Dissecting those irate King Lears in their tracksuits
The Gaffer adds to that rich tradition of behind-thescenes watching of managers, writes Alan Tyers
The manager. The boss. The man with his bum in the bacon slicer. The gaffer.
No role in sport provokes more scrutiny, nor attracts more ridicule and contempt. A BT Sport film meets six of these curious creatures, all operating at the same level, and the outcome is entertaining and revealing and, in a very English way, quietly yet profoundly eccentric.
Director Ben Lowe has gathered Neil Smith of Bromley, Simon Weaver of Harrogate Town, Ben Strevens of Eastleigh, Craig Hignett of Hartlepool United and, at Maidstone United, a double act comprising head of football John Still and head coach Hakan Hayrettin.
All competed in the 2018-2019 National
League, the fifth tier of English football.
Hignett is the sole name definitely familiar to those for whom football means “the Premier League”, and is not the first manager to struggle with the gulf between the guys at his disposal and his own playing level. He brings the famed Merseyside wit to bear upon the “monkey hangers”, breezing into the treatment room to joke “this is where all the skivers are” and suggesting that the medical waste bin will soon be an ideal receptacle for one bemused crock.
Supervising penaltytaking in training, he hoots with affable derision as one forward blooters an attempted chip a mile over, before demonstrating how it is done with a floated, delicate dink that nestles in the corner. Craig’s win percentage across his two spells at Victoria Park? 30.7 per cent.
Being too good at football is not a problem faced by anyone else in the film. Still, at Maidstone, who has a thousand League games under his managerial belt, came out of retirement to be a steady hand on the tiller, and to mentor Hayrettin. Their partnership most resembles a Derek and Clive sketch, with high levels of furious disgust and industrial language deployed as they watch their hapless charges make the same mistakes over and over. This belongs to a rich tradition of behind-the-scenes manager watching, from
An Impossible Job via
John Sitton in Orient: Club for a Fiver. The cardiologist must be on speed dial.
Smith, at Bromley, presents as an absolute gent, a pillar of the community. Weaver, at Harrogate, is in the unusual, nightmarish position of being the son of the chairman: “The fear of letting my father down gives me sleepless nights.” Maybe all managers, with their need for approval, have got daddy issues somewhere in the mix.
Strevens, at Eastleigh, has only just hung up his playing boots, and is negotiating the transition from being one of the boys to the manager. He delivers the film’s nut: “When you are on the pitch you cannot really hear what the manager is shouting, and often on the touchline it’s just you shouting your own frustrations anyway.”
This is the fascination of the manager, is it not? We all wonder what exactly they do. Leaving aside recruitment and training: team talks. On this access-all-areas evidence, these are as they have always been: a middle-aged guy whose mood ranges from manically overstimulated to furiously apoplectic yelling at lads who barely seem to be listening.
The Manchester City series All Or Nothing allowed us to see Pep Guardiola doing his dressing-room rally and, it seems, whatever the level of football, it is essentially the same: exhortations to be determined, brave, together, etc. You might as well be talking to the wall.
None of these blokes is a Guardiola, not that there is any shame in that, but each tries to put his finger on why they do it at their less exalted station. Hayrettin reckons “when you lose it is the loneliest job in the world”.
Perhaps their function is no more or less than to give the fans somebody to take out their frustrations on and, these days, to be sacked regularly so that blood can be let and the beast can be fed.
Master of his domain and yet totally at the mercy of circumstance, where would we be without these raging King Lears in their monogrammed tracksuits, these gumchewing sponges for our own failings and fury?
The Gaffer (Saturday, 9pm, BT Sport 1)
‘Often on the touchline it’s just you shouting your own frustrations’