{"id":287121,"date":"2023-09-10T22:22:38","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T22:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsloveme.com\/?p=287121"},"modified":"2023-09-10T22:22:38","modified_gmt":"2023-09-10T22:22:38","slug":"legendary-commentator-archie-macpherson-on-footballs-oldest-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsloveme.com\/soccer\/legendary-commentator-archie-macpherson-on-footballs-oldest-rivalry\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary commentator Archie Macpherson on football&apos;s oldest rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Legend of the commentary box Archie Macpherson on the pain, pride, hate joy of covering football&#8217;s oldest rivalry as England head to Hampden Park for latest chapter against Scotland<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Legendary\u00a0commentator Archie Macpherson recalls class 1977 Scotland win\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>The Scottish fans famously invaded Wembley after the 2-1 victory over England<\/b><\/li>\n<li><strong>Scotland meet England on Tuesday in a 150th anniversary match at Hampden\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t a classic. Just Kenny Dalglish, scrambling the ball past Ray Clemence at Wembley in 1977, in a way that warranted no mention in either of the striker\u2019s subsequent autobiographies.<\/p>\n<p>But it is a measure of the deeper, existential significance of the fixture for those north of the border that the goal \u2014and Scotland\u2019s 2-1 win that day \u2014 still resonates so deeply for the man who has interpreted, assessed, and commentated on England v Scotland more than anyone else.<\/p>\n<p>Dalglish was leaving for England that summer, to replace Kevin Keegan at Liverpool, and, like many Scots, Archie Macpherson felt the sting. \u2018A native born, who had oodles of talent, was going away from us,\u2019 he reflects.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018And there was also the sad inevitability of it. The sad inevitability that somehow the whole commercial, professional trend meant a talent like that would always now go south.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>A haunting image in Macpherson\u2019s biography of Jock Stein \u2014 one of the broadcaster and writer\u2019s 10 books, chronicling his life in sport \u2014 captures the great manager at the top of the steps of East End Park, Dunfermline, watching Dalglish head down them to play his last game for Celtic on August 10, 1977. \u2018It\u2019s like a father watching his son disappear,\u2019 Macpherson says. \u2018That expression of Stein\u2019s might have expressed that of Celtic and the wider Scottish support.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272493-12502227-image-a-38_1694377066984.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Archie Macpherson, the legendary commentator who&#8217;s seen countless England Scotland games in his broadcasting career\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272495-12502227-image-a-39_1694377071776.jpg\" height=\"421\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Scotland fans take to the Wembley pitch and break the crossbar after 2-1 win over England\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272491-12502227-image-a-40_1694377075906.jpg\" height=\"353\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Archie Macpherson was covering the game in 1977 and recalls the scenes in London that day\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So, Dalglish\u2019s Wembley goal in Scotland\u2019s victory brought a particular sweetness that year. \u2018It was as if he was pickpocketing the culture he was about to make his living in,\u2019 Macpherson relates, with a broad smile.<\/p>\n<p>And then, of course, came that day\u2019s riotous aftermath. Dalglish, who had also popped a ball between Clemence\u2019s legs to score the previous year at Hampden, describes how the Scots \u2018took England and their pitch\u2019 but there was a lot more to it than that. Scottish fans fanning out across the turf, clambering onto the Wembley crossbars and breaking them, in one the most iconic scenes the 150-year-old fixture has ever known. Macpherson, commentating on events, was with those fans in spirit when his English BBC superiors issued instructions on how the moment should be captured for the TV audience.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I\u2019m surrounded by my English BBC colleagues, who were like elders of a church, watching this awful display,\u2019 he relates. \u2018It was a class thing. Middle class English, tut-tutting about this. There was one voice in particular who said \u201cput the boot in.\u201d By which he meant, \u201cget the cameras close in and show them at their worst.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I was very uncomfortable with what was going on. I witnessed hooliganism amid the Scottish support from the mid-1970s; wanton hooliganism. But I found myself not wanting to pillage my people.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I think it was almost a tribal thing. My tribe was out there and they weren\u2019t behaving as I wanted them to but I held back from what the producers wanted me to say. I let the scenes speak for themselves and let people judge for themselves.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>They were his tribe because of an upbringing, among the east Glasgow tenements of the Shettleston district, \u2018two closes away from Tommy Docherty\u2019, which steeped Macpherson in Scotland v England \u2014 a fixture around which the entire Scottish football culture seemed to be constructed.