By Alistair Aird
I love Ally McCoist. In a plutonic, non-sexual way incidentally. I grew up idolising him. He was the poster boy of the Rangers team I watched when I first became intoxicated with football in the late 1980s. In a team laced with legends, McCoist was the main man when it came to scoring the goals that would propel my team through one of the most successful eras in our history.
I grew up in an era when football with your mates was played on concrete, ash or grass, not through a WiFi connection on a games console. And when me and my buddies gathered to batter lumps out of a Mitre Mouldmaster or similar until the streetlights came on, Ally would be the player I would mimic. My domain would be his domain – the 18-yard box– and I would hover around that area trying to poach or plunder a goal or 10 before running off to take the acclaim of the ‘crowd’ I imagined had gathered behind the goal.
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McCoist had a voracious appetite for scoring goals. And he more than satisfied that hunger in a playing career that spanned from 1978 until 2002. His glut of goals exceeds 500, with a total of 434 for Rangers, 27 for St Johnstone, 17 for Sunderland, and 14 for Kilmarnock. And the man who is currently the world’s best co-commentator also netted 19 times in 61 appearances for Scotland. Will this country ever see his likes again? There have been some who have tried to take his mantle in the 22 years since McCoist hung up his golden boots, and although John McGinn recently supplanted him as Scotland’s fifth top male goalscorer, not many Scots have come close to matching his extraordinary figures at club level.
Now an integral part of the TALKsport Breakfast team and a popular co-commentator and analyser for TNT Sports and Premier Sports, McCoist has now become a published author. He has teamed up with the experienced writer Leo Moynihan to pen Dear Scotland: On the Road with the Tartan Army, an aide memoire of his time in the footballing fraternity.
As you would expect, there is a focus in the book on Ally’s 25-year playing career that started in Perth in 1978 and ended in Ayrshire in 2002. Mention is made of his time with St Johnstone, Sunderland, Rangers and Kilmarnock, and there are pages of prose that bring to life his experiences in a dark blue jersey too. And McCoist laces all the tales he tells with the humour and sharp wit that he is synonymous with.
There are stories of getting stitched up by Kenny Dalglish, doing crossword puzzles in Italy with Alan McInally and Stevie Nicol’s rather odd order from room service. McCoist also tells us about how John Spencer used to take the mickey out of Craig Brown and recounts several other tales that show how the international camp camaraderie was developed.
That fellowship forged a bond between the players that helped secure qualification for major championships on a regular basis. And McCoist spends time taking the reader through the highs and lows he experienced at each of them. For example, he missed out on the squad for the World Cup Finals in 1986. He had recently won his first cap, but having been top scorer in the Scottish Premier Division the previous season, he was in the mix for a place on the plane. But he didn’t get a boarding pass even when Kenny Dalglish pulled out injured, Alex Ferguson electing to take Steve Archibald instead.
McCoist, who at the time had a potent partnership at club level with Mo Johnston, talks of being benched for the opening two games in Italia 90, plummeting from what many regarded as first choice striker to fifth in the pecking order by the time we beat Sweden in Genoa. And then there are the two Euros, 92 and 96, with the story having a typical Scottish ending. Ally’s thunderous strike against Switzerland had us on the verge of the knockout stages until a late Dutch goal at Wembley gave us another entry in the capacious ‘so near, so far’ tome that has been penned by Scotland over the years.
In this section and in many others, raw emotion rises from each page as does a deep sense of pride. If anyone doubted what playing for Scotland meant to McCoist, any uncertainty will be firmly put to rest when they read this book.
McCoist makes mention of the array of Scottish talent he has witnessed or played alongside, and also speaks of the reverence he has for all the managers that he played under. In a chapter entitled ‘The Gaffers’, McCoist shares his thoughts on among others, Alex Rennie, the man he credits with changing his career in its nascent days at Muirton Park, Jock Wallace, who literally chinned him one night, John Greig, who made Ally’s granny’s day when he signed McCoist for Rangers, Graeme Souness and Bobby Williamson. There’s reference to Andy Roxborough and Craig Brown too. But there is one ‘gaffer’ that gets more focus than anyone else, Walter Smith.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Indeed, Walter gets his own chapter in the book, and it is one that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure. From the day and hour McCoist locked Smith out on a hotel balcony while representing the Scotland U18s, the pair built a ‘father-son’ bond that saw them share success at Rangers and as part of the management team for Scotland.
The tome doesn’t just cover McCoist’s playing career though. It talks of how he fell in love with the beautiful game and identifies the key influencers in his life from an early age. And it also touches on his experiences when he was part of the Tartan Army in an era of punk rock, a time that witnessed McCoist making the pilgrimage to Wembley, him and his mates fracturing furniture in his mum’s house and heading to Hampden to bid farewell to Ally’s Army before they journeyed to Argentina in 1978. Like many others that he rubbed shoulders with that afternoon, Ally was intoxicated, drunk on the words of the Scotland manager who addressed the nation and told them that the national team would swat aside all before them and be crowned world champions.
I admit that I am a little obsessive when it comes to McCoist’s career. I have dug deep to find data on him, but one thing I learned from the book was that Ally had been in a couple of Scotland squads before he made his full international debut in Eindhoven in 1986. He was called up by Jock Stein and Ally writes about first meeting one of the country’s managerial behemoths, weaving in references to Bill Shankly and Sir Matt Busby too. He recounts a meeting with Sir Matt when Ally was in his playing pomp and tells us how a man who came across as a confident fellow was as nervous as a kitten when he met the great man at Old Trafford.
As the book nears an end, there is an emotional tribute to the Tartan Army. Having been a foot soldier himself, McCoist dedicates some words to those who follow their country with pride, talking about how privileged he was to make that transition from the terraces to the pitch. From his first cap in Eindhoven to his last at Tynecastle, he highlights his highlights – among them are his first goals against Hungary, his header against Greece and his fiftieth cap against Australia – but he often refers to how much he enjoyed bringing joy to those with tartan tammies scarves. It very much reads as Ally is one of our own. Pride oozes from the ink at this point and one thing is certain, Alistair Murdoch McCoist was proud to play for his country.
In summary, if you follow Scotland or indeed football, this book should have pride of place in your library. It has a five-star rating from start to finish. It tells some tales that will make you laugh and others that will make you cry. It talks of the great and the good of Scottish Football and at the heart of it all is one of the best in my eyes.
Well done Mr McCoist. Another impressive string added to one of the most majestic and stringiest bows around.