LAWWELL MAY FOLLOW LENNON OUT OF PARKHEAD

BY ANDY RITCHIE

I WAS spot on when I was the first to reveal that Neil Lennon would be leaving Celtic.

Followers of No Grey Areas were tipped off weeks ago that Lennon was poised to quit. Now I believe a second high profile figure may soon follow Lennon out of Celtic Park – chief executive Peter Lawwell.

The majority shareholder Dermot Desmond wants Roy Keane as Lennon’s successor and I believe that could hasten Lawwell’s departure.

Why do I think that? My gut instinct is that Keane wouldn’t be Lawwell’s preferred choice. Keane doesn’t strike me as the sort who is prepared to compromise and take instructions. I also get the distinct impression that when he sets his mind on doing something, he’s unshakable.

Lennon was Lawwell’s man. Keane is Desmond’s and I suspect there would be an inevitable clash of personalities.

It’s no secret either that Lawwell has been touting himself for high-powered chief executives roles with Premiership clubs. He was keen on the Arsenal job and there have been one or two others.

So, watch this space, and remember who told you first when there are further changes at the top at Celtic.

To be honest, I do think Lawwell really wanted to do more to try to persuade Lennon to stay. I believe he had already made his mind up that next season would be Lennon’s last and it suited him when the manager announced he was quitting.

No great effort was made to persuade Johan Mjallby to stay and it was made clear that other changes were required in the coaching staff, including Garry Parker leaving.

I reckon Lawwell thought the treble was a gimme, given how little pressure there is on Celtic at the moment domestically.

Lawwell expected a clean sweep of honours and losing to Morton in the League Cup and going out of the Scottish Cup to Aberdeen constituted major disappointments.

So, no great effort was made to keep Lennon. Significantly, there has been no gnashing of teeth or wailing from within in the wake of the announcement.

At least that was the feeling I got and I am sure Lennon read all the signs and reacted accordingly.

But if he’s honest with himself, he’ll probably reflect that he should have acted sooner when his stock was at its highest in the wake of Celtic beating Barcelona and qualifying for the last 16 in the Champions League.

If Keane does get the job I expect he’ll shake the place up and the fact that there are no credible challengers to Celtic’s dominance in the SPFL and Rangers are still stumbling around in the wilderness would probably make the transition fairly straightforward.

But while Desmond would be quite happy to see Keane in charge, I don’t think Lawwell would share that feeling.

Lennon was Lawwell’s man and he had to put up with a lot. Keane does not fit into the same category, in my opinion.

But, let’s be perfectly frank, the Honey Monster could move into the Celtic dug-out at the moment and be expected to win the treble.

But,  judging by their initial reaction to the news, whether the fans feel the same way about Keane is a different matter entirely.

IAN BROADLEY: AN APPRECIATION OF A FINE JOURNALIST

BY JIM BLACK

SCOTTISH sports journalism has lost one of its few remaining characters following Ian Broadley’s sudden death at his home in Aberdeen. He was 72.

Ian, from Dumbarton, was a newspaper man of 50 years standing and, during his time as the Herald’s golf writer, reported on all four major championships as well as the leading European Tour events and local championships.

He was also employed by the Daily Record in Glasgow and the north east as a football writer for more than 20 years after graduating from local newspapers to the news desk of the Scottish Daily Express in the early 1960s.

Immediately prior to joining the Herald, Ian also worked for the ill-fated Sunday Scot newspaper, which closed after just a few months. In more recent years he operated as a freelance sportswriter in his adopted city of Aberdeen, reporting on the Dons for several national newspapers.

During his long and distinguished career, Ian covered Aberdeen’s most successful years under Sir Alex Ferguson and, prior to that, Eddie Turnbull and Billy McNeill.

Know as “Bonesy” or “Broads” to his closest colleagues, Ian was a larger than life character famous for his fiery temperament which brought him into conflict with football players, managers, golfers and colleagues in equal measure. Mercifully, his bark was often worse than his bite and underneath his at times gruff exterior beat a generous heart.

Ian never minded putting himself out to accommodate colleagues visiting Aberdeen and enjoyed sharing a drink and exchanging stories with them. But woe be tide those who crossed him. They were not easily forgiven, if Ian believed he was the victim of injustice.

A man with strong principals, Ian’s spats with various football managers are the stuff of legend and earned him the respect of his colleagues and those involved in the game.

