

It was a bitter disappointment indeed if 

your chosen shop was out of stock, worse 

still if you were momentarily tricked into 

thinking otherwise by the presence of a 

box of English football stickers. Collecting 

English stickers was rare among my 

friends and schoolmates but it’s possible 

this tendency has been altered in reflection 

of wider trends in the game. 

Collecting football stickers was a central 

feature of my early attachment to football 

and I can’t think of my formative years 

without thinking also of the pleasurable 

memories associated with it. There 

was an educational aspect although it 

would be misleading to overstate its 

importance. The ways in which a young 

fan would learn about the game in the 

pre-internet age look relatively limited 

when compared to the easy access to 

information that characterises the present 

day. More so than newspaper reports and 

more important, even, than attending 

or watching matches, collecting stickers 

was a way of familiarising yourself with 

the names and faces of the game. This 

point would apply with particular force 

to the majority of teams that you did not 

support. It’s entirely possible I’ve never 

known as much about the personalities of 

Scottish football since I stopped collecting. 


Obessions 

Three David Bowmans 

I had long assumed, based on my 

own experience, that the collection 

of football stickers was, in the main, a 

childhood pursuit. But this is far from 

the case and adult collectors no longer 

hide in the shadows. Some might choose 

to see this as symptomatic of a culture 

with abundant examples of grown men 

refusing to abandon things like video 

gaming, a culture than has elevated comic 

book characters into vastly profitable 

film franchises. Others might choose 

to see it as symptomatic of a different 

aspect of society: nostalgia. Without too 

much trouble, the simple act of collecting 

football stickers could be framed as a 

refusal to engage fully with the challenges 

of adulthood in the post-industrial 21st 

century or to embrace the opportunities 

the future has to offer. Instead, you might 

stand charged with having opted to pull 

your childhood memories over you like a 

protective blanket. Or something… 

Grown-up collectors aren’t difficult to 

track down. Lee Dent, manager at Martins 

in Macclesfield, established a weekly swap 

shop ahead of the Euros, while Colin 

Murray used his column in the Metro 

newspaper to confess his obsession is 

such that he feared he would try to peel 

the back off Mats Hummels if the German 

player ever crossed his path. Such is the 

perceived popularity of collecting football 

stickers among adults, the Three Sisters 

pub on the Cowgate in Edinburgh hosted 

a sticker swap as part of its World Cup 

festivities in 2014. And in perhaps the 

ultimate tribute to the cultural credibility 

of sticker collecting, the Guardian staged 

a fashion photoshoot inspired by Panini 

stickers back in 2014. 

Quite apart from the time it takes to 

follow the game itself, football offers plenty 

of opportunities for collection around 

the edges. This is not limited to stickers. 

In his book Confessions of a Collector, 

Hunter Davies reckoned there to be ten 

categories of football collectibles ranging 

from annuals and magazines to cigarette 

cards and stickers. Today’s fans can collect 

the Match Attax trading cards produced 

by Topps Direct, the company that also 

produces SPFL stickers having taken over 

from Panini. The Italian company, founded 

in 1961, has long been the dominant name 

in the UK market. Before Panini there was 

the Bradford firm J. Baines Ltd. which produced 

different shaped stickers between 

1887 and circa1920. These were more 

elaborate little productions than those 

produced by the likes of Panini, Merlin 

or Topps, with some containing quaint 

slogans such as ‘Cardiff Take the Cake’. The 

end of the Baines era coincided with the 

golden age of cigarette cards, which are 

similar in many respects to stickers. Davies 

reckoned this period spanned the 1920s 

and 1930s, with the cards printed on the 

cardboard used to stiffen the soft cigarette 

packs of the time. Manufacturers even produced 

albums for collectors to stick their 

cards in and it is estimated there were 

around 10,000 different cards produced 

between 1900 and 1939. 

More generally, Davies suggested there 

COLIN MURRAY USED HIS 

COLUMN IN THE METRO 

NEWSPAPER TO CONFESS 

HIS OBSESSION IS SUCH 

THAT HE FEARED HE WOULD 

TRY TO PEEL THE BACK 

OFF MATS HUMMELS IF 

THE GERMAN PLAYER EVER 

CROSSED HIS PATH 



were two categories of collector: the serious 

collector and the accumulator, with 

the latter essentially a glorified hoarder. 

He charted his own journey from serious 

collector to accumulator and back again. 

His collections spanned not only football 

but the Beatles, stamps, prime ministers 

and other areas. This suggests collecting 

should be seen as a character trait or a 

type of personality rather than simply 

an extension of an interest. He argued 

that collecting was a sociable pursuit at 

all ages but particularly as a youngster. 

The collecting bug bit him again well into 

adulthood and coincided, tellingly, with 

him having more time on his hands and 

his children taking up less of his time. 

Considering attitudes to completing 

a sticker book suggests two different 

categories of collector. There are those 

for whom the process of collecting 

is enjoyable in itself but there are 

others who are collecting with a view 

to eventually achieving some sort of 

completion. When it came to football 

stickers, I belonged, in the main, to 

the first group. The most pleasure to be 

had from collecting stickers was in the 

anticipation of a new packet, the prospect 

of getting a sticker you’d been chasing 

and swapping doubles with friends. On 

the other hand, adding a new sticker to 

your album was somehow a fleeting and 

inconsequential moment. The moment a 

sticker was added (as neatly as possible) 

to the album its status was somehow 

transformed, its value diminished 

alongside all the others. A completed 

album, therefore, had an ambiguous 

status and was never a primary objective. 

What value does a full sticker album 

have except in its ability to prompt happy 

memories of the process of completing it? 

Perhaps this is a minority position and 

it’s not one I adhered to religiously. For 

those who couldn’t complete their albums 

through the normal means of buying and 

swapping, Panini offered a cheat’s way 

out. If you made careful note of the stickers 

you needed and provided whatever 

sum was required, Panini would send you 

the goods. But what a way to dissipate the 

thrill of the hunt and the haggle! This was 

more like filling in a tax form or ordering 

something from your mum’s Avon catalogue. 

No doubt there was a public health 

dimension to this service but on the 

occasion I availed myself of it the sense of 

anti-climax was severe. But apparently the 

need to collect and complete can linger, 

if the exchange of old stickers on website 

like eBay and dedicated forums such as 

Swap Stick are anything to go by. 

No doubt some early collectors of 

stickers will abandon their childhood 

hobby to pursue the collection of 

something considered to be slightly 

more respectable such as match day 

programmes, tickets or pennants. Others 

will stop collecting altogether and still 

others will stop and come back again 

later in life. For all that collecting has 

been sanctioned by some high-profile 

names and enabled by accommodating 

venues and new technology, the intensity 

of my childhood connection prevents 

me from considering it an entirely 

legitimate hobby for an adult. Respect, 

where it’s due, to those who can justify 

to sceptical partners spending hundreds 

of pounds at a time of economic fragility. 

Conflictingly, however, I have limited 

time for those who would seek to frame 

people’s hobbies or personal interests as 

an obstacle to be obliterated as part of 

the forward march of society. At a time 

when Scottish football doesn’t generate 

an abundance of happy moments or, 

worse, seems keen to dispense with fans 

altogether, it can be useful to draw on 

happier times if they are available in the 

realm of memory. Happy memories: that’s 

what football stickers are for me, at least 

at this stage in my life. Well, happy if you 

exclude all those bloody Dave Bowman 

doubles. l 


Obsessions 

I CONFESS 

I wince to think of the things I 

could have achieved in the time 

I’ve spent on Football Manager 

since becoming addicted 20 

years ago. 


Imagine this is a support group. A sign 

pinned to the noticeboard in the corridor 

says Addiction Therapy in 72-point 

Comic Sans. We’re meeting in a grim 

windowless room in a community centre 

with terrible strip lighting and mottled 

peach wallpaper. Plastic stacking chairs 

have been placed in a circle, a tea urn 

bubbles in the corner. There’s a couple 

of recovering alcoholics clutching plastic 

cups, a coke addict rubbing his nose, 

two sex addicts giving each other the 

eye, and me. You spend a while trying to 

guess why I’m here. A gambler perhaps? 

A kleptomaniac? There’s nothing in my 

dress or demeanour that offers clues. 

After the others have each said their piece 

it’s my turn. You sit forward waiting for 

me to speak. I clear my throat, look at my 

feet in shame and say, ‘My name is Adrian 

and I’m addicted to Football Manager.’ 

For the uninitiated, Football Manager is 

a computer game. Each new release sells 

around one million copies worldwide. 

There is a huge online community who 

discuss the game every day and celebrity 

fans include popstars, comedians, actors 

and professional footballers themselves. 

Both David Moyes and Alex McLeish have 

admitted using it to identify potential 

signings. A book about the game, Football 

Manager Stole My Life, published by 

Glasgow-based Back Page Press, was an 

international bestseller. 

First released in the early 1990s, the 

Klondike era of computer game design, 

the football management simulation was 

designed by teenage brothers Ov and Paul 

Collyer in their bedroom in the small 

town of Church Stretton, Shropshire, 

close to the Welsh border. Originally 

called Championship Manager, it had no 

arcade graphics to speak of, but allowed 

would-be gaffers to take control of any 

football team in the English or Scottish 

leagues, selecting players, setting tactics 

home and away, making substitutions, 

buying and selling players and developing 

prospects from the youth team. Games 

played out via a text based commentary. 

If not given enough game time, used out 

of position, or not offered a pay-rise at the 

right moment, managers would have to 

cope with disaffected players, plummeting 

form and transfer requests. 

What might have been perceived as 

a weakness – the relatively slow gameplay 

of starting each season with several 

friendlies and then playing each fixture, 

including all league games, domestic and 

European cups, with the option of matches 

lasting everything from five minutes 

(edited highlights) to the full ninety, plus 

a full international schedule – turned out 

to be one of Championship Manager’s 

greatest strengths. The level of control and 

detail allows a player to synthesise all the 

emotional drama of a real football season 

but, unlike the real world and all its impotence, 

Football Manager offers the humble 

fan the chance to actually influence what 

happens on the virtual park. 

From its first incarnation the game 

quickly developed, new versions 

adding leagues from around the world 

and new features, including training 

set-ups, press conferences, pre-match 

mind-games and, eventually, realistic 

3-D representations of the matches 


themselves in ever-increasing detail. 

What set the first Championship Manager 

apart from its competition was the use 

of real players, each with carefully and 

accurately scouted attributes. From the 

beginning, the game’s creators had the 

sense to contact fans from every team 

in Britain, asking them to fill out paper 

questionnaires on the physical and 

mental attributes of every member of 

their club’s playing staff and take a guess 

at each one’s potential for development. 

This was a time long before a functioning 

internet and data had to be gathered 

by hand. But who knows a team’s players 

better than the superfans who travel home 

and away and even go to reserve and 

youth matches? Football Manager now 

has an army of 1,000 researchers covering 

every major league across the world, 

providing assessments of players long 

before they’ve come to the attention of the 

scouting networks of major clubs. At the 

heart of Football Manager’s success is this 

player database. For any football fan it’s an 

invaluable resource for building knowledge 

of football, both present and future. 

Recent Celtic signing Moussa Dembélé 

was in a team I managed around four or 

five years ago. When Brendan Rodgers 

announced his capture I knew exactly 

who he was and roughly what the game 

thought of his skills and potential at the 

beginning of his career while still at Paris 

St Germain, where he’d been marked 

out as a future star. Checking the current 

version’s profile, he’s still highly regarded 

without necessarily having the worldbeater 

potential originally assumed. 

Likewise, when my team, Aberdeen, 

signed 22 year-old Jayden Stockley in 

June this year and everyone shouted 

‘Who?!’, I was able to get an instant 

assessment – doubtless from the game’s 

Bournemouth scout from whence Stockley 

came. It appears he is tall, approximately 

6ft 2inches and, according to Football 

Manager, not particularly strong, but 

is a good header of the ball and can 

jump. Chris Sutton he’s not but, for the 

money, he could be a useful addition. For 

the wages of David Goodwillie, now at 

Plymouth in the bottom tier of English 

league football after being released, 

Aberdeen got Stockley and Miles Storey, 

also 22 years old, who scored a few goals 

on loan at Inverness Caledonian Thistle last 

season. Football Manager reckons Storey 

has great physical prowess but is nowhere 

near where he should be for his age in 

terms of technical ability. In other words, 

he’s another Josh Magennis. We’ll need to 

wait and see. Another season in the SPFL 

and the scouts may revise their opinion. 

I first started playing Championship 

Manager in the late 1990s. I can’t 

remember how I found out about the 

game but I do remember becoming 

addicted almost instantly. The best word 

to describe the experience is immersive. 

As someone whose first computer was a 

Sinclair ZX81, followed by a Spectrum, 

then a BBC B, this was a completely 

different approach to the standard handeye 

driven arcade games I was used to. 

The closest comparison was with the 

near-mythic space trading game Elite – a 

mix of spacecraft flight simulation, shootem-up, 

and a crash course in capitalism 

as players bought and sold food, weapons, 

slaves, narcotics and alien artefacts, 

trading between planets in order to buy 

bigger and better weapons with which to 

kill more aliens. 

Championship Manager introduced 

me to the value of paying attention to 

my team’s youth squad. As a manager, 

unless you’re able to sell one of your stars 

for a Goodwillie-sized transfer fee (an 

injudicious £2m from Blackburn Rovers), 

you’re very dependent on your own 

youth system to provide talent. Blooding 

the exotically named and long-forgotten 

Dons defender Malcolm Kpedekpo or 

trying to unlock the enigmatic talents of 

Manchester United loanee Alex Notman 

 


Obessions 

I confess 

were the key objectives in my early 

managerial career. 

Different people play in different ways 

but, when a new edition comes out I’ll 

usually play one single career over the 

course of 12 months which can equate to 

around eight to ten full seasons. With any 

luck that takes in domination of the SPFL, 

success in both domestic cups, followed 

by headway in the Champions League. 

With the right signings (using money 

from selling one of the club’s best assets 

for big cash) a couple of seasons in the 

group stages gives a manager a war chest 

generous enough to dominate Scottish 

football. Within a few seasons the big 

boys come calling and, if you choose not 

to be a one-club-man, you can try your 

hand in the English Premiership, Serie A 

or more exotic destinations. 

Sometimes, if I get bored I’ll quit a game 

as Aberdeen manager and start again at 

Stenhousemuir, my wee team where I first 

paid to watch football. Lower league management 

is a very different challenge, and 

mainly involves cobbling together a side 

from inexperienced free agents, 18 yearold 

loan players from bigger clubs and 

veterans whose legs have gone. Another 

great way to increase the depths of one’s 

football knowledge is by taking the helm 

at a lower league or medium-sized English 

club. Nottingham Forest and Leicester 

have always been favourites and have given 

me a bizarre connection with random 

I HAVE FANTASISED ABOUT 

BEING SENT TO PRISON, SO 

I COULD JUST SIT IN A CELL 

ALL DAY ON MY COMPUTER 

football characters like Eugene Bopp, 

a midfielder from Bayern Munich who 

signed for Forest as a 17-year-old, leaving 

behind the much less fancied Phillip Lahm 

and Bastien Schweinsteiger, or Andy King, 

whose bit-part appearance in the Euros for 

Wales this summer brought a lump to my 

throat, having developed him into a great 

attacking midfielder in my Leicester side of 

a decade ago. 

Football Manager also greatly improved 

my tactical awareness. Having tried 

every formation under the sun, I now 

understand much better the pros and 

cons of a 4-4-2 versus a 4-2-3-1, the 

importance of a poor team staying narrow 

to keep possession, and these days when 

I watch Aberdeen I can usually predict 

what substitutions the manager will make 

a good few minutes before they occur. 

This has increased both my enjoyment of 

football and my know-it-all smugness. 

My initiation as a virtual manager 

coincided with the birth of my second 

daughter. Although I loved her instantly, 

and love her still with a ferociousness 

that is a source of pride, surprise and 

occasional alarm, any father will tell you 

how tough the first five years of parenthood 

are. She wasn’t a sleeper and would 

wake at least twice a night till she went 

to school. So a combination of grinding 

fatigue and a dearth of baby-sitting 

talent on the Southside of Glasgow meant 

living with a seven-day-a-week curfew 

for more than half a decade. Despite all 

the positives of being a parent, which are 

many, I hereby confess that those early 

years could be stultifying. It was Football 

Manager that got me through. 

The season my daughter was born, 

1999-2000, was a mixed experience 

for Aberdeen fans, the start of the Ebbe 

Skovdahl era. On the one hand, we signed 

some exciting foreign talent, including the 

mercurial forward Hicham Zerouali, killed 

in a car crash in his native Morocco at the 

age of 27 in 2004, and lethal striker, Arild 



Stavrum, for 16 years the Dons’ top scorer 

in the league and who bizarrely has since 

become a personal friend. That year we 

had a double cup run leading to two finals 

at Hampden, although both ended in 

embarrassing roll-overs. But in the league, 

our proud boast that Aberdeen was the 

only club outside the Old Firm never to be 

relegated was severely undermined when 

we came bottom after a risible campaign, 

only to be saved by the state of Brockville 

stadium, which prevented Falkirk from 

meeting Aberdeen in a play-off through 

self-serving SPL rules. 

As a child of the 70s and early 80s, 

I’d grown up with the expectations of 

the Ferguson years and this was truly 

the nadir (although Steve Paterson’s 

cash-strapped tenure came close). For 

me, Football Manager offered the perfect 

escape. Working with the same players 

in a parallel universe, I turned the team 

around through a combination of strong 

leadership, cute tactics and some Harry 

Redknapp-style wheeler-dealing in the 

transfer market. 

And this takes one to the heart of Football 

Manager’s addictiveness. What better 

way to relax after a hard day’s graft 

than to retreat into a virtual dimension 

where your team are, with a bit of effort, 

all-conquering heroes, forgetting that in 

the real world they’re still donkeys? Any 

psychologist will tell you that we all yearn 

for control, especially if we lack it at work 

or in our personal lives. Football Manager 

offers gamers the chance to be benign 

dictators of their own football cosmos. 

Another compulsive attraction is the 

strength of the narrative. Goals are scored 

and conceded in extra time to win or lose 

championships. Star players get injured 

just before cup finals. While talented players 

flounce off to rival clubs for a paltry 

thousand pounds more a week, the reliable 

journeyman sticks with you, turning 

out solid performances week in, week 

out. You spot talented youngsters, sign 

them, nurture them, put an arm round 

them or boot them up the arse when they 

need it, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, 

they blossom into major stars, to be sold 

on for millions. You feel a huge amount of 

pride and ownership. You build clubs in 

your own image. 

Football Manager, just like real football, 

is soap opera for men. There are the 

heroes and villains, tragedies and twists, 

underdogs and victims. But unlike real 

football, in the computer game you write 

your own script. And you are the principal 

character at the heart of the drama. 

This is what has kept me devoted for 

almost 20 years. So, as we sit here in this 

windowless room, in a circle, under the 

grim fluorescent lights, addicts of different 

kinds to my left and right, I admit that 

my addiction to Football Manager has, on 

occasion, been out of control. I remember 

a family holiday abroad where I spent 

virtually every minute I could playing 

rather than engaging with my partner and 

young children. I remember being spotted 

by a friend driving into work during the 

morning rush hour, laptop open on the 

passenger seat of my car as a match (if I remember 

correctly against Dundee United) 

played out. Occasionally I’ve played 

for 18 hours solid with only the briefest 

of breaks. Train travel for work that 

should have been spent wading through 

paperwork was devoted to climbing the 

league. I have fantasised about being sent 

to prison, so I could just sit in a cell all day 

on my computer. It comes as no surprise to 

me that Football Manager has to date been 

cited in 35 UK divorce cases. 

