Читать книгу Ally McCoist - Rangers Legend - Alistair Aird - Страница 5

It is said that it is best never to meet your heroes for fear that you will end up disappointed. Scouring the internet, the testimonials of some who have met heroes of theirs would appear to confirm that this is indeed the case, which therefore places me very much in the minority. One Saturday morning in May 1996 I met my hero for the first time – but rather than being left feeling let down after our meeting, I walked away with my idol placed on an even higher pedestal.

The meeting came about by pure chance. On the evening of Friday 3 May 1996 I was having dinner in a renowned Ayrshire seaside hotel when it emerged that the Rangers first team squad were staying there overnight ahead of their final Scottish Premier Division fixture of the 1995/96 season, against Kilmarnock. Just five days earlier my boyhood heroes had defeated Aberdeen 3-1 at Ibrox to clinch the Scottish Premier Division Championship for the eighth successive season. The mercurial Paul Gascoigne stole the show with a breathtaking hat-trick but while I was overjoyed that the Light Blues had taken a significant step towards securing the much coveted Nine-in-a-Row – thus giving them the opportunity to match the achievement of Old Firm rivals Celtic, who had won nine league titles on the trot between 1966 and 1974 – I was more than a little upset when I saw Ally McCoist completing the lap of honour in a Sunderland jersey.

With his contract due to expire at the end of the 1995/96 season, rumours were rife that McCoist, the finest purveyor of the art of goal-scoring that Rangers had seen in the post-war era, all-round likeable rogue and the idol of one seventeen-year-old from Cumnock since the mid 1980s, was set to end his trophy-laden, twelve-year spell at Ibrox with a return to previous club Sunderland. I have to confess that this left me rather peeved. In my opinion, McCoist was Rangers. Without his glut of goals there is no way that my team would have been on the cusp of making history. A Rangers side at this time sans McCoist was like Corrie without Ken Barlow or Wimbledon without strawberries and cream. Thus, when the opportunity arose to meet Ally a few days later I was keen to seek reassurances that the Sunderland rumours were without foundation and that he would be part of the Ibrox scene for the forthcoming season.

Having missed out on the opportunity to meet the players following dinner on the Friday, I returned to the hotel the next morning, the day of the game against Kilmarnock, on an autograph-hunting mission. Gradually, one by one the players emerged from the hotel for a saunter around the golf course before lunch. With a few autographs scribbled on the paraphernalia that I had taken along with me I was suitably satisfied – although that happiness was admittedly tinged with a little disappointment when it transpired that Gascoigne and Laudrup had been excused duty to rest up ahead of the Scottish Cup Final against Hearts. But one much sought-after signature was absent; I wanted McCoist’s autograph before I headed home.

He eventually emerged – he was, after all, infamous for being late for everything – and I got what I was looking for. Had Ally simply scrawled his signature on the copy of his testimonial programme that I thrust under his nose, I would have been happy. However, in addition to getting his autograph and my picture taken alongside him, McCoist spent a good ten minutes conversing with me, talking about Rangers and also my local side, Cumnock Juniors. When he found out that I would not be at Rugby Park that afternoon, but would be at Townhead Park cheering on Cumnock instead – which was common practice for me on Saturdays when Rangers played away from home – he asked how Cumnock were performing in the league and seemed genuinely interested in the fortunes of the club. He did not need to do this; he could simply have posed for the picture and signed the programme then bid me farewell. But this did not appear to be this icon’s style; he seemed to have a genuine interest in what lay ahead in the next few hours for this eager autograph hunter and when we parted he was elevated to an even higher plane in my humble estimations. Oh – and I did get the reassurance I was looking for; when asked if he would be staying with Rangers he replied that he hoped so, and less than a week later it was rubber-stamped when he penned a new contract!

Sitting here almost fifteen years later, Ally McCoist remains an iconic figure. I have avidly followed his career with interest since I was a youngster. My first clear memory of him came from a match programme. Sitting at home one evening, furiously working my way through school homework, my dad came home and dropped the programme for the 1986 Skol Cup semi-final between Rangers and Dundee United on the table. It was the first time I had ever seen such a publication and it had been given to my dad by Scott Alexander, a janitor at his school and a fellow McCoist fan with whom I remain friends to this day. One of the featured players inside was McCoist and after reading the piece I started to pay more attention to Ally’s blossoming Rangers career.

He very quickly became a hero and on the school playground, when the lads got the football out at interval and lunchtime, I was always out to emulate Ally (I failed miserably but God loves a trier!) and would constantly hover around the six-yard box of the makeshift football park looking for the slightest opportunity to stick the ball between the clumps of jumpers that we put down to act as goalposts. Much to my mother’s chagrin, countless pairs of school shoes would end up scuffed as I slashed and swiped at the ball when it arrived in my general direction. And although I have to confess that we spent most of the time retrieving the ball from the other side of the school railings after some rather wayward finishing, on the rare occasions when I did find the target I would always make a point of wheeling away with arms aloft, with a big cheesy grin on my face, mimicking the latest celebration that Ally was using after finding the net for Rangers.

It would be much the same when we reconvened after school at the local playing fields. The clumps of jumpers were now replaced by real goalposts, but during games of ‘World Cuppie’ or ‘Three-and-In’ I was still Coisty, still endeavouring to replicate what Ally would do on a remarkable 355 occasions in a Rangers jersey: score a goal.

