CELTIC v HEARTS
TOMORROW 2.15pm HAMPDEN N
LIVE ON BBC1 SCOTLAND & PREMIER SPORTS 1 SCOTTISH CUP FINAL SPECIAL
ONCE it was a swagger in a kilt and a spot at the very heart of a Scottish Cup final. Once it was listening to Andre Villas- Boas as he unveiled the tech and the detail that helped inform Jose Mourinho.
Now it is East Stirling away in the Lowland League with analysis done in the first five minutes of a match as opponents are assessed frantically and plans are made or tweaked.
This is the reality for Rowan Alexander in 2020 after the dream of 2006. As the Scottish Cup final peeks over the horizon, he can look back with the knowledge that he has suffered blows, he has faced rejection but that he took a team from the third tier of Scottish football to the very edge of glory.
‘When I walked out at Hampden that day it was tough to fight back the emotion,’ he says. ‘It is probably something I will never experience again. The emotion came from the sudden realisation of where we were. After that, it was just a blur. It was suddenly over.’
Gretna lost on penalties to Hearts. Worse was to follow as the club collapsed into liquidation after the illness and subsequent death of Brooks Mileson, a businessman who funded their rise from non-league football to the top flight, racking up unsustainable debts.
Alexander was a victim of both the caprice and collapse of Mileson. ‘It’s past. It’s gone,’ he says. But Alexander is still there. He was discarded by Gretna in controversial — and never fully explained — fashion not long after the final. He spent more than a decade out of the professional game before returning to manage Gretna 2008.
Asked what the past has taught him, he takes a long pause before laughing. ‘Never get too comfortable in football. That would be the lesson,’ he says.
‘We went through a period of elation and joy and sometimes we can lose sight of what can happen, we lose sight of reality. That can be unpleasant. Somebody might j ust not l i ke you. And want a change. And that is what happened.
‘There is a lot of jealousy in football. Doesn’t matter at what level you are operating. People do not like to see other people doing well. They are too busy criticising, sticking an oar in, sticking a knife in. I don’t like that about football. It’s horrible.’
He is not referring to Mileson. ‘I have moved past any anger towards him,’ he says. ‘Brooks was a wonderful person to me, a wonderful person to my family. He wanted success and wanted to show what he could do with a football club. He was a very giving person but he met some not very nice people along the way who over-influenced him in some of his decisions.’
The decision was taken to dispense with Alexander. It had serious repercussions for him personally. He could not find another opening in the pro game.
‘It wasn’t for the want of trying. I was applying for jobs but I wasn’t getting a sniff at anything,’ he says.
‘ My confidence took a dunt. The unresponsiveness hit me. There was a lack of f replies, never mind offers. I was fully qualified with a pro licence and youth licence e but many boards went for r ex- players who had no o experience, whether failure or success, and I had both. I wanted somebody to take a chance and it didn’t happen. That was difficult.’
Alexander had a solid playing career with Queen of the South and Morton, in particular. But his exploits with Gretna as a manager were substantial. He took the team to three championships as they rose through the leagues. He certainly was given the resources, but he achieved. ‘I only bought one player: David Bingham,’ he says. ‘The rest were sitting on the bench at other clubs.’
He concedes the money did bring the facility to prepare for matches. ‘I went to a coaching seminar to see Villas-Boas and I was very impressed with how he used technology to supply Mourinho with detail. Remember, this was almost 20 years ago.’
Villas-Boas is now the coach at Marseille but once was the apprentice to Mourinho at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan.
‘I saw up close how matches were analysed precisely. Players under Mourinho would be told how substitutions could impact the game, what their opponents would do… all supplied with clips on individual DVDs. I saw the value in that,’ says Alexander.
At Gretna, he was not immune to issues with the team. ‘We had to manage the players because we had a lot of egos g in the side. You had to keep them on the right track,’ he says. But the Villas-Boas lesson lingered. ‘We had a lot of stuff behind the scenes in terms of analysis. Finances helped in that respect. We did good, thorough analysis of who we were playing. Now it’s different. I concentrate on my own team i n terms of preparation,’ he adds.
