STARING THEM IN THE FACE
Hughes tips old pal Collins for Celtic role
AS one of John Collins’s closest friends, John Hughes has no problem in declaring his partiality when it comes to assessing his suitability for the Celtic director of football role. But it is precisely because he knows him so well on both a personal and professional level that Hughes feels he would be perfect for the job.
Former Celtic midfielder Collins has this week put forward his own case for the position as the club look to modernise their football operation following the departure of manager Neil Lennon and the imminent exit of chief executive Peter Lawwell.
Collins was director of football previously at Livingston, where Hughes worked under him as manager, so the now Ross County boss knows first hand the qualities he brought to the role while at Almondvale and the passion he poured into it.
Given his own history with Celtic and his personal relationship with Collins, nothing would give Hughes greater pleasure than seeing his friend being given the chance to help the club regroup and rebuild this summer.
Well, apart from the regular pleasure he derives from parting Collins with his money on the golf course. According to Yogi, of course.
“The two of us played for the same boys club [Hutchison
Vale], though he was a little bit younger,” Hughes said. “But ever since he was a young kid, his name was always going about as one that had a chance, so you always knew of John.
“He moved on to Hibs, and with me being a Hibs supporter, all my mates would ask me all about him. I then went on to play with him at Celtic, so I became firm friends with him.
“He’s put his name up for the job, and he’s the man for me. It’s staring them right in the face.
“He’s been there and done it before, he knows a player. He played a massive part in bringing the likes of Ryan
Christie and Stuart Armstrong to the club in the past.
“When he was in at Celtic as assistant manager, they were playing Ross County funnily enough in a reserve match. He said ‘Take a look at our leftback, he’s destined for big, big things.’ It was Kieran Tierney.
“I said to him the boy is nonstop, he sprints everywhere, and he said there and then that he needed to get him in and around the first team.
“He knows the game, he speaks the language, and he gets on well with Peter Lawwell. Most importantly, he wants football played in the proper manner.
“Celtic have to play football in a manner that is entertaining. They have to control and dominate the ball, and that is what John is all about. He knows the club inside-out.
Collins has been there and done it all before
“Working with him at Livingston when he was director of football, he let me be the football coach, because he knew I wanted to pass it like him. But he would be on the training pitch taking part, we’d go and watch the kids playing on a Sunday, he knew all the kids that were coming through.
“When you get to spend a lot of time with him, you realise the wealth of knowledge that he has. He’s well thought of at Celtic, and I just hope he gets the chance. I’m with him every day and I see the enthusiasm he has.
“He conducts himself in a very professional manner. He’s always got the guard up until you get in that inner circle, and then you see the humour and the funny side and the emotions. The emotions usually come out when I’m battering him at the golf and taking money off him, right enough!
“It comes back to what I was saying though, if someone is staring you right in the face with all those attributes, then you have to take it as a goer.”
As friendly as Hughes may be with Collins, the same can’t be said for all of the players who have worked under him, a few of whom have been vocal in their criticisms of the training methods employed by Collins when he was a manager in his own right.
Hughes contends though that the only thing Collins is guilty of is failing to recognise that his own high standards are not always shared by others.
“The thing about John is that every now and again you have to say to him ‘John, they’re not all like you,’” he said.
“When he was a player, he was different. He had that vision, that eye of the tiger, he wanted to be the best he could possibly be. When people aren’t putting it in every minute of every day, he gets frustrated.
“But why should you be scared of that? Why would you not want that at your club, somebody that is relentless in his pursuit of success?
“He would love the challenge to go in there and play a massive part in getting right in about Rangers, trust me on that. I talk football with him and I know what it means to him.
“He has such high standards, but all he wants is the best for his players. He’ll work you and he’ll work you, but it’s because he wants the best for you.
“He keeps in touch with Virgil van Dijk and these guys, and you ask them how much he helped them. Jason Denayer too. That tells a story.”
THE target has always been 55 for Dave King. That is still his ambition for Rangers despite the league flag returning to Ibrox this term.
It has been a season dominated by talk of tenin-a-row and Rangers’ first silverware success in a decade. While many have lapped up the drama, King believes the campaigns leading up to this historic one haven’t been good for Scottish football.
When the South Africa-based businessman was on the Ibrox board first time around during Sir David Murray’s reign, the Old Firm would spend big in the Scottish football arms race. The giants of our game went head-to-head in an era of multi-million pound signings and dramatic finales to remarkable campaigns.
