Accies go the extra mile in helping people to conquer their addiction

WE’RE tiptoeing past a Hamilton Accies squad who are doing their level best in worsening weather conditions to prepare for Saturday’s trip to face Motherwell in the Scottish Cup.

Past the famous red bus behind the goal, the club’s animated chief executive Colin McGowan leads us. Beyond the man-made beach and the murals depicting everything from Loch Lomond to Del Boy and Rodney. Just for good measure, there’s a replica three-wheeled yellow van sitting in our path.

We pass therapy rooms, a small chicken coop, a recording studio and a 12-step addiction-recovery garden before entering work sheds where men of a certain age keep busy for the sake of keeping busy twice a week.

The snow-covered surface of the SuperSeal Stadium has now disappeared from view and, for all the world, it feels like we’ve gone through the looking glass some time ago.

‘We’re going to build a Safari Adventure Walk here next,’ says 62-year-old McGowan. ‘We’ll have models of every animal in the world here.’

McGowan appreciates the eccentricity of what’s unfolding before Sportsmail’s eyes but this is no rich man’s playground or any kind of ego trip. More things that keep body and soul together for far too many in the local community.

To understand the origins of what you have just walked through, you need to go back to McGowan’s own in the Gorbals in the 1960s.

‘There were nine of us in a roomand-kitchen plus a dog called Teddy,’ he explains. ‘But I never thought of it as poverty. It was just the way it was.’

It wasn’t long before he grew familiar with the demons that would punctuate his formative years, though. ‘I was always full of fear,’ he recalls.

‘Eventually I took anything that was mind-altering... tablets, medication, alcohol. I thought I had arrived. But quickly my journey was one of alcohol and drugs, borderline criminality and unacceptable conduct.’

He knew he had one foot on the road to ruination at 13. At 19, he attended his first recovery programme but he was 28 before alcohol or drugs passed his lips for the last time.

‘I finally surrendered,’ he explains. ‘It’s the only disease in the world you have to surrender to in order to win.

‘Somewhere in the middle of the mess I got married and had kids. But alcoholics don’t get married. They take hostages.’

Years of self-abuse hadn’t diminished his Herculean work ethic or a razor-sharp mind.

‘Getting clean and sober allowed me to be everything I could be,’ he says.

‘I’m a contract floor fitter to trade. I worked very hard. Even the waste bits of carpets I cut into rugs and sold them at the Barras market on a Saturday. I delivered butcher meat on a Friday night. I became a workaholic instead. I don’t suggest that to anybody. But I did stay clean and sober.’

Having earned enough money through myriad business ventures to be ‘the father and husband I always wanted to be’, McGowan felt he had partially atoned for his previous transgressions.

But there was to be no lasting sense of satisfaction. Not while others were — and are — in the same boat as he once found himself in.

‘I’ve always tried to give back,’ he said. ‘I’ve never just taken from this beautiful thing called sobriety.

‘Directing people into recovery has become part of my social life. I’m proud to say most of my friends are alcoholics and drug addicts who are in recovery.’

A football club would be the vehicle to carry his lifetime crusade. After a brief dalliance with Raith Rovers, in 2003, he hitched his wagon to Hamilton.

‘I don’t like football,’ he laughs. ‘I’ve only ever been to one away game. I love the youth academy and the business of football intrigues me.

‘We’re a business that’s trying to run a football club like a family.

‘Our sponsors are here because of our social conscience. Not because they want Hamilton Accies to be the next Man City.

‘I’ll be eternally grateful to the success (chairman) Ronnie MacDonald has brought to the football club as it’s given my groups a platform.’

In no particular order, the groups to which he refers are soon-to-bereleased prisoners training for freedom, autistic children (who have access to a custom-built in-house cinema), those septuagenarians making and mending in the sheds, and two charities — Soldiers Off The Streets Scotland and Blameless —– the latter of which provides respite for the families of those addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.

Accies’ approach to tackling all manner of addictions is spreading beyond their own community, however.

In an initiative entitled ‘Scottish Football — Sowing the Seeds of Recovery’, McGowan last month outlined to the Scottish Parliament the club’s means of assisting those addicted to alcohol, cocaine, narcotics and gambling, together with the help made available to their families.

Already ten other clubs, including Dunfermline, Kilmarnock and St Mirren, have given it their full backing.

McGowan believes that selfsupporting, unaffiliated fellowships, and the rolling out of various 12-step programmes can go a long way to dealing with the country’s addiction pandemic.

‘We’ve won the European Cup many times as far as I’m concerned,’ he adds. ‘Every time someone goes into recovery it’s that kind of feeling.

‘Seeing a wreck become a man again in front of your eyes does that to you.’

A real threat has emerged, however, to McGowan’s vision of a better world courtesy of Hamilton’s numerous community engagements.

Last October, the club were victims of an elaborate banking fraud which saw the guts of £1million swiped from their accounts in less than 22 hours. Opting to initially keep their own counsel while working with Police Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the club’s hopes of a satisfactory resolution soon drifted. Not only have the perpetrators never been caught, last month RBS told Hamilton they would not be recompensed. Furious at what they see as a hand-washing exercise by the bank, the club are now pursuing every available means to recover the money and take RBS to task. A press conference at which they intend to expose their bankers’ conduct is in the pipeline.

‘It’s inconceivable the bank aren’t partly liable for this,’ McGowan states. ‘They know they aren’t blameless in this.

‘£300,000 goes one day and it’s challenged twice. £600,000 goes out on day two unchallenged. How can that happen?

‘The fact is, that wasn’t normal trading. £900,000 never went out of this club in 22 hours in its life. Anyone monitoring that would see there’s clearly something wrong.

‘The duty of care has totally let us down.’

Expressing their anger in public may make Accies feel a little bit better and may prevent others being snared in such a fashion in future, but McGowan readily acknowledges it won’t fill a gaping void in the club’s finances.

He remains hopeful that sponsors who recognise the club’s ‘social conscience’ will yet fill the breach. The completion of Greg Docherty’s move to Rangers would help enormously, too.

Yet for an organisation that seems born into the phrase ‘more than a football club’, these are dark, troubling times.

‘We can’t guarantee that it will leave everything unaffected,’ McGowan admits.

‘I’ve a belief that the assistance we need will turn up at some point. Whether that’s in the form of a massive sponsorship or someone that sees the good we are doing, I don’t know.’

Looking around at the initiatives here, the prospect of the lights being dimmed on Hamilton’s non-footballing operation is terrifying.

But the wee boy from the Gorbals is one of life’s true survivors. While he is in the building, one senses that the club and all its remarkable facets will somehow prevail.

‘It’s another challenge that we’ll overcome,’ he insists. ‘It’s drip-filled buckets but it’s business as usual at the moment. We’ll just need to get our sleeves rolled up. This cannot be allowed to fail.

‘Somebody at some point in time will make a movie or write a book about the influence Hamilton Accies football club has had on the lives of many.’

We’ve won the European Cup many times as far as I’m concerned. When someone enters recovery, it’s that kind of feeling