Dear John, here’s a REAL dream team!

CHECKING into the Central Hotel at Glasgow station, long before they added the prefix Grand. Asking if one of those old, creaking rooms might be available which had been occupied by Winston Churchill, the Queen, Frank Sinatra or Trigger, the horse ridden by movie cowboy Roy Rogers for whom the bridal suite had once been carpeted with bales of hay. Friday night out on Sauchiehall Street. Supping the ale, dodging the fisticuffs. Hangover Saturday morning. Cured by a brunch of haggis and neeps. Out through the grey, turreted streets to Hampden. Often in the drizzle. Once on Rod Stewart’s bus with our gravelly rocker in his tweed trousers. A hundred voices and a collective chuckle telling the England team upon arrival at the players’ entrance: ‘Nae chance today, bonny lads.’ On one of England’s better days, jeers about southern softies give way to applause for Bobby Moore, the imperious England captain they loved to hate but admired in their fitba’ hearts. Grinning as Ramsey tells a ticket collector who ventures ‘England were a mite lucky today, Sir Alf’ that he was effin’ mistaken. What days. One thing never changes. Whenever the Auld Enemies collide we get to pick our all-time best team compiled from the greatest Scottish and English footballers. Sometimes that is a task that gets the better of us. Even an institution as precious to us all as John Motson. Love Motty but the XI he picked in this paper this week was the kind of impractical dream team which would wake up without the ball. Motty admits he agonised over some big names he left out, citing the difficulty of squeezing wonderful names you have seen play into one team. But come on. No Gordon Banks, one of the best goalkeepers of all time? No Tom Finney, probably the finest of all English footballers? No Kenny Dalglish, the greatest Scot? To name but three. Here’s how it’s done, my dear John. By thinking outside the old tactical box, by discarding the less distinguished full backs in favour of a formidable back three to fit the greatest legends of all into this formation.