I wince to think of the things I could 

have achieved in the time I’ve spent on 

Football Manager. However, I console 

myself with the pleasure I’ve gained 

and the knowledge I’ve gleaned about 

Scottish football and the wider game. The 

good news is that, although I still play, 

it’s without the frantic, obsessive energy 

of my younger years. Well sometimes, at 

least. l 


Opinion 

A QUESTION 

OF EMPATHY 

The aftermath of this year’s Scottish Cup final says much about the 

state of the game – and the state of the country. By Gerry Hassan 

Football saturates most of Scotland. It is 

one of the things which defines us, creates 

numerous identities, and for many years, 

was the sole way Scotland had a profile on 

an international stage. It fills numerous 

conversations and dominates spaces, both 

public and private – and affects attitudes, 

thoughts and emotions. According to 

some measures Scotland is one of the most 

football mad parts of Europe, coming third 

behind Iceland and Cyprus; the former of 

course, now turn out to have got the hang 

of how to play the game too! 

This isn’t just an essay about football. 

Instead it is about the wider and cultural 

impact of the game in Scotland and what it 

says about us. Too many football conversations 

here take place as if the sport was 

played in some kind of hermetically sealedoff 

bubble – unconnected to our many 

contested histories, identities and stories. 

If you are a football fan (I guess reading 

Nutmeg you might be) but also somewhat 

partisan in your support, let me be clear. 

I do not hate, or want to denigrate, any 

of Scotland’s football clubs, Rangers and 

Celtic included, while I do not see any club 

as beyond redemption or above reproach. 

This year’s Scottish Cup Final between 

Hibs and Rangers was a captivating 

game of football. Hibs dramatically won 

the Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 

years and then the chaos and trouble 

began. A section of Hibs fans invaded the 

pitch. There was aggression and violence 

amongst a very small section of the minority 

of Hibs fans that breached the barriers. 

A tiny number of Rangers fans responded 

in a similar manner looking for trouble. 

All of this was on live TV. Police and 

security seemed briefly stunned and 

immobilised. Just as serious was the wave 

of reactions, both in the immediate aftermath 

and subsequently. Initially, there was 

an element of hyperbole, with various TV 

commentators comparing it to the Celtic 

v Rangers riot at the Scottish Cup final of 

1980. This was over-the-top sensationalism: 

the 1980 final involved pitched battles 

between fans, scores injured, and violence 

which lasted for a prolonged period, rather 

than the 10 to 15 minutes in May this year. 

Yet, while there was the knee-jerk rush 

to condemn and blow up into apocalyptic 

proportions, just as serious and damning 

was the collective denial of large 

numbers of those connected in some way 

to the day and to the two clubs. Hibs and 

Rangers, fans and clubs, spoke in the immediate 

period – and days after – in what 

amounted to entirely different languages 


from completely different worlds. It was 

as if they were talking about entirely 

separate events – bereft of a mutual language 

and way of seeing things. 

Many Hibs fans dismissed concerns 

about misbehaviour and violence. They 

ridiculed the claims of Rangers of aggression 

and assault of the club’s players and 

officials. They were ‘bad losers’, ‘typical 

Rangers’, ‘a club in denial’ and one with 

‘a wounded entitlement culture’ – unable 

and unwilling to adjust to events of the 

recent years. Many Rangers fans showed 

their anger and fury. They attacked 

anyone who wasn’t completely on their 

side and those opposed to their interpretation: 

‘Rangers’ haters’, ‘out to do this 

club down’ and ‘terrorist supporters’. 

The Rangers blogger Jonny spoke of a 

systematic attempt to dehumanise the 

club’s supporters and what he saw as an 

‘intellectually empty, sneering, faux moral 

superiority’ amongst other fans. 

Why this happened seems to say much 

about the state of the game and more 

today. The cup final troubles seems to 

act as a tinderbox and amplification of 

a whole pile of simmering resentments 

which have been building over the last few 

years, and which the football authorities, 

rather than addressing, have just hoped 

would go away. There is the near-universal 

loathing of Rangers in sections of society. 

Never the most loved institution in 

Scotland, this has reached new levels after 

the club imploded, went into liquidation, 

and the subsequent train of events. This 

has been matched by the indignation and 

bewilderment that Rangers fans feel about 

being forced to start again in the lowest 

league, which they see (wrongly in the 

eyes of other clubs) as punishment. 

Scottish football has always carried 

complicated baggage. There is the feeling 

of many Celtic supporters who view 

the game as shaped by an anti-Celtic/ 

anti-Irish Catholic prejudice – from 

refereeing, to the media and SFA. Many 

even go further and think the roots of this 

are to be found in an organised Rangers 

conspiracy – which feeds into and shapes 

significant sections of the media. Some 

think the club has never been fully accepted 

as part of Scottish society, and perpetually 

see themselves as outsiders, even 

underdogs (which clearly has a historical 

basis in reality, considering how prevalent 

anti-Catholicism and anti-Irish sentiment 

was until relatively recently). All of this 

leaves for the moment the nature of the 

Old Firm cartel, and how Scottish football 

has been run as a closed shop since the 

advent of professional football in 1893. 

In the here and now, there is the big 

question of how we get past the hurt 

feelings and passions of the last few 

years. Rangers as a club never really said 

‘sorry’ to their own fans and the wider 

game for letting everybody down: for the 

administration, liquidation and years of 

maladministration and terrible stewardship 

of the club beforehand. The rest of 

the game mostly saw it as cathartic that 

Rangers had to start again in the fourth 

tier. Little attempt was made to hold the 

olive branch out and understand how the 

good Rangers fans had first been betrayed 

by David Murray, Craig Whyte and a host 

of others, and then left feeling got at by 

the rest of the game. Whatever the many 

rights and wrongs, it isn’t a great place to 

be left: hurt, alone and badly bruised, and 

thinking no one understands you. 

This isn’t just about football. It is much 

more important and serious. After all 

rumour has it that football is just a sport, 

and ultimately doesn’t matter too much. It 

is about society. And it is about what can 

only be described across parts of Scotland 

as a chasmic public empathy deficit. This 

phenomenon could be seen in the recent 

Rangers implosion, the reaction of others, 

and the club’s re-emergence coming 

through the lower leagues. It could be witnessed 

in many manifestations of the indyref 

amongst some of the most blinkered 


Opinion 

A question of empathy 

zealots. But it can be seen elsewhere in the 

way that Scottish politics hasn’t nurtured 

pluralism: from the pursuit of the toxic 

Tories in the wake of Thatcherism, to the 

desire to punish Labour post-Iraq war and 

post-Tony Blair and the dogmatic cheerleading 

of some nationalists no matter 

what they do or don’t do. 

None of this emerged overnight. There is 

a historical backstory founded in a myriad 

of factors such as religion, geography, 

terrain, climate, our ‘in bed with an 

elephant’ relationship with England, brutal 

industrialisation and endemic poverty 

and powerlessness in our past. It also has 

a more recent contemporary variant in 

public life and politics where people wilfully 

sit in their own comfort zones and are 

happy to try to deny the right and legitimacy 

of opposing views. It could be argued 

that all of Scotland’s underlying problems 

and challenges – economic, social, cultural, 

demographic – from the long-term lower 

economic growth rate compared with the 

rest of the UK, to the educational attainment 

gap now flavour of the month with 

the Scottish Government, and ‘the Glasgow 

effect’ of health inequalities – all have their 

origins in this empathy gap. 

As a society we have done very little to 

recognise this. The exceptions are few and 

far between. There is the pioneering work 

of the Violence Reduction Unit attempting 

to address the origins of crime and 

violent behaviour; the trailblazing and 

liberating activities of Sistema in Raploch, 

Stirling and elsewhere; the argument 

of Carol Craig’s ‘The Scots’ Crisis of 

Confidence’ published over a decade ago 

as a counterblast to conformist thinking, 

and the writings, musing and free spirit 

of the rapper Loki. These are but a few 

examples, and while there are others it 

would still be a very, very short list. 

We have to talk about this. Rangers are 

whether anyone likes it or not a Scottish 

club and institution with Scottish tradi- 

tions and histories. They represent and say 

something about all of ‘us’ as a society. The 

same is true in equal measure of Celtic. 

Both of them have things to be proud of, 

some blemishes, and things they could do 

much, much better and confront. 

How do we even begin to start facing up 

to this? There is the story of recent years 

and Rangers’ implosion and road back, and 

then the longer story of Rangers and Celtic’s 

dominance of the game. How can the 

mutual non-understanding, fear and loathing 

felt by many Rangers and non-Rangers 

fans towards each other be tackled? What 

do we do about the football and wider tensions 

between the Old Firm and the rest of 

football? And what can be done about the 

relationship between the supposed beautiful 

game and everything else in society? 

All of this needs context. A large part, 

if not most of the Celtic/Rangers rivalry 

today, even when it spills over into violence 

and intimidation, isn’t really in any literal 

meaning about sectarianism. This is used 

as a catch-all description to capture issues 

of tribalism, belonging and identity. The 

them/us duopoly of the Old Firm with its 

well-worn historical reference points and 

inappropriate songs celebrating Northern 

Irish troubles isn’t really – to use a recent 

word – about ‘Ulsterisation’ in any form, 

but about mutually antagonistic sporting 

traditions which began with religious 

roots. The football historian Bob Crampsey 

used to have a brilliant description about 

how when the term Old Firm was first 

coined in 1904, it caught the way the two 

clubs worked to play to their captive markets 

– fossilising part of Scotland in the 

process in a kind of Cold War permafrost. 

It is also true that the football fans 

who cause trouble even in its broadest 

definition are not a majority of society – 

or anywhere near a majority of any club’s 

supporters. But there is in places a culture 

of quiet acquiescence whereby certain 

clubs, Celtic and Rangers in particular, 

have soft-peddled or refused to challenge 

the most problematic strands of their 


By Gerry Hassan 

own traditions, and how some fans have 

chosen to represent it. 

This reflects football’s place, dominance, 

and the emotional investment hundreds 

of thousands of fans put into it. It is about 

class, but not in any simplistic working 

class ‘bad’ / middle class ‘good’ dichotomy, 

but what is seen as permissible and not 

permissible. There is a West of Scotland 

dimension – which then again isn’t to say 

other parts of the country are immune. 

Then there is the thorny aspect of gender 

and certain manifestations of Scottish masculinity. 

A couple of years ago, St Andrews 

University produced academic research 

which showed a link between Old Firm 

matches and spikes in domestic violence 

in Glasgow. To some of us it didn’t seem 

surprising, but it was illuminating that 

Celtic and Rangers both chose publicly to 

dismiss the research saying it hadn’t proved 

the link: the two clubs united once more in 

defence of denying domestic violence. 

In the last four years, there has been 

an absence of regular Celtic v Rangers 

matches, with a mere two cup-ties 

between the pair. After all the prophecies 

of Armageddon and even one local economic 

development agency calculating 

that its absence could cost the Glasgow 

economy £120m over three years, the 

city has felt a freer, gentler, safer place. 

You could almost sense it in the air: the 

absence of the merry-go-round and 

media circus, the build-ups and tensions, 

and expectation of altercations, even 

violence. Most of that is about Scottish 

(and a sprinkling of Northern Irish and 

Irish) men. 

The Scotland with no or little empathy 

is a society which doesn’t acknowledge 

the rights of others. If you live and think 

in a bunkerist mindset, the world looks 

simple and like a battlefield. That kind 

of attitude is not particularly healthy for 

any individual, nor is it conducive to early 

21st century life. We do need to confront 

this difficult stuff. We need the courage to 

face up to our own internal demons, the 

bitterness and rage that still has hold in 

sections of our society, and confront those 

who reference past battles they know 

little about to validate problem views 

today. This is about so much more than 

football, and how for some, no matter 

how packed or empty their lives are, 

football is elevated into this uncontrollable 

passion when ultimately it is only a 

sport. What does that say about Scotland 

in 2016 and what some of us lack, and 

clearly revel in lacking? 

Empathy requires putting yourself in 

other’s shoes. One standard defence of the 

Hibs pitch invasion was that it was in the 

words of Hibs fan Simon Pia “an explosion 

of joy”, a ‘“carnival atmosphere” and “the 

ecstasy after the agony”. Now while Simon 

did go on to condemn the violence, this 

was after several minutes in the above 

vein, and he still talked about the troubles 

being “overhyped” and “overspun”. One 

Hibs fan reflected that in recent years, 

“the deep hatred of Rangers has gotten 

worse” and that the Offence Behaviour at 

Football Act has made all this even more 

poisonous, as part of Rangers’ support is 

seen to act with “immunity”. 

Imagine if it had all been the other way 

around and Rangers, having won the cup 

in the last minutes coming from behind, 

celebrated in a cathartic way their first 

major trophy triumph since the ignominy 

of liquidation. Would large sections of 

Scotland listen to their explanations of celebration 

and collective joy, or would they 

see it as something darker, about intimidation, 

wanting to settle old scores, and an 

element of triumphalism? The answer is 

obvious, and it cannot be right that we 

have such blatantly different criterion for 

one club and another for everyone else. 

At times in the last four years I have had 

negative comments and threats from some 

Rangers fans, when I wish their club no 

ill will at all, merely to challenge some of 

the worst things which have happened 

 


Opinion 

A question of empathy 

By Gerry Hassan 

in that institution. But Rangers cannot be 

singled out and treated differently from 

everyone else, and the widespread conceit 

self-evident in many Celtic fans (some of 

whom even go blue with rage at the mention 

of the term Old Firm with its implied 

equivalence) is equally problematic. 

It has to be possible to discuss such 

subjects maturely – beyond the mental 

barricades. In the aftermath of the match, 

I penned a piece for the Scottish Review 

reflecting some of the above, in the same 

tone and avoiding making cheap, partisan 

points. The response was fascinating. In 

today’s world there is a propensity to say 

that due to social media and the intolerance 

of some, it is impossible for nuance 

to be heard and thus hate and abuse often 

carries all before them – the EU referendum 

being the latest example cited. 

However, my intervention got the exact 

opposite response, including on social 

media and twitter. Virtually all Rangers 

fans who commented upon it, and we 

are talking hundreds of responses, were 

respectful and thoughtful, and recognised 

that my piece tried to reach out and 

understand them and their club. I found 

that heartening and galvanising, and feel 

that it must offer some wider points for 

how football and more important matters 

are discussed in Scotland. It suggests that 

if empathy, nuance and subtlety can be 

put forward, and black and white thinking 

challenged, different voices can be heard 

and have an impact, even amid the noise 

and name-calling that passes for how 

many public controversies are defined. 

On a practical level, any thoughts of 

the abolition of the badly put together 

Offensive Behaviour at Football Act can 

be shelved at least for a period, as can any 

Jim Murphy-like relaxation of alcoholic 

drinking at football grounds. There was 

an air of soft, misty booziness at the cup 

final, aided by sunny Glasgow weather. It 

seems as if sections of Scottish society still 

don’t want to grow up: a judgement amply 

multiplied by the post-fracas reactions. 

Somehow we have to heal the wounds 

of the last few years, of the Rangers 

crash and burn, and the ripples it sent 

through the game and society. These were 

momentous events, and we are going to 

live with their after-effect for years to 

come, the normal order having been severely 

disrupted. For some – the football 

authorities, TV broadcasters, and much 

of the media – this coming season will be 

a welcome return to normal service, and 

the regular circus of the Old Firm fixture 

and all that entails. 

That seems to be the summit of aspirations 

for how some of the guardians and 

advocates of the game see the domestic 

scene: as a kind of closed shop of competition, 

offering the most predictable and 

stale menu year in, year out. There is a 

paradox that allows this unedifying spectacle 

to be maintained with no plans or 

designs to change it, with the continuing 

fact that this is still overall a football-crazy 

nation. The latter has bred complacency 

for generations, and bizarrely, an aversion 

to any kind of far-reaching change. But in 

reality, in an increasingly globalised world, 

maintaining Scotland’s farce of noncompetition 

only condemns our football 

to a slow decline, in skills, prestige and 

rewards. Celtic Chief Executive Peter 

Lawwell spoke of this when he commented: 

“There is a colonisation of the game in 

Scotland by the English Premiership,” and 

that is the slow decline that is our future 

(The Herald, August 29, 2014). 

While Scottish football faces all of these 

intense challenges, the emotional baggage 

and weight the game carries in Scotland, 

in many respects, burdens and holds it 

back. Much of our proud and wonderful 

legacy can be seen as golden memories 

which prevent us from seeing the uncomfortable 

truths in front of us: such as the 

evoking of the England 1967 and Holland 

1978 triumphs, Jim Baxter keepie-ups and 

Archie Gemmell wonder goal. 

Not only that, after all the epic chaos 

and transformations society has gone 


through in recent decades, we have to 

ask: do parts of our society invest too 

much in our game? Why do some working-class 

and middle-class men fill part of 

the meaning and emotional canvas of life 

with football, and sometimes to an extent 

which becomes a problem? This touches 

on the role of masculinity, changes in 

gender and work roles, the relationship 

of men to fathers, and inter-generational 

memories. In this age of immense change 

and instability, for some football provides 

this constant and emotive thread to the 

past and to supposedly simpler times. 

Of course, there had to be an official 

report into it headed up by some bigwig. 

This being Scotland, it didn’t address any 

of the fundamentals and had some miserly 

recommendations in ‘best’ SFA tradition. 

Warning players who score from the dangers 

of over-exuberance and over-exciting 

fans, is straight from the world of buttonedup, 

Ernie Walker land and cloud cuckoo. 

What could a report have realistically 

said: that the last four years carry an 

open wound in Scottish football, that 

the authorities just want it to go away, 

that ‘Armageddon’ was avoided, but 

no explanation given, and little insight 

gained? That is never the point of such 

reports. Instead, the disruption and 

unpredictability of recent times saw 

another opportunity for fundamental 

change lost. It is back to business as usual, 

and the football authorities (and most of 

the media hope), the stale, failing duopoly 

that is the ‘Old Firm’ (and yes, Celtic fans 

it still exists. Ask yourself why you still 

care so much?). 

Football in Scotland still carries too 

much baggage. It is good to dream, hope 

and even escape, but some of the energies 

invested in the game by some of the 

football fans could well be better spent on 

more important concerns. Who knows 

what kind of Scotland might emerge if 

we normalised our football passions? We 

might be a better, more at ease, nation. l 

OFFENSIVE AND 

UNJUSTIFIED 

The pitch invasion which marred the end of this year’s cup final could 

have far-reaching consequences for the Scottish game, consequences 

which supporters do not deserve says Christopher Marshall 

There are certain moments seared 

into the collective consciousness of the 

Scottish football fan: Archie Gemmill’s 

mesmeric run and goal against the Dutch 

at the 1978 World Cup; Jim Baxter’s keepyuppies 

when Scotland defeated the Auld 

Enemy – and then world champions – in 

1967 or James McFadden’s long-range 

screamer against France at the Parc des 

Princes in 2007. 

Another indelible image to add to the 

list is that of members of the Tartan Army 

balancing on the crossbar at Wembley 

following Scotland’s famous 1977 


Opinion 

Offensive and unjustified 

By Christopher Marshall 

victory over England in the British Home 

Championship. 

Among the apologists for the ugly 

scenes which marred the end of this year’s 

Scottish Cup final between Rangers and 

Hibs were those who likened the pitch invasion 

at full time to the jubilation shown 

by those Scottish fans nearly 40 years ago. 

