The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 9

The Forgotten Ones – Number 11 – Jimmy Sanderson

My first experience of the late, lamented James Sanderson came many years ago when he made an appearance on Scotsport in the guise of a boxing expert to preview an upcoming world lightweight title bout between Jim Watt and a South American, whose name was something like Alfredo Pitalua. Senor Pitalua, who seemed to be a most amiable individual, was himself a special guest on the same programme. He was not, however, the most ideal interviewee, on account of the fact that he could not speak a single word of English. This inconvenient characteristic was not apparently discovered by the hacks at STV until moments before the programme got underway. Hell, this was live TV, so the show simply had to go on. Alfredo sat there, grinning from ear to ear, while Arthur Montford burbled his way through a hastily arranged one-sided interview in which he both asked and answered the questions. Eventually a disembodied hand passed a piece of paper to Pitalua from which he stutteringly read “I so appee be in yor wunnerfull count-tree”. Things were getting on just fine until wee Jimmy entered, bottle of vitriol in hand. In that whining voice, which was later to become much-mimicked, he opined ”This man Pitalua has no right to be in the same ring as Jim Watt. He’s never fought anyone of any consequence. He’s a powder-puff fighter who won’t last three rounds. He’s got no guts and even less boxing talent and he ’s a fraudster who’s taking money from the Scottish public on false pretences”. Alfredo beamed warmly throughout this fulsome tribute, and responded “I so appee be in Sco’lan “. First impressions were that Jimmy was quite possibly the rudest individual, outside of Basil Fawlty, to appear on TV. It was particularly mortifying to think that he’d taken advantage of Alfredo’s lack of English to plant a journalistic hatchet between his shoulder-blades. In retrospect, however, it’s plain to see that Jimmy would not have moderated his venomous comments even if Pitalua had been multi-lingual. On the contrary, he would have positively relished the opportunity of goading the boxer into an uncontrollable fury with the possibility of the Scotsport studio being turned into a slaughter-house.

Years later, of course, Jimmy found his true vocation as the resident obstreperous bastard within the lunatic asylum which passed for Radio Clyde’s sports team. During his wilfully vicious tenure there the post-match Saturday phone-in became practically unmissable. And not just for football fans. Many people who didn’t know football from a rat’s arse tuned in to experience the vicarious thrill of danger generated by Jimmy operating on the edge of the libel laws, to say nothing about the edge of reason. Of course, it goes without saying that most of the opinions expressed by the callers and by Jimmy himself were the most preposterous nonsense. That wasn’t what mattered. The real motive for listening was to hear Jimmy scaling ever higher peaks of invective, unrestrained malevolence, and downright viciousness in dealing with callers who had phoned in with innocuous questions like ‘would this be Thistle’s year’ or ‘was there a crisis at Ibrox’. I used to feel quite nervous when it would appear that he was about to go completely over the top in a way which would necessitate the police being called to the studio to transport him to Carstairs in a strait-jacket.

I’ve previously pointed out (in TAG 14) that Jimmy had a fondness for consulting his dictionary each Friday night to find words which would flummox his Saturday audience. The most notorious and long-running example was his oft-repeated challenge to callers, “Are you accusing me of mendacity?” No-one ever did accuse him of that, in case it turned out to be some sexual deviation involving small furry animals and copies of the Daily Record. Not that his targets were restricted to the gormless goons who phoned in. His own radio colleagues were just as likely to be on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing. In particular, Jimmy could simply not abide anyone predicting that a particular match would end in a draw. “Fence-sitting” was what he called it. Anyone who sat on the fence was dismissed as a spineless, gutless, yellow-bellied creep with no balls. Jimmy characterised himself, on the other hand, as a fearless, no-nonsense, daredevil super-hero, completely unafraid to “put his head on the chopping block” by forecasting a positive result one way or another. The fact that many of these games did actually turn out to be drawn did not diminish Jimmy’s conviction that you were some kind of depraved slime-ball if you had predicted it. In fact, he seemed to believe that draws were played out by players who were the same kind of loathsome, reptilian wankers who forecast them.

Jimmy frequently dug himself out of a hole by indulging in shameless name-dropping. He would give authority to his own opinion by reminding listeners of all the famous personalities that he knew personally. For example, if the caller was on to suggest that Kenny Dalglish shouldn’t be in the Scotland team, Jimmy would launch into some waffle like, “I’ve been all over the world with Kenny Dalglish. I’ve dined with him, I’ve showered with him, (He usually just managed to stop short of saying he’d slept with him as well) I know Kenny Dalglish better than most, etc etc“. The number of players that Jimmy had showered and dined with while circumnavigating the globe was truly extraordinary. The listener may have got the impression that Jimmy had been at the star player’s elbow throughout those gruelling journeys to foreign parts. The truth was that while the star was snoring his way through the in-flight film in first-class, Jimmy was back in economy squabbling over the last vacant seat with Ian Archer.

Woe betide any major football personality who was not a chum of Jimmy’s. For example, his contempt for Senor Joao Havelange could only have been born out of the fact that Jimmy’s name would not have rung an immediate bell with the FIFA supremo.
Jimmy’s potted biography of Joao was along the lines, “Senor Havelange. The biggest waste of space in World football. A man who knows more about eating out in expensive restaurants than he does about football. A man with links to organised crime and terrorist groups around the world. A man who I most definitely have not showered with, and most incredibly of all, he’s a man who doesn’t even know who I am“.

Hardly anyone ever got the better of Jimmy in the unarmed combat over the airwaves, although it has to be said that it’s a substantial advantage to be able to cut the caller off if he’s proving too troublesome. I remember one instance where he was bested, but I’ll need to give a bit of background first. One of Jimmy’s many hobby-horses was that he had an evangelical fanaticism about ensuring that all callers had actually been to a match that afternoon. Many calls were cut short prematurely when the caller sheepishly admitted that he hadn’t been to a game. This resulted in people coming on and starting off with the most preposterous excuses before putting their question. You’d get calls starting “Eh, I wisnae at the match the day ‘cos ma wife was just run over by a 40 tonne articulated lorry” or “I’m unemployed an’ I’ve got eight kids an’ I got a hernia yesterday, so I wisnae able to get to the game“. There would then be a nerve-wracking pause while the caller waited to find out whether Jimmy would accept his excuse. Against that background one caller rang in with an impressive opening gambit, “Mr Sanderson, I haven’t been to a game for years because fitba nowadays is a load of crap“. (Sounds of Jimmy spluttering with fury at the other end of the line). “Mr Sanderson, I’d just like to ask you when you last paid to get in to a football match “. (Jimmy’s blood-pressure audibly sky-rocketing as he fumbles for a convincing reply). Taking advantage of the wee man’s temporary discomfiture the caller delivered the coup de grace – “Mr Sanderson, I widnae pay you to sell newspapers never mind write the bloody things“. (Strangled squeals from the tranny, Jimmy apoplectic and incandescent with rage, Richard Park on the phone to the nearest psychiatrist, listeners staring with amazement as the wireless explodes).