He was once famously challenged by the then Aberdeen manager Eddie Turnbull to settle their differences behind Gleneagles Hotel on the eve of the 1967 Scottish Cup final. There is no record of blows being thrown, but the incident highlighted Ian’s refusal to bow down to those in authority if he felt he had been wronged.

Sir Alex Ferguson recalled: “I had many arguments with him over the years but I could never get angry. I never fell out with him which says a lot when you consider my battles with the press.”

A talented golfer himself with a low single figure handicap at his peak, Ian was a member of Murcar Golf Club.

Paul Lawrie, the former Open champion, said: “I have known Ian for a number of years. He covered golf quite a bit when I first went to America after winning the Open and I got to know him.

“He also played golf at Deeside, where I play with my boys when I am at home, and I used to see him out playing in the evenings. He was a good journalist for a long time so we will miss him.”

Always good company and a man of wit and a rare ability to laugh at himself, Ian was a member of both the Association of Golf Writers and the Scottish Football Writers’ Association.

He had genuine warmth and he was a loyal and supportive colleague and friend, and in an age when new technology has replaced many of the previous working practices, he remained an old school type of reporter with the ability to ask the right questions and elicit a response.

Ian will be sorely missed by all those who knew him. He is survived by his widow Margaret and his sons John and Gavin.

NO GREY AREAS MAKES NEW SIGNING

NO GREY AREAS has made an exciting new signing...17-year-old freelance sports journalist Ben Palmer.

Ben’s Blog will be a regular feature and is the young voice of the website.

So, who is Ben Palmer?

Brought up in Buckie, Morayshire, Ben began covering sports from as wide a geographical area as Wick to Wigtown – before he was the legal age to drive.

A keen golfer, Ben hopes to one day cover both golf and football on a regular basis, but says his sports mind is not as narrow as may seem. His passion is greater for writing on sports of all varieties, rather than just watching his two preferred.

He started sports writing at the tender age of 13 – covering the Highland League – but has continued to climb the metaphorical ladder and has written for an array of Scottish national newspapers, including The Press & Journal, Sunday Mail and The Times.

So far in his career he has won “The Herald and Daily What News Schools Journalist of the Year 2012” and was also selected as part of the Future News event in Glasgow, 2014. This event rounded up 100 young journalists from across the Commonwealth and taught the fundamentals required in modern day journalism.

Having only just completed his Secondary education at Buckie High School – at which he was Head Boy in his final year – Ben is about embark on a four year University course before, hopefully, sculpting a career writing the back pages of newspapers.

Meantime, don’t miss his weekly blog, starting with his frank assessment of the state of Scottish football at the top level.

BY BEN PALMER

LA LIGA  and the Barclay's Premier League. Arguably the two top leagues in world football quality wise; certainly from an economic dynamic.

Questions have been raised on the ethics in either of these leagues recently. Man City look set to be fined 60 Million Euros for breaching the Financial Fair Play regulations, whereas Spain's crippling problems with racism continue to increase.

Beneath the blurred surroundings in which these leagues are played though, is still the fundamental trait mandatory for the top football leagues in the world: excitement.

Atlético Madrid won their first league title since 1996 – on the last day of the season in a winner takes all affair with Barcelona – and Manchester City won the English edition in similar circumstances, defeating West Ham. Not quite in the Hollywood style climax La Liga enjoyed, but a fitting finale nonetheless.

Essentially, these two leagues continue to flourish, continue to captivate and ooze excitement year after year. The spectators of each are lavished with sheer quality continuously.

In Scotland, however, we are being told that we have just experienced the most exciting season in years. That seemingly positive comment is merely a sad indictment of our nation’s number one sport.

The game, according to some, is blossoming, all because neither Celtic nor Rangers partook in a cup final.

Sure, it's great that we've been treated to St Johnstone winning the Scottish Cup and Aberdeen the League Cup - two formidable tasks - but the assessment that this is portraying this past season of Scottish football as being exciting is laughable.

The début Scottish Premiership season was a sham. Celtic being engraved as champions could have been done last summer, and Hearts were always condemned to relegation having to toil through a season with a bunch of teenagers and a 15 point deduction.

The main trophy in Scottish football never even had realistic potential to conceive excitement. The two most important positions in the league table had been determined before the leaves had started to drift off the trees; the period in the season where a team’s potential should become recognised.

Whilst Dundee United displayed sprinklings of their now recognised youthful zest, it didn't really matter at all in the context of the league – they would never win it.

