There are people who are temperamentally unsuited to positions of responsibility. Some of them end up there anyway, often with catastrophic consequences. They might even start out fancying themselves, wanting power, but getting it destroys them and all around them.
You can see them in politics, in business and in sport, like rabbits caught in the headlights, nerves frayed, heads down, shuffling around like reluctant kids at try-out who don’t want the ball. And that stuff is catching. Before long colleagues and team-mates are similarly afraid and a creeping malaise takes hold of everyone. Disaster.
And there are some to whom leadership comes easily. Some of them don’t find that out until crisis hits, and then they rise to meet it. They have cool heads in the toughest circumstances. That too is catching. It can run through an entire group like an IV drug. They are almost irreplaceable. Their absence leaves a hole not just in the team but seemingly in the world. There are numerous examples, but one that shouts out is Scott Brown’s absence from the Scotland team.
Results and performances have nosedived since he announced his international retirement. His last game was back in March, against Denmark. Since then we’ve lost two friendlies – against Italy and France – won a single qualifier, drew one and lost the other. Is this all down to the absence of Brown? Clearly not, but when Slovakia beat the national team by three clear goals last month it was apparent that something pretty serious was wrong.
The players thought they knew what it was. Some of the senior internationals begged Brown to return to the fold. Scott, typically, didn’t want to do so until he and the manager had talked. He didn’t even want it to look like he’d changed his mind because there was a big game at Wembley coming up. Not that it mattered. The media spun it that way.
Had this been a Sevco player they would have been marked as “riding to the rescue” but Brown is afforded no such accolade. He’s a guy who’s changed his mind to play in a glamour match, no matter how little resemblance to reality that actually is.
Brown is an extraordinary leader. He’s blessed with all those qualities you would hope for and want in someone in an important job. And he is loyal. He’s been missed at the centre of the Scotland midfield – he’s won 50 caps for his country – and when the call came he didn’t say no, he did what we would expect a leader to do.
That should have earned him universal respect, yet I’ve read a lot of criticism of that decision and I know the usual anti-Celtic suspects have had a field day over it. What a brass neck they have; Brown has answered the call of his country, and their attitude towards it should have started and stopped there. When their hero, Smith, walked out of the national team to answer a call far closer to his heart there was not a complaint from any of them. In fact, country be damned. The nation was expected to simply understand and accept.
We are lucky – and I speak as a Scot and as a Celtic fan – to have Scott Brown. He is having his best season in many years, and in particular playing alongside Rogic and Armstrong, who ought to be joining him in the centre of the pitch in London.
He deserves our support, and I for one am glad he’s been passed fit for the game.