O’Neill holds soft spot after first job at Cowdenbeath
CENTRAL PARK was the stadium that launched Michael O’Neill’s coaching career and, though he spent just a few months at Cowdenbeath, he left with a lifetime of memories.
The words culture shock have been readily applied to Rangers’ eagerly anticipated and once postponed Scottish Cup tie at the League Two venue.
A ground famous for its stock car races and spartan facilities will play host to Steven Gerrard’s team on Wednesday night, assuming the pitch does not again fall victim to the frost that caused the original date to be scheduled a week past on Friday.
Northern Ireland boss O’Neill hopes to attend in the hope of catching sight of his Northern Ireland captain Steven Davis and squad men Gareth McAuley and Kyle Lafferty, and he may even pop his head into the office of Cowden boss Gary Bollan, his old team-mate at Dundee United.
It was also at Tannadice where O’Neill first encountered Mixu Paatelainen, the man who opened the door to a career that led to international management.
‘If you’re going to start you might as well start at the bottom!’ laughed O’Neill, by way of introduction to his story. ‘I’d been working in financial services and doing some TV work back in Northern Ireland, and I read that Mixu didn’t have an assistant manager.
‘We had played together at Dundee United and had travelled together to do our coaching badges through the SFA, so I asked if he needed a hand.
‘He said he didn’t have money but it didn’t matter. Gordon McDougall was the owner and said he could give me £20 a week, although I don’t remember ever getting it!
‘It was hard. Mixu was a full-time manager at a part-time club, he spent hours inside Central Park, in an office without a window.
‘It was so small, like a cupboard. He’d be in there all day.
‘It was a great insight for me because you were doing everything. I was coming in Tuesday and Thursday nights after finishing work. I’d get across the bridge and the training was always the challenge.’
Not only had Paatelainen thrown himself into the job but the chairman, too, was playing a hands-on role in the day-to-day operation.
‘Gordon bought a pair of motorway lights and we had to crank them up so we could train on grass,’ he recalled.
‘You had to wind them up and then couldn’t hear yourself coaching because of the noise from the generators!
‘That’s what Cowdenbeath was like. Gordon’s family were around the club and he was obviously big into the stock cars.
‘He had bought the team bus, too. It was like a 70s rock band tour bus with a big round leather seat at the back — the leather was so old, and it had curtains.
‘I remember going to Elgin in it and I don’t know how we made it.
‘Mixu told me they had broken down once and Gordon, who was a mechanic by trade, got under it and fixed it.’
Somehow it’s hard to imagine Cowden’s current chairman Donald Findlay QC swapping his trademark pipe for a spanner but the experience of getting his own hands dirty served O’Neill well.
He left to take up his first managerial post at Brechin City in 2006 and went on to manage Shamrock Rovers before his country came calling.
‘My time there was about three and a half months,’ continues the 49-year-old. ‘I was offered the interview for the Brechin job and I left with three or four games of the season to go.
‘I was delighted they won it (the title) after I left — it was massive for Cowdenbeath to win that league and it was a good starting point for Mixu.
O’Neill retains a certain fondness for the Fife club but offers little hope for the League Two part-timers causing one of the big cup shocks this week.
‘I can’t see Rangers slipping up but it’s a great occasion for Cowden and for Gary,’ he added.