Opinion

Danny Wilson’s appointment as Glasgow Warriors’ head coach has not been met with universal approval by supporters of the Scotstoun side but the new man has tasted success in club rugby, and on the European stage to boot.

It was one of the best exchanges I can recall reporting on golf because it stemmed from passion and actually left me feeling that my questions were personal rather than posed from a professional standpoint.

Hanging on against Cyprus might well sum up a campaign that grinds to a halt tomorrow against the team from where it began in such shocking fashion eight months ago.

On the morning of England’s 1,000th international breakfast telly was predicting a smashing, positively dashing spectacle, just like in the song about Ascot in My Fair Lady. I thought: aren’t they even going to mention the bust-up between Raheem Sterling and Joe Gomez? They did, right at the end of the report, and maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised it was downplayed because our dear friends in England love a coronation, or as close as football can get to one. Which is pretty close. Remember the big party thrown for David Beckham? I forget what it was supposed to be celebrating. Becks going five consecutive games with the same hairstyle, perhaps. Or eight games played from a standing position. Or the highest number of times he was first to jump on a goalscorer, literally piggybacking on the man’s fame to ensure his own prominence in the back-page photos. Or the highest number of times a goal was shown and bloody shown again – his last-minute free-kick against Greece.

Maybe it is these feverishly political times, but a slogan of feckless former prime minister Theresa May kept coming to mind watching Scotland squeeze out a 2-1 victory in Cyprus. Hard-working families with nothing much to spare she described as “just about managing”. In ensuring back-to-back wins for the first time in Steve Clarke’s seven-month tenure, it certainly was a case yesterday of a hard-working Scotland just about managing.

It’s not difficult to choose the highlight of my early years in journalism. Cub reporters on weekly newspapers
in my day were ambulance-chasers and hopefully still are. They cribbed, from village notice-boards, breathless intimations of bring-and-buy sales and the names of the soon-to-be-married. If your shorthand was up to it you might be trusted with the district court’s litany of scuffles and kerfuffles which had “disturbed the lieges”. So, yes: most memorable day? The opening of that tyre and exhaust centre in Restalrig, Edinburgh – no question about it.

Mid-November, and excitement about the European Cups should be taking a grip. Clubs will usually have had half a dozen or more league matches to get their season properly underway. It’s not quite like that this first European weekend. The shadow of the World Cup lies over the tournaments.

As honeymoon periods go, Steve Clarke’s start to life as Scotland manager has been the equivalent of a wet weekend in his native Saltcoats.

This international break sees Alfredo Morelos seeking to further his ambitions as the heir apparent to Colombia’s greatest-ever striker, Radamel Falcao.

A report in The Times newspaper yesterday claimed that bungled calculations by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs were responsible for Rangers’ slide into liquidation in 2012. The report was novel in one respect – the arresting conclusion at which it arrived would appear, in itself, to depend on an unfortunate helping of bungled interpretation.

Let's begin this article with the men's national team before quickly discarding them.

Allan Preston enjoyed a decent football career. He played for Dundee United and Hearts and distinguished himself in Perth with a good St Johnstone side.

Talk about it being tough at the top. Bob MacIntyre finishes joint 17th on his World Golf Championship debut, backs it up by claiming a share of seventh position in a Rolex Series event, picks up more than £200,000 in the process and yet still drops six spots to 13th in the Race to Dubai.

The other morning Glasgow woke up in a state of delirium. Celtic triumphed stupendously in Europe and then a few hours later Rangers followed suit. In Sauchiehall Street, a member of the Copland Road cognoscenti spotted an aesthete in a hooped shirt. They sprinted towards each other, chest-bumped, fell over, picked themselves up, counted their sovvy rings, hugged passionately – then the Rangers man cradled the face of the Celtic man, stroked his cheek tenderly as he would a babe or a pitbull pup, and sighed: “I love you, you love me, whae’s like us, by the way?” OK, maybe not, but the victories in the Europa League were real, thrilling and deserving of acclaim. Meanwhile at the exact same moment Edinburgh woke up in a state of delirium but a different kind. Not the delirium of ecstasy and rapture but the delirium of dementedness and derangement.

An item on the whereabouts of the much-missed sign at the Gorgie Road end of Tynecastle in this space a couple of weeks ago seems to have struck a chord.

The decision by World Rugby’s Independent Disputes Committee to fine the SRU £70,000 and demand an apology from its chief executive Mark Dodson’s intemperate remarks concerning the possible cancellation of Scotland’s vital match against Japan isn’t, sadly, likely to be the end of the affair.

Halfway up a flight of stairs at Tannadice, within an area not much bigger than the six-yard box of the pitch outside, currently exists a treasure trove.

Michael O’Neill has earned the chance to do whatever he pleases so the surprise from some quarters at his decision to take over at Stoke City won’t concern him.