Moira Brown is 93 years old, and she still drinks, smokes, and chants salty soccer slogans. That’s not a misprint. In Glasgow, where the walls of her third-floor apartment are plastered with Scotland soccer memorabilia, age is truly just a number.
And here’s what really gets me: she’s planning to fly solo to the United States for the World Cup, carry-on bag only, because at her age, who has time to wait for checked luggage?
“At my age, am I not lucky?” Brown asks. “I waited almost 30 years to see another World Cup. Now I’m the luckiest person in this world.”
This is the first World Cup Scotland has qualified for since 1998. Brown will be there, living her best life, with tickets to all of Scotland’s group stage matches, including games near Boston and Miami. Her opening match against Haiti kicks off at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday.
A Lifetime of Devotion
Brown was born on Christmas Eve 1932. Her first glimpse of soccer came in the mid- to late-1930s, when young girls didn’t go to football games, let alone play them. But her dad took her to a club match in Motherwell, and from that very young age, she was hooked.
She went on to see Scotland beat England at Hampden Park in a 1946 “Victory International” staged to celebrate the end of World War II. Since then, between working as a nurse and teacher and raising a family, she’s traveled the world, following both the men’s and women’s national teams. Japan, Peru, Morocco, she’s seen them all.
“I’ve been to the best places, and I’ve been in some of the worst dive bars around the world!” she says, laughing.
Her best World Cup memory? 1974 in Germany. West Germany beat Holland in that final, and Brown still remembers it like it was yesterday.
She’s got close-cropped gray hair, often wears Scotland football jerseys, and couldn’t care less about fashion or fine dining. “I’ve got all the clothes I need. This is me! If I’m not going out, sometimes I’m still in my jammies.” Football tickets are the one thing she’ll spend money on.
Scotland’s Football Legacy
Here’s something that might surprise you: the short-passing tactics that every team in the world uses today? They were invented in Scotland, not England.
“The style was very different,” explains Andy Kerr, visitor attraction manager at the Scottish Football Museum. “England almost played rugby with their feet. But the Scots played what we call the short passing game, which has gone on to take the world by storm.”
Scotland also has the world’s oldest national football trophy, and it was Scottish migrant workers who first exported the game to current powerhouses like Brazil and Argentina. They gave the world Alex Ferguson too, though he moved to Manchester United for glory, in the land of Scotland’s archrivals: England.
“The English Premier League is the most famous and the most monied league in all of the world,” Kerr says. “So in Scotland, sometimes it does feel a bit like being a poor relation who’s on the outside.”
Scotland has never made it past the group stage of any major tournament. For nearly three decades, they didn’t even qualify. So when they beat Denmark last November to book their ticket to this World Cup, it was a massive moment.
“It really was one of the most spectacular days in modern Scottish history!” says Pat Nevin, a former Scotland player who’s now a soccer commentator. “I’m not exaggerating at all.”
A billboard went up in central Glasgow with two simple words: “We’re in.”
The Evolution of the Tartan Army
Decades ago, the Tartan Army had a reputation as beer-guzzling ruffians. They were seen as dangerous, maybe with a hint of violence behind them, and not particularly well-behaved, mostly drunk.
Brown remembers almost getting into a fight decades ago at an international match in Croatia. When another fan called her “an old git,” the Tartan Army closed ranks around her.
“They said, ‘You say another word to Moira, and I’ll plant one on you!’ And I had to say, ‘Guys, guys, settle down,’” Brown recalls, clearly proud of her protective fan crew.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as violent fan hooliganism spread in England, Scotland fans went the other direction, differentiating themselves by being friendly, making friends everywhere, and throwing fantastic parties.
“I urge anyone in the U.S., if you know there’s going to be a Scotland game in your city, go!” Nevin says. “You don’t need tickets. Just go look for the lads in plaid, listen for the bagpipes. You will have the most joyous, fun party you could ever imagine!”
There’s something special about having no expectations. One of Scotland’s fan anthems, “No Scotland, No Party,” openly acknowledges: “Nobody’s saying we’re gonna win it, we know we ain’t Argentina!”
Brown says she’s hoping Scotland makes it out of the group stage. That would be historic.
“I go always in hope, but often not in expectation,” she says. “Strange things can happen!”
No matter what happens in this World Cup, there’s always the next one. When that comes around, Brown will be 97.
You have to admire that kind of optimism.