The outcome this term is the one that King has been dreaming of. Six years after he rescued Rangers, he has seen Steven Gerrard deliver the most important title in their history.
But the former Ibrox chairman reckons Scottish football will benefit now that there is no Old Firm disparity on or off the park. Once again, it is an equal fight for supremacy.
“I think we have to make sure we win more leagues than we don’t win,” King said of the challenge facing the Rangers board now that they are champions rather than challengers. “Nothing is guaranteed. If you ask me in a perfect world, I would like Scottish football to be competitive. If Rangers won 55 per cent of league titles going forward, I would be very happy with that.
“I don’t think nine-in-a-row has worked for anybody. It doesn’t work for supporters. It becomes boring – nine-in-arow, ten-in-a-row.
“Ideally for me, I’d like every season to begin with uncertainty about who is going to win the league and I want Rangers to win 55 per cent of them.
“I’d like a very healthy Scottish football environment, with Rangers winning the league more often than not and having good runs in Europe.
“I think we should be a feared club in the Europa League. When it comes to the Champions League, I would like to think that, some of the time, we could get through the group stages.
“Not every season. I think that’s the level of ambition you can have for Scottish football until circumstances change.
“In terms of the current European structure, it’s unrealistic to expect Rangers – or Celtic for that matter – to beyond the group stages every season. What we have to do is still concentrate on winning our domestic league.”
The title win this term has completed ‘The Journey’ for Rangers. From the depths of the Third Division, they now sit proudly top of the Premiership.
It marks the end of an era of dominance and unprecedented success for Celtic and they find themselves in an unfamiliar situation heading into the new campaign.
Dominic McKay will replace Peter Lawwell as chief executive, but the identities of the incoming sporting director and a manager to take over from Neil Lennon have yet to be revealed.
For so long, it was Rangers who seemed to be in a constant state of flux. Now Celtic have to go back to the drawing board and rebuild to catch a superior rival.
“I actually think that we can,” King said when asked if Rangers can capitalise on Celtic’s instability this summer. “If I look at what is happening on the other side of the city, clearly they are not taking this as being a one-off.
“They could say it was a one
off, they had a bad season and that happens and they would regroup and go again. But they haven’t done that. It has been kind of lifeboat stuff and because of that and because of the changes they are going to go through…
“I have been through that and see what it is like when you go through managerial changes and executive changes and it is not easy. There will be player changes, there will be pressure on their financial resources that hasn’t been there before, they won’t have access to Champions League money that they had previously.
“So I see this as being a very, very challenging season for Celtic because they will want to stop us defending the title. I think it is going to be very interesting to see how they respond to the challenge because there is no merit in looking at Rangers’ performance this season and saying it is a one-off. It is not as if Rangers have sneaked through.
“The level of points that Celtic could reasonably get at the end of the season, that would win the title in three of the last five seasons. Rangers are so far ahead of that and they have decisions to make on their side. Irrespective of the decisions, there is a level of uncertainty on the other side that I think can only benefit Rangers.”
With the Ibrox club’s 55th title in the trophy cabinet and their place in history enshrined, Gerrard’s side can now look forward to the opportunities their success has earned them.
The landscape of European football has changed dramatically since Rangers last competed at the highest level on the continent a decade ago.
Rangers have shown they are up for the fight in the Europa League but will now have to punch well above their weight if they are to compete
I would like Scottish football to be competitive. If Rangers won 55 per cent of league titles, I’d be happy
against the biggest and best. In time, that door may close for Scotland’s title winners.
“Absolutely,” King said when asked if he feared the prospect of a closed shop Champions League. “The idea of the Champions League continuing to just entrench the rich clubs… for the guys who are interested in the money, that might make sense for them, but it just cannot be good for football and it certainly can’t be good for Scottish football.
“I did have involvement in the Atlantic League but it’s something that really is very much a forward position. It’s not going to happen in the next five years. Our planning is one, two, maximum three years ahead.
“Will it happen eventually? Yeah, probably, because money will move it in a certain direction. But in the meantime, if we are looking at what Rangers need to do over the next two or three years, I think it’s going to be very much domestic football and doing the best we can in Europe.”
THAT Johnny Madden, the former Scotland internationalist and Celtic centre-forward, revolutionised Slavia Prague after being made their first ever manager in 1905 and then went on to become regarded as the “father of Czech football” has been documented extensively over the years.
