Chick Young's view

Andy Ritchie rides the challenge of Kilmarnock's Ally Mauchlen

By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

The cynical, shame on you, would argue that it might be the case every time you visit Greenock, but we turned the clock back 30 years there the other night.

In quite the finest excuse for a party I have heard for a while, Morton's Supporters' Trust decided to celebrate that November weekend in 1979 when Cappielow's finest topped Scotland's top tier.

The Good Lord knows that I toil to remember what I had for my lunch, but I can remember with vivid clarity the joyous feeling I had when my sports editor instructed that I would be heading for the Tail of the Bank any given Saturday that season.

Morton were magnificent, both as a club and as a team. Under the influence of the greatest football showman of them all, Hal Stewart, they realised that football was, after all, part of the entertainment industry.

Thirty years down the line there is not a player in the SPL who is fit to lace the boots of Ritchie

Mr Haldane Stewart could have sold sand to the Arabs and that Christmas offered his players the festive bonus of the choice between a turkey and a pair of Levi jeans. This is a true story, believe me.

And how, under the stewardship of Benny Rooney and Mike Jackson, they entertained the Greenock public... and terrorised everyone else, including the Old Firm and, in particular, Alex Ferguson's otherwise rampant Aberdeen, for whom Cappielow became Hell on Earth.

And here's where the sermon begins.

Celtic have a maverick player in Paddy McCourt, blessed with enormous natural talent but who can't quite cut it in the big time.

Morton had one too. But Andy Ritchie - ironically allowed by Jock Stein to leave Celtic Park - was everything that supporters love about football. Lazy and seemingly indifferent towards the concept of team spirit, yes, but gloriously gifted.

He scored outrageous goals and, until last week when I saw a DVD of the magic that made him Scotland's player of the year, I was beginning to think time had enhanced the magic of it all.

These were happy days for Scottish football and we all hoped - but deep down knew it wouldn't happen - that Morton could win the championship.

But there was a dark side to football then. Old Firm fans fervent in their bitterness, hell bent on violence and seemingly more interested in the politics of Ireland than the state of the Scottish game.

MY SPORT: DEBATE Share your memories of Andy Ritchie and Morton in 1979

What do you know? Thirty years down the line there is not a player in the SPL who is fit to lace the boots of Ritchie: but the cancers of society are active still.

Rangers were in Bucharest, but it could have been Birmingham or Newcastle or Villarreal or Pamplona or Manchester. The idiots still don't learn.

I suspect they never will.

Meanwhile, on Remembrance Sunday, BBC Radio Scotland listeners clearly heard a section of the Celtic support insist on poisoning a minute's silence to honour the memory of the fallen who gave their lives for this country by singing songs about the IRA, albeit outside Falkirk Stadium.

Elsewhere, on rather more frivolous matters, I see dear Willie Miller continues to drone on about Aberdeen being hard done-to by referees and that, of course, was his then manager Alex Ferguson's favourite pastime all these years ago.

Match officials and the West of Scotland media.

Plus ca change, as they say on the other side of the Channel.

Too much has changed since 1979. But, then again, too much has remained the same.