Craig Brown - The Game of My Life. Craig Brown
enough being told that I would never play again, but I would have found it very difficult to live with myself if I had gone out of football with the feeling that I had taken money under false pretences from such a friendly club as Stranraer.
Unlike many players, I had no need to worry about where the next penny was coming from or, indeed, what to do with my time. I would now have more time to devote to the teaching profession. While undergoing various courses during my Dundee days, I also attained my Scottish FA coaching certificates, my preliminary badge and my ‘A’ licence badge at Inverclyde, Largs, so I was already qualified enough for professional coaching had I chosen to pursue this option. If I might just give a bit of advice to today’s players, it is a good idea to take your coaching certificates while you are still playing, because you have both the time and the money to invest in your future. In Scotland, the Professional Footballers’ Association, whose dedicated secretary is Tony Higgins, is a big help, because it contributes two-thirds of the cost, which I believe is a very generous way of giving players extra options when they find it is time to be hanging up their boots.
I could name many among today’s top football management and coaching staff who took the trouble to take their coaching courses quite early on in their playing careers. Men like Sir Alex Ferguson, Alex Miller, Walter Smith, Archie Knox, Jim McLean, Alex Smith, Jimmy Bone, Tommy McLean, Murdo MacLeod, Alex McLeish, Andy Watson, Tommy Burns, Paul Sturrock, John Hagart, Billy Davies, Sandy Clark, Billy Kirkwood, Jimmy Nichol, Donald Park, Tom Hendrie, Gordon Strachan, Willie Miller, Mark McGhee, Dave Moyes, Roy Aitken, Craig Levein John Blackley, Terry Christie, Jim Leishman, Bobby Williamson, Billy Stark, Alex Wright and Wilson Humphries. Some of today’s younger managers have followed the same pattern, planning well ahead for a continuation of their football careers. We are very proud in Scotland that virtually all the managers in senior football have taken their coaching courses at Largs and hold the ‘A’ or ‘B’ badges of the SFA. We encourage that, and we are also moving on to the higher course for a European pro licence which is co-ordinated by UEFA. It is a very good course at Largs, and we continue to promote it, both for the good of Scottish football and for the good of those players and others who want to coach at the highest possible standard.
For me, the summer of 1967 proved to be the twilight of my playing career. I had my championship medal, my youth and school caps, and many adventures and experiences to treasure. Now, it seemed, I was destined to be a schoolteacher who used to play football.
THERE IS NO prescription for football. It was 1969, my professional interest in football was over and I was happily continuing my role as primary and PE teacher when I was invited to join the coaching team at Largs by Roy Small, who was running the courses there. I was asked along with my present colleague, Frank Coulston, who was – and still is – an excellent coach. The staff at Largs included Eddie Turnbull, Aberdeen manager, Jimmy Bonthrone, who was then at East Fife, Wilson Humphries, then at St Mirren, Archie Robertson, the manager of Clyde, Willie Ormond, then in charge at St Johnstone, and Peter Rice, who was a former player with Hibs and became a lecturer at St Andrew’s College.
All those men I have just mentioned have been fine coaches in their own right. Everyone has different ideas – which is why I maintain that there is no prescription for football. It is something that I have kept in mind since then. I have had it as a belief throughout my coaching career. You have a philosophy of football that suits you and you stick to it. It is totally wrong to criticise someone else’s beliefs because what might work for one coach may not work for another – and vice versa! Flexibility has to be a highly important factor – you cannot be hide-bound to one system, one set of rules for set pieces in attack or defence.
All this was brought home to me once when I had a minor disagreement with the late Peter Rice, who was in charge of the course at this particular time. Peter had been No. 2 to Roy Small and, as Roy was away at this time, Peter was in charge. I was watching one of my coaches taking an excellent session. He was Eddie Thomson who later became coach of Australia after he had finished playing for Hearts and Aberdeen. Eddie was very successful with Australia and gave them a much higher profile on the international scene than they had previously had. When he left the job he became a coach in the J League. I have often wanted to be a fly on the wall at one of his sessions, just to see how the Japanese and other nationalities coped with his team talks. The last time I saw him they were still being delivered in one of the most pronounced Edinburgh accents you could ever wish to hear – I sometimes had difficulty in understanding him myself!
Eddie was coaching the use of a sweeper behind a back four. Peter came along and said, ‘What’s he doing, Craig?’
‘Well, you can see what he’s doing, Peter,’ I replied.
‘Surely he’s not using a sweeper behind the back four?’
‘He certainly is,’ I responded.
‘Well, you never do that!’ Peter said.
I rose to defend Eddie’s right to try his own methods. ‘I think that’s a bit of a sweeping statement, Peter.’ One thing led to another and Peter and I disagreed over it. Eddie’s idea was unusual but it was working for him – and it has since worked for Willie McLean and me when I was assistant manager at Motherwell. If we had a tricky away match we would use Eddie’s system to good effect. Peter felt that Eddie should fail his exam because it was an unrealistic system – but I strongly disagreed.
In the end, Eddie completed an excellent session and I passed him. Later, both Frank Coulston and I were dropped from the coaching staff at Largs. I think it was a direct result of my disagreeing with Peter, who said that he was going to use a pool of coaches instead of having the same people involved all the time. I don’t think anyone has been dropped since then, so I think I am probably correct in my assertion that it was all down to my backing Eddie.
I am sure that Peter, fine coach though he was, felt that there was a prescription for football and that if you used a sweeper it had to be behind a two- or three-man defence, and adopting any other system was unthinkable. Since then I have always kept an open mind while doing my own coaching thing. I have my own thoughts and systems but I am always prepared to have any aspect of my knowledge of the game improved by sensible suggestions. There is no set formula for anything, whether you are scoring goals or stopping them, and I defy anyone to show me a long-term success story involving anybody who is not prepared to adapt, adopt and try to improve.
While I was adding to my coaching experience I was working tirelessly with school and youth teams as well. I was also working to further my teaching career. When I finished my professional playing, the Open University was starting up and so I took a degree through that medium. I had been taking course after course for some time in my thirst for knowledge and qualifications, but there always seems to be a stigma attached to the role of a PE teacher – everyone thinks that you are an ignorant acrobat! People don’t seem to realise that the academic qualifications needed to get into a PE teaching course were a lot more stringent than those needed for a primary teaching course in those days. I knew from my father’s experience that qualifications were of the utmost importance if you were going to have a good career in teaching and, as with everything else, I did not see the point in getting involved with anything unless it was with a full commitment.
I thought I’d better get some academic respectability, so I took a BA degree through the Open University. I also did some additional courses that were relevant to my job – courses such as the development of reading, geography, and so on. Studying was becoming something of a hobby for me. I was really enjoying it and it provided me with something totally different from my PE and football coaching – which were taking up most of my time, of course.
As a result of all this – and possibly also because there was a shortage of teachers in Lanarkshire where I was working – I became deputy head teacher in Bellshill. Things seemed to move quite quickly because not long after that I became, for a short time,