Sep 192013
 

refereetallBy Bob Smith.

Ian Black yon fitba player
Some siller he’s bin layin
On results o fitba matches
Far his ain team hid bin playin

A measly ban an paltry fine
Wis aa the buggar got
Wis iss less than aa the dosh
Efter coontin up the tot?

Wullie Woodburn in nineteen fifty fower
Wis fae the gemme suspendit sine die
Fer heid buttin a Stirling Albion player
Faa kick’t Wullie twixt unkle an thigh

The ban on Wullie Woodburn
T’wis lifted efter three ‘ears
Tam Finney the English international
Wis amang fowk faa raised three cheers

So fit’s the worse offence fowks
A heid butt or an illegal bet?
Baith are brakkin aa the rules
Yet different bans they get

Eence mair the SFA fell doon
On applyin the law’s full blast
A langer ban fer Ian Black
Wid show the die’s bin cast

Ally o the new Gers claims
Lots o players hae a flutter
So gie the names tae the SFA
In case ere’s ither nutters

The fitba gemmes in sic a state
Surely integrity it still maitters
Come on ye SFA heid billies
Staun up agin thae betters

© Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2013

Mar 152012
 

For the third time in less than a year, Dons fans and players of a certain age will be wearing mourning clothes, literally or figuratively. David Innes reminisces on Jens Petersen, a man whose dedication to the Dons in the 1960s makes him truly worthy of legendary status among Reds followers.

It was with heavy hearts that we learned of the death of Jens Petersen, a stalwart servant of the mid and late 1960s whose brave battle against death ended in noble defeat on 8 March 2012.

This follows far too closely the deaths of Eddie Turnbull in April 2011 and Francis Munro in August last year.

Another one of the Reds family has gone, and it hurts.

For the many friends Jens made during his time at Pittodrie, the hurt is because they knew him, they appreciated his determination to succeed and the inspiring leadership that he offered, but most of all, the lasting friendship that they formed with someone who is unanimously regarded as one of the genuine good guys.

Among the fans who remember Jens, it hurts because we too have lost someone we looked up to, someone who played the game in its proper spirit and a man who took delight in meeting fans, taking an interest in them and making them feel that they, as much as the players, were all part of the same whole.

We have lost a hero.

Jens arrived in Aberdeen with fellow Danes, Jorgen Ravn and Leif Mortensen, all signed by Tommy Pearson in 1965, when Scottish clubs realised that Scandinavia was a new hunting ground for players of good quality who fitted into the Scottish style of play. Whilst Ravn and Mortensen left Pittodrie after a short while, Eddie Turnbull spotted that Jens had something special that would fit with the Turnbull football vision and not only kept him on at Pittodrie, but made him a key member of the first team.

In 1966, the jewel in the Reds’ crown was Dave Smith. His performances in midfield and in the curious “sweeper” role that Eddie Turnbull introduced meant that he was an attraction for bigger, more predatory teams. I recall, to a background of Yellow Submarine, the news coming through in August 1966 that our star had signed for Rangers and that the Dons were £45000 better off.

The money was unimportant; we had lost our most influential player. How, the devastated 9 year old me worried, could we go on without Dave Smith? Eddie Turnbull had a cunning plan: Jens Petersen.

What the Boss had seen in Jens was someone who could naturally play the role that Smith had made his own, a man possessed of an unflappable temperament, comfortable with the ball at his feet in defence or midfield, an athlete, excellent in the air and with an ability to break from defence with the ball, striking panic into the opposition, a sight to behold.

US sports fans were amazed that the players did not wear body armour

The statistics tell us that Jens Petersen made 203 appearances for Aberdeen and scored 11 goals.

These are merely numbers. Influence and dynamism cannot be enumerated.

It’s a long time ago, but I can still remember his late spectacular goal against Morton to put us into the League Cup semi-final in 1966, my uncle’s surprised comment, “Look, the Dane’s wearin’ san’sheen”, when Jens decided that a frosty pitch later that season needed alternative footwear, and his ill-luck in the 1967 Cup final where his shot into an open goal was miraculously saved by Celtic’s Ronnie Simpson’s sliding clearance from the goal line.

When Jens left the Dons in 1970, his number 6 shirt was bequeathed to Martin Buchan. That illustrates the level of talent at which he operated.

My own contact with Jens was limited to a couple of phone conversations about the 1967 Washington Whips. Chalky Whyte gave me Jens’s number and encouraged me to call him in Denmark. He answered in Danish. I said, “Hello, I’ve been given your number by Jim Whyte”. Jens’s response (and that of his wife Dora when I called on another occasion) was that he was delighted to speak to me, but before he spoke about the USA in 1967, how were his friends at Pittodrie?

My lasting memory of the discussion was that he was asked by a US interviewer, “Petersen, have you ever burst a ball with your head?” and that US sports fans were amazed that the players did not wear body armour. His English, and Dora’s, was better than mine and he was a joy to interview.

Chalky, Ally Shewan and Ian Taylor have often spoken to me about the friendship they maintained with their great pal Jens and their memories and anecdotes will help ease some of the hurt that these guys and their colleagues are feeling.

Jens was only just 70 when he died, which is no age at all these days, and he was an outstanding athlete, still running marathons into his 60s.

The Northern Lights are significantly dimmer with his departure.

Image Credit: Aberdeen Voice is grateful to Aberdeen Football Club for use of Photographs. 

Sep 232011
 
Dear Don.

Maybe you don’t appreciate how difficult relations have become between us in recent times, but alas, I think the time has come for us to go our separate ways.

