Reid All About It

Govan is famous for the Clyde, shipbuilding and football. I almost said the Bens there but seemingly there are another couple of football clubs who could lay claim to the same geographical home. The following is an article by the late Jimmy Reid who manages to combine all three of the claims to fame in a piece published on the morning of the opening game of the 1998 World Cup in France (10 June 1998) and the Scotland v Brazil match. In it he remembers a visit to Tinto Park. Maybe a big wummin wi' a handbag could be the answer to the refereeing crisis in Scotland. Again this was taken from the archive of The Herald at http://www.heraldscotland.com/ .

'One of my earliest recollections is of being taken to a football match by my mother. There was no admission fee. No fences to keep you out. No dressing rooms or clubhouse. Just a marked-off pitch ringed by spectators, including many women like my mum, supporting their local team. One of the players for our team was a family friend called Martin. I think he fancied one of my sisters or she fancied him. Something like that. Martin was a good looking guy, built like a tank, and when he tackled his opponents, they seemed to fall over. Why this should be was a matter of dispute between the women and the referee. At the start they were on first-name terms with the ref. As the game progressed this was dropped. ''Hey, Thomson,'' they would roar, ''that wis never a foul,'' as another opponent fell to a perfectly good tackle from Martin. Thomson would reply in kind. He gave as his considered opinion that the women might be better deployed washing the clatty stairs and closes up which he presumed they lived. Dialogue was an ongoing phenomenon. When our boys clattered into an opponent it was clearly ''a ferr shoulder charge''. If the other side did the same it was a diabolical act of aggression. Despite everything, real skills were on display. Players who could take on men, jouk past them like sprites, and create scoring chances for their mates. I remember one called Sparra Hope (sparrow if you're from Edinburgh). Sparra went on to play for Clyde. Later Dad took me to see the Juniors. Many of the players looked ancient, and still do, though I'm getting a bit ancient myself, but then I don't call myself a junior. I remember going to a game at Tinto Park, Benburb's home ground, with my pal. Standing beside us was a lady built like Hyacinth Bucket from the television sitcom. She proudly told us her son had just signed for the visitors. Despite her imposing physique she seemed a gentle, motherly sort. Halfway through the second half her son was tackled from behind. In fact he was kicked up the behind. I swear his feet left the ground before gravity got a grip of things and brought him down to earth with a resounding thud. The matronly lady was off like a cheetah in pursuit of prey. She surmounted the perimeter fence like a gazelle, ran to the culprit who could have been the model for the original drawing of Desperate Dan, swung her large handbag that must have been full of bricks, and smashed him in the moosh. He dropped as if poleaxed. The ref tried to intervene and she hit him a glancing blow that sent him birlin like a peary, before he crumpled in slow motion. Her son by this time had made a remarkable recovery and beseeched her to leave the field of play before she pruned the ranks any further. Apart from that he added: ''Hiv ye no' gied me a big enough riddy?'' The lady left the the stadium with dignity. Nobody stopped her. She still had the handbag. When the game resumed nobody tackled her son. We lived near Ibrox Park. My mother let me go to the reserve games, but not to the big games. In Rangers' 2nd XI at that time was Willie Woodburn. The best centre-half I've ever seen. He was unique at the time. A ball-playing central defender. He had a problem. He thought it was against God's expressed wishes that Rangers should ever be beaten. When they were in any danger Willie became the Almighty's avenging sword. He handed out chastisement with such zeal the refs took a dim view. He was suspended sine die, a punishment that now seems unbelievable in its severity. In the last 20 minutes of any game the gates were opened to let people out and we could get in for nothing. Afterwards, when the crowd had dispersed, my pal and I would collect empty beer bottles and humph them down to a garage in Copeland Road that paid a penny for each bottle. During those 20 minutes I saw glimpses of great players. Tommy Walker. Billy Steel. Torry Gillick. When I started work at 14 I could pay my way in. I remember players such as Bobby Mitchell and Jimmy Mason of Third Lanark. Charlie Tully of Celtic. Jummy Watson of Motherwell, whom nobody but me seems to remember. I remember starting my engineering apprenticeship for it coincided with my first glimpse of the great Hibs forward line of Smith, Johnston, Reilly, Turnbull, and Ormond. At each stage of my life there is a footballing corollary.
The day I went to do my National Service was the day Hungary trounced England at Wembley. I watched it in a pub in Bedford. When I moved to London the Spurs team of Blanchflower, McKay, Greaves, etc, was coming to fruition. I saw the young George Best. The Brazilian and Dutch masters. The artistry of Pele, Maradona, Puskas, Cruyf, Di Stefano, and a host of others. I was back in Scotland to see Jock Stein's great Celtic team; for two years the best club team in Europe and, arguably, the world. My Dad took me to Hampden to see the Victory International against the Auld Enemy shortly after the last war. I was just a kid. Scotland won 1-0. The sheer unalloyed joy as the final whistle blew was untainted by the sectarian divisions that so marred club games in Scotland. Henceforth my team was Scotland United. I went to Wembley. In so far as my budget allowed, I've supported Scotland on forays abroad. Yet this year I won't be in France with the Tartan Army. The game is now so commercially hyped that the real fans are being squeezed out. Incredible sums will be made. Fans are officially getting 8% of the tickets. Corporate entertainment 20%. God knows were the other 72% have gone. Clearly many have gone to ticket-tout organisations. Fans are thus forced to pay way over the top. The number of tickets involved in this scam is so large that it could only happen with the connivance of the organisers. Professional football had to become more business-like. Stadiums had to be developed, and not just for safety. The facilities had to be brought into line with people's modern expectations. The refinement of skills in a relatively short career and the dedication this requires, had to be rewarded with salaries that could set a young man up for life. But what has happened is a disgrace. The people's game is being taken from the people. Football is historically a social and cultural phenomenon. You can't apply the mores, appropriate to the production of margarine for profit, to the running of a football club. Punters who don't like a brand of marge will switch to another. Try telling Hibs fans that they could do the same. If that link is ever severed, football is in serious trouble. The Scottish Premier League next season will play 30-odd games on a Sunday night at 6.05pm, at the behest of Sky Television. Saturday afternoon football is an integral part of our culture. Sunday nights are for winding down for the sobering reality of Monday. If football in the US takes off in a big way, TV might want a 2am kick-off. If attendances drop, so what? They could dispense with spectators and replace them with cardboard cut-outs and canned sound-tracks. The deregulated football market is now a jungle. Some players' salaries are incredible. Punters are being unscrupulously squeezed for more money to fund these salaries. Each year more good players will be thrown on the scrap heap to help pay the salaries of a few. With such expenditure continuous success becomes a necessity. Indigenous talent is left undeveloped as our big clubs get out the cheque book and sign another transnational mercenary. Next year the need for success will be even greater. Someday the punters, increasingly marginalised, will pack it in. I'm already getting pissed off with the massive media overkill surrounding this World Cup. Much of it is cringe-inducing. Football might still be the beautiful game, but the trappings are increasingly tatty and ugly.'