Their developing of young Scottish talent did plant a seed of hope for the game as a whole, but their parabola of a second half of a season – rounding off with a Scottish Cup final defeat - means that we must wait longer to see it produce the desired results.

Admittedly there was tension, excitement for a pessimist, at the bottom end of the league. Hibs downfall and tussle with Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock for the relegation play-off place grabbed attention.

But does that mean a season of Scottish football has been exciting because one of the biggest clubs in the country has sunk in a manner of Titanic proportions? Absolutely not.

Teams tussling for the league title is exciting; teams having a hope of escaping relegation is exciting; our clubs battling it out in Europe is exciting - Hibs having a bunch of incompetent footballers does not constitute exciting.

With this, I am not saying Scottish football is in an inescapable cul-de-sac. It is the proclaiming of this past season as the most exciting in years that I must refute.

Scottish football has perhaps enjoyed a better year; Aberdeen fans being thrown back to the 80's was a fun period, and Motherwell's steadiness is reassuring, but we must let the game reach its peak before we jump on our stallion and shout from the roof tops.

Will we remember the dogged battle Hibs have fought in 10 years time? Probably not. Will we remember La Liga's most thrilling conclusion in a decade? Absolutely.

Let's just settle ourselves down and leave the superlatives to the games that deserve it. With the progression we are currently making, it may not be long before we merit it ourselves.

MCINNES NOT FIT FOR FERGIE'S SHOES JUST YET

By Bryan Cooney

THIS somewhat deranged world of Scottish football is occasionally predisposed towards wild exaggeration.

The Highland News, for instance, recently reported that Inverness CT manager John Hughes had drawn comparisons between his prolific striker, Billy McKay, and the little guy employed to do similar business for FC Barcelona: Lionel Messi.

No, this is not a misprint. You imagine McKay pulling the duck-feather duvet over his head when he read that one. Can you imagine the stick he received when he next popped that head around the dressing room door at the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium?

Anyway, a similar form of hyperbole was employed in Aberdeen recently when Stewart Milne and some of his acquaintances from the business community toasted the club’s League Cup victory.

Now, aside from an impressive flourish of solidarity from over 40,000 fans, it had been a less than convincing conclusion at Hampden. The Dons just about crawled over the line, extra time and penalties being required to deny the muscular challenge of the aforementioned Inverness.

Yet the jubilation within Milne, no doubt encouraged by the massive turn-out in the city for the homecoming, was unconfined. I understand he astounded his chums by announcing that, in Derek McInnes, he’d found a manager who belonged to the same league as Alex Ferguson.

That statement put the chairman so far over the top that he effectively joined the space race. Had he totally lost his senses? Or, might he have been positively pixilated at the time of speaking?

Whatever, some form of empathy certainly can be distributed towards the man from Alford: he has experienced several torrid years, forfeited a sizeable chunk of his £400 million fortune and, it was whispered, come close to business oblivion.

His record as a football leader, meanwhile, has been so impoverished that it was comparable with the UK’s annual performance in the Eurovision Song contest. Eight managers in 19 years: that’s infiltrating the pedigree of real estate owned by the likes of Daniel Levy and Rod Petrie.

Still, with economic growth encouraging legitimate expectations and the building empire and bank balance rapidly replenishing themselves, Milne at last had discovered a man who certainly knew his way around the sporting block.

But does the fact that McInnes has won a League Cup and finished third in the Premiership, comprehensively outflanked by Celtic and marginally by Motherwell, mean they’ll be singing loud hosannas in the Granite City from here on in? It’s a possibility but some way from a probability.

Does it mean it’s acceptable to mention McInnes and Ferguson in the same sentence? No, it’s not. Listen, it’s impossible to imagine anyone taking such a claim seriously. Least of all the pragmatic McInnes.

However, there is a suggestion that the dual winner of the Manager of the Year awards is already fashioning himself in the image of the great man.

He appears to have adopted the unfortunate trait of phoning up those journalists who are not tuned into his personal wavelength. Anyone daring to query his tactics or his choice of playing personnel are liable to be in receipt of an assault of the auditory system.

Last week, it’s claimed that the phone lines between Glasgow and the South were particular busy. Radio pundit Allan Preston seemingly voiced his reservations about McInnes winning the manager awards and was rewarded with a few minutes of vituperation. From what I hear, Preston, alias The Biscuit, insisted on biting back.