If Jimmy was still around today then he’d undoubtedly have been on the same list with American pit-bull terriers and Japanese Tozers as species requiring muzzling in public places. Fortunately, one victim that he was able to sink his teeth into regularly was our old amigo, Cap’n (Fat) Bob Maxwell. The feud between Jimmy and the Cap’n began when the wee man was employed on one of the fat man’s newspapers. Fat Bob refused permission for Jimmy to travel to a Scotland away game. Jimmy responded by telling him to stick his job up his monstrously expansive rear end. Thereafter there was some spectacular spleen-venting whenever Richard Park wound the wee man up with references to “Robert Maxwell’s Derby County doing well at the moment, James” etc.

Pugnacious, obnoxious, discourteous, coarse, belligerent, forthright, hostile, impertinent, ill-mannered, vulgar, offensive, impudent, truculent, aggressive, nasty, bad-tempered, arrogant, ignorant and petulant are just a few of the adjectives which spring to mind from Webster’s Dictionary to describe wee Jimmy.

I liked him.

We all loved him. The John McEnroe of the phone- in circuit. Buddy Holly’s death was eulogised in “American Pie” as being the day the music died. Jimmy’s death was, for me, the day football phone-ins died. If that last sentence is a bit too mawkishly sentimental for you, take comfort in knowing that Jimmy would have described it as being “bunkum, balderdash and claptrap” .

First published in TAG 24 – August 1991

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 8

Matches to Remember No. 15

Falkirk 1 Berwick Rangers 1 Scottish Cup Third Round 25 January 1997

Whenever Berwick Rangers are involved in a Scottish Cup tie memories are inevitably evoked of their astonishing victory over their Glasgow namesakes in 1967. That was such an amazing feat that Berwick still have the reputation as ‘giant-killers’ thirty years on, despite the fact that very few giants have been slain in the meantime.

‘Very few’ is perhaps overstating the position. ‘None’ would be more accurate.

At the time when they met Falkirk on 25th January this year, Berwick had managed to win only one of their 22 league matches in division two, and to all intents and purposes they’d already nose-dived through the trap-door into the bottom division. Put simply, and with suitable apologies to the Redcar Loony, Berwick were real mince. Falkirk, on the other hand, were one and a half divisions above them and were still theoretically harbouring ambitions of promotion to the Premier League. Thus Falkirk found themselves cast in the rather unlikely role of ‘giants’. On paper, this was a home banker, but in the words of the old cliche, football isn’t played on paper. Most of the Bairns fans went along in the reasonable anticipation that Falkirk would win fairly comfortably. Instead of the afternoon of relaxing family entertainment which they expected, they were served up with a triple X horror.

On The Threshold of a Dream

Things started to go wrong after fifteen minutes when Brian Hamilton sustained a compound fracture of his leg. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Falkirk ‘physio’ (wee bald man with a sponge) tried to repair it there and then with what looked suspiciously like a tube of super-glue. Bits of Hamilton’s leg were protruding through his skin at weird angles, but the physio insisted on him standing up to see if he could ‘run it off’.

Inexperienced in medical matters I may be, but I can’t say that I was wholly taken by surprise when Hamilton collapsed again shrieking in agony. Despite this, many Bairns fans were jocularly calling for Hamilton to be kept on the pitch, whatever his condition, because they could see that the sub was the hapless Scott McKenzie, whose recent form had been slightly less convincing than that expected from a one-legged man. So far, so amusing. Up till then the Bairns had been merely thoroughly incompetent, but goals were bound to come, weren’t they?

Yup, sure enough, a few minutes later Berwick scored. The Berwick player had possession in an innocuous position about thirty yards out. All his team-mates were marked and he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with the ball. I was standing on the terracing behind the goal, looking right into his face, and I could see him thinking, “Ach fuck it, I’ll just punt it in the general direction of the goal and see what happens”. Craig Nelson, the Falkirk goalie, appeared to have something else on his mind at the time. His illustrious ancestor, Lord Nelson, may have famously turned one blind eye, but at least he had the decency to keep the other one open. Unlike Craig, who appeared to have both eyes shut at the critical moment. Generally speaking, I’ve got no serious objections to Craig indulging in transcendental meditation or astral travelling or whatever it is that he does, but I just wish he wouldn’t do it on a Saturday afternoon. On this occasion he was only restored to the present time frame by the sound of the ball swishing in the back of his net.

This unexpected development was the signal for a radical change in the atmosphere amongst the Bairns fans. What had been a benign impatience now became heated anger at the team’s inability to deal properly with inferior opposition. Nelson was the initial target, firstly because of his gaffe at the goal, and secondly because he was the Bairns player in closest proximity to the fans. He had to stand for the remainder of the half just yards in front of people who were abusing him roundly, ‘Nelson, ya fanny’ being about the most complimentary accolade shouted in his direction.

Falkirk stumbled and bumbled towards halftime, and it began to cross my mind that victory wasn’t inevitable. I digress for a moment to note that Nelson was just one of an alarmingly large posse of former Hibs/Hearts players now ‘plying their trade’ at Brockville. In this match the Falkirk team included former Hibees Mitchell, McAllister, McGraw and Tortolano, and ex- Jambos Nelson, Foster, and Hagen, while the aforementioned Brian Hamilton had previously turned out for both the Edinburgh teams. A former Hibee and a Jambo, and now a broken leg. Lucky white heather, or what?

Watching this Falkirk side in action one could only be amazed at how any of these guys (McAllister excepted) ever got beyond pub football, far less played at ‘the highest level’. Brockville seems to have become the football equivalent of Dounreay, a place where everyone dumps all their nasty waste products. Apart from the crew I’ve already mentioned, such former Auld Reekie luminaries as Walter Kidd and Neil Berry have recently turned up at Brockville for ‘re-processing’. Mind you, it’s not completely one way traffic. Just a couple of days before this game came the astonishing news that Hibs had paid £100,000 of real money to take David Elliot off Falkirk’s hands. This was proof, if any were needed, that Jim Duffy has not only lost his hair, but he’s now lost his head as well. And his marbles. You’d need to knock off at least three of those zeroes to discover Elliot’s true value. When Hibs are relegated in May, that transfer will be viewed as one of the events which made demotion inevitable.

Urine Specimen

With the first half wearing on anger amongst the fans was giving way to a squirming embarrassment, as Berwick threatened to increase their lead on several occasions. On one of Falkirk’s apparently random, entirely speculative, and totally un-coordinated visits up the field McGrillen missed an easy chance. One of the boys next to me confided to his pals that McGrillen was “just a wee bag of pish”, which, in fairness, is about as reasonable a summary as any I can immediately think of.

