The Toe Poke: Scotland, Brazil, a World Cup and when Jimmy Hill was accused of slur on entire nation

Everyone was in ferment, earphones and mics flying. No one thought to describe the remarkable long-distance hoof as a toe poke.

Except someone did. In England, perhaps not surprisingly, James Lowman’s phone pinged to alert him to a message from a fellow Ipswich Town-supporting friend. “Nice toe poke from McLean,” his pal wrote, with the begrudging tone owing more to the East Anglian divide – McLean, of course, plays for Norwich City – than the Scotland-England one.

It got Lowman thinking. Ah yes, the toe poke. Whatever did happen to David Narey? Now 51, Lowman recalls Espana 82 with special affection. It was the first World Cup he remembers watching. Narey’s strike against Brazil in Seville, infamously referred to as “a toe poke” by BBC summariser Jimmy Hill, is one of his enduring memories. Reference to it triggered long dormant interest in something that came to define the lives of both men, certainly in some people’s eyes. Did they, Lowman wondered, ever meet? While it seems unlikely, some googling suggested they may have – in Paris during the 1998 World Cup.

“There is no further detail whether this happened or not,” says Lowman. “So I started thinking about what might have happened if they met. An imagined meeting of Jimmy Hill and David Narey, a reconciliation. And then I started chatting to people about it.”

There was an extra spur – Scotland being drawn with Brazil in the same group a few weeks after qualifying on that night of nights v Denmark. “It was almost too perfect,” he says.

The result is a play, called simply The Toe Poke, that will open at the Edinburgh festival later this summer. It is, he admits, a bit of a punt – the only thing to do with the goal that is. After all, until recently he was the chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores. He had no real ambitions to be a writer and had certainly never written a play before. Now he’s got a venue in the New Town area of the city to fill each night and a director, an assistant director and four actors to keep happy.

As well as Hill and Narey, legendary commentator Archie Macpherson, who was based in Paris during France ’98 while working for Eurosport, is depicted as brokering a resolution to what is described on the flyers as “one of football’s longest-running feuds”. This all takes place in a typical French brasserie.

Lowman visited Edinburgh earlier this month to meet the cast and start putting things in place. There were several times when he found himself wondering what the hell he was doing.

Finding the cast was a challenge but it came together. An obvious question is, who’s playing Jimmy Hill? And erm, how pronounced is their chin?

“Firstly, I am not going for perfect physical accuracy,” says Lowman. He contends, reasonably, that anyone can do a passable Jimmy Hill impression by simply stretching out their chin. The actor in question is Graeme Dallas, who is Scottish. In fact, he’s stepped out of character long enough to fly to Miami to cheer on Scotland against Brazil in midweek.

“I have always had quite an interest in Jimmy Hill, partly because my dad is a Fulham fan and I used to go and see Fulham quite a lot when I was a kid,” explains Lowman. Hill was chairman of the Craven Cottage club for a spell but had many other strings to his bow.

“Now, football’s on the box all the time,” continues Lowman. “But it wasn’t when I was a kid growing up. And when it was on the telly, certainly on BBC, Jimmy Hill was always on it. He was always either a pundit or a commentator or a summariser or whatever. Obviously, he was this sort of figure of fun.

“But also, of course, there is his role in bringing in three points for a win and abolishing the maximum wage. His record as a manager and chairman was actually very, very good. And so he's just quite an interesting figure. Because of the way he looked, obviously, he was very distinctive. I found that sort of interesting. By contrast, while we knew everything about Jimmy Hill, I couldn’t find anything detailed about David Narey.”

The ultimate quiet man

Even those who grew up watching football at Tannadice might wonder how much they really knew about the cultured defender, whose actions on the pitch spoke eloquently enough.

Narey is the ultimate quiet man, one with no airs or graces. He still lives in the same house in Dundee that he lived in when he was a player and politely turns down requests to be interviewed. His 70th birthday last week passed without too much fuss, though former teammates made sure they were in touch.

