DUFFY’S DESIRE STILL BURNS BRIGHT IN A SEA OF CHANGE
WHEN Jim Duffy took his first steps in football management, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and Phil Collins was Top of the Pops with A Groovy Kind of Love.
‘I wouldn’t have known that — I was always more of a Bowie fan back in the day,’ Duffy tells Sportsmail. ‘Stevie Wonder, as well, I was right into his stuff at one point.’
Much has changed since that day in September 1988, when the-then 29-year-old Duffy took charge of Falkirk and entered the Guinness
Book of Records as the youngest manager in British football.
But his passion for the game has not altered. Not even slightly.
That may sound like hollow praise, but anyone who counts the Marr brothers (Dundee), Vladimir Romanov (Hearts), Ken Bates (Chelsea), Delia Smith (Norwich) and Milan Mandaric (Portsmouth) as former employers could be
If you don’t move with the times, football will leave you behind ‘The internet has totally changed what it means to be a footballer. Even at a smaller club like Morton, your personal life is public’ JIM DUFFY
forgiven if they felt slightly less enthused about football than they once did.
The fact that his passion burns as brightly now as it ever did is testament to Duffy being one of the great survivors of Scottish football.
His long and storied career takes him to Hampden today, where his Morton side take on Aberdeen in the semi-finals of the Betfred Cup.
It’s lazy to trot out the usual clichés for such an encounter between Championship and Premiership teams. But, in this instance, one such phrase is perfectly applicable.
This really is a once-in-a-generation match for Morton. It really has been a lifetime in the making. Literally.
The Greenock side have not contested a national semi-final since 1981, nor have they played at Hampden since 1979.
The two eldest players in the current squad are goalkeepers Andy McNeil and Derek Gaston (both 29), meaning that none of the current crop were even born the last time the club had the chance to savour this kind of occasion.
Prior to speaking to Sportsmail yesterday, Duffy is in his element. Cones and bibs are scattered across the Cappielow turf after an intense final training session.
Carefully, he counts the number of balls that have been returned. The tone of his voice indicates there is a problem.
‘Hawl! Jai (Quitongo), Tam (O’Ware), there’s a baw missin’,’ he barks at two players shuffling towards the changing rooms. ‘Don’t gae in till yies have fun’ it.’
These are the gritty economics of football. Duffy laughs that locating said baw would not have been an issue when he was coaching at Chelsea in the late 1990s.
He is under no illusions that Aberdeen will begin today’s match as strong favourites, but adds: ‘Upsets can — and do — happen. That’s the beauty of football, that sense of unpredictability where anything can happen.’
When Duffy took the job in the summer of 2014, Morton was a club on its knees. Relegated from the Championship and thumped 10-2 by Hamilton on the final day of the previous season, they had become a laughing stock.
‘We only had four players on the books when I arrived,’ he recalls. ‘When you come into a job like that, you rely on having good contacts.
‘You have your phone glued to your ear, getting in touch with everyone and anyone to see if they can help you with signing some players.’
Every page of his contacts book was scoured and it speaks volumes for his ability as a manager that Duffy was able to assemble a squad to win League One in 2015, and secure promotion back to the Championship at the first time of asking.
But there are some fans who remain unconvinced. The type who can be heard venting their
spleens on the Cappielow terraces on matchday. The phone-in crackpots who denigrate their manager’s and players’ ability on national radio.
‘That has been one of the biggest changes since I first became a manager,’ says Duffy. ‘Pundits have always been there in the papers and on the telly. But the general public are also now part of that.
‘Don’t get me wrong, some of the things I’ve seen written online are actually quite articulate and insightful — they would probably put many a journalist to shame.
‘The flipside of that is you also have the not-so-insightful ones who are miles off the mark and just go for a really personal attack on players and managers. But no manager worth his salt will allow that to dictate how he sets his team up. You’ve got to be your own man and stick to your own way of doing things.
‘If you get the sack, how embarrassing would it be to say: “I was only doing what 200 people on a forum told me to do”. You have to do it your way.’
Back when Duffy started at Falkirk in 1988, Dougie Donnelly and a set of plastic letters and numbers on a shoogly stand were what Jeff Stelling and Twitter are to the current generation.
He is acutely aware of how the landscape has changed during his managerial career.
‘You’ve got to embrace it,’ he says. ‘If you don’t move with the times, football will quickly leave you behind.
‘I enjoy working with a group of young lads. It keeps me going and keeps that desire burning within me to always learn new things.
‘Having said that, if you walked into a dressing room containing the likes of Andy Ritchie and myself talking about Twitter and how many followers you had, you would have been hung from your ankles and dropped head-first into the bath.
‘Young players now don’t know what it is to play on red blaes or an absolute muck-heap. Some of them complain if there’s too many of those black rubber beads on the 3G astroturf.
‘But I wouldn’t change it. Listening to their nonsense, all the patter in the dressing room — that keeps me young.
‘I try my best to look after my players and advise them because the internet has totally changed what it means to be a footballer.
‘Even at a relatively smaller club like Morton, your personal life is also your public life.
‘It used to be the case that it was just the A-list stars who you would see on the front and back pages of newspapers.
‘Now it’s anyone who is perceived to have done wrong — regardless of that person’s profile. It’s an environment where people actually enjoy being offended. They enjoy picking faults.’
His managerial career may have spanned almost 30 years, but Duffy is far from finished. He is only 57 and still has plenty of ambitions to achieve.
Victory at Hampden today would be a good place to start.
‘I want to get Morton promoted, that’s my main priority,’ he says. ‘But I would also love a crack at international management.
‘I’m very patriotic, so Scotland would obviously be my first choice. But I wouldn’t say no if the opportunity came with another country.’