But salvation was at hand moments later when the wee bag of pish scampered beyond the Berwick defence and was hauled down just outside the box by the Berwick goalie who was rewarded for his efforts by a red card. The resultant goal-scoring opportunity was, of course, sclaffed into a nearby car-park, but surely, we thought, it wouldn’t be beyond our heroes to overcome the resistance of a ten-man second/third division outfit in the remaining 55 minutes? We waited for the deluge. Unfortunately, there never is going to be a deluge when your strikers are McGraw and McGrillen, Falkirk’s very own ‘McG Force’. Mark ‘Slowdraw’ McGraw’s main asset is that his old dad scored thousands of goals in the sixties, but apart from that he’s strictly ‘couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo’ material. McGrillen***, on the other hand, can sometimes hit the cow’s arse, but it’s usually the wrong cow. Thus Berwick went in at the interval still safely 1-0 ahead.

After the Goal Rush

I forgot to mention that when the Berwick goalie was sent off, they took off an outfield player and substituted him with a reserve goalkeeper, by the name of Neil Young. Not the Canadian feedback-meister of course, though the way Falkirk were playing Neil Young and Crazy Horse would have had a better than evens chance of progressing to the fourth round. In the second half ole Neil could easily have performed an acoustic set on the six-yard line without any serious interruption. When Neil appeared many spectators were asking rhetorically just how bad you had to be to end up as a sub-goalie for Berwick. As it happened, we never really got a chance to find out, because Falkirk’s ineptitude was such that the goalie never had to make a save. For all I know he could’ve been a Scandinavian tourist who’d conned his way onto the park.

That isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, because it was revealed after the game that the Berwick manager had never even met Mr Young until ten to three that afternoon. Apparently, Berwick thought it would be prudent to have a sub goalie for the Scottish cup-tie and hired Young through Exchange and Mart, sight-unseen, as it were. He didn’t turn up when the team bus was leaving Berwick and only arrived at Brockville during the pre-match warm-up, claiming to have been involved in a car accident. When the crisis arose with the sending-off of the regular goalie, they had no choice but to field the unknown stranger. I still entertain a lingering suspicion that he was a redundant plumber who’d been sent along on a job restart programme by the DSS.

Hey Joe
(where you goin’ with that P45 in your hand?)

The agony continued in the second half. You’ll all have read about Joe Tortolano being booted out of Falkirk in the aftermath of this game, because of a gesture he made to the home fans while he was being substituted. The gesture consisted of him pointing theatrically to his backside. Apparently the referee (who booked him), and the Falkirk management (who sacked him), interpreted this gesture as being an invitation to ‘kiss my bum’. At the time, I merely thought that Joe was gamely confirming what we’d all seen, namely that he’d made a total arse of himself throughout the match. Whenever Joe had been faced with the option of playing a ten yard pass to an unmarked colleague, or slicing the ball wildly into neighbouring gardens, he invariably and boldly chose the latter. At no time did he neglect to make a complete hash of whatever he was involved in. In fairness to him, there was a section of the crowd on his back right from the start. Each time he made a dog’s breakfast of it this small band would launch into a heavily ironic chorus of “There’s only one Tortolano’: The trouble was that the opportunities for such carousing were so frequent that many of the choristers were hoarse by the time Joe made his dramatic and final exit.

Horrifyingly bad as he was, Joe was by no means the worst. Take Andy Gray for example. Yes please. Take him as far away as possible. This is not the Andy Gray of Sky Sports that I’m talking about, though I’m quite confident that the balding Sky balloon would have been much more effective in this game. No, Falkirk’s Andy Gray is a former England International player. Yes, but at what? Not football, obviously. This particular Andy Gray seems to have no interest in playing football at all, and certainly not for Falkirk. His sheer contempt for his colleagues is a constant affront in what is supposedly a team game. OK, his teammates are hopeless, but that is frankly not an excuse for his complete lack of effort.

David Hagen, on the other hand, is a trier. He usually tries to play football. Unfortunately, he usually fails. He does, however, almost always try our patience. In this particular match, David started invisibly and fell away. He suddenly re-appeared on the scene with time running out and Falkirk still trailing. He embarked on one of his lung-bursting runs up the wing. This is usually the cue for the stewards to open the gates, because Dave hasn’t quite got the hang of when to stop. These runs invariably end with him colliding at full tilt with the wall behind the goal, having omitted to release the ball before doing so.

That’s what happened on this occasion as well, and the only reason I mention it is that while Dave was having bits of granite surgically removed from his knees one of the Tortolano wrecking crew enquired in a puzzled voice, “when did Hagen come on?” And let me tell you, he was not joking. It’s really unfair to pick on individuals because the whole Falkirk team were shocking. They were collectively engaged in merrily kicking the ball into the shed in lieu of passing, while attacking the opposition goal appeared to be something they considered to be wholly outdated.

With fifteen minutes to go, it seemed entirely likely that Berwick were going into the hat for the next round, and even the most die-hard Bairns fans couldn’t have grudged them that. However, enter stage left, the only person who was having a more awful game than the Falkirk players, viz, our old friend, referee Willie Young. Willie had pretty well fucked up every decision he’d been called upon to make, bur arguably his eccentric interpretations of the rules had not affected the scoreline until, that is, he awarded a penalty to Falkirk ten minutes from the end. The fact that it wasn’t a penalty is incidental. More significant is the fact that not a single Falkirk player, official or fan thought that it was a penalty. No-one appealed, no-one shouted. Everyone stared in disbelief when Willie went dancing like a dervish into the box, pointing madly at the penalty spot with one arm, while jerking the other like a seriously out of control string puppet, apparently in an attempt to indicate that someone had handled the ball. Many thought that Willie was having an epileptic seizure, and players of both sides gathered round him to see if they could help. It was the turn of the Berwick manager to have a fit when it finally became apparent that a spot-kick had been awarded.

Albert Craig scored and promptly raced round behind the goal gesturing insanely, as though he’d just grabbed the winner in the final itself. His goal and subsequent extravagant celebrations were greeted by polite applause rather than the usual demented exultation. Obviously, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but there was considerable sympathy for Berwick, even among the most rabid Bairns fans who were feeling a wee bit sheepish at the thought that it needed a sending-off and a highly dubious penalty to secure a draw at home with a ten-man second division outfit. (Just what is going on here? we’ve had cow’s arses, dog’s breakfasts, horse’s mouths and now sheepish fans. What do you think this is? Farmers Weekly? – ed.)

I’m sure the small, but highly vocal, crowd of Berwick fans were pig-sick (OK, you’re really pushing your luck now – Ed). Still, it would be hypocritical of me to weep crocodile tears for Berwick (that’s it -you’re fired – ed). The main thing was that Falkirk lived to fight another day with dreams of cup glory intact.

