Gordon Strachan: has revived the nation's fortunes. PA Wire/Press Association Images
Iresco
Help me Boab! Why I can't help but like the Scotland football team
‘Short of locking myself in room with Wet Wet Wet, I can’t work myself up into a lather of rabid anti-Caledonian sentiment,’ writes social media sensation Tommy Martin.
LAST SUNDAY, RATHER rather than roundly booing the England supporters’ lusty rendition of God Save the Queen, we should have asked them for a copy of the lyrics.
Not the actual, send-her-victorious stuff, per se. The short-lived verse that was appended during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 would suffice:
Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save The King.
It might be tricky to get started in your average Irish pub sing-song (and who the hell is Marshal Wade anyway?), but the sentiment in the penultimate line would at least have been one useful takeaway from Sunday’s torpid affair. For make no mistake, if we are to entertain any hopes of spending next summer in France we must surely make like ruthless Redcoats and inflict footballing Culloden on these tartan-clad savages.
See what I did there? Dehumanising the enemy. Has to be done. How did World War One propagandists persuade millions of white, working class Englishmen that they should obliterate millions of white, working class Germans? By calling them ‘Huns’. Barbarous, despicable, bloodthirsty Huns.
But it’s just no good. Short of locking myself in room with Wet Wet Wet, I can’t work myself up into a lather of rabid anti-Caledonian sentiment. You see, the problem is I really like this Scottish team.
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They’re really…likeable.
I really like Gordon Strachan. He’s a good manager and he has tuned his team up and turned them out like a fastidious pipe major. I like him because of his humour: caustic, dry and very Scottish. I like his single-mindedness, the way he bristled at the bullying excesses of Alex Ferguson till the point where the two could no longer co-exist. I liked his adherence to the credo of the right-living athlete long before it was fashionable (Strachan’s porridge and banana diet was revelatory during his late career playing success with Leeds).
He doesn’t believe footballers should drink, and in his Scottish camp, they don’t. Neither do his coaching staff, and I like them too, especially Mark McGhee, who has the gentle, sonorous tone of a thoughtful clergyman. I like the players. I like Shaun Maloney. He is articulate, intelligent and hard-working. He comes from a well-to-do family but is serious and humble. In an interview with David Walsh in last week’s Sunday Times, he talked about his move to Chicago Fire.
“I love the city. I’ve got an apartment in Trump Tower, overlooking the river. The Wrigley Building, the Chicago Tribune tower, the lake in the distance. It really is a city with a soul.”
His favourite book is ‘The Fight’ by Norman Mailer. “I’ve recommended it to people and felt envious at the joy they would have on first reading it.” I like this kind of talk in a footballer.
I like Steven Naismith, who buys tickets for Everton matches to be distributed to unemployed supporters. He has also worked with projects for the homeless and injured service personnel in Liverpool and Glasgow, and is an ambassador for Dyslexia Scotland.
I like Darren Fletcher, who bore his long and harrowing battle against ulcerative colitis with dignity, returning to the top level of the game after a six-year struggle that, at its worst, left him three stones under his ideal playing weight.
I like Craig Gordon, who has, with Celtic, miraculously revived a career that injury seemed to have destroyed, dragging him down from the heights of being Britain’s most expensive goalkeeper in 2007 to a casual coaching role at Dumbarton by 2012.
I like Scott Brown, who has belied early perceptions of him as a violent, shaven-headed loon to become an inspirational and much-loved midfield presence for club and country.
[To balance all this, class, please turn to the photo of striker Steven Fletcher posing with his new Lamborghini Aventador, his reward for scoring five goals for Sunderland this season. Thank you.]
The players and management aside, I can’t help but feel, on top of it all, that it is somehow simply their time. There was something in the air in Glasgow last November, aside from chip van fumes. Though Celtic Park has a way of cooking up the disparate elements of a football occasion into a headier brew than most grounds, it felt like we were watching a team going places. And sadly, it wasn’t Ireland, based on that night’s evidence.
It is always strange for an Irish person to deal with, given our navel-gazing propensity to believe that the world revolves around our escapades, but this time it feels like we might not be the story.
