For most of us a home match means leaving the house in time to get down to Gayfield or nipping to the pub for a quick drink before the game. But what does it means for some of the players? Captain Marc McCulloch explains his normal match day routine.
“For a match at Gayfield I wake up at 9.30. My breakfast of cereal and toast will be interrupted by the phone call I get every Saturday morning at 9.45. It’s William Martin who calls me, sings the Newcastle song to make sure I’m up. Then he’ll call Dobbs and Mark Peat and do the same thing. (The Newcastle song originated after a match at Berwick, when the team had a night out in Newcastle but that’s all the information I can give you!) I’ll then watch a wee bit of Soccer A.M. before leaving the house at 10.30 to walk to the city centre.
From there I get a train to the Showcase Cinema where the Glasgow boys meet. I’ll try to avoid Willie Martin, as he is even more hyper on match days than he is normally. We’ll then spend ten minutes arguing over whether Willie or Dobbs will drive. The next 90 minutes involve Mark Peat and I sitting back and listening to Dobbs and Willie cane each other about everything in life. Dobbs used to be such a quiet lad too!
We get to the ground at around 1.30 and I have to try to calm Willie down a bit and keep him away from the other players so they can get themselves prepared for the match. We’ll argue over the choice of music we listen to while we are getting ready. Robbie Raeside’s taste in music is a disgrace and Willie ‘King of Cheese’ Martin will try to take over with some Abba or the soundtrack from Grease or Dirty Dancing. However, the music heavy weights, Bishop and Watson will usually triumph with their hard-core dance music.
At 2pm John will name the team and we will get ready for the warm up. This involves me making sure I have my new Superman pants on; we haven’t lost since I started wearing them on Saturdays. I’m going to have to make sure they are washed and ready for all these mid week games coming up. At 2.55 we’ll be back in the dressing room and I will get the boys into a team huddle, whether I’m playing or not, and try to come up with some motivational words which will inspire the boys to victory.
After the game we’ll have something to eat in the tearoom, which tides us over until we get home. We’ve always got to wait for Dobbs as he takes so long to put on all his moisturisers and do his hair!
The journey home always involves a discussion about the game and there are usually four very different opinions. Willie is very good at letting you know if you’ve done something wrong or haven’t played well, the rest of us are usually more diplomatic. We get back to Glasgow around 7pm and I’m usually back home for about half past, sometimes for a quiet Saturday night in and sometimes not!
For away games at the likes of Elgin I have to be away from the house by about 7.30 am, but for the Queen’s Park games I can leave the house at 1 o’clock and be at the ground ten minutes later.
To be honest the car journey up is a big part of my match day preparation as we have such a laugh. We have a great bunch of lads at the club just now and there’s a fantastic team spirit.”