We have a combined book review/Mary’s Meals promotion today. Celtic fan and politician, Jim Murphy, has written an excellent book, The 10 Football Matches That Changed The World. It’s in my top three books on the game (as opposed to a player), and gives insight into the deadly intimidation which sparked the Barcelona-Real Madrid rivalry, how the game was rescued from oblivion, and England’s public schools, by a handful of communities in the 19th Century, Hillsborough, standpoints against racism in the UK and a whole lot more.
Romantics forever mourn that the great Hungarian team lost the 1954 World Cup Final, but that game changed for post-war West Germany. Then there’s Robben Island, apartheid’s most feared opponents were locked up for decades, denied all but a football. With that ball, teams were built, men were built.
Profits from sales of the book through the link at the bottom of the page go to our Mary’s Meals appeal. Here’s the interview:
Q. OK, Jim, you’ve written a fine book, but I have to open with a question as charged as anything in the world football could be. On meeting then-Rangers chairman, Craig Whyte, you opened with “When do you think Rangers first decided on a ‘No Catholics’ policy?” Did you appreciate the enormity, and rarity, of that question? Would Scotland benefit from being open about what happened inside the game here?
“Looking back it’s hard to believe that the country tolerated that old style sectarianism. Growing up in Glasgow it was treated by far too many as the norm when it was anything but normal. My one and only encounter with the ill-fated Craig Whyte, the calamitous and short-lived Rangers chairman took place in the most unlikely of places. It was in the board room at Celtic Park, at half-time in the infamous 2011 Scottish Cup match.
“As part of my research for the book I decided to ask him about the history of the Club that he would go on to cause so much harm to. I asked Mr Whyte, ‘When do you think Rangers first decided on a “No Catholics” policy?’ He took such a direct question surprisingly well. Perhaps because I was asking him about a Rangers from what now seems like another age. Pretty fairly, he couldn’t place a date on it.
“For decades, his club was probably the only team in the world where the question of which foot you kicked with was more important than how well you could kick. Only a few yards along the corridor, in the Rangers changing room, no one knew how many Catholics were sitting listening to the Rangers manager Ally McCoist’s half-time team-talk. More importantly, no one really cared.
“Thinking back its inexplicable why so many in the media, football, UEFA, politics and others had accepted such a policy for so long. It was from an era when there was little protection against discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities, the disabled or on the grounds of sexuality and even against women. None of those things were right and nor was any sectarianism wherever it came from or who it was aimed at.
“I spoke to some of the best Celtic and Rangers historians there are. Celtic’s origins are rightly and universally celebrated but for decades much less was spoken of Rangers earliest days. But the passions of the Club’s founders the canoeing McNeil brothers had nothing to do with other people’s subsequent prejudices. For years when Rangers had a free Saturday their players sometimes turned up to watch Celtic and were welcomed by the sound of Celtic fans’ applause rather than any boos.
“In 1909 both sets of supporters invaded and rioted on the Hampden pitch after a drawn final. Parts of Hampden were set alight, fans fought with the police and some fireman were set upon when they turned up to save the stadium. Astonishingly there’s no reports in any of the media of rival fans throwing even a single punch at one another.
“But by 1924 events including post First World War anti-Catholic sentiment and the opening of Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan helped contort Rangers. It was revealing to interview Graeme Souness, the manager who broke Celtic hearts by signing Mo Johnston and in so doing helped break a sixty year taboo. Talking to Billy McNeil about all of this was pretty enlightening.”
Q. Racism was rife in British football in the 70s and 80s and you give some inside into the tide turning after Chelsea fans booing their own black player on a day they won promotion in 1984, but if you look around Britain today, or even some football grounds, do you feel as though we have slid back after recent years or recession and shortage?
“Football has come a long way to challenge the racism that had been tolerated on the pitch and celebrated on the terraces; accepted in the boardroom and in far too many changing rooms. No Club was exempt from the racism, not even Celtic. I remember being at Celtic Park and how angry I felt about the treatment of Mark Walters. We’ve all come a long way since then.
“But there’s still racist and other attitudes to be challenged. Anti-gay sentiment is still considered acceptable by a lot of football people. And football isn’t immune from the anti-Muslim attitudes that survive in wider society.”
Q. The Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry is the most intense still alive in the game but its roots, and the roots of both clubs, as you explain, are difficult to pin to a single game. Do you think this is more about the struggle for Spain across the 20th century? Barcelona, as much as any club in the world, have a duty to live up to historical expectations. Do you think this is possible in the modern world?
