2 weeks Ago
I would suggest it was a great boost for Dougie Imrie and the Morton support that Michael Garrity turned down the opportunity to follow his pal and team-mate ‘Kingy’ to Ireland last week. It was refreshing as well, to be honest. When I was a player, it was a bit of a cattle market, when a player’s opinion on a move would never be sought or considered.
When I first broke into the Morton side, I was able to form a good and productive partnership with Mark McGhee. We had an almost telepathic understanding of where each other would be on the pitch. That was the basis for a Cappielow side who arguably punched above our weight in a division that had Dundee, Hearts, Kilmarnock and others fighting to get to the Premier League.
One thing about McGhee - or ‘Dingus’ as we called him - was that he knew his own mind. That trait took him through a career at Aberdeen, Hamburg, Celtic and more as a player, before turning his hand to management, with varying degrees of success. However, he turned up at Cappielow one Friday night in 1978, at the behest of the legendary Hal Stewart, to be told he had just been sold to Newcastle United! No agent.
No discussion. No re-location plans. Just pack a grip and get moving! It’s a different world now - although, in some ways, things are not so very changeable.
Morton still have to retain a model as a selling club to realise their revenue goals and ultimately their ambitions. In that respect, good husbandry in the transfer market is important - which is why they would have accepted a reasonable bid for any of their first team talent. But it’s also why I use the word ‘refreshing’ when I see that the lad wants to stay at Sinclair Street.
It was agents, of course, who agitated for the two-windows transfer model that we now navigate in. But I am surprised a little that, in the post-Bosman era, no-one has challenged it. I may be as old-fashioned as Roger Moore’s safari jackets, but I do prefer the ‘open all hours’ system from my day, even if it saw us lose ‘Dingus’ as coals to Newcastle! There was the surprise element that a club would make a bid out of the blue for a player without worrying about time constraints and parameters.
Now it’s a game of chess, with clubs having to play against a ticking clock. Celtic sell Kyogo and are in the market for a striker. As soon as they identify one, the price goes up quicker than a tax hike, because the selling club know that the buyers have a limited time.
So it’s take it or leave it...
and you can see the end result. Speaking of strikers: we lost a good one just this week with the death of Dundee Hall of Famer Billy Pirie. Billy and I jousted many a time at Cappielow and Dens Park.
His tally of 106 goals in 138 games in the dark blue, including a 44-goal campaign in his first season, points to the quality he had up front. What would he have been worth in today’s market? Rest in peace, ol’ mucker..
