CHARLIE WHELAN: Footy fans have been re-united in the season of the underdog
The streets of Aberdeen were teeming last Sunday with happy delirious football fans celebrating after having seen their team defeat Celtic in the Scottish Cup final and becoming yet another underdog triumphing in this mad football season.
I had only just returned from Bilbao in Spain having watched my team Tottenham Hotspur lift a European trophy for the first time in more than forty years.
Aberdeen had a young Spurs player in their team on loan so you can guess who I was supporting!
It is worth remembering on these occasions that football brings so much joy and sometimes despair to so many people across the country and indeed the world.
Over in Dallas in Texas more than 1000 Spurs fans crammed into a pub to watch the match and here in the Highlands perhaps a smaller number - though no less fanatical - gathered in an Inverness pub to see the game.
‘Highland Hotspurs’ as they are known are one of hundreds of Tottenham supporters groups across the UK and one of the biggest is ‘Glasgow Spurs’ who welcomed me when Spurs played Rangers.
Sometimes if I fly down to the match I meet Spurs fans doing the same at Inverness Airport.
The fact is, the Highlands isn’t such a bad place to access football matches.
I often come back from a game in the Smoke on the Caledonian sleeper and my trip back to Bilbao was actually much easier than for those trying to get back to London.
I changed planes in Amsterdam because KLM have regular and reliable flights to the Highland capital.
Some football supporters may never see their team win anything and up until last week’s FA Cup final in England Crystal Palace fans hadn’t.
Outside of the Highlands who would have ever given Ross County or Caley Thistle a chance of ever winning a cup?
They did and the joy it brings is always worth the wait, as it has been to see my own team get over the line and for my fellow Tottenham supporters here in the Highlands.
* * *
Before my trip to Spain I took off in the camper van to the far north to stay a few night overlooking a beautiful sandy beach.
It was actually hotter than Spain and for the first time in decades I even had a swim in the sea!
The only spoiler was the realisation that we can’t go back in the summer because it’s simply too crowded and for that we can than the hated (by locals) so called North Coast 500.
What you may not know is that the brand North Coast 500 is actually a private company and guess who is the majority shareholder?
None other than Scotland’s biggest landowner Anders Povlsen.
The owner of the Glenfeshie Estate should be forced to drive a car along the whole route in the middle of August to see for himself the total traffic chaos.
He won’t of course he’s too busy counting his money amounting to £7.7 billion according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
Funny they don’t do a poor list. I suppose it would be too long.
* * *
The River Findhorn fishery board have taken the unprecedented step of stopping salmon fishing because the river is so low.
Whilst we can all welcome some much needed rain this does not solve the long term problem of water abstraction from our rivers.
My guess is it will only be when the hundreds of whisky distilleries along the Spey run out of water that the government will be force to act.
Charlie Whelan (Labour) was one-time spokesman for Gordon Brown.