To make that comparison, however, is to 

underplay the seriousness of the trouble 

which took the sheen off Hibs’ historic 

victory – just as it is unfair to suggest what 

happened is in any way similar to the 1980 

Hampden riot, where groups of Rangers 

and Celtic fans fought running battles as 

the police attempted to restore order. 

But just as the 1977 pitch invasion acted 

as a precursor for the dark days of the 

1980s, when hooliganism was on the rise 

and fans were treated with contempt by 

the authorities, so too could this year’s 

cup final come to mark a defining chapter 

in the history of our national game. 

As a young football fan in the 1980s, 

I remember being transfixed by the 

entirely odd – and short-lived – spectacle 

of the Rous Cup. A successor to the Home 

Championship, the Rous Cup ran from 1985 

to 1989 and latterly became a mini league 

comprising England, Scotland and a South 

American nation. Brazil, Colombia and 

Chile all took part before the annual fixture 

was consigned to history against a backdrop 

of hooliganism and the Hillsborough 

tragedy. England and Scotland would not 

meet again until Euro ‘96. 

While Scottish football in 2016 is light 

years from the controversies of the 1980s, 

supporters are once again beginning to 

feel victimised. Much of that anger is a 

direct result of the Scottish Government’s 

Offensive Behaviour at Football and 

Threatening Communications Act, which 

came into force in March 2012. 

This much-maligned piece of legislation 

grew out of the reaction to the Old 

Firm “shame game” of 2011 when three 

Rangers players were sent off and police 

made more than 30 arrests within the 

confines of Celtic Park. There was also 

the infamous touchline bust-up between 

managers Ally McCoist and Neil Lennon. 

There is undoubtedly a bigger issue 

about the effect Old Firm games have on 

crime levels, with the associated spike in 

domestic violence incidents being particularly 

shameful. But those are not the sort 

of incidents the Offensive Behaviour Act 

was brought in to deal with. 

The Act applies to incidents “at, on 

the way to or from” matches, as well as 

anywhere a game is being broadcast (with 

the exception of private homes). Keen to 

be seen to do something following the 

2011 “shame game”, the SNP government 

hurriedly introduced the legislation, now 

widely regarded as a knee-jerk reaction. 

It is fair to say the Act has not been short 

of critics. Sir Tom Devine, one of Scotland’s 

most eminent historians, described 

it as the “most illiberal and counterproductive” 

ever passed by the Scottish 

Parliament. Stuart Waiton, an academic 

at Abertay University in Dundee, calls the 

Act the “logical development” of the “intolerant 

times” in which we live. “Speech 

crimes are becoming the norm in a 

culture which encourages a thin-skinned, 

chronically offended and anti-social 

individual to flourish,” he says. 

“The problem is not this one bill, it’s 

all the other laws that have undermined 

basic liberal principles of free speech 

based on politically correct ideas that 

appear progressive but replace politics 

and arguments with policing and prison.” 

Moves are now under way to have the 

legislation repealed at Holyrood; a very 

real possibility after the nationalists lost 

their majority at May’s election. But an 

even bigger development, which could 

have far-reaching implications for the 

national game, could soon be on the way. 

Following the trouble at May’s cup final, 

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson once 

again raised the possibility of Scotland 


adopting so-called “strict liability”. The 

Scottish Government minister has left 

Scotland’s clubs under no illusion: kick 

violence and disorder out of the game or 

have strict liability imposed on you. 

Already used in European competition, 

strict liability can see clubs fined, docked 

points or forced to play games behind 

closed doors as a punishment for the 

behaviour of their fans. Both Celtic and 

Rangers have fallen foul of this legislation 

in recent years while playing in the 

Champions League and Europa League. 

Regardless of what happens to the 

Offensive Behaviour Act and to strict 

liability, Scottish football appears to be at 

a bit of a crossroads. Indeed, a report by 

Sheriff Principal Edward Bowen into the 

trouble at the cup final has called for the 

Scottish Government to consider making it 

an offence to run onto a football pitch. 

No-one wants to see a repeat of the 

scenes which marred Hibs’ first Scottish 

Cup win in 114 years, but legislating for 

trouble hasn’t worked. Strict liability may 

be one answer, but another is to treat fans 

with the respect they deserve. 

The overwhelming majority of Scottish 

football supporters follow their team in a 

peaceful and law-abiding fashion. While 

bringing back alcohol at matches is probably 

a step too far, initiatives such as the 

introduction of safe standing at Celtic Park 

are vital for improving the lot of supporters 

left feeling increasingly disenfranchised 

from the running of the national game. 

If as much attention had been paid to 

issues such as ticket prices and fan ownership 

as it has to criminalising supporters 

over the past few years, the average 

Scottish football fan would be revelling 

in the here and now, not just constantly 

re-living glories of the past. l 

STAND UP FOR 

YOUR RIGHTS 

The quest for a family-friendly match-day experience is ruining 

Scottish football for the average fan. No standing, no booze, no pyro 

often means no atmosphere and no enjoyment. Why are supporters 

in Scotland treated so differently from those in other countries? 

By Martin Stone 

Since the inception of the SPL in 1998, 

Scottish football has pursued a relentless 

agenda of promoting our game as 

a family-friendly ‘product’. All-seated 

stadia, legislation to deal specifically 

with the issues of ‘offensive behaviour’ at 

matches, special police units dedicated to 

enforcing this legislation – just some of 

the initiatives aimed at smoothing off the 

rough edges of our national sport in the 

hope of attracting more families through 

the turnstiles. 


Opinion 

Stand up for your rights 

Against the backdrop of a downward 

trajectory in attendances, any attempt 

to encourage kids to forgo the myriad of 

alternative pursuits should be applauded. 

Securing the next generation of fans is vital 

to the long-term health of our game. The 

wee guy dragged along to the fitba – who 

barely watches the hoof ball played out in 

front of him and only really cares about the 

crappy mascots – will hopefully be gripped 

by the same fervour as so many of us have 

and be taking our place in years to come. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the 

strategy has been a qualified success: the 

numbers of families attending games 

appears to this observer to have increased 

dramatically in the past 15 years. 

However, the continued obsession with 

honing the match-day experience to the 

family audience, to the exclusion of all 

other demographics, is based on a fallacy: 

the assumption that there are swathes of 

families waiting to be converted to the 

cause if only the authorities can make 

the experience that bit safer, that bit 

friendlier, that bit more sanitised. 

According to a survey of almost 7,000 

Scottish football fans carried out in 2012, 

the need for a more family-friendly 

environment didn’t register in the top 10 

reasons given as barriers to respondents 

attending more home fixtures. The biggest 

obstacle was the price of tickets. Other 

factors included the quality of football on 

display, the prohibition of standing within 

the stadiums, poor match atmosphere 

and the inability to buy alcohol within the 

stadium. 

In fact, when asked about the importance 

of various elements of the matchday 

experience, the fily-friendly factor 

was ranked as 7th out of 14. Even more 

tellingly, respondents felt that clubs were 

outperforming expectations in the familyfriendly 

stakes, while falling well short in 

terms of the atmosphere at games, which 

was rated as the 2nd most important 

factor. 

The results of the survey are conclusive. 

There is a consensus that the match day 

experience is suitably family friendly. 

There appears to be little to be gained by 

pushing this agenda any further. 

And what of those left behind in the 

wake of the relentless march towards the 

family-friendly utopia? 

The same survey showed that the 

crowds at Scottish football matches are 

still overwhelmingly comprised of the 

traditional lifeblood of the game – blokes 

aged between 18 and 40, many of whom 

like a few drinks before the game, who 

head along to support their team and 

have a laugh with their mates. You’d 

expect given the amount of money they 

pour into the coffers that their opinions 

would be respected and their support 

highly valued. You’d be wrong. 

These punters are not only being ignored 

but are increasingly being trampled 

beneath the family-friendly juggernaut. 

Over the past few years the following 

measures have been rolled out by the 

Scottish Government, Police Scotland and 

the governing bodies: 

l The Scottish Government introduced 

specific legislation (The Offensive 

Behaviour at Football and Threatening 

Communications Act 2012) to differentiate 

between “offensive behaviour” carried 

out at football matches from anywhere 

else in Scotland. Why football required 

its own law and what actually constitutes 

behaviour offensive enough to merit 

prosecution is another matter. 

l Soon after the act was passed a 

full-time unit was established by Police 

Scotland to ensure the law was pursued to 

its fullest extent. The FOCUS unit is made 

up of 14 specialist officers whose only 

job is to seek out those guilty of footballrelated 

offensive behaviour on match days 

and on social media. 

l In January this year came the latest 

brainchild of the SPFL: the potential introduction 

of facial recognition software 

at Scottish grounds. The theory being that 



already impoverished clubs would install 

expensive equipment at the turnstiles to 

scan the face of every paying customer in 

a bid to weed out potential troublemakers. 

Thankfully the idea appears to have 

been kicked into the long grass with the 

refusal of the Scottish Government to 

subsidise the scheme to the tune of £4m. 

The trouble is that the idea gained any 

credence in the first place. This is not 

some dystopian vision of the future, this 

is Scotland in 2016. 

Supporters are now accusing the 

authorities of being criminalised by them 

and it’s a notion which is hard to argue 

with when you look at the draconian 

measures being inflicted upon us. The 

detachment between the authorities and 

a significant number of fans should be 

sounding alarm bells in the corridors of 

power. There appears to be a real danger 

that those fans who follow their teams 

the length and breadth of the country 

may decide it just isn’t worth the hassle 

any more. The game they fell in love with 

increasingly feels like it’s slipping away, 

replaced with a pale, sterile imitation. 

What I wanted to know was whether 

our story is unique or are the same 

feelings of supporter dissatisfaction being 

echoed in stadiums across Europe? Are 

our feelings of persecution justified or is 

the game alienating fans on a wider level? 

I decided to have a look at the matchday 

experiences of fans in European 

leagues comparable with our own. I 

needed a yardstick to measure how 

bad we’ve got it in Scotland. Are other 

There is a 

consensus that 

the match day 

experience is suitably family 

friendly. There appears to be 

little to be gained by pushing 

this agenda any further. 

countries able to balance the need to attract 

more families without marginalising 

their traditional fan base? 

I settled on Denmark, Sweden and 

Norway as the basis for this case study. All 

three countries have suffered the same 

downward trend in attendances over the 

past decade and are battling to attract fans 

back through the turnstiles. They are also 

having the same discussions as us: league 

reconstruction, the merits of summer 

versus winter football and the use of artificial 

surfaces. However, their discussions 

are taking place against a backdrop of fan 

engagement and match-day experience 

light years ahead of our own. 

There were three areas in particular 

which they are getting right which would 

have a transformative effect on our game 

if we were able to follow suit: standing 

at games, the sale of alcohol inside the 

stadiums and the use of pyrotechnics. 

1. Safe Standing 

Standing within Scottish top-flight 

stadiums has been banned since 1994 

in the aftermath of the tragic events at 

Hillsborough. What I hadn’t realised until 

recently is that although the recommendations 

of the Taylor Report, which was 

released in the aftermath of Hillsborough, 

are enshrined in English law, the requirement 

for all-seated stadiums in Scotland 

was applied on a voluntary basis; there is 

no requirement for it in Scots law. 

In 2011, spurred on by pressure applied 

by the Celtic Trust, Celtic approached the 

SPL about the possibility of introducing 

safe-standing sections, as pioneered 

in the Bundesliga, to Celtic Park. In an 

uncharacteristic display of rationality, the 

SPL conditionally approved the introduction 

of safe standing in Scotland. 

More than five years later, only now 

is Celtic’s 2,600-capacity innovative 

seating/standing hybrid section in place. 

The tortuous process that Celtic had to go 

through to turn this pioneering proposal 

into reality says much about the attitude 


Opinion 


of the powers-that-be towards Scottish 

clubs and their fans. 

In their wisdom, when the SPL made 

their landmark announcement in 2011 they 

also slipped in the caveat that the implementation 

of standing sections would be 

conditional on approval by local authority 

safety committees and the police. 

Prior to this, Scottish Police Federation 

chairman Les Gray had set out his stall 

when he released the following statement 

to the media: “People have this romantic 

idea about standing areas. There’s nothing 

further from the truth, they are dangerous. 

People go into a standing area because 

they want to misbehave. They will tell you 

it’s for the atmosphere but invariably you 

get a crowd of people who misbehave. If 

you’re in a seat you are easily identifiable. 

It starts off with great intentions but even 

with a small controlled number, it doesn’t 

work. We have all-seater stadiums for a 

reason. Standing areas are a nightmare.” 

By rights the only involvement from the 

police should have been in an advisory 

capacity as part of local authority safety 

committees. No laws were being broken 

nor amended. However, their stance was 

clear: they would object to these proposals 

at every turn and do everything in 

their power to obstruct them. 

Celtic followed up their initial 

representations to the SPL with a formal 

application to Glasgow City Council (GCC) 

in 2012. This application was finally approved 

in June 2015 following a gruelling 

process which included two rejections of 

the proposal. The process required Celtic 

to commission numerous feasibility studies, 

the preparation of an independent 

study by a subject matter expert and a 

massive amount of administrative work. 

The process is estimated to have cost 

Celtic in excess of £100k. 

The basis for the two rejections by the 

GCC Safety Advisory Group (SAG) and the 

justification for delaying the approval by 

three years are poorly documented. What 

is clear is that Police Scotland was able 

Vålerenga will be 

the first Norwegian 

club to utilise “safe 

standing” rail seating when 

their new stadium is opened 

in 2017. In sharp contrast with 

Celtic’s travails this installation 

has not been subject to a 

protracted approval process; 

in fact no governing body 

intervention was required. 

to exert an inordinate amount of control 

on the SAG. I spoke to various sources 

who were stunned by the extent of Police 

Scotland’s influence in what is essentially 

not a matter for the police. I heard 

numerous allegations about the reasons 

behind Police Scotland’s objections, including 

personal politicking, self-interest 

and a refusal to back the proposals due 

to the association with Celtic’s Green 

Brigade group. 

The most worrying allegation was that 

the objections were not even based on 

safety concerns but instead centred on 

the ease of policing standing sections. 

This was allegedly confirmed during 

one meeting of the SAG when the police 

raised the possibility of erecting fencing 

around the standing area. Given the role 

fencing played in historic stadium disasters, 

the short sightedness of this proposal 

seems incredible. 

The standing section at Celtic Park is 

effectively being used as a trial run for the 

rest of Scottish football. Whether Police 

Scotland allow it to be successful remains 

to be seen. 

Meanwhile, despite suffering crowd 

trouble during the 1970s and 80s, standing 

spectators have been an enduring sight 

in Scandinavian football. Standing is 

currently allowed in all three of the Nordic 



countries I looked at. All 16 top-flight 

stadiums in Sweden contain standing sections 

and the concept of “safe standing” 

does not even enter the thinking - many 

grounds retain old-school terracing long 

since lost from the UK. 

Vålerenga will be the first Norwegian 

club to utilise “safe standing” rail seating 

when their new stadium is opened in 

2017. In sharp contrast with Celtic’s travails 

this installation has not been subject 

to a protracted approval process; in fact no 

governing body intervention was required. 

Scandinavian fans regard it as a fundamental 

right of supporters to choose how 

they watch the game. Standing isn’t viewed 

as intrinsically less safe than sitting. 

2. Booze Ban 

In the aftermath of large scale rioting 

in the 1980 Scottish Cup final between 

Rangers and Celtic, the sale of alcohol 

within football stadiums in Scotland 

was made illegal by the passing of the 

Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980. That 

final was the culmination of drink-fuelled 

violence that had blighted the Scottish 

game for years. 

The footballing and cultural landscape 

has changed dramatically in the 30 odd 

years since the ban was introduced. Even 

though half of all people attending games 

today take a drink before the game, 

violent disorder within stadiums has been 

virtually eradicated. 

Recent years have seen a groundswell of 

opinion advocating a rethink. A total of 

62% of respondents to the 2014 SDS poll 

were in favour of lifting the alcohol ban, 

while 72% advocated the introduction of a 

small-scale trial. 

There have been sporadic efforts at 

relaxing the restrictions, most recently a 

populist move by former Scottish Labour 

leader Jim Murphy in 2014. Yet again 

Police Scotland was hot on his heels, 

Chief Constable Stephen House stating 

at the time that he would be “extremely 

concerned by any proposal to amend 

legislation in respect of alcohol at 

football matches in Scotland.” 

Detractors will point to the recent 

trouble at the Scottish Cup final as 

evidence that widespread disorder at 

matches is only ever just over the brow of 

the hill. This isolated incident, completely 

uncharacteristic of Scottish football in the 

past few decades, will now be cited by 

governing bodies and lawmakers as justification 

for refusing to even contemplate 

removing the ban. 

There is a phrase in legal circles 

which feels particularly pertinent when 

considering the wider impact this game 

should be allowed to have on our liberties 

as fans: “Hard cases make bad law”. 

That game represented an almost 

unique set of circumstances: a more 

volatile than normal atmosphere amongst 

the fans due to recent spats between 

the clubs which was then exacerbated 

by a last-minute winner which ended 

Hibernian’s 114 year wait to lift the trophy. 

Even then, the explosion of emotion from 

both sets of fans at the final whistle could 

have been contained had it not been for, 

somewhat ironically, inadequate policing. 

The highly improbable confluence 

of these contributing factors shouldn’t 

be allowed to inform our match-going 

experience for years to come. The 99% 

of us who are able to drink sensibly and 

act like responsible adults should be 

allowed to do so, while the police ensure 

any trouble is handled in the same way as 

any other alcohol-fuelled incident which 

occurs on any given Saturday night across 

the country. 

As you might have guessed the story 

across the North Sea is very different. 

Alcohol is readily available at all grounds 

in Sweden and Denmark. A modicum 

of control is in place with the alcohol content 

of the beer on sale being restricted: 

2.1 to 3.5% in Sweden and 3.5 to 4.1% in 

Denmark. 

The availability of booze means fans 

arrive earlier at the ground than we 

 


Opinion 


are accustomed to in Scotland. Fans in 

Sweden and Denmark arrive between 

30 and 90 minutes before kick-off. They 

enjoy a few pints, have some food, pump 

much-needed revenue into their clubs 

and generally contribute to an atmosphere 

that builds to kick-off. 

3. No Pyro, No Party? 

The use of pyro (i.e. smoke bombs and 

flares) within stadiums doesn’t do much 

for me personally as I’ve no real desire to 

stand in a plume of smoke while trying 

to watch the game. There is however a 

section of fans in Scotland, enthralled by 

images of sweeping curvas in European 

stadiums lit up with flares and draped in 

flags, that is determined pyro should be 

part of our match-day experience. 

Norway allows pyro displays providing 

they are sanctioned by the clubs in 

advance and are carried out by trained 

individuals. In theory it is the same 

situation in Sweden and Denmark, but 

both countries are currently working out 

the finer details of how these rules will be 

implemented. 

The key difference is how the 

Scandinavian authorities deal with the 

demand for pyro. Nordic associations, 

including their police forces, have had 

progressive, round table conversations 

with the fans to explore solutions which 

meet the needs of all parties. They are 

intent on finding safe ways of satisfying 

customer demand. 

The Scottish approach on the other 

hand appears to centre on the implementation 

of punitive measures in the hope 

the topic will disappear from the agenda: 

a young Motherwell fan has recently been 

jailed for five months for letting off a 

smoke bomb inside Fir Park. 

