Football for good

Football for good

I had one of those conversations recently that occur every once in a while. I was talking to one of those self-righteous sort of guys and I happened to mention the effect the current health crisis is having on football. He went into a monologue about how it would be good for Scotland if football never resumed. ‘Every time Celtic plays Rangers’ he began, ‘there is a spike in domestic violence. It brings out the worst in people. It fosters bigotry and prejudice…. Blah blah blah.’  You get the picture; he was no fan of football. I told him of the great enjoyment playing or watching football brought to millions and that Scotland’s uneasy relationship with alcohol was a more likely cause of domestic violence than two football teams. 

You often get a certain middle-class snootiness about football from some people; the implication that it’s a sport for the uneducated plebs is never far away. It did get me thinking though about the slogan used by Celtic’s charity foundation, ‘football for good,’ and wondering if the game in Scotland is actually a positive force in our society.

The enforced shutdown of football we are enduring due to the Corona pandemic has demonstrated how much many people miss the game. It is a huge part of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Scots who go to games, watch on TV or spend hours discussing it on social media. Football has played a key role in the social lives of so many. Friendships flourished on the terraces and many a good night was had at football social clubs and supporters club dances up and down the country.

Football has burrowed deep in the psyche of so many ordinary Scots. The can tell you of great games, players and goals scored and who they were with at the time. Football gives so many a comradeship and sense of community that can be lacking in our modern, individualistic society. It can raise you to heights or drag you to the depths of despair. It is a metaphor for life itself with all its triumphs, disasters and occasional moments of astonishing drama. For those of us who understand and love the game, it is an ingrained part of our life. An heirloom handed on by fathers, grandfathers, mothers or some other equally besotted fan.

It may be hard to explain to people ignorant of the game the joy a Celtic fan takes at a last minute winner in a big game. Or a Hearts fan’s joy at beating their biggest rivals in a cup final or indeed a Hibs fan’s ecstasy when David Gray’s header exploded into the net on a sunny day in 2016 to end 114 years of waiting for a Scottish Cup win. Fans of all clubs will be able to tell you of such moments. How can those with no love for the game understand the artistry and balletic elegance of Lio Messi, Jimmy Johnstone or George Best? How can they comprehend the fairy story of a club born into an impoverished immigrant community rising not only to be the finest side in Europe but also do it playing football that was beautiful to behold?

The great Scottish sports writer Hugh McIlvanney once wrote or the magnificent Real Madrid side which won the European Cup at Hampden in 1960 in the following words…

“Fittingly, the great Glasgow stadium responded with the loudest and most sustained ovation it has given to non-Scottish athletes. The strange emotionalism that overcame the huge crowd as the triumphant Madrid team circled the field at the end, carrying the trophy they have held since its inception, showed they had not simply been entertained. They had been moved by the experience of seeing sport played to its ultimate standards.”

That is how football, played to its highest expression can move the ordinary fan. McIlvanney, who once said that George Best had ‘feet as sensitive as a pick-pocket’s hands,’ was perhaps best at bringing his descriptive powers to bear on football, once said of Jimmy Johnstone…

‘Johnstone will not be remembered simply as a footballer of electrifying virtuosity, though he was certainly that, with a genius for surreally intricate dribbling so extraordinary it is impossible for me to believe any other player before or since quite matched his mastery of tormenting, hypnotic ball control at the closest of quarters. As I have acknowledged in the past, other wingers might fairly be rated more reliably devastating (Garrincha, George Best, Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews are obvious candidates) but none of them besieged opponents with such a complex, concentrated swirl of deceptive manoeuvres or ever conveyed a more exhilarating sense of joy in working wonders with the ball.’

Days when the clubs treated fans like cattle and milked them for as much as they could without giving anything back to the community are long gone. Celtic has a long and illustrious record of supporting charitable causes. From its very inception it has been much more than a football club and heavily involved in its community. Indeed Celtic is part of that wider community and from the penny dinner tables of 1888 to the work of the Celtic Charity Foundation the club has never forgotten its roots. The Foundation Celtic has raised almost £20m for the causes it holds dear. Their focus (HELP) is to work to improve Health, Equity, Learning & Poverty issues for some of our most needy folk. The Foundation has a dedicated Learning Centre in Celtic Park and has worked with 29 Secondary and over 100 Primary schools and it raises funds from ordinary fans via the annual badge day and a whole host of activities people engage in to fund the Foundations work.

Celtic isn’t the only football club to engage in such activities as many clubs, large and small are heavily involved in helping their local community. Stenhousemuir FC may be struggling to survive these difficult times but their Community Help Initiative has seen 80 volunteers helping vulnerable people in the community with everything from shopping to dog walking. The Chairman mans the phones with others and helps direct help to the elderly, infirm and others in need. That is what a football club should be like; supporting the community which in turn supports the club. The bigger clubs may be capable of helping out at a greater level than clubs like Stenhousemuir but it doesn’t detract from the admirable things they are doing. As Karl Marx once said; ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’

Make no mistake about it, some of our smaller clubs will struggle to survive the current crises but still they give to others, still they reach out to those in need. I hope our footballing community remembers them when this is all over.

