Sportsound Watch

[The Ginger Prince]

Spiers is an arsehole. I listened to it this morning and he completely misunderstood everything mclaren was saying.

Waffling on about how his laddies can play other sports, that's not the fucking point.

Pressley going on about academies as well that had no relevance to the discussion.

I was actually fuming listening to it, neither of them have got a fucking clue.

[Dunning1874]

I've not had a chance to listen to the programme yet, but I've got a lot of respect for Andy McLaren and I'm looking forward to hearing it. A guy who had a lot of problems of his own making but has put the work in to turn his life around and is always willing to speak frankly about his past mistakes in the hope it stops others making them. You'd hope the likes of Garry O'Connor and Derek Riordan who completely fucked their own careers through stupidity would look at him as an example to follow.

I'm not keen on going down the 'real football person' cliche route as there are plenty of people who've worked in the game their whole lives who don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about when it comes to issues like youth development and reconstruction - dinosaurs like Alex Smith, Billy Brown - but someone who speaks as frankly and honestly about issues as McLaren, who is also outwith the usual group of ex-players and out of work managers who regularly appear in the media, would be quite refreshing to hear.

On the abuse he got from fans, obviously you expect footballers to take stick but looking back at it I don't think I appreciated at the time just how vitriolic it was. I was 14/15 when McLaren was playing for us, he was one of our best players and was a well-known character, so of course opposition fans targeted him was how I viewed it, just part of parcel of football, but looking back some of the junkie stuff really was extremely over the top and it's no wonder he cracked a few times. He got it especially bad at Somerset Park due to his Kilmarnock connections. When you consider the guy was dealing with depression as well, it's no wonder he struggled to cope.

[ayrmad]

3 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

I've not had a chance to listen to the programme yet, but I've got a lot of respect for Andy McLaren and I'm looking forward to hearing it. A guy who had a lot of problems of his own making but has put the work in to turn his life around and is always willing to speak frankly about his past mistakes in the hope it stops others making them. You'd hope the likes of Garry O'Connor and Derek Riordan who completely fucked their own careers through stupidity would look at him as an example to follow.

I'm not keen on going down the 'real football person' cliche route as there are plenty of people who've worked in the game their whole lives who don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about when it comes to issues like youth development and reconstruction - dinosaurs like Alex Smith, Billy Brown - but someone who speaks as frankly and honestly about issues as McLaren, who is also outwith the usual group of ex-players and out of work managers who regularly appear in the media, would be quite refreshing to hear.

On the abuse he got from fans, obviously you expect footballers to take stick but looking back at it I don't think I appreciated at the time just how vitriolic it was. I was 14/15 when McLaren was playing for us, he was one of our best players and was a well-known character, so of course opposition fans targeted him was how I viewed it, just part of parcel of football, but looking back some of the junkie stuff really was extremely over the top and it's no wonder he cracked a few times. He got it especially bad at Somerset Park due to his Kilmarnock connections. When you consider the guy was dealing with depression as well, it's no wonder he struggled to cope.

Never underestimate how much Andy gains from speaking frankly about his past, it used to absolutely drain me mentally as I had so much emotion of all kinds wrapped up in sharing my story but I derived a tonne of benefit every time I shared.

He just couldn't handle it from Ayr fans, I don't ever remember the abuse having anything other than a detrimental effect on his game against us.

 

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

I've not had a chance to listen to the programme yet, but I've got a lot of respect for Andy McLaren and I'm looking forward to hearing it. A guy who had a lot of problems of his own making but has put the work in to turn his life around and is always willing to speak frankly about his past mistakes in the hope it stops others making them. You'd hope the likes of Garry O'Connor and Derek Riordan who completely fucked their own careers through stupidity would look at him as an example to follow.

I'm not keen on going down the 'real football person' cliche route as there are plenty of people who've worked in the game their whole lives who don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about when it comes to issues like youth development and reconstruction - dinosaurs like Alex Smith, Billy Brown - but someone who speaks as frankly and honestly about issues as McLaren, who is also outwith the usual group of ex-players and out of work managers who regularly appear in the media, would be quite refreshing to hear.

On the abuse he got from fans, obviously you expect footballers to take stick but looking back at it I don't think I appreciated at the time just how vitriolic it was. I was 14/15 when McLaren was playing for us, he was one of our best players and was a well-known character, so of course opposition fans targeted him was how I viewed it, just part of parcel of football, but looking back some of the junkie stuff really was extremely over the top and it's no wonder he cracked a few times. He got it especially bad at Somerset Park due to his Kilmarnock connections. When you consider the guy was dealing with depression as well, it's no wonder he struggled to cope.

I listened to it in full this morning, having just caught the tail end of the live broadcast on Monday.

McLaren really was quite impressive.  He did have something to say and came across as entirely credible.

 Football clubs for kids are very structured and organised now.  They rely on worthy volunteers and there is more emphasis on coaching and development.  That's all welcome, but the reality is that it's not accessible to everyone.  Payment is by direct debit and there perhaps is something in it, that if not 'middle class' is reliant on being part of an employed, relatively affluent mainstream.

