THE GOOD THE BARD AND THE UGLY
Broxburn’s Beesley is a poet and doesn’t he just know it
A CASE of champagne or a crate of beer, every Cup shock needs one – but how about a poem to celebrate the run.
Meet the Bard of Broxburn, Jack Beesley, the midfielder who is as much a dab hand with the rhyming couplet as he is with a cross-field pass.
St Mirren beckon this Saturday for the lowestranked team left in the Scottish Cup after winning on Inverurie Locos’ patch at the end of November.
But Beesley’s shining moment did not finish at the final whistle – he had the team bus on tenterhooks on the trip home as he summed up the day in verse.
Dubbed “The History
Makers”, no one on board was safe in a threeand-a-half minute slaughtering in what has become something of a tradition since he joined the club two-and-a-half years ago.
Club secretary Jim Provan got it in the teeth for his lack of them, boss Brian McNaughton took pelters for his orders on their pre-match lunch, while more than one team-mate was singled out for their luck with the ladies.
Although Beesley admits another recital should they stun the Buddies may be a long shot – as his team-mates may not be blootered enough to appreciate it.
The 33-year-old said: “When I joined Broxburn you have to do an initiation and I wasn’t keen for singing a song.
“So I’d contacted one of my ex-assistant managers, who’d played at a lot of senior clubs, and asked him if he had any ideas for an initiation. He said somebody when he was at Hearts had done a poem and it went down quite well.
“I thought, ‘Ach, I’ll go for a wee poem’ and obviously did one slagging some of the boys.
“It was well received so I got asked to do another one at the end of the season. It was a summary of the season with a couple of digs.
“And it has become almost a ritual on big away journeys.
“For the Inverurie game, because a lot of it was obviously linked to what had happened, it was just a case of trying to get the creative juices flowing in amongst the carnage on the bus.
“I suppose it was more complimentary than the previous ones so I’ll maybe need to change that at the end of the season and revert to type.
“I don’t know if I’ll be doing one on the way back from St Mirren. It is only an hour’s journey, it doesn’t give you much time to think of something to write.
“And I don’t know if an hour is enough time for people to be drunk enough to appreciate it! It might not go down as well, we’ll see.
“On the bus on the way back from Inverurie, I think it was just guys punching the ceiling and floating us back down.”