Saturday Interview Tony Green
Ex-scotland midfielder turned maths teacher and Pools Panel regular on why he’s loved at Newcastle despite only 33 games for the club
I’ve got a brilliant quiz question for you this week: which international footballer achieved the unusual – and unwanted – hat-trick of his first three matches featuring a Scotland own goal?
And – same guy – which clever little midfield schemer is still applying deep thought to the game at the age of 71, meeting once a week in private with some English legends to predict results which could change lives with cash bonanzas and, who knows, prompt a spike in the sale of speedboats?
Give yourself a coconut if you answered Tony Green of Blackpool, Newcastle United and – these days – the Pools Panel. Better still, give yourself a macaroon bar. Green began his career at Albion Rovers where John Justice Lees, inventor of the coconutflecked confectionery, was a director.
For fans d’un certain age the cry of “Erra spearmint ana macaroon barz” is as evocative of a bygone era as “You’re going to get your flippin’ heads kicked in”. Why the two treats were sold together on the terraces is one of life’s abiding mysteries. “Funny that,” says Green, “but I’m afraid I don’t have any insider knowledge.” Were the Rovers players given the “Lees, Lees, more if you please” sweetmeats before games and then a box each at Christmas? “No, we didn’t, but I once had a hurl in Mr Lees’ Rolls-royce and there weren’t many of them parked up outside Cliftonhill. This was after we’d won the Police Cup which was a daft wee five-a-side tournament for teams in and around Glasgow played at Shawfield. We actually beat Celtic in the final and my brother John, who supported them, didn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards.”
Green is one of the lost talents of our game. He debuted for Scotland in 1971 in our first competitive match against Belgium who are coming to Hampden next Friday night. But five internationals later it was all over. Green smashed up his right knee and never recovered. He was 25.
What was he going to do with the rest of his life? There were young mouths to feed. He was offered a pub to run as convention decrees but had a better idea and became a maths teacher. “I did that for 30 years. Six times longer than I was a footballer. It was a very rewarding job. Of course, no one asks me about it. They all want to know about the football. And, aye, some of them will say: ‘Tell us about that time you dumped Georgie Best on his backside … ’!”
We meet in the market town of Poulton-le-fylde, the train-stop before Blackpool, where Green lives with his second wife Chris. It’s a pretty place battling the tide of over-development but life for him seems good: there are two Mercedes in the drive and a holiday in Florida to come, the couple having only just returned from Majorca.
Now I know what you’re thinking: footballer-to-maths teacher? “Well, I studied maths at the University of Paisley while I was playing for Albion Rovers,” he explains. “I seem to have an aptitude for it so when I stopped playing I thought I’d try to put that to some good use.” Green’s parents, Thomas, a docker, and Agnes, wanted the absolute best for their three boys and hoped they’d all go to uni. “They didn’t get the chance. I think they were ahead of their time because most other lads would have been encouraged to leave school at 16 and get a wage. John, who’s dead now, was the brainiest but he went from job to job: bee-keeper, male nurse, etc. You’ll never guess what became of my other brother, also called Thomas: nuclear scientist! He worked at Dounreay among other places and has just retired. He says he’s going to try to get to the bottom of calculus, the study of continuous change, so that should keep him nice and busy.”
I suggest to Green, an inside-forward in the grand Scottish tradition, another pint-sized playmaker from the assembly-line, that compared to his contemporaries he’s the forgotten man. “That suits me,” he laughs. But, as I learn, it’s not true. The Newcastle faithful have never forgotten him. They cross the Pennines to knock on his door and get him to tell the story of his Magpies tenure one more time. All 33 bittersweet games of it.
Born in Glasgow close to Ibrox, Green joined Albion Rovers in 1964 for £7 a week. “You got that if you played, and evenifyouwereinjured,butifyouwere dropped it went down to four. One frozen Boxing Day I broke my wrist. My wee brown envelope only had four quid in it. ‘But I got injured’, I said. ‘We were just about to drop you’, I was told.” Crowds at the Coatbridge coliseum averaged 400 – “And Dad and brother John knew everyone. The comedy could be good. When Johnny Dillon, a nice lad who went on to play for Sunderland, was told by someone in the
“It’s all a long time ago. I was surprised to get picked for Scotland but obviously delighted. All of a sudden I was mixing with names I only got to read about and I think I was a bit starstruck”
ON HIS SCOTLAND CAREER