Ally is clearly very fond and proud of his grandad, Andy Coogan, and rightly so. Andy was a familiar face in Carnoustie while I was growing up as he ran the local athletics club. My memory of him is of a very slight, wiry man – with a steely gaze behind his kindly eyes – cycling around Carnoustie wearing his old-style burgundy tracksuit en route to guiding successive generations of kids into athletics. His own athletic prowess saw him finish second behind the then world mile record holder in 1940, and he was regarded as a serious contender for an Olympic medal if the Second World War had not intervened. But perhaps my memory of a steely gaze is most likely explained by Andy’s experience as a prisoner of war, which he wrote about in his 2012 memoir Tomorrow You Die. The book’s synopsis gives this overview:
Andy Coogan was born in Glasgow in 1917, the oldest child of poor Irish immigrants.