Clarke Seems Happy Operating Beneath the Radar

IN RECENT years, the mainstream football media in Scotland's way of covering the beautiful game has become somewhat embarrassing. The Daily Ranger and The Hun have been Old Firm fanzines for years, we expect no better from them, but, to see once sensible newspapers charging down that route, where only two teams matter, has been, well embarrassing.

Stevie Clarke - the quiet man might bring about an improvement

It was the same with the coverage of Scotland, with every other title trying to latch-on to the old Scottish Daily Express model (from when the Express was a serious power in Scotland and not the disgraceful comic it has become) of trying to make out that their Chief Football Writer was the then Scotland manager's best buddy.

But, this week, with Scotland preparing for a couple of crucial European Championship qualifiers, against Cyprus and Belgium, I detect a subtle change. There is barely a mention of the national team's preparations, where, of late we have become used to such earth-shattering “exclusives” as:

• Scotland boss blew his nose this morning
  
  
• The Scotland captain had to scratch his itchy arse today
  
  
• Scotland assistant boss had scrambled eggs for breakfast

Maybe this is a reflection on the way our new boss, Stephen Clarke works. Clarkie is not a natural communicator in the Gordon Strachan mould, he's first and foremost a hands-on coach, who prefers to let his Monday to Friday work on the training paddock speak for him on a Saturday. He prefers the company of other coaches and players to chewin' the fat with the press corps.

You know, this new approach just might work. He certainly has a track record of working with good managers, coaches and players, and the change he wrought in his last post, at Kilmarnock, was fantastic.

You know, if, in spite of all the in-built obstacles of being the Keeper of the Poisoned Chalice brings, if Clarkie can replicate with Scotland, the change he brought at Rugby Park, we just might be going further into the European Championships and hopefully the next World Cup, than we have ever gone.

No pressure then, Stevie.

REGULAR swimmers through this blog's pish will be aware, I get to write an awful lot of obituaries, as former football greats pass-on. I consider this a privilege, making the deeds of these great players known to a whole new generation.

 Lawrie Leslie makes a typical flying save at a West Ham training session

I have just, prior to writing this, filed my obituary on one of my own heroes, former Scotland goalkeeper Lawrie Leslie, who has died, aged 84, after a final decade of life spent fighting recurrent bouts of the liver damage which blighted his life, plus the added burden of dementia. He spent his final years, confined to a wheel-chair, a tragic downfall for a man who, in his prime, was the sort of physically-imposing figure every club wants to have asa back-stop.

In a 13-year, 400-game career, Leslie performed miracles for Hibs, Airdrie, West Ham United, Stoke City, Millwall and Southen United at club level, also winning representative honours with the Scottish League and Scotland.

With Hibs, he played alongside four of the Famous Five – Bobby Johnstone had move on to Manchester City before his arrival, Joe Baker and Jackie Plenderleith. He had Bobby Moore in front of him at West Ham United, at Stoke City, he shared a dressing room with Sir Stanley Matthews. Leslie moved among giants, and did not look out of place.

I first became aware of him, when he was goalkeeper in the Hibs team which reached the 1958 Scottish Cup Final. But, he really made an impression on me, a young wannabee goalkeeper, when I saw him playing for Airdrie, against Kilmarnock, under the Rugby Park lights, in a League Cup tie in August, 1960.

Killie won 2-0 that night, but, the game was a case of Killie, fielding a forward line of Billy Muir, Jackie McInally, Andy Kerr, Bertie Black and Brian McIllroy virtually playing “shootie-in.” They took myriad shots at Leslie, who produced a string of unbelievable saves to save all but two of the efforts fired at him. After that night, I was a confirmed fan.

Within a week, Leslie had won the first of an all-too-few five caps, against Wales in the opening game of the Home Internationals. Wales won 2-0, but, as at Rugby Park weeks before, but for Leslie it would have been a massacre.

The great Cyril Horne of The Glasgow Herald, then the doyen of Scottish football writers wrote in his Monday match report: “I can recall, of Scottish goalkeepers, only John Thomson, against the English League in London in 1931 and Jimmy Cowan against England at Wembley in 1949, making as many breathtaking saves in one match as Leslie did on Saturday.”

He kept his place for match two, a 5-2 win over the Northern Irish, at Hampden, and it was no surprise when he was named in the team for the big one – the trip to Wembley to face England, in April, 1961. However, on the preceding Saturday, playing for Airdrie against Ayr United at Somerset Park, he made a typically brave save at the feet of a United forward, sustained a horrific cut to an eyebrow and had to be taken to Ayr County Hospital, to have 11 stitches inserted in the wound.

The eye closed as the wound swelled up; manager Ian McColl gave him every chance to improve, but, on the Friday, in the face of: “I can play Boss,” from Leslie, McColl decided, he was not fit to play and Frank Haffey would take his place. What happened next is still too-painful for Scots to dwell on.

He recovered, winning a further three caps that season, against the Republic of Ireland, twice, and Czechoslovakia.

In part, Leslie owed his caps to a dispute between the SFA and Tottenham Hotspur, who were reluctant to release goalkeeper Bill Brown, the established national team goalie, for Scotland games. The following season, Spurs made Brown available again and Leslie, who had joined West Ham United for £14,000 was an ex-Scotland goalkeeper. Airdrie, by the way, did none too badly out of replacing him, with a certain Jock Wallace.

He won the “Hammer of the Year” title in an impressive first season, but, his penchant for disregarding personal safety to make saves at the feet of inrushing forwards saw him frequently injured. Indeed, when I interviewed Lawrie for a Scotsman piece on the 50^th anniversary of the 9-3 game, his wonderful wife Jeanette remarked: “Lawrie was injured so often, he was on first-name terms with the A&E staff at the Royal London Hospital, where the joke was, he had his own bed reserved for him.”

Injury caused him to lose his ~West Ham place, so, he moved-on, helping Stoke City to reach the League Cup final, then a two-legged affair. But, you've guessed it, he got injured in the first game and missed the second.

He moved back to London, when Millwall recruited him to replace another fine goalkeeper, Alex Stepney, who had moved to Chelsea, prior to moving on to Manchester United and winning the European Cup. Here, at the Den, he was a cult figure, a fans' favourite with his .brilliance.

He then ran down his playing career with Southend, where he switched to coaching, serving that club and former employers Millwall, where he was briefly caretaker manager. The bulk of his post-playing career, however, was spent coaching football around schools in the Greater London area.

He was an inspiring figure in this role, with many former pupils taking to social media to praise him in the wake of the announcement of his passing.

Retirement was difficult, his life-long liver problems - a legacy of being transfused with unscreened blood following a childhood road accident, from which, initially it was feared he would never regain the use of his legs – returned. He was forced into a wheel-chair, pushed around by the dauntless Jeanette, as he continued to watch football. He made occasional forays to West Ham, but, mostly he watched Gillingham, the club closest to his home on the borders of South London and Ken, and, even as dementia took hold, he retained his interest in the game.

Hibs have had a formidable list of international goalkeepers since World War II: George Farm, Willie Miller, Tommy Younger, Leslie himself, Ronnie Simpson, Jim Herriot, Thomson Allan, Alan Rough, Andy Goram and Jim Leighton. The last three of those are always short-listed in arguments about Scotland's best-ever.

But, placing Leslie among that band would surely keep a good-going argument alive in any of the many Hibs' pubs in Leith and wider Edimnburgh. One thing is certain, even among that stellar band, Leslie was surely the bravest.