I was paid £4,000 a year — it hardly compares to what the next Scotland manager will get
LAST month Bobby Brown, Scotland’s first full-time manager, received an offer he felt unable to resist. ‘Denis Law was given the freedom of Aberdeen and I was asked up for the dinner,’ he recalls. ‘He doesn’t look so well now Denis, a bit frail...’
At 94, people should be saying the same of Brown. Instead, he carries a tray of tea and biscuits into the front room of his Helensburgh home and his handling is as steady as when he flew a Fairey Swordfish biplane during the Second World War or kept goal for Rangers in their first ever Treble-winning season of 1948-49.
In management he was equally dexterous, stitching together a Scotland team strong enough to inflict the first defeat on newly-crowned world champions England in 1967.
‘For Denis they had a big dinner in the Marcliffe Hotel with 350 people with a beautiful meal and various speeches,’ says Brown.
‘Jonathan Watson did his spiel before myself, Bobby Lennox, Jim McCalliog and Denis were the main feature, doing a question and answer all about 1967.
‘I would never have guessed 50 years ago that I would still be asked to speak about it all these decades later.
‘And, you know, the real tragedy of it is this. I was never, ever able to play that same team again. Injuries, call-offs and the importance of European competitions to clubs made it impossible. That’s the story of managing Scotland.
‘I think Craig Brown said that the job is enjoyable. But it’s almost impossible.’
All of this is pertinent because Scotland are currently seeking a new manager. Michael O’Neill is the man chief executive Stewart Regan wants and a £500,000 compensation bill, allied to a potential salary in excess of £600,000 a year, is furrowing brows on the SFA board.
‘Fifty years ago, the SFA paid me £4,000 a year,’ laughs Brown. ‘That would equate now to about £70,000 in modern money.
‘It was a great salary in those days. But it doesn’t compare to what they’ll pay Michael O’Neill or whoever the next guy is.
‘The salary was a bit different. But was it a different organisation to now? Not really.
‘Everything was done through the SFA committee. They would have a meeting to discuss finance or something and I would sit in my office picking my next team.’
SCOTLAND’S first fulltime manager always knew when the SFA committee were ready to talk football matters. ‘After half an hour or so, a bell would ring in my office and that was the signal for me to go in.
‘Willie Allan, the secretary, would look at the names and say: “Right, Bobby, you’re picking so and so, why’s that?”
‘Or if we had played recently I had to give an appraisal of why we lost. Then I would go back to my office and that was it.’
Allan ran the SFA as an autocracy. In an era when secretaries of the governing body yielded power like an Ayatollah denouncing infidels, Brown entered a conservative organisation impervious to change.
‘Willie Allan was a very competent man who ran the SFA. Everything went through him,’ he recalled. ‘It would be right to say he didn’t think there was any need at all for a full-time Scotland manager.
‘I had a little bit of bother when I went there. Willie wanted all the mail coming through him. I said to him: “If there’s anything pertinent to me I want to see it”.’
St Johnstone manager for eight years, Brown had his doubts over swapping a comfortable family life on the banks of the Tay for a new high-profile role at Park Gardens. A PE teacher in Alloa, he never felt football was a secure way to support his family.
‘I was thinking this football lark wasn’t going to last and get me to my pension,’ he admitted. ‘There was a wee goalkeeper who played for Third Lanark, Charlie Robertson, who was a great keeper and the chairman Bill Hiddleston said to him: “Right you, out,” and he was left with nothing. That made an impression on me. Football seemed a precarious existence.
‘But I went for an interview with the SFA committee and in the car on the way back up to Perth I said to my wife: “It was as if they were offering me that job...”
‘Later that night at 10 o’clock I got a phone call from Willie Allan to say the job was mine.’
To this day he keeps scrapbooks. Career clippings stretch back to the day in April 1940 when he played for his school team on a Saturday morning before making his Queen’s Park debut against Celtic at Parkhead before 50,000 fans later the same day.
We move through to the study of his Helensburgh home where the walls are plastered with black and white pictures of the glory years.
Brown as a schoolboy with Eddie Turnbull in the Falkirk and District team.
Another of him hugging Rod Stewart. Mementos of his decade at Ibrox when he won five league titles and four Scottish Cups. Chatting with Alf Ramsey on the Wembley pitch in ’67.
‘People say it was a wonderful result against the world champions,’ he observes. ‘But I looked at the players I had and never felt unduly concerned by England.
‘I got the job in February and spent the time getting to know the players, talking to them — I didn’t have the fear or awe of England some had.
‘Scotland had very good Anglo Scots like Ian Ure, Frank McLintock and Billy Bremner who were household names playing every week against these world champions.
‘Plus, we had a very vibrant, strong Scottish league with household names. Celtic were about to become champions of Europe, Rangers were heading for a European final as well. So we were never Aunt Sallies.
‘Desmond Hackett wrote in the Daily Express that England would relegate Scotland to our minor role in international football. They didn’t, you know, and I never thought they would.
‘Early in Gordon Strachan’s reign I couldn’t tell you what club the players played for.
‘There was never that problem in those days.’
One aspect of the Scotland job has never changed. Everybody wanted to pick the team and thought they knew best.
‘I had two problems,’ he said. One was in goal where Bobby Ferguson of Kilmarnock had shaded off. Ronnie Simpson hadn’t been capped — he was my ball boy at Queen’s Park when I played. But I felt he had the experience to do the job.
‘I was criticised as well for playing the Rangers two John Greig and Ronnie McKinnon at centre-half because many people felt it should have been Billy McNeill and John Clark. I also moved Tommy Gemmell to right-back.
‘On the other side we had probably the most cultured leftback I’d ever seen in Eddie McCreadie. I took stick for that. But I had options a Scotland manager now could only dream of.’
HE found the criticism and scrutiny and call-offs — some more legitimate than others — hard to deal with. Yet admits: ‘There was no real pressure to qualify.
‘We went to Germany for a key qualifier for the 1970 World Cup needing to win or draw but lost 3-2,’ he recalled.
‘It was 2-2 and Tommy Gemmell was sent off for kicking (Helmut) Haller up the backside and we were so on top you thought we were going to get the winning goal.
‘I have never known a team to come back after a loss like that and get such praise. You could say now it was a very Scottish glorious defeat.’
A father of three daughters, football was never the be all and end all for Brown, whose wife Ruth died of a rare form of blood cancer in 1983.
For four years in the early 1970s the Browns had developed a small business empire, opening a gift shop, a pine furniture outlet, a restaurant, and rented out flats to incoming workers. All of this is recalled in an engaging new book by former QC Jack Davidson.
‘I was never someone who couldn’t live without football,’ stated Brown.
‘The night I left the SFA we had a wonderful party down the hill there in Helensburgh because I was free. I was no longer obligated to anyone. I always wanted to do my own thing.’
Bobby Brown: A Life in Football, From Goals to the Dugout, by Jack Davidson (Pitch Publishing, £18.99) is available online and from all good bookshops.