Look, this is not a campaign on behalf of the media - its representatives are robust enough to look after themselves. But just remember, despite what many fans think, most of those reporters do their jobs as objectively and honestly as possible. Most of them are inveterate fans themselves.

But how robotic would we be if there was agreement on every citizen’s lips? This country still preserves its reputation as a democratised society: it is not Putin’s Russia, And, because of that, everyone is entitled to their beliefs, even it if conflicts with others.

Perish the thought that anyone should be stripped of his or her opinion by any football manager, no matter his status.

Many fans are unlikely to agree with these observations because of an inherent dislike of the media, But the habit into which McInnes is falling is ill advised, Taking issue in this manner tells you a lot about a man. It represents hubris and arrogance. But it can also suggest insecurity and paranoia.

None of these things look good on the figurative C.V. of an ambitious young thruster. And I suspect this young man is bristling with ambition.

Now, I introduced myself very briefly to McInnes at Sunday’s football writers’ dinner. I was immediately impressed. He’s a clean-cut, articulate figure who has taken on the good work initiated by Craig Brown and Archie Knox and directed the team onto the next platform.

Most fans have bought wholeheartedly into his style, after their initial suspicions. The popular mantra has now become: In McInnes We Trust. There remain a few worrying issues, however.

Being a Dons fan for 60 years and more, I told him that I was a great admirer of his team. I could have said a lot more had the situation been more appropriate. Asked him a few questions.

For instance, who recommended that Calvin Zola should ever wear an Aberdeen jersey, and how much research went into that signing?

Why was Gregg Wylde discarded with such haste and so little explanation?

Why is the lone striker system persevered with at home, when invariably there are two rows of double-decker buses parked just in front of the opposition’s penalty area? Why does he seem reluctant to alter tactics when a stalemate ensues?

Don’t misinterpret matters. I’m not anti-McInnes. Far from it. Overall, he’s performed so much better than most of his predecessors. A welter of fine work has been achieved and a smile is returning to the faces of the people of Aberdeen. But these faces are mercurial by nature.

Last Sunday, the Dons threatened to sweep Motherwell into the North Sea. By doing that, they’d have finished second in the Premiership. Ultimately, they were denied by a refereeing blunder of the first order, so they were left in third spot.

This was the last game of the season and it’s traditionally a festive occasion where players celebrate with the fans. But, five minutes after the final whistle, there were almost no Aberdeen fans with whom to celebrate.

McInnes should take that on board. The wind is firmly in his favour at this moment. He should harness it effectively rather than trying to fight it.

WHY LENNON HAS RUN OUT OF OPTIONS

By Andy Ritchie

SO, now the annual skittle competition that’s called the Scottish Premiership is over for another season, the questions will inevitably begin.

In fact, they began in my house this morning when a teaser was thrown at me: did I expect both Neil Lennon and Derek McInnes to be with their respective clubs next season?

A long intake of breath was needed over the cornflakes. I replied that I’d only expect one to be there. My questioner was relentless. Which one? If I were given one of those hard-earned pounds that Aberdonians seem to swear by, well, I’d put it on McInnes being at Pittodrie next season.

But, as for Lennon being at Celtic Park? I think not. I’d imagine he’s looked at the equation and decided: “I’ve got to get out of here - it’s time to move on.”

The noises that he may want to go have been flying about for some time. I suggest they will become more prevalent now that the title race has been copper-bottomed with that runaway victory over Partick Thistle.

So I think it’s just a case of playing the countdown game. Who could blame him for looking down the road? Hey, he’s left a legacy by joining the select managerial band of Willie Maley, Jock Stein and Gordon Strachan, who had won three or more titles in a row.

But trying looking for reasons why he should stay is another thing altogether. Anyone who recognises their onions know that, without Rangers in the mix, everything is a hollow victory. Lennon will recognise that better than anyone.

He’ll also recognise the fact that times have changed and there’s a whole different ball game going on with Celtic these days, And it’s official. It’s gone public. In the old days, it was an accepted fact that the Charlie Nicholas and Kenny Dalglish types of this world would eventually play in England. But it was never mooted in public.

Now it’s been discussed openly that the policy is to bring in good, under-the-radar young players, get them developed before selling them on for as big a profit as possible. You’ve got to look at it and say it’s the state of Scottish football. And it’s also the state of Celtic.

