For today’s discourse on Ohio State football perspective, I take you to the little Isle of Bute, a choppy, 30-minute ferry ride west from Scotland’s mainland in the Firth of Clyde.
First, let’s take on the obvious questions: What was I doing on Bute, which doesn’t make even a solitary appearance in my 525-page, Scotland travel guide? Or more to the point, how could anything on a hilly, rural Scottish island with more sheep than people offer even a sliver of perspective on the almighty Buckeyes, whose most fervent followers come with an intensity and demands that seemingly no one on this peaceful place could possibly understand?
The first question is easier to answer than the second:
My son Bryan and I were there during a recent trip to Scotland because of a story in our family that our Hunters once lived on the island and were “associated” with the royal Stewarts of Bute. I won’t take you on a long, sleep-inducing journey down a deep rabbit hole here; let’s just say that the Stewart kings and queens who once ruled Scotland controlled the island back in the Middle Ages and had a favorite castle there that is still standing.
For that reason, Bute landed on our 11-day Scottish itinerary, the day before we made a three-ferry, four-hour trip to the even more remote island of Islay, which just happens to be home to several Scottish distilleries including Lagavulin, my son’s favorite. It’s fair to assume that most members of our family would have swiftly vetoed a visit to either place.
Now, let’s take a stab at that second question, which takes some time to answer:
It was raining when our ferry landed in Rothesay, Bute’s largest town (4,300 residents) and the site of the Glenburn Hotel, our home for the night. We conducted our own tour of the 47-square mile island, which included not finding the ruins of an ancient church and finding, quite by accident, three ancient standing stones, which I spotted from a narrow country road.
If you’re a fan of the cable series Outlander, where a British nurse from the 1940s touches one of these things and is transported back to 1740s Scotland, you can probably appreciate what’s it like to find these stones in a remote place on a remote island on a gray, rainy day. You can probably also understand why a reasonable, sensible guy like me decided it would be best not to not touch one of them.
What? Of course, I don’t believe in that junk. I just didn’t want to risk damaging one of them.
It had stopped raining in Rothesay by the time we got back. We consumed a delicious, mid-afternoon lunch/dinner at the Kettledrum Café and visited Rothesay (Stewart) Castle, which is closed and surrounded by fencing while preservationists try to keep it from becoming an interesting pile of old rocks. We also visited a few local attractions — the Victorian toilets are fantastic! — and determined after maybe five seconds of indecision that we should probably have a beer or two before we returned to our hotel. I remembered a neighborhood pub across the street from the castle – Macs Bar, no apostrophe – and must have thought that it would be cool to have a beer close to my ancestors’ old stomping grounds.
It wasn’t what we were expecting. There were about a dozen older men seated and standing around a little L-shaped bar; there was barely room for us to get in the door, stand up while we ordered and drink our pint of Tennant’s. Sitting was not an option. After a few minutes, Bryan noticed an open doorway to the rear and we soon found ourselves in a much more expansive room where probably a seven or eight men and one woman were seated and staring at a big screen television and the pre-game show before a football (soccer) match.
We grabbed two seats before other filtered in (which they did), although we soon realized that there was another room around the corner to the right with more people, another television, a pool table and the pre-game show in progress. No one said a word to us, but it’s safe to say that the regulars in Macs could tell we weren’t regulars. They could also tell we weren’t Scottish. Did they think we wandered in here on a chilly, rainy October evening just to watch the game? It’s hard to say. But why else would we be here?
We soon discovered that the approaching match was a Europa League contest between Glasgow’s Rangers of the Scottish Premiership and Aris Limassol from Cyprus, and that Cyprus had never won a game at this level of competition. It was also apparent from the pre-game commentary, both on the big screen and in Macs, that the Rangers had lost the match before this one and fired their manager afterwards, and that the new field boss had the job on an interim basis. We also discerned that the Rangers would have been favored to win this one even if our bartender were coaching.
