McNAMARA’S SURVIVAL INSTINCTS
Jackie McNamara reveals how the mental strength he honed at Celtic has helped him through every challenge in an illustrious career... and ensured he had the necessary fight when death knocked on his door last year
THE philosophy of survival takes an understandably prominent role in the life of Jackie McNamara. He reflects with gratitude on his recovery from a brain haemorrhage suffered only in February. ‘First, I am lucky to be here,’ he says. ‘Lucky to be enjoying life.’
But survival as a fixture in his professional life holds no such allure. ‘I am reluctant to get back in,’ he says of management. ‘It is now results, results, results. It has become about survival. That’s no use to me. I still enjoy watching football, spending time in and around the game, but I don’t think I will come back. My appetite has been spoiled. Everyone talks about survival. Getting into the top six, missing out on relegation battles… but that grows monotonous.
‘What is success? I want enjoyment. I want to develop players. Effectively, you are a teacher as a manager or a coach. That’s what it should be about. It’s not for me at the moment. That can change because life changes, but I am happy in what I am doing in terms of the football consultancy and other businesses.’
McNamara, at 46, is thus no misty-eyed romantic about football. He had to suffer rejection as a player, the dismantling of a
What is success? I want enjoyment. I love working with those who have suffered rejection
team as a manager and the various tests and trials that beset those determined to make a living in an unforgiving sport.
‘I love working with those like myself who have suffered rejection early on,’ he says. ‘I like to help kick-start careers. Playing is the best job in the world but it can be the toughest one as well.’
He speaks of this with the benefit of experience. His size caused him to be overlooked as a youngster and it was his outstanding form at Dunfermline that finally saw him graduate to a Celtic side where he won titles, reached a European final and won player of the year awards with regularity.
He concedes he may have received much of his strength from a background that emphasised the need for hard work. Jackie Snr, the famed socialist and former Celtic and Hibernian player, not only passed down to his son his ability but the realisation that professional football made psychological demands.
‘My mentality,’ replies McNamara when asked about his greatest asset. ‘My mental strength gets me through everything. It had to be there as a player and continued in my managerial career with the stuff I had to deal with at United and at York, too. I know I had to be strong to survive that.’
In a season that will have ten in a row as its constant mantra, McNamara looks back to the events of 1998 as the most testing time psychologically of his playing career.
‘At Celtic, mental strength just has to be there. It is instilled in you. You have to perform week in, week out. It’s that simple,’ he says. ‘People ask me about the highlights of my career and I was lucky to have many. But I suppose the big two were stopping the ten and reaching a European final under Martin (O’Neill). The title win in 1998 probably just shades it. It was a win, after all, and one against a very good Rangers team. But that title was significant in many ways.
‘The most important thing about it was that it set everything up. The stadium was built and filled. Martin came along and everything changed.’
There is one personal curiosity to the 1997-98 campaign. McNamara won the Players’ Player of the Year Award.
‘I only ever played right wing-back for one season and it was under Wim (Jansen),’ he says. ‘Won the award and never played there again.’ He won the players’ award for Young Player of the Year in 1996 and the football writers’ award for Player of the Year in 2004 as a full-back, but on different sides of the pitch.
He sidesteps questions about his personal value at Celtic, including his perfect cross to Harold Brattbakk that led to the second goal against St Johnstone, ensuring the title would be won. ‘The important thing was that we had a good group who could handle it,’ he says.
This side was populated by players who had to endure tribulations that reduce all sport to a triviality. His haemorrhage made him think regularly of Davie Cooper, the former Rangers and Motherwell winger who died suddenly of a similar condition at the age of only 39 in 1995.
‘Phil (O’Donnell) is still very raw too,’ he says of his former Celtic team-mate, who died suddenly after collapsing on the pitch, aged 35, when playing for Motherwell in 2007. ‘It is extraordinary, scary how many of my team mates had have had major health issues to deal with. There was Stubbsy (Alan, testicular cancer), Darren (Jackson, brain surgery), big John (Hartson, cancer), Stan (Petrov, leukaemia). They were fit guys, suddenly finding themselves seriously ill.’
THE walk with his wife, Samantha, ended in the garden of his home in Yorkshire. ‘I seemed to struggle when I was speaking to her,’ he says of that day in February. ‘I felt unwell and then collapsed. I only regained consciousness in the ambulance. I was transferred from one hospital to another for neurosurgery. The whole episode was strange and obviously scary.’
But he adds: ‘There have been no further problems, no long-term issues. Apart from having a shunt (a device that relieves pressure on the brain) in my brain, I am fine. And I will take that shunt all day long.’
He does not believe stress contributed to the illness, saying: ‘It was much more pressurised being a manager and I had been out of that for some time. From the age of 16 on, I realise my life has been pretty full on and management was all-consuming. But the doctors say it was just the way I was wired up. But I realise I am fortunate enough to tell the story. Other people have not been.’
Part of this story has a relevance today when Dundee United, the team he managed after leaving Partick Thistle, play Celtic for whom he won four titles, three Scottish Cups and three league cups in a ten-year spell. There is frustration about how his spell as a manager ended at United in 2015. He brought through a glut of talented young players in John Souttar, Ryan Gauld, Gary Mackay-Steven, Stuart Armstrong and, of course, Andy Robertson.
But when the talent is sold, then results dip. Management can become a trial rather than a vocation.
I felt unwell and then collapsed. I only regained consciousness in the ambulance. The whole episode was very strange and obviously scary
‘It’s difficult being a manager,’ he says. ‘People want your job, people criticise when they don’t know the facts, people stab you in the back. There are people who are jealous. And everybody thinks they can do your job. Everybody. It is the one profession where everyone in the world thinks they could do better than the man in the job. They don’t see what is going on. They don’t see the inside story. I was immensely proud, though, to have had the opportunity to have done it.’
It also came with the consolation of working with prodigious talents, one of whom went on to win the Champions League. He recognised the potential of a fellow reject. ‘We signed Andy Robertson for a couple of grand from Queen’s Park. He had energy, enthusiasm. He is a great model for young players. He was rejected but he has shown the fight to succeed at the very top,’ he says.
‘You saw that in him right away, at the very first training session. We then played a German side in pre-season and I thought: “He’s ready”. We had signed him from a League Two club and we thought we would bed him in. But he didn’t need that. Everybody knows what happened next.’
But what is the future for McNamara? ‘There is no doubt that illness changes things,’ he says. ‘You look at things differently. How do you work and what do you really want to do? How much time are you spending with your kids? It gives you a moment to reflect on that, to see all of that before you. ‘The experience of lying in a hospital bed was surreal, it was scary. But it’s not that way now. I enjoy doing the football consultancy stuff, particularly at Dunfermline. It was my first club and it was great to give something back.’ He also enjoys taking regular trips to Spain, where he has a bar. ‘The biggest factor for me now is enjoyment,’ he adds. ‘I ask myself about that all time. Am I enjoying what I am doing? If not, why I am I doing it?’ He takes his advice, his philosophy of life, from two Celtic legends. ‘I was at a lunch recently where Kenny (Dalglish) was speaking and he was saying that life is not a rehearsal. That hit home. He is so right. I intend to keep that with me.’ He also thinks back to his early days at Celtic 25 years ago. ‘Tommy Burns would say to me: “Train every day as if it is your last”. I like to think I did that.’ A similar determination to seize the moment has moved from training pitch to the expanse of real life. McNamara is ready to go again.