My own path through the football ranks was quite an unusual one. My first school was St Anthony’s Primary School in Govan, a rather old fashioned building – the toilets were outside and had no roof! – with a playground bounded at the top end by the gable end of a tenement building. That particular gable end gave me one of my best memories as a kid. The year above me were holding a cricket ball-throwing contest and one laddie’s throw slammed into the wall about five feet off the ground, the first time anyone in the history of the school had managed such a long throw.
Everyone was cheering like mad but suddenly the celebrations were cut short as cracks appeared in the plaster covering the outside of the wall and then big bits of the stuff fell off! Needless to say, sports day was abandoned! Continue reading