“No other sporting rivals have been so trapped by the multiple and often tragic identities of their country. As a consequence of the brutality inflicted on Barca and Catalonia by Franco, Barcelona set themselves standards that they are finding it hard to live up to. The allegations on transfer kick-backs, tax problems and ties to Qatar 2022 are out of kilter with the often utopian ideals that Barca sometimes encourage. And now we have the signing of Suarez. I’m not sure the signing of this brilliant but troubled star is in keeping with the spirit of Gamper and Sunyol.
“For the unthinking many of course, there is a sense that Madrid the football club was founded by the forefathers of fascist neanderthals. In truth Real were formed by left-wingers. But at a time when Franco was a pariah, Real were world beaters. He simply sided with Spain’s greatest export. The Real Madrid of the late Di Stefano were transformed into his unofficial global ambassadors.
“In writing about Barca and Madrid I was spoilt for choice about which game cemented the political and cultural conflict that became the story of the two Clubs. The contenders are: 1925, when a British Royal Marine band came to play; 1943, with Madrid’s biggest ever victory; and, lastly, a sending-off in 1970 that never should have been. I opted for the cup semi-final of 1943. Barca were 3-0 up after the home leg and favourites to go through. But after a threatening pre-match visit to their changing room by the Director of State Security Barca managed to lose the return leg 11-1.
“To fathom what happened in 1943, you need to understand something about the one event in Spain’s history that has influenced politics, the nation’s football and culture for decades. For those who lost family it’s the heartbreak of modern Spain. For many football fans it’s the emotional backdrop to the Barca v Madrid rivalry. In his brilliant book ‘The Spanish Civil War’ Antony Beevor wrote of the conflict that, ‘It is perhaps the best example of a subject which becomes more confusing when it is simplified.’ Read his book to see what he means.
“In early 1936 Spain had a democratically elected left wing Popular Front government. It was rocked by an attempted military coup that summer by its right wing opponents. For three years Spain fought and with Hitler’s support Franco triumphed. Barca President Josep Sunyol was assassinated by fascists.
“Franco was vengeful against a defeated Catalonia and often defiant Barca. Its the memories of those horrors that live today for many in Spanish football.”
Q. Football and feelings of national image have had a mostly unfortunate relationship but you tell a different story for the 1954 World Cup Final, between the great Hungarian team and West Germany. Hungary were robbed of a deserved national highlight but you think Germany won more than just a football match?
“We’ve all just enjoyed a great World Cup with Germany winning for a fourth time. The one big surprise was that the hosts conceded more goals than any other nation. Its hard to say what the impact on Brazilian psyche is going to be. But there’s little doubt about the effect on the West Germany psyche of 1954 – the most important World Cup final ever played.
“That Bern final was played against the Puskas inspired unbeatable Hungarians. Franz Beckenbauer, the man who would go on to win the World Cup for West Germany, both as a player and manager, believes that, after their success, ‘suddenly Germany was somebody again’. And reflecting the experiences of his own childhood he knew how an eighty-fourth minute winner by Helmut Rahn changed Germany’s view of itself. ‘For anybody who grew up in the misery of the post-war years, Bern was an extraordinary inspiration. The entire country regained its self-esteem.’”
Q. Football is the sport of the people in South Africa, your childhood home, but the story of the role the game played in the lives of inmates – and future statesmen – on Robben Island in 1967, unfortunately, goes largely untold. How did this game reach into the hearts of Mandela, Zuma and their contemporaries, through such hardship?
“My family emigrated to South Africa in the early 1980’s and I lived there until the South African army came knocking on the door looking for me to serve two years national service. I’m neither a coward nor a pacifist but there was no way I was going to serve in an apartheid army.
“When I lived there Nelson Mandela and so many others were jailed on the former leper colony of Robben Island. Every morning I could see across to the Atlantic Island. There was very little news from the island. Like most people I had no idea about the Makana league that the prisoners had forced the regime to allow them to set up. It was inspired by British football. Aston Villa fan Tony Suze got it going.
“Many of the prisoners idolised Billy Bremner. A lot of the teams were named after British clubs. Current South African President Jacob Zuma was a tough tackling centre-back for a team called Rangers!
“One of the ANC’s former island political prisoners I interviewed Dikgang Moseneke was clear about how football helped keep hope alive. ‘It was the great escape from imprisonment. I don’t think the governor and wardens understood the full meaning of the football that they allowed us to play. Very few people came out of Robben Island broken, very few, And some went on to become leaders.’
Q. It is clear that you enjoyed writing the book but the final chapter, Liverpool v Nottingham Forest, 1989; the Hillsborough Disaster is haunting. More than the sectarianism which through football was institutionalised in Scotland in 1924, or the Soccer War game, between El Salvador and Honduras, it reaches inside the reader to touch regret and sorrow, in particular with Trevor Hicks account. What was the Justice for the 96 campaign up against, as they set about trying to change the world?