You hear from some quarters claims of an upsurge in the game. Really? Well, up at Aberdeen, for instance, there’s a guy who wasn’t good enough to play in the first team last season and who in fact was loaned out to St Johnstone.

It’s now being stated that Peter Pawlett’s an absolute certainty to be playing in England in six months. Yeah, he couldnae get a game for them a year ago and they were undecided if they wanted to keep him. Now he’s the new Willie Miller, or, to put him more in context, Eoin Jess.

So, I’d imagine for the benefit of Neil Lennon and his career as a manager, it would be beneficial for him to be looking at the bigger picture. And that, I’m afraid, is England. There’s nothing radical about that, though, He’s done four years and they’ve generally been good years.

Things have changed for him. It’s only natural if you’ve been in a job this length of time that the rough edges have been knocked off. In Lennon’s case most of them have gone, even if some took a while to disappear.

I think the change in attitude could be traced back to the time he was attacked at Tyne castle - and also the time they beat Barcelona and had a decent run in Europe. That escalated his worth to the football world.

And I think people were making suggestions to him then that it might take a different type of managerial mindset for him to get a job down in England. That’s when the rough edges began to disappear.

It was like he was saying to himself: “If I do have any aspirations as an individual, these issues need to be addressed.” And I think that’s been his purposeful plan as Celtic manager ever since. And, in fairness to him, he’s done very well.

Perfection is nearly impossible, of course. You hear him being interviewed by local reporters in Scotland and then by those from down South. There’s a marked difference for the better, as far as the latter is concerned. Look, it’s not that he’s so much more refined, it’s just that he’s more acceptable to the masses. I sometimes wish he’d add those little touches up here as well.

I remember at the Aberdeen game at Pittodrie when Celtic’s winning streak ended. If he’d put on the diplomatic hat that he wears for the international media, it would have been better. As it was, he was less than complimentary about Aberdeen. A wee bit more humility was required in that situation.

But, on the whole, I think the changes in his character have been for his well-being. Whatever, if and when the day arrives that he makes a move down South, it might be beneficial to him if he leaves a couple of pieces of luggage behind him.

Would he be successful in a far more competitive division? I see no reason why he shouldn’t be. He probably has a head start on many others who are coming to the Barclays Premier League from abroad. He has a grounding in England, knows the game and also the aspirations of the supporters - unlike some who have gone there recently.

Look, when you went to manage in England years ago, it was a 25-piece jigsaw. Now it’s a thousand piece affair and remember you’ve got to put all those pieces together. I don’t see why Lennon can’t make a fist of it down there. Father Time, of course, is the only man who will tell.

HAS THE McGINN BOBBLE BURST?

By Andy Ritchie

NOW that their League Cup euphoria has been exhausted, fans of Aberdeen FC are perhaps entitled to ask: whatever happened to Niall McGinn?

The Northern Ireland forward was a bit of a performer last season, with 21 goals to his eternal credit. In reality, he was just about the Dons’ only goal-scoring option.

The difference this season has been next door to astounding. Yes, he’s managed to stockpile nine goals so far, but a study of their chronology makes for slightly more disturbing reading.

Three of these goals came early on in the campaign. Then he went 11 games firing blanks, before securing another six from eight attempts. Cue another serious famine: up until the League Cup Final, he had gone 14 domestic games without embarrassing the opposing goalkeeper.

Last Sunday, the chance to be a hero arrived all over again when, late on in normal time, he rounded an Inverness CT defender and discovered the goal virtually at his mercy. The ball, unfortunately, seemed to bobble and the chance was squandered.

A certain fairytale became a possible nightmare, and some people were left wondering whether his bubble, or bobble, had finally burst.

The bacon rations were only saved by the fact that the Dons clawed their way to victory on penalties in front of 43,000 of their magnificent fans. Significantly, McGinn was not one of the four penalty takers.

Now, I wouldn’t wish to sound like a wise man after the event, but I predicted to anyone who would listen last summer that Niall would find it difficult, if not damned impossible, to scale such goal-scoring heights again.

He has never been what I would consider to be a natural goal-scorer. He is sometimes a scorer of great goals, but not a great goal-scorer.

His career with Celtic and Brentford, however, has always suggested that he prefers to be out wide. And in recent games, I’ve noticed that he often retreats into areas 30 to 40 yards from goal. These can be comfort zones for some players, but they’re not the natural habitats of born strikers.

