I was amused at the response to a tweeted video of Huddersfield Town manager Mark Fotheringham this week. There was a lot of criticism of his accent.
Mark (known as Fozzy) is a Dundee laddie, brought up in Charleston.
He played for both city clubs and played and coached in England, Germany, Switzerland, and Cyprus.
The video in question had him delivering a fearsome message to his players.
A highlight was: If you ur no trainin’ with intensity, you’ll no be in meh team.”
It was in broad Dundonian.
He sounded like he was managing at South Road 3, angry because the ball had rolled down the hill. Again.
It is to his credit that he has kept his accent through his travels. It shows great strength of character.
I’ve known people move from Dundee and within a year sound like they wouldn’t know a Wallace’s peh from a Nicoll’s peh.
There is, however, more to this than meets the eye.
Fozzy was, I suspect, being very clever.
Mark Fotheringham understands the power of a Scottish accent
In England, especially the north, a football man with a Scots accent conjures formidable ghosts of the past.
Legends such as Busby, Shankly, Ferguson, Dalglish, and Bremner possessed iron characters and an indomitable will to win.
Each retained an undiluted Scottish accent all their lives.
Each commanded great respect.
To an English ear, a gravelly Scots voice in a football setting is a thing of power.
I suspect Fozzy was, in part using his accent as a tool.
He wanted to give underperforming players a verbal boot in the pants.
He wanted to sound abrasive, frightening, motivating, a bit like Shankly or Ferguson in full flow.
So the way he delivered that speech, with echoes of Dunholm Road in every syllable, will have been effective.
What accent is this?😂 pic.twitter.com/YzfA4WSYlK
— Scottish Football Away Days (@days_scottish) October 10, 2022
His players got the message: give 100% or “you ur no gonna play fur me”.
The Huddersfield fans, judging by their online forum, loved it.
Maybe critics need to mind their own language
From clever and strong-willed to the other side of the coin.
I refuse to get angry, or even take seriously, much of what is said on Twitter.
It is a nutcase’s playground.
Some comments were pitiful, even by Twitter standards.
A few showed staggering ignorance, many revealed their authors to be rather unpleasant people.
But, and this is the shake-your-head bit, the majority of replies critical of Fozzy’s accent were couched in farcically bad English.
Proper nouns not capitalised, a blithe disregard for punctuation, childlike spelling, wanton failures of sentence construction, or all of the above.
If you’re going to comment on someone’s spoken English, there’s a delicious irony if you do it in risible written English.
We in Dundee are proud of you, Fozzy.
And your accent.
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