Williamson sees the lig

Despite being sacked by Uganda, manager is in no rush to be heading out of Africa

THE recent news that Bobby Williamson had been sacked as national coach of Uganda provoked an uncharitable reaction from some quarters. After registering their surprise – “what, is he still there?” – some people then scoffed. Just wait, they predicted, for his imminent return to Scotland, where a seat on the managerial merry-go-round is assured, along with a slot on the Sportsound banter bus..

This might have been the scenario five years ago. But that was then, this is now. Williamson’s horizons reach a lot wider now. The 51-year-old has seen things he never thought he’d see. He has dined with presidents, gone on safari adventures and, despite the blow of losing a job he clearly adored, continues to go into battle on behalf of a place that has clearly seeped deeply into his soul.

For example, he abhors the way the major sports brands ignore the poorer countries in Africa. “The equipment is not the best,” says Williamson. “It is all down to finance. There is a shortage of balls, a shortage of pitches. Even with the national team, we didn’t have a sponsor.

“We had to buy our own Adidas strips. Once we wore fake Adidas strips, and we were caught and were reprimanded! These things happen in Africa. But it is disappointing. You would have thought ments Williamson. But he has made a positive impact in many other ways, even though his reign could not survive a World Cup qualifying defeat in Liberia in March, which sent Uganda to the bottom of their group. However, Williamson cannot be criticised for a dereliction of duties, or for failing to employ local talent (his assistant at Uganda was the former Ugandan international midfielder Jackson Mayanja, who he hopes to take with him to his next position).

Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi has complained about the number of white coaches who come from Europe to Africa ‘just for the money’. Williamson accepts that he has a point. “When Berti Vogts was at Nigeria, he never lived in Nigeria,” he notes. “Some people think they can come in for a game and do their job and fly away again.

“However, I live here,” he adds. “They cannot tar me with that brush. I came for the experience, and for the job, I never came for the money.” So what did he come for? “At this moment in time, it’s 10am in the morning, I have my shorts on, my flip flops on, I am walking around the garden, the sun is beating down,” he replies. “I don’t want to leave all this just yet,” he adds, understandably.

MEET someone the locals refer to as “Mr Bobby” (note the absence of an l). As the old joke goes, he’s half the man he used to be. The weight has dropped off him – “I miss fish suppers, and the bread here is crap, that helps,” he says – while the scales have also fallen from his eyes. He never saw himself as an adventurer.

He wants to remain in Africa, preferably with another national side. A couple of years ago he was a target for World Cup quarter-finalists Ghana. He has just finished finalising a settlement agreement with the FUFA. “I have an agent here who doesn’t tell me very much until it is actually about to happen, so I will wait and see what he comes up with,” he says. He is determined not to let the inconvenience of being sacked by Uganda sour his unlikely adventures in the heart of Africa. You wonder if, work permit-wise, the fact he no longer has a job might impact on his wish to remain in the country.

“I am not sure actually,” he admits. “I have got a lease in a house until August, and I am staying there, I will wait and see what develops.”

Joseph Conrad, whose 1899 novella Heart of Darkness charts a journey down the Congo river, apparently stuck his finger in the middle of a map of Africa when he was a child, and cried: “When I grow up, I shall go there!” Williamson had no such firm plans. After stints with Clydebank and Rangers, he ventured to places no more exotic than West Bromwich Albion and Rotherham, before he returned to Scotland with Kilmarnock, where he ended a playing career that produced a more-than-decent return of goals; nearly 150 in just over 400 appearances.

Then, in his first season as manager at Kilmarnock, he won the Scottish Cup. You hope he has put that near the top of the CV he is currently updating. “I can’t remember dates at all, I have to Google everything to find out where I was at certain times,” he says. “1997”, you remind him, with reference to that win over Falkirk in the Scottish Cup.

The Ugandan twist took everyone by surprise, including himself. After the conditions that he saw on his first visit to the country, he resolved not to take the post. And then – “it was a Sunday”, he recalls – he found himself on the beach at Lake Victoria, staring out across the huge body of blue water that is Africa’s largest lake. “I thought: what have home for?”

In a professional sense, the answer was not a lot. When asked what he misses about Scotland, he mentions his family, though not much else. At the time he was offered the job with Uganda, his last post had been with Chester City, from where he had been sacked five months earlier. Before that there had been an initially successful spell with Plymouth Argyle. Even when he was eventually sacked, the club were still in the Championship – a place they would dearly like to be now.

“They put me on gardening leave for a year, which put me out of the public eye,” he says. “It was difficult to get a job after that.

“I had just bought a place in Plymouth and then I had to try and sell it, I lost a of money from that carry on,” he adds.

Igot to go While he is alert to the fact that he needs to continue working to earn a living, such concerns over taking a property hit do not seem quite so relevant where he lives now. “To be honest, it was a huge culture shock when I first came, and when you see the poverty that is all around,” he says. “I am in a nice house, a nice compound, but 20 minutes up the road there are people staying in worse circumstances, shall we say.

“But people are happy. I am not sure why they are happy, because all they have is sunshine. Yet they don’t complain about it.

“So I thought to myself, why I am complaining, why am I feeling uncomfortable?”

This was what he asked himself while staring out across Lake Victoria. The result of this piece of soul-searching has