THERE is laughter, even the merest gasps of joy and incredulity, as Elsie Cook tells her story. There is the trip to Hampden in the official Brazil team bus after a meeting with Pele in 1966.
There is the hailing down of a furniture van in Argyll Street in 1972 so that the first Scotland women’s team could get to training in Greenock. There is the meeting with Jock Stein.
There is a moment when a women’s team is changing behind a bandstand in an Ayrshire Park in the sixties, providing more than frisson of shock for the church goers leaving a Sunday service across the road.
All these, and so much more in her life story, can raise a smile but there is a deeper tale of struggles, regular disappointment and pain just beneath the surface of congenial hilarity.
Born in 1947, Cook has done it aw and seen maist of it, as the vernacular in her outstanding memoir, A Kiss Fae Pele, might put it.
Former Scotland manager Elsie Cook is reunited with Pele back in 2016
Former Scotland women’s manager Elsie Cook back in her playing days
The Scottish Women’s Premier League begins on Sunday. Professional women players will play on good surfaces, in front of paying crowds with authorised referees. In the early days of Cook’s passion, even obsession, of organising women’s football none of the above applied.
‘We had to clear dog mess off the parks,’ she says. ‘The councils would not allow us to change in the dressing-rooms. The SFA would not allow referees to officiate at our matches. We changed where we could and we were grateful to those on the sidelines who would come and referee our matches.’
This was Stewarton, Ayrshire, in the 1960s and beyond. The landscape of professional women’s football, of thousands of young girls being coached and given a vision of a future of playing football, was out of sight then. This destination was reached by the efforts of many. It is, though, impossible to imagine it being secured without Elsie Cook.
Cook was inducted into the Scottish Hall of Fame this month. It was long overdue and, full disclosure, as chairperson of that august body I must share culpability for the delay. Cook, though, was sanguine about it all. After all, the story of her life has been one of fighting battles in the face of outright opposition or chronic indifference.
But there are signposts on the journey that took her from football in a mass of grassland, dubbed the Jubilee, in Stewarton to the inner sanctum of the hall of fame at Hampden where she was inducted in front of a packed crowd. They had all been touched by the driving force that is Cook.
She tells her story. Then others emerge from the audience to tell their tales of Elsie. Of course, there is fitba’ chat but there are also the tributes to another Elsie. This is the Cook who took up art in her fifties and graduated with honours from Glasgow School of Art.
This is the lover of nature who took up hill-walking and became an Alpine climber. This is the runner who tackled marathons for the first time as she was approaching 40. She was inspired by her mother and auntie, who both completed marathons in their sixties.
Billy Bremner keeps a close eye on Brazil superstar Pele during a Hampden friendly in 1966
The Scotland women’s football team pictured back in 1974, Elsie Cook is back row far right
There is obviously something in the genes that propels Cook but there is something defiantly individual too. She is a woman of ideas but one of action, too.
The Pele story shows this. As a teenager, she ventured from Stewarton to see the great man in Troon in 1966 where the Brazil squad was staying in preparation for a friendly against Scotland before the World Cup in England.
‘When I heard he was there I had to go,’ she says. She took a tartan tammy and presented it to her hero. ‘I was standing there when Garrincha, Tostao and others were passing by. My knees were knocking like coconuts in a hurricane when Pele came up to me.’
She made an impression. She was given tickets for that night’s game at Hampden and a place in the official bus that followed the team bus up to the national stadium.
‘You know, I’ve never quite forgiven Billy Bremner because the wee so-and-so kicked Pele all night,’ she says with a smile.
She then visited Pele in Liverpool before a World Cup match and was even invited for a night out. That putative date was collateral damage as Pele was kicked out of the tournament and Brazil went home after the group stages.
If that bus was missed, then a furniture van was caught. The superficially humorous story of Cook hailing down a van as a minibus for players failed to turn up in 1972 has a deeper meaning. It first shows the paucity of resources for the first Scotland women’s team. ‘The English turned up for that match in fine style with great coaches and good gear,’ she says. Cook was left to beg and borrow. And use her native wit.
When the team seemed to be stranded under the Highlandman’s Umbrella in Argyll Street, the van was spotted, the driver cajoled into helping, and a disaster averted.
‘What else could I do?’ says Cook. The idea of just accepting that it just was not her day did not cross her mind.
This first international in 1972 – 3-2 loss to England in Greenock – led to a wondrous, significant moment at Celtic Park. In 1974, the phone rang in Stewarton. Cook’s mother told her: ‘’It’s for you, it’s Jock Stein.’
The Celtic manager invited Cook to bring two women’s teams to Celtic Park as pre-match entertainment before Celtic faced Olympiakos in the European Cup.
‘I was standing in the tunnel as our game finished. I was beside Jock Stein. There I was this wee woman for Stewarton alongside this football great. He was such an imposing presence and he congratulated every one of the players as they came off the park. I was so proud. He was a big man but so much more than a physical presence. I detected an honesty and a gentleness about him.’
Former Scotland manager Elsie Cook with Manchester United legend George Best
Former Scotland women’s manager Elsie Cook pictured back in 2019
The same could be said of Cook. Her gentleness should never be misconstrued as softness, however. Women’s football was never given anything in the early days. Everything had to be fought for and Cook was on the front line.
As honour was conferred on her at Hampden, as friends and family congregated to share her joy, it was instructive to reflect that everything came at a cost.
Cook’s marriage failed and she blames her obsession for football. She once promised her husband that she would resign as secretary of the women’s association only to do so but return home as the national team coach. She also was afflicted by an energy-sapping illness that would not have been helped by such a hectic lifestyle.
But surveying the audience at Hampden and almost bathing in their affection, she says: ‘I would do it all again.’
Later, she adds: ‘It did take a toll and I never stopped but it was so good, even when I just took the wee girls at the start. It was hard going but it was worth it.’
She says: ‘I am surprised by the outpouring of love. I get very emotional about it. You meet mums and grannies who were weans when I was coaching them and it is great to see what is available for girls today. It is amazing, though, what comes back to you when you are writing a book. I suppose it is quite a story.’
It is. It is a chronicle of a life well-lived. It is also a testament of how women’s football prospered despite derision and the force of malignant male authority.
The walk to the hall of fame has been long and sometimes arduous. At the end of her talk, Elsie Cook sits, surveys the audience with a smile and a tear in her eye. She is greeted by a standing ovation in the shadow of photographs of fellow hall of famers in such as Stein, Shankly and Busby.
She deserves her place. She has more than paid the price of admission.
A Kiss Fae Pele, was co-written by Tom Brown, it can be bought at tombrown.online.
