IAN Baird spent at least part of yesterday explaining the uniquely Scottish fascination of Irn Bru to a dressing room full of bemused Sutton United players. Having sampled the charms of Scotland’s other national drink during the two years he spent leading the line for Hearts in the early 90s, now he and his players are preparing themselves to taste cross border competition for the first time after being handed a trip to face Airdrieonians in the second round of the Irn Bru Cup.
“Certainly I don’t think too many of them will have tasted it down here,” said the Yorkshireman, whose main footballing claim to fame came at Leeds United. “But I do remember it being the drink of choice for the Glasgow lads.”
Baird, who is essentially general manager to head coach Paul Doswell at the Conference National outfit, welcomes the novelty factor of the 778-mile round trip to Lanarkshire at the start of next month. Even if the experience of playing against Airdrieonians won’t entirely be new to him.
“The last time I played at Airdrie it was the old stadium and I was getting slaughtered by Joe Jordan at half time because Walter Kidd was getting the better of me,” Baird told Herald Sport. “That is my abiding memory of Airdrie. And in the second half he got the better of me even more! No, we always used to have good games against Airdrie when I was there, they had Walter there, Jimmy Sandison, a couple of others. At that time they were a very, very good side.
“This is certainly something different,” he added. “We trained today so we were aware of the draw. It is a little bit of an adventure for us. We will fly up to Glasgow. The season has started sort of thick and fast and the league down here is a bit of a slog. This will be little bit of a novelty, but something we will also be taking very seriously.”
If the strange amalgam of sides in the Irn Bru Cup these days - colt sides, Welsh, Northern Irish, and now English – isn’t to everyone’s tastes, Sutton’s meeting with Airdrie and Dunfermline’s visit to Boreham Wood may offer further clues when it comes to the ongoing debate over the merits of Scottish and English football. Further context in the debate is provided by the fact Sutton United share a league with big spending Salford City, having beaten them – Adam Rooney et al – by a 2-1 scoreline only this week.
“Salford are in our league – and we beat them in Saturday,” said Baird. “Adam Rooney didn’t score against us – we beat them 2-1. But for a player to go from Aberdeen to Salford, obviously the figures that are involved, £4,000 a week I’ve heard, are massive. Funnily enough I was listening to a debate on Talk Sport and Simon Jordan was on there basically writing Scottish football off, obviously every club up there is going to finish second or third to Rangers and Celtic.
“I guess it has always been like that but when I was up there it was a really competitive league. The TV money has taken over, I think it is £30m a season up there in total and that pales into insignificance beside all the money we have got down here. But there have always been talented players up there – maybe not quite the talent they had 25-30 years ago – but I am sure that will come again.
“It would be unfair to say we are favourites because I don’t know anything about Airdrie. What I do know is that in our league, the Conference National, there are very big budgets, hence Rooney going to Salford City. But we are not in that realm, believe you me.
“We are a part time club with no paid employees, they are all volunteers. But there are not many of them in our league, we are the only part time club. We have made massive leaps in the last four years but I can’t say we are favourites going into it. I don’t know anything about Airdrie at the moment but I do know every Airdrie side I have ever played against has been decent and they have always been competitive. So it will be an interesting game.”
The last time Sutton United were on your screens was when running Arsenal close in an FA Cup tie, having disposed of Baird’s former club Leeds in the previous round. “We had a very, very good cup run two years ago where we beat Cheltenham, Leeds and played Arsenal in the fifth round,” recalls Baird. “We earned almost £1m but it wasn’t invested in the squad, it was invested in refurbing the whole football club where there had been no money spent for years. It sounds like I am trying to play down Sutton but some of our players work and we train two days a week. We are a small club in a league which is getting ever bigger.”
Conspiracy theorists see this competition as a trojan horse to get supporters used to the concept of British domestic football in order that the likes of Celtic and Rangers will make it down one day. Baird may have sampled life on both sides of the border, but he is a traditionalist at heart.
“It has always been mooted that Celtic and Rangrs could be part of the English league, me personally I am a little bit of a dinosaur, I would rather the English and Scottish leagues are kept apart.”
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