Ian Wood: Comic capers provide correct choice

Published on Sunday 12 October 2008 23:14

IT IS not a manager the Scotland football team needs, it's a hypnotist. When poor Chris Iwelumo missed his sitter at Hampden Park on Saturday, I couldn't have been the only old-timer who thought wistfully of the sinister but effective Mr Vulcan, who featured in a story serialised in one of the DC Thomson blockbuster crop of comic papers many years ago.

I've a feeling it was The Adventure, but that's just a wild guess. The point is that whichever football team was involved had picked up, from somewhere, a chairman of foreign extraction called Mr Vulcan, who sat in the stands during games, fixing players with his burning eyes and hissing things like "Shoot, you fool", when the occasion demanded. As a general rule, the player being stared at did what he was told.

This ploy seemed to work for the most part but, like all good things, it had its downside and nobody had much time for Mr Vulcan. I can't remember what the downside was, but it must have been pretty dire to turn players and supporters alike against someone who had the power to arrange for goals to be scored whenever he felt like it. The way things are today, he would almost certainly be accorded a warm welcome to most club boardrooms and he would have to be a vampire or a cannibal to incur the wrath of fans if they thought he was able to get the lads sticking away the chances on a regular basis. Fans will put up with a lot to get the old onion bag bulging.

Of course, in Iwelumo's case, Mr Vulcan would have had to be quite specific, for the forward did, in fact, shoot. Mr Vulcan would have had to hiss: "Shoot straight, you fool." Obviously, even hypnotists have their problems and nothing must be left to chance. The details of the task in hand have to be spelt out, lest something vital gets lost in the interpretation.

Actually, when it comes right down to it, Iwelumo did shoot straight, in that he hit it straight along the line on which he was travelling. Mr Vulcan would have had to hiss something like: "Shoot straight, you fool, in such a way that the ball goes between the posts." Then again, he should, perhaps, add "...and under the bar." It will be seen from this that the instruction is beginning to get too long and too complicated for practical purposes. Any more detail would be liable to lead to mental strain and confusion on the part of both player and hypnotist and there's a real danger they'd run out of time before they got it all worked out.

On the golfing front, Ross Fisher could have done with a Vulcan-like presence in his vicinity as he pulled out his driver on the first tee of the Old Course, St Andrews, when he set out on the three-man play-off in the recent Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. Such a presence would undoubtedly have hissed: "Not the driver, you fool, you'll put it in the Swilcan." As a matter of fact, the boys in the television commentary box were almost Vulcanesque in their reaction to Fisher's club selection and had him down to hit the water from the moment he took his first preparatory waggle.

Such was their conviction that he was doing the wrong thing that when his ball, mightily struck, duly took the plunge after a couple of bounds, it came as no surprise at all. It was simply numbing that such a talented golfer had made such an error of judgment. Anything played to a safe area of that generous fairway would have kept him alive and kicking and in the mix with Martin Kaymer and the eventual winner, Robert Karlsson. The whole daft episode had a 'Van de Velde' feel to it, though Fisher at least managed to keep his shoes and socks on.

The Swilcan Burn has collected its share of victims, though not all were put to the sword by the tee-shot. The American, Craig Wood, took the spectacular route when, in the 1933 Open, he committed to the deep a drive of some 350 yards, presumably by way of warming up for the 430-yard monster he buried in a bunker at the fifth during the final round, in which he tied for the championship with Densmore Shute who, playing in a somewhat lower key, polished off his powerful compatriot in a 36-hole play-off with rounds of 74 and 75.

Wood had to bide his time to make his mark in the majors, which he did, emphatically, in 1941, winning both the US Masters and the US Open.

Having exercised my old git's right to get sniffy with young Fisher, I am bound to say this stuffiness is based on sheer envy. I'd give anything to be able to drive into the Swilcan or any other similarly distant waterway.

Of course, there was a lot of money riding on the outcome of that hole, but what a feeling it must be to know you can get that far. In the event that I ever managed it, the hardest part would be to keep the smile off my face as the splash went up.