The sequel to all of this is that Falkirk undeservedly won the replay 2-1, and went on to defeat Premier league DunfermIine by the same score in the 4th round. Their performance against the Pars was the complete antithesis of their display against Berwick. Every player was fully committed to the task. Andy Gray was superb. Craig Nelson was awake. David Hagen scored the winner! McGrillen was on the sick, McGraw was on the bench, and Tortolano was on the dole. Another ex-Jambo in the shape of Scott Crabbe had joined the ranks, the difference being that Crabbe is a genuinely talented player. It’s a funny old game. The air of pessimism after the display against Berwick has been supplanted by genuine hope that further progress can be made. At the time of writing they’ve got a home draw against Raith Rovers in the quarter-final. In fact, the way the draw has worked out, it does not require a dose of mescaline to envisage them getting to the final. Or beyond!! When Falkirk take their place in Europe next season the match with Berwick will truly be a match to remember, being where it all started.

First published in TAG 52-March 1997

PS – Obviously at the time when I wrote the last paragraph my tongue was in my cheek. But, but, but…….amazingly enough Falkirk beat Raith Rovers in the Quarter-Final and then BEAT Celtic in the semi-final, before damn-near becoming only the second lower division team ever to win the cup, losing narrowly and controversially 1-0 to Kilmarnock in the Final

PPS – ***As fates would have it, I posted this here on 28 or 29 July 2009 (ie more than 12 years after it was first published) and on 30 July 2009 Paul McGrillen died at the tragically early age of 37. I feel nothing but sorrow at hearing of Paul’s death. I cannot unwrite this article, and can only say that Paul became a hero of the Falkirk support when he scored the winner in the semi-final replay against Celtic that same season. That is the way he will be remembered by the Bairns fans

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 7

MATCHES TO REMEMBER (1)

Readers of The Wee Red Book – forget Celtic versus Inter Milan and Rangers versus Moscow Dynamo – the real deal starts here.

East Stirling 3 East Fife 1 (Firs Park – 27 October 1990)

Firs Park: Welcome to the PleasureDome

Before this season it’s always been fucking difficult to buy a match programme at Firs Park. I’ve turned up early, I’ve turned up late. I’ve crept around the unfamiliar back-streets in the environs of the ground, I’ve accosted ancient grey-haired locals and young street urchins with the relatively simple query as to where one might perchance to purchase a programme. The aged ones rub their chins and scratch their heads as if the question relates to a tricky problem of quantum physics. The youngsters merely snigger and say, “You’ll be lucky, mister. Gonnae gie us a lift ower the turnstile.” Either way, I get into the ground, a broken man without a programme. I’ve been driven to the edge of madness when I see a few punters standing on the terracing quite brazenly reading the damn thing. On enquiring where they get them from, I’m usually told that “Big John” had a few. I’ve never been brave enough to wander round the ground asking anyone of above average height or weight if they are “Big John“. The truth, of course, is that only about a dozen copies of the thing were printed and they were immediately snaffled by Big John and his intimate associates.

That all changed this season. After my customary fruitless scouting about the highways and bye-ways of Falkirk, I eventually made my way through the turnstiles to watch the East Stirling v East Fife match, resigned to another Saturday without a programme. Imagine my surprise when I was met inside the gate by two young girls, neither of whom resembled Big John, both clutching piles of programmes and bawling at the tops of their voices. “PROGRAMMES”. This was a happy omen for the 90 minutes of sheer delight to follow.

East Fife were top of the league. East Stirling were in their customary bottom position. A definite away banker on anybody’s coupon. In second division terms, the Fifers were carrying an impressive away support of a few hundred black and gold-scarfed fans, while the ‘Shire had their usual loyal following of Shuggie and Senga Bonkers and their extended family. The following day the Sunday Mail quoted the crowd as being 381. Lying bastards. I counted 403.

After about ten minutes of mildly entertaining jousting, the ‘Shire broke upfield and a cross was swung low into the Fife box. The Fifers centre back was clearly favourite to get to it first, though he was running back towards his own goal about twelve yards out. Amongst the many courses of action open to him, the simplest would have been to control the ball and nonchalantly side-foot it back to the goalie. Alternatively he could have chipped it out for a corner. In fact, he chose quite a surprising option. Quicker than you could say “Christ, there’s a real upset on the cards here as the plucky ‘Shire upset the staunch Fife defence” he smashed a howitzer drive into the back of the net. This was the cue for the ‘Shire to go through an extraordinary purple patch during which they played some astonishingly good football – you know the sort of thing – passing the ball to players of their own team, playing towards the opposing goal etc. They also contrived to score another two quite magnificent goals, without any assistance at all from the visiting defence, before half an hour had elapsed. Surreal or what?

One of the Fife fans had begun queuing at the refreshment stall when it was 1-0. By the time he had his chops wrapped round a mince pie it was 3-0 and his Saturday afternoon was becoming distinctly unenjoyable. He reeled along the terracing in a fearsome rage, shouting and swearing about the supernatural incompetence of his team. He roundly abused each of the Fife players in turn, reserving particularly venomous invective for the goalkeeper. By the time he got round behind the goal where the target of his spleen was “minding the net”, he had-worked himself into a truly furious lather. He stood a few feet behind the custodian and verbally pitched into him in colourful terms during which the phrases “useless cunt” and “fucking wanker” featured prominently. When the ball was safely up the other end of the field, the hapless goalie left his line and went behind his goal and indicated to this individual that he was going to “smash your fucking face in“. Undaunted, the Fife “fan” gestured in the traditional outstretched arms fashion, saying “C’mon then big man“. Unfortunately for fight fans the ball chose that moment to re-appear in the vicinity of the Fife goal and the goalie had to sprint towards the edge of the box, shouting “After the game“. Regrettably I’m unable to report whether the assignment was kept as the head-case soon disappeared back into the throng of East Fife fans, still swearing vigorously.

In the second half East Fife pulled a goal back as the ‘Shire remembered who they were and reverted to type. The ref did his best to help the Fifers out of their difficulties by awarding them 2 penalties in mysterious circumstances. They missed them both of course.

Bottom beat top. A stupendous own goal. Four goals in total. Two missed penalties. Goal-mouth incidents galore (including the aforementioned attempted square-go). A programme. What more do you want for three quid ? Serie A is never like this. Shuggie, Senga, Big John and I marched out of the ground singing “There’s only one team in Falkirk“. Bring on Stenhousemuir

First published in TAG 21 – December 1990

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 6

THE FORGOTTEN ONES – Number 9 – COLIN STEIN

Colin Stein was not related to Jock or Frank N of that ilk, but he could well have been some mutant amalgam of both. He was the archetypal Rangers target-man centre-forward of the type that Graeme Souness keeps trying in vain to rediscover via West, Falco, Gray, Dodds and Hately. In full flight, elbows flailing, legs pumping, lungs bursting, blonde hair trailing in the wind, he was a pretty fearsome sight. He was a football journalist’s dream. Practically every tired old cliche applied to him. “Bustling”, “strong-running”,”tireless”, “fearless”, “brainless”,… “useless”. Opinions are divided as to his precise qualities as a player, but one thing is for certain and that is that he scored goals. Lots of them. Like Magnus Magnusson once he got started he just couldn’t be stopped. He also had a peculiar penchant for getting himself sent off, regularly combining both talents and receiving his marching orders within minutes of completing a hat-trick. At Ibrox, he formed an amazing strike-force with another “forgotten one”, namely Willie ‘Bud’ Johnston. At least, he would’ve formed such a strike-force with Bud, had it not been for the fact that one or other of them was invariably suspended as they vied with each other to be first to the sine die sentence.