“Put bluntly the ‘Justice for the ’96’ campaign was up against large section of the British establishment. With the official inquests going on at the moment I have to be careful about what I say. Back then a media that was willing to repeat lies, too many police complicit in a cover up, a government too quick to blame the innocent and a country where many were initially willing to believe the worst of Liverpool fans. But over time the lies unravelled. Celtic’s solidarity with the campaigners is well known. What is less well known is that it wasn’t until a UK Cabinet meeting in Glasgow in 2008 that the campaign got its much yearned for political breakthrough.
“When I wrote the book I decided I wasn’t going to stitch anyone up; and I didn’t. But there’s one person who it’s impossible not to be angry with – the odious then Sun editor, Kelvin Mackenzie. Even today he gives mediocre middle aged men the world over a bad reputation. His malevolence is matched only by his unjustified arrogance.
“But the fact that the campaigners have now got to the truth means that they might just be on the cusp of getting justice as well. Theirs is a story of working class solidarity and of a city that refused to give in. As one campaigner put it to me. ‘We always believed that the law and the establishment would always win. As The Clash would say, ” I fought the law and the law won”.’ But on this occasion, mercifully, it appears they haven’t.
Q. There is so much in the book I didn’t know about the game, specifically, including that in the early 19th century it had all-but disappeared, apart from outposts in Orkney, Shetland, Workington, Cornwall and Jedburgh, before it was colonised by Britain’s public schools and Army messes. 200 years ago, it was a game, but not a game of the people. Your story starts with how people reclaimed football and lived their lives through it. Is this the real story of football over the last two centuries?
“Football almost died. How it survived is a little known truth and is the secret that the sport rarely recognises. A single match helped rescue the sport, and, with one unexpected victory, it finally broke free from its ghettos in the nation’s public schools and British Army officers’ messes. The ailing game had been violent, with very few agreed rules. It was run by and for the elite and, in a nation with very few sports fields, had been banned from public streets. In England, the FA Cup (partly funded by Scotland’s Queens Park) was colonised by university, public school, and regimental teams.
“In the 1883 FA Cup final, the former pupils of Eton College lined up against Blackburn Olympic at the Oval cricket ground. The Lancashire team won in extra time and the trophy went home with them which was further north then ever before. It coincided with Britain’s second Industrial Revolution and meant that when people left these shores they took with them a newly proletarian sport with them.
“A new breed of football innovator was born. They were more in the image of Blackburn Olympic than Old Etonian. In South America, British railway workers helped introduce the sport to Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina. A school-teaching Scot, Alexander Watson Hutton, set up the Argentine FA. In Chile, British sailors, and in Venezuela, British miners were amongst the first to play. In Spain, Brazil and Italy, Britons also planted their working class footballing roots.
“This change in football came in time for the First World War. It meant that football was one of the few things that the working class soldiers and their public school educated officers fighting in the Western Front trenches had in common. It’s an integral part of the story of how the 1914 football Christmas Truce came about. But that’s a different story and is the one match in the book which didn’t change the world.”
If you order the book through this link, with the promotion code: CELTIC, all profits will go to Mary’s Meals.
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lilys grandpa
22:17 on 17 July, 2014
‘People of Gaza And Israel, God be with you’
###
Given the relative death tolls it looks like God is with the Israelis and has turned his back on the Palestinians.
Hey now hey now, don’t say it’s over.
It is so sad that so many people live their life’s with blinkers on.
ernie
You want Israel to stop defending its people? Turn off defences, so there can be hundreds of Israeli casualties? would that honestly make you feel better?
See for what its worth, I usually enjoy reading your posts, that is just feeble.
lilys
Big Nan
21:55 on
17 July, 2014
Will go to bed with a heavy heart knowing the evil that will be unleashed on innocent men women and children in Gaza tonight.
I won’t wait for condemnation from our spineless politicians. They know about keeping schtum
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Well said , and the world stands by and does nothing as usual .
Prayers for the people of Gaza tonight
ernie,
Just got your last post there, God hasn’t turned his back on them, Hamas has though.
lilys
Think it’s over FFS!
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
You know they won’t win
HH
GuyFawkesaforeverhero
21:49 on
17 July, 2014
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo
21.43
Fair comment.
At least you’ve set the bar for BRTH to meet CQN expectations.
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Eh — when it comes to getting tits in my face can I point out I sometimes get enough of that on twitter!!
