Ally McCoist opens with a story.
It was last Thursday morning and he was out for a 20-mile ride, winding through the back roads between Lochwinnoch and Kilmacolm.
Life felt good. The sun was beating down, the football season was upon him and, pedal to the metal, he was going at a fair lick. “Not bad for a 60-year-old,” he thought to himself.
Then suddenly, a blur of orange descended on him. “I’ve been cycling for a long time but these four boys just left me for dead. I thought I was going at a semi-reasonable pace but it was like I was standing still. I was absolutely devastated, ready to chuck it in,” he says.
Inevitably, there’s a punchline. “Turns out it was the Dutch national cycling team, who were in town for the world championships in Glasgow. I’ve never felt so humiliated in all my life at the pace I was going,” he says, with a chuckle.
Even in his playing days, McCoist was one of life’s natural raconteurs, capable of spinning yarns as expertly as scoring goals in the royal blue of Rangers.
So it’s no surprise he has a few cycling tales to tell after spending the afternoon sweating on a recreation of the world’s first pedal bike, a wooden structure built by Scottish cyclewear brand Endura.
“Och it was great fun, totally different cadence and pace, it was like learning to ride all over again. I was like a wee kid out there,” he says. But now his true love football is back and he’s ready to get on the saddle again.
“Don’t get me wrong, at the end of the season I was saying ‘Brilliant, a wee break’ but then you realise the break is longer than you wanted,” he says.
“You’re enjoying your holiday on the beach with the wife and kids but you start looking at your phone: ‘Right, Arsenal – Forest, when’s that?'”
He got his match list from TNT Sports while he was away. The Emirates last weekend then Athens for the European Super Cup before pitching up at the Etihad as lead pundit for Manchester City against Newcastle on Saturday.
“I mean come on, what is there not to love about it?” he asks.
In football’s divisive, tribal age it sometimes feels like the presence of McCoist in the commentary booth is the one thing fans can coalesce around.
He invariably garners a positive reaction, a status befitting the nation’s favourite pundit. He demurs when I put that title to him but he does have a Sports Journalism Awards gong to prove it.
McCoist isn’t on social media to lap up the adulation – although grown up sons Alex and Argyll monitor it and keep him in the loop – but reasons that his connection is simply because the ups and downs of four decades in football have done nothing to dint his enthusiasm for the game.
“If I was going to guess at why things are going so well at the moment – and as we’re aware with football all things can change in an instant – I think it’s because the vast majority of fans listening can tell I’m enjoying it,” he says.
“I think I can give a reasonable insight and I won’t kid people on if it’s a bad game but maybe even the bad games I enjoy more than most.”
He is too modest. McCoist’s off-the-cuff lines have their own highlight reel. His particular favourite was during Euro 2020 before Scotland played England at Wembley.
“Graeme Souness was in the studio and gave a rousing speech and they came to me in comms and I said after listening to him I was ready to march on Carlisle,” he says.
“I really was! Sometimes particularly for Scotland games I’m perhaps not as unbiased as in other games but I like to think I call the game honestly, which is probably why England fans didn’t mind too much.”
McCoist is so positive that you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d led a charmed life but that’s not always been the case. He has spoken movingly about his son Mitchell, who was born with a serious heart defect and has profound disabilities.
He also endured a spell in charge of “his club” Rangers that coincided with the club’s meltdown and left him so physically and mentally shattered that he walked away from the role after finding himself “not recognising the man I saw in the mirror”.
“Hand on heart I don’t regret it one bit,” he says now.
“It was my club, it is my club and it’s my boys’ club to my dying day. I still have my season tickets there and it was one of the greatest privileges of my life to be the manager of the club but it is history now.
“I miss the coaching, I miss being on the grass every day and all that sort of stuff but I’m thrilled at what I do now.”
McCoist is at the Etihad this weekend. He likes Howe’s energetic side and thinks Newcastle bought well in the summer. But, he reasons, City are City.
“I do fancy City to win the title again but I’m not sure they’re going to be as strong as last year,” he says.
“I think they’ll miss Gundogan and I think they’ll miss Mahrez and not many people are really mentioning him and the hole he leaves behind.”
The TNT gig reunites him with Laura Woods, his former Talksport co-presenter and now lead anchor for the station rebranded from BT Sports. His warm words for his friend’s inextricable rise are genuine and heartfelt.
“I’m so proud of her. That’s probably a word I haven’t used as much as I probably should,” he says.
“I’m not in any way surprised because she’s an incredibly talented girl, knows her stuff, so thorough and I’m so pleased for her. I think it’s only the beginning for her.”
Ally McCoist was speaking on behalf of Scottish cyclewear brand Endura, that last week launched a recreation of the world’s first ever pedal cycle. Ally took on the final leg of the journey that went from Thornhill to Glasgow, replicating the bike’s maiden journey, to celebrate Scotland’s impact on the cycling industry.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/ZY3nlK7
Post a Comment