In 1968, Rangers bought Stein from Hibs for £100,000 which was then a record transfer between two Scottish teams. In post-decimal, hard-ecu terms, that’s roughly equivalent to the million-plus they paid for le petit Mo. Colin made an Owen Coyle-type whirlwind start to his Rangers career, smacking in three or four hat-tricks in his first half-dozen games. He was only sent off once during this honeymoon period. Although he was scoring goals aplenty he had the singular misfortune to have joined Rangers at the beginning of the long dark age of Celtic domination. In response to Celtic’s success Rangers gradually evolved a style which consisted of leaving Colin upfield as the sole attacker and punting long hopeful/hopeless balls up to him in the hope that he could ‘do the business’.
This tactic spawned thousands of newspaper headlines along the lines of “The Lone Ranger” and “Stein left to plough a lonely furrow”.

My favourite memory of Stein was a goal he scored in an away game against Bayern Munich in the Cup-Winners Cup (historical note: Rangers used to score goals away from home in Europe in places other than Cyprus and Malta). A long ball had been played out of the Rangers defence. Colin got to the ball first, bustled past his marker, leaving an elbow in his face for good measure, and raced towards goal, where the goalkeeper had advanced to the edge of the box to meet him. A quick shimmy and he’s round the goalie. Now for the tricky part.He’s fourteen yards out with not a German in sight. In similar circumstances, Bud Johnston would have just side-footed the ball into the empty net and wheeled away giving two fingers to the home crowd. Colin, however, was more ambitious than that. Or possibly he mistakenly believed that there was a Teuton hard on his heels about to perform a John Greig operation on him. Whatever the reason, he suddenly veered hard right out towards the eastern edges of the penalty area and began making for the bye-line. Soon he was in a position where it would have required a Garrincha-type banana-bender to hit the target. By this time a Bayern defender had sprinted back into the six-yard box, at right angles to the untended goal. Now at an impossible angle Colin took aim and fired. The ball was quite clearly destined for High Street, Munchen, until it collided, at extremely high velocity, with the defender’s face, from where it obligingly flew into the back of the net. Goal for Rangers. Broken nose and ambulance home for Fritz. Two fingers to the home crowd. Barcelona here we come.

The trick was repeated in the Final of that competition, where Colin got one and Bud the other two as Rangers lifted the trophy. If you watch that match on TV, poor camera work creates the illusion that Bud’s second goal came about after he’d nipped off for a fly fag and then suddenly re-appeared on the pitch without being noticed by the Soviet defence. Or was it an illusion ?

After the European success these two worthies departed to the greener fields of England, though these moves were probably not unconnected to the SFA disciplinary committee indication that they would not like to see either of their faces again. Colin was thus literally and metaphorically sent to Coventry. Some things never change, huh? He did however return a few years later when the heat was off and the wanted posters had come down at Park Gardens. Rangers were on the verge of breaking Celtic’s stranglehold on the championship. Colin was pitched straight into a tense away game against Dundee at Dens Park. At that time Rangers led the league by one point from Celtic. He lasted twenty minutes before the obligatory ordering off. Coupled with the fact that Dundee were leading 1-0 his dismissal provoked a mini-riot, necessitating the players being taken off for twenty minutes while the police fought to restore order. After serving his suspension he returned to assist Rangers to consign those green ten-in-a-row flags to the dustbin. Remember these flags. Heh heh. Perhaps some reader would like to contribute a “Where are they now” article.

Colin Stein played only 14 matches for Scotland. In that time he scored 10 goals. He is the tenth equal top scorer for Scotland of all time. Mind you, four of those goals were scored in the 8-0 rout of Cyprus at Hampden in 1969. Apart from scoring 4, Colin found time to block several scoring shots from his colleagues, and even helped out the hapless Cypriot defence by clearing some of his own best efforts off their line.

Tragically, Colin Stein may ultimately be best remembered in the history books for the goal he scored on 2nd January 1971 against Celtic at Ibrox. Some say that it was the excitement of this goal which precipitated the Ibrox disaster when 66 football supporters died in truly horrifying circumstances. I prefer to remember Colin for all his other goals, for his non-stop effort, for his occasional brilliance, for the excitement engendered by his sheer unpredictability. In an ideal world he would have played for Partick Thistle alongside Dennis McQuade and Chic Charnley. Oh yes, and Willie Johnston.

First published in The Absolute Game No 22 – March 1991

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 5

Here’s a book review from TAG 47 (March 1996)

FACTS ARE CHIELS THAT WINNA DING
(This heading is TAG’s contribution to the Burns bi-centenary celebrations. Anyone who has any idea what it means should contact the editor immediately.)
The Breedon Book of Scottish Football Records

On Boxing Day when we found Santa wedged in one of the central heating ducts connected to the fake chimney, he was clutching a brightly coloured package addressed to me, and it turned out to contain a copy of ‘The Breedon Book of Scottish Football Records’. This book contains the dates and results of every Scottish League game, every Scottish Cup game and every Scottish League Cup game played between the creation of the universe and the end of the 1994/95 season. A fantastic feast for football fact fiends. The blurb on the dust-jacket notes that football results are more than just mere statistics. It says that they are milestones, not only in a football-watching career but in a very life itself. A candidate for Pseuds Comer or what? Well, yes, except, I agree with the sentiments entirely.

Like every book of this sort it contains its fair share of irritating errors. Without looking too hard I was able to note that there was no reference at all to ES Clydebank’s single season in the sun (see elsewhere in this issue for further details). The naming of the losing cup-finalists of 1987 as Dundee without the reasonably important qualification of the word ‘United‘ is annoying if you’re the kind of sad person (like me) who gets annoyed easily. Proof that this is a mistake born out of genuine ignorance, rather than a typographical error, is provided when the same gaffe recurs on page 133 when a team photograph is said to be of the Dundee team who finished 5th in the league and were beaten in the fourth round of the cup by Celtic in 1972. Dundee did finish 5th and were beaten by Celtic in the 4th round in that year. The problem is that the photograph is of Dundee United. The clues which alerted me were (a) the presence of Hamish McAlpine, Walter Smith, Tommy Traynor, Dougie Smith, Andy Rolland, Kenny Cameron, Jerry Kerr et al in the photo, (b) the fact that the backdrop is obviously Tannadice, and (c) the real giveaway that the players have badges on their shirts reading ‘D.U. F.C’. Apart from that it’s an easy mistake to make.

