Russell Latapy sets some myths straight
By Aidan Smith (The Scotsman)WHEN Russell Latapy phones to say that, yes, he’ll talk about Scottish Cup semi-final weekend – “Two days when I really can’t lose because three of my teams are playing” – your correspondent is in Edinburgh’s St Stephen Street and this seems apt indeed. Was it not right here, 14 years ago, that the wee man drove himself into the stout arms of the local constabulary and out of the cup final, having daundered along a one-way the wrong way?
For those who don’t know it, St Stephen Street is the once-picaresque avenue which was the capital’s Haight-Ashbury during the hippie era and is now thoroughly chi-chi. There are worse places to take a tumble and, when we meet in an Inverness coffee-shop, I’m about to suggest that Cup-tormented Hibbies might want to erect a plaque at the road entrance. Maybe “Here, in 2001, the dream died again” – something like that. But then Latapy says: “No no, my friend – this is a myth.
“Yes, I’d had a coupla drinks and yes the law got me, but it wasn’t St Stephen Street, not one-way, it was… ” He tries to recreate the classic grid of Edinburgh’s New Town using his phone, his cappuccino and his lemon muffin only to get lost (again). “I love the New Town, you know. Alex McLeish, intelligent man that he is, drove me round it to sell Edinburgh to me. I’d just been having a look at Barnsley so, no disrespect, but the final score was probably Barnsley 0, Edinburgh 17. I lived in a flat in Fettes Row so could walk up to Princes Street nice and easy. Rick’s, which became my favourite bar where the whole team used to go, wasn’t far away at all.”
If only he’d left the car at home that night. If only Big Eck’s intelligence had encompassed the pragmatism that would have allowed club rules to be waived, making a special case for a special player, because if Hibs were to have any chance of beating Martin O’Neill’s Celtic in the ’01 final they would need their Trinidadian patter-merchant. This was the fans’ view. That is, it was the dear wish of those supporters not spitting mad at Latapy who was effectively sacked.
Ah, but it’s also a myth that the incident happened 48 hours before the Hampden showdown, ultimately lost 3-0. “The final was still a fortnight away,” he confirms. “Yes, it was daft of me to drive, but one of my two oldest friends had come to Edinburgh to see me, and I think we all know his name.” This was Dwight Yorke, the other good buddy being cricketing great Brian Lara. “The truth is there were these boys – twins who ran a nightclub – and they were taking pictures of us, I guess to publicise the place. Dwight, who maybe hadn’t told his managers where he was, didn’t like this. They jumped in a car so we chased them.” With three blondes in the back seat, so legend has it? “Ha ha, it wisna three!”
Another myth, then, but what is not mythology is that Latapy was a genius with a ball, a wayward one perhaps, a playmaker and also a playboy, but a lemon muffin among the meat pies of Scottish football, one of the finest from foreign shores who were supposed to brighten up our perishing afternoons. He was adored at Hibs and Falkirk, who meet in today’s semi-final, and admired everywhere else with possible the exception of Tynecastle, for in green and white he never lost to Hearts and pulled the strings for the second most-famous Hibee derby victory.
Never lost? Actually, that’s a myth, too. “The first Scottish footballers I met was when Hearts came on a Caribbean tour.” This was 1986 when Latapy was 17 and a diminutive but determined graduate of Trinidad & Tobago’s splendidly-named Sunshine Snacks League and here’s further evidence of the truth regarding him often being more prosaic than the folklore: Walter Kidd scored two of goals in the Jambos’ win over the national side. Hearts, by the way, rated him simply too small, as did Leeds United later, but the knockbacks, together with the put-downs of his schoolteacher – “Don’t be stupid – no one from here becomes a footballer” – made him more determined still.
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