The first capacity crowd of the new season will be recorded tomorrow afternoon. Except it won’t be called a crowd, it will be more properly termed a congregation. And every place taken up won’t be inside a football ground. It will be contained within a more conventional place of worship inside a church.
And when the great and the good gather for Andy Goram ’s funeral service, it will seem like saying goodbye to a place in time for football as well as bidding farewell to The Goalie. A level of irreverence will need to be tolerated within the context of the more sombre aspects of the occasion – how could it possibly be any other way?
Ally McCoist, John Brown and Donald Findlay QC will take turns at the lectern to immerse themselves in the sorrowful side of a man’s passing. They will also recall a litany of stories to describe the life of a player acted out during a time when the composite picture of a professional’s life still left room for what was innocently known as high jinks.
The notion of a place in time coming to an end for good came to me after speaking to Chic Charnley on the radio. Chic is enshrined in the game’s roll of honour under the heading of hellraiser, not a description he could deny after having declared he “had O levels” in the creation of mayhem in his heyday.
Seventeen red cards, three of them in one game, signposted the trail of destruction in his wake while attaining legendary status under John Lambie’s management at Partick Thistle. And then there was the time he fought off the intruder wielding a samurai sword who was intent on disrupting a training session in a public park adjacent to Firhill.
As you do. Or as you did in the era that’s now about to be laid to rest. Chic wanted to publicly pay his respects to The Goalie and recall the night the pair attended a function as the after-dinner speakers.
The story contained all of the obligatory elements surrounding a wee night out. Andy had discovered a case of red wine under the apron of the top table and had made serious inroads into its contents before a vexed organiser pointed out the case was intended to be the first prize in the interval raffle.
When former players like Andy and Chic are booked to speak at social functions it’s not so the audience can hear their opinions on inverted full-backs, false nines or VAR. They are there to deliver tales of the bevvy and the bust-ups that formed the recreational hours of careers otherwise devoted to displaying the rich talents bestowed on them.
And the anecdotes have to be told in a way that “contains humour reflecting attitudes of the era,” as disclaimers say prior to the showing of old films or TV shows with naughty words. How those who are speaking at Andy’s funeral service get around that one while standing on consecrated ground is for them to know.
When Chic delivered the eulogy at Lambie’s funeral, the man he had driven to distraction but was inseparable from at the same time, he was asked to replace cuss words with “bleep.” He ended up sounding like a Geiger counter.
Bleep tests have a whole different meaning today, being a measure of a player’s fitness. It is not possible to complain about setting the highest physical and professional standards.
Without them, teams will fail because the world’s a different place from the way it was when The Goalie graced a side whose motto revolved around the team that drank together being the team that won together. And the old days have gone forever because of the other big story concerning Rangers.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst and his players will learn tomorrow the identity of the first side to stand between them and the Champions League group stage, with all of its riches and far-reaching consequences. If they tried to recreate the old days they would face abstinence from that competition.
Sobriety, uniformity and conformity are the buzz words that sum up team ethics today. It’s why young players such as Lewis Ferguson and Josh Doig can leave Aberdeen and Hibs for Bologna and Hellas Verona respectively in Serie A.
Their skill sets are transferable anywhere so long as their bodies are supremely well looked after. Mavericks, like Andy and Chic, are now an extinct species at the game’s highest level. There’s too much at stake for individuality of The Goalie’s variety
So we’ll say goodbye to a husband, father and character tomorrow. And the football world will be a more disciplined but infinitely less colourful place as a result.
