ONE OF my old teachers once told me: “Socrates, you have what I would call a dustbin mind – throw any old fact at you and it remains inside that head of yours, awaiting retrieval at the opportune moment.” He may be correct, or he might be wrong, but, my ability to call-up obscure facts at random did save the jerseys once or twice in a previous life as a player in some very-competitive pub quiz teams.
The funny way the MacSporran brain works also sees me easily-distracted when perhaps penning a meaningful peace; or going off on a tangent at some point – as happened the other day.
I was reflecting on my obituary of Craig Brown and it got me thinking on how we interpret Scotland's success or otherwise under Broonie and the other unfortunates who have been charged with guiding the national football team.
Wikipedia's page on the national side and the various team managers, whose ranks include managerial royalty such as Sir Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Sir Alex Ferguson, as well as some lesser mortals makes interesting reading. For instance, from it we learn the national team has played 820 games since 1872, winning 391, for a wining average of 47.68%.
To use an Americanism of which I am not fond, but one which does the job, The Winningest Manager of the 27 men who have held the job since 1954 is Billy Stark, who won his solitary game as caretaker boss. Of the longer-lasting custodians of what is something of a poisoned chalice, the most-successful was Alex McLeish, who had a 70% winning record yet never got us to either the World Cup or European Championship finals..
Only seven post-holders have bettered that 47.68% media winning figure. However, the Wikipedia figures are slightly-skewed, as I shall now reveal.
According to them, the Selection Committee who picked the side (by their calculations) from 1872 until 1954, and again from 1954 until 1957. This gives this collection of butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers, elected to the job by their peers a 58.7% winning record.
This however is wrong. The Selectors actually picked the team right up to the appointment of Bobby Brown in 1967. So, the records of the seven managers from 1954 to 1967: Andy Beattie (two spells), Dawson Walker, Matt Busby, Ian McColl, Jock Stein, John Prentice and Malky MacDonald should actually be credited to the Selectors.
Yes, the managers prepared the sides; of course they had input – no way could we envisage Stein just blindly accepting the team picked for him by the Selectors, but, while the managers prepared the sides – they did not have control of selection.
So, if we add these games to the Selectors' tally, they come out with a 55% winning record – 177 wins from 321 games.
This compares more than favourably with our record when the Team Manager is the sole selector - 214 wins from 499 games – 42.9% winning record.
OK, I will concede, the old Selection Committees did, particularly in the Victorian era, and again in the 1920s, have a great many more top-quality Scottish players to pick from than perhaps more-recent managers have. For instance, Stevie Clarke doesn't have to choose between Hughie Gallacher or Jimmy McGrory as his centre forward, or Willie Waddell or Gordon Smith, or Willie Henderson or Jimmy Johnstone at outside right; or Lawrie Reilly of Willie Bauld at centre forward.
Mind you, thee SFA Selectors of the time never took what many in the media saw as the obvious step for Scotland going on to world domination - they never melded together Rangers' Iron Curtain defence with Hibs' Famous Five forward line to produce what many football writers of the time saw as the Scotland Dream Team.
But, received wisdom has it that actual team selection is the hardest part of a Team Manager or Head Coach's role – and some guys are better at it than others. Once a side is nominated, it's all down to how it is organised and for many years, as was the case with Rugby Union and Cricket, the Team Captain in football was the de facto team manager.
Jimmy McMullan, the legendary Captain of the 1928 Wembley Wizards, led Scotland in just 6 of his 16 internationals, but was never on the losing side in these games – four wins and two draws was his record. He was very-much the man in charge in these games.
In the post-World War II era, George Young set a record number of games as Scotland captain, leading the side out in 49 of his 54 games. I have been assured by Scotland caps of the time - “Big Corky” as he was known, was Manager of Scotland in all but name; he organised the training and set the tactics, indeed, there is a famous quote from Sir George Graham, the long-serving Chief Executive of the SFA, who when asked why Scotland had not followed England's example and employed a Team Manager for the national side, replied: “We don't need one – we've got George Young, the Captain, he's our Team Manager.”
George Young - the best manager Scotland never had
Scotland, under Young, won 27 of his 49 games as Captain, that's a 55% winning record – only Tommy Docherty, Ian McColl and Alex McLeish of the later Managers have a better winning record.
Andy Robertson, the current national captain, has now led the side on 42 occasions and is on-course to break Young's captaincy record next season. Robertson can point to a 50% wining record as captain – but, of course the kudos for that go to Stevie Clarke and not to the player. Robertson is a key man in the Clarke set-up, but, he doesn't have the authority which Young carried more than half a century ago.
It might be argued that it took football a long time to accept the concept of a Team Manager actually managing the team. Across the pond, in North American sport, the concept of the Coach as God has been in use almost from the off. Baseball has always had team managers, Gridiron has long embraced the Head Coach as a Deity, ditto Basketball. Over here, however, it wasn't until the 1920s and the arrival of perhaps the original managerial Holy Trinity: Herbert Chapman at Arsenal, Willie Maley at Celtic and Bill Struth at Rangers that the men in-charge became Manager rather than Secretary-Manager.
Organised football was already more than half a century old when these three giants began to alter the fabric of how the sport was run – and it would take nearly another half century before Directors finally lost their right to actually pick many teams – for instance, Wullie Shankly had to play hard ball to win the right to pick the team when he became Liverpool manager; while it says much about Jock Stein's force of personality that he could convince Sir Bob Kelly that he, as Manager and not Kelly, as Chairman, who should pick the Celtic team.
As I mentioned above, actually picking the team is seen as the hardest part of a coach's or manager's job and some guys do it better than others. Maybe there is something to be said for a team manager having to run his selection past his board of directors prior to announcing it. With the right board, one or two selection mistakes might be avoided.
Mind you, managers tend to have a jaundiced view of their boards, as witness a great wee story which Craig Brown used to tell. The Chairman of a middling Scottish club was elected to the SFA's International Committee. That body, prior to 1967, actually picked the team, since then they have only had to make the really important decisions:
Does the squad stay at Gleneagles or Cameron House when preparing for a home international?
Do we fly with BA or a charter airline to away games?
Do we serve Merlot or Malbec with the main course at the post-game banquet?
You know, really important, crucial decisions like that.
Any way, this director's appointment to make such crucial decisions was followed by what is now seen as one of the great Scotland wins, when we routed one of the continent's major powers in a Hampden friendly. The following evening, as he arrived for their part-time team's evening training session, the club manager overheard the director's wife asking the club secretary if she had seen the difference her Jim had made to the Scotland team.
But, to be fair, maybe it might ease the pressure on the National Team Manager if, as happens with the world's most-successful international sporting side – The New Zealand All Blacks, the side was run and chosen by a three-man team, albeit with a Head Coach who is, as they say about a Prime Minister: “First Among Equals.”
The All Blacks have a 77.12% winning record, over their 612 Test matches, while this decade their record is up over 90%. Clearly their system works, but, could we Scots stop fighting among ourselves long enough to give their system a chance here?
No comments:
Post a Comment