I can’t abide the term “one-season wonder” because it’s too trite and probably a bit insulting. But sometimes it conveys at least a little bit of the truth. Is it possibly applicable to McGinn? I would say that if he ever scores 21 goals again, most of them would have to be from the penalty spot.

Not that this somehow transforms him into an ordinary player. He is far from that

My point is that you must possess a certain mindset to be a scorer. Go back in history and you find it everywhere. Denis Law had that certain something. Joe Jordan, too. Andy Gray and Joe Harper - they were around when the gifts of arrogance, courage and confidence were handed out.

Coming up to date for a second, Billy Mackay has it - forget that missed penalty kick on Sunday, and Stevie Mays is also blessed with it. And I know I bloody well had it.

In my senior career, I received many compliments. Jimmy Homes, my colleague at Morton, used to say I was the coolest man in the penalty box. Dundee United manager Jim McLean said I came close to genius.

Seriously, though, I used to think about scoring goals before every game and I didn’t mind how they came about. I remember being farmed out to junior club Kirkintilloch Rob Roy at 16 from Celtic.

I was partnered by a guy called Jimmy Murphy, who’d scoot around like a burst hose pipe. He provided the sweat and the graft and all the activity that leads up to the scoring of goals.
At one point he put a cross into the box and there was I, standing with my back to the goal. It didn’t matter - the ball went into the net via my arse! Trying calling that cool!

I only played 17 times for Rob Roy before I was recalled to Celtic. But those were times I needed to score. Like against Vale of Leven. I was a boy - and we were facing a team of full grown men - yet I scored five times in a 7-2 victory.

Listen, I don’t know what I did for Jimmy Murphy, but I know what he did for me and I still appreciate it. Don’t know if his appreciation comes my way, mind. Maybe he’s sitting someone sticking pins in my doll right now!

From what I know of him, Niall is a nice guy. He’s not a problem player with an outsize ego. Goals or not, he makes valuable contributions to the team, with his link-up play and his passing, and as far as I know, his commitment to the cause is not in doubt.

But he’s sort of made a rod for his back in many ways. He doesn’t need to be a goal machine, but he’s got to get into that mindset of old, restore his confidence and get back to the basics of where he was when times were good. I’m sure his manager, Derek McInnes, will provide encouragement for him in this way.

So, too, will those magnificent fans. What a show they put on last Sunday. And I would hope that they turn out in massive numbers this weekend when Aberdeen face Kilmarnock. They should welcome their team home in style.

A return to McGinn goal-scoring form would suit them admirably. I imagine that the player longs to place the cherry back on his cake. I don’t know if what happened to him last season came as an almighty shock to him: a bit of a thunderbolt.

But I’d love to see more from him. And if he wants the best advice available about how to get himself back on that standard, then he needs to look no further than Joe Harper, a true Aberdeen legend.

How many goals did Wee Joe score in his career? Google tells me it was 232. And I tell you this: it was all about hard work.

He didn’t score as many as that by cracking jokes with centre-halves.

My best advice to Niall McGinn would be to sit down for half an hour with Wee Joe and soak up any advice he offers. If anyone can put him right, it’s Harper.

JUST FORGET THE FOOTBALL - COME FEEL THE NOISE!

By Bryan Cooney

THE ascent to Area 410, Row N, Seat 12 of Celtic Park’s North stand Upper might have been acceptable to a man possessing not only the lung power of a Chris Bonnington but his mountaineering pedigree.

This old guy, without having the benefit of either, was consequently looking for an oxygen tent only a couple of minutes into the climb. The compensatory factor was reaching the summit and finding himself besieged by a red and white bedlam.

Two important points were proved. Firstly, 43,000 Aberdeen fans, 150 miles from home, were demonstrating that if Scottish football is close to self immolation, then the North-east obituarists have yet to be notified.

And secondly, joy of joy, those roistering, raucous, rambunctious fans seemed intent on ridiculing the indictment that they suffer badly from inhibition and indeed are dedicated rustlers of sweetie papers.

Hey, legendary producer Phil Spector once nurtured what was described as the Wall of Sound, an impenetrable, multi-layered onslaught of orchestra-inspired music that monopolised the senses and the pop charts in the early 60s.

He should have been in the East End of Glasgow on Sunday afternoon to record something that came very close to his concept of noise. This was one that steamrollered the senses; one that you could almost touch; one that made you inordinately proud to be an Aberdonian.

Now, I have pursued the fortunes of this wildly idiosyncratic team for 65 years. I have never heard anything like this before - even on a night of Pittodrie mayhem which I shall come to in due course.

