Rod Stewart couldn’t match Archie Gemmill’s poetry

Archie Gemmill throws his fist into the air following his goal against the Netherlands. Picture: Colorsport/Shutterstock

To any Scottish football supporter of a certain vintage, their first World Cup is like the awkward first love. Not merely never to be forgotten. Seared into the consciousness for the moment that it seemed – following the strung-out courtship, the heartbreak, the angst over it appearing not meant to be – there was going to be the happy ever after. Before dissolution. Archie Gemmill’s slalom-slicing strike against the Dutch in 1978 was all of that.

The goal has become something of a cultural cliche in the Scottish psyche, with its – in all truth – pretty naff evocation in Trainspotting… and all that. Football out of context on the screen forever fails to do it justice.

The flutter in this 52-year-old’s beating chest at the very thought of the wee wiry midfielder’s mastery is triggered by thoughts of the when, why and what surrounding it.

As we are starved of living community during this lockdown, beyond all experiencing it in our different homes, it is easy to forget that so much of what binds used to be delivered in such fashion.

The times spent as a family gathered round the television for Scotland’s games never leave you. Not least when the parents with whom you did so have left you long ago. But, oddly, why Gemmill’s seminal goal stands out personally is for the absence of those family members. And the  reasons for that.

It can be difficult to articulate just how exhilarating it was to live in Scotland as the country prepared for the finals in Argentina. It has been well versed that all of us, not only impresario manager Ally MacLeod, got carried away with the possibilities for our football nation in that tournament. Yet, to be swept off your feet in the way we were then was utterly joyous.

I didn’t only get the Panini Argentina 78 sticker book, but a rival publication with a red cover. You had to lick the backs of the player pictures to press them into it ,and I can still taste that adhesive.

I also collected these magical “heroes” football cards contained in crisps shaped like footballs. You had to rip them out from within plastic wrappers but they always still smelled of the salt and vinegar. They had fascinating biogs of the players on the back and the image of Mario Kempes was as dashing as the man who would light up his home  tournament.

I had the Rod Stewart single recorded with the Scotland squad and containing a couplet so buttock-clenchingly awful as to be stupendous .“Ole, ola/ we’re going to bring that World Cup back from over thar”. Indeed.

I came within a whisker of also acquiring a lifesize cut-out of Kenny Dalglish, pictured, used for a promotion in our local Co-op. I asked if I could get it but a neighbour whose son worked packing shelves in the shop heard they were amenable to releasing it, and he nicked in to bundle it home.

Best of all, though, was me and my brother John getting our first Scotland strips with those big diamonds down the arms that seemed to give you muscles. We dutifully wore them for the first game against Peru, which was awful as a good team skewered Scotland 3-1, then again as they were even worse to scrape a 1-1 draw with Iran.

By the time of the Netherlands game on a Sunday night, which Scotland needed to win 4-1 to progress, my  parents decided to take their time with their roast rather than come through to, what then seemed, an aptly desolate living room.

But John and I refused to give up on the “miracle that is beginning to happen” as David Coleman put it when Gemmill sashayed past Dutch defenders as if he was retaining his balance with the help of invisible ski poles, before caressing a chip in from a tight angle.

Against the aesthetes of the Netherlands, to produce such beauty and grace seemed akin to, at last, being able to take the hand of the all-consuming subject of your youthful affections, and the world outside  simply melting away.

Of course, the crushing reality came within a couple of minutes –it felt like an instant – when Johnny Rep rattled in a screamer from what seemed 40 yards. The other reality is that it suited the Netherlands to lose that night, so the taste of honey that they allowed MacLeod’s men to serve us was probably always destined to be followed down by a helping of arsenic.

These facts are meant to render Gemmill’s accomplishment – in which Dalglish plays a crucial role in drawing away defenders – a “typical” Scotland moment when we wallow, nay, glory  in failure.

Stuff that for a game of soldiers. Archie produced poetry that recalls a couplet just a bit better than Rod’s. For it truly is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.