There really was a time when Scottish football's top players would be signed off for a weekend to represent their clubs in a mid-season six-a-side tournament. That was the Tennent's Sixes of the 1980s and 1990s. Now, 33 years on from its previous iteration, the "creaky joints" of the Scottish game, as Rangers hero Ian Durrant puts it, will hobble about on an artificial surface rolled out over Braehead Arena's ice rink.
The cult indoor event returns this weekend, with former players representing each of Scotland's 12 top-flight sides. They will play group-stage matches on Saturday before a new winner is decided on Sunday evening. Inside the return of the Tennent's Sixes How author Stephen King is helping keep Highland League side going With the assistance of Durrant, Barry Ferguson will manage a Rangers team including the likes of Charlie Adam and Andy Halliday, while Aiden McGeady and Charlie Mulgrew are among Celtic's squad.
Hearts legend Rudi Skacel will also be in action, but the fact that current first-team players represented the clubs back in the day highlights just how seriously the tournament was taken. Many readers of a certain vintage will know that, but for those unaware, consider this: Davie Cooper, regarded by some as Rangers' greatest player, scored the first-ever Tennent's Sixes goal during his peak years in the mid-1980s. You also had the likes of John Collins, arguably Celtic's top man at the time, part of the Parkhead club's triumph in 1992.
Try translating that to the modern day: Callum McGregor and a few of his Celtic team-mates knock off for a couple of days playing sixes. Find us a sports scientist who would approve that. Then the mind wanders to how Martin O'Neill would react if one of his big-money summer signings returned to Lennoxtown with an ankle the size of a golf ball after tripping on a poorly laid green rug.
"Imagine somebody got injured these days doing that," says Gary Harkins, who will be playing for Dundee. "Your £12m striker out for the season because he's basically played a game of fives." "When you think that actually happened, it's genuinely incredible," adds Scott Allan, who will be managing Hibernian. "I'd love to see it now, but it would just never happen." The lore is bizarre, endless and only serves to highlight how much the game has changed this century.
In 1988, when Rangers declined to take part, Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest were participants. Just think for a second what it would take for a current-day Premier League side, built with bucketloads of cash, to send a six-a-side team north of the border. Legendary boss Clough was unable to add the trophy to the European Cups he had won earlier that decade.
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