Dear WSC
If Chic Charnley (Reviews, WSC 281) had had a longer fuse, it’s a racing certainty that he’d have played for Scotland and, in all likelihood, have drawn the attentions of bigger clubs in Scotland and down south. But, in gaining a model pro, we’d have lost a character who inspired love and loathing in equal part (depending on whether he was playing for your club). For a fan Chic was a uniquely interactive experience – if you got on his back he’d react and, as his disciplinary record shows, on 17 occasions that reaction led to a red card. As a fan you knew it. He’d be looking at the crowd trying to pick out his tormentors and on a good day you’d get a gesture. What better motivation could there be.At McDiarmid Park in Perth, on New Year’s Day 1997 Chico had a particularly fine blow-up. With the St Johnstone fans full of New Year spirit (spirits?) the abuse directed at Chic was ripe. With the match at 1-1 the red mist descended, and he thumped one of his team-mates. What followed was one of the high points of the last 20 years for Saints fans – a 7-2 victory over the bitterest local rivals.Equally, when playing for Partick Thistle against Motherwell in 1994 or 1995, I recall the crowd focusing even more relentlessly on the man. My memory says that again he got wound up, launched a kung-fu tackle at an opponent and earned an early bath. I’m less certain of this though and would welcome confirmation that I twice played my part in taking Chico off the pitch, definitely my most significant footballing achievement. At a later date I met Chic in a Glasgow pub. He was holding court to a rapt audience of Celtic fans whose devotion to him was greater than to many of the club’s long-term players. They knew he was one of them and they knew he’d come within a whisker of fulfilling his/their dream of playing in the hoops. Down-to-earth, frank about his errors and damn funny, it’s a shame there aren’t more like him. But if there were, there’d be chaos.
Alistair Smith, Forest Hill
Search: 'Partick Thistle'
Stories
The Autobiography
by Dixie Deans with Ken McNab
Birlinn, £16.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O'Brien
From WSC 300 February 2012
It requires little brainpower to work out how John Deans, Celtic's powerhouse striker of the early 1970s, came by his nickname. But it seems even that was beyond some people. Early on in this autobiography, a well-known horseracing pundit accosts Deans at a function and slaps his back, under the impression he has just met the Evertonian Dixie Dean instead. "For me to be Dixie Dean, I would have had to be about 90," he writes. "I must look like I had a hard paper round."
Me, My Dad And The Dons
by Stuart Donald
Hachette Scotland, £ 12.99
Reviewed by Keith Davidson
From WSC 284 October 2010
Despite the title, this book has nothing to do with Sir Alex Ferguson and his time at Pittodrie. Instead it's a memoir by Stuart Donald, looking back on his childhood as a Perth-based Aberdeen fan in the late 1970s and 1980s, and how his relationship with his father developed while they watched the Dons together during the club's most successful era.
The Chic Charnley Story
by Chic Charnley with Alex Gordon
Black & White, £14.99
Reviewed by Chris Fyfe
From WSC 281 July 2010
One match can define a player's career: Archie Gemmill's goal against the Netherlands; Diego Maradona's Hand of God; Eric Cantona's karate kick. It was Chic Charnley's acclaimed guest appearance for his beloved Celtic against Man Utd in Mark Hughes's 1994 testimonial that summed him up.
Dear WSC
In response to Huw Griffiths’s letter in WSC 263, I would like to apologise to David Lloyd, the extremely popular fans’ liaison officer at Bristol City, for the flippant remarks I made in an article about the club in WSC 262. Sorry, Mr Lloyd. I would also like to apologise to my father, a Bristol City supporter for 60 years and, like Messrs Griffiths and Lloyd, an avid admirer of Paul Cheesley, for implying in the article that he cross-dresses in his potting shed. To put the record straight: my father has never owned a potting shed. Sorry, Father.However, I would like to take issue with Mr Griffiths’s claim that I have given up neither time nor money to support and represent the club in the last 15 years. In 2002, I bought and paid for the previous season’s away shirt and gave it to a friend of mine for his 40th birthday. Until unwrapping the gift, the recipient was like an excited schoolboy and cherishes it to such a degree that he has, to this day, neither worn the garment nor, as far as I know, taken it out of the packaging. Further, in 2007, I attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to obliterate a Bristol Rovers graffito on the lavatory wall in a public house in Berlin using nothing more than my house keys and a briefly rediscovered passion for the Boys In Red. If Mr Griffiths were aware of the willingness of Bristol City stayaways in Germany to jeopardise long-term friendships and to commit acts of criminal damage in the name of the club, he wouldn’t have made such an unfounded accusation in a poor attempt to add some much-needed gravitas to the WSC letters page.
Matt Nation, Hamburg