With the best talent in the world, nobody wants to be the follow-up act to a band that blows the doors off the building with a stunning performance.
Even if you’re the headliner, it must grind your gears to have to go on stage following a band that has wowed the audience and brought the house down. The pressure to perform must be enormous.
So much better if you walk on stage after the last act has bombed, and even greater if that last act was once a great band, well past its best, and reduced to the supporting role.
It’s great to set your sights high, but it’s much quicker building your confidence walking in the footsteps of someone who’s ploughed the road in front of you, and if you happen to find their corpse up ahead, frozen stiff from the endeavour, tell yourself “I survived longer than you” and keep on moving forward.
I hope Dominic McKay brought a little of that mentality with him when he went into work today.
There are some in the media who would have you believe that he’s walked onto a stage too big for him to fill. They would have you believe he’s taken the place of a true giant of the game, a titan of Scottish football.
Well, to paraphrase the great Shield character, Claudette Wyms, just look “at what the hero left on his way out the door.”
[snack-countdown title=”Celtic’s Countdown To Champions League Disaster” date=”06/20/2021″ time=”00:00:00″ colour=”#000″ textColour=”#FFF”]
Instead of letting it get him down, I’d take heart from the shambles he inherits.
I’d feel my confidence soar with every single look behind the furniture.
Ever seen Gordon Ramsey walk into one of those manky kitchens where he’s there to tell them how to save the business?
That’s how I want McKay to feel walking around Celtic Park this evening; like a guy who’s seen the worst of it and knows that no matter what comes next the place will never be in this state again.
If he arrives with a modicum of competence and a dose of reality, if he approaches it with hope but also with humility – and he’ll bring all of those things – then I think we’re already halfway there and we should start to see things falling into place soon.
The first thing we have to do is settle on a director of football, and appoint him at once.
Then we can move on to the larger task of finding the next manager, a search we need to undergo in a manner befitting a great club and not one skulking about as if afraid of its own shadow.
We need to cease this nonsensical two-step with the candidates; neither Keane, nor Howe for that matter, merits this gross gavotte.
Who do they think they are? Who do they think we are?
If all McKay does in his early days in this job is restore a sense of professionalism and pride to this club, then that will be a major step forward from the shambling ruin we see right now.
If he can speed the appointments up that will, of course, be wonderful. If he can land us a manager of the calibre we deserve then he will start as a hero and can only go up in our estimation.
If he feels himself flagging, he should know that he will have the full support of many, many thousands of people. As long as he plays with a straight bat, levels with us, and doesn’t try to bullshit his way through.
The blogs will back him. The podcasts will sing his praises.
Hey, he can only improve us. The way things are right now, I struggle to imagine how this talented and accomplished man who transformed Scottish Rugby can possibly make us worse.