Mackay is now ready for real life after degree in football

I wasted free time as a player. I wish I had studied hard

IT caused a flutter on Twitter, a fleeting flurry on social media. Dave Mackay, Scottish Cup-winning captain and Stirling Albion manager, was ready for the real world.

This is not to suggest that a career which started in Hamilton as a boy kicking a ball ‘down the garages’, and led to more cultured exchanges of passes with such as Claudio Caniggia and Fabrizio Ravanelli and ended in substantial success at St Johnstone did not contain the invigorating and brutal reality that is in the marrow of professional sport.

But Mackay had to investigate the outer world as he accepts the capability of football to wound or destroy careers almost on a whim. The purpose of his post on the Linkedin site was to seek work outside football as a complement to life with the Binos.

‘It was something I was always going to have to do,’ he says. ‘I knew there had to be life after football. As a footballer, I wasted free time. I now wish I had done an Open University course or prepared better.

‘I am in a part-time job with loads of time during the day. Why would I waste any more time? I want to go out and learn something other than football. My ultimate goal is to stay in football but everybody knows how precarious it can be. If one job goes wrong, you can be so quickly forgotten.’

The responses flowed in. Mackay has decided to train to be a financial advisor with mortgages his initial speciality.

He has always been aware, though, that fortunes can fall as well as rise.

At 36, he has been welded to football since he was chosen for his school team in primary four. The kickabouts became gradually more serious. They included two Scottish Cup finals, spells with Dundee, Oxford, Livingston and St Johnstone and now the key to a small office in Stirling where he conducts the fortunes of Albion.

But this foray into management was no dreamy-eyed progression. Mackay stares the truth of his profession squarely in the eye.

‘If we had gone down last year, I would have been out a job. My career’s done,’ he says of arriving at Albion last November when the team was second bottom of League Two and staring at the abyss of leaving the SPFL.

He adds: ‘You don’t have time. That’s not a complaint, that’s the reality. There were stages last year I thought: “I’m done”. But we got out of it. You need to be a lucky manager as well as a good manager.’

He may be the former but there are signs he is almost certainly the latter. A clear-out of the dressing room in the January window was followed by a sustained run of good form that saw Albion finish comfortably mid-table.

Mackay applied some basic lessons learned from life as a toplevel pro. ‘Tommy told me to try to keep it as simple as you can. You can’t come in with crazy ideas that take time to implement. You haven’t got time,’ he says.

Tommy, of course, is Mr Wright who’s brought consistent success to St Johnstone and who continues to be a mentor to his former centre-half and captain.

‘The season changed when we got our own players in January. Some of those moves worked, some didn’t but they were all characters,’ says Mackay.

‘The biggest thing I learned from St Johnstone is that the character of the team can take you a long way. We were decent, good players but we looked at other teams with good squads and thought: “They should be doing better than us”. So we knew the importance of how we worked for each other, the togetherness in the dressing room.’

This professionalism saw St Johnstone became regular qualifiers for Europe and winning the Scottish Cup for the first time in 2014, beating Dundee United in the final. Again, Mackay is sober on the romance of the cup. ‘First St Johnstone captain to lift the Scottish Cup? That’s great but I couldn’t care less if I was the first or the last,’ he says. ‘It was the fact of winning my first piece of silverware and such a big one for a player and for the club.’

He recalls the day in detail. ‘My feeling was: “I am 33. This is my last chance”. In 2003, my first full season as a first-team player, I played in the Scottish Cup final for Dundee against Rangers. I was devastated when we lost but you are young and you think: “These will come around again”.’

He adds: ‘Eleven years later my mindset was clear. We were playing Dundee United, we had a great record against them that season, we knew we had a chance. It was a case of if we don’t do it now… we met that pressure full on.’

The losing final for Dundee certainly sharpened his appetite for success but his spell at Dens Park offered lessons from the elite. The Hamilton schoolboy had graduated from the kickabouts down the garages to training sessions with such as Caniggia, Ravanelli and Fabian Caballero.

‘It was surreal to see these guys at training. They were obviously brilliant but their attitude was spot-on. That was probably why they were so successful,’ he says.

‘Caniggia and Ravanelli were incredible in their work-rate and dedication.

‘There was never a minute when they were thinking: “I’m in Dundee now for a final pay day”.

‘I was just a lad and I never played with Caniggia in the first team but I came up against him at training. A great experience.

‘To be on a pitch with these guys concentrates the mind. You don’t want to make mistakes because they were always spot on.’

He then utters one of those sentences that makes one’s heart sing in joy at the marvellous, enduring strangeness of Scottish football: ‘I played in Ravanelli’s debut against Clyde.’

The Italian striker, who had won two Italian titles and scored in a Champions League final victory for Juventus, duly netted a hat-trick against the Bully Wee — or Piccolo Bully as he probably called them — in a League Cup match in 2003.

He was soon to leave Dundee, however, after the club attracted debts and litigation rather than ageing superstars. It was an Argentine and a Republic of Ireland internationalist, though, who were destined to impress and influence Mackay.

‘Ravanelli and Caniggia had the most success in their careers but at the time Caballero was the best,’ he says of the Argentine striker who arrived from Paraguay.

‘He was incredible. He was on the verge of signing for Celtic but the move fell through because of his injuries. He could’ve played anywhere. He was an unbelievable talent. He maybe didn’t have the dedication of Caniggia and

Caniggia and Ravanelli had incredible work-rate

I used all the advice Tommy Coyne gave me until I retired

Ravanelli but ability-wise he was incredible, strong as an ox, could finish with both feet, and quick.’

However, Mackay is keen to testify to a lasting debt to Tommy Coyne, the striker who played in the 1994 World Cup for Ireland. ‘I was playing right-back as a kid and Tommy came up to me in training and told me what the best passes were from that position, what movement to look for from the forwards and the best ball to find them.

‘He was always giving advice. I used all that stuff until I retired. I now pass that experience on. I am forever grateful for it.’

Mackay had to hirple away from playing football because of chronic injury, particularly to his hips.

‘I played for a year when I should not have been out on the pitch,’ he says. ‘It’s your mentality. You are desperate to go out there.

‘If I only played when I was 100-per-cent fit then I would have played 15 matches instead of 600. You are always carrying a niggle or suffering some pain.’

His burden now is to lead Stirling Albion to success. ‘This is a great opportunity,’ he says. ‘I am expecting a good season.

‘My ultimate goal is to win the league. It is a tough division but there is no need to fear anyone.’

The real Mackay faces up to the surreality of football where only success ensures survival. In substance and experience, he has a better chance than most. And if you want to put your mortgage on that I know a guy who can help you out…