So in answer to my ignorant acquaintance who thought Scottish football should just stay closed when the Corona pandemic is over I say; you don’t know what you’re talking about. Football plays an important social, sporting, cultural and altruistic role in Scottish society. Yes it has some idiots hanging onto its coat-tails for their own warped agendas but for the vast majority it is game they love for its excitement, its drama, its moments of artistry and its sense of community. What else can make a normally composed Scot scream at the top of their lungs or hug a complete stranger? What else can have us debating great games, goals or players decades after the event?  Only the game we love gets us that way and it’s woven into our hearts forever.

For those who understand that no explanation is needed. For those who don’t, no explanation is possible.

Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers

There is a school of thought that suggests you get more emotional as you get older. I don’t know if that holds true for everyone but as I sat this week watching the wonderful documentary ‘Glasgow 1967: the Lisbon Lions’ I could feel my eyes moisten. The stories of players and fans who embarked upon that incredible journey have been told so often but still hold power enough to move anyone who holds Celtic dear.

Billy McNeill once said, ‘there is a fairy tale aspect about this club’ and those words never rang as true as they did on that sunlit evening in Lisbon all those years ago. Eleven pale, Scottish lads took on the sophisticates of European football and taught them a lesson which still echoes down the years. Young men who had grown up playing football in the streets and back courts of tenement blocks produced a display of scintillating attacking football that delighted not just Celtic supporters but also fans across Europe who saw in their play the death knell of the joyless, defensive ‘catenaccio’ system which had been strangling football.

Sometimes the stars align and incredible things can happen. For Celtic, a team born into an impoverished immigrant community Lisbon 1967 was an unlikely dream. The team may have had astonishing success in its first 50 years but the years after World War 2 saw their huge support frustrated and on occasion rebellious. Yes, there was the occasional bright light like the Double season of 1953-54, the Coronation cup win and of course the 7-1 victory against their local rivals in the 1957 league cup final but there was no consistency, no belief that they could dominate for a sustained period of time. Indeed that title win in 1954 was their only success in the league in a twenty year period after the war. Rangers (10), Hibs (3), Hearts (2) Aberdeen, Dundee, Kilmarnock all took titles as Celtic laboured under a Board which seemed happy with mediocrity at times.

There were talented players on the books and the nucleus of a good team was starting to emerge but consider Jimmy Johnstone’s debut for Celtic at Rugby Park in 1963. Celtic started reasonably well but after losing an early goal crumbled and lost 6-0. That same season Celtic lost 4-0 at Ibrox after a insipid and naïve performance. One newspaper report said of the game…

‘I have no wish to detract from the merit of Rangers performance when I say that this was one of the worst Celtic elevens for many a day. Certainly they had none of the luck of the game but lack of ability far more than lack of fortune caused a deservedly heavy defeat.’

That team with its ‘lack of ability’ contained four players who would help Celtic to European and domestic greatness just a few short years later so what was causing this frustrating inconsistency? Manager McGrory was a gentleman in every sense of the word and seldom involved himself in training or working with the players. Good players like Pat Crerand were allowed to leave and the club didn’t seem to have the ambition or vision to turn their fortunes around.

By the mid-sixties the legendary Jimmy McGrory was nearing the end of a lifetime’s service to Celtic and the support knew the obvious choice to replace him. Jock Stein had worked wonders at Dunfermline, even defeating Celtic in the 1961 cup final. By 1964 he was at Hibernian and took a team which was almost relegated the previous season to a high standing in the league. He even invited Real Madrid to come to play at Easter Road and beat them 2-0. Bob Kelly, Celtic’s autocratic Chairman hesitated when it came to bringing in Stein. He thought Sean Fallon could utilise Stein as his assistant but Jock was having none of that. Kelly next offered Stein a joint-Manager post with Fallon but Jock held out for the manager’s job with full control of the playing side of the club. When Wolves showed an interest in Stein, Kelly relented and appointed him Manager of Celtic in March 1965. His last act as Hibernian manager was to knock Rangers out of the Scottish cup in March 1965.

Much has been written about Kelly’s reluctance to appoint Stein as Manager when it was obvious that he was the most talented coach in Scottish football. He knew the game and he knew Celtic having played there and coached the young players. The club had only had three mangers in its 75 years; Maley, McStay and McGrory. All were former players and all were Catholics. Jock was of course not a Catholic and that fact, petty minded as it seems, may have influenced Kelly towards Sean Fallon. Whatever his thought processes he made the right decision in the end by appointing Stein and could not have foreseen the wonderful journey the former miner would lead Celtic on.

