Craig Brown - The Game of My Life. Craig Brown
and had remained so. Having worked at Clyde for so long, as both manager and a director, and with the club moving to a lovely new ground, it should be perfectly understandable to anyone that I would want them to win their opening match. I do hope that she thought my letter was a pleasant one – it was meant to be!
That incident demonstrated to me just how important it is to be careful about your comments to the press – especially when you are in charge of something as important as a national team. I always tried to make my comments constructive, unbiased and objective – but there is rarely any response when people are in agreement with you. It is only when you say something that strays beyond your own confines that people seem to take umbrage if your comments don’t support their own particular viewpoint.
I must point out that I have remained on good terms with both Mr and Mrs Fulston – and I certainly have nothing but respect and admiration for George Fulston’s tireless efforts for Hamilton and Falkirk.
I see that I have digressed yet again, but it seems that the present is always tied up with attitudes and events from the past.
As my years advanced into double figures, the two big loves of my life, namely football and golf, had grown even closer to my heart. When I was eleven years of age I was finally unleashed into the world of golf – and I really took to the game. I played at Hamilton Golf Club and steadily improved until I had a handicap of four – while I was still at school. I was runner-up in the Lanarkshire Boys’ Championship and reached the last eight in the Scottish Boys’ Championship, as well as playing for the West of Scotland boys’ team.
There never seemed to be any question that I would pursue a career in golf, but I have to say that even though I was very enthusiastic, I was not quite good enough. However, my love of golf continued to develop and has endured to this day. In fact, golf proved to be a very useful tool to me on a number of occasions during my playing days. Although successive knee operations have taken their toll on the number of times I can play without the discomfort of fluid in my knees.
At around the same time, I played my earliest competitive games with St John’s primary school, where one of my teachers was Curly Thompson. Naturally enough, he was called ‘Curly’ because he was completely bald. Another of my teachers was Bob Roan, who was in charge of the football team at St John’s.
It was Bob Roan who also had the unenviable job of taking us for swimming. He had developed his own technique for teaching youngsters how to swim. Once you had learned how to ‘sprachle’ – a Scottish term for getting about in the water at the shallow end without drowning yourself or anyone near you – Bob would take you to the deep end and order you in, sometimes with the assistance of a discreet push. Naturally you didn’t argue, and the primitive urge to live took over. Your innate sense of survival helped you to sprachle your way from one side to the other – or even back to the shallow end. Either way, when you finally clung breathlessly to the side of the pool – after what seemed like a battle across the Bay of Biscay – Bob would be there, smiling down at you. ‘There you are, son, I told you that you could swim!’ He was absolutely right, of course – you were still alive to prove his point! To be fair, I never heard of any fatalities as a result of his ‘scientific’ approach to the art of swimming, and we were all able to swim shortly after becoming his pupils.
Swimming was very popular in Hamilton because we had such good facilities. The town was also very proud of Eleanor Gordon, who had won countless national and international breaststroke championships. She was a very famous swimmer, and her exploits inspired many youngsters throughout Scotland, especially in her home town of Hamilton, where the baths were one of the most popular venues for young and old alike.
So you see I enjoyed my golf and I enjoyed my swimming, but it was football that was the most important to me. If ever I had to choose from among the sports, football would always be the winner.
As I grew up, I played in all the Hamilton Academy school football teams. We had a variety of coaches, who were also teachers. I recall Cliff Bruce, science teacher; Alf McCracken, our English teacher; Eddie Young, also an English teacher who was keener on rugby but was, nevertheless, a good football coach; and the principal teacher of PE, Willie Liddell. Mr Liddell encouraged all sports at the school and, certainly, football was no exception.
I played constantly throughout my school years and took part in trials for the Scottish Under-15 team, which was a great experience even though it was unsuccessful. Joe Baker was also around at the time and was centre-forward in the Under-15 team. It would have been great for me if I could have joined him, but it was not to be. I was disappointed, but I have always considered that disappointments only put you down for as long as you let them. If you use them as a springboard to better times ahead, then they become much more bearable.
A couple of years later I was offered a trial for the Scotland Schools Under-18 team. There were some excellent players in the squad. The goalkeeper was Fred Renucci, who went to Partick Thistle. We had Phil Lynch, who went to Celtic, and Davie Hilley, who went to Third Lanark and then on to Newcastle. He still writes a column for the Sunday Post. We also had Sandy Turpie, who played for Queen’s Park, Brian McIlroy, who went to Rangers and then Kilmarnock, and Hugh Brown, who also went to Kilmarnock. But probably the most famous of that particular squad was Billy McNeill, who went on to become the first British captain to hold aloft the European Cup when he led Celtic to their historic triumph in 1967.
To my immense delight I found myself selected to be among these guys, and I played for my country at the age of seventeen. We scored a memorable 3–0 victory over England at Celtic Park. It was a tremendous experience for me – quite awesome to be walking out at Celtic Park, and very emotional too to be wearing the shirt of my country. I think I must have had a reasonable game because I kept my place in the squad. As you might imagine, my family were nearly as thrilled as I was about the whole thing.
While I was at school I was also playing for one of the very best amateur teams in the country. Willie Waddell, the former Rangers player, was manager of Kilmarnock at the time, and he had a firm belief in youth development for football clubs. To this end Kilmarnock Amateurs were formed, and this was the team that I played for – one of the strongest sides in Scotland at that time. There was probably only one team to rival us at the time – and that was Drumchapel Amateurs. There were certainly some epic matches between us.
I used to go down to Kilmarnock for training. It was about an hour’s journey from Hamilton and, of course, it was an invaluable experience to be training there. I was also invited to train at Celtic Park, and I went along with Billy McNeill. The coach of the Celtic youth players at that time was the late, great, legendary Jock Stein – who was then in the early stages of his management and coaching career. He was something of a father-figure even then, as he took a personal interest in each one of his charges and coached them as individuals. Jock also had an amazing memory and, from our very first meeting, he remembered everything about me. Even when I hadn’t seen him for ages he still remembered that our first encounter had been when I was a young hopeful visiting Celtic Park for the first time.
The manager at Celtic Park in those days was Jimmy McGrory, but he didn’t offer terms to either Billy or me – which turned out to be quite ironic, really, when you consider how great a name Billy was to become at Celtic. As it happened, they later had a change of heart and did offer to sign him. As for me – well, I was pretty confident in my ability and I lived in the expectation of some club offering me a career in the game. I was hopeful, and I was informed repeatedly that this or that club had phoned my father to establish my availability. However, my father liked to keep my feet on the ground and didn’t tell me of the enquiries.
Not long after running into the Celtic cul-de-sac I was back in the Scotland Schools Under-18 side. One of my teammates was to go on and make himself very famous indeed. He was Alex Ferguson, who was then playing for Govan High School and was an extremely good attacking player. We were to play against England again, this time at Dulwich Hamlet, the home of one of England’s most famous amateur clubs. Jim Cruikshank was our goalkeeper and he went on to play for Hearts and Scotland as a senior. We lost the game 4–3 as it happened, but it could have gone either way, and there was the special memory for me of scoring from the penalty spot.
To