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Forty Years Ago Today

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    Forty Years Ago Today

    Willie Johnston was about to discover that he'd failed a drugs test. The story broke the following day:

    https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/06/a...-scottish.html

    Significance: This was the earliest 'sports scandal' I can ever remember, with the hand wringing and earnest faces on the news and World Cup Grandstand. Total hypocrisy, obviously, as teams had been using various means of performance enhancement for decades, but also a way for the tabloids to fill the dead time between the Peru and Iran games.

    Willie just seems to have been very naive and rash, and I wonder if he'd have been as harshly treated if they'd beaten Peru and didn't need a distraction. Good career profile here:

    https://www.theguardian.com/football...rangers-celtic

    Your memories of this?

    #2
    My memory would be shaped by the fact that schoolboy-me was swimming in Schadenfreude, wanting Scotland to fail and delighted when they did. So Johnston was Evil, the London media told me so and/or I chose to believe it.

    Social media didn't invent the pile-on.

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      #3
      I think that Johnston was hung out to dry, to be honest. He was interviewed on Nationwide very soon after returning, as I recall and didn't really come across as the sharpest knife. (I wouldn't mind betting that Ally McLeod was quietly relieved that somebody else was getting all the flak for a day or two.)

      As I mentioned on another thread, some wag defaced a Scotland Chrysler billboard with the legend: 'Don't take the piss out of Willie Johnston'.

      It seemed a major scandal, yes, but was pretty small fry compared with some of the shenanigans ('allegedly') going on at that tournament.

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        #4
        I don't remember the incident at all (very little to no coverage of in the local media. No TV broadcast of the WC). The following summer however Willie Johnston was playing for Vancouver Whitecaps. Here he's best remembered for an incident in San Jose (I think?). It was a hot afternoon, WJ was about to take a corner kick when someone in the crowd offered him a can of beer which Willie gratefully accepted prior to taking the kick. The right oppo corner at BC Place retains a permanent sign on match days, reading "Willie's Corner."

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          #5
          It was part of the cycle of building a team up so you can knock it down, although I don't think the 1974 team came home in as much disgrace (if any) or the 1990 and 1998 ones that lost to teams that were arguably worse than the 1978 Peru side (OTOH it was the Iran draw that actually put them out, and Iran truly were poorer than any side I can remember a British team play in the finals; they even gave Scotland a goal start).

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            #6
            I don't think that there was any real shame following Scotland's 1974 elimination, no. The general consensus was that they'd been a shade unlucky - especially in the match with Brazil - and indeed remained the only unbeaten side at that tournament.

            As a wee laddie, I 'can', however, recall sitting in front of the TV thinking that they should be trying to score goals in that non-event of a second half against Zaire. And so it proved...

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