The most glaring error is one which, if it had been made at TAG HQ, would have resulted in the sub-editor being banished permanently to Cliftonhill. On page 102 there’s a photograph of a Celtic goal being scored and it’s captioned as being their first goal in a 2-0 cup replay win over Rangers. It’s such a great photograph that it’s pressed into service again on page 189, only this time it’s one of Celtic’s seven goals in the 1957 League Cup Final. There’s also a minor misprint in the Premier Division Table for 1975/76 which records Dundee United’s points tally as 52, when in fact they only got 32. Please don’t get the idea that I’ve pored over the whole thing looking for trifling errors. I just happened to notice that one because I wanted to remind myself just how close Dundee Utd (and Aberdeen) came to relegation that season, both surviving on goal difference only. As printed, it looks like United weren’t even involved in the dogfight at all.

One other criticism which I’d make of the book is in the choice of photographs. OK, I know that the Old Firm hordes are the biggest part of the football market, but does that really justify having Rangers and Celtic feature in six of the eight photographs on the front and back covers? One of these photographs is of Brian Laudrup. Great player, but hardly synonymous with the history of Scottish football. Inside, there are 80 photographs (yes, I counted them) of which no fewer than 59 feature the Old Firm. Of the remaining 21, ten feature Aberdeen, 3 are of Dunfermline and the two Dundee teams have two each. Which leaves four photos shared out amongst the other approximately 400 teams mentioned in the book. To put this into perspective, there are no photographs at all of about 30 of the current 40 league clubs, while, on the other hand, there are no less than 5 of Mark Hateley. This sort of thing becomes particularly annoying when there are no illustrations to accompany those sparse occasions when one of the ‘Mickey Mouse’ teams actually did something remarkable. Like, for example, Kilmarnock winning the league in 1965. That page is illustrated by a team photo of Aberdeen who finished 12th, were knocked out of the Cup in the first round by East Fife, and were eliminated from the League Cup in the first round sections, gaining only 5 points from 6 games. More recently, St Mirren’ s cup triumph of 1987 is illustrated by a photo of Ally McCoist, while, by contrast, Motherwell’s cup winning year of 1991 is illustrated by a photo of, eh, Ally McCoist. Like Hateley, super-Swally manages to chalk up a total of five pictures, even if one of these does show him on crutches.

Revolting pandering to the Old Firm and minor errors aside, this is an excellent book. It is quite amazing how memories can be activated by flicking through the pages recounting the scores of your youth. Everyone can remember the first game they were at. In my case I have to go back nearly 30 years (now 40 – aging blog Ed) to 1967 and Rangers beating Morton 1-0, with Willie Johnston scoring in the very first minute. The league table shows that that was the season when the only game which Rangers lost was the very last one of the season and yet they still finished second. As your eyes flick across to the Scottish Cup results for that year you see that the semi-finalists were Dunfermline, St Johnstone, Hearts and Morton (the last-named having narrowly beaten Elgin City in the quarter-final). Happy days. Apart from the opportunities for maudlin reminiscing which the book provides, it will also finally put a stop to all those arguments about whether East Stirling beat Arbroath by 2-0 or 3-0 in the second round replay in 1934.

Every home should have one.

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 4

(Clydebank Blitzed – Part 2)

Kilbowie Kasuals.

There’s a spit and sawdust pub about 200 yards from Kilbowie which I will not name to protect the inebriated. On my second visit to see the Bankies I stopped in there for a quick pint. It was packed to the gunwhales with people drinking haufs and hauf-pints and paying particularly close attention to the horse racing on the TV. I naively thought that the patrons of this pub were, like me, on their way to the game, as the conversation occasionally passed from the prospects at Kempton Park to the prospects at Kilbowie Park. It was only on my return there after the game that I realised that the entire clientele was still exactly the same as it had been two hours earlier, except that those on bar stools had slipped that bit further down below bar level, those who had been standing now required the assistance of the wall to remain upright, and any semblance of coherent speech was a thing of the past. There was one wee man that I’d actually spoken to before the game, and at that time he gave all the indications that he was a lifelong Bankie fan on his way to the game. But now he was completely steaming. When he saw me he seemed to speak on behalf of everybody in the bar when he said, “The bashtardsh got beat again. That’sh why I never go to watch them“. Clydebank was blitzed during the war. Many of its citizens have been blitzed ever since.

On the other hand, the youth of the town seem to have been raised with the words of Bob Dylan ringing in their ears, viz “Everybody must get stoned“. Over the years I’ve watched several generations of spotty Clydebank Herberts engaging in the quaint post-match ritual of bombarding opposing fans with half-bricks. The favoured venue for this sport is Singer railway station, where there’s a convenient embankment above the platform which appears to have been designed specifically as a launch-pad. The Herberts have a captive audience, and it seems to matter not a whit to them that the invariable recipients of their hurled masonry are old women who’ve been shopping at the town’s large shopping centre (your average football fan being nimble enough in mind and body to take cover behind the nearest pensioner). The police seem to be baffled by it all because I’ve never yet seen a policeman trying to stop it happening, though of course after the game the plods have their work cut out moving people in directions they don’t want to go in.

Crap, Crap, Crap

The infrequent visitor to Kilbowie will find that for the past few seasons there’s been an amazing piece of surreal art positioned along the side of the pitch. The first time I saw this monstrosity I was genuinely puzzled. Part of it consisted of a giant advertising hoarding containing the single word ‘Wet‘. I gazed at it for about ten minutes wondering what on earth it was supposed to mean. I rejected the notion that it was a ‘wet paint’ sign with a word missing, primarily because it was too high up for anyone to touch it, and it wasn’t attached to anything which could have been painted. Similarly I dismissed the thought that it was a static weather report as for once it wasn’t actually raining, and in any case it would have been a major undertaking involving the use of one of the shipyard cranes, to change it to ‘Dry‘ or ‘Sunny with occasional showers’, as the need arose. Could it be an oblique direction sign for the toilets?, No, it wasn’t that either, as the facilities were on the other side of the field. Wet? What did it mean? I fancy myself as a bit of a cryptic crossword expert and I was deploying all my feeble mental resources in cracking this particular riddle when I glanced further along the pitch and saw another two exactly similar signs. OK, Wet Wet Wet. I haven’t really paid much attention to the hit parade since the Big Bopper took-the final aeroplane ride, but even I have heard of ‘the Wets’. They’re fae Clydebank and they sponsor the club. That Marty Pillow never misses a home game (sarcasm intended). It’s fortunate that neither Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich nor the New Riders of the Purple Sage originated from Clydebank.

