Fitba Hell

THE first edition of Scotsport SPL went down in legend. From the ponderous version of the classic theme tune to the bizarre finale of jumper-wearing journalist Graham Spiers playing some Elton John on a stray piano, it was a spectacular display of broadcasting ineptitude that media studies lecturers will be playing to horrified students for years to come. The cringe factor has never been so intense since that first edition, but Scotsport SPL continues to unite fans of all persuasions in their derision of its awfulness.

Yet I must confess to a sneaking affection for Scotsport SPL. For a start, it has rehabilitated the two men who provided the soundtrack to the football viewing of my childhood. Archie McPherson, with his bluster and laboured metaphors, may lack the slickness of modern-day contemporaries, but, like Brian Moore and Kenneth Wolstenholme, his is a distinctive football voice that is inextricably linked to many a classic clip. Jock Brown's love for the drama of football, meanwhile, is evident in his emphatic delivery and boyish incredulity at any feat of footballing skill. Albeit, he's a little more muted these days - perhaps because of the ignominy of his time at Celtic and his long exclusion from terrestrial TV - but he remains one of the greatest and most underrated of commentators.

Other innovations of Scotsport SPL are less easily defended. For a start there's the 11pm Monday night scheduling, which, along with the competition prizes - mostly tickets for matches outside Scotland - suggest the producers are trying to run down the game in this country rather than build its profile.

Then there's Karen O, the DJ whom programme-makers felt could be our answer to Gaby Yorath - failing to realise that Yorath is an effective presenter because of her knowledge and authority, not because she happens to have blonde hair and a pair of boobs. Julyan Sinclair, on the other hand, is an accomplished TV presenter - few know he once won a Bafta - but he obviously knows how maligned Scotsport SPL is, since he wears the look of a cabinet minister the paparazzi have found cottaging in the Downing Street loos.

That's before you get to the bewildering arrogance of Andy Walker and the embarrassment of the unfortunate footballers (usually youngsters shoved into the spotlight by their canny elders) taking on pointless challenges like Throw-in Throne, although producers seem to have finally copped on that this was sending viewers scurrying behind their settees. Most infuriatingly, the programme-makers stubbornly refuse to bow from pressure from viewers to show more highlights, and continue to sacrifice action replays for the inane observations of a studio of shell-shocked fans.

So why do I tune in so eagerly every Monday? Because Scotsport SPL sums of the essence of Scottish football, in the same way that the more polished coverage of Champions League and the English Premiership reflects the corporate sterility that has crept into football elsewhere.

The SPL has yet to be invaded en masse by the the prawn-sandwich brigade. The players, other than the Old Firm's top stars, earn little more than a decent professional wage and continue to live in much the same world as the fans who watch them. Most of the grounds in the SPL are still at the heart of their community, few clubs having yet felt the need to shoo their followers to characterless out-of-town sites. Branding, meanwhile, refuses to get much more sophisicated than mugs with club crests and bibs carrying the same "I'm the best dribbler at Pittodrie/Easter Road/Tannadice" that were on sale 20 years ago. The Scottish game retains a ramshackle enthusiasm that compels thousands of fans each week - just like Scotsport SPL.

I WAS reminded on Saturday of why I put up with the plodding predictability of Scottish football. Not at Hampden but in Geneva, where England beat Argentina 3-2 in one of the greatest friendly matches I've seen (albeit that's faint praise since most examples of the genre I've witnessed have been the notoriously turgid affairs that Hampden seems to specialise in). I take no pleasure in seeing England win - especially after hearing the rousing choruses that taunted the Argentines about the Falklands War - but Michael Owen's two-goal salvo thrilled me for another reason.

Each goal your team scores while a match remains alive sends you into momentary euphoria. It's an addictive rush that allows people like myself to cast off the shackles of manly stolidity and share a moment of sheer pleasure with thousands of strangers. Those who decry football's low scoring fail to realise that this is one of its beauties: the rarer the pleasure, the more intense the pleasure. The rush is further intensified because the goal is the only way of scoring. Compare rugby, where the fundamental aim of scoring a try is undermined by the hefty scores accumulated through penalties awarded for innocuous offences.

No other sport can match the purity or the rarity of the goal. So when two come along to win a game right at its death, this is the football supporter's manna from heaven. Just ask any Manchester United fan who watched the 1999 European Cup final. That United beat Bayern Munich to become European champions made for a night to remember, but it was the timing of the two goals that ensured the game would be recalled with reverential awe.

The England-Argentina game may not have provided quite so important an occasion, but this was still a vigorous match injected with that most rare of footballing denouements. England is not my country and I felt no joy in seeing Michael Owen's second goal defeat the Argentines; what I did feel was a frisson of excitement at witnessing the full realisation of football's potential to transcend. The thrill might have been vicarious, but it tantalised with the prospect that next time it could be me.

FEW countries are obsessed with football like Scotland; few countries are as indifferent about football as the USA. Yet, according to FIFA, Scotland are ranked 62nd in the world while the USA are seventh. This Saturday we'll have a better idea of the gap between the two sides' abilities when Scotland play the US at Hampden, and, if one Scottish footballing legend is to be believed, his native land could be on the verge of a humbling experience.