Natknow
Roseburn Bar is grand for me though will probably have kids with me.
Doc
The cases concerned ( bar Hillsborough which was later ) became avid reading for me — and I mean something to devour.
While not forgetting what I did for a living at the time, justice and the system of justice is something which has simply been taken for granted by many for a long long time.
There is no worse feeling in the world than when you represent someone, or know of someone who is being represented by someone else, who you believe is innocent from your socks up but who ends up being convicted.
I remember reading a civil court judgement which praised the advocacy of yours truly to the hilt but which ultimately found against my client.
I will never forget the look on his face as I read out that the judge just simply did not believe my client.
It was not the money he had to pay as a consequence that mattered ( though that annoyed him ) but just that his word, his being, his soul and conscience had not been accepted by the court that really affected him.
I remember the man concerned’s reaction: he said simply ” Don’t read any more, I will pay the money but right now I want to go home to my wife and family as they all think the sun shines out of my arse!”
I never forgot that day and that meeting.
The Guildford four, the six and the Maguires were assaulted, bullied, tortured and tormented by the state.
The same happened to Judith ward and others.
At the time, I got into many an argument and the occasional fight about the lack of British justice that existed.
To this day it still rails and causes anger as the whole set up was a complete disgrace.
Just took a call from my mum back in Troon to tell me my cousin was on the plane shot down. Edel was born and raised on Palmerstown, Dublin before moving to Oz where she raised her own family. She had just been back in Dublin to visit her aging mother and was heading home via Amaterdam and Kuala Lumpur. Her kids will never see their mum again – numb just thinking about it.
Tonight thoughts and prayers for all of her family in Perth and the Byrne family back in Dublin.
Some horrible partisan posts being made on Cqn in what is yet another tragedy for the ordinary people in Israel/Gaza.
lilys grandpa,
some defences the Israelis have that they manage to kill over 240
FourGreenFields
21:30 on
17 July, 2014
big georges fan club – hail, hail, wee oscar
What time you on at ?
============================
Will be on around 8:30 / 9:00 till late.
HH
BGFC
lilys grandpa
22:36 on 17 July, 2014
Hamas were elected.
Do you ever wonder why?
Awe Naw
Johnny Depp on Blow?
Na just not cool enough as a comparison……………….
Denia Bhoy,
desperate news about your cousin,
my thoughts and prayers are for you and your family
BIG-CUP-WINNERS
22:39 on 17 July, 2014
‘Some horrible partisan posts being made on Cqn in what is yet another tragedy for the ordinary people in Israel/Gaza.’
###
How many ordinary people in Israel will be killed tonight?
DeniaBhoy
22:39 on
17 July, 2014
Very sorry for your loss. Words fail me. Too many good people leaving us too early in mind numbing circumstances.
Thought to you and your loved ones.
Maybe we can call a halt to this particular debate out of respect for one of our own tonight.
HH
HH
Now I’m walking again to the beat of a drum(not that one)
And I’m counting the steps to the door of your heart
Only shadows ahead, barely clearing the roof
Get to know the feeling of liberation and release
BRTH
Shug says 21 Jump Street ?
HH
DeniaBhoy
22:39 on
17 July, 2014
Just took a call from my mum back in Troon to tell me my cousin was on the plane shot down
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Deepest sympathy for your family with that tragic news
Doc
Neil Finn was touring recently. Needless to say I missed him :-(
HH
Crowded House night
BRTH,
That feeling must have felt like the bottom of your world just fell out!
Do you have faith, today, that such would/could not happen now?
I know that is a tough question, there are no guarantees, but are there more rigorous checks in place?
BRTH
I done hospitality at recent Scotland England rugby ( the day we lost to Aberdeen in Scottish cup)
Our business, party met up at the Ellersly ? House hotel, which is very close to stadium, but a street back from Corstophine road, a 5 min walk right into stadium.
It had a good size lounge for meeting up ? And from memory our English guests enjoyed the hotel for staying
Hail Hail
ernie,
Only at a guess mind, but I think that Arafat, and the PLo had let them down up till then, combined with the upsurge in radical Islamists
lilys
One of the most under rated bands.
Great music.
SOAL
Smashing Bunny men
Billy Bhoy recognises unmitigated class
HH
Dream, can’t believe it took me that long to remember the chorus!
Denia Boy
Bloody Hell!
Thoughts and prayers with you and your cousin and her family.
Thoughts and prayers with all the victims of such a tragedy.
DeniaBhoy,
So sorry to hear that, thoughts and prayers with you and family
lilys
Chavez
12:54 on
17 July, 2014
Good old Jim Murphy. You could have asked him about his membership of Labour Friends of Israel and how they are the British lickspittles for the Israeli apartheid regime.