The crowd in the room grew larger. Our new bar friends were laid back and chatty when we first got there. One older guy even seemed to have stopped here during his nightly walk with his dog. He kicked back a couple of beers, had a few yuks and went home with Fido even before the match started. He probably thought there was no reason to watch it. Life was good and predictable. It was throwing everybody soft, middle of the plate “fastballs.” Imagine being in a sports bar in Columbus before an Ohio State-Indiana football game.
All of that changed once the match started. The Rangers looked lethargic and disinterested and the tension and temperature in Macs started rising. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was Indiana, uh, Cyprus, remember?
When the Rangers finally went on the attack and flubbed a scoring chance on a bad turnover, the mood in Macs turned ugly.
“F— me,” one of the men fumed. “F— me!”
As the Rangers’ malaise continued, others chimed in and a trickle of obscenities gradually became a flood. When Cyprus scored, the exasperation grew. One man threw up his hands in despair and threw them toward the big screen in disgust.
“F— YOU!” he yelled.
My son and I exchanged sidelong glances. We tried to look as unhappy as everyone else – What the f— was wrong with our guys? – but it wasn’t easy. There was nothing to be unhappy about. The beer was cold and this was high theater.
I knew of the Rangers-Celtic rivalry of top Glasgow clubs from my previous trips to Scotland. I’m not sure Bryan had ever heard of either of them. No matter. The Rangers, one of Scotland’s best and most storied clubs, were losing to Indiana, uh, Cyprus, for god’s sake.
“Cover him, you piece of shite!” another guy yelled. “Oh, Jesus. . . what the hell.”
One of the Rangers best players – we could tell because he always seemed to be on camera and made some good plays – went down after a hard check at one point and it looked for a while as if his injury might be serious.
“I hope he broke his f—– leg!” the thirtyish guy next to me said disgustedly.
Again, Bryan and I exchanged looks. The player appeared to be one of only two Blacks on the team, so we didn’t know if the remark was racist or simply borne of frustration from his team’s woeful performance. How could a Rangers fan hope his team’s best player had broken his leg?
In the ensuing minutes, the thirtyish guy next to me became an obscenity machine. That didn’t seem to bother his female companion, whom we guessed could probably regale us for hours with stories about her friend’s inability to accept the Rangers’ failures. But when the bartender entered the back room with a couple of long necks, he heard my neighbor spit out a vicious F—, and quickly gave him a stern warning: if he didn’t knock it off, he would have to leave.
Others hadn’t been put on notice, though, and cripes, the Rangers were losing to Cyprus. Besides, it wasn’t long before the obscenity police had returned to the bar in the other room.
“You piece of shite!” a grizzled, seventy-something fan yelled after another bad play. He slumped in his chair and mumbled again in a lower, barely audible tone, shaking his head like a tired bobblehead. “You piece of shite. . . you piece of shite.”
As the clock wound down on Limassol’s 2-1 win, the guy next to me forgot his warning and couldn’t help himself. “This is f—- embarrassing. F—– embarrassing.”
The sentiment seemed universal, and I’m sure I nodded a few times just to let everyone know that we were just as disappointed by what was happening as they were. Ten minutes following the end of the match, most of the bar’s patrons were gone, presumably to kick their dogs, burn their Rangers’ gear, fire off a fire-the-coach email to their newspaper or do whatever they usually did when their favorite football club suffered an unexpected loss.
We stayed long enough to finish our beers, see the room clear out and marvel at what we had just witnessed, quite by accident. Fans are fans, even here in a small Scottish town on an island west of mainland Scotland. During a career covering sports in Columbus, I have often heard people say that Ohio State fans are the worst (as if all OSU fans are the same) both because of the unfair criticisms they heap on coaches and players and because the success they demand is outrageous and, well, abnormal. But, really, what is abnormal? Should fans call for Ryan Day’s head because he has a bad half against Notre Dame? Of course not. But should an angry Rangers fan hope the team’s best player has broken his leg? This was a reminder that some fans are short on patience everywhere, even on the tranquil Isle of Bute.
On the way back to the hotel, we talked about how we didn’t even know that there was a game before we got in there. Bryan read some reviews of Macs on his phone, and discovered that while it is a popular place to watch a football match on Bute, patrons aren’t allowed to wear team colors or gear while they are there. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess the reason for that policy, especially after seeing how serious the customers were about a match against Ari Limassol. I’m not sure I would want to be there when the Celtics and Rangers play.