What else can I tell you? Well, for one thing I was fortunate enough to be attending Clydebank games when Gerry McCabe was at his peak. Gerry was the best player in Scotland for a couple of seasons, though, of course, you wouldn’t have found that out by reading the Daily Record. By the time he ended up playing for Dumbarton he was well past his best, but I cherish the memories of him regularly making monkeys out of more famous and more illustrious ‘opponents in his Bankie days. I also had the privilege of seeing Jim ‘Chic’ Charnley entering the senior stage. Chic was a bona fide nutcase from the start, though regrettably he’s another that ended up at Boghead when his future was behind him. There are thousands of tales which illustrate Chic’s lunacy, but one goal of his always sticks in my mind. The Bankies were playing Hamilton Accies at Kilbowie on the last day of the season. The Accies were already certain of promotion to the Premier League and their fans were in party mood. Charnley tore them apart and finished it all off with a dramatic piece of theatre of cruelty. He was on the end of a sweeping move which had completely cut out the goalkeeper, and merely required him to tap the ball into the empty net. That was far too simple for Chic, and he stopped the ball on the goal line and beckoned on the sprawling Accies keeper to come and get it. For a few seconds the hapless keeper lay on the ground practically begging Chic to put him out or his misery and put the ball in the net. Chic just stood with his foot on the ball and a big grin on his face. Suddenly the demented custodian made a desperate lunge at Chic’s feet, but too late, as Chic had nudged it over the line and was wheeling away doing aeroplanes while not, of course, forgetting to give copious v-signs with both hands to the enraged Accies followers.

Finally, my favourite memory of Clydebank has nothing to do with football. Every night for 6 years I got the train from Glasgow to Dumbarton. The train passed through, but did not stop at, Clydebank. One night it slowed down and actually stopped there for some unknown reason. There were two old women sitting on a bench on the platform. They got up and pressed the button to open the train doors. The doors didn’t open. One of them went along towards the train driver, shouting, “Coo-ee. Coo-eee, driver, the door won’t open“. The driver, who had obviously not been to the BR charm school, but who did have a well-developed sense of the absurd, replied, “We don’t stop here“. The totally baffled look on the old dears’ faces, as they wrestled with this Zen paradox, was a real treat. Can I use this story as a metaphor for the football club? -

Clydebank – it’s got a station but the trains don’t stop there!

(Note by 2006 Ed – Regrettably, extending the metaphor, Clydebank doesn’t even have a station now. Kilbowie Park is long gone and so is the senior club)

Note – the picture of Kilbowie used above comes from the excellent series of pictures of deceased Scottish football grounds here-
http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~jblair/grounds.html

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 3

from TAG 47 (March 1996)

CLYDEBANK BLITZED

(photo from http://www.homesoffootball.co.uk)

In TAG 44 the editor appealed for somebody somewhere to write something, anything, about Clydebank FC. I’ve watched out for the resulting flood of articles in issues 45 and 46, but so far, nothing. In the absence of any Bankie fans stepping forward to do the job, emergency measures are called for, and so this is a view of Clydebank from a person who has only been at Kilbowie Park on a handful of occasions over the last six or seven years, and has practically no knowledge at all of the current set-up there. More poignantly, it’s the view from a Dumbarton supporter, and you all know that it’s notoriously difficult for a Sons fan to think of the word ‘Bankie’ without following it with the word ‘bastard’, but, hey, who said TAG has to be objective or fair?

Born Under a Bad Sign.

Devotees of blues music will be aware that there were two separate, and equally famous, men calling themselves Sonny Boy Williamson. Similarly, Clydebank Football Club has had two totally separate incarnations, the first club of that name having expired in 1931, while the present club which we all know and love was born as recently as 1965. It was a difficult re-birth, which is not really surprising when you consider the unnatural practices which resulted in its conception. Extending this rather disgusting obstetric metaphor, the new club’s parents were the Steedman brothers, and the offspring was originally one half of a siamese coupling with East Stirling, which was christened with the distinctly unlovely name of East Stirling Clydebank. Post-natal separation of this gruesome twosome was performed by a judge in the Court of Session. Just in case none of this makes any sense to you, the story is that Jack and Charlie Steedman were directors of East Stirling in the early 1960’s, and after a couple of relatively successful seasons, they were desperately looking for ways to increase the size of crowds at home games. They came up with the truly brilliant idea of moving East Stirling lock, stock, and rabbit, up the road to Clydebank.

The geography experts amongst you will have instantly spotted a flaw in this cunning plan, namely that that particular road is rather longer than a hopeful punt up the park, crossing, as it does, several counties, a number of largish towns, a couple of time zones, and a gigantic cultural divide. Just in case any of the ‘Shire fans had missed the point, the name of the club was quickly shortened to ES Clydebank, thereby ensuring that memories of its true origins would soon be forgotten. (This is a bit like the more recent occasion when the Halifax Building Society and the Leeds Building Society merged. The Directors of each society solemnly agreed that the name of the new merged company should be a composite of the old names. Thus the Leeds provided the words ‘Building Society’ while the Halifax chipped in with the words ‘The Halifax’ so that the new company was named ‘The Halifax Building Society’). The ferocious reaction of the east Stirling supporters to this de facto destruction of their club should have been, but wasn’t, a lesson to Wallace Mercer when he was pondering a similarly outrageous manoeouver 30 years later.

After months of messy litigation the shareholders at East Stirling triumphed and ES was forensically uncoupled from Clydebank leaving two clubs where there had formerly been one. The Steedmans (or should that be the Steedmen) remained at Clydebank and the Shire were free to wend their merry way towards what we should diplomatically call their present predicament. One consequence of all this is that the record books for 1964/65 contain reference to that ugliest and most misleading of all Scottish football names, East Stirlingshire Clydebank. It’s hard enough nowadays to get some people to believe that East Stirling Football Club is located in Falkirk, and not Stirling. It must have been murder trying to explain that Clydebank wasn’t in Stirlingshire, Stirlingshire wasn’t in Clydebank, the club was named after a county that it wasn’t in, neither East Stirling nor Clydebank were anywhere near the town of Stirling, and Clydebank was very much west of Stirlingshire. A nightmare for English groundhoppers.

Kilbowie Konfessions

There’s no denying that since 1965 Clydebank have been much more successful than East Stirling.** The Bankies have had a couple of forays into the Premier League, and after their initial promotion from the second division they’ve never been back there. They’ve caused their fair share of Cup upsets over the years, and they’ve gained a reputation for bringing through many talented youngsters who are subsequently snapped up by bigger fish, for suitable fees. Off the top of my head I can think Of Davie Cooper, Tommy Coyne, Bobby Williamson, Frank McDougall, eh…Mike Conroy, um…Chic Charnley, and many others that I’ll think of in a minute. They had the first all seated stadium in Scotland, far in advance of the Taylor report, albeit that, as Simon Inglis notes in his ‘Football Grounds of Great Britain’, “the bench seating allows the hardy to continue standing”. Oh, and eh, Davie Irons is another one.

