DavieCooper.com Editor’s Blog

Walter Smith’s candid appraisal of our national game, last week, should be applauded. His comments weren’t exactly revelatory, but managerial confirmation of what every supporter, pundit and journalist has been saying for the last few years – Scottish football is shit. The blazers in Hampden Park will be squirming at his dissention; he’s shattered the pretence, perpetuated by them, that all is rosy in the SPL. SFA Chief Executive Gordon Smith, predictably launched a PR counter-offensive, spewing out a list of feeble stats that did little to appease our concerns:

- Per head of the population, more people attend football in Scotland compared to England
- The audience for the first Old Firm derby showing a 32% increase on the average for last season, and was shown on HD for the first time
- Scottish players now make up 60% of first teams in the league compared to 48% in 1998

Yawn.

At press conferences Smith is an impenetrable slab of granite. Stoic and grumpy, he has a palpable disdain for journalists and his rhetoric is often guarded and austere. So his unexpected fusillade on Scottish football was gold dust for a press core emaciated on a diet of verbal crumbs. Behind closed doors Watty is apparently a convivial and witty dinner companion – the antithesis of his public persona. It’s a shame he can’t muster a frisson of this geniality when the cameras are rolling.

But then again, look what happened to wee Gordon at Celtic; vilified by fans and the media for being a frivolous smart arse. This media game isn’t easy. Somehow managers such as Harry Redknapp manage to charm the press, effortlessly striking a balance between humour and solemnity. For those lacking in charisma, perhaps being factual and terse is a damage limitation strategy.

Maybe once Walter rides off into the Govan sunset, he will lower his cast-iron veneer and let us see the real touchy-feely Wally. Imagine “When Louis Theroux met Watty…” – Walter strolling along the beach in Helensborough discussing his prostate with the nerdy journo. I doubt it. I think Walter would give Louis one of his icy glares, followed by a swift kick to the chuckies. After all Walter Smith is no Jimmy Saville.

Swirling through the radio waves, cajoling, bruising, titillating, sweeping up through the valleys of Glenmore and down the streets of Glasgae…it greets us. Saturday lunchtimes, Off the Ball – the white dog turd of Scottish radio.

It is without doubt an endangered species; the thinking man’s football show. Effortlessly blending schoolboy jokes about dobers and fuds with philosophical musings on life. It races up and down the ladder of abstraction like a window cleaner with the skitters.

Stuart Cosgrove, the epitome of the liberal thinking Guardian reader, is the shows pedagogue. The definition of modern Scot – combining tales of single ends in Perth with lectures on Marcel Proust. Tam Cowan, his blue-collar foil; coarse, sharp, witty – the guy that makes you howl in the pub x1000.  It’s an over-simplification to say Cosgrove provides sustenance for the mind and Cowan tickles your funny bone, but that’s where their strengths lie. They’re both intelligent, funny guys.

The shows appeal is universal. Some of the football references may body-swerve the unenlightened, but Cowan’s carpet bombing delivery will have you grinning every 55 seconds (every 54 seconds a man thinks about sex). That leaves another 58 seconds for thinking about beer.

So next time, instead of surfing for porn, wrest your wrist, expand your mind and tune into Off the Ball. The Woody Allen of Football Shows (the early funny one that mixed Marx Brothers with Bergman, not the lurid pensioner):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/scotland/tv_and_radio/7133168.stm

Summer’s glow bows to the sky, autumn winds chase the light – further, deeper, darker into the winding streets of Govan. We rise from the depths, riding an orange monster through the tunnels of gloom. Fried onions, Buckfast, scenting our trudge to the creaking turnstiles. Up we rise again, snaking through the steel and glass, laughing, moaning with our 90-minute friends. Our bodies framed against the blue plastic, straining at the garbled tannoy. Our heroes on green blades, toiling in the murky light. The weekend ritual of lost souls…