Yet, what is less well known is how a Glasgow shipyard riveter from Dumbarton whose nickname was The Rooter came to be appointed by a club in the old Austro-Hungarian empire in the first place. The way he landed the position was as unusual as the success that he enjoyed during his 25 year reign was remarkable – he disguised himself as Rangers player.
The newly-crowned Scottish champions will take on Slavia in the first leg of their Europa League last-16 double-header in the Sinobo Stadium – where Madden has a stand named after him – in Prague tomorrow evening and will be doing extremely well to get a result.
Their opponents reached the quarter-finals of the competition two years ago before losing to Chelsea, made it through to the Champions League group stages last season and have defeated Bayer Leverkusen, Nice and Leicester City this term. They will be formidable adversaries.
However, it is debatable whether the Red and Whites would have become a force in the Czech game, let alone Europe, had it not been for the intervention of a Rangers player 13 years after their formation.
Keith Baker, the author of Fathers of Football: Great Britons Who Took The Game To The World, discovered that Madden came to take charge of them in the most bizarre circumstances imaginable while he was researching his book.
“Johnny Madden is considered to be one of the pioneers of modern Czech football,” he said. “But how he got there has always been a bit of a mystery.
“A lot of former pros who had done well in Scotland and England in the late 19th century went off to preach the game to the rest of the world. The impact they had, in Europe in particular, but also in South America, in Argentina and Brazil, was very considerable indeed.
They performed great deeds developing football.
“Madden had played for Dumbarton, Grimsby Town, Celtic, Dundee and Spurs as well as Scotland. But after he retired in 1898 he completely disappeared for a number of years. He was a toughie, there is no doubt about it. He was a riveter in the shipyards. I suspect he was a bit of a rogue.
“But in 1905 he suddenly appeared in Prague as the new Slavia manager. I delved into it a bit when I was writing Fathers of Football and how it happened is interesting. There is a link with Rangers. He was quite friendly with one of their players, John Tait Robertson. They lived in the same street as each other in Dumbarton and were pals.
“Slavia had been set up by medical students and their players were all intellectuals, scholars. They were very keen to do well and wanted to learn about the game. But they didn’t have a coach or a manager. They were a bit of a Sunday afternoon pub side. They just went out and played.
“Somehow, they knew Robertson and they asked him to go over and become their coach. But he wasn’t interested in moving. He joined Chelsea that year. So he urged Madden go over instead of him.
“The story goes that Madden dressed up in Rangers gear, a shirt and a cap, made out he was Robertson, presented himself to Slavia and got the job. He was recruited as a coach.”
Madden had been an outstanding player. He became the first-ever Celtic centre
forward when he played in their inaugural match in 1888 and then won three Scottish titles and the Scottish Cup during his eight years at Parkhead. He also scored no fewer than five goals in just two appearances for Scotland.
He was renowned for having a powerful shot and that led to him being dubbed The Rooter; it was said at the time that whenever one of his goal attempts hit the post it threatened to uproot it. He proved to be every bit as accomplished as a coach.
“Madden was an intelligent and confident man who immediately brought backbone to the club,” said Baker. “He was a bit of a disciplinarian, a tough taskmaster who didn’t stand for any nonsense. If he felt any of his players weren’t taking the game seriously enough he would come down on them.
“He had always kept himself fit as a player and training had to follow a very strict routine. He was meticulous. He introduced the short passing game that was prevalent in Scotland at the time, encouraged good movement and urged his men to use both their feet.
“He was always looking for different methods of training. He was very modern in his outlook, almost before his time.
For example, he was keen on gymnastics, which he thought would strengthen his players’ muscles and make them more flexible. He drew up individual training regimes for each member of his squad.”
Baker continued: “Slavia were very quickly transformed under Madden. They became the preeminent team in the country. He was extraordinarily successful. In the first six seasons after the Czech league was formed in 1925 his team won the title three times and finished runners-up three times. Then he retired aged 65 in 1930.
“It is estimated that in his 25 years as manager he led Slavia to victory in 134 of his 169 domestic league matches and to 304 of the 429 games they played overall. That is a pretty good indication of how well he did.”
MADDEN’s methods were adopted at clubs across the country – Bohemia became Czechoslovakia at the end of the First World War in 1918 – and he inadvertently helped to drive up standards in the game there.
“He was an inspiration for other leading clubs,” said Baker. “They followed what he did. His influence was quite considerable. He became a coach for the
Czech national side. He was in charge when they played in the Olympics in Paris in 1924. He was also closely involved when the World Cup was played in Italy in 1934. Czechoslovakia, who fielded eight Slavia players, lost to the hosts after extra-time in the final.”