The supporters were delighted that at last they had a man with the know how to mould these talented youngsters into a real team. He also had the strength of character to kick the butt of players who were coasting or resting on their laurels. Here was the new type of manager, a man who would be on the training ground drilling players, schooling them in tactics and motivating them to give their all. Their spirits were raised and they refused to accept defeat in games were it looked like things were going against them. The 1965 Cup Final against Dunfermline saw them twice come from behind to win the cup in memorable style.

The first big test of Stein’s first full season in charge was the League Cup Final against Rangers in October 1965. Rangers had already beaten Celtic that season and were favourites but in a bruising encounter Celtic showed enough to win the game 2-1. This was a markedly different Celtic side. Gone was the naivety of previous years when Kelly insisted on gentlemanly conduct and respect for opponents. Celtic knew Rangers would be physical and gave them it back with interest. It wasn’t a pretty game of football but if that’s how opponents wanted to play it then Celtic would no longer be pushovers.

Celtic swept all before them in the league in 1965-66 season and were crowned Champions for the first time since 1954. That league win was marked with a playing style which was quintessential Celtic. They simply tore into teams with attacking flair that had their fans loving it. They scored 106 league goals that season as Stein organised his young team into one of the most potent sides in Europe. As they smashed Rangers 5-1 in January 1966 some fans must have been wondering was this the same Celtic who had lost 6-0 at Kilmarnock just three short years before?

That title win gave Celtic their first crack at the European cup and in another wonderful season they swept all before them and set up their date with desiny under the Portuguese sun.

Watching that documentary on the Lisbon Lions brought back so many wonderful memories for Celtic fans. They were a wonderful team but a real band of brothers too. It was moving to hear the marvellous Bobby Lennox say as he looked wistfully over the sea in his native Ayrshire, ‘I loved them, they were my brothers.’ Then the normally ebullient Bertie Auld, face lined by more than 80 winters, looking momentarily sad saying to the camera, ‘I miss them.’  

We all do Bertie, we all do.

The honour that great side brought to Celtic shall never fade. Time wearies us all but that day beneath the Lisbon sun still shines brightly. It always will.

Extraordinary Times

Corona Virus 19 looks set to scupper what remains of the football season of 2019-20 season across Europe.  National leagues everywhere have been halted at a crucial and deciding phase and UEFA’s flagship Champions League has been suspended indefinitely. All of this has led to great confusion about what happens not only to this year’s competitions but also next season’s. It is to be hoped that UEFA offer some firm leadership and guidelines as to what is to happen in each country playing under its auspices. If it is left to national associations to find and apply national solutions it could at best be messy and at worst acrimonious.

Celtic FC is currently 13 points clear in the SPFL with just 8 games remaining and denying them the title would seem harsh indeed as it would have taken a major collapse in the remaining games to see them lose the title. However others quite rightly point out that Hearts, Hamilton, Ross County and even St Mirren could all still be relegated and to simply say to Hearts ‘sorry, you’re going down,’ is equally unfair. So what is to be done?

If, as scientists are predicting, Covid 19 doesn’t peak until the summer in the UK, then the chances of any football taking place remain very low. A vaccine is said to be a year away so we can’t look for medical science to solve this conundrum any time soon. Thus we should be thinking very carefully about solutions which will not only solve this season’s issues but also steady the ship for what needs to happen for next season. We live amid great uncertainty at the moment and if there is to be no football played again this season then we need to look to start season 2020-21 and base our solutions around restarting our game in the autumn. In Scotland, issues of who will be champions/promoted and who will be relegated from the country’s four divisions remain the main problems to be solved. There is an ancillary problem of how certain clubs survive without the match day income they rely on so much but from a footballing perspective we need to know who will finish where in the Scottish leagues.

One possible solution would be to declare the leagues as finishing in their current positions and go from there. In three of our four divisions there is a runaway leader who is almost certain to emerge as champions. (Celtic 13 points lead in SPFL, Dundee United 14 points clear in Championship and Cove Rangers 13 points clear in League 2) Only in League one is there a tight struggle with just two points between Raith Rovers and Falkirk. If we declare the current leaders of the four leagues as Champions then it would at least have some sporting integrity.

As far as relegation goes, we don’t relegate anyone but promote two teams into each league. Thus the SPFL would rise to 14 teams with Dundee United and Inverness joining the top league. This would mean clubs could play each other twice leading to a truncated 26 game campaign next season which would be a one off but would at least allow fixtures to be fitted into a reduced time-frame in 2020-21.  Of course the knock on effect of no relegation means two clubs from the non-league set up would join the league. This could be for a year or two until the extreme circumstances pass and reconstruction can take place again and we can get back to the status quo.

