Ght in Dark Continent
working there,” he explains. “I just feel passionately about that. I have been at clubs where you get these people coming back. I call them ghosts. They go back into the place, and get everyone saying what a great guy they were.”
Williamson had an awkward time of it at Plymouth, where he replaced Paul Sturrock. The former Dundee United winger became a legend in Devon, and when he moved on to Southampton, and Williamson stepped in, it was a far from clean break. “The biggest problem I had was my relationship with the chairman [Paul Stapleton],” recalls Williamson. “I spoke to the chairman about a player in the afternoon, and never got much encouragement from him. He phoned me back that evening and he said he was speaking to Paul earlier, ‘and he mentioned a player to me’. “I said: ‘chairman, he was the player I mentioned to you this morning’. He was listening to Paul more than he was listening to me.”
“I have never been back to Kilmarnock, unless in an official capacity with another team,” he adds. “You don’t live in the past. That’s always been my philosophy. I am sure that will continue.”
In saying that, he would jump at the chance to return to the post of Uganda coach.
“Maybe at some stage, things will change, and the job might come back again,” he says, wistfully. “I would certainly apply for it because I have enjoyed the country and the people, and the job. But it’s time to move on to other things now, move forward.”
He didn’t manage to catch any coverage of last weekend’s Scottish Cup final, which featured one of his former clubs, Hibernian, against Celtic. Ah, Hibs. Mention of his name to a supporter of the Easter Road side, and it was once guaranteed to produce a groan. The thing is, his reign has begun to look better and better with the passing years. Wins over Rangers and Celtic on the way to a League Cup final, players such as Kevin Thomson, Scott Brown and Steven Whittaker making a breakthrough. It has (whisper it) got a lot worse since. Not that you need be shy about pointing this out down a crackly line to Uganda.
“What disappointed me was that in January of the year we played in the League Cup final [which Hibs lost 2-0 to Livingston], I went to the board and said: ‘look, we can swap a central defender for a midfield player, because we are going to be short in midfield’,” he says.
Williamson wanted to bring in Steven Thomson, then at Peterborough United. “Kevin Thomson was picking up a few injuries, and a few others were picking up injuries, and I said we should do this, because we would be struggling in midfield towards the end of the season,” he adds. “But I could not get it sanctioned.”
Something else that couldn’t be sanctioned was a swap deal involving Derek Riordan and Bobby Mann, though this, as well as being a blessing, is a bit of a myth it turns out. “Donald Park [at Inverness] wanted Riordan, and I thought we needed a Bobby Mann-type centre half,” he says. “But the board never sanctioned it. It was not the case that I wanted to get rid of Derek Riordan.
“They [Inverness] wanted Riordan, and I said to Donald, ‘speak to the board’. It was probably just an excuse to get off the phone to him.”
Who cares about all this now? Certainly not Williamson, who is concerned only with the next phase of his managerial career. Four years ago, in a poignant interview with a Sunday newspaper, he admitted that, separated from his family, he “wondered whether it was worth it at times”. But football inevitably wins out whenever he is experiencing a dark night of the soul. “It is not an obsession, it is a necessity,” Williamson tells me.
“I would rather be unemployed in Africa than unemployed back in Britain,” he adds, before making it clear that it is time to go. “Alan, I am walking around the garden here and the sweat is lashing off me, I have not put any sun cream on, so I am probably burnt to a crisp.”
This information brings to an end a 50-minute conversation with someone so often cast as taciturn, difficult and prickly. It’s been as fascinating a discussion as I can remember having with a football figure, as well as probably among the more long-distance ones.
So forcefully have I been pressing the phone to the side of my head that several hours after hanging up it is still possible to hear what sounds like African birdsong in my ear, as well as the voice of an admirable Glaswegian who has managed to prosper on another continent, against all odds.