Hunners O' Potential
- Ray Hargens Hire
- Mar 10
- 7 min read
Hunners o' Potential
Scotland loves football. Obsessively. Pathologically. The kind of love that borders on a sickness, a collective self-flagellation. It’s in our bones, in our stories, in the way we measure time by World Cups and European Championships we barely feature in. It’s the sport we pin our national pride to, the one we will argue about until our dying breath, the one we teach our kids before they can even walk. It’s the dream whispered in playgrounds and back gardens, the floodlit fantasy of becoming the next Dalglish, the next Law, the next Robertson.
And yet, for all that devotion, we are, by most reasonable metrics, shite at it. Even now, with a crop of players better than we’ve had in years, we remain steadfastly mediocre. We still go into every major tournament qualification campaign hoping rather than expecting, clinging to the faintest mathematical possibility of making it through. The disappointment is so routine it barely stings anymore—just another chapter in our tragic, self-inflicted footballing folklore. We are the nearly men, the ones who promise but never deliver, forever romanticising the past instead of demanding more from the present.
The excuses roll in thick and fast: we’re a small nation. No money. No resources. Too cold. Too wet. Too many pubs between the house and the training ground. All bollocks. Croatia is smaller, skinter, and somehow still produces the kind of players who make Champions League squads and World Cup finals. Scotland produces good grafters, a handful of stars, and an endless supply of pub chat about how we should be better.
Potential, though—aye, we’ve got that in spades. Just lying about, squandered, like loose change on a sticky bar top. It’s not a lack of talent. It’s never been a lack of talent. It’s something else, something deeper, cultural, systemic, stitched into the fabric of who we are. The way we raise boys. The way we fear ambition. The way we scoff at the very idea of self-discipline. The way we romanticise failure, the noble loser, the nearly man, the heroic collapse.
I knew a boy once, back home. Andy. Could’ve been a star. Two-footed, glided through a midfield like he was born to it, the kind of player folk whispered about. The kind of player who’d have had a clip of his best bits doing the rounds on TikTok these days, some young lad’s phone screen a shrine to his footwork.
Then there was Ryan. Big lad. Goalie. Not a genius, but solid. Knew what he had to do and did it.
Both of them got picked up by Aberdeen. Then, one evening, they showed up five minutes late to training. The coach, Drew Jarvie, old-school disciplinarian, told them to run five laps of the pitch. Ryan got his head down, started running. Andy argued. Thought it was unfair. Went on about how it wasnae his fault, about how five minutes was nothing.
Ten minutes later, Ryan was three laps deep. Andy was still arguing, red-faced and breathless, gesticulating wildly as if he could talk his way out of the punishment. The other lads carried on with their drills, casting the odd glance at the standoff, shaking their heads. The message was clear—argue all you want, but the work still needs done.
Andy never made it. Slid down the leagues, first into the Highland League, then into the amateurs, until eventually, the game slipped away from him entirely. The boy who once dominated pitches ended up working offshore, another cautionary tale told over pints in the pub. "Mind Andy? Could've been brilliant. Wasted it."
Ryan? Seven Scotland Under-21 caps. A full career in the game, The Dons, Caley Thistle, A spell in England, Shrewsbury Town. Solid and respectable. Not a world-beater, not a superstar, but he grafted, and grafting kept him in the game. And in the end, that’s what mattered.
Talent is nothing without work. Potential is an illusion until it’s realised. And most of us, if we’re being honest, never come close to realising it. Because potential is work—and work isn’t sexy, isn’t glamorous. The hero’s journey we prefer is the one where the talent shines so bright that success is inevitable. But nothing is inevitable, least of all success.
The Fatal Scottish Shrug
Heidegger—aye, we’re going there—talked about how people fail to reach their potential because they conform to the expectations of their culture. In Scotland, those expectations aren’t exactly aspirational.
The acceptable template for a Scottish existence: work enough to pay for a mortgage and a car you don’t need, drink enough to make sure you don’t think too hard about whether you’re happy, and if anyone starts getting ideas above their station, drag them back down with a bit of well-placed slagging. Don’t try too hard. Don’t take yourself too seriously. God forbid you admit you actually want something out of life.