Schools are belatedly becoming aware of the need to remove financial barriers in trying to close an ever widening gap.  McLaren is recognising the need to do similar in football if its transformative power is to be fully unleashed.

I generally like Spiers, but I'm keen to hear his stupid sounding response.

[Malcolm Malcolm]

14 hours ago, King Dom's Moustache said:

Spiers is an arsehole. I listened to it this morning and he completely misunderstood everything mclaren was saying.

Waffling on about how his laddies can play other sports, that's not the fucking point.

Pressley going on about academies as well that had no relevance to the discussion.

I was actually fuming listening to it, neither of them have got a fucking clue.

I'm sure his laddies are great but unlike most Scots lads they can do whatever the f**k they want which is probably how it was for Graham too. I still like the guy though - he has good intentions. 

[Monkey Tennis]

19 hours ago, Malcolm Malcolm said:

Spiers has a real soft spot for the middle class. I distinctly remember him describing private school bigot Chris Graham as refreshingly bright and articulate, i.e. upper middle class. That worked out well for all parties. 

Was Chris Graham a public schoolboy?

That's some waste of an expensive education.

[Malcolm Malcolm]

9 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Was Chris Graham a public schoolboy?

That's some waste of an expensive education.

Yeah, he's an utter twat in a whole variety of ways.

[Monkey Tennis]

I'm several days behind,  but I heard the Spiers/Pressley one today.

Sweet Jesus, as an exercise in point missing, it was truly top notch.

I don't think the discussion was helped by the silly tabloid billing of how we might be missing out on the next Dalglish.  That was a throwaway remark from McLaren and was utterly beside the purpose of what he does.  His raison d'etre is not to unearth a superstar, but is to improve lives that could use his input.

However, the pitch of the story led Spiers down a path of arguing against some non existent drive to reverse the slum clearances.  He was maybe right in that it's not a notional 'working class' that is now disenfranchised.  The issue though is that it's still a significant constituency and its exclusion is thoroughly unjust.  I think he realised what a twat he'd come across as when messages came in, and he did some backtracking re poverty.  The fact that he'd already prattled on about his own kids' opportunities to play tennis and rugby did render him a bit of a fool in the discussion though.

But Pressley took idiocy to new, previously undocumented levels.  He honestly could not see a discussion about abject poverty and what football based projects could do, in any terms beyond those related to the development of professional footballers.  It was genuinely embarrassing.  His slow, deliberate delivery had never conned me into thinking he was as clever as he does. It had perhaps though, masked the fact that he's actually pretty thick.  A bewildering performance that's kind of depressing.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Monkey Tennis

[IrishBhoy]

I remember Andy McLaren playing football and taking a lot of stick, all the 'junkie' chants, but what did he actually do to deserve that, I'm too young to remember it? Did he actually take heroin or was it just a case of fans jumping on drug taking and calling him a junkie? Because you could level that accusation at about 50 percent of footballers in Scotland these days. 

 

I remember bumping into the Wolves team when they had their Christmas night out in the golf lounge in Glasgow and they were all on the gear, Fletcher dressed as Big Bird from Sesame Street included. They were never out the cubicles in there. 

[Dunning1874]

6 hours ago, IrishBhoy said:

I remember Andy McLaren playing football and taking a lot of stick, all the 'junkie' chants, but what did he actually do to deserve that, I'm too young to remember it? Did he actually take heroin or was it just a case of fans jumping on drug taking and calling him a junkie? Because you could level that accusation at about 50 percent of footballers in Scotland these days. 

He was banned while playing for Reading in 1999 after testing positive for cocaine and cannabis, never used heroin. He was an alcoholic, after Reading sacked him the PFA in England put him through rehab and he sorted himself out. He revealed late on his career that he'd been sexually abused as a child and turned to drink and drugs as a coping mechanism; he went through therapy to deal with that and depression, he's been sober since about 2000. Within a year of getting out of rehab he'd won a Scotland cap and was playing in Europe.

As an aside, before going public about the abuse as a child, he told Jim McInally, who was his manager at Morton at the time. He revealed that he was still on medication to deal with depression which arose from what happened to him and wanted to open up to his manager, both to ready himself for potentially being more open about it in the future and just to have someone he trusted within football to talk to about it. McInally's response was to give him the cold shoulder then release him via a phone call a few weeks later with no pay off despite the fact he'd played enough games to automatically trigger a contract extension under the terms of his deal. The next time you see some puff piece in a tabloid saying how nice Jim McInally is and how everyone in football respects him, remember that he's actually a despicable, shameless b*****d.

[Hammer Jag]

I never knew that about McInally. What a scumbag. Much the same as Jimmy Calderwood ostracising a depressed player when he was at Kilmarnock.

[ayrmad]

52 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

He was banned while playing for Reading in 1999 after testing positive for cocaine and cannabis, never used heroin. He was an alcoholic, after Reading sacked him the PFA in England put him through rehab and he sorted himself out. He revealed late on his career that he'd been sexually abused as a child and turned to drink and drugs as a coping mechanism; he went through therapy to deal with that and depression, he's been sober since about 2000. Within a year of getting out of rehab he'd won a Scotland cap and was playing in Europe.

