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In the third and final part of our exclusive interview, Stuart talks going bust, the "Houston Four", the Marr brothers, and getting jaiked in Vaasa...
If Saints went bust tomorrow, would you support any other club?
No, definitely not. I honestly mean this, and I go to see Motherwell with Tam and I've been to see Ayr and the rest of it, but I'm not one of those guys who would say "well my nearest club now is Dundee" or that I've got a soft spot for Stirling Albion because they're just down the road, but I've grown up with Saints all my life and if Saints folded, I'd just say "that's it" and not regularly go back to a club game. I might go to a game with a mate or something and support Scotland but that'd be it.
I think you've got to support a team. I'm a terrible neutral because I've got to believe in something - like today [before the Hibs game] I know that inside, my stomach will be churning for 100 minutes before and after the game, and I think "oh come on, don't go wrong, don't do anything stupid" and all that, so in a way there's a lot of pain attached to supporting Saints but I wouldn't support anyone else.
I sometimes look around the leagues and see who would be the "Saints" of that league - and I've got a mate who's really good at that, he'll tell me that the Saints of Belgium are some team who play in blue and white, and have been relegated 14 times or something - and he even went into the French Third Division and found a team called "Le Saints" or something...!
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Stuart and Tam Ower on their way to a Saints game at Celtic Park
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You'll know more about this - the "Houston Four, 1986" - discuss...
Oh Christ, this will be a long one. It was me, Stan Harris, Tommy Ower and another guy called Geordie Jack - we were all big Saints fans and big Scotland fans - we were going to Mexico for the World Cup. We got down to Gatwick with this huge big ghetto blaster - a monster beat-box, straight out of Harlem - and England were going as well so there were these West Ham fans, playing their pop stuff, so we got right in there with the Andy Stewart records and stuff.
First thing we heard was that there'd be a two-hour delay with the flight so we started drinking, and by the time we got to the flight we were absolutely gubbed with the drink. There was this guy across with us from Errol, who we called "DeLorean" because he looked like [allegedly crook car maker] John DeLorean but he was a Dundee fan and we were really having a go at him - but I thought, you're from Errol, we're from Perth, can we not find decent something to talk about, while the others shouted "Cossie, pass us a drink" and so on, since it was my nickname.
Then there was this other mate with us, Mike, who got off with it and we always say he's the "fifth member" - he's one of those guys who gets drunk an hour before everyone else, but never gets any worse - and he's getting into this DeLorean chap, saying "aye, Billy Pirie, wanker" and so on. That's how it started. So we're going over the Atlantic and I was right in the middle, passing drink around - and the stewardess comes up to us and said "Look, if you don't calm down, we're going to bring the plane down in Greenland."
So this is all going on, and to be fair, it wasn't just us, there were all these other guys. There was this other wooden-legged English guy, who looked like Worzel Gummidge, listening to all these daft conversations about Billy Pirie, whether Angus Cook was a crook and so on, and next thing you know, the guy who really did have this bad wooden leg was in the road. Geordie said to him "can you not sit down?" as a tray of drink was being passed back, and the man promptly fell backwards into this tray of drink and sent it all over the place. Geordie shouted "it must be metal fatigue" and the stewardess just said "right, that's it, I'm done with this, we'll get the police on at Houston."
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"The Houston Four" ... left to right: Mike Mason, Stan Harris, Geordie Jack, the polis, and "Crazy Cossie"
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So they took us all off - and this isn't a lie - we took the beat-box down with the Andy Stewart records, and the police came on with these huge cowboy boots, so we couldn't help giggling - and said "right - you, you, you". I wasn't really involved with it so they missed me out - but then this bimbo American stewardess pointed at me and said "and this one here - they call him 'Crazy'!"
So everyone got pulled out, including the English guy with the wooden leg, and the headline in the paper the next day said "The One-Legged Englishman and the Four Legless Jocks".
It was all a bit of a laugh. Talking of the things you got up to when you were kids, we used to go about as the CYS - the 'Crazy Young Saints' and one weekend, this lady was up from Portsmouth, a genuine diehard skinhead. A lot of guys from Almondbank used to go down to the Navy for courses and met this woman - although there was a lot of debate over whether she was a woman or not, because she was a monster. We were all at a Raith Rovers game, behind the goal at Starks Park, and their goalie was right in front of us and Saints were at the other end, so this woman was constantly gobbing on their goalkeeper. He turned round and assumed that the guys were doing it, and boy, he wasn't happy...
