Nothing beats that Kilwinning feeling

For 25 years our merit winners have done anything but swan around

- BY ALAN ROBERTSON

JIM HODGE can laugh about it now but that morning in 2006, at least while SFA legend Jim Fleeting kept him waiting, threw up the polar opposite.

The Kilwinning Community Sports Club trustee revealed: "Walter Smith was coming to open up the two new grass pitches and the five-a-side courts.

"The five-a-side courts had been finished before that but we hadn't had a grand opening. In the morning, Jim Fleeting, who had organised it, came in and told us about 11 o'clock Walter couldn't make it.

"Obviously he was the Scotland manager, a busy guy. Jim left it a few minutes for us to stop crying... then he announced, 'But I've managed to get somebody else, guys'.

"Who's that? Who's that?'... Ally McCoist. We all wiped away our tears and were quite happy about getting the assistant manager in!

Come five o'clock this evening, the latest to occupy that dugout at Hampden, Steve Clarke, will bid to inch the national men's team a step closer to a first World Cup finals since before the turn of the century.

But before kickoff, inside the National Stadium away from the TV cameras, it's what happened in the couple of years after that run-out at France 98 which will be celebrated.

On this, their 25th anniversary, Hodge-one of the club's co-founders - and Co will be last up on stage to collect the Merit Award at the SFA's Grassroots Awards, which have run in partnership with McDonald's and the Sunday Mail for 20-plus years.

It all started in the late 90s when as many as 16 teams dotted around the town were competing for the same, few, rundown facilities.