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018That culture was purely to bring England down \u2014 every time we played against them,\u2019 he says, in a secluded corner of the Glasgow Station Hotel, where many of a Tartan disposition will gather tomorrow before kick-off at Hampden.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We had Wembley \u201cclubs\u201d, where working class men docked their wages over two-year periods to be able to afford a bus down to Wembley. We would go out and see them going away to Wembley \u2014 waving them off as if they were troops going to the front. The whole of the area came out to see off the two \u201cWembley buses\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In a sense, football was presenting this duality to us, of giving us expectation and hope and triumph by blinding us also to the other ways we could get out of the humdrum existence we had.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Macpherson, who was still a teacher, working part-time for the BBC, when he covered Stein\u2019s Celtic lifting the European Cup in 1967, also grew up with a sense of football oppression, as he listened to Raymond Glendenning, the BBC commentator, describing the feats of Stanley Matthews, Tommy Lawton, Tom Finney, Raich Carter and Wilf Mannion in cities south of the border, far away.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It was fearful to hear,\u2019 says Macpherson, who is now in his mid-80s. \u2018Fearful. Lawton was known as \u201cthe hammer of the Scots.\u201d When we beat them in 1967, we could say we had beaten the world champions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But I think that more than feeling we were better than England at any one time, the satisfaction we always got was of achieving deflation: of puncturing what we thought were feelings of supremacy over us.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We were part of the levelling down process and of course an English triumphalism was associated with that. We just assessed England in a different way, and of course we loved it.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272295-12502227-image-a-36_1694376913729.jpg\" height=\"460\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Scotland fans are jubilant as the celebrate their famous win over the old enemy in 1977\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272087-12502227-image-a-32_1694376309378.jpg\" height=\"442\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Kenny Dalglish scored in Scotland&#8217;s win and Mcpherson would have many runs in with him over the years\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The mood had changed materially by the era of Dalglish, the Wembley crossbar and all that. Ally MacLeod had become Scotland manager and, buoyed by qualification for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina that England would miss, he played up to a nascent Scottish nationalism that was fomenting at that time. The SNP was flourishing. The Scots who arrived in the capital on the \u2018Wembley buses\u2019 no longer left wreaths at the War Memorial on The Mall, as they once had.<\/p>\n<p>At his pre-match press conference before the 1977 game, MacLeod declared: \u2018I don\u2019t dislike the English, I hate their guts.\u2019 That came back to bite him, just like so much of his hubris.<\/p>\n<p>After drawing 1-1 against hosts Argentina in a pre-tournament friendly, McLeod foolishly declared of the impending 1978 World Cup: \u2018We are potential finalists.\u2019 But Macpherson still loathed the pleasure his English colleagues took in Scotland\u2019s group stage exit.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Having to concentrate on Scotland, as the only UK team there, as an act of sufferance for too many of them,\u2019 he writes in his excellent latest book, the part-memoir, Touching the Heights.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It was a calculated mockery of us Scots who had trooped along willingly behind this man.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>One of the Scottish managers he was coming to know well at that time would have empathised with Macpherson\u2019s abhorrence of the English mockery and they would probably have discussed it at length. That manager was Alex Ferguson, who came to trust Macpherson in a way that made him a sounding board and confidante, invited into the boot room to chew the fat at Pittodrie, as Aberdeen took Scottish football by storm. The friendship extended to Alex and Cathy Ferguson being occasional social companions of Archie and Jess Macpherson.<\/p>\n<p>And then, in October 1986, Macpherson observed on commentary that Jim Leighton had been at fault for at least one of the goals conceded in a 3-2 defeat for Scotland to Belgium. He had thought no more of it until arriving at Easter Road a few days later to cover Aberdeen\u2019s game at Hibernian and wandering into what he calls \u2018the dingy foyer\u2019 there.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Out of the dark dinginess came this fiery figure I\u2019d never seen like this before,\u2019 Macpherson recalls. \u2018Spitting \u201cwhat the f*** do you know about football?\u201d at me and blasting me for the comments I\u2019d made about Jim Leighton.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It went on and on and I have to say I called him names back. I come from Shettleston, you see. I\u2019d had many a fight around the backcourts of Shettleston Road. I was hitting back at him. I gave it him back.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It was very nose to nose, though I don\u2019t think fists would have flown.\u2019 The assistant chief constable of the Lothians Police Force happened to be in the foyer. \u2018He stepped in and told us he would have to take action if we didn\u2019t desist,\u2019 Macpherson relates.