It’s often said that Scots love making excuses for themselves. If something goes wrong, we have a wonderful tradition of blaming something or someone else. “Aye, it wisnae ma’ fault, some wee bugger stole ma’ fitba’ boots and I had to play in ma’ plimsolls.” We’ve even got a comedy show called: “It’s Only An Excuse” and that hilariously sums up our view of football.
 
In some ways having a good excuse allows us to walk away from the reality. And often the truth in  Scotland is that our sporting heroes, with a few honourable exceptions, such as Chris Hoy and Jackie Stewart, aren’t quite good enough. They haven’t actually made the grade on the world stage. And there is always some lame apology for failing at the final hurdle.
 
Does that ring true with you? Do you start some of your sentences with the phrase: “If only...”  We’ve already talked about a typical Scots’ fear of failure – it manifests itself in the lack of ambition you’ll find in housing schemes and comfortable middle-class villas from Dundee to Dumfries, Glasgow to Peterhead. It comes from a paucity of imagination and ambition because a burning desire to succeed normally comes out of some kind of adversity. 
 
Many great sporting winners have had to deal with adversity and rejection in life – and the Greats are those who pull through the other side. For example, one of the greatest boxers of all time, Jack Dempsey, fought his way from poverty and obscurity – hanging underneath railway coaches to reach his destinations – to become a world champion. Like so many others, before and since, his ‘sport’ dragged him out of the gutter and made him rich and famous. But what also drives human sporting endeavour is a determination to prove the doubters wrong. And rejection can be very cruel – but when it is soothed later with encouragement, it can become a classic carrot and stick. 
 
Kevin Keegan, a Liverpool, Newcastle and Hamburg legend and the former England manager who epitomised the ethics of hard work and application, spoke candidly about how it was a spur for him. He told In the Winning Zone: “As more and more players are put into the factories that are producing footballers, there is less chance of finding someone the clubs have never heard of being discovered. At 16 and 18-years-old, most of the players have been assessed – but you do get the odd non-league player bouncing through. And because he hasn’t had it as easy, because his mates got taken on at a club, and he didn’t, he’s more determined. Rejection, in some way, helps you become a winner.”
 
For Keegan, there was a positive way of handling this slur.  “If you look at most people who have become really successful, it is usually been because they have been turned down and told they are not good enough. They have been challenged by someone saying, ‘You ain’t going to make it.’ We’ve all had that.’
 
In Keegan’s case, he was turned down at Coventry City and at Doncaster Rovers. “Coventry was the biggest blow for me because I was picked out of 200 kids – with another guy and we went for six weeks’ special training at Coventry. In my mind, it was; ‘Wow’. Jimmy Hill was running the team and they had their own training ground – which not many clubs had, and they even had the Sky Blue train.”
 
But there was a shock in store. “After six weeks they took the other guy and they let me go. On the train back to Doncaster that day, which took about two hours, I was very upset. I was going back to the people who had said to me before, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’re not good enough to be a footballer.’ I was thinking, ‘Maybe they’re right’. Rejection is not a bad thing, if you use it as a spur.”
 
Keegan used this experience to drive him to the very top. And it was the encouragement of the late, great Bill Shankly, among other, who provided the antidote of rejection – praise. When Keegan arrived at Liverpool he had been there only ten days when an obviously impressed Shankly took him aside and said: “You’ll play for England, son.” That was one sentence – but it had such a positive impact. Rejection and encouragement become two sides of the same coin of success.
 
One of Scotland’s greatest players was Wee Willie Henderson. He was the legendary inside forward for Rangers in the 1960s and 1970s. He remains one of the best players ever to have played at the Ibrox club. But he was branded a failure at school. “When I was a kid my school teacher at Glengowan School used to tell me I’d finish up a failure. His problem was the same as many more people in schools. They don’t realise there was future for boys in football if they have the ability.” And they were prepared to work hard. Willie Henderson was driven by the desire to prove people wrong.
 