We’ve shared some great times, some of the best times of my usually-unexciting life, in particular those long European holidays and the weekends in often unfriendly cities where we enjoyed our time together and the sweetness of what I thought was a unique relationship.

All I have ever asked is that you put the same effort into our relationship as I have always tried to do, but, and this may be a symptom of how you’ve changed, you have found other suitors whose company and, it seems to me, more shallow affection than mine, you seem to prefer.

Betrayal is a strong word, but you have let me down so often now, despite hollow assurances that you would change and things would return how they used to be, that I think it’s time for our ever more flimsy relationship to end because you have betrayed me once too often.

There have been apologies and repeated assurances that things will get better. I am sure you have had good intentions in following them through but the will does not seem to have been there and the same cycle of promises and let downs continues. Enough is now enough.

The passion has gone; the excitement I used to feel before meeting you has long disappeared; you have become more or less indifferent to my efforts to give as much as I have always done. Those in your new circle of friends are not the type of people with whom I want to associate and I believe they will let you down. They do not seem to be your friends for the right reasons.

From now on, I will be spending more time with my real and genuine long term friends and my childhood sweetheart in the Highlands. Their values have not changed and my feelings for them are reciprocated with no expectation of reward or repayment on either side. That is what a mutual loving and respectful relationship should be about.

I intend to remain friends with you although I don’t suppose you will notice whether or not I’m around much any more, but we still have too much history and shared memories for me to abandon you altogether. I do honestly wish you luck and success, especially in that planned new home, but I’m afraid I’m doubtful that this wish will come true for you.

With affection always

Scarlet.

Aug 182011
 

Earlier this year, on Eddie Turnbull’s birthday – that’ll be 12 April, then – the writer of this article opined that that Dons great would live  forever. He died a few weeks later and there was a genuine, deserved, widespread expression of grief from the Scottish fitba community. The Boss was 88. Of course he couldn’t be expected to live forever, but when one’s heroes or icons die, the world seems a dimmer place.
This week, Dons fans of a certain vintage, among them Voice’s David Innes are mourning the loss of Francis Munro, rarely mentioned in pub and online debates about Great Reds, yet from 1966-68 the most dynamic and explosive individual in a supremely-talented squad.

The statistics show that Francis Michael Munro played 59 games for the Dons and scored 14 goals.
In today’s multi-media analytical world, his number of assists, the yards he covered during 90 minutes, his percentage successful passing rate would all be monitored and published. Had  such analysis been available in Franny’s time at Pittodrie, his value would have been far more obvious 45 years on.

But it still wouldn’t have told the full story.

When I interviewed Eddie Turnbull in 1997 for an as yet unpublished account of the Dons 1967 USA adventure as The Washington Whips, I asked The Boss about Franny in particular. Why? Because on Christmas Eve 1966, I was to witness this teenager rule the midfield in a top of the table head-to-head with Celtic, a mere five months before Jock Stein’s team lifted the European Cup.

Stein’s midfield of the time included luminaries such as Bertie Auld and Bobby Murdoch, yet it was Munro who bossed the game and, had it not been for Ronnie’s Simpson’s breathtaking save just before the end, Munro’s piledriving late goal attempt would have secured a rare victory over Celtic. He achieved instant hero status from this wide-eyed loon.

He wasn’t about blood and thunder, though. He was as graceful an athlete, despite an ongoing weight problem, as any of the more high-profile figures of the time.

During the 1997 interview, his manager told me,

“It shows how if you’re aware or alert what can happen. In the early days, before I came to Aberdeen, I was in charge of the Scotland Under-18s. And I remember Francis as a fifteen or sixteen  year old, and I thought, ‘This is some player’. Of course he was a Dundee boy and he went to Dundee United, but Jerry Kerr couldn’t handle him and he started getting into the wrong company.

“He was one of the finest long passers of a ball that I ever saw in my life, that I ever had under me, that I ever played against. He would say, ‘I can’t do that’, and I would say, ‘You’re the most skilful of the lot’. That was when he first came in, he was an introvert. A lovely lad. For a big man, he was so light on his feet. He’d great vision, could see everything on the park.”

In his pen picture of Franny in a programme for a Washington Whips fixture in summer 1967, The Boss described his protégé as being “as nimble as a ballerina”.

In the States, he proved his worth, even scoring a hat trick in the largely-forgotten but supremely thrilling President’s Cup final. He followed that by becoming the first Aberdeen player to score, and the first Don to score a hat trick in a European tie, both in the 10-0 extirpation of KR Reykjavik, the Dons’ debut competitive European outing.

He wis some boy

Wolves, who had been on the receiving end of Franny’s hat trick in the USA, eventually persuaded the Dons to transfer him to Molineux in 1968. He was immediately converted into a centre half, the Wolves number 5 shirt as comfortable on his back as his Pittodrie number 4 had been. At Wolves, he won a League Cup winners’ medal in 1973-74 and became a club legend.

I hope that two Wolves fans for whom I have almost as  much long-distance affection as I had for Franny – Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Dexys’ Kevin Rowland – idolised him as much as I did.

During my research in 1997, I spoke briefly with Franny on the phone. I hope I didn’t come across like a babbling, tongue-tied teenager. He was very polite, informative and interested in what I was doing, but was obviously in poor health, an affliction which continued until his death on 16 August 2011 aged 64, no age at all really.

That he shares his date of death with Elvis is a coincidence that I will regard as wholly indicative of the level of Franny Munro’s talent.

Sleep easy, big fella.