One minute your stock is very high... the next minute you are damaged goods
Paul Hartley opens up on peaks and troughs of football management as he rebuilds his career at Cove Rangers
IT’S sunny. There is a soundtrack of summer music. And Wee Zico is showing off the Cove have a cabana.
‘I’ve been called Zico since I was five, playing in the park outside my house in Hamilton during the 1982 World Cup,’ Paul Hartley says, striding towards the players’ lounge at Cove Rangers, which is a luxuriously appointed cabin next to a tidy stand.
There was never any danger Hartley would be nicknamed Smiler. ‘Aye, I have always been described as a wee moaner, a grumpy sort. I am always asked why I don’t smile. How did that come about?’ he says, with a chuckle revealing the truth.
Hartley is happy. He knows this because he has been unhappy.
‘I have been hurt. I have been damaged. One minute your stock is very high. The next minute you are damaged goods,’ he says of his career as a manager.
In his pomp, he was offered the Cardiff City job. He turned it down. ‘I spoke to Vincent Tan and I felt it wasn’t right,’ he says.
‘In hindsight, people will say I was stupid. It was big, big money. But I didn’t have good vibes and I don’t regret it. I stayed at Dundee.’
The job went to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Whatever happened to him? And Hartley, after two sackings and a period where he fell out of love with the game, ended up at Cove. The smile has returned, though.
Cove are a club with plans and with the money to back them up. Keith Moorhouse, the club chairman, has made his cash in oil and gas.
Angela Bruce, the commercial manager, who is laying tables for hospitality for today’s game with Cowdenbeath, reports that she has a handful of tables left for the entire season.
She has sold so many advertising boards around the stadium it is a surprise the manager is not bedecked in a sandwich board.
Hartley has the grace to smile at that observation but is blunt about the demands of playing and managing in top-class football. He was bred for a struggle, however.
One of six kids brought up by his mother in a two-bedroomed flat in Hamilton, Hartley was let go by Hibs as a boy because of his height.
He went on to play Champions League football with Celtic, win 25 caps and lift two league titles, one League Cup and two Scottish Cups, one with Hearts. The 42-year-old drily notes: ‘According to my mum, I never played a bad game. She’s a rock for us. She always would tell me: “You did well today, son.” She was always proud of me.’
Professional managers were harder to impress. ‘I remember I had just joined Hearts in 2003 and it was tough initially. I didn’t perform the way I should have,’ he recalls. ‘We played Hibs, lost by a goal and we did video analysis. It was the first session I had ever done and it was all on me, not doing my job, being lazy, not tracking runners.
‘It was a wake-up call. I thought I did okay. The laser pen was on me the full hour. You can’t hide from it. It was the truth.
‘Then I was out the team for five, six weeks. I put my head down and worked on fitness. I thought I was fit. I wasn’t. The fitter I got, the better I became.’
The manager who had Hartley in the spotlight was Craig Levein, who had signed him on a Bosman from St Johnstone after he graduated from Hamilton Accies, Millwall, and Raith Rovers. Celtic, Bristol City and Aberdeen awaited in the midfielder’s career.
With more clubs than a golfing equipment warehouse, he is well placed to gauge managers.
‘Levein and Gordon Strachan were the best. Craig was great on detail, on bringing in innovations. Gordon told me there were certain players he could always trust. And he always trusted me in the big games, Champions League and so on. That was a brilliant compliment. My career took off.’
When he mentions how he loved working with Walter Smith, Ally McCoist and Tommy Burns at Scotland, he pauses to reflect: ‘My first cap was at 28.’ Did he ever think as a youngster, particularly after leaving Hibs, that his level might be that of the journeyman?
‘No,’ he replies quickly. ‘I always thought I was better. I was prepared to work to prove that. I’ve had to graft. It never came easy. I’ve had a lot of knockbacks because of my height but I always came back.’
He has returned to management in unusual circumstances but with a customary display of resilience. John Sheran, father of Hartley’s partner, Lisa, had a bout of ill health. Hartley stepped in to coach in the play-off matches and then was offered the full-time job when Sheran decided to step down. His dismissals from Dundee and Falkirk, in particular, had hit Hartley hard.
‘I had a great spell at Dundee and then we sold our strikers (Kane Hemmings and Greg Stewart). Once they were on their way, I knew we were in deep trouble. You’re only as good as your strikers. I felt I did a good job at Dundee for two and a half years and then we got hit by a sevengame losing streak and I lost my job. That happens. I was hurt by it, though.
‘Then I took the Falkirk job. It was a tough ten months for me. I was really damaged by that. I take responsibility for that but it wasn’t all well behind the scenes. It was a difficult job for me.’
The aftermath was bruising. ‘It affects everything, your physical health, your mental health. That love of football just went. It was all I had known since kicking a ball about at two, playing in the park at five, going pro after I left school. For two or three months I didn’t go to games. I went so see my son playing at Hamilton Accies’ academy. Nothing else. I couldn’t be bothered.’
The redemption came in a phone call to Brian Rice, manager at Accies and a good friend. Hartley scouted matches and his love for the game returned.
He was ready for the opportunity at Cove. ‘It’s perfect for me. I suddenly wanted back in, but not at any cost. It had to be the right place. I just agreed to help out. There was nothing in it in terms of anything down the line. I knew some of the players who had been with me at Aberdeen and, obviously, I was close to John. It went well and here we are.’
He looks around a tidy, prim stadium on the outskirts of Aberdeen with everything in place for expansion. The players’ cabin may be rudimentary on the outside but is plush, comfortable and quietly impressive on the inside.
The players are parttime but treated well, travelling to matches in a bus once used by Arsenal. The artificial surface is being pounded
by a group of youngsters while staff are preparing for what should be an interesting match against Cowdenbeath. A violent collision between the two sides in the play-offs in 2018 led to suggestions that any future fixture should be accommodated on Omaha Beach, not near Cove Bay. Hartley believes it will be a tough match but only in the sense that League Two will pose his side problems they have never before encountered. ‘We got it our own way most of the time last season,’ he says of the Highland League campaign that saw them promoted to the SPFL. However, they routed Edinburgh City 5-0 in the historic first top-tier match at the Balmoral and drew 4-4 away with Albion Rovers last week. Hartley’s team are already strong favourites to win the division and the manager doesn’t shrink under that burden.
‘We don’t get carried away. We have a five-year plan and we would like to make a point of rising up the leagues. That will be difficult. But we will work for it. The chairman is an ambitious person but he has met his match in that regard with the manager.
‘I want to do well for this club. Tam Ritchie, our fitness coach, has followed me everywhere since he worked with me as a Hearts player. Gordon Young, my assistant, is one of the best coaches I’ve worked with. There are good people here.’
And if he makes a success of Cove? ‘I’m very happy here. I’ve signed a three-year deal. I am loyal to the chairman,’ he says.
‘I have my love back for the game but I know how it can be. In career terms, I’ve been hot and I’ve been cold.’
It’s not Copacabana but it felt warm in Cove this week.