When I moved to Dumbarton in 1981 the first game I went to was at Boghead where the Sons went down narrowly to Motherwell, 0-6. A couple of weeks later I travelled the few miles along the road to Kilbowie to see what my other local team were made of. By coincidence, Motherwell were again the visitors. Although the Bankies managed to get on the score sheet, my masochistic streak was well satisfied by Motherwell sneaking in 7 at the other end. Thereafter I attended Kilbowie reasonably regularly for a few years and saw some great games there. There always seemed to be a deluge of goals. I particularly remember one game against Airdrie where it was 3-3 after ten minutes.

Another of the joys of visits to Kilbowie was in getting much more than your money’s worth in the match programme. I don’t know what its like now but in the Eighties it was simply the best in Scotland. Where other programmes might just have stretched to an up-dated league table, the Bankies version bombarded you with pages of statistical analysis which could easily have passed for ICI’s annual accounts. Much of the information was obscure, but nevertheless fascinating. It also regularly included reports from Italian/Spanish/Dutch/French football, information about programme collecting, reviews of ‘matches to remember’, genuinely interesting pen portraits and histories of their opponents, a truly argumentative and ‘no-holds-barred’ correspondence column and much much more. Wherever possible they adopted the old Kinks trick of converting every word beginning with a ‘C’ into a ‘K’, so that sections of the magazine had titles like Kilbowie Komment or the Kilbowie Kartoon etc, prompting Dumbarton supporters to refer to Bankie fans as ‘Kilbowie Kunts’. The programme was practically a fanzine before fanzines had been invented. Have I praised it enough? This may well be a major clue as to why TAG has never heard from any Bankie fans. It’s distinctly possible that none of them have ever purchased a fanzine because their programme is so good.

Part 2 – tomorrow at the same time

**Footnote by pernickety Editor – this was written in 1996. As at 2006 Clydebank Football Club has long since disappeared from Scottish senior football – it is defunct – or a word that sounds like that. All of that is another story for another day

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 2

In the interests of balance (which will not often be a guiding principle of this blog) I follow slim Jim with wee Jinky (this from TAG23 May 1991)

THE FORGOTTEN ONES – No 10
JIMMY JOHNSTONE

Jimmy Johnstone, or to give him his full name, James Jinkworth Johnstone, may well have been the last of the ‘tanner-ba’ players. By the time his career came to an end, the tanner itself was a fading memory, and a ‘£3.49 plus VAT ba’ player’ doesn’t quite have the same sort of romantic ring. Proverbially smaller than the corner flag and with a Barlinnie Special Unit haircut years ahead of Jimmy Boyle, Jinky Jim did not at first sight look like the terroriser of defences from Montrose to Milan, but for a period in the sixties and early seventies he was one of that (increasingly) rare breed – a Scottish player of genuine world class. Born in that cradle of Scottish football, Bellshill, he honed his natural ball control skills by lining up milk bottles in his ma’s living-room and dribbling the ball round them for hours on end. When he first broke through into the Celtic first team, he found to his surprise, and delight, that the then current Rangers defenders were approximately as mobile and skilful as those milk bottles.

Jinky was undeniably the jewel in the crown of the Lisbon Lions (what aboot wee Bertie? – outraged Ed) and it’s a moot point whether Celtic could have made the leap from being an excellent Scottish team to being champions of Europe without his extraordinary ability to tantalise, bemuse, bewilder and break the spirit of even the best the Continent had to offer. In an interview for the TV series “Only A Game?”, Tommy Gemmell provided an interesting insight into the tactics of Stein-era Celtic, – “If we were under pressure, all we did was give the ball to Jimmy because nobody could ever get it off him…..if we were three goals up in a match and we were trying to save energy for a midweek game, give the ball to Jimmy and let him run about with it just to slow the whole tempo of the game down, take it easy……and if we needed someone to break open tight defences we had to give it to Jimmy as well….”

In that same programme, Hugh McIlvanney quoted Billy McNeil as saying, “The only trouble wi’ Jimmy is that you’ve got to make sure he’s running in the right direction because if he’s coming this way we’ll never get the ball off him – he’s liable to beat three turnstile men and five of the crowd….”

We can all remember playing football in school playgrounds etc and there was always one wee bastard who appeared to have the ball tied to his feet. You’d have liked to amputate the wee bugger’s legs with a lunging two-footed tackle except you could never get near enough. Jinky was one of the few who were able to move easily from being an annoying wee shite in the playground to being an annoying wee shite at Hampden Park. Although many defenders at home and abroad attempted to perform non-surgical limb removal on him, no-one ever truly mastered him. In particular, one remembers the efforts of a succession of Atletico Madrid players to relocate Jimmy’s head in the back of the Jungle. As each throat-high tackle felled him, Jimmy’s response was merely to pick himself up and run at the defenders inviting yet another red card challenge.

Of course, genius is pain, and not everything in Jinky’s garden was rosy. It is said that Bill Shankly once complained to one of his players, “The trouble wi’ you son is that your brains are in your heid”. No such criticism could be levelled at Jimmy and it’s fair to say that an application to join Mensa was never on the agenda. His unusual sense of brainless joie de vivre led him into a number of off-field scrapes, during which bottles of Buckfast and cans of Carlsberg Special played more than a subsidiary role. The most celebrated incident featured Jimmy’s unsuccessful attempt to travel to the 1974 World Cup Finals in Germany by boat (a rowing boat in the Clyde, departing Largs 4am). This was only one of many similar occurrences and Jock Stein had practically a full-time job digging the wee man out of a variety of licensed premises. It was said that if Jinky went into any one of fifty bars in Glasgow, the barman would acknowledge him with “The usual, Jimmy?”

A few years ago, Jimmy’s autobiography was published (ghost-written of course, we’re not dealing with a literary giant here). The book was reviewed in the very first ever edition of the Rangers fanzine ‘Follow Follow’, and I think it’s worth quoting the entire review, because apart from being a very amusing and much more succinct appraisal of the wee man’s career than the autobiography itself, it also betrays a sneaking regard and affection for Jinky which you might not expect from that source -

“Ah pure love fitba’ an’ that, know. The set-up at Parkheid wiz gemme, a new set o’ falsers, a Burton’s suit, an’ sixty quid a week. Mind you ah didnae fancy the doings fae Big Jock an’ Caesar fur ma drinkin’ an’ that. At wan time ah wiz swallin’ a ful bottel a Domestos an’ that oan the bus goin’ tae trainin’ in the mornin’. These days am working fur a boay that’s a bigger chancer than ah ever wiz. Cheerio Chinas! Whose round is it?”

During his career Jimmy was often compared with George Best. They were both described as free spirits. Or at least they were both usually to be found drinking free spirits. While George graduated to swilling champagne in exclusive London night-clubs and being called the fifth Beatle, Jimmy continued to get blootered on pints of heavy in Lanarkshire spit-and-sawdust dives, while Slade in their skinhead phase would have been the more obvious comparison for him. To quote McIlvanney again, Jimmy undoubtedly added substantially to the gaiety of nations off the field.

On the field he wiz pure magic.