Following Rangers in the mid- to late 1980s and the 1990s, there was no shortage of potential heroes and icons for young supporters. There was the late, great Davie Cooper in the first Rangers side that I watched; Terry Butcher and Chris Woods, who swept in as part of the whirlwind that was The Souness Revolution in 1986; then, in the mid-Nineties, the Rangers followers were wowed by the exceptionally gifted Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup. But there was something about McCoist. He was a razor-sharp predator and although he missed his fair share of goal-scoring opportunities, he could always be relied upon to deliver the hard currency that is required to win football matches on such a regular basis. There was almost a sense of disbelief on the rare occasions when he was not amongst the goals as Rangers plundered trophy after trophy during a sparkling era for the club. He was also the joker in the pack, the proverbial ‘cheeky chappie’; but you could sense that there was also a steely desire in his make-up, too. He would always bounce back and prove his critics wrong on the countless occasions that he was written off during what can only be described as a fairytale playing career.

In my opinion, McCoist deserves to be bracketed with the best strikers that have ever graced the British game, even though his critics point to the fact that he plundered most of his goals in what is perceived to be the inferior Scottish Premier League and that his short stint in the English First Division between 1981 and 1983 was relatively unsuccessful. The latter criticism is one which rankles with me, though. He was just eighteen when he signed for Sunderland and, in addition to shouldering the burden of what was at the time a record transfer fee, the team he joined were always in the throes of a relegation dogfight. The hefty transfer fee shelled out to recruit him raised expectations amongst the Roker Park faithful that McCoist would net the goals that would spell the end of Sunderland’s perennial struggle for survival. Such expectations were unfair since McCoist was still learning his trade and was far from being the finished article. He needed a better class of player around him, too; individuals that could provide him with the ammunition that a striker of his age needed to score goals on a regular basis. Had he been as fortunate as one of his contemporaries, Ian Rush, who flourished in a Liverpool team that were masters of all they surveyed both at home and on the Continent, the landscape of his career may have been altogether different. And had he graced England’s top flight when he was at his peak, say in the 1991/92 and 1992/93 seasons when he won the European Golden Boot, there is no doubt that his name would have featured at the top end of the scoring charts alongside the likes of Alan Shearer, Teddy Sheringham and Ian Wright.

I have a host of memories of Ally’s football career, with his stunning overhead kick against Hibernian in the 1993 League Cup Final and the spectacular diving header against Leeds United standing out, but my all-time favourite McCoist memory may surprise some of the others who have followed his career. It came in the less than salubrious surroundings of Stark’s Park, Kirkcaldy towards the end of the 1995/96 season. Rangers were looking to win their eighth successive title but were being pushed all the way by Tommy Burns’ Celtic. Any slip-up could have proved disastrous. Indeed, a mortal blow looked set to be delivered to those title aspirations by Raith Rovers, who held a 2-1 lead going into the closing stages of their fixture with the Light Blues – until McCoist stepped in. Having already scored Rangers’ goal from the penalty spot, Ally was, as usual, in the right place at the right time to level the match at 2-2, his goal being followed by a rousing celebration in which he cajoled his team-mates into producing one last push to grab a crucial three points. The goal that completed McCoist’s hat-trick and secured the three points for Rangers duly arrived when, after having been denied by an outstanding save by the Raith goalkeeper, he prowled around the six-yard box as the resulting corner was floated into the penalty area before pouncing like a true predator when the ball broke his way to force it over the line. There is no doubt that the goals scored by McCoist that day were amongst the most important of the 355 he netted for Rangers, and that is why they stick out for me. Without them, dreams of Nine-in-a-Row may well have evaporated that afternoon and, for me, this epitomised McCoist and what his presence meant to Rangers; his goal-scoring instinct and ability to score crucial goals meant he was indispensable.

Memories such as this stimulated me to such an extent that I decided to put pen to paper. In 2007, not long after Ally had returned to Ibrox as assistant manager to Walter Smith, I decided to try and catalogue all his achievements in a biographical account of his career. The manuscript eventually took shape and I am grateful to John Blake Publishing, who believed that it was worthy of publication. I was thrilled when Ally McCoist – Portrait of a Hero went into print in May 2008 and was delighted when the company approached me again to produce this book to mark Ally’s appointment as Rangers manager. I’d like to give special mention to Michelle Signore and Allie Collins at Blake, who provided support and understanding throughout the publication process.

Although I knew pretty much chapter and verse about McCoist’s time at Rangers, I knew very little about the fledgling years of McCoist’s career with St Johnstone and Sunderland. I am therefore grateful for the assistance of Paul Smith and Rob Mason who provided me with some indispensable information regarding Ally’s time in Perth and on Wearside. I would also like to thank Richard Cairns, who helped with the provision of some details on Ally’s time with Kilmarnock and the staff at The Mitchell Library in Glasgow, who were always polite and helpful as I trawled through the archives in my attempts to unearth as much information as I could about one of Scotland’s finest and most popular footballers.

Finally, I must thank my wonderful wife Sharon, who was a rock throughout the preparation of the manuscript. She became something of a ‘manuscript widow’ as I pieced together the jigsaw of McCoist’s career but she understood how much writing this book meant to me. She has also provided me with two wonderful children, two-year-old Eva and Finlay, who arrived in March 2011. Both are still a bit young to understand daddy’s obsession with football and, in particular, Rangers Football Club, but there is no doubt when the time is right they too will be introduced to, and hopefully become intoxicated by, this wonderful football club. And they will also be told at great length about the achievements of their daddy’s hero, the legend that is ‘Super Ally’.

Alistair Aird

July 2011