TERRY' S ALL GOLD
|
TERRY' S ALL GOLD:
Here we are into another year and what does it hold for the Fir Parkers??
I really don't get carried away with all this reconstruction lark, you can alter the system
every year but it won't bring in capacity gates the cockeyed way people look at football in
Scotland is alt against a fair structure. Everything is geared towards Celtic and Rangers as
long as the media continually brain wash everybody in a double act that reflects everything
about a country's view on their major sport. So many things are written and spoken about the
poor state of Motherwell FC. but the major reason there is no sustained challenge coming out of
Fir Park is because people will not come out to support their local club. It is not only the
massive amount of money generated by big crowds at the loathsome two's games but also the
intimidation felt by all the other teams. I always attempt to try to understand why somebody
who lives in Motherwell and supports the despised Glasgow two, and when they play Well that
person then shouts against their local club. That type of person, who is everywhere, is making
the rich more wealthy and the likes of his or her local side struggling to survive, it beggars
belief. My idea of a new set up is the same as those expressed by Graham Barnstaple in his
programme article recently, a 16 team league is badly needed as meeting teams four times a
season, perhaps even more, is crazy. A pyramid system, similar to that in force in England, is
the answer, the one thing wrong down here is that Premiership hogs all the wealth. That is why
I am against Scotland's "breakaway" idea, everybody in the game of football should be in it
together, every town, village etc, who have people willing to give up a big slice of their life
and always have as their aim the betterment of players and supporters.
So many clubs have made massive progress through English pyramid; ground wise and also in
playing standard. Money generated at the top should filter all the way through the game.
Amalgamation is another thought, it sounds a good idea but not one that I like. Football is all
about passion for your own club. Why should one town lose its team and join up with another one
miles away just because the hypothetical questions says that you would get bigger crowds with
fewer clubs. I have first hand experience and it does not work out like that. When our local
Leamington club and ground folded it seemed natural that support would go else where to watch a
game. Not so, when someone has given a life time of support to their club they are not interested
in any other, that's what happened with most of Leamington's supporters.
My great love affair with Motherwell had been with me most of my life so that still sustained my
football interest but I have never watched any football locally since Leamington stopped playing
in 1988. Someone at that time told me to go and watch Coventry only 10 miles away, my short,
sharp answer was NOT INTERESTED. Something similar had happened to me as a boy in 1937,
Leamington Town, playing on the same ground as the Leamington club who finished in 1988, became
defunct. They played in the Birmingham Combination and had won that League ten years previously
and were a top midland club but lack of support landed them in financial trouble and so ended a
club who's history dated back to 1889, throughout which many trophies had been won. One of
England's top wing halves, George Green, a local lad from Leamington had started his career with
Town and went on to play for Sheffield Utd and win a cup medal in 1925. He played many times for
England , once against Scotland the year before the Wembley Wizards game. He also played against
Well's George Stephenson in an inter League match in 1927. Little did I know that the inter
League game of that year would have two players who would become my first two favourite
footballers.
George Green came back to Leamington for three years as a player/manager after his successful
spell of 10 years with Sheffield Utd., that's when my Dad started taking me to matches with
George of course being a big favourite. 1937 came and so ended George's career and Leamington
Towns. Coventry City bought the ground, named the Windmill because of a windmill standing close
by, for their third team. The town tries to get help from Coventry but no such luck the local
club had always rented the ground from the owners of the land but could not meet the many
financial demands needed to run a semi-professional club, so along came Coventry and bought the
ground. They owned the ground up until the War when they sold it to the Lockheed factory who
were situated across the road from the ground. My Dad and I never went to a match at the
Windmill while Coventry played there, as I wrote previously when your local team dies something
within you goes also. Amazing how just after the demise of Leamington Town another football club
sprung out from the football fixtures in the newspapers and Dad's pools coupon, yes that name
was MOTHERWELL and another George came into the frame, George Stephenson, little did I know that
in 10 years time I would meet him. Two men who I found out were a credit to their clubs and
country, Georges Green and Stphenson.
The biggest cancer in the game today is the grotesque wages being paid out from top to bottom of
this so called sport, even in the lowest echelon of football players want money to turn out for
a football club when in the past they would have been happy to pay their subscriptions to get a
game. Same as the some directors who take massive amounts of money out of the game through
shares where in the past directors put their hands in their own pockets to help run the clubs at
the top end of the game that just doesn't happen nowadays. How about the biggest comedy act in
football today, Rangers and Gascoine - I hear that Gascoine has been fined by the club for his
latest crazy act. Fining the idiot with his mountains of money is surely the biggest joke yet.
A kick up the backside out the exit door would be the answer. In fact the exit door out of
Scottish football for Rangers and Celtic would be like a breath of fresh air to the game, the
bigotry associated with these two stinks like a sewer.
Terry Willoughby
