Last week a tip-off from a friend sent me scurrying up to the Victoria Bar in the Partick area of Glasgow. No they weren’t giving away free pints of Tartan Special and packets of cheese and onion square-shaped crisps but better still there was to be had a selection of Sunday Post beermats depicting Scottish Football Legends. It’s an exciting life being a collector…….
Memories of the Tennents Lager 1978 World Cup squad collection came flooding back as I entered the hostelry at 11.03am that Friday. The friendly bar staff were kind enough to help me locate seven different mats – I think their view was ‘Let’s help this joker out then we can get on with serving normal customers’ – with the Magnificent 7 being Willie Miller, Danny McGrain, Billy Bremner, Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish, Denis Law, and…….Andy Goram.
Whit? Jings, Crivvens and Help ma Boab as they say in DCThomson-land. Now I don’t know how many mats are in the set and I recognise that the term ‘Legends’ can be subjective but to have Andy Goram as No1 ahead of Jim Leighton and Alan Rough is just not right in my opinion. What next – Daphne Broon as an English Premier League ‘Good-time Girl’?
Truth is, what I really want is the creation of some ‘new’ legends – Scotland’s Euro class of 2016. I want to stare through the bottom of an empty beer glass and see the likes of Scott Brown staring back at me – from a celebratory beer mat that is. I want my spare room walls adorned with alcohol-scented cardboard memorabilia of Craig Gordon, Alan Hutton, Darren Fletcher, Shaun Maloney, Steven Naismith, Ikechi Anya etc etc etc. To echo what a frustrated Isa once bellowed in an episode of ‘Still Game’ – I want an orgasm!
Oops sorry about that, I got a bit carried away there. Hurry up Georgia-Game, the wait is killing me….
Robert Marshall
First posted on Facebook August 14th 2015
The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine 
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