Ill tattoo the Gor logo on my leg: Kerr

The adrenaline associated with winning a trophy in any sport causes different reactions in different people. The memories go a long way and it is not surprising that Kenyan Premier League table topper Gor Mahia coach Dylan Kerr has promised to tattoo the Gor Mahia logo on his leg if they win the league this year.

But Kerr’s decision is informed by the only other trophy that he won, this time as a player. In 1997, he played as left back in the Scottish Cup winning Kilmarnock FC team.

“Nobody expected us to win and I was very drunk when I got it (the tattoo) done. In fact I was asleep when they did it,” Kerr said, breaking into easy laughter during in the interview in the warm surrounding of Camp Toyoyo where the team conducts their training sessions.

It might have been 20 years ago when Kerr attained that feat, when Kilmarnock beat Falkirk 1-0 at the Ibrox Stadium on May 24, 1997 to win the cup after failing in the previous seven finals they contested, but he recalls the details with ease and nostalgia as if at just happened yesterday.

In this free-flowing interview, Kerr rolls back the clock revealing that he  played under former Gor Mahia coach Bobby Williamson when they won the honours with  Kilmarnock at that time. That fete called for wild celebrations.

“My very good friend Gary Holt, he is Kilmarnock crazy! So we went out for three days, we got very, very drunk. I went to sleep and the next thing I wake up and I’ve got this cling film around my leg; and I got a tattoo!”

Though he didn’t plan to have one, Kerr displays it proudly, and it has been there for 20 years.

In fact he’s grateful that the tattoo reads “Scottish Cup winners 1997” with the Kilmarnock logo.

Aware of the naughtiness of his team mates, the Briton confesses it could have been worse.

“Imagine he (Gary Holt) could have put a lot of bad things on that leg, but he didn’t. Fair play to him, he did look after me. So I didn’t want a tattoo, but I have one,” concludes Kerr.

Fast forward, the soft spoken coach is in Kenya and on the brink of winning a 16^th league title for Gor Mahia. How does he feel; and what will he do in such an eventuality?

“Gor Mahia logo will join the Kilmarnock one on my leg, 100 per cent, and 100 per cent on that left leg as well, not on the right. But, these players have to go get me that tattoo by winning the title,” says the soft-spoken coach who was born in Valletta, Malta and today both the  nationality of the country of his birth as well as that of England.

Apart from his fun- filled life, the fifty year old tactician played for Doncaster, Leeds United, Reading and Kilmarnock before retiring at Hamilton Academical in 1993.