Super Ally On Cooper

[ian1964 10,720]

Feb 26 2009 By Hugh Keevins

 

ALLY McCOIST will help build a lasting tribute to Davie Cooper on Friday night ... then honour his old pal's memory by continuing the search for the Super Coopers of tomorrow.

 

A debate about the health of Scottish football has raged since Walter Smith and Gordon Strachan attacked the level of criticism aimed at the last Old Firm game.

 

McCoist doesn't deny some of the stick was justified but refuses to believe this country's well of talent has dried up.

 

Along with Celtic coach Neil Lennon, McCoist will tomorrow help with the fund raising for a sensory park for special needs children in Clydebank, the town where Cooper began and ended his playing career.

 

But Rangers' assistant manager refuses to believe the exceptional skills Cooper possessed, and which ultimately took him to Rangers and a place in the national side, have skipped a generation. McCoist said: "I'm a glass half full kind of guy.

 

I'll concede Coop was the last of the breed of players who learned their football in the streets but I won't accept pessimism so far as the future is concerned.

 

"The talent is still out there and Scotland will continue to produce the type of player who makes you feel the anticipation of the crowd whenever he gets on to the ball.

 

"Kids don't play on the streets any more for a variety of reasons but that doesn't mean to say genius no longer exists.

 

"Aiden McGeady has ability to go past people for Celtic. Aaron and John Fleck at Ibrox have it as well.

 

They're the players who produce the stuff the fans go to the pub on a Saturday night and talk about.

 

"The priority for coaches is to make sure the team they work for wins matches. If we don't do that, we don't have a job but football has an obligation to entertain After the Old Firm had been slaughtered for the derby game, I felt we went out against Kilmarnock with a 'Let's show these people' attitude.

 

"Coop was the consummate entertainer. Whether it was the swivel of the hips or the 40-yard pass, he entertained no matter the fixture or the surroundings.

 

"The highest tribute I can pay him is to say I worked many times with Ruud Gullit on TV and he was always raving about Davie and a game he played against him while he was at Feyenoord.

 

"I like the idea of a lasting tribute to Davie in Clydebank because I first became aware of him in 1976 when the Bankies took Rangers to four games in the League Cup before we got rid of them. I won't name names but there were two Rangers full-backs who tried swopping sides of the park during the first of those games because one of them was getting such a chasing from this young kid.

 

"Coop was, first and foremost, a humble man but when people talk about him they don't mention his medals, they talk about his skill."

 

Cooper, who died in 1995, was revered by his team-mates at Ibrox and McCoist smiled as he recalled one occasion when they literally pulled his leg. He said: "It was Coop's testimonial match and we racked our brains over a gift.

 

"Then one of the lads had a brainwave and got the right leg off a tailor's dummy and wrapped it up in brown paper with the message, 'What do you give the man who's got everything ?'

 

"I couldn't put a price on what that left peg of his would be worth in today's transfer market. Beyond price I would say.

 

"I appreciate there's more to the game than goalscorers and I say that as someone who made his name as one. Rangers had three quality finishes on Saturday against Kilmarnock and Pedro Mendes was outstanding with defence-splitting passes.

 

"But fans love the genius of a Coop or a Jinky Johnstone or a Willie Henderson. We need more like them and I know they can still be found."

 

Part of McCoist's remit is to help discover and develop stars of the future - a job a certain ex-colleague would never have expected him to take. He said: "I can guarantee Coop will be looking down at me shaking his head. The prospect of me in management would have tickled him.

 

"Never a day goes by that I don't think about him and Tommy Burns. You might go from the Old Firm to work elsewhere but in your heart and mind you never leave Rangers or Celtic.

 

"Stefan Klos once told me it was what distinguished the Old Firm from German clubs.

 

"That's why Davie will be on my mind when I pay tribute to him in Clydebank on Friday night. He had that magic ingredient and others will come to show they have it too."

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/football/spl/rangers/2009/02/26/exclusive-duty-is-on-us-to-find-the-new-generation-of-davie-coopers-insists-ally-mccoist-86908-21153912/

[Gers4Life 0]

My all time favourite player ever to grace the light blue jersey, a true gentleman and a legend.