Passion Fruit

A quirk of character perhaps, but the history of Scottish football clubs thrilled Geoff's soul. First, there's the names: Hamilton Academicals, Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Then the scorelines - East Fife 4, Forfar 5 was a favourite - and the beauty of matchdays. The contradiction between the run-down corrugated iron stadias and their surroundings in the majesty of the highlands lured him, time and time again, five hundred miles out of his daily routine. He was a fond collector of anecdotes: in fifteen years he will die, and relatives will discover maybe as many as twenty notebooks packed from cover to cover with stories, hearsay, facts, lies, myths - all relating to the proud, unrepentant tradition of soccer in Scotland.

His favourite story he found one afternoon in a bar on Sauchiehall Street. It involved the Danish coach Alvin Knudsen, at that time responsible for the Glasgow Rangers under-19 squad (this was the age of the foreign coaches - sport science graduates from all over Europe and South America were given prestigious positions high up within the hierarchy of British football clubs, often without background checks and on the evidence of a five minute interview). Anyway, it transpires that Knudsen - so the story goes - was a passionate man with a deep love of Glasgow Rangers. Everything in his house was blue, white or orange (apart from his skirting board, which his wife had painted red after a night on the piss). He staunchly refused to admit of the colour green's very existence. He was extremely proud of his job and even had business cards printed up on a machine at Scotch Corner service station. At every team talk just prior to kick-off he would scream "Forward Glasgow Rangers! Glasgow Rangers forever and ever!!" at his young charges as they headed out the door.

The problem was Knudsen could speak, at best, only fractured English. In moments of passion, therefore, he invariably preferred the Danish tongue. The thing is, apart from Knudsen, no-one involved with the day-to-day running of the Glasgow Rangers Under-19s could understand a word of Danish. An intimidating man, at over seven feet tall, covered in hair from his head to his toes, with only a few bare, hairless inches of pockmarked olive-coloured skin around his eyes and mouth, Knudsen's shrill cries of triumph served only to unnerve the precocious starting eleven, and maybe some of the subs.

It wasn't that Knudsen was an aggressive, overbearing man - far from it. In every training session, Knudsen would be first to arrive. He would lay out the cones and share jokes with his players as they turned up, one by one. The players grew quite fond of him. To lose his confidence would shatter their own self-esteem. Walking onto the pitch every Sunday afternoon, the Glasgow sun blinding their eyes and causing their skin to itch, the Glasgow Rangers Under-19 squad would tremble and worry. "What's up with the boss?" they would all think, too scared to share their thoughts with one another, lest this further infuriate Knudsen. You don't need telling what happens next - the forwards would spend the opening half spurning chances, chasing after misjudged passes from an anxious midfield who would either give the ball away too soon or dwell for too long on their options. The defenders would scuff clearances into the stands, moving too late to lend any stringency to an extremely loose offside-trap. The keeper would stay on his line for crosses, and wouldn't call when coming for the ball at corners. Long story short - it wasn't rare for the Under-19s to go in at half-time four goals down.

At the half-time team talks, Knudsen would be so disappointed with his team's performance that he would sit in a corner sobbing loudly to himself for the whole fifteen minutes. The spectacle of their beloved coach so upset would spur the team on to come out fighting and they would leave the tunnel full of renewed vigour, determined to level the scores for Knudsen. The real tragedy was that Knudsen was overseeing one of the worst incarnations of a Glasgow Rangers Under-19 side for a long time. To be honest - they were easily one of the worst ever. They lacked width and tired easily. It wasn't long into the second half that they would overstretch themselves pressing forwards and the opposition would net a fifth. Heads would drop, and their game would become all about containment and aggression. Dismissals were common, and nobody was surprised at full-time when the team found themselves on the end of a eight-nil spanking.

At the end of every season, Knudsen grew more and more haggard. It was at the end of his fifth season that he stumbled upon an idea that would last beyond his lifetime, and provide a sharp increase in the standard of life upon earth.

Ruby Murray - It's The Irish In Me