Cheers, Barry, you deserve better

Kevin McKenna

Even by Scottish football standards it was a swally of Homeric proportions. The Rangers and Scotland captain, Barry Ferguson, accompanied by his team-mate Allan McGregor, started it at last Sunday at 4am and finished around noon. Most of the sessions I've ever been forced to sit through tended to start at noon ...

Not only does Scotland do drinking sessions well, we have also perfected the art of moral outrage. Over the 72 hours since the pair's misdemeanours were revealed, the outpouring of indignation in the nation's public prints and on television has been sickening. The public hanging of this hapless pair makes the Salem witch trial the very acme of justice and objectivity.

Ferguson and McGregor have been handed life bans from representing their country and have been suspended for two weeks and fined by their club. It is believed that neither will ever play for Rangers again. The players compounded their drinking crimes by being pictured giving the V-sign to a battery of photographers who were in their faces before the start of Scotland's match against Iceland on Wednesday night. It was a petulant gesture rather than the gross offence to public decency it has been portrayed as by the scribes and pharisees of the Scottish sporting press, none of whom needs lessons in how to conduct a bevvy session.

It is a shattering blow to Ferguson in particular as he has been a Rangers player from his early teens and was groomed to become a future captain of the club. He is an excellent and thoughtful footballer who plays, at all times, with his head up, looking to make the searching pass. This makes him different from the usual assortment of scufflers and ankle-biters that Scottish football coaches, fans and writers tend to admire.

Ferguson's chest visibly swells with the pride of captaining the club he has followed since childhood and for whom he has always been a polite ambassador until his act of folly last week. Last season, while ignoring a number of injuries, he led his players to a European final, only the third Rangers captain to do so. None of this though was allowed to be entered on his behalf when the hanging judges donned their black caps.

The Tartan Army jeered Ferguson and McGregor when their names were read out at Hampden Park before the match. Presumably they, too, had felt violated at the alcoholic excesses of these players. This from a group of people who rejoice in their reputation for emptying every European city they visit of all available liquor.

Scottish football has a long and proud tradition of booze-drenched incidents, each of which has added to the gaiety of the nation. The finest one occurred in 1974 when the famed Celtic winger Jimmy Johnstone commandeered a rowing boat in Largs at 5am before realising, too late, that there were no oars. He should have been preparing diligently for a match against England. The coastguard had to be brought in and Johnstone looked a bit sheepish at breakfast the following morning. Luckily for the rest of us, Scotland were then managed by a gentleman called Willie Ormond, himself no stranger to the odd glass, and who displayed a sense of proportion tragically absent in our latterday inquisitors.

A few days later, Johnstone duly inspired Scotland to a splendid 2-0 win over the English. He also flashed a very extravagant V-sign at the members of the Scottish press perched high in their Hampden ivory tower and has since been rightly lauded for his justifiable act of defiance.

Barry Ferguson would have flourished under a manager like Willie Ormond and we would have a better international football team.

Taken from the Guardian/Observer