So how glorious were the glory days? Between 1960 and 1972:
- Rangers won the European Cup Winners Cup and reached another two finals. They also reached a European Cup semi final and a Fairs Cup semi final.
- Hibernian reached the European Cup semi final, as did Dundee (who also reached a Fairs Cup semi final)...Kilmarnock and Dunfermline reached the Fairs Cup semi final
- Celtic won the European Cup and reached another final. They also reached the European Cup Winners Cup semi final.
Not bad eh? And who was watching? Well a lot of people. In their title winning season Dundee averaged close to 40,000 a game and took 20,000 to Perth to see the title won. And our own club? Here are a few snapshots: in 1962 there were 41,350 fans at Pittodrie to see a cup tie, and the following year 39,750 saw a league game between Aberdeen and the Teddy Bears. In 1965 a league match at Easter Road saw 44,300 fans crowd to Leith. And did the quality on the pitch, the huge crowds and the spread of talent show itself on the pitch? Well between 1955 and 1966 the Scottish league had 6 different clubs winning the league title. Something was working. The competition drew fans who in turn increased competition; a virtuous cycle.
But as in music, fashion, politics and attitudes to female nudity the 60s did stop swinging. In 1973 122,714 saw the Centenary Cup Final, the UK’s 94th and last 100,000 football crowd. It wasn’t just us: it wasn’t just Scotland - something was changing. It is this change that matters.
Before this cut-off point of 1973 Scotland had players who could mix it with anyone: genuine stars with the technique of anyone on the continent. Our clubs could face anyone without fear of a physical contest or technical battle although this never did translate to the international stage for some reason. As the 70s wore on and the 80s dawned something had changed. We still produced very decent players but now the flood was a stream and warning signs were already there that this was heading towards a trickle. And what players there were seemed to head south; our clubs were unable to keep them and the standard of football seemed to reflect this; our brightest talent now lined up for Liverpool, Ipswich or Man United.
There was a very brief Indian Summer in the early 1980s when the New Firm rediscovered pass and move, physical fitness and tactical awareness; combining all three to defy some fine teams around Europe. But then even this last hurrah seemed to fade as the 1980s set out its stall and the markers were laid down for the mediocrity that would follow. Football violence, crumbling stadiums, poorer standards, a disastrous teaching strike, the destruction of tenements and the ‘street football culture’ they had bred, a new coaching mantra that started to make itself know here and down south. The effect of the teachers' strike should not be underestimated.
Fred Forrester of the EIS, the principal Scottish teaching union:
Our preferred weapon in 1974 was the work to rule. That eventually spilled into strikes when we could not contain our members’ justifiable anger any more. The strikes, while unprecedented, were not as prolonged as those that were to follow in the 1980s. The work-to-rule tactic was significant in that it concentrated on the teachers’ precise contractual obligations. At the beginning of the dispute there was a very strong linkage between your powerful grievance and confining your activities to the absolute minimum you were required to do in the working day.
What happened as a result of the work-to-rule was that voluntary activity at the week-end, and that mainly involved schools football on Saturdays, more or less stopped. Then, when the grievance was eventually resolved, it was very difficult indeed to get teachers to resume their voluntary activities. They found that they enjoyed having their week-ends to themselves. They asked themselves the simple question: ‘Why should I bother?’ They thought: ‘I’m really enjoying my week-ends now.’ The effect of this on schools football was seriously harmful, but I would not wish the teachers of the 1970s to be presented as the villains in your book. You must realize that their working day had become so crowded, so overburdened, that even when their pay grievance was removed, they quite understandably saw no need to resume extra-curricular activities.
Football was without doubt the number one extra-curricular activity. So football indubitably suffered most. In the space of a few months, Saturday sport dwindled away, till it became not a mainstream activity but just the responsibility of a small number of enthusiasts. It did revive again, but the seeds had been sown. Schools football was never to be the same again, particularly in the great breeding grounds of Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, Glasgow and Fife.
Bob Crampsey the commentator and journalist had just begun life as a secondary head at this time:
Teachers had this understandable sense of liberation, but the decline of schools football was disastrous. It was not just about producing great players. The not-so-good footballer played too, and while he might not go on to make his mark as a professional, he learned to understand and appreciate the game, and he might well go on to become a referee, or an official, or just a good, well-informed supporter. All that was lost.
And what of street football? The Gub recalls:
“Class footballers abounded. So what has changed? Well, life certainly has. All we knew back then was kicking a ball. The big thing for me as a kid was going up to stay at my grand parents’ house at the weekend.
You see in Bridgeton, we played ‘fitba’ in the streets’, in Castlemilk we played it on grass. Oh, and sometimes, some clever clog would even have nets ready made for some hastily constructed goal posts. The nets were stashed away after that three hour ‘ten-twenty-wanner’ was finished. Trust in Castlemilk that your goal nets could stay up all night in one piece, if at all, was in short supply.”
And of course we have to meet Charles Hughes. Hughes was consulted by the FA’s Charles Reep and became the FA’s coaching guru. Hughes presented his ideas in the now defunct magazine Match Analysis and concluded most goals were scored from less than three passes. So it was important to get the ball quickly forward as soon as possible. He based this analysis on over one hundred games at all levels, including games involving Liverpool FC and the Brazilian national team, as well as many England Youth games. His ideals were developed from those developed by World War II Wing Commander Charles Reep. From his statistical analysis, Hughes emphasized the importance of particular areas of the field from where goals were most often scored.
He called these areas the POMO - Positions of Maximum Opportunity - and asserted that players would score if the ball was played into the POMO enough times. He stressed the importance of set plays and crosses into the box. Many British coaches advocated his long ball philosophy but critics have derided his philosophy for encouraging a generation of players who lack basic technical skills and have lack of understanding of diversity of different tactical playing strategies.
This brings us to the ‘Largs Mafia’ as it became known; the SFA’s coaching base, think-tank and the people who awarded the coaching certificates. Whatever the merits of this facility in 2010 there was long the thought that the coaches had been average players and were slaves to gurus such as Hughes. They preached a mantra based on not taking risks, percentage football and using as few touches as possible to create ‘opportunities’.
So we are in the mid / late 1980s now, crowds across the UK are falling, coaches are in thrall to a high-ball ethos based on ‘the science of football’, schools football collapsing, and young talents being poached by English clubs almost as soon as they leave school. We have new housing estates where there are no football pitches initially (or pubs or even post boxes initially) and the tanner ba’ days seem gone as what kids remain playing the game seem drawn to organised coaching.
These teams, leagues and coaches seem drawn to football’s most base approach:winning cups. Twelve year olds play on full size pitches in the rain; on gravel; with no rules re touches, head height etc. they foul, poach and play offside for baubles and trinkets. The amount of touches each kid gets is minimised - the rewards for playing safe are maximised and many, many players are discarded: too wee, too light, or too fancy. Can a player ‘put himself about’? Ronald Koeman has spoken of his own youth football days, with his father being a coach: “We didn’t hold a trophy up when I was a kid…we just played and got to understand the game.”
Enter David Holmes, Graeme Souness and a revolution that would cause many problems for our national game as well as give us bears a huge shot in the arm.