STUART BATHGATE - The Scotsman – 7 June 2003
AS AN amateur with Airdrie, Queen's Park and Scotland, Bill Neil travelled widely, accumulated, by his reckoning, more caps than any other amateur, and was also able to maintain a good career in banking. He enjoyed just about every minute of his time in the game yet, curiously, hopes that the high point of that time will be denied to any other Scot.
This is not because of a desire to hold on to any records he has, or out of any feeling of curmudgeonliness, for Neil is a generous, open-hearted soul who still loves the game, Rather, it arises from the nature of that high point, and the political implications of it.
Bill enjoyed his days as a right-back/centre-half with Queen's Park
Now 64, Neil is one of the few Scots to have represented Great Britain at football in the Olympic Games. He was there in 1960, and was also part of the squad which failed to qualify on two subsequent occasions.
In those days, of course, the Olympics were amateur, and little fuss was made about the existence of a united British team when the four home nations were treated separately in all other footballing matters. Neil knows that things would be different now, and is all too well aware of the risks involved in re-establishing - as one body of opinion would do - a GB team for the 2012 Games.
The motive behind such a venture may be well-meaning and centres on London's bid to stage the Games in nine years’ time. But Neil knows that any unification of the four teams would be a threat to Scotland's right to exist as a separate footballing nation, and believes that right should be guarded jealously.
"I had a super time playing football, and the Olympic Games were the highlight," he said this week at his Edinburgh home. "We didn't qualify for the Olympics in 1964 or 1968, and as far as I'm aware I don't think there's been any Great Britain football side since then.
"If FIFA is still laying down the law I don't think there's any way round that. I'd hate to lose our national identity, and football is our national sport. I'm not a Scottish nationalist politically but I’m very much a nationalist in other respects, and I'd hate for our identity to be diluted"
And FIFA is still laying down the law, besides which, the Olympic football tournament is now open to some of the best players in the world. The teams are now under-23s with three overage players, but can consist of the highest earners in the game.
To be able to hold its own, any British team would have to be composed of the best professionals available. There would probably be no more than one or two Scots, but that would still be enough to threaten our national side's right to exist.
Having served on the committee at Queen's Park for a spell after retiring from active service, Neil has some knowledge of the intricate nature of sporting bureaucracy. He is just glad that he does not have such problems to deal with now, and is also thankful that when he played, everything was a whole lot simpler.
Known as Willie in his days as a right-back or centre-half, Neil had opportunities to turn professional. He has never doubted that he made the right decision in turning them down.
"I have no regrets about not going professional. In those days there wasn't a lot of money in the game, and my attitude was that I had security and could make a good career with myself in the bank.
"Jock Stein wanted me to go to Dunfermline when he was manager there, and I understood Rangers were also interested, but I just decided it wasn't for me.
"My one regret was that 1 did not get to take part in either the opening or closing ceremony in Rome. The opening ceremony was the day before our first game, which was in Livorno. Quite rightly we had travelled there to prepare for the match, so we missed the ceremony.
"Then in those days once you were out that was it, you went straight home. So we weren't around for the closing ceremony either."
There were three other Scots in the Great Britain side which failed to qualify from the group stages - Ronnie McKinven from St Johnstone and two Queen's Park players - Davie Holt, later of Hearts, and Hunter Devine.
"We were in the same pool as Formosa [now Taiwan], as they were then called, Brazil and Italy:' Neil went on, "I didn't play in the first game, which we lost 4-3 to Brazil, but I was in the next one against the host nation.
''I'll always remember the atmosphere. It was a very warm August evening in Rome, and there were 70,000 screaming Italians in the stadium. We drew that one 2-2.
"We then beat Formosa 3-1, but we just missed out on qualification. Brazil had a point more than us, and Italy, I think, had two."
Bill Neil – third row, far right – was one of four Scots in the GB Olympic team in 1960
While Neil and his compatriots played in the old Scottish First and Second Divisions, their English team-mates were largely in fully amateur leagues, or at least, as "fully amateur" as you can get when you are actually getting some sort of income from the game.
"1 never made a penny out of football, but I'm sure the English amateurs and those from some other countries were recompensed in some way for playing. They had very strong amateur leagues down there and the money was quite good"
The money is quite good in football these days too, which is one reason there is so much politicking involved One man who has witnessed the machinations, and who backs up Neil's fears about a Great Britain side, is David Will, the Brechin man who is FIFA vice-president.
"Through the 1980s and into the early Nineties at FIFA Congress level there were many, many attacks on the separate existence of the four teams, mainly from the Africans," Will said "Thankfully, for a number of reasons, that has died down, and world football now accepts that we have the right to exist.
"But we don't want to jeopardise that happy situation, and there has always been a feeling within the four nations that entering a single UK team for the Olympic football tournament would do that."
Neil's happy situation was to have been in the game before such questions arose. It will be some time - perhaps an eternity - before another Scot emulates his experiences.
