Jim didn’t just mould my football career. He moulded my life too
PAUL STURROCK’S relationship with Jim McLean began with a deception. An economy with the truth which left him skating on thin ice.
The year was 1974. Acting on a recommendation from Bankfoot Juniors boss and part-time United scout Chic McNaughton, McLean saw enough of Sturrock’s raw talent during a game against Dundee Harp t o make t he most important signing of his managerial career.
‘Luggy’ came to know United’s legendary, volcanic manager as well as anyone could. No mean feat when the relationship which shaped and influenced the working life of both men began with a little white lie hatched during contract talks at Perth Ice Rink.
‘We were going up the stairs and the scout who started the whole thing off turned to me and said: “Look, if he asks, you’re only 16”,’ Sturrock tells Sportsmail.
‘I said: “Eh? I’m 17 and I don’t want to be telling lies”.
‘But he warned me: “He won’t sign you if you’re 17. He wants someone to come in f or two seasons on a youth contract on the groundstaff before they get a new contract at 18”.
‘So I made a quick decision to change my date of birth by a year. I said I was 16.’
During 20 years as player and coach at Tannadice, Sturrock won a league championship medal, two League Cups, played in a European Cup semi- final and reached the final of the UEFA Cup.
The original one- club man, he scored 171 goals during 574 appearances. Yet, while a small fib worked out fine for both him and McLean, McNaughton fared less well.
Sturrock was pitched in for his first-team debut as a substitute against Romanian si de Jiul Petrosani in a Cup-Winners’ Cup game three months after signing. And that’s when things began to unravel.
‘That night, all the press were hailing me as the youngest player ever to represent a Scottish club in Europe,’ he recalls.
‘The problem was the guy who held the actual record for youngest player at that time was Jim’s wee brother Tommy.
‘And I knew I was actually a year older, so I hadn’t broken any record.
‘I talked about it with the older players and they told me to go and tell the manager all about it.
‘I left it a couple of days and then worked up the courage to go in and tell him I was actually 17.
‘He picked the phone up straight away, phoned the scout who told me to lie in Perth and sacked him on the spot.
‘To be fair, he gave it a while and brought him back in eventually.
‘ The two players Chic had brought to the club were me and Raymond Stewart. He wasn’t a bad judge...’
The death of McLean at the age of 83 has thrown up some memorable anecdotes over the last week. The player most closely identified with his remarkable reign, Sturrock lived through most of them.
At the age of 64, the ex-Scotland striker now l i ves quietly in Cornwall with partner Andrea where he bakes, cooks and plays some golf.
Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2008, his speech is slower than it used to be and his movement certainly is. During lockdown, shielding has restricted his ability to manage the White Hart pub’s walking football team or captain the pool team.
Yet, when news came through of McLean’s death after a long battle with dementia ten days ago, the isolation offered time and space to digest the loss of the man who changed his life.
‘There is huge respect for the man and the disappointment is that Covid will make it difficult for people to show it,’ he admits.
‘ I dearly hope a statue gets sorted out, because he deserves to be remembered. He was a huge influence on an awful lot of players. I could probably rattle off a hundred he helped to reach a decent standard.
‘I took over as youth coach the year after I retired and we won the youth cup two years in a row.
‘I worked out that 96 per cent of the players who were involved went on to play for our first team. That was an incredible percentage.
‘He believed in rearing our own. He introduced dieticians, fitness trainers, sprint trainers.
‘He was a man of his time. But he was also a man ahead of his time. Football was a drug for him. Nothing else got a look-in.’
A manager with Plymouth Argyle, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday,
Football was a drug for him. Nothing else got a look-in
Jim could never lose the disciplinarian streak. He just couldn’t tone that down at all
Swindon and Yeovil Town, Sturrock always knew where to go for free advice.
Where some of McLean’s former players found it difficult to forgive or forget the run-ins of the past, Luggy felt a lingering debt of gratitude. On visits to Dundee, he would drive to Broughty Ferry to take advantage of the hospitality laid on by McLean’s wife of many years, Doris.
‘What saddened me — and Jim — was that his family life suffered through his addiction to football,’ recalls Sturrock.
‘He was open when it came to saying he never had enough time for his family.
‘I never went up to see him when he was ill in hospital. I left that to the family. But every time I came north and he was in the house, I popped in for a cup of tea.
‘ He appreciated that and I respected what he achieved and what he did for me. He didn’t just mould my football career. He moulded my life.
‘When I finished playing, I had five years as a first-team coach and I got a bit of an insight into him then. I probably knew him as well as anyone.
‘If one of my teams was on TV, he would tape the game, analyse it and contact me by phone or write me a letter offering observations on the system I was playing or the types of players I had.
‘ He must have phoned me half-a- dozen times and I always appreciated it. Football was his life and then, all of a sudden, it was lost to him.
‘He had to have an input in some way and it would have been silly to ignore the advice of a man with his experience in the game.’
He used to joke of the half-time team talks when United were losing. While McLean took a flame throw er to team-mates from one to eight in the team, his status as a No 9 left no time for the lecture to finish.
The suspicion is that Sturrock was a favoureds on, whose unstinting excellence spared him the worst of the wrath.
‘Jim could never lose the disciplinarian streak. He just couldn’t tone that down at all,’ he added. ‘ His man management of the players was something he could be criticised for.
‘Strikers, in particular, used to get a hard time.
‘But, to be fair, he had (Eamonn) Bannon, Sturrock, (Davie) Dodds and (Ralph) Milne. At the end of the day, you look at that four and it was always going to be hard for the Tommy Coynes and Derek Frys and John Reillys to oust us.
‘I don’t mean that to sound bumptious in any way, but that’s just how it was.
‘Would that have transferred well to a bigger club and other players? It would have been nice to find out.
‘He had the chance to go to Rangers. And when you see what he did at United, you wonder what he would have achieved with money and resources.
‘I think he underachieved at United as far as winning trophies is concerned.
‘But to mould a squad of players over a certain period of time to be feared all over Europe was remarkable.
‘There was a time when no team in Europe wanted to draw Dundee United. No one.
‘Think about it now. For a club like Dundee United to be in the s e mi- f i nal s of what’s now t he Champions League was incredible.’
Covid- 19 and the effects of Parkinson’s will make it impossible for Sturrock to pay his respects properly.
Diagnosed during his second spell in charge of Plymouth Argyle, he does not blame football for causing the condition.
‘I probably headed the ball twice in 20 years,’ he says. ‘I can’t blame what happened to me on that.
‘I take a cocktail of drugs, I walk, I play golf when I can. I get about, I bake and cook.
‘But it would be nice if they found something to alleviate the symptoms. Lockdown has made life hard for everybody…
‘And the loss of a genius like Jim makes it a wee bit harder.’