AS SOON as Carlos Cuellar leapt to touch that shot over the bar I turned to my brother and said: "He should give the award back." Bro agreed. How could Cuellar call himself Player of the Year? But after the match Gordon Strachan put us right. The big man had to make that "save", he said. And wasn't it a good one? We bowed to Strachan's superior knowledge. Sometimes I don't know where we'd be without Guys Who Have Played The Game.
Everywhere you look, Guys Who Have Played The Game light up football debate with their insight. They're on the TV, on radio and in newspaper columns. "Guys," Sportsound's Richard Gordon will ask, meaning of course Guys Who Have Played The Game, "you'
ve all been there – what will the manager be saying to the players in these last few minutes before kick-off?"
Willie/Billy/Sandy: "He'll be saying they have to go out and score goals."
The motto of Guys Who Have Played The Game is: "If You've Played The Game, You Know ... " Meaning: if you haven't, how could you possibly? The first GWHPTG I heard utter the motto was Graeme Souness, a regular supplier of training-ground 'revelation' for Sky Sports. He used it to bring about closure on a discussion going nowhere. It was abrupt, but undeniably impressive, like one of his old skin-graft tackles. And it didn't sound like I was being put in my place.
When other GWHPTG started using it, the motto became like a blast of a dog whistle, on a frequency no one else was supposed to understand. A secret club seemed to be forming. Then Bobby Williamson trotted it out. During his stint as Hibs manager, Bobby made reference to the public parks where football as played by non-GWHPTG was a vastly different – euphemism alert: inferior – game. I remember being a bit miffed by that. Bobby had never before tried to distance himself from the burly scuffers. He was our role model and, indeed, our roly model.
Now you hear "If You've Played The Game, You Know..." all the time. It's part of a manager's defence mechanism when he's under pressure. After Celtic finally got back to winning ways against Motherwell, Gordon Strachan was asked about criticism and whether it had affected his players. "Who's criticising them?" he said. "Is it worth listening to?"
During moments of stress I can sympathise with GWHPTG. The slagging that managers and players get on phone-ins and especially websites is incredible. But the motto also features when GWHPTG are having a heated debate with professional football-watchers, the "fans with typewriters", as the Scottish football hack-pack was once known, and this use seems to be taking GWHPTG into the realm of self-mythology.
After all, actors wouldn't challenge theatre critics over the fact they've never acted. Acting holds deeper mysteries than football and you could argue that critics would benefit from having had personal experience of the craft.
It wasn't always like this. My earliest memory of a pundits' panel was the classic line-up of Brian Clough, Malcolm Allison, Pat Crerand, Derek Dougan. I remember kipper ties. I remember heated debates. But no sense that they were lording it over the World Of Sport masses.
GWHPTG can make some journos self-conscious. On Scotsport recently one of them explained how, when defending corners, he was always told to guard the posts – neglecting to add that this was almost certainly while playing under-12s football.
Some journos, of course, have never been self-conscious in their lives. On Sportsound last Wednesday in the aftermath of the Old Firm punch-up, Chick Young criticised the players for being irresponsible and likely to provoke trouble on the streets. Murdo MacLeod, chief GWHPTG for the night, trotted out a version of the motto. "It's football," he said. Chick retorted: "It's only football." And so the yabbering continued.
"If You've Played The Game, You Know… " Maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it is the greatest mystery.