There are clearly safety concerns where 

pyro is involved and many people want 

nothing to do with it. However, at a time 

when clubs are trying to get as many 

fans through the turnstiles as possible, 

no avenue should be left unexplored. The 

current trend of young lads sneaking in 

uncontrolled pyro and discharging them 

in crowded areas is the biggest risk. Surely 

our clubs are able to implement controls 

to allow the aspiring ultras to have their 

fun while safeguarding other spectators? 

Other European countries 

The argument that Scandinavian fans enjoy 

much greater freedoms and a more enjoyable 

day out as a result is pretty compelling, 

but what of other European countries? Is 

Scandinavia particularly progressive? 

The table below shows you how fans in 

seven other Western European countries 

fare compared to Scotland. The reality 

reinforces all of our negative perceptions. 

We certainly are being treated differently 

to our European peers. In footballing 

terms, we are being criminalised. 

Call to Arms 

The silent majority need to make their 

voices heard. The authorities need to be 

made aware that the continued pursuit 

of the family-friendly agenda to the 

exclusion of all else needs to stop. The 

hard working punters who hand over 

their cash at the turnstiles and want to 

stand, have a few beers and maybe even 

take part in some organised pyro, have 

as much right to be accommodated as 

families. There is no justification for us to 

be treated so badly in comparison with 

our European counterparts. 

I have two young daughters who I take 

to Pittodrie on occasion. They barely 

watch the game but they are enthralled 

by the sensory experience: the buzz of the 

crowd, the smell of the burgers, Angus 

the Bull firing some Fruit of the Loom 

t-shirts into the crowd. 

I also attend games with a group of 

mates. We have a few pints before and 

after the game, sing a few songs, dish out 

some good-natured abuse to opposition 

fans and let off some steam. There is no 

reason why our game can’t cater for both 

of these scenarios. l 


Tales from the memory bank 

THE HEARTBREAKER: 

THE STORY OF 

AN UNFULFILLED 

NORWEGIAN GENIUS 

‘The Garrincha of the Nordics’ 

was regarded as the most 

scintillating player of his 

generation in his home 

country and for a brief period 

wowed fans in Scotland. But 

few people outside his home 

country and the Scottish club 

he graced are likely to know 

much about him 

By Nils Henrik Smith 

He was the most mesmerising player 

his compatriots had ever seen. He made 

his international debut aged 17 and ran 

rings around World Cup finalists. He led 

his hometown club to consecutive league 

titles and earned 25 full caps before he 

was old enough to vote. His ability was 

acknowledged by the most successful 

British manager of all time. He had a 

horse race named after him. And he died, 

aged 44, still wearing his football boots 

and old national team shirt. His nickname 

was ‘The Garrincha of the Nordics’, but 

few football fans outside of his home 

country and the Scottish club he graced 

are likely to have heard of him. This is the 

story of Roald ‘Kniksen’ Jensen. 

Brash and fiercely independent, Bergen 

ticks all the traditional second-city 

boxes. Once a member of the Hanseatic 

League, the northern European trading 

block formed in the 13th century by the 

region’s most important merchant towns, 

the ‘city between the seven mountains’ 

was for centuries Norway’s main gateway 

to the world, taking no small amount 

of pride in its cosmopolitan, quasi- 


separatist outlook, enshrined in the 

popular song and slogan “I’m not from 

from Norway, I’m from Bergen!” This 

peculiar local identity, of course, is also 

frequently reflected in the mirror of 

football. Bergen’s undisputed powerhouse 

is Brann, which translates as Fire, and 

rarely can a football club have been 

more appropriately named. Famous for 

the passion of its fans and the perpetual 

volatility of its boardroom, the club has 

more often than not struggled to live 

up to its undoubted potential, which – 

paradoxically, perhaps – accounts for a 

great deal of its popularity. Inspiring blind 

faith and blind fury in equal measure, 

this is an institution both defined by and 

defining of the city it calls home. 

Born in Bergen in 1943, Roald Jensen 

grew up in an austere post-war Marshallplanned, 

sugar-rationed society, with 

limited scope for individual selfexpression. 

Nonetheless, he developed 

into the ultimate Kjuagutt – local slang 

for the archetypal street-smart, irreverent, 

flamboyant kid, essentially a 

Scandinavian, social-democratic version 

of the Argentinian cult of the Pibe (if 

such a concept is imaginable). At the age 

of four, he was given his first football 

by his father, and there was no turning 

back. Honing his skills by spending 

untold hours doing keepy-uppies and 

smashing the ball against the wall of his 

childhood home, he soon made a name 

HE MADE HIS INTERNATIONAL 

DEBUT AGED 17 AND RAN 

RINGS AROUND WORLD CUP 

FINALISTS. 

for himself. His first club – formed with 

friends with whom he’d play in Bergen’s 

narrow alleyways – was called Dynamo 

in honour of the Muscovite idols who had 

bewildered British crowds during the 

Russian club’s famous tour of 1945. The 

Bergen version routinely won games by 

twenty-plus goal margins, with the tiny, 

frail dribbling wizard either scoring or 

making most of them. He quickly became 

known as ‘Kniksen’, after the verb knikse, 

to do tricks with the ball. 

Eventually, he joined Brann’s youth 

set-up alongside several of his Dynamo 

pals. He was ten. Younger than most 

and smaller than all of his teammates, 

he nonetheless continued to dominate 

games, despite opponents often deploying 

brutal tactics to stifle him. In 1959 

he was the star of the junior side that 

reached its second consecutive Norwegian 

Youth Cup Final. The game was played at 

Brann Stadion, and a 10,000-plus crowd 

turned up to watch the boy wonder who, 

according to contemporary press reports, 

won the semi-final “on his own”. (He 

later said he could never accept such 

praise as it was also “an implicit criticism” 

of his teammates.) Brann retained the 

trophy, and a few weeks later, as Kniksen 

turned out at home for Norway’s juniors, 

14,000 Bergeners showed up to worship 

their new idol. To put those figures into 

context, the entire population of Bergen 

at the time was approximately 115,000. 

This was Kniksen-mania. 

It was evident, then, that young Jensen 

had to be accommodated into the firstteam 

without delay. Appropriately, it 

was a coach known as Saint Peter who 

opened the Pearly Gates. Upon arrival in 

Bergen in 1960, the Hungarian Tivadae 

Szentpetery opted to introduce a Magical 

Magyaresque formation, with the centreforward 

and wingers withdrawn and the 

nominal inside-forwards – Kniksen on 

the right and his great friend Rolf Birger 

Pedersen on the left – playing alongside 



The Heartbreaker: The story of an unfulfilled Norwegian genius 

each other up front. Although Szentpetery 

failed – mainly because he had no 

common language with the players – his 

thinking was innovative by Norwegian 

standards, and helped lay the foundations 

for future success. Meanwhile, Kniksen 

impressed enough to be called up for 

senior national duty after only a few 

months in the first team. His call-up was 

controversial, both because of his youth 

and because of the fact that one of the 

three men on the selection committee 

was also a Brann director. The national 

coach, an Austrian disciplinarian called 

Willy Kment, stated that “Jensen is merely 

a child”. Still, he had no qualms about 

putting the child in his side. Kniksen 

made his debut against Austria, scored 

his maiden international goal against 

Finland, and then in September 1960 won 

the collective heart of the nation with a 

masterful performance against eternal 

arch-enemies Sweden. Some 36,000 

spectators in Oslo saw the youngster 

humiliate a side that had been World Cup 

finalists on home ground only two years 

previously. “Kniksen drew more applause 

than the National Theatre gets through 

an entire season,” claimed one excited 

scribe; meanwhile, Dagens Nyheter, 

Sweden’s largest newspaper, anointed 

him “Norway’s new King!” . 

In the spring of 1961, an extraordinary 

story appeared in the now-defunct 

Bergen broadsheet Morgenposten. The 

paper revealed that Roald Jensen had 

signed a contract with Real Madrid. There 

was one catch, however: the ‘news’ was 

reported on April Fool’s Day, and the ‘Real 

Madrid manager’ pictured and quoted 

in the paper was in fact László Papp, 

the Hungarian triple Olympic boxing 

champion. Still, the fact that the story 

was deemed plausible enough to publish 

as a joke spoke volumes about the esteem 

in which the teenager was held. And 

more was yet to come. 

Because of a change in the league 

format, the 1961/62 season was a 16-team, 

18-month marathon affair, and during 

this period Jensen, Pedersen and Roald 

Paulsen developed into one of the most 

potent attacking forces the nation had 

ever seen. Combined, the trio scored 

a stunning 75 goals, powering Brann 

towards their first title, which was 

eventually secured with an away win over 

Rosenborg that also saw the Trondheim 

club relegated. The triumph was marred 

by an incident in which a frustrated 

home supporter attacked Kniksen with 

an umbrella, knocking him out cold. Still, 

it was a remarkable achievement and the 

party, predictably, went on for days. For 

Jensen, though, the most important event 

of the season had arguably occurred a 

few months previously, when Heart of 

Midlothian arrived in Bergen to play an 

exhibition match. The Scottish professionals 

defeated their amateur Norwegian 

counterparts 4-0, but Kniksen’s performance 

left a lasting impression. “From 

that moment,” he later claimed, “I knew 

AMONG THE MANY 

IMPRESSED BY HIS 

SKILL WAS A BATTLING 

DUNFERMLINE CENTRE- 

FORWARD OF THE DAY. “OUR 

TACTICS [WHEN FACING 

HEARTS] WERE BASICALLY 

‘STOP SUPER-JENSEN’,” 

SAID SIR ALEX FERGUSON, 

MANY YEARS LATER. 


By Nils Henrik Smith 

I could go to Edinburgh anytime I wanted 

to.” (Later, Norway’s sensational 4-3 defeat 

of a Scotland side featuring Kniksen’s 

great hero Denis Law merely confirmed 

the instincts of the Hearts directors.) 

Having already rejected an offer from an 

unnamed Italian club, Kniksen decided 

to stay put for the time being, and Brann 

won the now-restructured league again 

in 1963. The following season, however, 

the double champions suffered a barely 

comprehensible relegation, and the team’s 

undisputed superstar began to realise his 

future lay abroad. Even so, the decision 

to move was not one to be made lightly, 

for, trapped by its self-defeating amateur 

ethos, the Norwegian FA still forbade professionals 

from representing the national 

team. As it happened, in 1965 Norway 

enjoyed one of their best seasons since the 

war, only missing out on qualification for 

the upcoming World Cup in England after 

a narrow home defeat to France. If their 

best player had been available, who knows 

what might have happened? 

Kniksen arrived at Tynecastle in January 

1965, midway through what would 

eventually prove to be the most dramatic 

season in his new club’s history. He was 

the first foreigner to wear the maroon 

shirt, and managerial legend Tommy 

Walker was not exactly stingy with his 

praise: “Jensen is the greatest talent [to join 

Hearts] in ages”. The 22-year-old made his 

debut against Dunfermline and earned 

rave reviews. “Jensen’s five-star show!” 

roared the headline in the Edinburgh 

Evening News. Norwegian footballers 

had excelled abroad before – Asbjørn 

Halvorsen captained Hamburg to German 

titles in the 1920s and Per Bredesen won 

the Scudetto with Milan in 1957 – but 

Kniksen was the first to play professionally 

in Great Britain, which was a source of 

enormous pride to the most Anglophile 

of all nations (the distinction between 

England and Scotland counted for little). 

The celebrity magazine Aktuell, 

predictably, published a photo of the 

smiling young star in full Highlander regalia, 

and his every move was reported by 

the adoring Norwegian press. Meanwhile, 

his performances continued ŧo impress 

Scottish scribes. “Jensen keeps Hearts 

in title race” reported Ian Rennie after a 

3-1 defeat of Third Lanark. On January 

17, Hearts ascended to the summit of the 

table by beating Celtic 2-1: “Jensen saves 

the day” said the Sunday Evening Post, 

and went on: “The new boy who stole 

the show was Roald Jensen, Hearts’ new 

import from Norway. He was the man 

who took the steam out of Celtic. Who 

tamed the ball. Who never made a move 

that didn’t have intelligence behind it.” 

For Kniksen, who despite his immense 

popularity had never felt accepted as a 

team player by the sports press in his 

homeland, this was vindication. 

Alas the season was to end in heartbreak 

for Hearts. Famously, on the final day 

of the campaign Hearts lost 2-0 to 

Kilmarnock at Tynecastle, conceding 

the title to the visitors on goal average. 

Their luckless Norwegian inside-right, so 

decisive in earlier games, contrived to hit 

the post not once but twice. Still, despite 

this cruel set-back, Kniksen was now 

recognised as a star in his new homeland. 

Among the many impressed by his 

skill was a battling Dunfermline centreforward 

of the day. “Our tactics [when 

facing Hearts] were basically ‘stop 

Super-Jensen’,” said Sir Alex Ferguson, 

many years later. However, although he 

continued to dazzle in flashes, Kniksen’s 

subsequent seasons at Tynecastle were 

marred by injuries and managerial 

conflict. After 15 years in charge, Tommy 

Walker was relieved of his duties in 1966, 

and his replacement, John Harvey, was 

less than impressed by his flamboyant, 

yet fragile winger. “I guess he just didn’t 

like me,” he later said, whilst maintaining 

that he had “been treated very unfairly.” 

Strangely for such a firm fans’ favourite, 

 



The Heartbreaker: The story of an unfulfilled Norwegian genius 

he made almost as many reserve- and 

B-team performances combined as he did 

for the first team during his six-and-a-half 

years in Scotland. (As testimony to his 

popularity, more than 30,000 fans would 

sometimes turn up to watch reserve games 

in which he was playing.) Being routinely 

kicked pillar-to-post did not help, and 

– being a Bergener and thus not lacking 

temper – he would on occasion retaliate, 

which led to disciplinary problems. 

When fit and on song, he could still 

create moments of magic. Many older 

Hearts fans regard his goal against Partick 

Thistle as the finest in club history. 

Receiving the ball on the left wing, he 

bamboozled five defenders and the 

goalkeeper before striking home. That 

year, he was in fine fettle, scoring nine 

goals in 22 games, leading the team 

on a glorious cup run and scoring the 

decisive penalty in the semi-final against 

Morton. In trademark fashion, however, 

Hearts surprisingly lost the final to the 

team against whom Kniksen had made 

his Scottish league debut three years 

previously: Dunfermline. Around this 

time, Feyenoord allegedly wanted to sign 

him, but he politely declined their offer as 

he felt he still had something to prove in 

Scotland. Two years later, the Dutch club 

won the European Cup. 

Ankles swollen, tendons aching, 

Super-Jensen – like many another gifted 

maverick of his era – went into relatively 

early decline. In 1969, as the ban on 

professionals was belatedly abolished, 

he returned to Norwegian national team, 

but despite a wonderfully composed 

performance in his comeback against 

Mexico, ultimately he could not dazzle as 

he did in his early-Sixties heyday. 

Eventually, he left Hearts and rejoined 

his beloved Brann – as he had always 

said he would – inspiring them to win 

the cup in 1972. But he retired from the 

game the following year, settling for a 

quiet life in Bergen – fishing, tending to 

his cabin, spending time with his wife 

and children. He remained a staunch 

critic of the way the game was run in his 

homeland, once commenting that “We 

will not have professional football in 

Norway until they get it on the moon!” 

Professional football did eventually come, 

though not, sadly, in Kniksen’s lifetime. 

On October 6, 1987, while playing in 

a veteran’s game at Brann Stadion, he 

collapsed and died from an undetected 

heart defect, aged only 44. Tragically yet 

somehow appropriately, he departed this 

world wearing his old Norway shirt, the 

one he should have worn so many more 

times had it not been for the Norwegian 

FA’s short-sightedness. 

Thousands turned out for his funeral. In 

memoriam, Brann commissioned a statue 

by Per Ung, Norway’s finest sculptor, 

which stands outside Brann Stadion. 

Norway’s annual Player Of The Year 

Award was named for him, but bizarrely 

and dismayingly this honour was revoked 

in 2013. Thieves broke into his wife Eva’s 

home and stole most of the medals and 

mementos from his career – including 

his Golden Watch, the traditional gift 

presented to all Norwegian players who 

reach the milestone of 25 caps, and which 

he remains the youngest man to have 

received. His son Sondre, who briefly 

turned out for Brann in the early Nineties, 

said he was “the perfect father”. “He just 

wanted to be kind and help people. Often 

those who were not like everyone else. He 

just wanted to be an ordinary guy. And he 

was.” Perhaps that’s as fitting an epitaph 

as any. An ordinary guy who wasn’t 

ordinary at all. Roald Jensen may not 

have enjoyed the success and wealth his 

talent merited, but as he no doubt would 

have agreed, talent, somehow, is its own 

reward. Nearly three decades have passed 

since his untimely death. However, they 

still remember and adore him in two 

great cities either side of the North Sea. l 


THE GENIUS OF DAVIE 

COOPER: EXHIBIT A 

No-one could question his 

supreme talent. But is Cooper 

Scottish football’s last genius? 

One moment in particular makes 

it hard to argue otherwise. 

By Rob Smyth 

Video killed more than just the radio 

star. Blanket coverage, streaming and 

YouTube have done permanent damage 

to the mythology of football. Old folk will 

have no need to tell their grandkids about 

Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi; their 

entire careers will be instantly available in 

High Definition. 

Reality rarely matches up to the fertility 

of the imagination however, and there is 

something magical about a great moment 

that is not easily accessible on video. In 

1977, Rivelino played an 80-yard pass 

against England that is seared into Kevin 

Keegan’s memory. “I was about three 

yards away from Rivelino and I felt the 

wind as the ball passed me at shoulder 

height,” said Keegan. “The astonishing 

thing is that it stayed at the same height 

all the way. I watched wide-eyed as it flew 

on and on; that’s one of the rare times 

when I’ve felt outclassed.” How could that 

possibly be as good on screen as it is in 

the mind’s eye? 

Davie Cooper’s legendary solo effort 

for Rangers and Celtic in 1979 – voted 

Rangers’ greatest ever goal in a fans’ poll 

– has retained a similar mythical quality 

despite being all over YouTube. There are 

two reasons for that. The shaky, grainy 

footage, taken from an unusual angle 

behind the goal with a hand-held camera, 

gives it a bootleg quality. And not even 

Walter Mitty could have imagined a goal 

of such unique brilliance. It is Exhibit 

A in the case for Cooper being Scottish 

football’s last genius. 

“He was a Brazilian trapped in a 

Scotsman’s body,” said Ray Wilkins, 

who played with Cooper at Rangers. It’s 

a lovely quote but not entirely correct: 

while Cooper had the balance and skill 

of a Brazilian, he had a very Scottish 

chutzpah. He was a modest man, who 

sometimes seemed almost embarrassed 

by his talent, but he became a swaggering 

superhero when he put on his costume of 

a Clydebank, Rangers or Motherwell kit. 

The same was not necessarily true of 

the Scotland shirt. Cooper won only 22 

caps, a frustratingly low total, and never 

started a World Cup match. But if he did 

not leave an impression on the world 

game, he certainly did so on one of the 

world greats. In 1984, Rangers played a 

mid-season friendly – called the KLM 

Challenge Cup – against a Feyenoord side 

that included Johan Cruyff and Ruud 

Gullit. “Davie Cooper,” said Gullit years 

later, “was one of the best football players 

I have ever seen.” He included him in his 

 



The genius of Davie Cooper: Exhibit A 

all-time XI of those he had played with 

and against. Ronaldinho and Zinedine 

Zidane were on the bench. 

Although Cooper was inconsistent, his 

boyish enthusiasm for the game was 

such that his genius could assert itself 

in any setting – from the Scottish Cup 

final to the KLM Challenge Cup or even 

the Drybrough Cup final, which Cooper 

illuminated with his goal against Celtic in 

1979. 