‘You have to rely on experience. You can look at teams on websites and try to work it out yourself. You look at them for the five or ten minutes of a game. But I want my team to play the way I want them to play. I don’t worry about the opposition any more.’
LIFE has changed but football was always a part of it. Alexander set up a coaching business, The Professionals Elite Academy, when he could not find a job in the professional game. He may have been divorced from the top flight for more than a decade but he learned from coaching kids — still does.
He also faced an education when he returned. ‘I try not to look back too much because of where I am now,’ he says. ‘It’s a new club, it’s a different environment,’ he says of Gretna 2008.
‘ It’s a different phase of my career and my mindset is totally different to what it was then. My passion for the game has not changed but, , in regards to society and the way the game has gone, attitudes of others have changed.
‘The desire of the game at our level has changed. The quality of players i n the l ocal area has changed. We once had an abundance of talent we could call upon but that’s changed. It’s difficult at the moment to pull a team together from Cumbria, South-West Scotland and the Borders. The teams around us are in the same situation.’
It is also difficult to attract players f rom the central belt where clubs such as Kelty Hearts, East Kilbride, Bonnyrigg and others are investing in squads.
There is another twist, too. ‘A lot of people are on shift work now, so it’s a question of how many can make training,’ he says. ‘ We can have only 12 at a Tuesday session but there’s more — maybe 18 — on a Thursday because that’s when we get our loan players in.’
He adds: ‘I was out the game for so long and it evolved and developed in a certain way. You have to deal with the reasons why players cannot turn up. It is frustrating and can be difficult. But that’s the reality.’
There is, though, satisfaction. His academy has produced players for Newcastle United, Carlisle United, Annan and for Gretna 2008. There is hope and focus, too, in the Lowland League.
‘We have a young side and I am enjoying working with inexperienced players, giving them help, drive and passion, dedication, some sort of success. The opportunity is there too. It’s just one step from the SPFL. You can be in before you know it. ‘
However, if he has been marked by the past, he is determined to be focused on the present.
‘I just want to give Gretna a better opportunity, to see where we can go,’ he says. ‘We are living from day to day at the moment. Many clubs are in the same position.
‘A lot of clubs could go to the wall in the present situation with Covid. So it’s tough. But I want to keep this team together as long as possible, even strengthen it. I want to help them understand what success feels like.’ And what does it feel like? There is another laugh .‘ I suppose it’ s titles, ambitions realised, players being sought after by other clubs, smiles on people’s faces,’ he says.
So very much like May 13, 2006, when a football defeat could not hide the scale of the distance travelled?
‘We achieved so much,’ he says, succumbing to another enquiry about the past. ‘That’s why I walked around the arena at the end of the game. I had to take it all in. I had to capture some memories. I wanted to applaud all the supporters — the Hearts fans, too.
‘But the volume of the Gretna support? They say it was 14,000. Where did they come from? We had emails from all over the world. Seeing their smiles and jubilation at experiencing something of that magnitude was great,’ he says.
He reflects, too, on what he knew before and what he knows now. ‘My father taught me how to work for something,’ he adds. ‘And when you achieve something you have to cherish it, soak up what it feels like.’
But he does not shirk from accepting the tougher lessons, the ones inflicted in the football wilderness of playing pitches far from Hampden, when he was attuned to excited chatter of coaching boys rather than the roars from packed stands.
‘The older you get, the more experiences you have in the back of your head,’ he says with the realisation of someone who will be 60 next month. ‘These experiences and the lessons come to the fore when a similar situation kicks in now. It’s one of the worthwhile aspects of getting older.’
‘It’s past. It’s gone,’ he says again of the original Gretna. But some things remain from that day in the sun and not all of them are intangible experiences.
‘I still have that kilt,’ he says. ‘I wear it on special occasions.’
One suspects the drive and the passion that inhabited it are still there, too.
“Brooks was a wonderful person to me. He was very giving”
“I still have that kilt... I wear it on special occasions”