Arguing for our limitations

There’s an old saying which goes; ‘Argue for you own limitations are sure enough they’re yours.’ We who inhabit the clannish and internecine world of Scottish football should heed well those words. For too long we’ve listened to folk from south of Hadrian’s wall tell us that our football is akin to a Pub League and that their product is the best in the world. I have heard more than a few Scottish fans agree with them after some European disaster but that self-deprecating humour Scots are famous for is in no danger of becoming a permanent Caledonian cringe.  

That misplaced arrogance many English commentators and supporters have about Scottish football has become so deeply ingrained that it leads to knee jerk judgements about our game from people who have seldom if ever actually watched a game up here. We’ve all had it on holiday when we’ve been lectured by some ill-informed EPL acolyte about how poor our game is compared to the mighty Premiership. I even had it off a nice chap from Dublin who followed Arsenal. He didn’t see the irony that so many of his ilk following English clubs is actually stunting football in his own country. The island of Ireland has over six million people living on it and yet the top supported club side there, Cork City, averages barely 4000 fans at a home game. Even in Dublin, a city the size of Glasgow, clubs like Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians do well to break 3000 at a home match as does Linfield in the north.

100 miles away in Scotland, a country of similar size we have far higher engagement in domestic football. Celtic and Rangers are among the top 20 best supported clubs in Europe with the hoops 2017-18 average of 57,523 placing them as the ninth best supported club in Europe. Indeed they are just just 6 (yes six) fans behind Inter Milan who sit in eighth place with an average of 57,529. The SPFL is the seventh best supported league in Europe behind the big 5 and the Netherlands. As well as Celtic and Rangers playing to big crowds, we have Hearts (18,336), Hibs (17,964) and Aberdeen (15,633) all playing to decent average attendances. All of this in a nation the size of Sweden where the average top league attendance is just over 8000.

Where Scotland really loses out though is in the revenue television pours into football. If we discount the so called ‘big 5 leagues,’ comparable footballing countries to Scotland such as Portugal, Austria, Sweden, Greece, Norway and Denmark all receive significantly more money for TV rights that the SPFL. Even the BBC stitches Scotland up paying just £2.8m per year for the Sportscene highlights programme. (Gary Lineker earns £1.75m per year for introducing match of the day.) Meanwhile they pay the Premiership in England £68m per year for Match of the day. That is around 24 times the amount they pay for Scottish football. Given that Scotland pays 9% of the BBC licence fee this is hardly equitable. This lack of revenue is what really makes it difficult for Scotland to grow the game and develop the infra-structure such as coaching facilities, modern stadia and indeed a higher ratio of properly trained coaches. In countries such as Holland you fill find all weather football pitches in most towns and villages. In Scotland the few we have for our youngsters are over-priced and often booked out.

All of the above demonstrates that Scotland need not cringe about its footballing pedigree. We have a proud history in the game and our clubs have appeared in 10 European finals which for a small nation is no mean feat. We are the best supported league in Europe per capita and have some of the most committed and passionate fans around. Yes, the game here has its issues but it is nowhere near as poor as some of the ‘my Nan’ brigade down south would have you believe. Their condescension is as old as the game itself and leads to their clubs shopping for players in Scotland as if they were in Poundland.

We saw Arsenal begin their bid for Kieran Tierney, an experienced international and Champions League player at £15m. Meanwhile the same club purchased French youngster William Saliba from St Etienne for £27m. This is an 18 year old player who has played barely 25 competitive matches! This arrogance when it comes to purchasing players from the SPFL was seen when Virgil Van Dijk joined Southampton for £12m three years ago. Are we really expected to believe he improved so much since he left Celtic that he was worth £90m to Liverpool and became Premiership player of the year and a Champions League winner? Of course not; Virgil was an excellent player in Scotland too. We see the same nonsense with John McGinn who was purchased by Aston Villa from Hibs for around £3m. He is currently being touted as a £40m player in the Premiership.