Charlie Cooke was an old-school winger with Dundee, Aberdeen and Chelsea, remembered with misty-eyed fondness by those lucky enough to watch him play in the 1960s and 1970s. He was long-haired, good-looking and taunted lumpen full-backs like a matador - in short, the nearest Scotland ever got to a George Best. But while we wake each morning expecting to read Best's obituary in the paper, Cooke's whereabouts are a mystery to most.

He saw out his career in the short-lived glamour of the North American Soccer League, a venture that also helped boost the pension funds of Pele, Beckenbauer and Best himself. After the NASL collapsed, Cooke stayed on across the pond, enamoured by the USA's can-do mentality and lack of any need for a word like dreich. Now he is one of the most respected coaches of youth soccer - as they still insist on calling it - in the country.

When I spoke to a him a couple of years ago, he had news for those who patronised his adopted country's ability with a football. People don't realise how big the sport is here, he told me. Soccer is the biggest participation sport in the country among children, and, Cooke insisted, that pointed to an inevitable conclusion: the USA would be world champions within 20 years. And this of a country who, when it was awarded the 1994 World Cup, ranked tractor-pulling ahead of association rules football among its favourite sports. But by 2002 the USA had reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup. Cooke told me that he hadn't seen Scotland play in a while, but that they'd struggle against the USA. Now, on Saturday, I'll get a chance to see if the Americans really have progressed as much as Scotland have regressed.

I'm not convinced by Cooke's argument, and rest my case on my experiences as a counsellor in a summer camp in North Carolina in 2000. Eager to make some converts to the real football - "Because the foot kicks the ball," I said with sniffy pedantry - I organised a USA vs Rest of the World challenge soccer match. The Rest of the World consisted largely of talented Venezuelans sent north for the summer to improve their English. By contrast, the US had a paucity of talent. One eager volunteer informed me he was the best goddam defender in his state, which, when I gave him a trial, turned out to mean only that he could toe-punt the ball a phenomenal distance in whichever direction he was facing (but only if it was stationary).

My only hope for evening up the sides was Phillip, a gifted all-rounder who was at least as talented - and bigger - than any of the Venezuelans. But on the day of the match, Phillip was nowhere to be found. As kick-off approached I was still searching the vast camp's many cabins, until one of Phillip's friends strolled up to tell me my star player would not be playing. The reason? Because he was 'kinda embarrassed' to play soccer.

Football is a sport most played largely by younger children and women in the US, but it was only Phillip's reluctance to show up that made me realise realise how deeply unfashionable it remained. He was happy to wow the opposite sex with his skills on a basketball court, but, to Phillip, admitting a flair for soccer was the social equivalent of asking a girl out by breathing garlic in her face and asking whether she'd like to learn Klingon.

I admit to a bit of concern about the prospect of Scotland suffering a humbling on Saturday. But if football had even the slightest hint of street-cred across the pond, I'd have been absolutely terrified.

I FELT a familiar sense of bristling anger on the train back from Rugby Park on Saturday. Aberdeen had just been hammered 4-2 by a mediocre Kilmarnock team, and a young group of Dons fans decided to perk themselves up with the Iain Durrant song. This was the reason for my irritation, and, for those of you unfamiliar with this particular ditty, here's why.

In February 1988 Aberdeen were serious title contenders when they played Rangers, the favourities, in a home league match. The game was a 2-1 victory for Aberdeen packed with drama, but, 17 years on it's remembered for just one tackle. Neil Simpson, the Aberdeen midfielder, went in over-the-top on Iain Durrant, a young player who was being touted by some as one of the most gifted of Scottish footballers. Simpson's tackle was a poor one all right, although I remember thinking at the time that I'd seen worse. It was the end result that made it so infamous: Durrant didn't play regular fotball again for years and never scaled the predicted heights, eventually seeing out his career at Kilmarnock - hence last Saturday's singalong.

Simpson became a pariah in the eyes of some, with much of the vitriol being shovelled on his name by Rangers sympathisers in the Glasgow-based media. He moved to Newcastle United a little while later, but his career, too, petered out.

Which brings us to the Iain Durrant song, the words to which go something like this:

"Who's that lying at Pittodrie?
"Who's that lying on the floor?
"Looks like Iain Durrant to me, and he's gone and bust his knee,
"And he won't be playing for Rangers anymore."

Usually accompanied by rounds of "Nice one Simmie, nice one son."

Neil Simpson was my favourite player when I was growing up. During kickabouts at the park I would leave my top hanging out of my shorts, like he did, as I attempted in vain to imitate his skills. That Simpson played only five times for Scotland hides the fact that he was one of the most talented players of his generation, dominating some of Europe's top stars when scarcely aged 20. His game was a mix of dogged ball-winning, surging runs, surprisingly nimble feet and a healthy dose of goals from midfield. When I recently watched recordings of Aberdeen's 1983 wins over Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, the only player I could think of to match Simpson's style was Roy Keane.

I cringe when I hear the words of the Iain Durrant song, their lyrics as witless as their rendition is tuneless; I squirm when I hear the glorification of a talented player's serious injury (it takes some effort to cede the moral ground to Rangers fans and their rabble-rousing bigotry, yet some Aberdeen supporters have a right good go). But what really sticks in my throat is when this song comes from the mouths of people whose behinds were still being wiped clean by their mothers in 1988. These fools reduce the career of one of my boyhood heros to a single tackle.