Poetry in emotion

May 24 2009

Slater, Parker, Rae.

Wright, Irvine, Prentice.

Murray, Grierson, Merchant, Moran and O'Hara.

That right there is Falkirk poetry. It flows like Burns, like Keats, like Tennyson. Eleven names dancing off the lips like Nureyev across a stage.

Names I had drummed into me before I could even count to 11. Before I could recite the alphabet. Probably before I could walk.

Eleven legends.

The 1957 Scottish Cup-winning team.

But that's what happens when you win the Scottish Cup. When you become the once-in-a-lifetime of a whole community.

You live forever.

And that's why Saturday's trip to Hampden is - and always should be - more important than any league game a team like mine will play.

Why? Teams like ours win promotion.

Teams like ours are relegated.

They don't win titles, they never will.

But once in a generation they WILL give you something you will remember until the day you die.

I remember the last final in 1997 like it was yesterday - our 7am game of fives on the sun-kissed, dew-covered lawns of Callendar Park, seeing the team off on the bus from Brockville, 500 fans jammed into that three-yard wide corridor down the back of the old stand. Totts in his kilt.

The blazing heat, Paul Wright's dagger-between-your-shoulder-blades winner, Neil Oliver's goal that never was, the lap of honour at the end, the applause from both sets of fans to both sets of players. The mixture of heartbreak and pride at the open-top bus ride through the town right back to the spot where we had been kicking a ball about 14 hours earlier.

And that was a final we lost. How good would it feel to actually win one? The strange thing is, though, even the punters seemed to be suckered into believing that sealing SPL survival yesterday was all that mattered for Falkirk.

The Cup Final was almost like the elephant in the room.

Passion Earlier this week myself and a mate did a question-and-answer gig with the Senior Bairns, a fantastic organisation of more than 100 pensioners who have been watching Falkirk since time began. Every club should have one.

Some of them have been going to games since the 1930s and almost all of them are old enough to have been there the last time we won the Scottish Cup.

Yet they have the same passion for the team now as they ever had. It simply pours out of them.

Which is exactly what you would expect from a group whose bus to away games is affectionately known as Incontinental Travel. We were even graced by the presence of 83-year-old George Merchant, one of Falkirk's scorers in that Hampden win over Kilmarnock 52 years ago.

Yet no-one - and I mean no-one - even so much as asked about the final despite the fact we were 12 days away from going back to the national stadium.

Why not? Because they, like everyone else, have been suckered into thinking football is all about money and never about glory.

How often have you read in the past week or so about the COST of the drop? Two million, right? Between TV dough, sponsors, corporate income, ticket sales, the whole nine yards.

They hammer fear into you with figures like nails into a coffin.

The thing is, though, your bread and butter is all well and good - but I bet you remember the finest meal you ever had with more affection.

Players will never be remembered for surviving one season in the SPL because they will be gone the next. Players will also never be remembered for going down because they, or those who replace them, will always bounce back.

Hell, Jim Jefferies took a great Falkirk side down and was still voted their boss of the millennium. Most of the best memories for this generation of Bairns fans have come in the First Division.

So don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. Don't listen to the chairman or the managing director. Don't listen to the manager or the beancounters.

Faith Pounds and pence have become their religion, the God they worship is the Bottom Line.

That's why the victory for John Hughes and his men against Inverness yesterday was the be all and end all to them.

For those of us whose faith is still simply football, though? Don't choose money, 25-quid-a-go week-in week-out drudge. Don't choose a league you will never win, a flawed system. Don't choose fixture foul-ups or stay-in-your-seat stadia.

Choose the Cup. Choose immortality..