An interesting angle on our deteat form the Sunday Herald's Michael Grant.
http://www.sundayherald.com/sport/shfootba..._shock_talk.php
Enough of shock talk
ON THE SPOT: Michael Grant
THERE WEREN'T many Welsh journalists in Airdrie's stadium on Thursday evening but Lord knows what the handful who did travel north made of the reaction to Motherwell losing to Llanelli. It probably hadn't dawned on them that they had just witnessed a jaw- dropping sporting sensation to rival Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson. What wailing and hand-wringing there was. What anger.
It seemed rude to talk of Motherwell's "embarrassment", "humiliation" and "disgrace" against Llanelli when there were Welsh lads in the room. No doubt they were struggling to make sense of it themselves, although not for the same reasons. They could have been forgiven for taking a second look at their team-sheets just to check who had been playing for this mighty Motherwell side. Were they missing something here? Nope, it was as they first thought. We didn't recognise any of their players and they didn't recognise any of ours.
For all the moaning and criticising we all do about the standard of the SPL, Thursday's Europa League qualifying tie, the opening game of the Scottish season, showed we still quite fancy ourselves. A weakened, inexperienced, not fully fit team from the bottom half of the SPL were playing their first game under a manager appointed only three days earlier.
advertisementBut because they lost to the runners-up in the Welsh Premier League - a team that had been training for longer and played more friendlies in their build-up to the fixture - there was a song and dance about it as though Manchester United had been beaten by Fort William.
If it was really such a juddering shock for Motherwell to lose to Llanelli how come so many people had money on it at 14-1? Even I know of a handful of punters who were on the Welsh and it didn't need the most perceptive of minds to predict that Motherwell were going to find it hard going.
They hadn't been back in training long enough for their full-time status to be the advantage it ought to have been. Many of their best players are gone and they have yet to bring in any senior, experienced replacements. There were teenagers all over the place.
OK, Llanelli were part-timers from a modest league but they were physically strong, defensive and reasonably well-organised, which is pretty much certain to cause problems for any Scottish team, especially at this time of year. SPL teams are slow starters and playing in June or July catches them before they are even close to match sharpness. That's why teams like Partick Thistle, Dundee and Hibs suffered some awful results at the start of the Intertoto Cup, and why Rangers weren't ready for Kaunas last year when their Champions League qualifying tie was played on July 30 and August 5.
Should SPL teams return to training earlier to ensure they are better prepared for early ties in Europe? Easier said than done when the SPL season finished on May 24 and the Scottish Cup final was six days later. If there is a deter- mination to address the annual sequence of dreadful opening results for our teams in Europe and improve the Uefa co-efficient it will require the SPL and the SFA to agree that the domestic season must finish earlier, which would allow players to have the holiday break they need and still return in time to be fit for round one of the Europa League.
It would once have been a genuine embarrassment and humiliation for a Scottish team to lose to a Welsh opponent, but let's not kid ourselves on that it still is. Admittedly, it was humbling to see the Llanelli midfielder, Andrew Mumford, finish on the winning side - the lad was, frankly, enormous - but there was almost as much withering comment made about the fact their player-manager, Andy Legg,was on the field aged 42. Perish the thought that the SPL would ever be reduced to fielding men of near-pensionable age. Isn't that right Davie Weir? Andy Millen? Craig Brewster? Jim Gannon looked like he didn't quite comprehend the reaction to losing the first leg. It was as though he was being quizzed by people who - unlike him - hadn't paid attention to who had been playing out there or didn't want to acknowledge the evidence of their own eyes.
He had the expression of an outsider to Scottish football who had arrived in it with his sense of perspective still intact. Humiliation? Embarrassment? Disgrace? Only in Scottish minds. Where Gannon comes from, Motherwell losing to Llanelli at the start of July wouldn't cause the slightest ripple of surprise.
That's a more honest and realistic reaction than giving Motherwell, and Scottish football in general, a kicking for a result that everyone should have seen coming. There isn't any reason why they can't go down to the Parc y Scarlets on Thursday, turn the tie around and qualify for the second round. But if they don't, let's not make fools of ourselves by claiming that it's some sort of outrage. Right now Motherwell are in no position to lord it over Llanelli. It's time we admitted it.
Andy Murray is a Hibs fan. This might explain why he was more phlegmatic than most around Wimbledon about how long British tennis has waited for a men's champion.
You'll have been reading that "we" haven't won the title since Fred Perry in 1936. Perry died in 1995 at the age of 85. Hibs last won the Scottish Cup seven years before he was born.
Wimbledon could learn an awful lot about patience from Easter Road.