It is to be hoped that Scottish clubs start valuing their players more realistically in the future and stop underselling them. Scottish clubs rely so much on money from the fans and from transfers that they sometimes sell too cheaply. This of course stems partly from our poor TV revenues but also from believing some of the guff written about our game. I watch a fair bit of football on TV and the best matches I’ve seen have not been in the over-hyped Premiership but in our own SPFL. There’s a rawness and an energy to Scottish games which I like and it is more often than not entertaining fare. I have watched Premiership games with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent on the pitch and the entertainment value has been dreadful. As Neil Lennon once said, ‘I’ve seen games in England which would make your eyes bleed.’

As a new season gets underway enjoy the football on offer and don’t be sucked into the circle of negativity about Scottish football. It’s been run down for so long that some of our own supporters believe the nonsense written about it. Whether it’s the thunder of an Edinburgh derby, the battles when the big two travel to Easter Road or Pittodrie, the excitement of the play offs or the unmatched passion and noise of a Celtic v Rangers game, our football has much to offer.

Enjoy the new season and hopefully it’s a good one for Scottish football as well as the Bhoys in Green.

The Right Spirit

The Right Spirit

One of the features of modern football which exasperates me is the culture of diving which has become endemic. There were always players who went down too easily but it has grown in recent decades to become an almost accepted part of the game. In professional sport the prizes for success and the price of failure mean that some players will seek any advantage they can to succeed. Sportsmanship does still exist and even in highly competitive situations you can still find people prepared to play the game in the right spirit.

Celtic’s former chairman Bon Kelly was always very concerned about the club being seen to be sporting and playing the game in the right manner. Sean Fallon recalled being given a win bonus for a match they lost and being told it was because of the manner in which they played the game. Kelly would also tell the players to respect their opponents and accept the Referee’s decisions without complaint. When Jock Stein took over in 1965 he was adamant that he would run team affairs and the notoriously interfering Kelly should stay out of that side of the club. In one of his first big tests, the League Cup Final with Rangers in 1965 he did allow Kelly to address the team. The Chairman told the team to respect their opponents, play fair and remember they were representing Celtic. The pragmatic Stein waited till Kelly had left the dressing room and turned to his team saying, ‘You can forget that crap right now. We’ve been bullied for too long in these games. You let your opponent know he’s in a game from the first tackle.’ Stein wasn’t asking his players to cheat but merely to stop being soft touches. Celtic won the cup that day after a display which combined good football with a more streetwise attitude.

Some of the best examples of sportsmanship over the years have come in moments when players could easily have taken advantage of opponents. You may recall Everton Keeper Paul Gerrard lying injured in the box as a cross came towards West Ham’s Paolo Di Canio; the Italian could have headed for the empty goal but instead caught the ball in order to allow the injured keeper treatment. There was the famous incident in golf’s Ryder cup between Tony Jacklyn and Jack Nicklaus with the score tied and the players level on the last hole of the last round, Nicklaus holed for a par leaving Jacklyn a 3 foot put to ties the tournament. There was huge pressure on Jacklyn not to miss and as he prepared for the crucial put. Instead of making his opponent play the shot, Nicklaus picked up the ball saying, ‘I don’t think you’d have missed it Tony but I didn’t want to give you the chance.’ At such a decisive moment in the tie and indeed the whole competition is was a remarkable act of sportsmanship.

The essence of sport is in fair an honest competition and the Olympics in particular tries to promote these values. In the 1936 games held in Hitler’s Berlin, long jumper Lutz Long was up against Jessie Owens the remarkable American athlete. The American foot faulted twice and was set to be eliminated from the competition if he did so for a third time when his German opponent coached him on how to adjust his run up and not fault. Owens took his advice and qualified for the final. He won the gold medal and Long the silver and the two opponents walked arm in arm around the track laughing and joking together; a fairly symbolic act in a racially tense country at the time. Owens said years later…

"You can melt down all the medals and cups I have," said Owens and they wouldn't be plating on the twenty-four carat friendship that I felt for Luz Long at that moment."

Lutz Long was killed in Sicily fighting for Germany in 1943 and is buried there. Owens never forgot him and travelled to Germany after the war to meet Long’s family. They became friends and Owens was best man at Lutz Long’s son’s wedding.