The story could have ended with that unexpected shot of perspective, but it didn’t. Our next week was a procession of days and nights with soccer, and sometimes rugby. One night we watched the Scotland national rugby team lose to Ireland before an unhappy crowd in a bar in Campbelltown. On another day in Oban, we heard a guy muttering angrily over the failures of the Liverpool Reds. When we finally found ourselves entering Glasgow with a couple of hours to kill before we could check into our hotel, I suggested that we try to find a Rangers fan shop. I had run across a Celtic shop on my last trip to Glasgow five years ago, so I figured that the Rangers must also have one, and joked that we should go there since we had been inadvertently indoctrinated into Rangers Nation, or whatever it is called.
Google told us that there was a shop next to the club’s 125-year-old (with considerable renovations) Ibrox Stadium, across the River Clyde and only about a mile or two from our hotel. We both love old stadiums, so this seemed like a fantastic opportunity for us to both see it and reconnect with our “favorite” Scottish soccer team.
Connection made: Numerous cars were scattered around the lot between the stadium and the building where Rangers’ gear was being sold, which seemed odd on a Thursday morning. When we got inside, we found maybe 20 or 30 customers in the two-floor team shop. We wandered the place for 15 or 20 minutes, bought a few team items, exited the building and headed toward our car. Not so fast. A man with a television camera and a young woman with a microphone called to us from about twenty yards away.
“Could we ask you a couple of questions about the Rangers?” the reporter said.
We both laughed and tried to explain that we were Americans, didn’t know much about the Rangers and wouldn’t make good interview subjects.
“Oh, that’s no problem,” the woman said. “We’d love to have the American perspective.”
The American perspective? From us?
They motioned for Bryan to come over. Bryan laughed again. He tried to tell them that he didn’t know anything. They kept waving him on. He uttered an incredulous “really” and they kept waving him over. Finally, he stepped up, smiled sheepishly and the “interview” began.
“How long have you been a Rangers’ fan?” the reported asked.
Bryan chuckled. “Well, I guess since Thursday.’
The answer didn’t elicit the slightest reaction from the reporter. After few seconds of silence, Bryan went ahead and explained on his own.
“We were in a bar on the Isle of Bute and the game was on.”
Bryan grinned. The woman didn’t seem the least bit surprised by his answer and didn’t ask a follow up. It occurred to me that maybe she wasn’t even listening. She had a series of questions that she probably asked every fan she interviewed.
“Who’s your favorite Rangers’ player?” she asked.
Bryan laughed again. “Uh, probably that Black guy. I don’t know his name but he looked pretty good.”
The interviewer and her cameraman heard that answer and they both laughed. I did, too. I figured surely that would be the end of the interview. I mean, who keeps interviewing a fan who refers to the team’s best player as “that Black guy?” She does, obviously. She went right to her next question, which I didn’t hear, probably because my brain was still stuck on his last answer. This time Bryan paused for several seconds before answering: “I don’t really know.”
Of course, he didn’t. He tried to tell them beforehand. He didn’t know anything about this. I heard the next question and I couldn’t believe it.
“What do you think the Rangers should do about their coaching vacancy?”
Seriously? She just asked an American who has admitted that he has only been a fan since Thursday, a guy doesn’t know the name of their best player (who we found out later was team captain James Tavernier) what the Rangers should do to resolve its coaching problem?
“I don’t know,” Bryan said, smiling. “Hire a good coach?”
With that the interview died of natural causes, not because of his answers but apparently because she ran out of questions.
We laughed later about how Bryan’s interview is probably out there on the Internet somewhere, getting thousands of views from fans chuckling about the dumb American who didn’t know squat about the Rangers and their problems.
I even tried to find it later, but all I could find were interviews with Rangers fans who were furious with how the club had been playing, critical about the coaching decisions and calling for drastic action from the club’s management.
I’m guessing most of those unhappy souls don’t even know that Ryan Day exists.
