Contents
TEAM TALK
Pop Life BY GORDON LEGGE
After the Vision BY ALAN WARNER
The Brown Pint of Courage BY JAMES MEEK
Submission BY PAUL REEKIE
The Dilating Pupil BY LAURA HIRD
The Rosewell Incident BY IRVINE WELSH
THE LINE UP
IRVINE WELSH: Author of Trainspotting, The Acid House, Marabou Stork Nightmares and Ecstasy. All critically acclaimed best-sellers. Trainspotting has been turned into an award-winning movie and box office smash. Welsh was described by The Face as the ‘poet laureate of the chemical generation’.
ALAN WARNER: Author of award-winning Oban rave novel Morvern Callar, which is currently being adapted into a major movie by the BBC, and more recently a second novel, These Demented Lands.
GORDON LEGGE: Author of two novels and an SAC award-winning collection of short stories, In Between Talking about the Football. Inspired many of the new wave of Scottish writers to start writing with his first novel The Shoe. Described as ‘pop writer extraordinaire’.
JAMES MEEK: Author of two novels, McFarlane Boils the Sea and Drivetime and an SAC award-winning collection of short stories, Last Orders.
LAURA HIRD: Short fiction previously published in literary magazines like Rebel inc., Chapman, Cencrastus, Verbal, etc. Her first full collection, Nail and other stories, is to be published in Autumn ’97 by Rebel inc.
PAUL REEKIE: Writer whose live performances have become legendary. Author of one poetry collection, Zap, You’re Pregnant. His poem ‘Caesar’s Mushroom’ was featured at the front of Irvine Welsh’s The Acid House.
TEAM TALK
PICKING A TEAM is never easy. Different managers have different criteria. The late great Jock Stein would put it all down to pub arithmetic. And for him everything turned out sweet as a nut. Genius is not about doing the simple things well but the complex things simply. When John Lambie took over the managerial reins at Falkirk you could see the truth stripped bare. He learnt the hard way. Previously, he’d invested heavily – although not financially – in workaday journeymen during his spell at Partick Thistle. Honest jobbers with steel toe-caps. Yet at Brockville the formula cracked. Stars in their eyes. Copycat criminals. There was much guilt at the wake. Napoleon, geeing up his troops on the eve of battle, once remarked: morale is to the physical as four is to one. He was right. But that was his Waterloo. John Lambie could’ve learnt a bit more between hairdos.
I have my own methods, a minister once said to me. I think he was a Methodist. Well I too have my own methods. It’s no use just signing star strikers. That’s a recipe for disaster. I’ve learnt from the Souness years that you have to build from the back. Chris Woods and Terry Butcher. That’s when the tide turned. I’ve never admired Graeme Souness more than when he left the celebrations of a Rangers victory over arch-rivals Celtic – on April 1st 1990 – to go to an Anti-Poll Tax concert at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. He watched the proceedings with his wife from a seat in the balcony. See? Build from the back. Every time.
To this end I’ve selected an international keeper and a class A defender – both of whom I have total faith in. Irvine Welsh – a keeper of the faith. And Alan Warner – a defender of the faith. They are the smooth and charismatic spinal column of the team. They’ve learnt how to cope with the pressure – and the vagaries of the press – producing performances the fans just rave about. The world is at their feet and they know how to pass.
There is much running about to be done in midfield and a wide expanse of the pitch has to be covered. A cool eye for situations is prerequisite. This position needs more than just realism. Midfield needs imagination and pop mobility. The ability to fly at will. Selflessly. Players who sparkle. Like Johnny Doyle. You know the sort. What’s that? Gordon Legge and James Meek you say? Sorted. Proven track records at every level. They come recommended and are adaptable to both Premier Division and Tennent’s Sixes.
Up front, if we’re going to have any impact on the new league set-up, we’re going to need fresh legs. Strikers whose tricks and feints haven’t been studied in depth by the efficient but essentially Night Nurse opposition. The Andy Ritchies and George Bests rather than the Linekeresque bores. Forwards who don’t pollute the beautiful game with their predictable technique. Aye. Fuck the dullards with a Gerry McNee boner. Laura Hird and the boy Reekie are on from the start.
So that’s it. The Children of Albion Rovers FC. Bodies honed to the very peak of fitness by years of substantial training. Shirts on their backs. Trophy room bare. But this team is Going Places! Ooh aah.
Kevinacchio Vilhelmsonya
(Continental-Style Coach)
GORDON LEGGE
IT ALL STEMMED from their problems. With Martin it was money, with Ray it was women and with Hilly it was … well, it was always a wee bit more complicated with Hilly.
See Hilly was the sort of bloke that would take offence; and that was about the size of it. All that was needed was for somebody to say something, something commonplace, something you’d hear any day of the week, and next thing Hilly would be heading for the door, slating the others for being nothing so much as ‘spoilt bastards’.
That was what had gone wrong the last time, the last time the three of them had got together.
They’d been round at Ray’s one night when Martin, as he always did, started going on about his latest financial crisis. In the course of this, Martin had happened to come away with the one about how the more you earn, the more you spend. Hilly made a joke of it at first. The joke being that if Martin had a million pounds in his pocket, then chances were the million pounds would disappear before Martin reached the end of whichever street it was Martin happened to be walking on – with nothing to show for it, no recollection of what he’d done with it. But then Ray went and made the mistake of agreeing with Martin, saying that once you reached a certain level of income you never seemed to be noticeably that much better off. That was enough for Hilly. He did his ‘spoilt bastards’ routine and stormed off.
It was a good six months before Hilly had anything more to do with either of the other two. Six months in which Hilly was seen to hang around with the Kelsey’s or the Kerr’s, usually pissed or stoned, always laughing his head off.
Hilly was like that. When he was in a bad mood, he went out, he became more visible.
Ray, on the other hand, was the exact opposite, when Ray was in a bad mood, he kept himself to himself.
For years Ray had put up with the others going on about their successes and their conquests as far as women were concerned. Every so often all this would get to Ray; and, every so often, it would be Ray’s turn to slip out of the scheme of things.
Because he never really knew what he wanted from them, Ray was hopeless with women. Honestly, it was like watching a body trying to eat who didn’t realize the food was supposed to enter via the mouth. Hilly and Martin told him as much. There was even a time when they figured it was as well to tell the truth as anything: and told Ray that no woman they knew actually liked him. But before they’d