The food, the mad & the ugly
A CELEBRATION OF PLANET SCOTTISH FOOTBALL
LAYDEES and jennelmen, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The Sportsmail end-of-season awards for 2017-18. We know you will be shaking with anticipation over the prospect of soaking up this term’s run-down of the great, the good and the gormless, so, with all the urgency of Carlos Pena rushing out of training to buy a carry-out and have a pee in a fountain, let us begin….
MOST AMUSING USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Ever eager to appear more street than gammon, we begin this year’s awards by pretending that it’s much more fun obsessing over memes, threads and Snapchat than drinking 15 pints of Guinness in the pub and making Wee Charlie at the end of the bar dance for money.
Notable mentions go to Dundee United trying to sell off goalkeeper Cammy Bell on Twitter and Dundee reacting immediately on their interweb channels to United’s failure in the Play-offs by advertising Dens as ‘the only place to watch Premiership football’ in the city.
However, nothing beats the picture posted on Partick Thistle’s Twitter page in the aftermath of a catastrophic 2-1 home loss to Dundee, both goals conceded in the last six minutes, of a furious Conor Sammon posing with a double pepperoni sent to the ground by sponsors Pizza Express because he scored.
Mind you, that barely matched his expression weeks later when, after no goals and a home loss to Kilmarnock, a journalistic colleague piped up in the press conference to ask the Irishman: ‘I bet you’d be happy to have a pizza delivered these days, wouldn’t you?’. Cue the kind of awkward silence last witnessed when Saddam Hussein picked out those boys shouting from the cheap seats at the Ba’ath Party Conference and asked for them to be taken out the back.
INSULT OF THE YEAR
A golden campaign in which our game’s big dogs fired more barbs than Rangers fired managers.
Hibs manager Neil Lennon staged a spectacular press call at Kilmarnock accusing referee Kevin Clancy of having a vendetta against him and stating SPFL officials are ‘Mickey Mouse’ and should be sent off themselves for ruining games.
Rangers showed their website statements are often concomitant with sledging by calling Derek McInnes a bottle merchant for turning them down, while Dundee’s Neil McCann branded St Johnstone rival Tommy Wright a dirty grass who is ‘not welcome’ at Dens. Hearts boss Craig Levein also started a vintage season by claiming the £1-a-week spent to bring TV pundit Michael Stewart on loan from Man United in 2004 resulted in him being ‘the worst value-for-money player I ever had’.
However, a withering verdict from Ross County’s Michael Gardyne (right) on the brief reign of Owen Coyle as manager takes the prize. ‘Hopeless,’ he said. ‘We were training for cakes and Irn-Bru every day when we should have been preparing for big matches in the Premiership.’
Cakes are one thing. Lord knows what they were training for the day Gardyne was filmed on Snapchat pulling his own pudding in the dressing-room. A forfeit too far, methinks.
BEST CELEBRATION
Some serious contenders here. There’s Lennon swooping around like one of the ‘Dam Busters’ on the Easter Road pitch after a 5-5 draw with Rangers or Mikael Lustig of Celtic pinching a policeman’s hat. How about Kris Boyd, Killie captain and the Premiership’s top scorer, prancing along the touchline at Pittodrie laughing about the size of his belly? Or maybe Aberdeen’s Gary Mackay-Steven marking his 27th birthday by getting fished out of the River Kelvin at three in the morning? Joint-winners, though, must be Callum Paterson and Craig Bryson, who celebrated Cardiff’s promotion to the Premier League in the way you would mark that magical first night you got a cargo out of the Spar without being chinned for ID — by cracking open the Blue Raspberry MD 20-20 and a bottle of Buckfast. Reports remain unconfirmed that they were later spotted playing Happy Hardcore on their mobile phones and throwing bricks at a double-decker bus.
PRESENTATION CARRIAGE CLOCK FOR BEST WIND-UP MERCHANT
No contest. Levein hands-down. Where to begin with a man whose return to the dug-out, confirmed after a round of interviews that convinced him he was the best man for the job, has seen him buy hook, line and sinker into the indisputable view that Scottish football is ‘all about the bantz’?
He claimed everyone needs protection from Celtic captain Scott Brown, crossed swords with Brendan Rodgers over the grass at Tynecastle and told how ‘Natural Order’ had been restored in Edinburgh after a cup win over Hibs — a wonderful seven-week game of verbal table tennis with Lennon that ended with the unforgettable image of those two words being unfurled on a huge banner behind him in the Easter Road stands as the Jambos took a pumping in March.
The final word on a virtuoso campaign is best left to the man himself, our upbeat answer to Edith Piaf. ‘Regrets? No, it was a good laugh, wasn’t it?’
PHOTO OF THE YEAR
The ‘Natural Order’ pic was sensational. And, look, we all know how Jimmy Nicholl and Graeme Murty snapped beside Bart Simpson at the Florida Cup summed up another season of multi-layered comedy at Rangers.
But let’s be clear. There can be only one winner.
Pedro Caixinha. In a bush. In Luxembourg. End of.
MOST ALARMING TRIP INTO A PARALLEL DIMENSION
Get ready for a shock. Despite all those days down the rabbithole listening to him talk about clowns, elephants, dogs, caravans, vampires and Las Vegas, former Rangers boss Caixinha has been pipped to the post.
Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers earns a commendation for hyping the loan arrival of the useless Charly Musonda by insisting Real Madrid wanted to buy him after he starred against them for Betis — erm, he never actually played against Real, Brodge — and there are people still bearing a thousandyard stare after hearing John Hughes put himself forward for the Scotland job on radio. But the gong goes to Joe Miller, who previewed Celtic’s Champions League qualifier at Linfield by telling how he played there with Aberdeen and spent the game with the red dots from sniper rifles trained on him. Linfield later confirmed they have never, ever played Aberdeen. Miller suspects he may have got things mixed-up with feeling the aftershock from North Korea’s first-ever nuclear test during Clyde’s successful 2006 tour of Pyongyang and surrounding districts.
STRANGEST CELEBRITY INTERVENTION
We’ve had Lionel Ritchie holding up a St Johnstone strip, Wagner from X-Factor doing the half-time draw at Dens and even Coolio turning up at Parkhead, looking about as comfortable as Jacob ReesMogg doing gang signs outside Compton Shopping Mall. However, the prize goes to Star Trek legend William Shatner for a ‘hilarious’ (aren’t they all?) social media exchange over Twitter with Aberdeen striker Adam Rooney, all in the name of charidee at Christmas, about tight shorts and who had the biggest ‘bawballs’ hanging from their tree. Word is he later DMed Michael Gardyne to apologise and assure him he now knows who the daddy is.
BUMPER BOX OF HARIBO STARMIX FOR PLAYER LEAST LIKELY TO ACT HIS AGE
Anthony Stokes made his usual strong claim when forcing a mass evacuation of the Hibs hotel during their winter break in the Algarve after allegedly setting off the alarm while chasing a youth player with a fire extinguisher. However, Hearts rival Kyle Lafferty’s (below) unswerving commitment to the kind of puerile nonsense normally found around the school toilets at playtime made him the obvious choice. Rude hand gestures to rival supporters always win great favour with the judges, but the decision was swung by Hearts coach Austin MacPhee detailing the unique talent the striker employs to light up the Northern Ireland team hotel on away trips. ‘Maik (Taylor) is naked in the shower, hands washing his face, and can’t see,’ explains MacPhee. ‘Kyle has crept right in, opened the shower door and let off this massive seagull noise. He can really throw his voice with it. He’s done it in Heathrow, echoing around Terminal 5, security looking for this seagull.’ Lafferty is 30 years old.