By STEPHEN McGOWAN Taking the Good with the bad ...
JIM GOODWIN came to dread those Sunday afternoon text messages. When St Mirren teammate Steven Thompson’s name flashed on his phone, it meant one thing. A trial by Sportscene was about to convene.
For a time, it felt like they came every few weeks. A forensic examination of another onfield flare-up, followed inevitably by an SFA summons.
St Mirren’s former captain became Scottish football’s in-house panto villain. A public spat with Derek Adams (then Ross County manager) was followed by a touchline insult from former Celtic boss Neil Lennon. Amongst opposition fans, Goodwin became notorious. The situation peaked in November 2014. As player-coach of St Mirren, footage showed him elbowing Dundee United’s Aidan Connolly.
Thompson, his Paisley colleague and Sportscene’s in-house pundit, shuffled uncomfortably under the studio lights.
‘I felt bad for Tommo,’ Goodwin told Sportsmail. ‘There he is on the Sportscene panel judging me — and I have to see him at training on the Monday.
‘He texted me before the programme, giving me a heads up, saying: “By the way, they’re doing a piece on you again today”.
‘It was a shame for him because he is a serious pundit and it’s the industry he wants to be in.
‘So I would say to him: “Tommo, if I’ve done something stupid, don’t say you didn’t see it, or I didn’t mean it”.’
Squaring this reasoned, likeable and articulate Irishman with the absurd cartoon image of a marauding maniac on the pitch is no easy task.
The player supporters see occupies a different realm to the real Jim Goodwin. Jekyll and Hyde barely covers it.
This summer, the midfielder went part-time with League One club Alloa, entering the real world of 8-6pm working days with a car-leasing company.
He expected another year in the full-time game, but cannot dismiss the possibility his disciplinary reputation worked against him.
His foot wedged in the coaching door at St Mirren, his disciplinary record slammed it shut in his face.
Having every set-to pored over on national television didn’t help.
‘I had been on Sportscene as a pundit on a number of occasions,’ the 34-year-old recalled. ‘I haven’t done it since. I knew people who were presenting and producing. I also knew the guys on the panel.
‘But if somebody Tweets them on a Saturday night saying: “I can’t believe Goodwin got away with that”, they are obliged to show it.
‘They can’t be seen to be doing people favours because it would then lack credibility. But I just felt it was right for me to distance myself after that.
‘It wasn’t right me going on the show when two weeks prior, they stitched me up.
‘It’s not that they stitched me up. I just thought: “People get away with a lot worse”.
‘In League One, the compliance officer never comes near us because there are no TV cameras at Alloa games.
‘But in the Premiership, you can’t do a thing. Sportscene have a duty to show highlights and lowlights, but there were incidents I was pulled up for on TV which went to a disciplinary panel — and they threw them out.’
HE makes no claims of sainthood. Four red cards and more than 60 bookings tell no lies. Before the Connolly incident, the Sportscene cameras caught him elbowing Stuart Armstrong in his Dundee United days. A two-match ban followed.
There was another two-game suspension for a clash with Motherwell’s Steve Jennings in December 2011.
‘I don’t try to pass the buck,’ he
says now. ‘I take responsibility for the stuff I did. I did stupid things I regretted. I was punished and rightly so.
‘But there were other things someone else would have got away with. It all became part and parcel of my reputation. The incidents were being picked up just because it was me. No other reason.’
During five otherwise happy years at St Mirren, there were awkward Monday mornings in the dressing room after Thompson had been in the deeply awkward position of having to explain the actions of a friend and colleague to the nation.
‘Was that difficult?,’ asked Goodwin. ‘Yes, it was. Especially when you go to the compliance officer and your own team-mate has had no option but to condemn you on the Sunday night.
‘It’s a bit of an open-and-shut case after that.’
Last weekend, Goodwin guested on Radio Scotland’s Sportsound programme. His issues are with the disciplinary system more than the BBC. That television, newspapers or social media can effectively flag up an incident to the compliance officer Tony McGlennan, he believes, leaves the system open to abuse.
‘If the SFA want to employ someone to go through every minute of every game over the weekend, fine,’ he said. ‘But it can’t be right that they only act on things spotted by the
Sportscene cameras. ‘As a player, what’s to stop me Tweeting or getting someone I know to Tweet about someone having a kick at me in the 76th minute?
‘Everybody could do that. We are role models for kids and have a responsibility to play the game in the right manner with the right rules.
‘I’m not denying that, but let players make tackles. Let’s accept players want to win games.’
Goodwin can pinpoint the night he acquired the combative streak. Right down to a match in Stockport 16 years ago.
Back then, he was a different player. His competitive debut was in defence for Celtic under Kenny Dalglish. Henrik Larsson was making his return from long-term injury in a 2-0 win over Dundee United in May 2000.
A return to the Under-21 team under Martin O’Neill held no appeal. Stockport offered three years in England’s lower leagues where a violent collision awaited.
He explained: ‘You leave Celtic and think you’re a bit of a ticket. I was captain of the Under-21s for two or three years before I left.
‘We were winning Under-21 leagues, going far in the cups. You are living in a bit of a bubble. And then you go from Under-21 football here to lower-league football at Stockport in a run-down stadium and you’re playing against men.
‘I played against a guy called Micky Evans at Plymouth on my Stockport debut. He was a big, hulking centre-forward in his 30s. I was a centre-half and I’d never been knocked about like that in my life.
‘He battered me. He scored two and could have had more. I went home that night thinking: “Holy s***, I’d better buck up my ideas”.’
STOCKPORT’S manager Carlton Palmer saw Goodwin in a holding midfield role. He was quick and he was fit. He could stop others playing.
‘I had to make myself horrible to play against and let them know they were in a game,’ said Goodwin. There were spells at Scunthorpe and Huddersfield before a return to Scotland with Hamilton in 2010.
At St Mirren, he found a home, becoming the first club captain to lift the League Cup in 2012.
Bright and sharp, Goodwin talks a good game. He is a natural manager in waiting and, in Paisley, his coaching ambitions were encouraged.
When Tommy Craig replaced Danny Lennon as manager in 2014, Goodwin and Gary Teale were named as his assistants.
The St Mirren board loved him. Then the red cards and Sportscene trials changed things.
‘The board were getting fed up of it,’ he added. I think the disciplinary issues probably cost me that job.’
He reverted to playing. For current Saints boss Alex Rae, a former club coach on the playing staff must have been an odd business.
Young managers don’t usually relish strong senior players with managerial ambitions around the place, so when Jack Ross of Alloa called, Goodwin was gratified and surprised.
He assured Ross he plans to play until he is 40 and will spend what time he has left showing potential employers he can be trusted to lead when the time is right.
‘In the last two years, I hope I have changed,’ said the Irishman. ‘People’s perceptions of me also have to change because I want to be a coach, a manager. I want to be taken seriously.
‘People who know me know the person I am on the park is not who I am. If I didn’t play the way I play, I would have been out of the game a long time ago.
‘I’m not in the team to create goals or score them. I’m in the team to make life difficult for my opponents.
‘Do people want me to apologise for that?’