They don’t make them like they used to.
Spend enough time with an older relative interested in football and before long, they’ll be waxing lyrical about the good old days when players were real men and there was none of this namby-pamby diving, cheating and conning refs.
Players were hard as nails and had the scars to prove it. Why, some players even laced up their boots after spending a whole day’s shift down a mine. And another thing…
OK, as a young fan it might be easy to be dismissive of someone yearning for the good old days. Sometimes these harks back in time completely ignore the advances the game, both technically and physically, has made in recent years.
But as the entire Scottish football calendar is wiped out tonight because of snow, you can’t help but accept that these old-timers have a point when they talk about how hardy the players were.
Motherwell v Aberdeen, Celtic v Dundee and Hibs v Hamilton have all fallen victim to the Met Office’s red weather warning. While all of tonight’s Highland League games are off as well.
Few would dispute whether this is right call – it’s absolutely baltic out there today – but take a look at some of these matches which beat the cold back in the day.
We’ve trawled through our archives to let you have a glimpse at some of them.