<\/p>\n<p>So they did. But it was terminal between them. \u2018We\u2019ve never spoken since,\u2019 Macpherson relates, with a sense of profound regret. \u2018Maybe he (Ferguson) felt I\u2019d strung him along in some kind of way and he\u2019d found me out. Something like that. To this day, it\u2019s a mystery to me. But having said all that, I wouldn\u2019t have missed it \u2014 or any of those days with him \u2014 for all the world.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Some years later, Ferguson, who abruptly dropped Leighton from Manchester United\u2019s team for the 1990 FA Cup Final replay and subsequently sold him, walked into an Italian restaurant near the Macphersons\u2019 home. He embraced Macpherson\u2019s wife but looked through his one-time friend as if he wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n<p>Macpherson brings less explosive relationships to the England\/Scotland story. He came to know Dalglish well before he left for England. Neither party forgot the day that Dalglish, on holiday at the same Menorca resort as him, playfully pushed Macpherson\u2019s wife into the pool. \u2018She couldn\u2019t swim! Though perhaps what bothered her most was it ruined her hair!\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272091-12502227-image-a-31_1694376307144.jpg\" height=\"428\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Macpherson tells stories of clashing with Sir Alex Ferguson when he was manager of Aberdeen<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/10\/21\/75272203-12502227-image-a-37_1694376950364.jpg\" height=\"481\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>England and Scotland renew their rivalry with a clash on Tuesday at Hampden Park\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dalglish could be brutally direct, too. \u2018We were in Chile for a game that was politically controversial because Augusto Pinochet had taken over and the Labour Party was opposed to us going out,\u2019 Macpherson says. \u2018We were by the swimming pool one day and up came this strange guy, perfect English, to talk to us about Chile and how wonderful Chile was. Kenny told him to f*** off! He could be abrupt!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>He knew Graeme Souness less well, as a young player who left for the bright lights of London as a teenager. \u2018He was that horrible expression, \u2018Anglo-Scot\u2019, which is like someone in no man\u2019s land.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Though when he came back to us, he brought a revolution to Rangers, bringing Mo Johnston in as a Catholic player at that club and helping to hammer down the walls of the sectarian divide. He couldn\u2019t give a damn what was said about him. He just went there and did it and maybe he was the only man who could have done it.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Stein, the \u2018Big Man\u2019, was the one he was closest to. Some forget that Stein went south, too, to manage Leeds for what would be only 44 days, in 1978. During that brief period, Macpherson received a call from an associate of Stein, requesting that he call the manager at 3pm that day. Stein picked up and obliquely asked Macpherson to let it be known that he would love to go home to manage Scotland. Two weeks later, Stein packed a case and returned north of the border.<\/p>\n<p>There is a fundamental reason why Stein lacked the appetite for England that Ferguson, his protegee possessed, Macpherson reflects. \u2018He had decanted much of his spiritual endeavours winning the European Cup in 1967,\u2019 he says. \u2018It was as if he had gone on a pilgrimage himself, touched Mecca and everything by comparison would be humdrum. How could he go to Leeds and win the European Cup? He\u2019d already done it.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The aspirations of Scottish sides to achieve European glory, as Celtic and Aberdeen did, have all but gone because the financial gulf is so vast. \u2018Chelsea are spending \u00a3140m on a player we\u2019ve never heard of and clubs like Hibs, Hearts and Aberdeen are struggling to exist financially. We won three European Cups and thought it would happen again sometime. The chance of that now looks negligible,\u2019 Macpherson says.<\/p>\n<p>But the chance of the national team putting one over on the English is still very much alive this week, he insists. \u2018Football is still happening at the local level, down in the parishes,\u2019 Macpherson says. \u2018You have to say with optimism that \u201cyes, there will be talent from Scotland.\u201d There\u2019s nowhere here that you go and don\u2019t see a football pitch. The love of the game is there. Yes, I\u2019m very confident.\u2019<\/p>\n<h3>IT&#8217;S ALL KICKING OFF!\u00a0<\/h3>\n<p><span>It&#8217;s All Kicking Off\u00a0is an exciting new podcast from Mail Sport that promises a different take on Premier League football, launching with a preview show today and every week this season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It is available on MailOnline, Mail+, YouTube , Apple Music and Spotify<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Your browser does not support iframes.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sport\/football\/article-12502227\/Legend-commentary-box-Archie-Macpherson-pain-pride-hate-joy-covering-footballs-oldest-rivalry-England-head-Hampden-Park-latest-chapter-against-Scotland.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legend of the commentary box Archie Macpherson on the pain, pride, hate joy of covering football&#8217;s oldest rivalry as England<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - 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