'Romanov wantefd me to read out a statement saying I was young, naive and stupid. But there was no way I was going to do that. It wasn’t true’
bilities of his six-mile paper-round. “I don’t know if young players nowadays have the same mentality,” he continues. “My concern is I don’t see the same steely determination to be successful.”
That season for Hearts was still successful. They split the Old Firm, qualified for the Champions League and won the Scottish Cup, although, by the time the final came around, Webster had been removed from the team by Romanov for refusing to sign a new contract. This shouldn’t have come as a shock to the hierarchy. “I don’t think it’s well known that I’d told George before the season began that I wanted to go. I probably thought about moving on right after Craig did [becoming Leicester City manager]. I’d loved Hearts under him but remember thinking: ‘Ah, this doesn’t last’.”
Romanov was furious, however. “We were playing Hibs again and the night before at Dalmahoy his son [Roman] asked to see me after dinner. He got me on the putting green and said: ‘You want to play in the derby?’ ‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘Then you sign the contract.’ I didn’t, that was that, and I missed out on the cup final.” His chance to hoist the trophy with Hearts would come six years later. Of the 5-1 thrashing of Hibs, he says: “I knew that, if we played well, there could be no comparison [between a performance the Hibees might be able to produce] and that we would win. Maybe not everyone in our team thought that. The younger ones would have looked to the older guys for that confidence and, aye, a bit of arrogance.”
By the end of Webster’s first Gorgie spell, Romanov blow-ups were already legendary. Before a game against Celtic he breenged into the changing-room – a regular occurrence – to rage about “a virus affecting my players with indifference”. He was obsessed with breaking up the Old Firm’s hegemony – a laudable ambition – but had a few strange ideas of how best to achieve it. “There were some funny characters hanging about the club at that time. Romanov had these guys working with the goalies – were they opticians? Rima was this therapist who liked to get in about the pressure points on your body with her ‘golden sticks’. Then there was the one we called Pyjama Man because he wore this purple tunic. He was supposed to be a magic healer. He detected something wrong with my calf by fluttering his fingers over it. I wasn’t convinced. He popped a tablet in some water and said: ‘Drink this.’ I said: ‘Not a chance.’” It was around this time Webster was investigating psychology through the Open University. He couldn’t have wished for a more fascinatingly bonkers laboratory of human behaviour than Romanov’s Tynie.
Vlad the Mad insisted he was banishing Webster during the contract dispute because he could no longer trust the player in big games. This is at odds with Webster’s account of that crazy, careering season, when he admits he possibly showed too much of that steely determination out on the pitch, to the extent of irking decorated teammates.
“When I was younger I was very forthright in my opinions, I was a terrible shouter. I was ruthless in what I said to guys and there was one time when I absolutely screamed at Takis Fyssas, a European Championship winner and an absolute gentleman, over something I thought he should have done during a game. At Riccarton Takis and Rudi had a word with Elvis [Steven Pressley, captain] about this kid getting too big for his boots. I apologised.
“I remember Edgaras Jankauskas, too, saying to me: ‘Why are you shouting at everyone when you’re so young?’ Really, I didn’t care. Edgaras was a Champions League winner but I was of the opinion that, out on the park, everyone’s equal. If I mucked up I got it in the neck from Elvis and that was okay. Listen, I think my emotional intelligence has improved since then. I admit that right now if I was coaching the young Andy Webster he would be driving me nuts!”
The steely determination, the ironclad conviction, would enable him to shrug off the abuse of the Tynecastle boo-boys on his return with other clubs. “I was shown a Youtube video of them shouting ‘Die, die, die’ at me.” So where did the resolve come from? Growing up in Arbroath, Webster saw his labourer father Charlie secure jobs then lose them. His mother Jennifer was always urging the lad to study even after collecting his six Highers – “to keep my mind ticking over”. At the town team, the Red Lichties, there was, among other key influences, George Rowe. “Aged 15 I trained behind Gayfield where the lighting was poor and it was usually always cold, wet and miserable. George said: ‘If you can make something of this, even enjoy it, you’ll be one step ahead of everyone else’.” Webster loved his time at Gayfield, the happiest spell of his career. “I’m including lugging hampers and scrubbing
ON THE VLADIMIR ROMANOV REIGN shorts in that. I know young footballers have to be treated differently now. But therearesomeofmyniceladsatstmirren who I don’t think know how a vacuum cleaner works or what a mop is!”
Last week, slightly embarrassed because he made just 17 appearances in Arbroath’s maroon, Webster was invitedtothehalloffamedinnerwhen the inductees included John Fletcher, scorer of the winner in the sensational 1974 victory over Rangers at Ibrox, and the late John Mcglashan, who’d been a big influence along with Stevie Mallan snr, father of the Hibs player, and the hardest man Webster ever encountered in football. “At halftime in a pre-season friendly against Spennymoor United Stevie showed me the badge he’d torn off one of their players. That guy got off lightly. And Stevie’s still got the badge.”
And then, in the moulding of Webster, there was Levein. Tipped off about Arbroath’s tyro stopper who, by the way, was helping his team to a long unbeaten run of their own at the time, Levein was only allowed a 37-minute viewing after a very Gayfield combination of giant puddles and treacherous ice forced the game with Queen of the South to be abandoned. But that was long enough. Webster acknowledges Levein may have been buying what for him was a Mini-me. In his own playing career he’d made a similar journey to Hearts from Cowdenbeath. Webster, like his mentor, was a commanding, confident figure and not given to hoofing the ball into the North Sea. What else? “I’m not sure. I’d be interested in finding out. I obviously sent Craig a text when he suffered his heart scare. Maybe we’ll have that conversation before too long.”
Certainly Webster wasn’t the finished article. Moving to Hearts in 2001 he decided to join the players on an end-of-season holiday to Ibiza to get to know them better. “But lots dropped out and, in the end, there was just a handful of us, bolstered by some of Mikey [Colin] Cameron’s mates. I’ve never been a big drinker but these boys could put it away. If they were going to carry on like that over the summer, I thought I’d start early on my own with pre-season training, doing a few runs.
“Then came pre-season. Aberdour to Burntisland, 15 minutes. That was lively.butitwasjustthewarm-up.we had to run back in 12. I was struggling. Craig had a word. I told him about my jogging. ‘It obviously wasn’t enough,’ he said.
“Those two weeks were the worst of my life. I’d get up in the morning, have my Weetabix and throw up with the worry and panic over what was to come.
“We went to Kirkcaldy Rugby Club to sprint up some hills. The last six were to go again. Kevin James and Stevie Fulton, bless them, tried to sneak me over the line. Craig was standing at the top of the hill, looming. ‘Gaffer, this one’s absolutely f **** d,’ he was told. He said: ‘I don’t f **** n’ care. Get him round again’.
“How would I describe Craig’s management style? Good, hard, demanding, brilliant. Blood and thunder? You were under absolutely no illusion what was expected of you. Maybe he’s changed – we all have to adapt and evolve – but fundamentally he’ll be the same intelligent guy and the same absolute winner. Good luck to him and Hearts.
“I don’t know what the current players are thinking about being top of the league and what they do now. But if it was me I would be: ‘Why not?’”
“We called one Pyjama Man because he wore a purple tunic. He was supposed to be a magic healer. He detected something wrong with my calf by fluttering
his fingers over it”