High times at University but football is the drug

So after my short sojourn to France I now return to setting the scene for my Road to Wembley from Scotland 2016-17.

As we left it I had just started at Stirling University in September 1975. My love of all things football and cup football in particular had wained. I had discovered progressive rock music and cannabis resin and football seemed a bit passé. I have just looked up the Scottish Cup from 1975-76 and although my beloved Hearts reached the final that season, the whole thing passed me by as I spent the whole season in a drug soaked stupor. I am pretty sure that the only football match that I attended that season was the England v Scotland game at Hampden Park in May 1976. That was scary ! At this time I still considered myself to be more English than Scottish and I went to the match with a fellow Stirling University student from Teesside David Hodgson. We kept pretty quiet as there was a lot of anti English sentiment about at that time, but when England opened the scoring we made the mistake of cheering. We soon realised we were the only ones in the Rangers end at Hampden that afternoon who did so. About 20 Police made their way up the terracing through the crowds towards us. I was looking round to see where the trouble was behind us. When they reached us they surrounded us for our own safety. Just like an opposition defence when Will Grigg is on fire I was terrified. I looked straight ahead but I could hear the voices: “c’moan oafficer – yur a fucking Scotsman tae – pit the fuckin boot in!”. Scotland equalised and early in the second half Dalglish famously scored the winning goal by putting the ball through the legs of Ray Clemence. The Police dispersed and the same guys who had been ready to do us in offered us whisky from a hip flask, asked where we were from and kindly showed us what a Scotsman wore underneath his kilt.

Season 1976-77 passed me by in a similar way as the previous season. However, the student lifestyle had caught up with me and I was asked to leave the University in February 1977 having failed all my December exams plus the re-sits and come back in September to repeat my failed semester three. For eight months I worked in temporary jobs in the civil service and enjoyed working and returned to Stirling University ready to do the small amount of study that was needed in the late seventies to pass a University degree course. Working in the real world had also re-kindled my interest in football and although I was still not attending many matches I was following the progress of Hibs and Hearts by reading the sports pages of the Evening News and the Scotsman and then taking part, what I considered to be knowledgeably, in conversations about the beautiful game with my workmates. As part of my new student regime in 1977-78 I was spending more weekends at home rather than on campus with all it’s attendant temptations and started going to football matches again – inevitably with my Dad. At this time we were still going to see both Hibs and Hearts and I was starting to lean towards the Jambos. We did also attend an early round Scottish Cup tie that season. In January 1978 we traveled to the Scottish borders to the village of Innerleithen to see the local non league team Vale of Leithen take on Forfar. Against all the odds the locals won 4-1. I was once again smitten by the romance of the cup and this time the romance was to last a lifetime.

In the summer of 1978 romance of a different type was in the air and I started going out with Anne. We were to be married in June 1979. With Anne living and working in Edinburgh I was spending every weekend in Auld Reekie rather than at Stirling University. My Dad and I had got in to the habit of watching Hibs and Hearts on alternate Saturdays so Saturday afternoons became sacred and you never had to leave Edinburgh to see the match - great. Hearts got relegated that season but I was hooked. Always a supporter of the underdog I loved the hopelessness of their plight as in truth they were down from about February onwards. I also got to know and love the fickleness of the football fan. I recall one Saturday standing in the enclosure at Tynecastle and the hapless Hearts centre forward played a long cross-field pass. As the ball hung in the air it looked as if it was going to fall well short of it’s intended target then it got there partly because the recipient moved smartly towards the ball. The guy beside me hollered “Gibson …. That is fucking ……. (pause) brilliant !!” Despair and devotion within the one short sentence.

In the summer of 1979 my adult life was defined. I was a married man, a graduate, I had a proper job to go to and I was a Hearts supporter …. and the romance of the Cup was back on my agenda.