Aw FFS gie it a rest.Another clown with blinkers on.Thousands of Christians being killed in Africa,because of their religion,but not a word said.Instead we have the mob jumping on the latest bandwagon.
Do you really know anything of Hammas?.
Do you really think they are poor freedom fighters,defending the Palestinians?.
Hammas are a Al Quaeda/extremist Muslim Party,whos sole doctrine is the extermination of Israel.No peace talks,no negotiations.Not a lot left there then.
Defending the Palestinians?.
Hammas have been firing 100/200 missiles into Israel every day for years.The fact that the rockets dont really do a great deal of damage,is of no great comfort to the people within their range.Its not Palestinians who are firing the rockets,its Hammas.
They fire the rockets,then retreat to civilian areas,hide among the innocent.
They love to parade the bodies around the streets,for the sake of the cameras.All propaganda.They dont give a toss for the cannon fodder they are burying.
Why not an uproar about the Taliban,murdering thousands,subjugating women into slavery,depriving their own people of the most basic of civil rights.
ISIS in Iraq,weaving a pattern of destruction throughout Iraq,slaughtering thousands.
The Al Qaeda divisions in Western Africa,killing thousands of Christians in a vicious onslaught,halted a bit,by the French.
No,no one wants to hear about Christians being murdered.Much easier to jump on board the Anti Zionist bandwagon.
I have every sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza.They are being used as cannon fodder by Hammas.It wont stop.
I never heard once on this blog about Serbian murderers,or Croat butchers during the Balkan war.Very selective it seems on here who we decry.The 2 million dead in Rwanda seemed to sail over all the bloggers heads.Not a word spoken.I could go on,as you well know,but I am dismayed to know that attitudes wont change.Israel is the “Fashionable Baddy”at present,and the feeble minded will follow anything fashionable.
Denia Bhoy, Edel and all who knew her are in my thoughts tonight, as are all involved.
deniabhoy
22:39 on 17 July, 2014
Devastating news for the Byrne family
Thoughts and prayers with Edel, and the entire family
Ernie
Did my last post touch a nerve?
The reason groups like Hamas have come to the fore in the mid east is because Israel, the USA and others did not make peace with secular left leaning groups in years past. It is a pattern repeated across the mid east and parts of africa. Of course that goes back to the cold war but also the powerful Zionist lobby in the US and europe.
We are living with the legacy of the cold war and the ongoing disproportionate power and influence of Zionistd and their fundamentalist christian allies.
In the meantime palestinians pay the heaviest price; oppressed at every turn. We can bleat all we like on the web – whatever the reasons palestinians are being slaughtered in their hundreds this week.
Turkeybhoy
22:50 on
17 July, 2014
Chavez
12:54 on
17 July, 2014
Good old Jim Murphy. You could have asked him about his membership of Labour Friends of Israel and how they are the British lickspittles for the Israeli apartheid regime.
Aw FFS gie it a rest.Another clown with blinkers on.Thousands of Christians being killed in Africa,because of their religion,but not a word said.Instead we have the mob jumping on the latest bandwagon.
Do you really know anything of Hammas?.
Do you really think they are poor freedom fighters,defending the Palestinians?.
Hammas are a Al Quaeda/extremist Muslim Party,whos sole doctrine is the extermination of Israel.No peace talks,no negotiations.Not a lot left there then.
Defending the Palestinians?.
Hammas have been firing 100/200 missiles into Israel every day for years.The fact that the rockets dont really do a great deal of damage,is of no great comfort to the people within their range.Its not Palestinians who are firing the rockets,its Hammas.
They fire the rockets,then retreat to civilian areas,hide among the innocent.
They love to parade the bodies around the streets,for the sake of the cameras.All propaganda.They dont give a toss for the cannon fodder they are burying.
Why not an uproar about the Taliban,murdering thousands,subjugating women into slavery,depriving their own people of the most basic of civil rights.
ISIS in Iraq,weaving a pattern of destruction throughout Iraq,slaughtering thousands.
The Al Qaeda divisions in Western Africa,killing thousands of Christians in a vicious onslaught,halted a bit,by the French.
No,no one wants to hear about Christians being murdered.Much easier to jump on board the Anti Zionist bandwagon.
I have every sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza.They are being used as cannon fodder by Hammas.It wont stop.
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Turkeyboy – Are you Mark Regev ?
Evening Timland from a stiflingly hot hun free mountain valley.
Just logged on to say……………
Dearie me
HH
Then I saw DeniaBhoy’s post.
Sad sad news.
Thoughts with your family.
HH