In football, Robbie Fowler of Liverpool was awarded a penalty against Arsenal and to the surprise of everyone in the stadium told the referee these was no contact and he simply slipped. The penalty was rescinded. Such things are rarer these days with many forwards more likely to simulate in a shameless manner and take whatever the referee gives. We see it at every level of football and as youngsters seek to emulate their heroes and I was disappointed to see it in a schoolboy game I watched at the local park.  

One of the features of the recent Women’s World Cup was the much reduced level of simulation in games. It was quite refreshing to watch players compete without much cheating going on. You do get some Managers who will defend their players no matter what. Arsene Wenger was famous for ‘not seeing’ incidents when his players dived or claiming they were ‘avoiding injury’ by jumping out of the way. He’s no mug, he’s simply not one to criticise his players in public.

There will always be cheats in football and to be honest no club can claim to be free from it. Some are more blatant about it and seem to base a lot of their game on going down at the slightest opportunity. PSG’s Neymar rubs a lot of people up the wrong way with his antics while closer to home Kyle Lafferty seems to simulate at every opportunity. The incident where he got Charlie Mulgrew of Aberdeen sent off was a classic example as was Scott Brown’s yellow card when Lafferty rolls about holding his shin when there was clearly no contact. They’re not alone in this behaviour by any means and if it’s ever going to be stamped out (no pun intended) or at least reduced then referees need to issue a yellow card for every clear incidence of it. It should also be dealt with by the compliance officer when appropriate.

As the new season gets underway, I hope it’s remembered for good football, great goals and moments of skill not for controversy over simulation and inept responses to it from officials and the SFA. It’s a part of the game I don’t like and it has in my time watching football gone from a niggling rarity to a fairly common part of the game. Maybe I’m being old fashioned but I’d like to see football clean up its act and games decided on skill, effort and merit not on decisions conned out of referees.

The Sword that heals

The Sword that heals

I took a break and drove down to south to visit relatives this past week and was of course aware that Celtic’s first competitive match of the season was due to be played while I was there. Thus I found myself in O’Neill’s Bar in Cardiff where I watched a rusty looking Celtic do a professional job on a fairly mediocre home side. One of the great things about being a Celt is that you’ll find like-minded fans in every major city in the UK and can join them on match days to talk about all things Celtic. Some like me are visiting or passing through these towns while others have made them their home and took their love of Celtic with them. It was nice to see the hooped shirts in that bastion of Welsh rugby and nicer still to see Celtic win.

Being away from Scotland for a week or so meant I missed the ‘celebrations’ associated with the Orange Parade in my home city. I returned to see images of a woman being pushed and spat upon for trying to cross the road and it made for a sorry spectacle in the ‘best wee country in the world.’ Other images showed a band stop deliberately outside a catholic church in the Gorbals to batter out some ditty about the ‘Volunteers of the UVF coming down the road.’  This was no error, they knew they were outside a catholic church and they chose to stop there deliberately and play their tune as their followers danced around on the pavement, singing along.

Canon Tom White, the Priest spat on at last year’s ‘cultural’ event said of the events…

‘The Boyne match on Saturday 6th July 2019 was rerouted by the Loyal Orders but they still insisted on passing a Catholic Church, Blessed John Dun Scotus on Ballater St in the Gorbals. Despite meeting with the clergy from Blessed John Dun Scotus and giving assurance that the Church would be absolutely respected we witnessed yet another Church targeted by mob mentality with complete disregard for the conditions imposed upon their march by Police Scotland and Glasgow City Council. Bands ignored the condition of not playing music within 100 metres of the church with one band, Bridgeton No Surrender, actually stopping very close to the Church and continuously playing despite Police Scotland requesting that they stop. This was accompanied by their followers singing and dancing on the pavement in a mob like fashion.’

Canon White goes on to make a very valid point and one which the catholic community in Scotland has been making for a very long time…

‘This would certainly not be allowed if it targeted other minority communities such as Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Gypsy, Roma & Travellers or the LGBTQ+ communities and this is entirely appropriate. I am demanding no more than equality for the minority Catholic community.’

