In the 1970s, Scotland transformed its fashionable team into micro-mini sports shorts. These young men risked their chances of fatherhood whenever they found themselves on uneven ground. I think I remember we got yelled at a lot.
Things hadn’t improved much by the time Ally’s army set out to conquer Argentina (ahem). As for the shorts, the hem had dropped slightly, but the team had boldly refocused the fashion gaze by enthusiastically adopting a permanent lotion.
The team rocked this bouncy hairstyle. Slow-motion photos of successful goals looked like L’Oréal ads. There weren’t a lot of slow-motion shots. Yeah, alright, Archie Gemmill vs. Holland, I’ll grant you that. In particular, no sports loops.
I note that there is not much danger of upper thigh friction burns in modern football. The handsome game now prefers the knee-length option, although I still see some interesting hairstyle choices in top football.
Read more
Read more
Susan Morrison: How rubber boots made us invincible
Off the pitch we don’t know the shorts so we don’t do them well. We struggled with them for a while. I still have nightmarish visions of my father during the first Spanish vacation.
He preferred the kind of shorts Eric Morecambe wore jokingly. They were long, with a wide, bulky leg arrangement that looked oddly starched and spilled out to the side. I think it was because my mom ironed them before packing them.
Spain survived the Civil War and Franco. It was not necessary to inflict these shorts on them, or even the whole. Like any good Scotsman of the day, my father insisted on pairing his shorts with sandals and, of course, socks.
My mother and I were purely mortified. While on vacation in Italy, we walked him in front, hoping people wouldn’t realize he was with us. As my mom pointed out, gritting his teeth, he didn’t even bother to put on his holiday socks. Those he wore had holes in them.
My husband is prohibited from wearing socks while he is wearing shorts. There is only a limited number of flashbacks a girl can take.