CHRISTOPHER BROOKMYRE
I sawmyself once on Scotsport. They showed St Mirren versus Clydebank. A player went to take a throw-in and there I was, leaning over the barrier
I HAVE always enjoyed the ritual of going along to a football game on a Saturday. My fortunes have been attached to St Mirren ever since the fateful day in Primary Four when we were sitting at the kitchen table and my dad said he was going to Love Street and I uttered words that, to this day, I’m not sure if I regret: “Can I come?” But I have moved around a lot in my life and it is only since I returned to the central belt 10 years or so ago that it has been worth having a season ticket.
Why do I include football in my books? I guess it is a degree of self-indulgence, but there are lots of metaphors and analogies to be drawn from football. If you are wanting to write about characters from the west of Scotland, football is a big part of the culture and shapes them for good or ill. But I have tried not to make it too overt because I know a lot of people aren’t interested and I don’t want them to feel excluded.
I don’t know why, but it has always meant a lot to me to go to the game and see how different fans react. I can watch any kind of football. I think nothing of going to games on my own. When I lived in Edinburgh, and my wife had the car for work, I would just walk round to Easter Road with my transistor radio, watching and listening to what was going on at other grounds.
When I lived in various parts of London, I would just go to whatever ground was nearest. I remember going to see Wimbledon at Plough Lane, although I was getting the tube from where I lived in Tooting to South Wimbledon then making a-45 minute walk to the stadium until I found out the ground was actually nearer to Tooting than it was to Wimbledon. It was a club to which I had no natural attachment but, within about two weeks, I was jumping about like an eejit and shouting abuse at the other team.
I vaguely remember football going on around me and being discussed when I was in Primary Two at St Mark’s in Barrhead, but it didn’t mean anything to me until the World Cup in 1974 began and suddenly it was like a switch had been turned on. My most bizarre confession is that I decided that I was a Rangers supporter – out of sheer bloody mindedness.
The first game I actually got taken to was the 1976 Scottish Cup final between Rangers and Hearts – the one that Derek Johnstone scored before three o’clock because the match kicked off early. It gave me a completely false impression – that whenever you go to football, the match kicks off and your team scores straight away.
That first St Mirren match was against Dumbarton, Alex Ferguson’s team in the promotion season of 1976-77 and they won 3-2 – despite being reduced to 10 men. That was the beginning. It probably helped that it was midweek, under the floodlights. In that rickety old stand. But as my dad was playing amateur football in those days, I would usually be taken where my mum was going.
I would never miss Football Focus back then, but Scotsport was the one that really meant something to me. In fact you could map the transition in my interest in football to it. On Sundays the big event used to be Glen Michael’s Cavalcade, and I used to be impatient for Scotsport to be over so that would come on. Then, just when I got interested in football, they changed the order of those two programmes over. It was almost like they were trying to spite me.
I remember seeing myself once. For once, they showed St Mirren versus Clydebank, the top two teams in the first division. A player went to take a throw-in and there I was, leaning over the barrier.
I was terrible as a footballer. I liked to play but I was never any good and in those days to get a game for the school team you had to be very good. I have been playing tennis for the past nine or 10 years and I am terrible at that as well. Bizarrely, I decided to take it up after playing it on the Wii.
My son Jack is not interested in sport whatsoever. I took him to see St Mirren twice and I remember him looking ascance about the outpourings of rage in the stands.
I’ve not made it along to many of the games this year because there have been a lot of book festivals at weekends. I am not sure I have been missing much.
When you are a St Mirren fan you live for days like the 2013 League Cup final and for me that actually meant more than the 1987 Scottish Cup win. It is like what they always say about young footballers, that they don’t appreciate their first cup final because they think there will be other cup finals ahead of them.
Because of the intervening years, the ups and downs, and what St Mirren did that year, it meant a great deal to me.