Of course the great get out clause for politicians, police and others with the powers to curtail this sorry spectacle is to describe it as ‘sectarianism.’  This catch-all term allows some to dismiss what is in reality ugly prejudice against the catholic community as if it is in some was a problem created by both sides equally. The knee jerk responses we see every year about catholic schools are as predictable as they are risible. They exist all over the world without this sort of nonsense rearing its ugly head. Indeed England has over 2000 Catholic school with 10% of the school aged population attending them with no real bigotry problem. Make no mistake about it; this hatred is passed down the generations from father to son and is not in any way, shape or form learned in school.

If it is to have any future or any say in the public life of Scotland then the Orange Order needs to slay the dragon it created and not try to suggest that a few drunken hangers on are the root of the trouble. It is their bands and members who assault members of the public, play tunes with lyrics about being ‘up to their knees in Fenian blood’ or inviting their fellow Scots to leave the country with the words; ‘The famine is over, why don’t you go home.’ It is the Order which creates the space and the context where some think this is acceptable behaviour. If they really are the benign, Christian group they claim to be then they must surely act to end this yearly embarrassment to themselves and the faith they claim to be upholding. The hatred which swirls around their parades like a bad smell is the polar opposite of what the carpenter from Nazareth taught his followers.

As for our politicians, we seem to lack any with the balls to tackle this problem. It remains an act of cowardice and hypocrisy to allow this poison to be displayed on our streets every year. As Canon White suggests; if this was aimed at Jews, Muslims or other minority groups the jail cells would be full.

I love Scotland; it is a country full of good, decent people who care for their fellow citizens and I want it to become an even better land, a place where open displays of naked hatred are not only frowned upon but challenged by those we elect to represent us. I’m always uncomfortable with the curtailing or banning of demonstrations in a democratic society but the right to demonstrate and the right to freedom of expression must always be balanced against the common good. We are free to believe what we want to believe but we are not free to intimidate, threaten and insult those we dislike.

There is a school of thought that suggests a more violent reaction to these displays would force the authorities to act but that would play right into the hands of the haters who would portray themselves as victims. The dignified silence and unequivocally non-violent approach of the people who protest outside catholic churches is by far the best way to show the behaviour of the bigots in the worst possible light. Martin Luther King knew this and achieved far more through passive resistance than he ever could have by advocating violence. He once said…

‘Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.’

I firmly believe that the vast majority of Scots are embarrassed by this yearly exhibition of triumphalism and bigotry which goes against the values our country holds dear. The mace, which was created for the re-opening of the Scottish Parliament twenty years ago, is engraved with the words; ‘Wisdom, Justice, Compassion and integrity.’ Isn’t it about time we lived up to those values?

A turnstile click away

A turnstile click away

From a mile off you could see the floodlights

Illuminating the dark and brooding Glasgow sky

A lighthouse, guiding the people safely home,

From every street in Glasgow they came,

Each soul, a raindrop adding to the river

Flowing inexorably towards Celtic Park.

A small hand seeks the comfort of his father’s

Senses sharpened by his first night match,

The Gallowgate finds its voice as songs

Echo off tenement walls which have seen it all,

From strike, strife and Luftwaffe bombs,

‘What the hell do we care?’ is the refrain,

But they care, by God they care!

This is their team, their colours, their club.

Paradise is a breathless turnstile click away

The multitudes coalesce, become as one,

The great cathedral of football shudders,

As the team appears; gladiators in green,

The emerald turf glistens under the lights,

It has been like this for a century and more,

Since McCallum’s goal first made them roar,

Here Maley, Doyle and Quinn fought the foe,

Gallagher’s feints left defenders chasing ghosts

McGrory, sure of eye and fierce of countenance

Rippled the net more times than memory could recall,

Stein and Tully, Evans too made their mark,

In good times and bad the fans endured,

Stories of heroes and villains are retold

To wide eyed children, food for their Celtic souls

The Gemmell shot, the Johnstone dribble,

Imperious McNeill holding aloft the glittering prize,

Murdoch, a Napoleon in green and white,

Stein, limping away, like a proud father,

McStay, McGrain and others picked up the torch

Carried it proudly into a bold new future,

So too a dreadlocked Swede who grew to love

The green as much as they grew to love him,

The little boy who took his father’s hand

On a dark night so many years ago

Now he walks his own child down those streets

Smiling to see that same wonder he once felt,

Shining in those bright, young eyes.