PROS AND CONS
HAMPDEN ROAR LEGEND WANTS NEW DAWN Hunter: I love Queen’s Park and all that they stand for but it’s time to think about turning professional
EDDIE HUNTER takes a break from his Friday routine at The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice to field an enquiry from Record Sport.
This is a Queen’s Park legend who uses gallows humour better than most to assess life’s more brutal realities and his answers are laced with the odd expletive.
That the club who have been his labour of love for more than half of his 75 years are at a crossroads more critical than at any time in more than a century and a half is a matter of concern.
Traditions are about to be cast to the wind, an amateur status which is the bedrock of the club’s existence is at stake.
Hunter has watched Mark Roberts make a decent fist of replacing Gus MacPherson in the dugout over the past month but the veteran fears the new man might struggle to attract players.
He said: “I’d have taken the job in a heartbeat but I’d be the first manager in history to murder a player inside a dressing room. I’m not bloody kidding you.
“I approach players to try to get them to come to Queen’s and they say they would rather stay at their amateur club and play with their pals.
“It kills me to hear that. I love this club and I can’t listen to boys who lack the gusto and ambition to play for a club like ours, they need to have more about them than that surely?”
Underneath Hunter’s hard exterior is a caring side which belies the colourful language and fiery demeanour.
Twice a week at the hospice has become his routine as well as running Tackling Recovery, a drug and alcohol abuse project, at the South Side club which he combines with a scouting role.
As the Spiders oversee the £5.1million sale of Hampden to the SFA which ends their days having the stadium as a base, Hunter insists it’s time for the amateurs to turn professional.
He said: “I certainly don’t have a problem with the club moving to a professional set-up. I am out scouting every day of the week for Queen’s in all weather but I’ve known for a while tradition within football has now gone.
“You see agents tapping up 16-year-olds in our youth programme and it’s brutal. That is why professional contracts at Queen’s would not bother me. Tradition can’t be allowed to kill my club, we need to move on.
“In 20 years’ time I won’t be here and God rest my soul but the Old Firm won’t even be playing in Scottish football by then, they’ll be in some form of European league.
“The sum and substance of it all is we need to survive as a club now, that’s our everything.
“We need to show that we can convert Lesser Hampden into a viable stadium and take the club forward. This club can’t drop into the Lowland League as that’s a step towards death. Dropping down the pyramid? No chance. That’s the challenge for our next manager and he’ll have his work cut out.”
There’s an irony that new SFA chief Ian Maxwell’s was recruited by Hunter after he spotted the gangly defender on a public park.
But he is adamant the move to Lesser Hampden should be embraced with a mindset of modernisation, not fear. Hunter said: “We will come up with something, that’s for sure.
“I worked long and hard with purely amateur players at Queen’s and that was the way it was, that was it. Simple.
“If players now don’t want to come because they aren’t getting paid and we can’t offer a game at Hampden every second week then we can’t force them.
“We’ve never put a gun to a player’s head, it was the appeal of the club, take it or leave it. This is a unique club which has always come out of situations smelling of roses.
“You could throw us into a barrel of s*** and we would still come out smelling of roses. We have always managed that, we have been here for 150 years and it has never been a problem.
“I don’t believe the present day idiom is manufactured to play at Hampden. It has been a great appeal to have Hampden but we are no longer part and parcel of the set-up.
“We can play at Lesser Hampden, no problem. It’s a bigger pitch as well. Hampden has to go and we need to accept that.”
Time spent with Hunter is to be thrown a tale or two of the archaic workings of an amateur club which he revealed added an unusual remit to his coaching responsibilities.
He said: “I love tradition. Queen’s are the last bastion of tradition but we need to embrace the future.
“I remember a board meeting about Ian McCall who played without showing the three hoops and having his jersey tucked into his shorts. We’d won the game 4-0 and I wondered why this meeting had been called.
“Our president George Geddes was a gem of a man but was asking me why our No.10 had his jersey tucked into his pants. He could not even say it was Ian McCall.
“He had broken the tradition. From that moment on I used to make substitutions and told my players they hadn’t to move until I checked their attire was correct.
“I knew it was unbelievable but tradition is tradition and we all had to abide by it.”
Hunter also believes the last word on Queen’s future must me made by the club’s members who number just over 100.
He said: “My opinion won’t matter, I want this to be a decision which is taken across the members.
“It has to be the members who opt to go professional.”