STRAIGHT SHOOTER
At the time we’d have been fearful of a friendly with Fort William.
The Sunday Sport sent some topless models to a training session and if memory serves a few of us made boobs of ourselves by running about the pitch with a few of the gals getting a piggy back. It made for a shameful centre spread in that weekend’s paper.
A lads mag named Nuts also popped their heads in to do a feature which if memory serves also included some impromptu nudity.
And needless to say the cult of celebrating failure had the Shire as many of the nation’s second team for a spell as the Holy Grail search for a victory went on and on for those checking scores on the Vidiprinter.
We may have been on £10 a week but we were trailblazers. Losing is now the new winning as Sunderland ‘Til I
Die will testify when Netflix lapped up the implosion of a football club as it boosted the ratings.
Failure sells and if Hearts strike it lucky they could be next to get a call from Hollywood after going seven months without a Premiership home victory.
Spurs are the latest club to open their inner sanctum to the reality TV crews and it’s no coincidence their Amazon Prime series is titled ‘All Or Nothing’. Boss Mauricio Pochettino has already aired his concerns over an agreement which allows open access to players and staff – and well he might given the way his side have started the season. There’s no middle ground, all the Premiership managers below fifth spot, with only five points separating the lot from Livingston all the way down to St Mirren at the bottom, are looking over their shoulders. Craig Levein has left the building at Tynecastle. Well not quite, he’ll hang around until the summer after being relinquished of his first-team duties. The vultures will be out in force at Hampden this afternoon to try to pick the bones of another possible managerial casualty if Paul Heckingbottom and Hibs fail to claim a League Cup semi-final victory against Celtic. A heavy loss and the manner of defeat will be dramatised to the max and a second Edinburgh club could claim another victim.
Privately, just like their maroon counterparts, there’s a masochistic element within the psyche of the support which would prefer a painful afternoon and more managerial loathing – “If we’re going to get knocked out then hopefully it comes with a bit of kicking.”
It’s the manner in which they make up those numbers that will determine whether the rubberneckers and the ambulance-chasers turn up at their door.
And if they do, as Channel Five did at our place, let’s hope they take a leaf out of the Shire’s book and tell them to do one.