Narey is a popular figure, just a quiet-living one. He plays golf with old friends, some of them dating back to primary school, goes to watch Dundee United games and the shirt he put on directly after the game against Brazil was recently auctioned at the Snug Bar, a local pub, for the Dementia Dog charity. Narey wears his legendary status lightly.

“It's very hard to get a voice in your ears,” admits Lowman. “But you try and pick up on the body language, the fact that when he scored he obviously didn't know what to do, that sense of modesty comes across very strongly.” The slightly self-conscious celebration is tremendously endearing. Former Dundee United teammate Eamonn Bannon remembers Narey loved to lie in the sun with patches over his eyes, and whenever he sees footage of the goal now, all he can focus on are Narey’s slightly disbelieving “panda eyes”.

Lowman knows it’s absurd in truth to boil both Narey and Hill down to this moment in time. After all, Narey is one of the finest footballers Scotland has produced in the last half a century, while Hill, whatever his detractors think, was an instrumental figure in the British game from the late 1950s to 2007, when he retired from television. He also, except for one foot-in-mouth moment that led to him being defamed on the Hampden terraces for years, always seemed very generous towards the Scots.

When asked to explain the comment by Tom Lappin in Scotland on Sunday in 1998 while promoting his autobiography, Hill sounded contrite. “We were doing the commentary from the other end of the stadium, not from the centre as is usual,” he recalled. “I was doing the summary but I was talking when David Narey had the ball, and I was behind the action. I thought the ball had run away from him at first and then I yelled: ‘He’s scored!’ I was terribly excited because Scotland had the lead. In television terms, that was something for us to cheer and I expressed that excitement by saying: ‘I think it’s a toe poke, but I don’t care what he’s hit it with, Scotland are one up!’”

Although he added that it “wasn’t meant as an insult”, he concedes that this is how it was interpreted. He was accused of a slur on an entire nation, as if he was accusing all Scottish players of only being able to kick with the end of their toe. Anyone who saw Fifa president Gianni Infantino trying to take a corner kick recently and doing so with an egregious toe poke will know that this is slander of the highest order.

Although Hill seems to ‘fess up, the comment’s wide circulation still seems strange. It went viral before the days of going viral. Viewers in Scotland hadn’t heard it – Macpherson and former Celtic skipper Billy McNeill commentated on the game north of the Border. Lowman found a clip of Macpherson recalling the match at a speaking event in a sports club. “He’s so wise and compelling when he talks,” he says. “After the game, Archie remembered walking out of the stadium. Billy McNeill saw Jimmy Hill and was apparently very, very angry. So they already knew at the end of the game. Word had already got to them about what Jimmy had said. It was established very early that people felt affronted by how he described it.”

Only two Scots have scored against Brazil in a competitive men’s senior international game. Narey is one, John Collins is the other. Only one player has scored from open play: Narey. It’s right Scots should feel territorial about the strike.

Graeme Souness and John Wark were also involved in the move that led to the opening goal after 18 minutes. Souness found Wark with a lofted pass. Wark heads down for Narey, who is arriving late at the edge of the box as if he’d been playing midfield all his life. He was a centre-half although one with the talent to play elsewhere if required. With Scotland, he was required to do so.

Manager Jock Stein was reluctant to break up the club partnership of Willie Miller and Alex McLeish in the middle of defence. However, because Stein was such a fan of Narey’s, he accommodated him at either right-back or midfield. He was deployed in the former role when he connected with the shot so perfectly.

Some people wonder whether it might have been better had Narey hit row Z instead of the top corner. The goal motivated the brilliant Brazilians to move up through the gears, eventually winning 4-1.

It is, though, all a long time ago. Hill died in 2015, aged 87. He had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for several years.

Lowman reports that a friend’s nephew, aged 30 and a Tartan Army foot soldier, had never heard of toe poke-gate. There have been many songs heard in Boston in recent days, none about Hill. Have we finally moved on? Well, maybe we had. Then someone goes and writes a play about it…

Tickets for The Toe Poke can be purchased here.