It was a sunny summer Saturday in 1979 and four of us stumbled out of the now late-lamented Cathadamara pub on Dunlop Street into the afternoon glare. It was a favourite haunt because, even though we were 17-year-olds at the height of the Punk era, we were fans of the George McGowan Big Band which had a residency in the pub’s mock-pirate cave basement. And in the pre-ID days, we always got served.
We were usually three or four pints in when George’s set wrapped u, and the arrival of Bill Fanning’s Quintet for the afternoon slot meant it was time to go. Shielding our alcohol and darkness-widened eyes from the glare we pondered on what to do next. “What about the Drybrough Cup final?” someone suggested.
Not a bad idea, I thought, because Hampden was on the way back to King’s Park and the other guys were going to Clarkston. The only problem was it was Rangers v Celtic, the four of us were evenly split and we couldn’t agree where in the ground to go. Neither pair would agree to go into the other team’s end, going separately didn’t really figure, so the lager-fuelled logic dictated we would toss for it with the losers agreeing to go into enemy territory. The blue-noses, Neil Paton and I, lost; the consolation for me being I’d be in the right end for a shorter walk home.
Although I’d been to plenty of football matches, I’d never been to an Old Firm game. But this was a pre-season warm up so how bad could it really be, I wondered?
Very bad, was the answer, and what followed was amongst the most uncomfortable 90 minutes I’ve spent anywhere (except perhaps for the time I tried to convince Andrew Neil we really didn’t need to relaunch the Evening News, but that’s another story). Apart from being five minutes closer to Aitkenhead Road, the only other consolation was that Rangers won; not from any sense of triumph but because it was easier to silently feign disappointment than leap about in faux-celebration if it had gone the other way.
Fortunately for us, our Celtic-minded pals had the sense not to think it might be funny to point out our loyalties in the sea of green and white, especially after one chap next to us promised to knife the first Proddie he saw after Davie Cooper scored his astounding keepie-uppie goal. At the Celtic end. Nor did we think it appropriate to point out that the two Celtic boys were, in fact, Proddies themselves.
We came out unscathed, but it hardly encouraged me to make a habit of attending Old Firm games. I moved away, returned years later to live in Edinburgh and so it was decades before I went to another one, this time with the privilege of a corporate invitation from the Bank of Scotland. How bad can that be, I wondered?
Once out into the seats, very bad was the answer. How the Bank’s Governor must have enjoyed being sprayed with invective-propelled saliva from the leather-jacketed, bullet-headed art critics in the row behind who saw a resemblance between Craig Bellamy and the Gothic sculptures of Notre Dame Cathedral. “F*** off, ya f*****g gargoyle,” was roughly how it went; every time he got the ball.
Now, as anyone with a pulse in Scotland knows, after a four-year break Old Firm league games are back. The biggest occasion in the Scottish domestic sporting calendar whose absence has been impossible to fill? Or a festival of bigotry which is the biggest date on the Scottish domestic violence calendar whose absence was a welcome relief? Shamefully, it’s both.
But for all the cack-handed law-making, the dark side of this fixture will never go away as long as it continues to exist. For some, that’s what makes it special, but at least it’s a reminder Scotland is not the politically-correct playground of enlightenment some would have us believe. But it also shows that civilised rivalry can exist nonetheless.
Now being a fully paid-up member of the Edinburgh middle class, the edgiest it gets is Watsonians v Heriot’s, which had a happy outcome a fortnight ago and we’re looking for the same outcome at Boroughmuir this weekend. But I sure as hell want Rangers to win too.
The three others from that Drybrough Cup day? Of the Celtic boys, Simon became a hugely successful industrialist who is sadly no longer with us while Derek is an eminent physician in Pittsburg. Blue-nose Neil will be at the game on Saturday shouting on his team … he’s now a Celtic season ticket holder.
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