THE debate over where Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney, Scotland’s two talented left-backs, should be deployed in the national side has rivalled the Brexit negotiations in both its interminable length and the inability of anyone in charge to find a workable solution.
But when Willie Ormond selected Danny McGrain to play on his unnatural side as a left-back, not a word was spoken about it, or a second’s consideration given to how the Celtic defender might feel about his new assignment. The message was simply to get on with it, and that is what he did. Left-back means left-back..
Now, he feels that the only way to make the most of both Tierney and Robertson is to have both of them playing as full-backs, meaning that one will have to move to accommodate the other, as he had to do with Sandy Jardine throughout the 1970s.
“Willie Ormond played me at left back for Scotland,” said McGrain. “I don’t know why he played me there. I don’t think Mr. Stein ever did.
“I wasn’t too concerned about playing left or right back for Scotland. I was playing for Scotland.
“When somebody says; ‘you are playing left back for Scotland’, you don’t say ‘wait a minute my left foot is crap’. You just have to grab the bull by the horns and do it.”
For McGrain, that meant extra work in his own time at Celtic’s Barrowfield training ground to bring his weaker foot up to the required standard, and he can’t help but lament the lack of advancement in youth coaching from his playing days that has led to a similar situation arising 40 years on. It is up to the players, he says, to follow his lead.
“One of them is going to have to learn to kick with their right foot, it’s as simple as that,” he said.
“The most important thing is getting the ball into the box. When I hit the ball into the box, I was genuinely happy.
“When I played left back my biggest fear was getting up the park and six times out of 10 I would slam the ball out the field. My left foot was crap. In fact, it was f*****g crap!
“I worked really hard for two or three days [a week] a week on my left foot. It was something that I was never aware of. When I kicked the ball with my right foot, my left hand always went up. When I kicked the ball with my left foot, my right hand didn’t move.
“The brain was telling my hand what to do in other words. I’d been kicking with my right foot since I was born. So, I started kicking the ball with my left foot and raising my right hand so as to keep my natural balance. I had to tell myself to get the right arm up. I had to teach my brain to do that. It sounds daft but that is what happened.
“I would train on my own after training sessions. It took me about three solid weeks of hitting a ball against the wall at Barrowfield with my left foot and to tell my right hand to get up there.
“I was surprised that I had got to that stage in my life and could not kick better with my left foot. It is a terrible indictment on Scottish football and the coaching back then which was not the best, and it is not as good as it is today.
“People say that Robertson or Tierney should [already] be able to comfortably kick with both feet but that is not always the case.”
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