BILLY BREMNER MEMORIAL JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN
Date: 23rd March 2025
Imagine that.
A Scotsman who actually wants to be the best.
And of course, what we all do, as we always have done from time immemorial, is as soon as somebody stands up and says that they want to be better than everybody else round about them, we try to cut them down to size – Tall poppy syndrome…
“They should remember where they come from.”
“They should be humble.”
“They should try not to stand out in amongst a crowd.”
And there, for many years, is exactly why it is that Scottish sport has struggled. Not because there are people who don’t have confidence in their own abilities. Scottish sport is littered by people who had confidence enough to go and become a Chris Hoy, to become an Eilish McColgan, to become a Dick McTaggart.
They had the confidence.
They had the confidence and belief in themselves to raise themselves up from whichever kale yard they were born into and become a force for good on a sporting stage.
They didn’t sit back and think to themselves…
“Oh, I might just win a Scottish title.”
“There’s a possibility I might just become a British champion.”
Or, alternatively, “why don’t I just pack it all in and go home because the wee boy at the end of the road said that I’m just too big for my own boots.”
And then out comes Lennon Miller to say, I believe that I could be the best in that dressing room. And what happens? People pile in and they say he’s arrogant. He’s this, he’s that. No, he’s a sportsman.
Many years ago, I tutored a young footballer who had been released by Rangers. A bright kid, who, at that point, was sitting his Highers and I was brought in to tutor him and Higher English.
He was a really decent, intelligent, bright young man. He was juggling the idea of perhaps following a dramatic route rather than a footballing route. But ultimately, at the end of the day, the brains in his feet won out.
He went on to have a career that did not quite set the heather alight, though he was an under-21s international.
By the end of our time together, when he was about to sit his Highers, I may have been standing there thinking to myself, he’s maybe not going to get an A, but he might get a C. I needed to build that up. I needed to work on it. I needed to do something that Graham Spears called a total failure in psychology when comments from Scotland’s assistant boss, John Carver, were published. I praised him as I knew he worked off confidence. I did not give him false hope and I did not lie, but I knew that he could ace the exam – and he did.
John Carver, according to Graham Spears, gave poor Lennon Miller a mild Sunday school slap for being cheeky, so uppity and loose-tongued. Referring to his “mistake”, Scotland’s number two even suggested that Lennon Miller will learn.
What will he learn?
Will he learn that hiding your light under a bushel is the way in order to become a top internationalist and therefore support your country in becoming better than it is?
Will he learn that by being humble publicly, he’s managed to keep everybody happy until eventually he can’t keep anybody happy because his performances on the pitch are not quite as good as they should be.
What’s he going to learn?
I think he’s learned enough to be considered good enough to be on the pitch for Scotland. But the Calvinistic methodology of keeping people in their place is something that John Carver, though not a Scot himself, seems to have adopted as an honorary dour Scotsman with an English heritage. He managed to show a disdain for swagger that you would associate with Steve Clarke.
But Steve Clarke played it better.
Clarke did not give the same slap to his new-found future of the Scottish game. Perhaps he recognised that this young upstart, this gallus wee guy from Lanarkshire, who has a familial history steeped in this game, had the audacity to look over the wall into the dressing room and see in there people who are in Siere A, like Scott McTominay, Billy Gilmour, and Lewis Ferguson, who in what is claimed to be one of the toughest leagues in the world, making a name for themselves. Perhaps he looked over and he saw the likes of John McGinn captaining a side that’s at the top end of the English Premier League and thought, I want a bit of that.
And not only does he want a bit of that, he wants to be better than that.
How long have we waited for somebody to turn round and talk not just of Joe Jordan or Graeme Souness or Kenny Dalgleish as people you want to be like, but look round the dressing room and see people who are doing exactly the same as people like Jordan, Souness and others were doing years ago by blazing a trail abroad and managing to shine.
And now this wee guy has gone from running about in Motherwell to running about on international duty and going, I’d like to be better than them.
And what do we do? We cut them down.
Why? Because this Field of Dreams is something that we want to believe could happen, but we’re Scotland and we reckon that it’s not going to last. Maybe it won’t.
Maybe this campaign is Steve Clarke’s last as the Scotland boss. Perhaps he’ll keep us in League A of the Nations League and thereafter get us off to glorious failure in the group stages at the World Cup in North America in 2026. We shall then decide that he has to be sacked and off he shall go. And we shall marvel at a lost generation. Or shall we once again put those doubts aside? But shall we also, just for once, decide that somebody having ambition is to be embraced? Shall we decide that the Tartan Army deserves to hear from people who want the type of praise, that the Tartan Army itself gets every time it sets foot outside of Scotland?
Because we deserve it.
And Lennon Miller deserves to be praised for being honest enough. Those in the dressing room should be looking over at him now and going, you know, son, I’m going to take that challenge on and I’m going to be better than you. And you know who will benefit?
We will.
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