WHAT ELSE CAN I GET UP TO ON SATURDAYS? GARDENING?
I can be angry. The wrath of Dick is famous
HE IS now out on his own as Scotland’s longest serving manager and is third on the British l i st behind Arsene Wenger and Exeter City’s Paul Tisdale.
And yet, to label Dick Campbell merely as one of football’s great survivors i s to do him a great disservice.
In Mar c h 2011, already approaching three years into his tenure as Forfar Athletic manager, one of the game’s great characters was hit with the kind of news that rendered the vagaries of football virtually irrelevant.
Diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys, even a born optimist like the Fifer was shaken to the core.
‘I was told I had months to live if I didn’t get an operation,’ he told
Sportsmail. ‘I really felt my days were numbered.
‘My three sons and my brother Ian were there when the consultant showed me everything the cancer had done to me. I was fortunate in a sense that it was on the outside of my kidneys. ‘If it was in the inside, I was away. ‘But it was just like removing a piece of cake. They got i t out through an operation. The other kidney they did with keyhole surgery.
‘Tell you what, you don’t half take a step back and take stock.
‘I got so many cards from across the world. People I’d never heard from — Botswana, New Zealand — all admiring the way I’d tackled it and wishing me all the best.’
The contents of one note in particular hit Campbell squarely between the eyes.
‘I got a letter from one guy in Glasgow who had seen my positive approach, asking me to drop a letter of encouragement to a friend who was dying of cancer,’ he said. ‘So I sent him one.
‘A couple of years later, I was speaking at a football event and that group of friends — including the boy who was ill — were all there. I’d never met the guy before but I cried my heart out when I did. It was one of those things that made life worthwhile. He’s still hanging in there.’
Campbell not only lived to tell the inspirational tale but now does so with t he cl ub he j oi ned six- and- a- half years ago sitting proudly on top of League One.
At 61, he counts Dunfermline, Brechin, Partick Thistle and Ross County among his former employers but you sense that this miner’s son from Hill of Beath (same street as Jim Baxter) will take some shifting from Station Park.
‘When I went in, we were bottom of the Third Division. But I knew they were good people,’ he recalled.
‘I guaranteed them two things by the time I l eft: that they wouldn’t be the bottom club in Scottish football for long and that they wouldn’t be so heavily in debt ( £ 170,000). Did we not get Rangers live on the TV a couple of months later? Then, of course, we got promoted.
‘We got a new hospitality suite that’s second to none. We’re the only club i n Scotland that’s completely sold out for hospitality for the rest of the year.
‘Plus I believe we have the best pitch in the country.
‘It works because every director works their socks off. I identify with that.
‘We’d love to have a go at the Championship next season. If Alloa and Cowdenbeath can do it, why can’t Forfar?’
Currently sitting ahead of more fancied sides like Morton and Dunfermline, Campbell’s belief that football is the only industry that wilfully discards experience has some empirical evidence to go with it.
‘Managing is very simple,’ he explained. ‘I’m a straight-talking guy. I can be angry — the wrath of Dick is famous, I suppose, but I’m mellowing as I get older.
‘It’s about getting the best out of players and I’ve got a great crop at the moment.
‘I’ve always believed in signing good senior pros. They are not here to pick up their last few bob playing part-time football. I’ve got Rab Douglas at 42 years old and I’m ready to give him a new contract. By a country mile he’s the best goalkeeper in our league.
‘ Darren Dods, who’s 39, is without any argument, our Player of the Year. I’ve also got Derek Young, Jim Paterson, Chris Templeman and Gavi n Swankie — all experienced players.
‘I’ve combined that with James Dale, who’s 20, Scott Smith at 18, Dale Hilson at 20, Andy Steeves 20. Stephen Husband is 24, so there’s a mixture.
‘These young lads are coming on leaps and bounds. Don’t tell me that the Under-20 development league develops players l i ke playing in my first team. It annoys me that people think developing a player is battering a ball against a wall.’ Fo r Campbell , these are i ndeed salad days. Inevitably, having spent three decades in the dugout in one capacity of another, not every page in his personal scrapbook has been quite as colourful. Dunfermline, the town in which he works as general manager in his brother Ian’s successful
recruitment company, Avenue Scotland, watched its local team driven to the edge of the financial abyss following Campbell ’s dismissal in 1999.
‘ They were grossly mis-managed,’ he opined. ‘I’d nine years there. John Yorkston in his wisdom decided to sack me when we were close to the top of the First Division.
‘ That was £ 12million back down the road.
‘He just wanted a change. He didn’t exactly have a track record for getting things right.’
Brechin City proved a welcome panacea, with promotion from the Third to First Division between 2000 and 2005 before the lure of a full-time position with Partick Thistle proved too tempting.
‘I did what I said I’d do there,’ he reflected. ‘I got rid of their debt and got them back up the league.’
County came calling in 2007 after their relegation to the Second Division. Campbell left that October, having joined the exclusive list of managers sacked while top of their league.
‘(Chairman) Roy MacGregor felt we weren’t playing attractive enough football,’ he said.
‘Walter Smith, whose Rangers team were going through a sticky patch at the time, spoke at a dinner we were at soon after that and joked that he hoped it wouldn’t catch on!’
Campbell can laugh now but there was no humour to be found when the News of the World dropped on his doorstep five years ago this Christmas.
On holiday in Seville the night before Rangers pl ayed a European match, Campbell unwisely agreed to entertain some fans in a local bar with a rendition of Derry’s Walls.
One camera phone recording and one call from a tabloid reporter later, he found himself on the front page of t he now defunct Sunday tabloid and in the middle of a sectarian storm.
‘It was more embarrassing than anything else,’ he grimaced.
‘But I lost my job at the SFA (senior staff coach) because of it and that really annoyed me. I’d 23 years unbroken service.
‘Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a Celtic or a Rangers man. My wife’s a Catholic.
‘I’ve sung The Fields of Athenry at a Celtic dinner and didn’t get done for it.’
He has been in much worse scrapes and survived.
He sincerely hopes there are a f ew more on his j ourney although he would prefer it from now on if they are limited to errant linesman’s flags and lastminute goals.
Scottish football dearly needs characters like Campbell and, mercifully, the candle he holds for Forfar Athletic and the game in general shows no sign of blowing out just yet.
‘I’ve no idea where it will go,’ he smiled. ‘I’m 23 years now as a manager and I still love it.
‘The one thing you need in life is natural enthusiasm.
‘What else am I going to do on a Saturday? Go to the gardening centre?’