The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

No doubt some newspaper used that title after the taking of this contrived photo of Tommy Docherty and his Merry Band of “Scotchmen”.
This photo is taken from the Denis Law book ‘My LIfe in Football’, which I held back from yesterday.
The line-up is Tommy Docherty with his assistant manager Pat Crerand mucking about with the bagpipes and then going from left to right. It’s Alex Forsyth, Martin Buchan, George Graham, Denis Law, John Fitzpatrick and finally Willie Morgan. Including Docherty and Crerand they have an impressive cap count of 173.
John Fitzpatrick was the only uncapped player and generally throughout United’s glory years of the late 60’s he was a bit part player but he still racked up almost 150 games for the Red Devils. He would be familiar to card collectors from the early 70’s as he always seemed to turn up in the Scottish A&BC sets. However, John retired early from football due to arthritis at the age of 26.
Scots would come and go at Old Trafford under the Doc and you do wonder if some like Lou Macari and Jim Holton ducked out of this photo session or was this before their time. Ted MacDougall probably had already left at this point but the likes of Joe Jordan, Gordon McQueen and Stewart Houston would appear quite soon and coming through the ranks would also be Arthur Albiston.
Sadly, nowadays there are very few Scots at Old Trafford never mind in the rest of the EPL, however young defender and Scotland under -21 Donald Love made his first appearance a couple of weeks ago; so maybe there’s hope yet.
Finally I leave you with the wise words of Pat Crerand as quoted from the book; “You tell me any sensible person who knows one end of the bagpipes from another! Tommy Docherty could have played them okay, because he was always full of wind. If he told me it was sunny outside, I’d go out and check the weather.”