While the vast proportion of Scottish football’s day-to-day heartbreaks and bellyaches are lived out through the fortunes of Celtic and Rangers, the struggles of the national team over the 17 years since their last major tournament must surely have battered their self-esteem in a profound way. Football is a much deeper and more ingrained part of the Scottish identity than is the case in Ireland (listen to Graham Hunter’s current podcast with the comedian Kevin Bridges for a crystallisation of what I mean. It’s a Glaswegian and an Aberdonian lost in an intense reverie, a hilarious and profane devotion to the game).
While we can distract ourselves with the spectacle of the GAA’s summers and the exploits of rugby teams and horse folk, they have had to watch the only sport they really care about wither away to a husk, a national embarrassment. That night in Glasgow, they felt connected again, team and support, in a quite powerful way.
I like the Irish team too. And I’d really like for Ireland to be there next summer. To paraphrase the great Scottish poet Robert Burns, the sense this week is that the Irish camp have been ‘nursing their wrath to keep it warm’ since last November.
But it seems unlikely that both teams will make it, so in the event that tomorrow doesn’t go according to plan, I’ll be happy to give my backing to this Scottish team, the Irn Bru-swilling, no-to-independence-voting, Jimmy Hat-wearing, whiskey-wrong-way-spelling, Bay City Rollers-loving scoundrels.
“Would you like to rear-end Roy Keane?”
It was the perfect social media combination: Keane, sexual innuendo and personal humiliation. I should have known from the moment the words came charging senselessly out of my mouth, much to the horror of my unsuspecting brain, that it would be click-bait gold.
Questioning him about the minor M50 prang in which the Ireland management team had found themselves, my intention had been to gently nudge Alex Pearce – the hitherto workaday Championship centre-half, now thrust into a terrifying spotlight of lewd media suggestion – into saying that he wouldn’t, heh-heh, have liked to have been the guy to crash into the back of Roy Keane, heh-heh!
Heh.
Anyway, I would have gotten away with it too, had I not been surrounded by four pesky camera crews, half-a-dozen radio mics, reporters from all the major online news outlets and a couple of sniggering footballers.
Robbie Brady's reaction to the question.
Still, it’s nice to join the hallowed ranks of Ron Pickering (“And there goes Juantorena down the back straight, opening his legs and showing his class”), Brian Johnston (“The batsman’s Holding, the bowler’s Willey”) and George Hamilton (“He’s pulling him off. The Spanish manager is pulling his captain off!”).
Help me Boab! Why I can't help but like the Scotland football team
LAST SUNDAY, RATHER rather than roundly booing the England supporters’ lusty rendition of God Save the Queen, we should have asked them for a copy of the lyrics.
Not the actual, send-her-victorious stuff, per se. The short-lived verse that was appended during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 would suffice:
Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save The King.
It might be tricky to get started in your average Irish pub sing-song (and who the hell is Marshal Wade anyway?), but the sentiment in the penultimate line would at least have been one useful takeaway from Sunday’s torpid affair. For make no mistake, if we are to entertain any hopes of spending next summer in France we must surely make like ruthless Redcoats and inflict footballing Culloden on these tartan-clad savages.
See what I did there? Dehumanising the enemy. Has to be done. How did World War One propagandists persuade millions of white, working class Englishmen that they should obliterate millions of white, working class Germans? By calling them ‘Huns’. Barbarous, despicable, bloodthirsty Huns.
They’re really…likeable.
I really like Gordon Strachan. He’s a good manager and he has tuned his team up and turned them out like a fastidious pipe major. I like him because of his humour: caustic, dry and very Scottish. I like his single-mindedness, the way he bristled at the bullying excesses of Alex Ferguson till the point where the two could no longer co-exist. I liked his adherence to the credo of the right-living athlete long before it was fashionable (Strachan’s porridge and banana diet was revelatory during his late career playing success with Leeds).
He doesn’t believe footballers should drink, and in his Scottish camp, they don’t. Neither do his coaching staff, and I like them too, especially Mark McGhee, who has the gentle, sonorous tone of a thoughtful clergyman. I like the players. I like Shaun Maloney. He is articulate, intelligent and hard-working. He comes from a well-to-do family but is serious and humble. In an interview with David Walsh in last week’s Sunday Times, he talked about his move to Chicago Fire.