Madden married a Czech woman and remained in Prague until his death aged 83 in 1948. His massive contribution to football there is remembered on the anniversary of his passing every year. The “Friends of Slavia” place a wreath with red and white ribbons on his grave in Olsany Cemetery.
“The club were quite generous to him,” said Baker. “They gave him a pension. He was always afraid that if he returned to Scotland he would lose that. He thought it was in his interest to remain in Prague.
“But he was a very respected figure. His nickname was ‘Dedek’ – which means ‘grandfather’ . That is how was regarded. He used to wear a bowler hat and puff away on his pipe.”
When Johnny Madden’s former club Celtic played a preseason friendly against Slavia Prague at the Eden Arena back in 2017 a stand was named after him. It was quite an honour for a riveter from Dumbarton who had dressed up as a Rangers player so he could become their manager.
When he was once asked why he had taken the job, he said: “Well, it beats boiler making in the shipyard.”
Fathers of Football: Great Britons Who Took The Game To The World by Keith Baker is published by Pitch Publishing.
AFTER missing the first two months of this season with a knee injury, and then enduring another frustrating month of limited activity when two Covid close-contacts in quick succession forced him into isolation, Sam Johnson believes he has finally managed to build some form though regular gametime for Glasgow Warriors and is determined to play his part in helping improve Scotland’s miserable recent record against Ireland when the two sides meet at Murrayfield on Sunday.
The centre missed out on the initial training squad for this year’s Six Nations with head coach Gregor Townsend explaining that the 27-year-old did not have enough recent gametime under his belt but earned a recall during the build-up to Scotland’s round three match against France, and was supposed to start that game before it was postponed due to a Covid outbreak in the French camp.
Instead, he was released back to play for Glasgow against Leinster that weekend and picked up another full match – minus 10 minutes in the sin-bin for a dangerous tackle – in last Saturday’s victory at Zebre, so believes he is now in prime condition as he sets about making the Scotland No.12 own again.
“I’m pretty happy, it was my third game in a row at the weekend which was the first time that has happened since this time last year,” he said. “To play consecutive rugby is always a bonus. I was disappointed not to be in the original squad, but I completely understood. I was sitting in isolation for the best part of a month fully fit. But that’s Covid isn’t it. You saw in that first game against England with the Saracens boys, they hadn’t played since the autumn and they looked a bit undercooked watching that game.
“Hopefully I get picked and go from there,” he added. “I played a fair bit before this year, so it is about getting that consistency again. As a person I play my best rugby when I play continuously, week after week, and I haven’t had the chance to do that this season. Hopefully, we will see who Gregor picks and if I get an opportunity to wear the 12 jersey this week, I will take it with both hands and give it my best crack.”
Sunday’s visitors have come out on top in 10 of the last 12 meeting between the two nations, and while the 27-3 hammering in Yokohama on the opening weekend of the 2019 World Cup in Japan was undoubtedly the most painful of those defeats, the 31-16 loss in Dublin in the 3rd/4th place playoff of the Autumn Nations Cup was also hard to swallow – especially as it prompted some pretty savage remarks in the Irish jersey his media about Scotland being delusional in their aspirations.
“They always talk themselves up, they always talk a great game – they have some deluded notion that they are better than they are,” said former Ireland head coach Eddie O’Sullivan. “These guys haven’t won here in ten years – they’ve won three times against Ireland in nearly 20 years. They talk themselves up, they come in, and then they implode. We have seen this time and time again.”
As a laidback Australian who qualifies to play for Scotland through the three-year residency rule, Johnson is not the type of character to be sucked into trash talking in the papers, but he doesn’t flinch when asked if this weekend’s game can change the general trend of recent encounters.
“We know the test that is going to come against Ireland,” he said. “We seem to have played them a lot over the last couple of years and they’ve probably had the upper hand, but I feel that a lot of things have changed in camp, everyone is really enjoying each other’s company, and we will prepare well this week and give it our best shot on Sunday.
“We know what to expect. They will have a big physical forward pack and they have flair out wide. It will be a physical battle, and whoever wins that – whether at the breakdown or the gain line – probably wins the game.
“We want to continue the momentum the boys had built,” he added. “I was in camp for that France week, and it was really disappointing not to play that game. It is probably a bit harder for me to comment because I wasn’t in camp for the first two games, but from the outside it looked like everyone is happy, enjoying each other’s company, and wanting to play for each other.”
If I get a chance to wear the jersey this week, I’ll take it