As an aside, before going public about the abuse as a child, he told Jim McInally, who was his manager at Morton at the time. He revealed that he was still on medication to deal with depression which arose from what happened to him and wanted to open up to his manager, both to ready himself for potentially being more open about it in the future and just to have someone he trusted within football to talk to about it. McInally's response was to give him the cold shoulder then release him via a phone call a few weeks later with no pay off despite the fact he'd played enough games to automatically trigger a contract extension under the terms of his deal. The next time you see some puff piece in a tabloid saying how nice Jim McInally is and how everyone in football respects him, remember that he's actually a despicable, shameless b*****d.

I'm pretty sure Andy found the right person to aid him in his recovery, IIRC he found someone heavily into 2 fellowships(GA,AA)  that he could confide in and unburden himself, my memory isn't the greatest so apologies to Andy if I've got him muddled up with another former footballer.

McInally unwittingly did him a huge favour, what good would anyone derive from sharing with someone who's not equipped to help and probably running away from their own demons at that point.

Edited March 25, 2017 by ayrmad

[Monkey Tennis]

47 minutes ago, Hammer Jag said:

I never knew that about McInally. What a scumbag. Much the same as Jimmy Calderwood ostracising a depressed player when he was at Kilmarnock.

Yes, it reminded me of that too.

The macho nonsense in football is pretty resilient.

[Hammer Jag]

Thankfully it's looking likely that Calderwood will never work in football again. Although it's nice to read him bleating to the papers about how he can't understand why no club will take him on every once in a while.

[Malcolm Malcolm]

5 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

He was banned while playing for Reading in 1999 after testing positive for cocaine and cannabis, never used heroin. He was an alcoholic, after Reading sacked him the PFA in England put him through rehab and he sorted himself out. He revealed late on his career that he'd been sexually abused as a child and turned to drink and drugs as a coping mechanism; he went through therapy to deal with that and depression, he's been sober since about 2000. Within a year of getting out of rehab he'd won a Scotland cap and was playing in Europe.

As an aside, before going public about the abuse as a child, he told Jim McInally, who was his manager at Morton at the time. He revealed that he was still on medication to deal with depression which arose from what happened to him and wanted to open up to his manager, both to ready himself for potentially being more open about it in the future and just to have someone he trusted within football to talk to about it. McInally's response was to give him the cold shoulder then release him via a phone call a few weeks later with no pay off despite the fact he'd played enough games to automatically trigger a contract extension under the terms of his deal. The next time you see some puff piece in a tabloid saying how nice Jim McInally is and how everyone in football respects him, remember that he's actually a despicable, shameless b*****d.

That's absolutely disgusting. What a piece of shit McInally is.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Malcolm Malcolm

[Miguel Sanchez]

On ‎19‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 19:15, Dubford don said:

There would be no need for it if sevco weren't so sensitive about the truth,the bbc should just totally ignore any game played at snake mountain.

@DA Baracus

[M0rtonfc]

The interview with Andy was excellent, very honest throughout. I felt Kenny Mac was decent with his questions and handled the interview as well as he could, he's excellent with the 1 on 1 interviews.

Andy will always be highly regarded in my eyes for the stint he had with Morton, he could just open up and change a game when you least expected it. It was amazing to hear about him going to rehab and then a year later was winning a cap for Scotland, I totally forgot about all of that, fair play to Craig Brown.

I really like Speirs but he was way off the mark with this one, I think he realised himself at one point that he was being a total arse.

[Monkey Tennis]

6 hours ago, M0rtonfc said:

The interview with Andy was excellent, very honest throughout. I felt Kenny Mac was decent with his questions and handled the interview as well as he could, he's excellent with the 1 on 1 interviews.

Andy will always be highly regarded in my eyes for the stint he had with Morton, he could just open up and change a game when you least expected it. It was amazing to hear about him going to rehab and then a year later was winning a cap for Scotland, I totally forgot about all of that, fair play to Craig Brown.

I really like Speirs but he was way off the mark with this one, I think he realised himself at one point that he was being a total arse.

They've got McLaren and Spiers on together this week.

I hope they don't try to make it into some daft head to head.  I'd anticipate that instead Spiers will be pretty sycophantic in stating his admiration.  He's intelligent enough to know that he made an arse of it last week.

[Hammer Jag]

28 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

I'd anticipate that instead Spiers will be pretty sycophantic in stating his admiration.  

"Andy's a great guy. I find him a fascinating character." - his favourite line before he goes on to criticise someone.

An absolute weasel of a man.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Hammer Jag

[ayrmad]

2 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

They've got McLaren and Spiers on together this week.

I hope they don't try to make it into some daft head to head.  I'd anticipate that instead Spiers will be pretty sycophantic in stating his admiration.  He's intelligent enough to know that he made an arse of it last week.

Spiers will look a fool if he tries to get one over McLaren as it's hard to beat someone who talks with openness and honesty.