The Drybrough Cup was played 

between 1971-74 and then for the last 

time in 1979 and 1980. It was generally 

held as a warm-up to the new season, 

and involved the four highest-scoring 

teams from Division 1 as well as the same 

four from Division 2. It was not just the 

qualification criteria that was designed 

to promote attacking football: the SFA 

changed the rules in an attempt to create 

more space in midfield. For a couple of 

years, in the League Cup and Drybrough 

Cup, players could only be offside if they 

were past the line of the 18-yard box. 

That initiative had died by the time the 

competition was revived in 1979. Rangers 

reached the final for the only time in the 

Drybrough Cup’s short history, where 

they would meet Celtic. They tore into 

Celtic from the start, with the 18-year-old 

John MacDonald giving them the lead 

after a one-two with Cooper. It was all 

too much for MacDonald. “The enormity 

of what I’d just achieved hit me full on,” 

he said. “I ran to the Rangers End to 

celebrate and ended up throwing up all 

over the place. By the time the rest of the 

lads came over to congratulate me I was 

on my hands and knees being as sick as 

a dog.” 

MacDonald’s unusual contribution 

would be overshadowed, as would Sandy 

Jardine’s glorious second, when he ran 

the length of the field before battering the 

ball past Peter Latchford. “I scored one of 

my best goals that day,” said Jardine, “and 

it hardly got a mention.” 

That was because of an even better solo 

goal with 12 minutes remaining. Cooper 

received a pass from the wing inside the 

Celtic area, facing away from goal and 

with Roddie MacDonald attached to his 

back. He controlled it on his chest and 

volleyed it up in the air, allowing it to 

bounce as he jockeyed for position with 

MacDonald. When it did so he flipped it 

infield away from MacDonald, at which 

point Murdo MacLeod and Tom McAdam 

converged. Cooper lobbed the ball first 

time away from both and towards goal. As 

the ball dropped again onto his left foot, 

with Alan Sneddon haring across to cover, 

Cooper stretched his left leg to calmly 

cushion a volley over Sneddon’s head. 

That put him clear on Latchford, and 

after chesting the ball down he tucked it 

precisely into the net. 

In just seven touches – chest, flick, flick, 

flick, flick, chest, finish - Cooper beat 

four players and the goalkeeper. It’s hard 

enough doing that when the ball is rolling 

perfectly along the floor, never mind 

when it’s in the air. “It was a goal born of 

utter self-belief and complete cheek,” said 

the great Celtic defender Danny McGrain, 

who was one of the few on the pitch not 

to be left behind as Cooper scored. “The 

moment seems to last for ever. You could 

be ultra-critical and say that if you beat 

that many defenders in their penalty area 

they are the ones who are ultimately at 

fault. But it was as if they were transfixed 

as the ball was lobbed over one head after 

another in a surreal sequence of events. 

I kept think to myself, ‘He’ll get him’ or 

‘He’ll surely get him this time’ or ‘We 

must get it out of the box this time’. It 

never happened.” 

Celtic pulled a late goal back but 

Rangers were emphatic 3-1 winners. “We 

were so much on top that we could have 

netted six and that score will still have 

flattered Celtic,” said Cooper. “Obviously 

I was pleased with the goal I scored, too, 

because you don’t score goals like that 

very often. More’s the pity!” 


By Rob Smyth 

Later, the former Scotland manager 

Andy Roxburgh produced a video of 

Cooper’s highlights with a soundtrack of 

It’s A Kind of Magic by Queen. “Football 

is not about robots or boring tactics,” he 

said. “It’s about excitement, emotion and 

individual flair and imagination as shown 

by Davie Cooper." 

The goal demonstrated all those qualities. 

He was, as the former Hearts striker 

John Robertson put it, “one of the original 

tanner ba’ players”, and on this day he 

turned Hampden Park into the school 

playground. For a man who once said he 

supported only two teams – “Rangers, 

and whoever is playing Celtic” – this goal 

was the ultimate. 

When someone has such rare talent 

as Cooper, and especially when they 

die so young, it is very difficult not to 

romanticise their career. But it would be 

wrong to say Cooper’s was one happy 

story. He had some lost years at Rangers 

in the early 1980s, when he was often left 

out by John Greig, and the only time he 

was a Scotland regular was in a brief spell 

in 1984-85. 

Unusually for a player of his type, 

Cooper’s best years were in his thirties. 

He was superb for Rangers under Graeme 

Souness, something that Walter Smith 

attributes to being alongside better players; 

then, when he went to Motherwell at 

33 because he wanted regular first-team 

football, he had such a profound influence 

in a midfield role that there is a 

stand named in his honour at Fir Park. 

“It wasn’t until he went to Motherwell 

that I realised he wasn’t a winger,” said 

his former Rangers team-mate Gordon 

Smith. “Just because he was skilful and 

couldn’t tackle, he was put out on the 

wing. But in any other European country, 

he would have been a midfield playmaker 

– as he was at Motherwell – and I think he 

would have been an even greater player 

for Rangers there.” 

Gullit wishes that Cooper had tried his 

luck in Europe. “He had incredible skill 

and a command of the ball. There was 

something about his play that made him 

stand out. When I saw him play I was 

flabbergasted. I remember thinking to 

myself, ‘Who is this guy?’ I fell completely 

in love with his play. It surprised me a 

lot he didn’t become a big international 

name. It’s incredible that a player with his 

skills did not make it to the international 

top flight. I don’t know if it was because 

he stayed in Scotland but he had the 

talent to be one of the greats. He was a 

unique player, not comparable to any 

other. No, Davie Cooper was one of a 

kind.” 

Gullit still talks about Cooper now, 

often bringing him into a conversation 

without prompting. If you asked him 

what cars they used in The Italian Job, 

he’d probably say “Davie Coopers”. 

On the face of it, Cooper did not have 

much going for him as a player. He was 

short and slight, an obvious target at 

a time when GBH was a yellow-card 

offence at worst. He had no real pace and 

no right foot. He could be inconsistent. 

But he had a left-foot that was Harvard 

educated, sleight of hip that allowed him 

to beat defenders without touching the 

ball, a full range of passes and crosses 

– and, as he showed in the Drybrough 

Cup, a football IQ in the high 160s. “He 

was the quickest thinker I’ve ever seen,” 

said Tommy McLean, who played with 

Cooper at Rangers and managed him at 

Motherwell. 

Although Cooper had some of his best 

years at Motherwell, he will always be associated 

with Rangers. Cooper was a fan 

on the pitch, whose simple comment – “I 

played for the club I loved” – has become 

his epitaph. At his funeral in 1995, Walter 

Smith delivered a eulogy. “God gave Davie 

Cooper a talent,” he said. “He would not 

be disappointed with how it was used.” 

Especially not on one magical day at 

Hampden in 1979. l 



OUR NATIONAL DEBT 

TO NASKO SIRAKOV 

Euro 92 is remembered as the 

first European Championship 

finals in which Scotland 

participated. Perhaps less well 

remembered is the agonising 

nature of our qualification. 

By Andrew Galloway 

Nasko Sirakov is now 54 years old. 

He enjoyed an 18-year playing career 

flitting between clubs in Spain, France 

and his native Bulgaria. He won 78 full 

international caps, scoring 24 goals. The 

name may not register straight away. 

None of Sirakov’s international goals were 

scored against Scotland. But 25 years ago 

one of them did our national team one 

of the biggest favours it has ever received 

from a player in an opposition team. 

On the evening of Wednesday, 

November 20, 1991, Scotland’s players, 

coaches and national officials, along with 

thousands of fans, were on tenterhooks, 

awaiting the result of the final fixture 

in Group 2 of qualifying for Euro 92. 

Heavyweights such as Italy, Spain and 

Portugal had already been eliminated. 

Scotland were still in a position to make 

it to the finals in Sweden the following 

summer. Having completed their eight 

fixtures, they could only wait and watch 

as Bulgaria and Romania met in the Vasili 

Levski Stadium in Sofia. Anything other 

than a two-goal win for the visitors and 

Scotland, for the first time ever, would be 

in a European Championship finals, one 

of only eight teams involved. 

At the interval, Romania led 1-0. One 

more goal for the men in yellow would end 

the dreams of a nation’s football fans. This 

is the story of how it came to that evening 

of destiny – and what happened next. 

Five games into the group stages it was 

so far, so good. But as season 1991/92 

dawned, Scotland were under no illusions 

about the task ahead. 

In September 1990, three months after 

the World Cup in Italy, Andy Roxburgh’s 

men started their Euro 92 qualifying campaign 

with home games against Romania 

and Switzerland, the two favourites for 

qualification. Both games had to be won. 

They were, each by a 2-1 scoreline, and 

the best possible start had been made. 

The halfway stage of the campaign was 

reached with back-to-back 1-1 draws 

against Bulgaria, home and away, before 

a 2-0 victory away to San Marino, who 

were making their debut in the qualifying 

rounds for a major tournament. 

The hard bit was about to arrive early 

in the new domestic season: a trip to 

Switzerland followed a month later 

by a visit to Romania. The Swiss side’s 

Hampden defeat was the only reverse they 

had suffered in a group they topped after 

beating San Marino 7-0, albeit they had 


played a game more than Scotland. Defeat 

in the Wankdorf Stadium in Berne would 

leave Scotland three points adrift and, even 

with a game in hand, qualification would 

be difficult – although Switzerland’s final 

match was away to Romania. 

By half time, the task for Scotland 

was as steep as the Swiss Alps. After 30 

minutes Stephane Chapuisat, who had 

recently signed for Borussia Dortmund, 

scored the opener for the hosts. Eight 

minutes later Servette midfielder Heinz 

Hermann increased the deficit to 2-0. 

One hundred and twenty seconds after 

the restart the fightback began when 

Gordon Durie headed home from Stewart 

McKimmie’s cross. Thirty five minutes 

of angst ensued until the equalising goal 

arrived seven minutes from full time. 

Swiss keeper Marco Pascolo was unable to 

smother Durie’s low drive from 15-yards 

out; following up was Ally McCoist, 

whose customary lethal touch in front of 

goal earned a vital point. 

Five weeks later came the trip to 

Bucharest. Romania were five points 

behind Switzerland and, with three 

games to play, could ill afford even to draw 

any of them if they were to qualify. In 

contrast, Scotland travelled knowing that 

another draw away from home would in 

all probability be enough to get them just 

about over the line. That would put them 

level them on points with Switzerland, 

who had a better goal difference but 

had still to visit Romania. In contrast, 

Scotland’s final match was at home to San 

Marino, who were without a point and 

had lost 29 goals in their seven games. 

But Durie, having sparked the comeback 

in Berne, suffered a reversal of fortune in 

the cruellest way in the Steaua Stadium. 

The game was goalless with 15 minutes remaining 

when Romania sent a free kick to 

Scotland’s back post from the right wing. 

Durie’s attempt to clear was made with his 

hand and spotted by the German referee, 

who immediately awarded a penalty. The 

visitors’ hopes now rested with goalkeeper 

Andy Goram, newly-signed by champions 

Rangers from Hibernian. Facing him: legendary 

Romanian striker Gheorghe Hagi. 

Goram guessed the right way, but Hagi’s 

kick was too powerful. It was the only goal 

of the match. 

In a roundabout way, the defeat was a 

blessing in disguise for Scotland. With their 

chances of qualification still alive, it meant 

Romania had to be positive when they 

hosted Switzerland while Roxburgh’s team 

faced San Marino at Hampden. Victory in 

Glasgow was surely a formality, and hopes 

would be pinned on Romania doing to the 

Swiss what they had done to Scotland. On 

the other hand, a Romanian victory would 

mean that they could still beat Scotland 

to top spot in the group when they visited 

Bulgaria for their final game. 

Goals by Paul McStay and Richard 

Gough within the first half hour removed 

any doubt about the outcome against 

San Marino, and with Durie and McCoist 

adding further goals, attention switched 

to Bucharest, where the action was still 

goalless. Unless Scotland could run in an 

avalanche of further goals, a draw between 

Romania and Switzerland would not 

suffice, as the Swiss had a better goal difference. 

A goal for the home side had to come. 

After 69 minutes came the news 

that the Tartan Army were desperate 

for. Dorin Mateut scored for Romania 

and, if Switzerland were unable to find 

an answer, they were out of the race. 

Only Romania would stand between 

Scotland and a place at Euro 92. The best 

part of 25 nervous minutes later, with 

Scotland having coasted to a 4-0 victory 

at Hampden, the scenario was a reality. 

Switzerland, who started the evening at 

the top of the group, were gone. However 

another threat remained. 

Romania were two points and one goal’s 

difference worse off than Scotland when 

they travelled to Sofia to face a Bulgaria 

side who had only their pride at stake. A 

 



Our national debt to Nasko Sirakov 

1-0 win would not be enough for Romania 

to take over at the summit as Scotland 

would still qualify on goals scored. If 

Romania won 2-1, the sides would have 

identical records; any other victory by one 

goal would give Romania the advantage 

on goals scored. They would also qualify 

with a win by more than one goal, but a 

draw or defeat would see them fall. And 

all Scotland could do was watch. What 

did offer optimism was that Bulgaria, on 

matchday two in the group, had won 3-0 

in Romania. The consequences of that 

result may not yet have been complete. 

Eighteen minutes into the match, 

Romania were awarded a penalty, but 

Hagi could not repeat the spot-kick 

accuracy he showed in the Scotland game 

and missed. Just after the half hour mark, 

an Adrian Popescu goal meant that while 

Scotland still topped the group, their 

position hung by a thread. If the visitors 

scored again, Bulgaria would need to 

score twice to be able to help Scotland. As 

the second half began, Roxburgh and his 

colleagues were rooting for the only team 

they had been unable to defeat, home or 

away, in the group. There was a full card 

of Scottish Premier Division fixtures that 

night, but every fan would have had one 

eye on events in Sofia. And 10 minutes 

later their support in spirit was rewarded 

as Nasko Sirakov drew Bulgaria level. 

Despite incessant pressure from 

Romania, it remained 1-1. Scotland’s 

Group 2 campaign had been a rollercoaster, 

starting off in the best possible 

fashion, hitting a hitch by failing to win 

against Bulgaria, taking a priceless point 

in Switzerland before defeat in Romania 

which left things up in the air. 

But we were there. 

Rangers clinched their fourth consecutive 

league title with two games to spare, 

and then won the Scottish Cup. Dundee 

were First Division champions while 

Dumbarton won the Second Division. 

None of that was quite by the by, but 

THERE WAS A FULL CARD OF 

SCOTTISH PREMIER DIVISION 

FIXTURES THAT NIGHT, BUT 

EVERY FAN WOULD HAVE HAD 

ONE EYE ON EVENTS IN SOFIA. 

for the months which followed that 

nerve-shredding evening where Bulgaria 

did it for Scotland, ‘Euro’ and ‘92’ were 

the buzzwords of the country. Having not 

qualified for the tournament in its 32-year 

history, the wait was over, and while some 

giants of international football would sit 

at home watching, we were part of the 

festival in Sweden. 

Among the teams Scotland could 

face were reigning world champions 

Germany (albeit they won Italia 90 as 

West Germany) and the Netherlands, who 

were defending their European title. One 

of those in our group would have been a 

tough task. Both would have meant a serious 

battle to reach the knock-out stages. 

When the draw took place, it was the 

latter scenario which was handed down, 

with the CIS (the Russia-dominated rump 

of the disintegrated Soviet Union) completing 

the group line-up. To qualify for 

the semi-finals, Scotland were required 

to see off either the holders of football’s 

greatest prize, or the great Dutch side still 

containing the likes of Ruud Gullit, Marco 

Van Basten and Frank Rijkaard. Or both. 

It was easy if you said it fast enough. 

Four members of the double-winning 

Rangers side were in the Scotland squad: 

Andy Goram, Stuart McCall, Ally McCoist 

and Richard Gough. By the time the finals 

kicked off, Dave McPherson would be 



added to the Ibrox legion after completing 

a transfer from Hearts. After the Gers, 

the best-represented club in the pool 

was not Celtic, but Dundee United, who 

also had four representatives in Maurice 

Malpas, Jim McInally, Dave Bowman and 

Duncan Ferguson. Three Celtic players did 

make the cut: Paul McStay, Tom Boyd and 

Derek Whyte. Indeed, of the 20 players 

taken to Sweden by Andy Roxburgh, 

only five played their club football 

outside Scotland, all of them in England. 

Interestingly, the players were numbered 

in descending order based on the number 

of full international caps won, with 

the exception of the goalkeepers, who 

retained numbers one and 12. 

In preparing for the tournament, the 

team was unbeaten. The two home 

fixtures were won 1-0 against Northern 

Ireland (scorer McCoist) and drawn 1-1 

with Finland (McStay getting the goal). 

With the championship weeks away, 

Roxburgh took his players across the 

Atlantic to test them in sunnier climes. 

This was a successful exercise, with the 

USA beaten 1-0 in Denver courtesy of a 

Pat Nevin goal, and then Canada defeated 

3-1 in Toronto with a McCoist goal and 

a Gary McAllister double. The final 

friendly was drawn 0-0 in Norway, nine 

days before Scotland’s opening match in 

Gothenburg, against the Netherlands. 

Van Basten, Gullit and Rijkaard, members 

of the AC Milan team who won the 

1991/92 Serie A title with an eight-point 

cushion, all played for the Netherlands. 

Joining them in the starting XI were the 

likes of defender Ronald Koeman, deadly 

from set-pieces, and up-and-coming Ajax 

striker Dennis Bergkamp. To counter the 

Dutch threat, Gough and MacPherson 

were handed the joint duty of patrolling 

Van Basten’s beat. They were joined in 

guarding keeper Goram by full backs 

Stewart McKimmie and Maurice Malpas, 

while Gordon Durie teamed up McStay, 

McCall and McAllister in midfield. 

McCoist, along with Brian McClair, was 

tasked with finding a goal to stun Europe. 

As it transpired, Scotland could, very 

easily, have done just that. Not only 

were they containing the side who still 

possessed the European Championship 

trophy they won four years ago – they 

were outplaying them. Of all the players 

who could have gone closest to opening 

the scoring, it was MacPherson, whose left 

foot shot from a McStay assist narrowly 

missed the target. Meanwhile, Goram’s 

only first half save was a relatively 

straightforward one from a Rijkaard effort. 

The second half saw more of the same. 

A flurry of Scottish chances were created, 

falling most notably to McStay, Gough 

and substitute Kevin Gallacher, who had 

replaced McCoist upfront. None of them 

were able to hit the target. 

When that happens, the outcome is 

predictable, and it duly arrived in the 

77th minute. Gullit’s cross from the 

right was headed back across goal by 

Van Basten and flicked on by Rijkaard. 

The loose ball could have fallen for either 

Malpas or Gough, but it instead it came to 

Bergkamp. He guided the ball past Goram 

having got between the two defenders 

and the Netherlands had the lead. 

Ferguson was thrown on for McClair, 

but it was to no avail. One moment of 

slackness had cost Scotland in a match 

in which they had looked the better side 

for long spells. Gough’s defensive efforts 

came in for particular salutation, as did 

the performances of McCall and McStay 

in midfield. As Roxburgh put it, it felt like 

being involved in a smash and grab. To 

make matters worse, Germany and the 

CIS drew the other match in the group 

later in the evening. That had looked like 

providing a shock until Thomas Hassler 

rescued a point for the Germans in the last 

minute. Scotland were bottom of the section 

on their own, but if they could bring 

the world champions back down to earth 

after their great escape, they would be 

back in it. By contrast, and by consequence 



Our national debt to Nasko Sirakov 

of Germany and the CIS’ draw, a second 

defeat would eliminate them. 

