ALEX Totten's place in Scottish football's folklore is secure, signifying both a time and place. He was among Bill Shankly's first signings at Liverpool and felt the impact at Ibrox when Graeme Souness walked into Rangers at the start of a revolution
in Scottish football.
Totten was also there when St Johnstone started the trend for moving into purpose-built all-seater stadiums on the outskirts of towns. All of which made the recent news that he had been identified by a group of Falkirk supporters as the man to step in after years spent away from front-line management and lead the side to safety more mystifying.
The battle to remain in the Scottish Premier League resumes this afternoon against Motherwell, with John Hughes having proved just why general bafflement greeted the news that a letter had been drawn up by the Bairns Trust in the week before a crucial clash with Hearts requesting his immediate removal.
Hughes responded by guiding the club to only the fourth Scottish Cup final in their history while Totten led the applause in the Hampden stands. "I don't want to go back into management," says Totten, firmly. "I finished all that in 2002. I'm happy with what I am doing now."
Totten appears to agree with the perception that he represents another era. Brockville, he says, was his home, although he has made great efforts to make himself comfortable at Falkirk's new stadium, where he is business development manager. Making the contrast between the old and new even more vivid is the surprising serving-up of Starbucks coffee in the club restaurant. It almost mocks the memory of weak Bovril supped out of polystyrene cups in the Hope Street end.
Totten's present role ensures that he is alert to the need to court the corporate dollar, but he clutches memories as firmly as he does a golf club, although a finger operation has led to his recent absence from the fairways. Photos of old Falkirk team-groups which include him and Alex Ferguson line the office wall, and he drinks from a Liverpool FC mug, a reminder of days spent as a player at Anfield in the early Sixties. Although devoted to Falkirk, he maintains links with his former clubs, and was a guest of St Johnstone supporters at their match with Dundee at Dens Park last weekend, with his old club able to clinch the championship today with a win against Morton.
Wounds have healed since his removal from the manager's seat at St Johnstone, having led the club from the Second Division to the Premier Division. Incomprehension at the way it ended does, however, remain evident, although he wills a scenario which sees both Falkirk and the Perth side meeting in the Premier League next season.
"We had only been beaten once in eight games, and were lying 7th in the Premier League," recalls Totten. "Geoff (Brown] came in and said he felt he wanted a change. That was it. I will always remember some boy writing in to the Perthshire Advertiser to say: 'What do John Lennon, John F Kennedy and Alex Totten have in common – I will always remember where I was when I heard the tragic news'."
"The sacking came right out of the blue," continues Totten. "Geoff said I was an ambassador for St Johnstone Football Club. When I left he said: 'We don't need an ambassador, we need a decent football manager'."
Having experienced lows as well as highs in a managerial career lasting 22 years, Totten was able to sympathise with Hughes, as he attempted to cope with Falkirk's poor form while fending off a spectacularly badly-timed demand for his removal a fortnight ago. Hughes replied by leading his side to a cup final with a 2-0 victory over Dunfermline, and Totten commented on Hughes' more jaunty bearing at a club golf day at Glenbervie in midweek.
"He was up-beat," says Totten. "Being bottom of the league, and the pressure of having to beat our rivals had been getting him down a bit. But he was a different person at the golf.
"I know myself what it is like," he adds. "Everyone likes praise, there is no question about it. He could have done without that (the letter] at this stage of the season, with some very important games to go in the league. He is a tough guy but has feelings like everyone else. He had been a bit down, but the result perked him up."
Totten certainly has no intention of returning to the stresses of the dug-out. He once ended up in a court-room, passing Polo mints to fellow felon Walter Smith after a bust-up during a game between St Johnstone and Rangers in Perth. The old friends had briefly lost the place and were ordered to leave the stadium by the superintendent on duty that afternoon. The managers ended up watching the result come in on television at a St Johnstone director's house nearby. But this was in the early Nineties. You wonder if the authors of the Bairns Trust letter had even stopped to consider the practicalities of the scheme proposed, or approached Totten for his own views. It has, after all, been less than two years since he found himself at death's door.
It appeared that the Falkirk obsessive had even planned his exit for the 50th anniversary of the club's famous Scottish Cup win of 1957. But he fought back, after being given a 25 per cent chance of survival, though there was a cost. Totten is now deaf in one ear, and sports a large scar 40 stitches long up his right arm. "The surgeon said to me: 'You'd have accepted that,'" says Totten, whose problems began when he contracted septicaemia after being bitten by an insect when golfing in Spain.
He now looks well enough to get away with wearing a kilt; something he did 12 years ago when, as Falkirk manager, he led the team out before the Scottish Cup final against Kilmarnock at Ibrox Park. Its 'family cup final' credentials were strengthened by the identity of the manager in the opposition dug-out, Bobby Williamson. Totten had made him reserve team coach at Rugby Park when manager in Ayrshire, a period during which he had sowed the seeds for the harvest of Falkirk's dark destiny by signing seven of those who made-up Kilmarnock's cup-winning side that afternoon.
Despite Totten pointing out that the other four players were at the club before Williamson's arrival, they remain close. Indeed, the former Hibernian manager was his guest at the recent match with Hearts. His own recipe for weight-loss has been more extreme than even Totten's dice with death; accept a job managing the Ugandan national team. "He had a suit on and in the inside pocket was a team sheet from 2002," recalls Totten. "That was the last time he could fit into it. He is about three stones lighter."
Totten's reward for a remarkable return to health has been the forthcoming cup final against Rangers, although even a football romantic such as him must yield to a more pragmatic outlook when asked to pick which he would prefer: SPL survival or Falkirk's first major trophy in over half a century. Indeed, he is obligated to consider the financial reality given his present position at the club.
"All the advertising boards you can see, I sell that," he says. "I sell hospitality and the shirt sponsorship, golf days – you name it. The SPL is the only place to be really. For everyone's sake we need to stay up – there might be redundancies otherwise. It's so, so important. But then of course I would love to win at Hampden as well. We had an open-topped bus the last time, and thousands came out to see us. One thing was missing though – the cup."
The full article contains 1355 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
