Glasgow (44 page)

Stein had just about every attribute required of a great manager, but none of his talents was more significant than his judgement of people. Whether a man was playing for him, or against him, Jock specialised in probing assessments of strengths and weaknesses. He had worked underground in the pits until he was twenty-seven and he had a wider, richer experience of human nature than is readily available to somebody confined since schooldays to the enclosed, insulated world of professional football. I am sure I have been helped by the fact that I spent a full apprenticeship as a toolmaker, that in my formative years I was exposed to the values of the workplace other than the training ground and the football field. His talent for dealing with all kinds of men probably counted as much as his technical knowledge and his advanced ideas on the game in enabling him to establish himself as a manager. He matured to greatness very quickly.

Stein was a big man in every sense. When he came into a room he dominated it. You always knew Jock was present. He seemed to know everybody's first name and that's a wonderful asset. Matt Busby had it. When Jock left Dunfermline to manage Hibs he had a wee share in a bookie's in Dunfermline and I remember going into the betting shop one day when he was there. He said: ‘Hello Alex, are you enjoying playing at Dunfermline?' It made me feel really important. When people treat you that way you are instantly in favour of them. I had never spoken to Jock in my life but he knew me.

My first assignment as Jock's assistant with Scotland was a friendly match against Yugoslavia in September 1984, and I felt the preparation was good. Well, it couldn't have been too bad – we won 6–1, with Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness both at their majestic best. I revelled in the opportunity to operate from an assistant's position, blissfully free of all the extra responsibilities that crowded in on me as a club manager. I did not have to handle the press, deal with directors or cope with the countless obligations that go with being in overall charge of a group of players. Big Jock was a master in all those departments, so I was able to concentrate on working with some great footballers in training and studying how they applied themselves.

The Scotland get-togethers were an absolute revelation for me, priceless access to the mind and personality of Jock Stein. I am sure there are times when he got fed up with my incessant barrage of questions. I was so determined to find out as much as I could about one of the greatest managers of all time that I used every moment to draw enlightenment from him. On general football matters he was always forthcoming and educational but the brick wall went up if there was a hint of a negative about Celtic. I felt – and it wasn't exactly an isolated opinion – that Celtic had treated him disgracefully in failing to reward the years of inspired management that had brought the club the greatest run of success in its history. So I could not resist asking him how he had felt about the insult of being offered a job supervising the Celtic development pool, which amounted to reducing a supreme football man to a fund-raiser. His reaction was astonishingly low-key and devoid of bitterness. He said: ‘When you are successful it is fine for a time and then they maybe think you are too successful and that the success wasn't really due to you at all.' End of story.

Another subject that Jock consistently refused to expand upon was how he went about making Celtic the first British club to win the European Cup. Everybody knows that his contribution – in finding and developing the players and then supplying them with tactics brilliantly devised to suit their skills – was utterly crucial, but he shrugged off any attempt to give him a substantial share of the glory. His modesty was extraordinary, and it was sincere. When the European Cup was mentioned, he would eulogise the players who won it and launch into some of the marvellous human stories surrounding that great team. We would be sitting in the reception lobby of the hotel at 2 a.m. with one hilarious tale following another. Many involved wee Jimmy Johnstone. According to Jock, when his phone rang at home late on a Friday night a picture of Jimmy would leap instantly into his mind and his first thought would be: ‘Which police station this time?'

Having lost the second of our World Cup [qualifying] matches with Spain by 1–0 in Seville three months earlier, we now found that qualification for Mexico would hinge on our final group fixture against Wales at Ninian Park on 10 September 1985. We needed at least a draw to earn a play-off with the winner of the Oceanic group, Australia . . . There were, naturally, signs of nerves at the start of the game. I don't care what anybody says, when the crowd at Cardiff start singing that Welsh national anthem it creates some atmosphere. There were 35,000 in the ground that night and when they gave it voice it was bound to stir their players. That was real motivation. The Welsh team were revved and in the first half they gave us a hard time. Wales went ahead when
the ball was driven in from the left-hand side and Sparky Hughes took the goal brilliantly. So at half-time we were down 1–0 and in the dressing-room Jock got stuck into wee Gordon Strachan. He was going to take Strachan off and bring Davie Cooper on at that point. Gordon was upset but there was nothing new in that.

Then all of a sudden Jock left the main part of the dressing-room. Hugh Allan, the physiotherapist, had called him into the bathroom area. I went across and sat down with Gordon.

‘What Jock is saying is for the sake of the team. You're not playing as well as you should.'

‘I can't believe he is saying that to me,' Gordon responded.

‘Look,' I said, ‘he's right. Just settle down. You're not coming off. He'll give you ten minutes. Get your game together.' Then big Jock called.

‘Alex, come here.'

I walked into the bathroom area and I'll never forget the scene that greeted me. There was a kind of wooden plinth and Jim [Leighton, Scotland's – and Aberdeen's – goalkeeper] was half-sitting on it with an expression that told me straightaway there was a serious problem.

‘He's lost his contact lens.'

Jock said it in a way that suggested he was assuming I had known about the lenses and hadn't told him. I swear I had absolutely no idea that Jim used them. I was so dumbfounded and there was such a swirl of anger and embarrassment going through me that at first I didn't say a word. When I did speak it was to ask him if it would be better to take the second lens out and play without any. ‘I wouldn't be able to see the ball,' he told us. That meant we had to put Alan Rough in goal for the second half . . .

As everybody knows, we didn't lose the match. With ten minutes left, David Speedie was going through on a ball when it bounced up and hit David Phillips on the arm and we were given a penalty. The contact was accidental but it was blatant hand-ball and the Dutch referee, Mr Keizer, did not hesitate over the decision. Davie Cooper stayed cool and directed the ball low away to Neville Southall's left and into the corner of the net and we were on our way to the next summer's World Cup finals in Mexico.

