HIGH JINKS IN NORWAY
Read exclusive extracts from book by Archie Macpherson on our golden era
Johnstone was trilling and they were telling the students to join in ARCHIE MACPHERSON
JOCK STEIN put his Celtic players in a marble palace in Estoril in 1967 and Willie Waddell hired a luxurious hotel on the outskirts of Barcelona for Rangers five years later.
At a stroke they dispelled any feelings of inferiority among their players. If they were going to be taking on the best they had to be treated like aristocrats.
And now this – the tradesman’s entrance to the World Cup.
We had a full five days of preparation before the Norway warm-up game and I failed to find one soul who applauded the SFA for treating Scotland players like delinquents in boot camp.
We had been billeted in university accommodation next to a student union which, as they always do, contained a long bar with easy access.
Unsurprisingly, this little oasis, in the middle of sober academia, had a magnetic pull on the players who were immediately told by manager Willie Ormond it wasn’t out of bounds.
However, there would be a curfew at night and he would trust them to be prudent in handling the odd bevvy. It simply blew up in his face.
The night I walked into Ormond’s nightmare was one I shared with a man who was at the embryonic stage of his career with the BBC, John Motson.
He had joined me from London that day to film previews for Grandstand and Sportsnight and then came the moment his new-found enthusiasm for Scotland was put to the test.
Motson and I were sitting in the student bar having a chat and sipping our beer when we heard the sound of raucous singing that caught the ears.
They were Scottish voices, drunken voices. Down the short flight of stairs leading into the well of the bar came the Scottish captain Billy Bremner, his arms round the shoulders of his great mate Jimmy Johnstone.
They were, as the Bard would have it, “unco fu”. They saw us and made a beeline towards our table.
Motty froze. Whatever liberal arts education he had enjoyed in the south, it certainly hadn’t prepared him for being confronted by two drunken Scotsmen in a Norwegian student bar, about to intrude on his privacy.
“Will we move?” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. Bad idea. I didn’t need to say anything. I gripped him by the arm under the table and shook my head.
There could be nothing more provocative than snubbing two of the undoubted stars of the Scottish side. I could tell from the state they were in that hell would have no fury like these two scorned.
We held still and they thumped down beside us, Bremner’s arms round Johnstone’s shoulders and singing straight into his face. Johnstone, the better singer, was trilling like a linntie but in between they were encouraging the bewildered students to join in.
Those of them studying anthropology might have found this very interesting. I looked at my watch. It was at least an hour past the curfew limit Ormond had set for the players.
It looked as if they were begging for trouble now. I don’t know how long we were there but after a time Ormond appeared at the top of the stairs staring at the pair of them. They had obviously been reported missing.
He stood there for a minute or so then just disappeared. Shortly after that the SFA and Celtic doctor Dr Fitzsimons appeared and marched down the stairs.
He put his arm round Bremner, whispered something in his ear, pointed towards the exit, and both of them, surprisingly meekly, quietly rose and stumbled off like two contrite lads who just been caught stealing crab apples off a neighbour’s tree.
We had all assumed players would approach their first World Cup since 1958 like men studying for the priesthood or of soldiers doing nothing but bayonet drill before going over the top. And now what had we got? A couple of men who had brought Hogmanay to the fjords.
Although Motson and I were the only media witnesses to the incident and had vowed to say nothing, since we were not in the business of news reporting, we also knew by daybreak the word would have spread throughout the camp.
Although the betting among the media at that stage was that the players would be sent packing, at lunchtime the next day, SFA secretary Willie Allan revealed the result of the international committee’s deliberations on the incident.
It was basically a fudge, stating that apologies had been accepted from both.
Most players indulged only moderately and some, while hardly teetotal, were models of restraint, such as Joe Jordan, Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain and Sandy Jardine.
But with two players hitting the news the harm had been done, the stigma had been attached. Scotland were now seen to be carrying booze in the team hamper. It would take some living down. l Adventures in
the Golden Age by Archie Macpherson is published by Black and White Publishing on April 26.