Both they and Germany had only three 

days to recover from the exertions of their 

first matchday, with Scotland also having 

to travel the best part of 200 miles to 

Norrkoping from Gothenburg, where they 

had faced the Netherlands. So confident 

was Roxburgh that he sent out exactly the 

same starting XI. With the threat of an exit 

hanging over them, Scotland had to remain 

positive, and just as they did against the 

Dutch, they impressed. The problem was 

that they could not find the net. 

Within minutes of the start, 

MacPherson headed over from 

McAllister’s cross while a Gough header 

looked destined for the net only for 

German keeper Bodo Illgner to get a fist 

to it and turn it over. McAllister had two 

further chances, but saw the first blocked 

by the keeper while the second was 

narrowly wide. Having already seen how 

missed opportunities could be punished 

against the Netherlands, there was an 

inevitable feeling of déjà vu. 

It duly happened on 29 minutes. 

Matthias Sammer and Jurgen Klinsmann, 

both introduced to the starting line-up 

by Germany after the CIS draw, combined 

for the latter to hold off Gough’s challenge 

inside the area. His touch back was 

driven into the net by Karl-Heinz Riedle 

with Goram not even moving. For all 

Scotland’s early pressure, a bitter blow 

had been struck. 

And two minutes into the second half 

any hopes of progressing in the tournament 

ended in a moment that summed 

up Scotland’s luck: Stefan Effenberg’s 

cross from the right took a huge deflection 

off Malpas and, with Goram losing 

his footing, bent into the net. 

Scotland did not lose heart, and in fact 

came close to scoring through defenders 

Gough and McKimmie. But it was all 

over bar 90 minutes against the CIS with 

only pride at stake for Scotland. It was 

an emotional end to the afternoon, with 

Roxburgh ordering some of his players 

back out from the dressing room to applaud 

the supporters. 

After three days to reflect, it was on to 

the final match, which may have been 

meaningless to Scotland, but not to the 

CIS. As a result of their goalless draw with 

the Netherlands following Scotland’s 

loss to Germany, they needed a result to 

progress to knock-out stage. With all the 

pressure on the opposition, Roxburgh 

took the chance to experiment, resting 

Malpas and Durie in favour of giving Boyd 

and Gallacher a chance from the start. 

The new-look side took all of six 

minutes to make the impression they 

may have felt they should have done 

against the Netherlands and Germany. 

McAllister’s corner was headed down by 

McPherson and fell to McStay 20 yards 

from goal. After the Celtic midfielder 

drove in a low shot, it hit the post, then 

the back of keeper Dmitri Kharine, 

and into the net. It may have carried an 

element of luck, but nobody could argue 

that we were due some of that. 

Within 10 minutes the disappointment 

of the previous two matchdays was 

quickly being forgotten. Despite scoring 

many goals for Celtic and Manchester 

United, McClair had waited 26 caps for 

his first Scotland goal. That drought was 

ended by a deflected finish from the edge 

of the area after McCoist set him up. 

The CIS put in a power of effort to 

try to rescue their hopes, but with six 

minutes remaining came the icing on 

Scotland’s cake. Nevin, not long on the 

field in place of Gallacher, ran Rangers 

defender Oleg Kuznetsov ragged on the 

left wing before being fouled in the area. 

McAllister stepped up to do what needed 

doing and, as TV commentator Gerry 

McNee observed, three Macs had got on 

the scoresheet to send Scotland home with 

some pride. It was also a result appreciated 

by Germany, who were beaten 3-1 by the 



Netherlands in Gothenburg in the other 

game. As a result of the CIS’ sound defeat, 

the world champions were through to the 

semi-finals by the skin of their teeth. 

There were more emotional celebrations 

at the end of a tournament which 

ultimately came up short in terms of progress, 

but not in terms of how Scotland had 

acquitted themselves. If luck had come 

their way in the first two group games, 

things could have worked out differently 

and either the reigning European or world 

champions would have been eliminated 

in our favour. The finale was back home 

at Glasgow Airport, with over 1,000 fans 

waiting to greet the team home. After all, 

they had fared better at the finals than the 

likes of Italy, Spain or Portugal had. 

Of course, there is really only one team 

deserving of the last word in any remembrance 

of Euro 92. Denmark were due 

to sit at home watching the finals after 

finishing second in their qualifying group 

behind the former Yugoslavia. When 

the Yugoslavs were forced to withdraw 

because of the conflict in their home 

nation, the Danes took their place. Having 

finished top of Group 1, they defeated the 

Netherlands on penalties in the semifinal, 

leading them to the final against 

Germany in Stockholm. John Jensen and 

Kim Vilfort got the goals to ensure an 

historic 2-0 win for the team that wasn’t 

supposed to be there. l 

EURO 1992 QUALIFYING RESULTS 

12 September 1990 

SCOTLAND 2 

Robertson 37’ 

McCoist 76’ 

Romania 1 

Cămătaru 13’ 

17 October 1990 

SCOTLAND 2 

Robertson 34’ (pen.) 

McAllister 53’ 

Switzerland 1 

Knup 65’ (pen.) 

27 March 1991 

SCOTLAND 1 

Collins 83’ 

Bulgaria 1 

Kostadinov 89’ 

1 May 1991 

San Marino 0 

SCOTLAND 2 

Strachan 63’ (pen.) 

Durie 67’ 

11 September 1991 

Switzerland 2 

Chapuisat 30’ 

Hermann 38’ 

SCOTLAND 2 

Durie 47’ 

McCoist 83’ 

16 October 1991 

Romania 1 

Hagi 75’ (pen.) 

SCOTLAND 0 

QUALIFYING GROUP 2 TABLE 

13 November 1991 

SCOTLAND 4 

McStay 10’, Gough 31’, Durie 

38’, McCoist 62’ 

San Marino 0 

Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts 

SCOTLAND 8 4 3 1 14 7 +7 11 

Switzerland 8 4 2 2 19 7 +12 10 

Romania 8 4 2 2 13 7 +6 10 

Bulgaria 8 3 3 2 15 8 +7 9 

San Marino 8 0 0 8 1 33 −32 0 

EURO 1992 FINALS RESULTS & SQUAD 

12 June 1992 

Netherlands 1 

Bergkamp 75’ 

SCOTLAND 0 

15 June 1992 

SCOTLAND 0 

Germany 2 

Riedle29’, Effenberg 47’ 

18 June 1992 

SCOTLAND 3 

McStay 7’, McClair 16’, 

McAllister 84’ (pen.) 

CIS 0 

1 Andy Goram, Rangers 

2 Richard Gough 

(Captain) Rangers 

3 Paul McStay, Celtic 

4 Maurice Malpas 

Dundee United 

5 Ally McCoist, Rangers 

6 Brian McClair 

GROUP 2 TABLE 

Manchester United 

7 Gordon Durie 

Tottenham Hotspur 

8 David McPherson 

Hearts 

9 Stewart McKimmie 

Aberdeen 

10 Stuart McCall 

Rangers 

11 Gary McAllister 

Leeds United 

12 Henry Smith, Hearts 

13 Pat Nevin, Everton 

14 Kevin Gallacher 

Coventry City 

15 Tom Boyd, Celtic 

16 Jim McInally 

Dundee United 

17 Derek Whyte,Celtic 

18 Dave Bowman 

Dundee United 

19 Alan McLaren 

Hearts 

20 Duncan Ferguson, 

Dundee United 

Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts 

Netherlands 3 2 1 0 4 1 +3 5 

Germany 3 1 1 1 4 4 0 3 

SCOTLAND 3 1 0 2 3 3 0 2 

CIS 3 0 2 1 1 4 –3 2 


The Back Four: Tactics 

The history makers 

It was under John Robertson that Inverness Caledonian Thistle made 

history by becoming the first club from the Highlands to be promoted 

to the SPL. However there are strong claims for the side managed 

by his predecessor, Steve Paterson, to be regarded as the club’s 

best-ever team. John Maxwell analyses the players, the tactics, the 

formations and the performances of both squads 

Strategy in football has a curious way of 

setting its own trends. By its very nature, 

one manager’s plan will likely be successful 

only for a finite period, either before 

circumstances change or an opponent 

works out a successful counter to it. 

Football is rich with such instances at all 

levels, none more so than in Scotland over 

the last 20 years. 

Leading examples are found with 

the Old Firm. Dick Advocaat’s arrival 

in Scotland in 1998 brought a return to 

an orthodox 4-4-2 for Rangers, after 

a handful of years when Walter Smith 

preferred to use three centre-backs at the 

twilight of the nine-in-a-row era, before 

being usurped by Wim Jansen’s Celtic. 

Advocaat’s strategy was an immediate 

success, with an emphasis on his Dutch 

full-backs Fernando Ricksen and Arthur 

Numan bringing the ball out of defence 

and providing quality in the final third. 

Rangers’ progress was hampered two 

years later when Martin O’Neill arrived 

at Celtic and bettered his rival. Celtic’s 

3-5-2 was based on three dominating 

centre-backs, attacking wing-backs and 

a couple of dogged central midfielders to 

give Lubomir Moravcik the freedom to 

link with the forwards. O’Neill’s strategy 

trumped Advocaat’s, highlighted by the 

6-2 win in the first derby of the season. 

Rangers got some form of revenge in a 5-1 

win at Ibrox in November of that season, 

but Celtic won four of the five derbies and 

went six months unbeaten on the way to 

a domestic treble. 

O’Neill was eventually tested by 

Advocaat’s successor Alex McLeish, who 

preferred a 4-3-3. When the sides met, 

Rangers’ mobile forwards left Celtic’s back 

three having to mark man-for-man, or rely 

on the wing-backs to pick up the wingers, 

leaving fewer numbers elsewhere; Celtic 

no longer had numerical advantage in defence 

nor midfield. Thus Rangers generally 

had the upper hand in matches between 

them in McLeish’s first 18 months, before 

Celtic’s strategy had to evolve further. The 

cause and effect of the use of different 

strategies and systems can be seen quite 

clearly from those four years in Glasgow. 

One does not need to focus just on the 

Old Firm to find richness in the detail 

of different strategies used in Scotland, 

of course. Celtic made using three at 

the back seem like an easy thing to 

practise, but another club used their 

own interpretation of 3-5-2 and were 

fascinating to watch in the half-season 

it was used. Steve Paterson’s Inverness 

Caledonian Thistle infamously beat Celtic 

on their own turf in what was one of the 

biggest cup upsets in decades shortly 

before O’Neill’s reign, but it wasn’t until 

a couple of years later that Caley Thistle 

really began to show their potential in 


league competition. In 2002/3, Paterson’s 

side finished fourth in the ten-team SFL 

First Division, 16 points behind champions 

Falkirk, but were in first place until 

the beginning of 2003, when a string of 

losses dropped them down to a position 

they couldn’t recover from. Inverness 

won the title the following season under 

John Robertson’s stewardship, but it was 

Paterson’s attack-minded side, typically 

put out in an enterprising, asymmetric 

3-5-2 system, that first caught the eye and 

the admiration of the club’s followers. 

There was something fixating about the 

balance of that particular team, which 

blended creativity, power and athleticism. 

The side had a strong central column, best 

personified by captain Bobby Mann, a 

burly sweeper who could turn slow possession 

to a quick change in direction and 

pace in an instant. Mann was 28 years old 

at the time and captained the side from a 

pivotal role, with either Stuart McCaffrey 

or Grant Munro – both in their early 

twenties – on one side of him and Stuart 

Golabek - who was a year younger – on 

the other. The back three were a relatively 

mobile but fundamentally strong unit. 

Yet the relative lack of experience at the 

time, by the standards of a potentially 

title-winning team, probably accounted 

for the amount of goals conceded as much 

as the team’s attacking bias did. Caley 

Thistle finished the league campaign 

with 74 goals scored, the second-most 

behind champions Falkirk, but their 45 

goals conceded ended up being considerably 

more than St Johnstone, Clyde and 

Falkirk who all finished above them. 

The team was also well defined by 

the starkly contrasting styles of their 

wing-backs. Ross Tokely was 23 years old 

at the time but already had the experience 

of playing through the lower leagues 

(eventually to the top flight), in six years 

with the club. At 6’3”, with broad, high 

shoulders and a swimmer’s Y-shape 

build, Tokely would seem at first glance 

to suit a centre-back role more than a 

position that is typically suited to tricky, 

pacey players with skill to match endurance. 

What Tokely sometimes missed in 

technique he made up for by his sheer 

athleticism, which allowed him to often 

dominate a flank on his own. Tokely is 

more recently known for being a lumbering 

defender who could power through 

almost any opposition, but whose lack of 

pace occasionally showed a clumsiness 

that betrayed his anticipation. However, 

he should be better remembered for the 

marauding runs that he often made from 

a deep wing-back position at the beginning 

of the century, and the deceptively 

quick top speed that he had. 

Talking to The Pele Podcast about the 

players that fitted within Steve Paterson’s 

3-5-2 system, Bobby Mann was complimentary 

toward his former team-mate. 

“Ross would say himself that he became a 

better player the older and more wise he 

became,” Mann says. “Ross didn’t set up 

as many goals as Barry Robson did, but 

we didn’t concede as many goals coming 

down Ross’s side. Ross was obviously not 

as skilful as Barry, but he won a lot of 

headers at the back post, we got a lot of 

second balls and knockdowns from that 

and we scored a fair amount of goals as 

a result”. Tokely only scored five goals 

during the 2002-03 season, but the threat 

of arriving late to get on to a cross beyond 

the back post was a big asset to the team. 

Tokely couldn’t have been much 

more different in style to Barry Robson. 

Whereas Tokely would look to dominate 

the opposition by his physical power, 

Robson was arguably the most technically 

gifted player in the team and was the 

chief creator of chances. A cantankerous 

character who recently retired from 

first team football at Aberdeen – with 

the ignominy of being the player who 

has collected the most red cards in the 

top flight in the post-SPL era – he knew 

how to look after himself on the football 

pitch like the rest of his Inverness team. 




Perhaps an attitude held him back in his 

early years, but he developed into a player 

who would play in the Champions League 

and for his country. “Everybody knew he 

had lots of ability and talent,” Mann reminisces. 

“It was just getting the best out of 

him at the best time. Probably to this day, 

Barry is the best crosser of the ball I have 

had the privilege to play beside”. 

Robson’s quality of his deliveries was 

important in a side that included the 

veteran striker Paul Ritchie, who scored 

21 goals in all competitions that season, 

including four league hat-tricks. Whereas 

Dennis Wyness did most of the running 

for the strike partnership and caused such 

a nuisance with his cunning one-touch 

play and ability to score in a multitude of 

ways, Ritchie’s position in the team was 

as more of a penalty-box striker and he 

took up a more central position, allowing 

the ball to stick to bring Wyness and 

others into the game. 

Paterson didn’t immediately settle on 

the favoured 3-5-2, instead starting the 

season with a 4-4-2 shape that had Tokely 

and Golabek as the full-backs and Christie 

playing as a deep forward, behind 

Wyness. A resounding 4-0 win away at 

Love Street in late August showed a hint 

of what was to come, against a St Mirren 

side that included household names 

Paterson’s 3-5-2 made 

its debut in a 3-1 win over 

Queen of the South, in a 

fixture notable for veteran 

Doonhamers goalkeeper Andy 

Goram going off with an injury 

after 30 minutes 

such as Sergei Baltacha, Hugh Murray 

and Junior Mendes. Robson helped blitz 

the opposition into a three-goal deficit 

with barely a quarter of the match gone, 

Robson’s second goal was a particular delight: 

he pounced on to a loose ball from 

Christie to be left one-on-one against the 

St Mirren defence, where his dribbling 

left his marker falling unbalanced on to 

the ground before his shot from 16 yards 

found the bottom corner of the goal. It 

was a convincing win but Paterson’s 

post-match emphasis was on the team 

keeping a clean sheet, telling the press 

that goalkeeper Mark Brown was too good 

for the division he was in. 

For most of his time at Inverness, 

Paterson used 4-4-2 and geared his strategy 

toward stretching teams with width. 

However, a knee operation for David 

Bagan left Paterson without a specialist 

winger for the beginning of the 2002/03 

season. With Charlie Christie picking up 

a calf injury during the St Mirren match, 

the circumstances suited a change to 

picking two strikers but keeping three 

central midfielders. The 3-5-2 fell just fell 

into place. 

“It takes a wee bit of time but the 

change in system was about trying to 

get the best out of all of the players that 

Steve had at his disposal,” Mann says of 

his former manager’s decision to alter 

his strategy. “He was very good at fitting 

players into systems and trying to get 

the best out of everybody,” he continues, 

citing how Paterson harvested Mann’s 

own potential. 

“I played as the spare man most of the 

time, so it gave me a lot of time to sweep 

things up and read the game more than 

the other two defenders, and get on the 

ball from the back. It was always part of 

my game to do that, but at Inverness it 

was a big park. Steve always wanted to 

play with wide players, so we were looking 

to stretch teams. It was important to 

be able to switch the play quickly and hit 

teams on the break.” Few in the division 


By John Maxwell 

were as good at doing so and it seemed 

that the whole team set-up played to the 

captain’s strengths. 

Paterson’s 3-5-2 made its debut in the 

next league match, a 3-1 win over Queen 

of the South, in a fixture notable for veteran 

Doonhamers goalkeeper Andy Goram 

going off with an injury after 30 minutes. 

This was followed by a thumping 5-0 win 

against Arbroath, of which the Highland 

News declared the performance to be “as 

professional a 90 minutes as you could 

wish to see in Division One”. Robson 

was once again the chief creator through 

set-pieces and open play, but Paterson 

insisted on praising the team for defending 

solidly and working harder for each 

other than ever before. 

As was typical with Paterson’s 

management, a winning team brought a 

settled line-up, which, from September 

to December, resembled close to the 

following on a week-by-week basis: Mark 

Brown; Grant Munro, Robert Mann, Stuart 

Golabek; Ross Tokely, Russell Duncan, 

Richard Hard, Roy McBain, Barry Robson; 

Dennis Wyness, Paul Ritchie. 

A surprise 0-3 defeat to Alan 

Kernaghan’s Clyde was blamed by the 

Highland News on “a lack of bite, slack 

passing and haphazard defending”. 

Tokely’s absence through injury meant 

that ICT could only field four of five substitutes 

allowed, with youngster Tony Low 

taking his place. Low was praised for his 

efforts but it was simply a match where 

things just didn’t go Caley Thistle’s way 

and where Clyde had taken their chances, 

with Colin Nish scoring a double. Indeed, 

Paterson wasn’t despondent. “We came 

into this match after a terrific run, paying 

the best football I’ve seen from my side in 

all the time I’ve been with the club,” the 

manager considered. 

Paterson kept faith with the same team, 

which beat Ayr United 2-0 in their next 

match, thanks to a goal each from Ritchie 

Roy McBain deftly counter-balanced 

Barry Robson’s attacking instincts, 

while Ross Tokely could hold a flank on 

his own. 

Robson 

Golabek 

Ritchie 

McBain 

Hart 

Mann 

Brown 

Duncan 

Wyness 

Munro 

Tokely 

and Wyness. Ritchie’s partnership with 

Wyness improved with every game and 

their ability to link was best highlighted 

by the opening goal of their next game, 

a 6-0 thrashing of Alloa Athletic in, the 

second of what would be an eight-match 

winning streak that took Caley Thistle to 

the top of the league (a run that extended 

to 12 matches unbeaten). Wyness had 

pulled out to the right flank to send in 

a cross that was headed clear, only for 

central midfielders Roy McBain and 

Russell Duncan to recycle the ball before 

starting the move again through Mann at 

the back. Mann saw space ahead of him to 

push forward with the ball 20 yards until 

he was on the fringe of the final third, 

then stroked a cute pass into Ritchie’s feet 

as the forward backed into his defender. 

