Mike Aitken: Coming to terms with Cordoba three decades later

WHAT is it about sport and that gut-wrenching sense of regret which lights a bonfire under dreams of glory?

Although there have been plenty of euphoric moments, including an unforgettable night in Gothenburg along the way, the undercurrent of betrayal which links the most hypnotic sports stories of the past four decades in Scotland serves as an unflinching reminder that games can bruise the soul as well as the shin.

From Scotland's misadventure in Argentina in the late Seventies to the crushing disappointment of Tom Watson's near-miss in the Open at Turnberry earlier this month, it's been this sportswriter's discomforting privilege to report on the romance of what might have been, as well as the intrigue of what comes to pass.

Unlike news-reporting, sportswriting demands an emotional response. The reason it's a cliché when a TV reporter asks an athlete after a race how it feels is because the pictures always tell us far more than the spoken word. And for all the immediacy of live television, the box can only show us how rather than tell us why.

The challenge and enduring value of sportswriting is to peer between the cracks and attempt to grapple with the meaning of what happens in the stadium or on the course. For newspaper men and women, the essence of the craft depends on a combination of technique and observation to pull off this trick more or less immediately. But sometimes it can take years to rationalise an event, which was certainly the case with me when it came to working out Scottish football's fall from grace in Cordoba.

More than 30 years after the rise and fall of one of this country's best ever sides, as well as the combination of factors which led to their demise, it would be disingenuous to ignore history and claim only serendipity was to blame for unleashing the mother of all Scottish football controversies.

Human error and frailty, as much as happenstance, were the commentary for the sequence of events which smeared the reputation of the Scottish game and remain a talking point to this day. The defeat to Peru was a shock that no-one was prepared for – particularly national team manager Ally MacLeod, who had not watched the South Americans in action before the match. We didn't think that spirits could sink any lower when news broke of a subsequent drugs scandal which saw Willie Johnston sent home. But then came the Iran game.

The gap between extreme levels of expectation in the build-up to the finals, so fanciful you wondered if the nation was high on drugs, and the cold turkey of the ensuing campaign in Argentina was despondent enough to justify almost any criticism. I suppose hindsight wasn't really required to understand that Scotland's failure in Argentina was due to a combination of hubris, bad timing and poor management.

Yet, even after half a lifetime, I remember all our disappointments that torrid summer as failures of ambition. And, until watching Tom Watson come to grief on the 72nd hole at the Ailsa, Archie Gemmill's sublime goal for Scotland against Holland in Mendoza was for this observer the most bittersweet sporting moment imaginable.

If Argentina would mark the termination of the "whae's like us" streak in the Scottish mentality, a few years earlier I could hardly have expected a job on the sportsdesk at The Scotsman to carry such rich cultural implications.

Walking into the offices of this great newspaper in the old Scotsman building on North Bridge for the first time in the summer of 1974, the hubbub was breathtaking. Typewriters resembled tiny pianos and played an accompaniment to scores of conversations. As well as the pounding of keys, the rush of the carriage moving forward, the swish of paper being pulled from the portables and, occasionally, the crumpling of unsatisfactory intros, conducted a symphony of news.

Telephones rang, matches were struck in a frenzy (everyone smoked) and instructions from the hierarchy, who sat behind the sportsdesk, newsdesk and back bench facing the staff beyond, were issued either with a peal of whispers or sergeant-major fanfare. The sound of The Scotsman was a blast of the imagination.

On my first day, I was assigned a minder, Harry Reid, then the paper's education correspondent, who would go on to become editor of the Herald in Glasgow. As was the custom in the Seventies, Harry's first duty was to buy me a drink in the Halfway House, the bar located halfway down Fleshmarket Close which served as The Scotsman's nerve centre before the flitting to Holyrood ten years ago.

I joined a newspaper which numbered John Rafferty, Norman Mair, Arnold Kemp, Ian Wood, Allan Wright, Michael Fry, Julie Davidson, Bert Morris, George Hume, Alan Hutchison and countless other notables across the departments working under the unflappable leadership of Eric Mackay. I felt about The Scotsman the way a young footballer does when he signs for the club he supported as a boy. Thirty-five years and 13 editors later, I'm still wearing the jersey with the three thistles, even if it's an XL today rather than a medium.

The opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Rafferty as football correspondent came in 1976 after the Raff lost a long battle with cancer. Hugh McIlvanney, Rafferty's predecessor at The Scotsman, still recalls how the intelligence of his friend's eyes would have been visible through a blindfold.

These were impossible standards for a 24-year-old not long out of university to match. I know both John Fairgrieve and Harry Reid were sounded out about the position before I came into the equation. For better or worse, Mackay, who was passionate about racing, eventually placed a wager on the kid. (My nickname, incidentally, was 'Student'. The sobriquet, handed out by Doug Baillie, the former Rangers player who was then the football writer with the Sunday Post, highlighted the novelty of a young graduate in the press box.]

After John died, his research was given to me. Long before the internet helped everyone know everything, the idea was they might help me to make my way. His Calesco Pocket Files, which covered everything from the finances of football to the politics of the Commonwealth Games, were proof of the value of reporting.

A lifelong fascination with professional sportsmen started as a boy when my uncle, Bill Aitken, a doctor in Chirnside, introduced me to one of his patients, who had just become world champion. On the grid, Jim Clark was perhaps the greatest motor racing driver who ever lived. Away from the track he was a kind man, happy to give a youngster a tour of the family farm in a tractor as well as a hurl in his Lotus Cortina. I was struck by the contrast between the fearless brilliance of Scotland's greatest ever sportsman and the unassuming nature of the man. Over four decades, discovering a little about what makes athletes tick turned out to be as rewarding and addictive as any boy could have imagined.

The year before Scotland came to grief in Argentina, there was another trip to South America and an early lesson in how technology has the same effect on sportswriters as green Kryptonite on Superman. Reporting on Scotland's match against Brazil from the Maracana stadium, the telephones for the press were located in a closeted room with no view of the pitch.

Before the kick-off, it turned out the only paper from the UK with the correct phone number in Rio was The Scotsman. When my instrument rang, I put over the teams to a copytaker and gave Ian Wood, then the sports editor, a list of new numbers which he diligently passed on to desks all around the country.

While every other sportswriter received calls during the game, I never heard from The Scotsman again that night. Luckily, the friendly, which Scotland lost 2-0, was shown at home on Scottish Television. With peerless style, Woody saved the day and ripped off 850 words from the office which, like Brazil, danced to the rhythm of a samba beat.

On returning to Edinburgh, Eric Mackay took me to lunch and told me I'd made a decent fist of my first big assignment. "And I particularly enjoyed your match report from Brazil," he said.