Playing junior earns you badge of honour and instant respect
“Haw... Davie... DAVIE!” The voice bellowed out from behind the goal at Brandon Park, the rustic old home of Bellshill Athletic.
The booming grizzly voice came from under a bin lid bunnet, in a part of the country where the wearer could look anything between 40 and 80, depending on how many fags he smoked a day.
Either way Bunnet was trying to get Davie’s attention, and Davie turned out to be the Bellshill striker. “Davie... shoot on sight big man... the goalie’s pure s****.”
There were a few chuckles around him. There would have been another one from me, except I was the poor sod he was on about. Welcome to junior fitba, Mick.
That match actually didn’t turn out too badly. The goal ie wasn’t so s**** and lowly Coltness United scrambled a 0- 0 draw.
Unfortunately the Bel lshi l l Bunnet ’s prophecy came to pass over the next couple of seasons though.
Week after week we got pumped like a Goodyear tyre with a slow puncture and yours truly sold the jerseys so often I could have opened a Sports Direct.
I got dropped as many times as the ball and only got back in because our other keeper worked shifts and liked a drop of Buckfast.
There was some fun amid the bleachings though.
There were the neds who turned a hose on us at Glasgow Perthshire.
A league cup tie in July at Cumnock – or it could even have been a friendly – in front of a crowd so big it felt like we were walking out at the Ayrshire Maracana.
There was a veteran Chic Charley playing for Rob Roy, still working his magic at nearly 40, his trusty left peg almost as dangerous as his stookied arm, swinging wildly like a blind Babe Ruth. Sure enough, Chic figured out the keeper was a bomb scare pretty quickly and scored direct from a corner. Another gubbing.
It eventually stopped being fun getting bawled at by the boss every week and I slid back to my natural habitat among the amateurs on Saturday mornings.
But even now, 20 years later, to be able to dig out that brilliant Scottish response when someone ask if you played fitba. “Aye, mate, went junior.” Who cares if you were honking, to go junior in this country is a badge of honour. Junior football players are cool. They still get respect in the boozer and maintain their higher social status long after they hang up the boots.
But proper ones, at the real powerhouse clubs – like the guy s at Auchinleck Talbot?
Wow. Absolute legends. Regardless of what happens against Hearts today, these lads have secured their place in history, and in pictures on the walls of the pubs around town.
Their Scottish Cup run hasn’t just put Auchinleck in the headlines, it’s reminded the people who may have forgotten just how much junior football matters in this country.
It is all about the clubs rather than the leagues they play in. A fair few of them are far bigger than senior sides.
Junior football has skill, action, controversy and banter. And it’s all happening, more often than not, right on your doorstep.
The Bellshill Bunnet was probably right about the goalie being s****, but no one can say the same about the juniors.
Yours truly sold the jerseys so often I could have opened a Sports Direct