It starts young. The laddie with raw talent who trains twice as hard is a “sook.” The guy who takes care of his diet is a “fanny” for not coming to the chippy. The teenager who dares to dream is told to get his head out the clouds. The schoolboy who speaks well is a “posh cunt.” The girl with ambition is “full of herself.”
This is not a nation that cultivates excellence. It is a nation that mistakes cynicism for realism and bitterness for wisdom. And so potential stagnates. The easy path is the one we take—where failure isn’t just expected but celebrated, a badge of honour, a drinking story to tell in the pub.
Weather, Fatherlessness, and the Scottish Excuse Machine
You never hear folk complain that the weather kills our footballing potential, but it absolutely does. Rain that never quite stops, wind that howls through concrete estates and across bleak parks, pitches that are more mud than grass by November. It doesn’t just affect the game; it affects the hours spent perfecting technique, turning sharp touches into muscle memory. The long summer evenings of Croatia, where kids pass a ball for hours on sun-bleached concrete, don’t exist here. Our equivalent is a fleeting window of daylight between school and tea before the sky goes black and the rain sets in. But Denmark manages just fine. Sweden, too. The difference? Infrastructure. Investment. And, most crucially, mindset. In Croatia, boys spend hours mastering control and precision. Here, they just try to keep their feet on the boggy pitch, hoping the floodlights don’t cut out halfway through training.
And then there’s fatherlessness. The real silent killer.
Study after study shows it: boys without dads are more likely to underachieve, more likely to drift, more likely to seek male role models in the worst possible places. It doesn’t mean you can’t make it. It doesn’t mean you’re doomed. But it does mean the odds are stacked.
And yet, we don’t talk about it. Not properly. We dress it up in vague hand-wringing about “role models” and “positive influences” instead of saying it outright: too many Scottish men abandon their kids, and it is gutting us from the inside out. The rot starts there, and it spreads fast. Of today’s top-performing Scottish players, the top-rated 25 all come from two-parent homes. Every single one. That’s not a coincidence. It’s structure. It’s stability. It’s someone telling you to get up and train when you can’t be arsed. It’s someone making sure you push through the bad days, that you don’t fall into excuses. It’s proof that talent alone is never enough. Without discipline, without guidance, potential is just a nice idea that never goes anywhere.
The truth is, potential isn’t just about talent. It’s about structure. It’s about discipline. It’s about knowing that someone gives a fuck whether you succeed or fail.
And Aw that Potential...
So then we get back to Potential. Potential doesn’t actually exist, yet we act as if it does—like some divine birthright, an unspent currency waiting to be cashed in. Psychologists have studied this phenomenon for decades, the way humans place an almost mystical faith in the concept of what could be. Albert Bandura, the godfather of social learning theory, argued that self-efficacy—the belief in one’s ability to shape their own future—is a far greater predictor of success than raw talent alone. Belief becomes action; action becomes outcome. Without belief, potential is a phantom limb—something we feel, something we mourn, but ultimately something that isn’t there.
Carol Dweck’s mindset theory builds on this. A growth mindset—the idea that abilities are developed through effort—is the difference between those who reach the summit and those who stare up from the foothills, making excuses. And yet, in Scotland, we cling to fixed mindsets like an heirloom. You’re either born with it or you’re not. You’ve either “got the touch” or you don’t. As if ability were some kind of predetermined inheritance, rather than something crafted through years of stubborn, unrelenting toil.
Potential, then, is a cultural hallucination. We need to believe in it to justify our failures, to cushion the blow of not trying hard enough, to soothe the guilt of wasted years. It’s a safety net. A nice story. But it means nothing without action.
Belters, Bampots, and The Choice We Make
In the end, it comes down to a choice. Bampot or Belter. The guy who wastes it or the guy who makes it. The one who runs the laps or the one who argues.
Every city, every town, every village in Scotland is littered with boys who “could’ve made it.” Maybe in football. Maybe in music. Maybe in business. Maybe in something less tangible but no less important—being a good father, mother, being a decent man or woman.
Potential is a shadow. A thing that only exists if you chase it down and force it into being. Otherwise, it’s just another ghost, rattling around in the back of your mind, whispering about what could’ve been.
You want to be a Belter? Run the laps. Run them till your legs burn. Run them till you stop making excuses. Run them till there’s nobody left to argue with.
RHH
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