His favourite book is ‘The Fight’ by Norman Mailer. “I’ve recommended it to people and felt envious at the joy they would have on first reading it.” I like this kind of talk in a footballer.
I like Steven Naismith, who buys tickets for Everton matches to be distributed to unemployed supporters. He has also worked with projects for the homeless and injured service personnel in Liverpool and Glasgow, and is an ambassador for Dyslexia Scotland.
I like Darren Fletcher, who bore his long and harrowing battle against ulcerative colitis with dignity, returning to the top level of the game after a six-year struggle that, at its worst, left him three stones under his ideal playing weight.
I like Craig Gordon, who has, with Celtic, miraculously revived a career that injury seemed to have destroyed, dragging him down from the heights of being Britain’s most expensive goalkeeper in 2007 to a casual coaching role at Dumbarton by 2012.
I like Scott Brown, who has belied early perceptions of him as a violent, shaven-headed loon to become an inspirational and much-loved midfield presence for club and country.
[To balance all this, class, please turn to the photo of striker Steven Fletcher posing with his new Lamborghini Aventador, his reward for scoring five goals for Sunderland this season. Thank you.]
The players and management aside, I can’t help but feel, on top of it all, that it is somehow simply their time. There was something in the air in Glasgow last November, aside from chip van fumes. Though Celtic Park has a way of cooking up the disparate elements of a football occasion into a headier brew than most grounds, it felt like we were watching a team going places. And sadly, it wasn’t Ireland, based on that night’s evidence.
It is always strange for an Irish person to deal with, given our navel-gazing propensity to believe that the world revolves around our escapades, but this time it feels like we might not be the story.
While the vast proportion of Scottish football’s day-to-day heartbreaks and bellyaches are lived out through the fortunes of Celtic and Rangers, the struggles of the national team over the 17 years since their last major tournament must surely have battered their self-esteem in a profound way. Football is a much deeper and more ingrained part of the Scottish identity than is the case in Ireland (listen to Graham Hunter’s current podcast with the comedian Kevin Bridges for a crystallisation of what I mean. It’s a Glaswegian and an Aberdonian lost in an intense reverie, a hilarious and profane devotion to the game).
While we can distract ourselves with the spectacle of the GAA’s summers and the exploits of rugby teams and horse folk, they have had to watch the only sport they really care about wither away to a husk, a national embarrassment. That night in Glasgow, they felt connected again, team and support, in a quite powerful way.
I like the Irish team too. And I’d really like for Ireland to be there next summer. To paraphrase the great Scottish poet Robert Burns, the sense this week is that the Irish camp have been ‘nursing their wrath to keep it warm’ since last November.
But it seems unlikely that both teams will make it, so in the event that tomorrow doesn’t go according to plan, I’ll be happy to give my backing to this Scottish team, the Irn Bru-swilling, no-to-independence-voting, Jimmy Hat-wearing, whiskey-wrong-way-spelling, Bay City Rollers-loving scoundrels.
“Would you like to rear-end Roy Keane?”
It was the perfect social media combination: Keane, sexual innuendo and personal humiliation. I should have known from the moment the words came charging senselessly out of my mouth, much to the horror of my unsuspecting brain, that it would be click-bait gold.
Questioning him about the minor M50 prang in which the Ireland management team had found themselves, my intention had been to gently nudge Alex Pearce – the hitherto workaday Championship centre-half, now thrust into a terrifying spotlight of lewd media suggestion – into saying that he wouldn’t, heh-heh, have liked to have been the guy to crash into the back of Roy Keane, heh-heh!
Heh.
Anyway, I would have gotten away with it too, had I not been surrounded by four pesky camera crews, half-a-dozen radio mics, reporters from all the major online news outlets and a couple of sniggering footballers.
Still, it’s nice to join the hallowed ranks of Ron Pickering (“And there goes Juantorena down the back straight, opening his legs and showing his class”), Brian Johnston (“The batsman’s Holding, the bowler’s Willey”) and George Hamilton (“He’s pulling him off. The Spanish manager is pulling his captain off!”).
Sigh.
Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane took time out from Scotland preparations to visit Temple Street yesterday
O’Neill and Strachan: Only one can continue career resurgence
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