Right: it's got a name. I spent a long time thinking about what to call
the tumour but, as some of you might have guessed, there was only ever
one serious contender. Ultimately, I really had to title it after the
only other organism which has had such a destructive impact on my brain.
Ally. Super Ally. Golden Boot winner McCoist: the grinning,
thumbs-aloft cheeky chappie who did more to scar my childhood than Gary
Glitter managed with most of his victims. Super Ally, always game for a
laugh, like a Matalan Gazza: the acceptable face of bigotry,
institionalised sectarianism and No Surrender.
You'll
remember
my criteria for naming the neuroma. It had to be called after something
which was, like my tumour, benign yet destructive. Any trace of
malignancy would render a potential namesake unsuitable: yet as I said,
a lack of malice did not stop the likes of Ken Clarke, Mr Magoo or Don
Quixote from wreaking havoc.
And is it not thus with "our" Ally? Few would contend he has ever
wanted to cause trouble. That goofy cheeriness may make you and I want
to put in our TV screens whenever he appears on them, but there is
little doubt it is sincere. But wheras English readers of this blog may
recall him only as a profoundly irritating punding on ITV Sport -
annoying, but surely not a capital offender - my memory recalls him
being put to a darker use.
When McCoist arrived at Ibrox in 1984 Rangers were stubbornly clinging
on to a signing policy motivated by such an enthusiasm for bigotry and
segregation it would have done Governor George Wallace proud. Put
simply, the club refused to sign Catholics. Entrenching a century and a
half of reaction and anti-Irish venom, the club somehow managed to
avoid censure under the Race Relations Act until it grudgingly changed
tack at the end of the decade. Not that a third of Glasgow's population
and a fifth of Scotland's were all that keen to go there in the first
place, but this astonishingly neanderthal approach to community
relations helped ossify the nation into these divisions of Billys and
Taigs on seventeenth century lines, whatever the Capital of Culture
campaigns of Glasgow's Miles Better slogans told you.
Of course, our Ally seemed oblivious to all this. Well-meaning,
apolitical, he seemed happy to bang in the goals while the crowd sang
loudly about being up to their knees in the likes of my family's blood.
And baging in goals was something he was very good at. In three seasons
he managed 34 goals. No less than 28 hat-tricks. Not for nothing does
the club website honour him thus:
"In world boxing terms there
seems little doubt that Ali was the greatest. As far as goal scoring
goes for Rangers it is Ally."
Of course, the "sticky buns" soon ended their century-old system of
apartheid, a development which co-incided with the club's run of nine
league titles in a row. Not that the fans noticed their team had caught
up with the times. Still the King Billy banners flew, the BNP leaflets
were distributed outside the ground, and Simply The Best would drone
over the speakers because it was a favourite of the Shankill Road UDA.
When Catholic and ex-Hearts midfielder Neil McCann joined, the wits of
the Copeland Road sang: "He's blue, he's white, he's a fenian seen the
light.'"
And who was at the the vanguard of this prolonged period of triumph for
Scotland's own master race? Super Ally, of course, who was only one of
three Rangers players to be in the squad for all nine titles (the other
two were Ian Ferguson and Richard Gough, both of whom we must
disqualify for being obviously evil).
After leaving the club in 1998 and spending three mediocre seasons at
Kilmarnock, it looked as though McCoist would be unable to inflict any
more psychic damage on us again. But no. In the kind of cultural desert
where lack of self-awareness, willingness to play the daft laddie and
ability to read from an autocue are enough to guarantee one prolonged
celebrity, our anti-hero reinvented himself as a television
"personality". First A Question of Sport, then the ill-fated
Scottish chatshow McCoist and McCauley (in which he managed to drag the
comedian Fred down to his level), and, of course, that punditry spot on
The Premiership. Never has one man's ability to witter on for so long
about so little proved so profitable.
At least on TV his brand of ingratiating bonhomie can be cancelled out
with a flick of the "off" switch. But not content with rendering so
much of the schedule a no-go area, he is elbowing his way back into the
professional game. Having won his manager's certificate from the SFA,
he has landed himself a post as striking coach under his old boss Waler
Smith. And in the wake of Scotland's marvellous draw with Italy last
moth there he was, modestly claiming credit for turning goalscorer
Kenny Miller's career around.
I know it's wrong to set myself so passionately against someone so
well-meaning. But With his crass matiness and unwitting promotion of
bigotry, I really cannot help but resort to expletives whenever I see
his image. I tell you, it's just as well they don't allow you to own
guns in this country.
Next month I will be operated on at the Southern Gerneral Hosital on
Glasgow's Govan Road, no more than a couple of miles from Ibrox itself. And
when they cut out the tumour I'll comfort myself with the though that,
in one corner of the Southside, Super Ally is being excised for good.
headcase