 




Ritchie’s first touch took the ball to 

his right slightly, but his second touch 

allowed him to get the ball from out of his 

feet, to allow him to drag on to his right 

foot, feint a shot and strike the ball low 

into the far corner. It was a noteworthy 

goal due to the individual brilliance in 

finishing the move, but it involved some 

of the best aspects of Caley Thistle’s 

performance during the autumn season, 

from Wyness’s work outside the box, to 

the functional, if not spectacular nature 

of the centre of midfield, to Mann’s ability 

to dictate play from the back. 

The third goal happened largely due to 

a typical surge forward from midfield by 

Richard Hart, who at the time wore the 

number 9 shirt but his position on the 

pitch was the third central midfielder, 

with more responsibility than the others 

to attack the penalty area. Hart was 24 

years old at the time and was in his first 

season at Caley Thistle, having previously 

played for Ross County and Brora 

Rangers. Club legend Charlie Christie 

was in the twilight of his career, playing 

in rotation in his last full season due to 

Hart’s form, so with McBain and Duncan 

settling well into the line-up as understated 

players, who worked hard at winning 

the ball back and moving it on without 

fuss, it was important for Paterson to find 

the correct balance to give the midfield 

some thrust. Hart was the right player 

in the right place in that regard and his 

£5,000 transfer fee for him was justified. 

Hart’s attacking instincts were countered 

by Duncan and McBain curbing theirs; 

22-year-old Duncan would eventually 

specialise in a holding midfield position, 

while left-footed McBain would often 

pull out to the flank, to cover for Robson’s 

tendency to drift infield in the final third. 

The three midfielders complemented one 

another remarkably well. 

The best goal of the game was finished 

by Ritchie again, in a match where both 

he and Wyness scored hat-tricks. It was 

the fourth goal scored, where Robson 

drifted over to the right flank, carried the 

ball forward and took two Alloa defenders 

out of the play with a thoughtfullyweighted 

reverse pass into Ritchie’s path, 

after the forward had bent his run from 

left to the right side of the penalty area. 

Ritchie’s touch took him outside the 

box, but he somehow contorted his body 

to rifle a shot into the top corner of the 

opposite side of goal in an extraordinary 

show of marksmanship. 

The 6-0 win over Alloa was a recordbreaking 

win for the First Division at 

the time and Caley Thistle’s position at 

the top of the second tier was the club’s 

best to that point. It was followed by a 

2-1 win at home to St Johnstone at the 

end of October, after which the Highland 

News exclaimed: “Don’t be fooled by the 

scoreline, because the difference in class 

was there for all to see, with St Johnstone 

never looking likely winners”. Hart 

scored the winning goal with a spectacular 

thumping shot and the midfielder 

explained it modestly: “I glanced up and 

saw Alan Main had covered his angles, so 

I thought the only way I could beat him 

was to blast it, and I was delighted to see 

it hit the back of the net”. 

Caley Thistle won 2-0 in Dingwall, with 

Robson dribbling beyond two players and 

scoring from 25 yards past Tony Bullock 

within 40 seconds of kick-off. Ross 

The 6-0 win over Alloa was 

a record-breaking win for the 

First Division at the time and 

Caley Thistle’s position at the 

top of the second tier was the 

club’s best to that point. 



County manager Neale Cooper resigned 

on Monday after the game, having failed 

to build on his 15-match unbeaten run 

from the end of the previous season. The 

Highland Derby victory was followed by 

a 5-3 win over Queen of the South; then 

2-1 and 1-0 wins over Arbroath and Clyde 

respectively took Caley Thistle to the top of 

the league by the beginning of December. 

Given the success that Paterson had 

with Inverness, taking them through the 

divisions, the famous cup win at Celtic, 

having his team challenging and leading 

the division with a series of convincing 

performances, it wasn’t a surprise to see 

the manager linked with clubs in the 

top flight. Dundee United were turned 

down in November, but Ebbe Skovhdal’s 

departure from Pittodrie gave Paterson a 

job opportunity that he couldn’t refuse. 

Paterson tried to play down speculation 

in the press, but ominously told the 

Highland News a week before taking the 

job that “you would have to listen to any 

opportunity that would better yourself”. 

Until that point, Paterson seemed 

content in Inverness, but perhaps the club’s 

circumstances played a part in his move. By 

the week ending 2 November 2002, after 

the win against St Johnstone, it was clear 

that Caley Thistle were not going to be able 

to gain promotion to the SPL even if they 

won the league. At that time the criteria 

for inclusion demanded a 10,000 all-seater 

stadium, something which the club simply 

did not have the funds for. Paterson reacted 

to the situation with dignity, claiming that 

he and his players knew all along what the 

circumstances were, and that he hoped to 

be able to take the same team to promotion 

in the near future when the club was ready. 

The SPL’s rules were later relaxed, but 

perhaps the glass ceiling that Caley Thistle 

hit at the time had a bearing on Paterson’s 

immediate future. 

There was speculation that Paterson 

and his assistant Duncan Shearer would 

commit to the club for the long term, but 

they joined Aberdeen on 11 December 

2002. John Robertson and his assistant 

Donald Park left their posts at Livingston to 

replace Paterson and Duncan in Inverness. 

A couple of draws and then a 4-1 win 

over St Mirren saw Caley Thistle go into 

the new year as league leaders, but 2003 

didn’t start well for the new management 

team. Robertson didn’t want to disrupt 

the winning formula too much, but one 

loss in the league turned into four on the 

bounce, which by the end of February saw 

the Caley Jags ten points behind Falkirk. It 

was a sticky patch that the team never recovered 

from, despite thumping Hamilton 

Academical 6-1 in the Scottish Cup in 

between league losses. The most chastening 

result was a 5-1 loss at home to Ross 

County, which is still a record scoreline for 

the Highland Derby since both clubs were 

admitted to the Scottish Football League 

in 1994. More significant to Caley Thistle’s 

season however was a second defeat to 

Falkirk a fortnight earlier. 

The 4-3 defeat at home to Falkirk was 

notable for both teams lining up in 3-5-2 

formations. While the majority of the 

division was comfortable with 4-4-2, 

so each team enjoyed success from 

being able to have superior numbers in 

midfield, while still being able to field a 

clutch of regular goalscorers. Against each 

other, Falkirk generally had the upper 

hand through the season. It is difficult 

to pinpoint a defining reason why that 

was the case, because Caley Thistle gave 

as good as they got, but a recurring 

theme was Colin Samuel being quicker 

than anyone else on the pitch, which 

turned the Caley Thistle defenders and 

prompted errors that otherwise might 

not have occurred. Owen Coyle also made 

a difference, scoring a hat-trick in this 

match despite starting as an advanced 

midfielder, rather than as the penalty-box 

striker he was better known as. 

Robertson’s approach to drilling the 

team was more cautious and that began 

 




to show by this match, despite what the 

scoreline suggests. Under Paterson, the 

team had more licence to express itself, 

perhaps at the expense of more goals conceded. 

Robertson wanted the team to give 

less territory away, on the premise that the 

attacking talent could look after itself. 

“We probably didn’t play with as much 

freedom as we used to, we were maybe 

more tactical and a little bit more difficult 

to beat,” Mann says when comparing the 

two managers’ approaches. “No disrespect 

to Steve, he would give us tactics but it 

wasn’t the same detail that John gave.” 

“Everyone knew where they stood with 

John, it was drummed into us”. 

The significance of the fixture with 

Falkirk was not lost on either team and 

neither side wanted to give a yard of 

territory to the opposition. The ball was in 

the air a lot as a result. Three of the seven 

goals scored on the day arrived as a result 

of diagonal balls from the back, over the 

opposition line of defence. 

Caley Thistle found themselves with a 

two-goal lead inside half an hour, firstly 

from an aerial pass out of defence to the 

strikers, who linked up before Robson 

swivelled to shoot; and secondly after 

a long pass was miscontrolled by John 

Hughes, whose studs allowed the ball to 

squirm through to Wyness. A Coyle header 

from a looping cross brought to the score to 

2-1 almost immediately after. Hughes then 

launched a long ball over the Caley Thistle 

defence, where the bounce stood up for 

Golabek to head back to Brown in goals, 

only for Samuel to anticipate the move and 

intercept for the equaliser. 

Caley Thistle were on top by the hour 

mark with Wyness assisting Ritchie, but 

the one real piece of ingenuity in the 

match came from the spritely 20-year 

old Mark Kerr, who weighted a through 

ball behind Stuart McCaffrey (by then 

playing regularly instead of Munro) for 

Samuel, whose fleet-footedness allowed 

him to escape the back three and cross 

for an onrushing Coyle. That shifted the 

momentum to Falkirk’s advantage; Coyle’s 

left-footed volley four minutes from 

full-time gave the visitors a win and a 

commanding position in the league table. 

With a string of losses in the league 

and a grip on the title slipping away, 

Robertson moved the team to a 4-4-2 

system in March. Paterson’s 3-5-2 fitted 

the squad well earlier in the season, but 

David Bagan’s return from a long-term 

injury gave Robertson a more natural fit 

for an alternative approach, with Tokely 

and Golabek comfortable in the full-back 

positions and Bagan bringing width high 

up the pitch. Steven Hislop’s arrival from 

Ross County at the end of January marked 

the advent of Scottish football’s first 

winter transfer window, and he provided 

competition for Ritchie as the goalscoring 

target man. All three of Wyness, Ritchie 

and Hislop ended the season on roughly a 

goal every other game. 

The transition to Robertson’s strategy 

began to work. Caley Thistle went 

from losing four in a row in January 

to picking up 13 of 15 points in March, 

which gave the team an outside chance 

to overtake St Johnstone and catch up on 

Falkirk. However, the fourth away trip 

in a row – and third midweek fixture in 

three weeks – saw the Caley Jags falter 

massively at Clyde. In this instance, 

Robertson elected to play McCaffrey at 

right-back and Tokely in front of him, to 

add further steel into the team with two 

banks of four. However, Clyde still blew 

the visitors away with three goals in the 

first 16 minutes, two of those coming 

from errors by each full-back, and the 

other coming from a 30-yard blast in off 

the post by Andy Millen. The loss away to 

Clyde sparked a sequence of erratic form, 

with four losses in six matches, including 

another midweek reverse to Clyde. 

It left Caley Thistle stuck in fourth place, 

with a visit to a packed Brockville against 

the confirmed champions Falkirk for the 



Paterson’s side was dynamic, 

with a playmaking sweeper 

and lots of thrust and 

creativity in support of the 

forwards 

hosts’ title party. Without any particular 

element of importance to the fixture, the 

ball spent a lot less time in the air than in 

Falkirk’s 4-3 win in Inverness earlier in 

the year. With vibrant mid-May weather 

and a party atmosphere among the home 

support, it made an entertaining spectacle. 

One striking theme from footage of the 

match was just how composed and influential 

Mark Kerr looked, despite being 

the youngest player on the park. Stuart 

Taylor scored a couple for Falkirk, but the 

game is best remembered for a couple of 

free-kicks by Mann, both of which were 

equalisers before Christie closed the scoring. 

The first of Mann’s free-kicks was in 

a central area 22 yards out and was aimed 

to the inside of Allan Ferguson’s left-hand 

post, but deflected off the wall considerably 

to end up in the other side of the goal. 

There was no such luck in Mann’s second: 

the centre-back ushered Hart away from 

the dead ball before nonchalantly stroking 

the ball over the wall from a minimal 

run-up. There was so much top and side 

spin over the wall that the shot almost 

bounced the line, into the far-right corner 

of Ferguson’s goal. There have been few 

free-kicks scored as expertly as that in 

Scotland’s lower leagues since. 

It was a good note to end the campaign, 

then, but the season was one of missed 

potential. Perhaps if Steve Paterson 

had stayed to the end of the season, the 

unbeaten run from October to December 

might have carried on through the new 

year. It is difficult to believe that Caley 

Thistle would have lost so many league 

matches in succession had Paterson and 

his assistant remained at the club. The 

club lost four in a row in December 2001, 

but Paterson’s squad had a year’s more 

experience, and, more importantly, a 

system that seemed to suit every player in 

the team. Whether it was the transition in 

training methods, change in personality of 

leadership, increased tactical detail or the 

integration of different players, the subtle 

differences to the team after Paterson’s 

departure had an effect that resulted in 

Caley Thistle falling down the table. 

However, they won the First Division 

the following season. Robertson used 

his recent connection with Livingston to 

effect, bringing back Barry Wilson to the 

club and, crucially, tempted Davie Bingham 

north. Whereas Paterson generally 

relied on the same XI from week to week, 

Robertson had a lot of depth and competition 

through his squad. Robertson stayed 

away from Paterson’s attack-minded 

3-5-2, preferring to use Wilson and Bingham 

on the sides of a 4-3-3, which would 

allow the team to defend with a unit of 

seven yet also cut teams open with flair 

and pace. Robertson’s title winning side 

made history, being the first club from 

the Highlands to win promotion to SPL, 

but hindsight possibly frames Paterson’s 

team from the previous season in a more 

romantic aperture. Paterson’s side was 

dynamic, with a playmaking sweeper and 

lots of thrust and creativity in support 

of the forwards. Players complemented 

and played for one another. It is a moot 

point, because the potential was extracted 

for only a handful of months, but maybe 

the side that played between August and 

December 2002 should be viewed as 

among the club’s best ever. l 

Special thanks to Neil Sargent at STV for 

arranging access to archive footage. 

 


The Back Four: Stats 

Three years of Scottish 

Premiership penalties: the facts, 

the figures and the one area of 

the goal no keeper made a save 

Thom Watt has analysed every 

spot kick from three top flight 

seasons. The results, outlined 

here contain some intriguing 

insights. 

The penalty kick. A free shot at goal from 

12 yards out. The very definition of a game 

changer. Fans cheer their award almost 

as much as they would a goal, and players 

celebrate them when they benefit from an 

award. 

When it comes to record keeping, 

they’re one of the most interesting 

statistics you can look at. It’s a repeatable 

action, frequently involving the same 

players, with only a finite number of 

resolutions. And yet, they’re rarely looked 

at in any great depth. 

We are addressing this. After looking 

at three years of penalties from the 

Scottish Premiership, we’ve gathered all 

sorts of information on the players, teams 

and referees involved in kicks from the 

penalty mark. There are 178 penalties 

covered, featuring every penalty from 

the Premiership years from 2013/14 to 

2015/16. We’ve learned a lot about the art 

of the spot kick. 

Infographic by Colin Heggie 

184 | nutmeg | September 2016 

GOALS AND MISSES 

This seems like a very good place to start. 

How often are penalties scored and how 

often are they missed? 

Of the 178 penalties, 36 didn’t result in 

a goal, with 31 saved, and five wide of the 

target. Only one player, St Johnstone’s 

Steven Maclean, has put two wide of 

target, in November and December 2015 

against Hearts and Dundee United. 79.8% 

of penalties are scored, or just under 

four out of every five. Two goalkeepers 

have saved four penalties in the Scottish 

Premiership, Paul Gallagher and Jamie 

MacDonald. Gallacher’s record is especially 

impressive, given he’s faced eight 

penalties in total and saved half of them. 

Paul Gallacher – 4 from 8 (50% saved) 

Jamie MacDonald – 4 from 12 (33%) 

Owain Fon Williams – 3 from 6. (50%) 

Michael McGovern – 3 from 10 (30%) 

TEAM AWARDS 

One for the conspiracy theorists here: 

which team gets the most and the least 

amount of penalties, and who concedes 

the most? 

Of course, there are numerous reasons 

for a team getting more penalties than 

others. Teams with quick, direct players 

tend to win more, as do teams who attack 

more than they defend; spending more 

time in the opposition box is bound to 

draw fouls.

178 

Conversion rate 

Premiership 

penalties 

2013/14 

to 2015/16 

Bottom-left 

84% 

Bottom-right 

72% 

Referee awards 

Willie Collum 

Steven McLean 

John Beaton 

Best penalty taker 

Adam 

Rooney 

11 

from eleven 

100% 

Craig Thomson 

Bobby Madden 

Kevin Clancy 

Brian Colvin 

Just under 

four out of 

every five 

penalties 

are scored 

Top goalkeepers 

Paul Gallacher 

Jamie MacDonald 

Owain Fôn Williams 

Michael McGovern 

50% 

50% 

30% 

33% 


The Back Four: Stats 

Scottish Premiership penalties 

Aberdeen – 22 pens, 19 scored (86% conversion) 

Celtic – 23 pens, 19 scored (83%) 

Dundee – 9 pens, 7 scored (78% 

Dundee Utd – 17 pens, 15 scored (88%) 

Hamilton – 9 pens, 7 scored (78%) 

Hearts – 17 pens, 13 scored (76%) 

Hibernian – 2 pens, 2 scored (100%) 

ICT – 14 pens, 11 scored (79%) 

Kilmarnock – 10 pens, 7 scored (70%) 

Motherwell – 10 pens, 8 scored (80%) 

Partick Thistle – 6 pens, 5 scored (83%) 

Ross County – 11 pens, 8 scored (73%) 

St Johnstone – 17 pens, 11 scored (65%) 

St Mirren – 11 pens, 10 scored (91%) 

St Mirren, Dundee United and 

Aberdeen have been the most deadly from 

the spot, while St Johnstone have been by 

far and away the most profligate. 

BEST PLACE TO PUT A PENALTY? 

For this we’ve roughly divided the goal 

into six areas, as the shooter looks at it: 

bottom-left, top-left, bottom-centre, topcentre, 

bottom-right and top-right. 

It stands to reason that the top-right part 

of the goal would be the best place to put 

a penalty. Not only are the top corners the 

furthest from the goalkeeper’s grasp, the 

top-right corner means that a goalkeeper 

would have to lead with his left hand, 

and as most people are right handed, 

that’s harder to do. In the three years we 

studied, no goalkeeper saved a penalty in 

the top-right of the goal in the Scottish 

Premiership , and only one has saved in 

the top-left, Ross County’s Michael Fraser 

from Aberdeen’s Scott Vernon. 

However, it’s difficult to place the ball 

into the top corners. It’s a far safer bet to 

pick a low drive into the bottom corners. 

Does one side have greater success rate 

than the other? 

Interestingly, there have been exactly 

64 penalties put in the bottom-left and 

bottom-right corners of the goal. 

Penalties put in the bottom-right have a 

72% conversion rate, while those in the 

bottom-left have a significantly better 

conversion rate of 84%. Why? Perhaps it is 

that a right foot penalty taker would find 

the bottom-left corner the more natural, 

or generate the most power striking across 

their body? The numbers aren’t quite high 

enough to suggest a definite answer, but 

that would be a solid hypothesis. 

If a penalty has to be kept low, players 

are as well hitting the ball firm and hard, 

straight down the middle. 24 penalties 

have been hit in this manner, with only 

three being saved (87% scored). In theory, 

players are as well going for power as they 

are for placement. 

GOALKEEPER MOVEMENTS 

For a goalkeeper, there are a number of 

ways to approach facing a penalty. Some 

may rely on instinct and reading the body 

language of a forward, while the more 

prepared may have done their homework 

on where a particular player is most likely 

The goalkeeper’s secrets 

By Paul Gallacher 

I’ve been fortunate to have saved 

a few penalties during my career 

and would like to be able to give 

you a magic formula for saving penalties. 