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When you think back, supporting Saints always seemed to involve one scrape or another. One time we were through at Hearts, and we were at Falkirk station on the way, on the same day Rangers were playing Falkirk. It was Huns galore - thousands of them, and there were maybe 40 of us in the CYS from Perth. We got on the train at Falkirk Station, we just opened the windows as it started moving, and gave them "Orange wankers" and all the rest of it, and of course as soon as we were moving - the train stopped and started moving back into the station! The driver must have been a Hun or something.
It just seemed to be like that all the time. Your life would be so impoverished if there wasn't a Saints - and thinking about the question about what you would do if there wasn't a Saints, that's why I hate when we have a laugh about Airdrie going bust and stuff, however much you laugh about it when they're in trouble, but there are guys who supported that club all their lives and it must break their hearts to see them in trouble.
I'm totally into Genealogy, researching my family, and my family all descend from Ireland, I grew up a Catholic and the rest of it - so there are so many different people in your life giving you pressure about supporting Celtic. I remember going through to the League Cup Final against Celtic, and just as we were leaving, there were busloads of Celtic fans heading off at the same time - families from Perth that had Irish origins and so on. But if you look at their family history, they all came over in 1850, during the famine, and arrived in Scotland 20 years before Celtic existed, most Irish families received Poor Law Charity in Perth, Celtic did not exist - so this idea that they're inextricably linked to Celtic is the biggest load of pish in the world. Perth has done more for those families than Celtic ever did so it's such hype it's unbelievable. It's worse for me because I'm a Catholic and I can see it for the lie it is.
You look at those families who all descended from Sligo and all lived in the same close as me, you're now eight generations down the road, I just say "when are you going to give up with this," because in actual fact if you want to play it like that, you're a lot closer to Hibs than Celtic anyway.
So if Saints were going under, would you put your hand in your pocket?
Well to be really honest I made up my mind about this - I don't own any shares in Saints. If Geoff [Brown] needs me for anything, presenting things or anything like that, or Stewart Duff or Paul [Fraser] phones me up, I always do whatever I can - but if someone ever said to me "would you buy into the club" I'd say no.
I think I'm a better outsider than an insider, I'm a fan. I rarely go to corporate hospitality and my season ticket when I'm at home is in the East Stand and not in the West, and I hate getting moved for the Huns and so on. I'd be a terrible club director because I couldn't show the courtesies that you have to show to visiting clubs. Can you imagine saying "oh and now we'll go up to the boardroom for a fine malt," to Dick Advocaat, when in actual fact you're churning at the thought of being in the same physical space as him.
I think you've got to have a different mindset than mine - I'd be too big to crack gags and stuff.
It was like when we were kids growing, up, there were gangs in Perth like the CYS, the Pack and so on - and in Dundee there were the Shimmy, the Fleet and that. When Dundee came to Perth, you know there's a chippy on North Methven Street, there used to be a snooker club in there and I was one of these wee guys who were trained to spot for the older dodgy PACK guys. What would happen was that the Dundee fans would pile down North Methven Street and we'd be sent out as an advanced posse, baiting them, so we'd get into the snooker club and lock the door behind four of the Dundee guys and kick the shit out of them.
It must have been last season - maybe the season before - I got invited into the boardroom by Geoff, and the Marrs were there - and I just said "aye, you guys are just the Kirkton Huns". And to be fair he just stood and had a laugh about various people and things. The one thing about the Marrs is that they're genuinely in it as fans. They're not in it for the media, they're not businessmen expanding their empire, they're not upping their profile in their community - they're in it because they've got dough and they're Dundee fans. Obviously I hope their dough is lost but fair play to them.
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Our mate swears blind that in Vaasa, the night before the game, you said to him "Right you - see those two burds over in the corner there - I'm going for the one on the left, you keep her mate quiet". True or false?
Almost certainly true, yes.
Funnily enough, I got an invitation last week from the University of Helsinki to talk about sport in the media - and I decided I'm going to do it, because what happened is that they must have gone onto search engines on the web - and the conference organiser said "we can guarantee you a good time in Helsinki - but not as good as Vaasa!"
The thing about Vaasa was that when I was a kid growing up, I went to the Hamburg game, the Vasas Budapest game and so on - but back then I was only 15, and Saints were playing friendlies against Real Madrid and we just couldn't get there. When Vaasa came, I was like a wee kid in a sweet shop. It was us, not Scotland, and just the best thing ever.
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Stuart in Vaasa with a slightly scared-looking Alan Kernaghan in Vaasa
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Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Interview: David Low
Stuart Cosgrove is the author of "Hampden Babylon: Sex and Scandal in Scottish Football", which is available to buy on-line here.
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