There wasn’t time to wipe smile – fury and another fine followed
AS our team bus headed off to Stranraer the boss asked the driver to pull over.
A striker who had been informed the day before he was on the bench was ushered to the front and ordered off.
It was the middle of nowhere on that long and winding road to the coast but the manager had overhead him voicing his dissent.
His shouts for clemency fell on deaf ears and despite stating he had no money to get home, the bus pulled away.
Everyone headed to the back window to give him a wave as a furious team-mate became a dot in the distance.
It appeared a bit harsh but the gaffer made his point. “I’m not having that b ****** poisoning my team.”
The dressing-room dynamic can be a fragile ecosystem for even the hardest of players. Egos, difficult personalities and bad eggs abound in every squad and a culture of professional decay can become ingrained if allowed to go unchecked.
It’s easy to pour poison in the ear of a team-mate whose spirits are down.
Another hard lesson was learned on the bus home from Brechin one midweek at Clyde after a heavy defeat.
Sitting at the front with John Hillcoat, we held a vote on who we’d free at the end of the season.
In a whispered tone we released half the squad. It wasn’t until we were called into the manager’s office the following morning by Alex Smith that the horror of our brutal cull became clear.
He went mental, fined us a week’s wages and revealed the assistant manager had been sitting behind us.
When things do become violent, punches are thrown in a handbags fashion and adversaries are normally separated before damage is done.
One old team-mate called Chris Deegan was replaced during a match. It was textbook – a stone-faced charge for the changing room with a sideward glance of disdain at the dugout.
The scene inside the changing room after the game was carnage – tea urn was upturned while the treatment table lay in bits. In we all walked and Chris sat there in a state of calm. The manager burst in. “Here we go again, eh?” said Chris. “I
There’s a healthy venting of emotion in every dressing room OUR TOP WRITERS GIVE THEIR FEARLESS VERDICTS EVERY DAY IN RECORD SPORT
suppose I’ll be getting the blame for all this as well?”
There’s a healthy venting of emotion in every dressing room.
Smith’s half-time address if things weren’t going well would be an entertainment for those who hadn’t made the bench. One interval at Old Douglas Park let us press our ears up against the door – until I fell through it when abruptly opened from the inside.
There wasn’t time to get the smile off my face. Front and centre, the fury came and with it another fine.
The best punch-up? David Hannah against Peter Hinds at Dundee United. Let’s just say it was over a foul mess being left in a brand new pair of trainers.