But that’s not the case. There are plenty of 

theories and methods but to just make the 

save by any means is all that matters. 

Goalkeepers use many methods to try to 

gain an advantage when facing penalties. 

1. Video analysis: you can now find most 

information on player’s penalties on the 

internet. 

2. Player’s body shape as they strike the ball: 

closed or open body shape can sometimes 

give a clue as to the area they may hit towards. 

3. The time the penalty is awarded or the 

score at the time: these factors might play on 

the taker’s mind and add to the pressure. 

4. Ex-team mate: the taker could be an 

ex-teammate or someone you know well, so 

you’ve seen him take penalties in the past. 

5. Simply guess work: just pick side and dive. 


By Thom Watt 

to put his spot-kick. Some may simply opt 

to choose a direction to dive and hope for 

the best. 

As you might expect, there’s very little 

difference in the direction goalkeepers have 

moved, as there have been 87 occasions 

upon which a goalkeeper has chosen to go 

left, and 87 occasions when a goalkeeper 

has chosen to go right, with four instances 

of the goalkeeper staying still in the middle 

of the goal. Interestingly, two of those four 

instances resulted in a save. 

On 72 occasions (40%) goalkeepers 

chose to move in the correct direction 

after a penalty was taken, suggesting that 

forwards are reasonably good at fooling 

goalkeepers into going the wrong way. 

Some, such as Radoslaw Cierzniak, 

go the same way almost every time. The 

Polish goalkeeper faced 11 league penalties 

during his time at Dundee United, and 

went to his right on all but one occasion. 

REFEREE AWARDS 

Are there some referees who are more 

willing to award penalties than others? 

For starters, let’s take a look at which 

referees have given the most penalties as 

an absolute number. 

Willie Collum – 32 

Steven McLean – 20 

John Beaton – 17 

Craig Thomson - 16 

Bobby Madden – 16 

Kevin Clancy – 13 

Brian Colvin – 13 

As we can see, Willie Collum has given 

significantly more penalties than any of 

the other referees in Scotland, but does 

that necessarily mean he’s quicker in 

pointing to the spot? Collum is one of the 

senior officials in the top flight, and tends 

to get more games. Could that account for 

the higher figure? We’ll have to dig down 

a little deeper. 

Here we’ve taken those absolute figures 

for penalties, and divided them by the 

number of games each official has taken 

charge of. On average, how many games 

does it take for a referee to award a 

penalty in the top flight? 

Brian Colvin – 2.38 games 

Willie Collum – 2.44 games 

Don Robertson – 3.00 games 

Steven McLean – 3.70 games 

John Beaton – 3.35 games 

Bobby Madden – 4.31 games 

Craig Thomson – 4.75 games 

HOME OR AWAY? 

It would stand to reason that referees are 

slightly influenced by a home crowd when 

making split decisions. Who wouldn’t 

be slightly intimidated by thousands of 

supporters angrily suggesting their team 

should be awarded a spot-kick? Is there 

any truth in this hypothesis? 

It would appear so. Home teams have 

received 57% of the penalty awards in the 

Scottish Premiership, in comparison to 

just 43% of those for the travelling side. 

Perhaps that’s down to home sides being 

more attacking, or less conservative? 

Regardless, home teams receive more penalties, 

but there appears to be no difference 

in the likelihood of scoring; 79% of home 

penalties have been converted, while 80% 

of away penalties are converted. 

BEST PENALTY TAKERS? 

Finally, who have been the best penalty 

takers of the Premiership era? It’s a very 

specific skill, and while the attacking 

players are expected to score, there are 

some who clearly practice their spotkicks 

more than others. It’s often the 

difference between taking full points. 

Adam Rooney – 11 from 11 (100%) 

Kris Commons – 9 from 10 (90%) 

Greg Tansey – 7 from 7 (100%) 

Nadir Ciftci – 6 from 7 (86%) 

Kenny McLean – 7 from 7 (100%) 

Leigh Griffiths – 6 from 8 (75%) 

Billy McKay – 6 from 8 (75%) 

Liam Craig – 5 from 5 (100%) 

Brian Graham – 5 from 5 (100%) 

John Sutton – 5 from 5 (100%) 

Jamie Hamill – 4 from 5 (80%) l 


The Back Four: Strips 

Top marks 

The real low point of Euro 2016? That Spanish away kit. 

Are we about to see our club sides sporting tops that look 

like someone has vomited all over them? 

By John Penman 

Sitting in a pleasant little cafe in the 

centre of Bordeaux enjoying a light lunch 

before that night’s game in Euro 2016, my 

peace was shattered when a supporter 

came in wearing the Spanish Euro away 

top. There was a collective gasp from the 

fashion-savvy French and the checkerboard-clad 

Croats at this abomination, 

which was made even worse by the fact it 

was draped round a 50-something with a 

spreading middle. 

You’ve probably banished the white 

top with red and yellow triangles from 

your memory. What were adidas and 

Spain thinking? Did someone drop a pot 

of paint and was then too embarrassed 

to admit it? Were they sick? Literally? 

Whatever the reason, they got it badly 

wrong with a design that was supposed 

to be a representation of the Spanish 

mainland and associated islands. Think of 

the Scotland top from the 90s that looked 

like the wearer had been bitten and blood 

was seeping through the shirt. You get the 

concept but the execution leaves a lot to 

be desired. Bad enough on the pitch, the 

Spanish top is positively offensive on a fan. 

As Alan Hansen might have said: “You 

win nothing with crap kits.” And so it 

was that a few hours later, the reigning 

European champions threw away the 

chance to top their group with a supine 

loss to Croatia which condemned them 

to more difficult route to progress further 

in the tournament. A few days later, the 

Spaniards were denied any hopes of a 

third Euro title on the trot, vanquished by 

a stylish Italian side clad in classy Puma 

blue. There’s a moral here. 

The good news is that no one has copied 

the Spanish approach for this season. 

World Cups or European Championships 

are often used as the benchmark for the 

following season’s club kits and while 

that’s partly true this year, thankfully 

Spain’s unique approach hasn’t carried 

into club football. 

These days it’s rare for clubs to stay with 

a design for more than a year which means 

the demand for new, innovative designs is 

increasing. Does that push manufacturers 

into making dodgy decisions or carrying 

out minor tinkering which can result 

in even worse designs? Some changes 

are easy. Leicester City, for example, will 

sport gold inserts in their Puma strip this 

year – but did you know this is apparently 

reserved only for the champions? 

If you want evidence that designers are 

running out of ideas, look at the similarity 

between Borussia Dortmund’s Puma 

home top and Juventus’ adidas one. Of 

course, the big manufacturers often come 

up with a template that’s slightly adapted 

to accommodate a club’s demands 

but you have to examine the Juve and 

Dortmund tops very closely to detect any 

difference in design. 

While the likes of New Balance, Joma, 

Under Armour, Macron and Warrior 

have made significant inroads into major 

European leagues, they are largely absent 

from international football. The Euros 


are still mainly a bun fight between the 

traditional players because so much is at 

stake. When they are priced at €85, it is 

easy to see how valuable the market is for 

national tops. But the real money is still in 

club football. 

Some similar designs are leaking into 

the club shirts you’ll see throughout the 

2016/17 season. Manchester City have 

a light blue version of England’s Nike 

kit. Manchester United, again backed by 

adidas, continue with the cheap t-shirt 

theme both home and away, Chelsea take 

St Etienne: a rare beauty by Le Coq Sportif 

Spain’s Euro 2016 changed strip: what 

were adidas thinking? 

boring to a new level and New Balance 

seem to have forgotten what to do with 

the neckline on Celtic’s new kit. 

But across Europe, there are a few 

gems. St Etienne sport a stunning 

shade of green with red, white and blue 

piping, a rare beauty by Le Coq Sportif. 

Barcelona’s simple but effective return 

to stripes is a homage to their incredibly 

successful 1992 side that won the 

European Cup for the first time (albeit 

with a horrendous change kit). Inter and 

Milan stop messing about and have glorious, 

traditional kits this season. 

In the UK, though, you have to look 

beyond the top leagues to find anything 

different and classy. Millwall may be 

stuck in League One but their style is 

Premier League. They have reverted to a 

blue and white stripe top by Errea with 

a very classy looking gold collar insert. 

Meanwhile in the Scottish Premiership, 

there isn’t much to get excited about. 

If you want a British equivalent of that 

Spain away kit, look no further than 

newly promoted Middlesbrough. They are 

wearing the identikit strips adidas produce 

for lower league teams, the Regista 

16 jersey featuring a swooping stripe. It 

generally works but not with red and 

white and if you’ve a bit of middle-aged 

spread, forget it. 

And avert your gaze from Girondins 

de Bordeaux’s third kit which looks like 

someone has put their holiday snaps on 

a blue shirt, a terrible contrast with the 

beauty of their new stadium which is one 

of Europe’s finest. 

The best kit of this coming season? 

Well, as I have said, both Milan clubs are 

looking good but the winner is easy for 

me: Real Madrid. Classy, simple with a 

neat collar. It’s the same design as the 

new Bayern top but in white, it looks 

fabulous and it’s worthy of a Champions 

League winner. Well done adidas. But that 

doesn’t mean we forgive you for Spain. l 


The Back Four: Poetry 

Commemoration 

By Stephen Watt 

Legend: Noun. A historical narrative 

featuring plausible but extraordinary events. 

Taken: Verb. Removed from a particular place. 

The respected minute’s silence. 

Black armbands. Bowed heads. 

Television programmes 

present their prime. 

Jittery film 

transmits perms, nutmegs, goals, 

toothless grins, celebrations, ball control – 

hearts and soul 

captured inside sixty seconds. 

The best of how we remember them. 

Stadium fences become memorials, 

shrines of scarves, obituary editorials 

by fans scribbled on card, 

and flowers of all colours – 

the only time some husbands, sons, fathers 

have cried so hard, or invested in a bouquet. 

Women are stronger 

and know how to pray. 

Statues rise. 

Terraces are baptised, given names 

and supporters of the beautiful game 

keep them alive 

with stories, memories, 

and jerseys with retired numbers. 


Cup Final Day 

By Stephen Watt 

I 

F 

P 

U 

A 

N 

C 

L 

Not in my 

lifetime, 

he promised us. 

On his anniversary, I donned 

his alleged lucky hat, mum noosed 

by his anti-springtime scarf, doomed 

before the game could even start. 

Fans arrived in droves, bedecked in one colour, 

wolfing the perfect iced crests of bakeries’ cakes 

between songs sung as poorly as the caterwauling 

bagpipes. Plainly true, it was still greater than sitting 

on a deflating couch watching mid-day Bond films. 

And as the winning goal hit the net, a confetti cannon 

exploded inside, pride, something that he primed me 

for but I had never encountered. The tingle of a trophy 

being engraved with our name, players wiping hands 

on filthy shorts as the heavens rain 

while strangers hug, dance, 

forget we are not acquainted, 

reaching for cameras 

to snatch 

memories 

for scrapbooks, 

just incase 

this never happens again. 

The paparazzi want our faces in their papers 

and I want him to know we did it during my lifetime; 

that the superstition works – and so do the prayers. 

D 

A 

Y 

C 

U 

P 

F 

I 

N 

A 

L 

D 

A 

Y 


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November 


Contributors 

Paul Brown is a freelance writer 

working mainly for the Daily Star, 

Sunday Express, Blizzard and 

Squawka. Can be found in a London 

press box, or at @pbsportswriter. 

Half Finnish and proud of it. 

Chris Collins: Football obsessive 

working in Justice Department 

at Scottish Government. Career 

highlight remains a hat trick from 

right back on a rainy night in 

Renfrew, aged 13. @chriscoll10 

Stuart Cosgrove is a writer and 

broadcaster. He is the author of 

Detroit 67 and Young Soul Rebels 

and co-hosts BBC Scotland’s Off 

the Ball with Tam Cowan. 

Paul Forsyth is a sports feature 

writer with The Times. He has 

covered some of the game’s biggest 

events, from the Champions 

League to the World Cup. 

Neil Forsyth is the author of seven 

books and writes for television in 

the UK and America. He lives in 

West Sussex and has a dog named 

Ivan Golac. 

Craig Fowler is a freelance 

writer who works mainly for The 

Scotsman as the de facto online 

sports editor. He is also the cofounder 

of The Terrace Scottish 

Football Podcast. 

Andrew Galloway, from 

Dumbarton, is a freelance writer 

with nearly 15 years’ experience 

of covering Scottish football for 

published outlets. @AGallowaySport 

Daniel Gray is the author of Stramash 

and Hatters, Railwaymen and 

Knitters. His next book, Saturday, 

3pm: Fifty Eternal Delights of Modern 

Football is published by Bloomsbury 

in October. @d_gray_writer 

Simon Hart has reported on 

European football for more than a 

decade for UEFA.com, and worked 

for the Independent newspapers 

from 2010-16. Born in Liverpool, 

he is a lifelong Evertonian. Here 

We Go, his first book, is published 

Published by deCoubertin Books 

(£18.9) @simon22ph 

Gerry Hassan is a writer and 

commentator and author of 

numerous books including 

Caledonian Dreaming and 

Independence of the Scottish 

Mind, as well as the forthcoming 

Scotland the Bold. His website is: 

www.gerryhassan.com 

Colin Heggie is usually found in 

front of a computer in north-east 

Scotland as a graphic designer, or 

behind a camera anywhere as 

a photographer. 

www.seafieldstreet.co.uk 

Hugh MacDonald is a former 

chief sub-editor, literary editor 

and chief sports writer for The 

Herald. He now witters for hire 

@redblaes 

Paul Macdonald is a writer who 

specialises in Scottish, English 

and Spanish football, and is also 

Managing Editor of sports websites 

such as Voetbalzone, Spox and 

Sporting News for Perform Media. 

@PaulMacdSport 

Christopher Marshall writes 

about politics and policing 

matters for The Scotsman, where 

he is currently Home Affairs 

Correspondent. @chris_scotsman 

John A Maxwell is a private client 

lawyer based in the Highlands. 

He has previously worked on 

rosscountytactics.com and is coeditor 

of Tell Him He’s Pelé. 

@john_a_maxwell 

Duncan McCoshan is a cartoonist / 

writer/screenwriter who, under the 

nom de plume Knife, is half of the 

team behind Private Eye’s It’s Grim 

Up North London. @knife6161 

Alan McCredie is a photographer 

and filmmaker. He has two books 

to his name; 100 Hundred Weeks 

of Scotland and This Is Scotland 

(with Daniel Gray.) Originally from 

Perth, but now living in Edinburgh 

he spends most of his free time 

worrying about how to convince 

his 5 year-old-son Joe to support 

the mighty St Johnstone instead of 

lowly Hibernian. @alanmccredie 

w: www.alanmc.co.uk 

Alastair McKay is a freelance 

journalist who writes for the 

London Evening Standard and 

Uncut. He lives in London and is a 

West Ham season ticket holder. 

He has previously worked for 

The Scotsman, Scotland and 

Sunday, and Cut magazine. 

His blog is alternativestovalium. 

blogspot.co.uk. @AHMcKay 

Alasdair McKillop co-founded 

the Rangers Standard in 2012 

and has co-edited two books 

about Rangers. He contributes 

regularly to the Scottish Review 

and Scottish Review of Books. 

@AGMcKillop 

Heather McInlay is a longresident 

in Glasgow, though her 

passion for Charlton Athletic dates 

from a London childhood and the 

unfashionable football days of 

the 70s/80s. Writes with gentle 

humour about football’s characters 

and other stories. @hjmckinlay. 

Colin McPherson is a photographer 

and football fan who also writes 

about the game and contributes to 

When Saturday Comes magazine. 

He is a member of the Document 

Scotland collective. 

@germanocean 

Euan McTear is a football 

journalist and the author of ‘Eibar 

the Brave’. His primary focus is 

Spanish football, while he’s often 

found despairing at Saint Mirren 

Park on Saturdays. @emctear 

Kathleen Oakley is a Glasgowbased 

graphic designer, illustrator 

and Ross County fan. Once drew a 

fox for a school project with ‘this is 

the best I could do’ written in tiny, 

tiny handwriting incorporated in a 

bush. Twitter: @kathoakley 

Instagram: @kathoak 

Alan Pattullo has been a sports 

writer at The Scotsman since 

1998, reporting on World Cup 

finals, Wimbledon and Claudio 

Caniggia’s debut for Dundee. He is 

the author of In Search of Duncan 

Ferguson and once edited a 

Dundee fanzine, It’s Half Past Four 

And We’re 2-0 Down. 

 


Contributors 

John Penman is a Partick Thistle 

fan with an unhealthy interest 

in football strips which may well 

feature in many of his Twitter 

ramblings. @Gadgeagoogoo 

Adrian Searle is publisher, design 

consultant and author. He plays 

right back for Scotland Writers FC. 

@designandbooks 

Nils Henrik Smith is a Norwegian 

novelist and freelance writer. 

He’s a regular contributor to 

Josimar, Norway’s leading football 

magazine. @NilsHenrikSmith 

Rob Smyth is a freelance writer 

based in Hertfordshire. He is 

co-author of Danish Dynamite and 

is writing a book about the rivalry 

between Arsenal and Manchester 

United. 

Martin Stone is behind the 

eponymous www.unmodernman. 

net blog. He writes on all things 

fitba, music & terrace culture. An 

avid Aberdeen fan, he can be found 

in Pittodrie’s Section Y or 

@stonefish100 on Twitter. 

Chris Tait is recognised as a sports 

writer at The Herald, though he 

insists it was a case of mistaken 

identity. Has since emigrated to 

www.taitofthenation.wordpress. 

com to catalogue his experiences 

travelling in the US. 

Ian Thomson: Journalist. Author. 

Scholar of American fitba’s 

tartan-tinged history. Champion 

of Stateside Scots. Following the 

path taken by Aberdeen F.C. to 

Washington D.C. 

@SoccerObserver 

Michael Tierney is a multi-award 

winning journalist and writer, from 

Glasgow. His book, The First Game 

With My Father (Random House/ 

Doubleday), was first published in 

2014. He currently lives in Qatar. 

Mark Waters is a Graphic Designer 

based in Glasgow and is founder of 

the online magazine Glasgow City 

Arts. They also say he could have 

been a professional dancer if he 

had the training. To see more of his 

work visit - 

www.markwatersdesigns.com 

Stephen Watt is an awardwinning 

poet and performer from 

Dumbarton whose collections 

include Spit (Bonacia Ltd - 2012) 

and Optograms (Wild Word Press - 

2016) @StephenWattSpit 

Thom Watt generally writes about 

stats, facts and figures in Scottish 

football. He’s been featured in The 

Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and 

The Scotsman, but you can find 

him regularly on the STV website. 

Jonathan Wilson is the editor of 

The Blizzard and the author of 

Inverting the Pyramid. His latest 

book, Angels with Dirty Faces: the 

Footballing History of Argentina 

came out in August. @jonawils. 

Richard Winton is a senior digital 

journalist with the BBC Sport 

website. Exiled in England since 

leaving The Herald. Used to have 

“potential”. Dundee United fan. 

@richardwinton 

Interested in contributing? 

Mail ideas to: 

info@nutmegmagazine.co.uk 

Editor: Ally Palmer 

Design: Ally Palmer / Palmer 

Watson 

Publisher: Palmer Watson 

www.palmerwatson.com 

Editorial team: 

Alan Pattullo, Terry Watson, 

Stuart Cosgrove, Daniel Gray, 

John Maxwell, Richard Winton, 

Duncan McKay. 

Contact: 

info@nutmegmagazine.co.uk 

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