GORDON Strachan and Jimmy Calderwood could never be described as pioneers of the training-ground or dressing-room spat with a player, but they could reasonably be regarded as unfortunate victims of the all-seeing eye of the modern media.
The Celtic manager's fight with Aiden McGeady at the turn of the year kept reporters, headline writers and subscribers to phone-ins as busy as medical staff in a field hospital for days on end.
The Aberdeen manager's feud with his full-back, Richa
rd Foster, may not have generated the same level of publicity, but it was sufficient to move Calderwood yesterday to reassure the country that their reconciliation had been effected.
All that could be inferred from both incidents was the re-affirmation that these fights almost invariably produce only one winner – and it is not the player. McGeady's sentence for his offence, fined a fortnight's wages and given a two-match suspension, would be more punitive than Foster's – dropped for last Saturday's match against Dundee United – but the same principle applies.
Strachan will have been acquainted with Hugh McIlvanney's unarguable observation that "dressing-room democracy starts with the manager's casting vote" from the earliest days of his playing career. People of his and Alex Ferguson's volatility make a combustible mix, one that would ignite during their years together at Pittodrie. Even these two excitable personalities, however, could not claim exclusivity in the matter of manager/player collisions.
Long before Strachan was even out of primary school, Jock Stein at Celtic was lamenting that Jimmy Johnstone "has given me more trouble than any other player in my time at this club". Stein would reflect that, all the championships and cups on his record notwithstanding, his greatest achievement was to keep Johnstone in the game five years longer than he might have been.
But Jimmy's main problem, confirmed in conversations with many of his team-mates, was an incurable propensity for getting caught. While others breached curfews with more guile, Jinky suffered from a brazenness that would cause a modern criminal profiler to conclude that, subconsciously, he wanted to be caught.
Ferguson's reaction to challenges to his authority, of course, have been spectacular. Even some of the biggest names on the Manchester United roster – David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jaap Stam, Paul Ince and Paul McGrath – have been jettisoned when the Old Trafford manager has considered their insurrection to be potentially harmful to the club. In these instances, however, Ferguson has enjoyed the rare luxury of being able to exchange his problems for many millions of pounds.
Such a course of action would not have occurred to Jock Wallace, the Rangers manager whose sense of a kind of barrack-room justice betrayed his army background. Towards the end of a match at Firhill, Jock substituted Alex MacDonald, who threw his shirt at the dug-out and muttered his objection.
The jersey had not hit the ground when the diminutive "Doddie" saw the rage flush into the big man's face. He bolted for the dressing room and went straight into the large, communal bath, already full of water, and pressed his back against the furthest wall. Jock, attired as always in a smart suit and dress shoes, stormed through the door, headed directly to the bath and waded through the knee-deep water and hit Doddie with a sledgehammer right. It brought an abrupt end to an incident that never made the papers.
Few players, though, could have accepted punishment with the abandon of Frank McAvennie. A habitual offender who would screech into Celtic's Barrowfield training ground in a white sports car – invariably straight off a plane from London – half-an-hour or more after the session had started, was eventually sold to West Ham because his manager, Billy McNeill, believed him capable of undermining the entire club.
"He was something else, Frank," Billy recalled years later. "One Christmas Eve, I called him into my office to deal with his latest breach of the rules and fined him £500, a fair amount 20 years ago.
"Frank just turned and left the office. Within seconds, the door was thrown open again and there he was. I thought, 'Uh-oh, here it comes'. What he said was, 'Sorry, boss, I forgot – Merry Christmas!' and broke into that big smile of his.
"What could you do with somebody like that? I had to wait until he left before shaking my head and laughing myself."
The full article contains 755 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