When the equaliser went in, Jock didn't say a word. Shortly afterwards the referee blew for a free kick but Jock thought it was the full-time whistle. There were actually a couple of minutes to go but the Big Man rose to move towards Mike England, the Wales manager. Jock was annoyed about a lot of the stuff England had been quoted as saying about the Scotland team and I am sure the idea was to go across and say, ‘Hard luck, son.' It would have been a touch of the old sharp-edged
commiserations, doing things right by letting Mike know he didn't fancy somebody running off at the mouth. But as he rose from the bench he stumbled. I had been keeping an eye on him throughout the second half and when he began to fall I grabbed for him and shouted to Hughie Allan to do the same. The doctor joined us and the medics came out of the tunnel immediately. Hughie and I held him up until the others took over and helped him inside. I went back to the bench and at the end of the game I told the players to stay on the pitch. We didn't know whether Jock was in the dressing-room or what was happening. We were given the signal that it was all right to go in and when we asked how he was the first impression we received was that he was recovering. There were no real celebrations in the dressing-room but I felt reassured enough to start saying ‘well done' to the players and telling them that the Boss had suffered a heart attack but was going to be all right. Everything appeared to be OK and when I was told I would have to deal with the press, I was starting to warm to that job. Some of the reporters had been a bit critical of Jock and I was relishing addressing a few words to them. But when I came out I saw Graeme Souness at the door of the medical room and he was crying.

‘I think he's gone,' Graeme said. I couldn't believe it.

THE PATTER, 1985
Michael Munro

Following the success of Stanley Baxter's
Parliamo Glasgow,
Michael Munro published
The Patter: A Guide to Current Glasgow Usage,
which remains essential for daily discourse. Described dismissively by the
Scottish National Dictionary
as ‘impoverished and bastardised Scots', Glaswegian is a unique and dynamic tongue with its own extensive vocabulary and distinctive grammar. Students of language have suggested that Irish immigrants may have influenced its development. Another significant influence may have been the author John Joy ‘J.J.' Bell (1871–1934), whose incredibly popular novel
Wee Macgreegor
(1902) and its sequels are replete with Glaswegianisms. The language, if such it is, is remarkable for its ‘notorious' glottal stop and the absence of the initial ‘th' which has a tendency to change ‘that' to ‘'at' and ‘there' to ‘'err'
.

Arab
In Glasgow this has been a term of abuse since even before the rise of the oil sheikhs: ‘Get lost ya Arab ye!'

bampot
or
bamstick
An idiot, fool, or sometimes a nutcase. This is often shortened to
bam
, and any eccentric named Thomas risks being dubbed ‘Tam the Bam'.

coup
or
cowp
To spill, overturn, or dump: ‘I've couped a pint over my good denims', ‘The big eejit couped the table ower', ‘You're no meant tae coup yer rubbish here.' A
coup
is a dump or rubbish tip. It can also be applied insultingly to an untidy place: ‘His bedroom's a right coup.'

Dan
A nickname for a Roman Catholic: ‘Are you a Billy or a Dan?'

electric soup
Vivid term for a mixture of meths and red biddy as drunk by alcoholic down-and-outs.

finger
Often pronounced to rhyme with singer.

gaun
A local pronunciation of go on. Used on its own or with an insulting name it is a term of rude dismissal: ‘Gaun ya daft eejit ye!'
Gaun yersel
is a phrase of encouragement or approval, perhaps coming from football in the sense of a player making a lone run. I was once present at a rally in Queen's Park which was addressed by Tony Benn. Amidst the applause and cheering that followed his speech a wee Glasgow wifie was heard to cry: ‘Gaun yersel Mr Bogeyman!'

hackit
Ugly, unattractive, most often applied to girls: ‘Chic got aff with the big blonde and Ah wis left wi her hackit wee mate.'

ile
A Scots pronunciation of oil. The phrase
away for ile
means wasted, useless, finished, etc: ‘His brain's away for ile.'

jiggin, the
A dance: ‘Are ye goin tae the jiggin the night?'

keepie-uppie
Footballing game of juggling with the ball using feet, knees, head – anything other than hands. One of the legends attached to the Scotland–England fixture is that during Scotland's 1967 Wembley victory Scotland's dominance of the World Cup holders was so complete that Jim Baxter was able to play keepie-uppie with the ball.

laldy
To
give someone laldy
is to give him a thrashing or a beating. To
give it laldy
is to do something vigorously or enthusiastically: ‘The band's been givin it laldy the night.'

mince
Mysteriously enough this prosaic word for humble fare has blossomed into one of the most versatile words in the dialect. It is used to mean nonsense, rubbish: ‘Yer heid's full a mince', ‘He talks a lot a mince'. It is also a general term for anything unpleasant that finds its way to somewhere it shouldn't be: ‘The back a ma jeans is aw mince!' Extremes of denseness are also measured by it: ‘He's as thick as mince.' Someone who is listless or lacking in animation may attract a comment like: ‘What's up wi you? Ye're sittin there like a pun a mince.' If a person succeeds in spoiling something for someone else, taking the
wind out of someone's sails, etc., he might say: ‘That's sickened his mince for him.'

nippy-sweetie
A jocular term for a drink of spirits: ‘How about a nippy-sweetie to finish off?' Also used to describe a bad-tempered person: ‘Just keep out of that yin's road; she's a bit of a nippy-sweetie.' The derivation is from the sense of nippy meaning sharp-tasting, burning to the taste, etc.