As far as the Scottish cup goes, there are only three games left to be played and it wouldn’t be impossible to play these games next season, even as a curtain raiser to the new campaign. We are in unchartered waters and the suggestions above as far from perfect. We can’t engineer a situation where everyone is happy but we do have to do our best for the majority.

We await firm directives from FIFA and UEFA and there will no doubt be implications not only for domestic leagues but for Euro 2020 which may well become Euro 2021. It would help UEFA if domestic leagues were decided one way or another in order to decide who goes into the European competitions for season 2020-21. It would be ideal if we managed to finish this season but if not then the ideas above will just be one voice among many offering solutions. There is no ideal solution and we will have to accept that things won’t return to normal in a manner which suits all clubs or fans.

These are extraordinary times and they demand extraordinary solutions. Hopefully we have the vision and leadership needed to come through this period successfully. Whatever happens we should face it with magnanimity and humility. People are dying in this pandemic and football should bow its head and recognise that it isn’t so important against that background.

The bevy, the rebs and the laughs

The bevy, the rebs and the laughs

Watching the Celtic support fill 70% of Livingston’s neat little Almondvale stadium got me thinking about times before all seated stadia were the norm and the capacity of most stadia was higher than it is today. Celtic had a huge travelling support in those times and would often take 15,000 fans to places like Kilmarnock or Motherwell. Half of Ibrox would be filled by the Celtic support in those times and league deciding matches at places like Easter Road would see a huge invasion of Celtic fans. Of the 48,000 who saw Celtic win the league there in 1973 to make it 8 in a row, it is no exaggeration to say that at least 35,000 of them were Celtic fans.

Away days were always a more exciting prospect when you were a younger fan; the excitement of meeting up with your mates, jumping on one of those decrepit ‘football special’ trains or a supporters’ bus and heading off to adventures in some distant town or city. Of course alcohol played a big part in it for many as did the songs which would echo through the train stations of Scotland as the supporters arrived. There was comradeship too and you often saw the same people on the train every other week. As a young fan I loved those times. Win, lose or draw you backed your team, stood with your fellow supporters, often on open terraces in all weathers, and sang your heart out.

Travelling further afield to see Celtic play in Europe was another adventure which was not to be missed. You could guarantee a good laugh and a few high jinks abroad. Celts would look out for each other too and many a hotel room booked for two would have a dozen or more sleeping in it. I recall a fan having his wallet stolen and facing two days in a European city with no money. A quick whip round in a pub put him back in the game and he was delighted that a group of strangers would do that for him. Except they weren’t strangers, they were all Celts like him.

Things have changed in the modern era as ground capacities reduced and the allocation of tickets to away supporters has shrunk. Some grounds have thousands of empty seats as fans who would like to be there watch the game in pubs and at home. St Johnstone and Livingston are among the few with the sense to let the away support fill their empty stands. It looks better on TV, it brings in more revenue and more people watch the game in person. Clubs such as Kilmarnock would rather have a half empty stadium than see the sense in this approach. Indeed when they did use their imagination and let Celtic supporters fill the place for a league clinching game in 2012, the place was rocking and looked more like football stadium should.

These days though, there are many thousands of supporters who have got out of the habit of going to football although they are still fans. Satellite tv, free streams on the internet and of course the seemingly ubiquitous firesticks and digi-boxes can allow you to see any football game live as its being televised around the world. For the hard core though there is nothing like going to the match in person. I spoke to a young Celt recently who said he actually preferred going to away games more than home games. I asked him why and he said with commendable honesty, ‘The bevy, the Rebs and the laughs.’ The idea that away days are more fun, more exciting remains as strong now as it was when I was a youngster following Celtic. It is probably true that the atmosphere at away games is often more raucous than it is a Celtic Park.

Scottish football is more sanitised and some would argue more civilised than it was 30 or 40 years ago. The riot at Hampden in 1980 changed the game for the better as drunkenness was no longer going to be tolerated in stadia. It can still be raw and passionate but banning alcohol from the stadium and all-seater venues has in honesty made it more ‘family friendly’ than it once was. We see far more women at games than was the case in the past and that has to be a positive.

As far as alcohol on supporters’ buses goes, we often see policing of a sort which suggests they’re after a Columbian drug cartel and not a few lads having a drink before the game. It is a little amusing to see the police post photos of bottles of Buckfast lined up by a roadside, on social media as if they’ve just brought down Pablo Escobar.

Despite all of this there are those who love the excitement of away days, even if it means a 7am start to make it to Aberdeen for a lunchtime kick off. That hasn’t changed in all my years watching Celtic. The more youthful fans sometimes get a bad press for the non PC songs, the odd celebration on the pitch after a late winner and the sheer enthusiasm they put in to backing their team.

Maybe we should chill a bit and try and remember that once upon a time that was us.