A Bolero for Boyd

Boyd-y, Boyd-y, Boyd-y. All my friends and relatives hate you. Some of them hate you because they are bigots and you sometimes play for Rangers. Others dislike your arrogance. A few lament the shame you brought on the Scottish Cup Final with your moustache.



I remember, instead, the greatest free kick I ever saw in that self same game. Sir, it was a V2. It was in the net before you struck it. I remember you scoring against my wee team in the League Cup. The ball went over your shoulder and you just hit it. Just hit it! And the Bluenoses in the stand went nuts. I sat dumbstruck and, bewildered by greatness, applauded. You jammy sod.


Why isn’t Boyd always playing for Scotland and Rangers? ‘He doesn’t track back’. He doesn’t play bass and sing for Level 42, either. ‘He wastes more chances than he scores.’ Jesus! Even Pelè missed open goals sometimes. ‘He’s a one-trick pony’. The day a pony finishes as top scorer for two different clubs in the same season is the day I give up fitba for badger baiting.


So Kris, what do they all have against you. Managers, fans, referees! I hear now that you have turned your back on George Burley because you didn’t get the chance to miss the chance Iwelumo missed. On his film-star-playing-a-politician-looks? Our own Burley, who took Hearts (Hearts!) to the top of (gasp!) the Scottish Premier League: our own, our Premier League, for a couple of weeks? Kris, dice not with greatness. Don’t play chess with death. A rose by any other name. In the midst of life we are in death, etcetera. Come back into the team! Burley must certainly recognise eventually that you are as much a specialist as Craig Gordon, and you at least have the good fortune to not look like a 14 year old at a school disco. But George and Walter say the same thing. ‘When you are playing sickening anti-football, you can’t afford Kris Boyd in your team’. Obviously, that’s not a direct quote. But they agree. Boyd doesn’t do enough to impress them. So what’s your problem, Krissy boy?

You must really do feckall in training, you go missing when the ball isn’t at your feet, you are ponderously slow, you play for Rangers, you used to play for Killie! But:

Last night I was playing 5 a sides. I was in space on the right and a deflected pass ballooned off a hapless 42 year old opponent. It bounced high over my head but I read the pitch and outmanoeuvred the closing defender. I smacked the ball on the half volley and it swerved past the keeper into the net at the near post. A lucky wonderstrike. And as I wheeled away, grinning like a goalscoring idiot, I thought of you. Not Burley, not McFadden, not Ferguson, not even Iwelumo. I thought of Kris Boyd. And that’s why I want you back in the Blue of Scotland.