There’s a difference between being a football fan and being somebody who just really likes football and knows a lot about it. In the last couple of years I’d slipped into being the latter (I know that bit sounds boastful but how many people do you know who gave talks on Scottish coaches in Central Europe in the period between the two world wars?). In this article, I’d like to thank Scott Allan for rekindling the spark in me.
How had I come to have the emotional distance that divides the two states I outlined? Well, it had become impossible to both back and oppose what had been happening at Rangers over the last few years. I remember the way in which the club was punished for actions carried out by Craig Whyte as if he represented the club. The thing is, by being there in the stands, maybe I helped to allow that perception to be put forward.
With that in mind, I could no longer bring myself to deal with the thought that I was in some way offering tacit approval for the way in which the club was being run by the Easdales and other assorted interests. Hence the detachment. I say the Easdales. To be honest, I also didn’t feel like I could be seen to support (and here we reach the conflict of football – is support to support no matter what, or to support what’s right and oppose what’s wrong?) what a certain club legend was creating on the pitch either.
Signing players who couldn’t be improved and for more money than they were worth just to get them to come was madness. Madness only matched by then utilising them to play percentages against part-time opposition. Having no pace in the side and relying on set-pieces and the opposition tiring in the 2nd half of games was horrific.
I still watched matches if they were on, I still devoured whatever football news I could, I still understood the world through the blueprint of the beautiful game, but I wasn’t a fan because I just couldn’t feel it when I was expected to cheer for something that was wrong.
Imagine somebody got your best mate hooked on drugs and then used the dependency to force them into prize fights. You’d feel a certain ambivalence celebrating their victories, wouldn’t you?
OK, that may be the weirdest analogy I’ve ever used to describe watching your team play awful football, under the control of a terrible coach who was himself being constrained by a chaotic boardroom.
Anyway.
This season, things have been different. The dream coach has arrived (well, it would have been him or Ian Cathro but Warburton has experience as both a Director of Football and a first-team boss so he edges that) and a squad is being sensibly assembled to play attractive football. Also, Warburton appears to be a diplomat.
It’s another one of the depressing aspects of the lost Rangers years that McCoist’s reputation as possibly the most popular Old Firm figure across all of Scottish football was damaged so much. I hope that now he’s out of the firing line of the most extended period of stress and turmoil in the club’s history he can begin to recapture some of that cheeky chappie persona.
So how does Scott Allan come into all of this? Well, the thing is that being a football fan is really more of an emotional matter rather than a logical or reasoned one. That’s why two people can see the same incident and react to it just as dramatically, but with diametrically opposing views on it.
Over the last couple of years, I’d got used to reacting with my head. Scott Allan helped me to find my footballing heart again. He took me on the emotional rollercoaster once more.
From “linked with Scott Allan – that’d be decent” to “Scott Allan needs to come” to “What’s it going to take Hibs to let Scott Allan go?” to “It’s a waiting game until Christmas” to “Are Celtic just trying to wind things up?” to “He’s going to tell Celtic he’s not interested, right?” to “WHAT THE F*** IS HE DOING?!”
The thing is, the rational me completely gets it. He’s a professional footballer. It’s a short career and you never know what part injury could play in it. You have to try to do as much as you can with your career from both a financial and an experiential point of view.
Hibs weren’t going to sell him to Rangers at this point so he’d have had to wait until Christmas to sign a pre-contract with Rangers and see what Hibs would do. There are numerous dangers in this – what if he got injured? Remember Jaroslaw Fojut who was at Dundee Utd last season? He thought he’d got himself a move to Celtic a couple of years ago until he got injured and the club tore up that pre-contract.
Say he didn’t get injured, what would the atmosphere have been like for him at Easter Road? In a conflicted situation between two clubs (probably) vying for the Championship title? How would the fans have taken it? His teammates? The coaching staff?
So, in the best case scenario, he avoids injury, holds on until Christmas and signs a pre-contract. Hibs decide to call it quits and move him on then for a nominal fee. He’d still have spent this season in the Championship. Assuming Rangers go up, he’d have spent next season in a period of consolidation (although let me see how long Hearts keep up their current run for and I might get back to you on that). Perhaps the season after that the club would qualify for Europe.
This way? He signs for a club in the top-flight, who have a Champions League qualifier coming up. The competition for places is (currently) greater but the opportunities are greater too.
With my head – he’s done the right thing.
What I was excited/scared to realise I’d done though was that I’d reacted with my heart. It’s been too long since that happened.
So, Scott – thanks for making me a football fan again. I hope you go on to make the most of your potential for the benefit of Scottish football as a whole. Our game can never have too many talented players expressing themselves.
See the first time you’re playing against Rangers though? I hope Andy Halliday boots you into next week and then takes you out for a pint afterwards to count the bruises.
Among other TV and radio credits, his football-savvy has meant roles as writer/script-editor on Offside and Only An Excuse (both BBC1 Scotland).
He set up ScottishComedyFC.com in 2011, hosts and produces the Scottish Comedy FC Podcast and is often the fingers behind the tweets on @ScotComFC.
These days, his content-creative and social media skills have led to him working as a content marketing specialist with a top Edinburgh agency. He remains in demand as a comedy writer and this year has been commissioned to write on the BBC Radio Scotland shows ‘The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected’, ‘The Fame Game’ and ‘Breaking The News’.