Suddenly, all supporter sacrifice made sense. The myriad tears, disappointments and disaffections were forgiven and forgotten. And this, you should note, was before the League Cup Final between the Dons and Inverness CT had even begun.

My youngest son had kindly bought the tickets for this match and wouldn’t accept payment. The largesse extended to a pie and a soft drink. Was this his way of repaying me for introducing him to Aberdeen FC at a fairly early age?

But let’s go back to those 65 years: if this promised to be an occasion for nostalgia, I determined to indulge myself. I remembered the 1949 day my dad took me to Pittodrie for the first time.

Soon, he was wishing he hadn’t troubled himself. How do you constrict the conduct of a venturesome four-year-old who was fascinated by everything aside from the football?

I heard Dad complaining about someone fiddling. I began looking around, perhaps expecting to see a string quartet of string violinists in the immediate vicinity.

My father became agitated, possibly because of the home team’s shortcomings, most probably because of my finite attention span, and soon he’d had enough. He grabbed my hand and marched me down the stairs of the main stand. As far as I know, he never called in at Pittodrie again.

But sometimes it takes only one visit to be infected with the football virus. And so, when age permitted, I became a Pittodrie regular. I began to identify heroes and there was not a fiddler among them.

Their names adorned my autograph book: Jackie Hather, of the double shuffle, Paddy Buckley, Harry Yorston and ultimately Graham Leggat. They won the First Division championship in 1954-55 with a manager called Dave Halliday. They added a League Cup victory a year later with a new man at the tiller: Davie Shaw.

In spite of this success, we were destined for the football boondocks. This didn’t deter a few young men from Aberdeen Academy. Guys like Ivor Finnie, Gordon Donald, John Dingwall and I decided we would join the official supporters’ club, which comprised a handful of men from another generation and a couple of highly emancipated women.

The chairman, a lovely yet intensely garrulous guy, had a serious speech impediment and if you were in the front row at a meeting, you had to duck, bob and weave, like a professional boxer, to avoid taking direct hits from his saliva.

You required dedication to be in our small gang. Our red army didn’t even constitute a platoon as it made its way all over Scotland kitted out in red and white caps and scarves. We even bought ourselves blazers and badges at a later, more sophisticated, date.

Campbells, of Bon Accord Square, provided our transport and, normally, one bus was sufficient for our needs. Our travels were not without incident, however: we left Ibrox one year with a hail of stones bouncing off the framework of the bus; we retreated from Kirkcaldy severely depleted of our numbers. 

A Cup defeat proved unpalatable; the local police unforgiving.
On another Cup adventure, this time under the managerial stewardship of Eddie Turnbull, we took a respectable following to Easter Road, and only a last-minute equaliser secured us a replay at Pittodrie.

By now, I was working in the Press & Journal editorial but was granted a night off. I squeezed myself into the Merkland Road end as 44,000 rolled up that Wednesday evening.

The crowd groaned collectively as it was announced that the pugnacious Ernie Winchester would be playing. They changed their minds when he scored twice.

Winchester, who died only last year, was an inspiration, but not as far as Hibs centre half John Madsen was concerned. He later informed anyone who would listen: “Tonight I met a madman!”

But pay attention, if you will, to that figure of 44,000 on a hysterical night in March of 1967. It brings me back to the hysteria of Sunday and the pretty surreal fact that 43,000 of my ain folk had converged on Glasgow to ostensibly take over the city.

The football game began, but to call it a game is taking a liberty with the English language. Thankfully, as far as this person was concerned, it was over fairly quickly, not of course before nails had been gnawed to the bone and penalties had been missed (by Inverness) and converted (by my heroes).

But as we prepared to leave Celtic Park, my eyes were drawn to the seats immediately in front of us and a little boy clad, like his father, in red. He was bright-eyed and pumped full of mischief, sticking his tongue out at anyone who looked his way.

It was pretty obvious that he hadn’t been paying a blind bit of notice to what was going on down on the pitch. What a good judge he had been!

He can be forgiven. Perhaps this was his first football match. His initiation. Play was so puerile that perhaps he was looking for a fiddler in the roof the stand, just to take the edge off the boredom.

There again, maybe, just maybe, he’d caught the virus that makes professional football so compulsory - the one that infected me 65 years ago. I wondered whether he’d still be supporting his team in the year 2079.