Perhaps it isn’t only the Scots who aren’t good at winning. Look at the dismal performance of the Britons at Wimbledon in 2007. No-one can say that the athletes haven’t been supported by the Lawn Tennis Association, who have spent millions on trying to get a British champion. With no British man or woman able to reach the third round of Wimbledon it proves the dire state of a game that is hugely popular in Britain. Katie O’Brien, the young Briton comprehensively thrashed 6-0, 6-1 by Holland’s Michaella Krajicek, admitted: “The LTA have given all the players fantastic opportunities. I think some people just sit there and take it and don’t put in the hard work themselves.”
 
She admitted that the British women have had an easy ride compared to certain foreign players and said: “I think the LTA being tougher on us and telling us we can’t get there with half-hearted attempts is a good thing. I think it’s no secret that Eastern Europe players have to fight for everything they have. Tennis is the best opportunity for them to make something of themselves and they work hard.”
 
So it’s wake-up time if you really want to be a winner.
 
One of the most inspirational sporting figures of the last 50 years was the African-American tennis player, Arthur Ashe - the first black player to break through into a predominantly white sport. He was as significant as Mohammed Ali and in the 1960s – when the Black Power movement was taking root in sport - he overcame terrible prejudice to reach the top.
 
He became the first black American to win the American Tennis Open at Forest Hills and he campaigned for professional rights, then he fought against apartheid. He was even barred from entering South Africa because of his colour. But he was under huge pressure because of his race – and in the early 1970s his game began to suffer. He lost the plot – and he had to fight back, to prove the doubters wrong.
 
As his career began to fade he kept a diary – which was remarkably honest. It reveals a great deal about coping with rejection and failure – and it talks about dealing with the next generation of young and talented players who wanted to steal his crown. His diary entry for Sunday, 21 October 1973 read: “Right now, I just want to kiss off the rest of the year. I want to resign all my obligations and go back to Miami and work on my weaknesses. I have been playing worse and worse, but I am simply ashamed at how I played in the doubles today … I fell apart. I kept losing my serve…. It was awful.  I used to cry when I lost as a kid, and maybe I’d be better off doing that now. Maybe we’d all be better for that. So many kids grow up, as I did, confusing embarrassment with losing. We have such an insatiable desire to win that one is shamed by defeat. Is it our outlook in sports which affects the rest of our lives or is it our determination to success in all areas – and sports is just one of them?”
 
Ashe was coming to terms with his loss of form. And how he had to dig deep in his reserves to start winning again – especially when a talented person had just arrived on the scene; Bjorn Borg. Ashe said:  “I have to be very careful that I’m not copping out. I tell myself that there can be only one winner, and that I’ve won often enough. I tell myself that it is crap about how you’re only as good as your last game. I tell myself that my record stands. I tell myself there is too much emphasis on winning. But I must watch that I am not just telling myself these things to explain my losing lately or to excuse myself from not trying hard enough.”
 
Arthur Ashe used this slump to pull himself up to his greatest achievement, winning the Wimbledon singles title in 1975, when he beat the clear favourite, Jimmy Connors, now coaching Andy Roddick. It was a classic final and an example of using adversity, rejection and failure to fight back to become a worthy champion.

International sport is littered with example of people who have come back against the odds to prove they are winners. Even in Scotland we have plenty of examples of sporting heroes who have used the desolation of rejection to fight back and win. And here there are lessons in life too. Perhaps, just perhaps, many Scots simply give up too easily when the going gets tough. Yes, the warrior spirit still exists but it needs rekindled and even modernised for a new era.
 
There is this awful feeling in the pit of your stomach when you have been thrashed and hammered by someone who is fitter, smarter and more skilful. But do you just make an excuse for yourself, or do you have the bottle to really do something about it and have another go at improving yourself, of taking your talent to a new level? So stop making excuses and, to coin a bank slogan, Make it Happen.

KK

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