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Details
Title: The Price of Vice – Andy Ritchie
Author: Andy Ritchie with Stephen McGowan
Published: Sep 2012
Player Homepage: Andy Ritchie
Synopsis
This is an autobiography of former Morton and Celtic footballer and all round fans favourite, Andy Ritchie. Retired by the age of 28, Ritchie still managed to make his mark on Scottish football, not only for his amazing ball skills but also for his larger than life personality and colourful personal life.
At 22 Andy Ritchie had the footballing world at his feet. Scotland’s disastrous World Cup campaign in Argentina left the nation crying out for an entertainer and Morton’s ‘Idle Idol’ filled the void.
A former Celtic prospect, his spectacular goals, close control, dead ball genius and dazzling skills made him Scotland’s player of the year and the nation’s top goalscorer three years running. But by the age of 28 Ritchie dumped his boots in a bin and quit football for good.
Plagued by depression, panic attacks and attitude problems one of the Scottish game’s biggest ever characters tells with brutal honesty of the match-day drinking, the gambling, the indiscipline and the casual drug abuse which cut short his playing days and drove the late Jock Stein to despair.
Celtic’s chief scout under Tommy Burns, he expresses his regrets at the failure to patch up a rift with his lifelong friend before he died and of the spell of homelessness he survived following a breakdown and the break-up of his marriage.
Review
(by TheHumanTorpedo)
There are few sadder sights in football – indeed in life – than witnessing a man seemingly waste his talent. From it’s very earliest days the history of the beautiful game has been littered with such casualties. Yet lessons are never learned. Too often potential is poured away like a bad pint or nonchalantly discarded like another losing line at the bookies.
To the casual observer these are men with the world at their feet and a beautiful woman on their arm. But what is seldom observed is the demons on their shoulders.
At the age of 22 years Andy Ritchie was the Scottish Premier League’s top scorer and the Scottish Football Writers Player of the Year. It was a incredible personal feat, made all the more remarkable by the fact that Ritchie – a ‘Celtic reject’ – had walked off with these honours while a part-time player with unfashionable Morton.
Having started his professional career at Parkhead, Ritchie would make only a handful of appearances for the Hoops before he was sold to the Greenock side. But by 1979 he was without doubt Scottish football’s “next big thing”. Yet just six years after being crowned Player of the Year his days as a footballer was over – the ‘Price of Vice’ would cost Ritchie his career and so much more. It would be a price he continued to pay for decades afterwards.
Those who saw Andy at his peak will reverentially recall a player of sublime talent. A great goalscorer and a man who on even the most sullen and sodden of Greenock winter afternoons was capable of producing moments of magic. Legendary defensive partnerships such as Miller & McCleish and Heggarty & Narey were frequently tormented by the languid genius of Ritchie.
But in this compelling biography Ritchie reveals another side to the man christened ‘The Idle Idol’ by the Cappielow faithful. The path the player took may be one well traveled by George Best and other more high profile wayward stars. But Ritchie’s tale is unique and his story an intriguing read.
Ritchie’s demons are the same three devils which have troubled many footballers. Gambling, drink and drugs. But unlike the frequently told tales of Best there are no Miss World’s in this story. Ritchie’s self-destruction occurred not against a backdrop of celebrity parties and London’s west end. Instead his excesses were indulged in the altogether more gritty surroundings of the bookies, pubs and clubs of Greenock, Glasgow and Lanarkshire.
Glamour is in short supply. Sharing a curry and a spliff with a member of Showaddywaddy was as ‘showbiz’ as it got for Andy.
A sense of regret runs through every page. Ritchie’s pain is palatable. From his departure as a player from Celtic Park to a latter unhealed rift with longtime close friend Tommy Burns there is no disguising his hurt. His affection for Tommy in particular shines through and the pain at his passing is obvious.
Ritchie candidly describes his youthful self as “a cheeky, arrogant prick” and a man with “a chip on both shoulders”. By the time of his departure from Celtic Park he had developed “a bad attitude with bells on it”. In recalling those days as a youngster at Parkhead Ritchie reveals a fascinating insight into the post-Lisbon Stein and Celtic.
The player recalls how he was sold on a move to Morton by the club’s chairman Hal Stewart – a man Ritchie describes as having “a first class degree in ********”. His days at Cappielow would become the stuff of legend for fans of the Greenock club. But Ritchie’s delight at his scoring exploits is countered by an anguish that the move was never the stepping stone to return to football’s top table that he had originally envisaged.
He would spend the best years of his career as a part-timer. Supplementing his modest football wages with jobs in meat factories and on road gangs. Indeed on the very day he would collect his Player of the Year trophy Ritchie spent a shift digging ditches.
As the years passed it seemed that whenever he approached a crossroads in his life he would chose the wrong path. He undoubtedly had his share of bad luck. But unlike other footballer biographies Ritchie does not use the book to seek a get out clause for his own responsibility. Time after time he points the finger of blame for his downfall squarely at himself. There are no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ in this blame game.
It’s a welcome honesty and one which seems to have allowed Ritchie to avoid the bitterness which has enveloped many a former pro.
Ritchie’s account of his years as a scout at Celtic Park are also a noteworthy record of another interesting period in Hoops history. His spell as a talent spotter at the club would last from the reign of Tommy Burns through to the John Barnes debacle and his judgment on the characters and politics of these turbulent times seems as honest as any. It certainly makes for a fascinating read.
As a man and a footballer Andy Ritchie had his flaws. In the ‘Price of Vice’ he is the first to admit them. But he is also a man with many qualities. He was a footballer of supreme talent. It is impossible to read his story without feeling a tinge of sadness and frustration at what might have been – what should have been.
But more than anything the ‘Price of Vice’ leaves the reader with a renewed sense of respect for Andy Ritchie. Respect for his continued fight with the addictions which have haunted him long past his playing days. Respect for his honesty. His was a story worth telling. It couldn’t have been easy, but he has told it well.
Product Details
- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: DB Publishing (Sep 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1780910118
- ISBN-13: 978-1780910116
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