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6 months ago
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JULIE McNEILL is the Poet-in-Residence for St Mirren Football Club Charitable Trust, the only female poet — as far as can be established — attached to a professional football club in the UK, perhaps in the world. She is the Makar for The Hampden Collection, set up to preserve and protect Scotland’s footballing heritage. Here, she explains her motivation for her latest book, We Are Scottish Football...
The story begins in 2018 when the Scottish women’s national team were busy qualifying for the Women’s World Cup in France.
My daughter was five at the time and we went along to all the games. I started writing about the experience through her eyes — growing up in a world where it was completely normal to see the women’s team performing at such a high level and playing their games at Hampden Park.
It was early 2019 when I got to know the Hampden Collection volunteers, led by Graeme Brown. They were set up in 2017 to preserve and protect Scotland’s pioneering football history through the story of the Hampden Parks and all who played on them.
I wrote poems for the SWNT Poets Society, charting the journey to France and beyond, then became their Poet-in-Residence in 2020. Since then we have amassed an online collection of over 150 poems celebrating the men’s, women’s and children’s experiences of the game.
Hampden Bowling Club in Glasgow, which inspired the poem Echoes... ‘Fragments of legends gather from across the decades’
Fleshers Haugh, site of Rangers’ first game, which accompanies McNeill's poem Four Lads Had a Dream... ‘Marking one half of that grass green. One forever blue’
This iconic image of Billy McNeill is found at St Mary's Church in Glasgow. McNeill wrote For Good about Celtic's origins... ‘A bright new fitba team wedded from the start to the common weal’
Scotman Alexander Watson Hutton is considered the ‘father’ of Argentinian football and is the subject of the poem Rollin... ‘When Watson Hutton went tae the Scots School in Buenos Aires he stairtit sumhin’
The Hampden Collection have charted 21 sites of historical importance for Scottish football — the birth of the SFA, Third Lanark, Queen’s Park, the resting place of the ‘Scotch Professors’, the home of the father of Argentinian football, origin stories of Celtic, Rangers and the pub named after Scottish legend Rose Reilly to name a few.
These will become a free open-air museum with plaques designating the sites and QR codes you can scan to find out more. Each of the sites feature in We Are Scottish Football with a poem by me and beautiful photography by Campbell Ramage. The book also recounts games big and small, rituals, pies, missed chances and VAR — the highs and lows of being a football fan.
The Women Before Her is inspired by former women's footballer Rose Reilly... ‘They show us what women can do when we raise each other’
Luath Press have produced a beautiful book filled with poems and images celebrating our footballing heritage. We will launch We Are Scottish Football at two events, one at Hampden Bowling Club and one at the Football Museum at Hampden Park. I’m determined to keep shouting about the significant role Scotland has had in the birth and spread of the modern passing and running game of football and the sites we should celebrate and protect.
The book is a wonderful collection of poetry and pictures inspired by Scottish football
As Stuart Cosgrove said of the book: ‘These are the stories we should be shouting about.’
‘We Are Scottish Football’ is available at www.luath.co.uk and in all good bookstores.
English (US)