BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!
He didn’t blossom as a Scotland and Rangers striker until his thirties and now after years in supporting roles as a coach, Dodds is glad to be finally making it as a manager with Inverness, older and wiser
BILLY DODDS has always been a late bloomer. Just shy of his 30th birthday when he scored the first of his seven goals for Scotland, the striker was a year older still when he made his career-defining move to Rangers in a £1.3million transfer from Dundee United in 1999.
A clever finisher and a perpetual harrier of defenders, Dodds’ reputation as one of the game’s hardest-working strikers foretold an ethic that continued into his coaching career.
Yet it’s nevertheless remarkable to think that it’s only now, at the age of 53, that he is making his mark in his first managerial job at Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
Time served as an assistant to first Gordon Chisholm then Jim McIntyre, the former Scotland striker had mapped out all the job’s pitfalls before making the big leap forward. Even then, it happened almost by accident.
It was during the Covid-abridged Championship season of 2020-21 that Dodds was originally brought in to help Neil McCann, a caretaker appointment after John Robertson stepped back from the post for personal reasons.
Already resident in the Highlands after setting up home during his successful spell with McIntyre at Ross County, Dodds was the obvious, available choice when McCann stepped down at the end of the campaign.
He’d first coached as his playing career petered out at Dundee United and even took over on an interim basis following the departure of Chisholm in 2006.
Had chairman Eddie Thompson decided to go
I’m glad that I did it the way I have and just made sure I was ready for it
with him permanently he’d have jumped at the chance. With hindsight he’s grateful to have been overlooked.
He said: ‘I’m glad I did it the way I have. I’d always said I wanted a shot at management and I was close to it a couple of times. If I’d got the United job back in the day, I’d have been snapping at players constantly. A rookie manager who thought I could breeze it.
‘But I’m glad I got experience as a coach under my belt. I’m more chilled and understanding now.’
Even throughout a storied playing career that started at Chelsea as a youngster, Dodds was always a relatable character.
‘I got on with most of my managers,’ he says. ‘Gordon Wallace did so much for me when I came to Dundee. Really trusted me. Paul Sturrock was brilliant with me because he knew to leave me to get on with it, but would also give me a wee bit of patter.
‘He got the best out of me by a mile. It was the Dundee United school of coaching from Jim McLean through Walter Smith. All I wanted as a player was honesty.
‘You have to make tough decisions with players, leave them out. It’s about how you handle them. I tell them the truth. This is why you are not playing.
‘I’m not saying I’ve got everything right but I have learned from my own playing days because I did have one or two managers who weren’t straight with me.
‘You have to see it from both sides, imagine how the player is feeling. You can’t just give it big licks because you’re the manager.
‘I think you can be finished early as a manager because you start raw and dive into things. You might still have that players’ mentality, where you want to go out and fight with people.’
Dodds talks of long afternoons spent with McIntyre, discussing how to handle the sensitive issue of man management.
A proper double act, the pair were successful enough to land County’s first and only major trophy success with the capture of the League Cup in season 2015-16.
The duo were sacked six months later, with chairman Roy MacGregor later admitting he had been too hasty in his decision.
Yet that episode is not the one that brought their partnership to an end.
When McIntyre was appointed by Dundee in 2018, he accepted the job on the assumption that Dodds would be his assistant.
Nobody foresaw the backlash against Dodds from a section of the club’s support, still furious that he and Chisholm had voted against the CVA that brought the club out of administration in 2010.
Adamant that he acted on principle, and was certain that the club would be saved regardless, Dodds is unrepentant.
Nevertheless, his later appointment became untenable and McIntyre was forced to go it alone.
‘At the time, I was gutted,’ he admits. ‘But when I reflected, I just thought: “Move on from it, if that’s the way it’s going to be — you don’t need it”.
‘Was I angry? I was more disappointed at how I’d been portrayed. I would do the same again. There were guys at Dundee who were the real culprits but it got spun on me.
‘They could blame me all they wanted but that wasn’t the truth. The other guys walked away with a cigar while I was left to face it because I wanted in with Jim.
‘It was a club who did a lot for me in football. I scored a lot of goals for Dundee. But by the end of it, I probably dodged a bullet given what happened.
‘It wasn’t fair on Macca because he didn’t get to bring in who he wanted to. He didn’t get the best chance to make the best start. That’s not excuses, Jim is a big boy.’
The experience so sickened McIntyre that after relegation and another sacking he effectively quit the game, with Dodds essentially reverting to semi-retirement, too.
APHONE call from McCann, a former team-mate at Dens, Ibrox and with the national team, changed everything. When McCann opted to pursue agency and media work last summer, Dodds was finally out on his own.
His first full season was good and fell just short of being a roaring success. Firmly in the promotion mix at the turn of the year, Inverness fell short of sustaining a title challenge to Kilmarnock, whose appointment of Derek McInnes proved the decisive moment in the Championship campaign.
A third-place finish left them with a heavy play-off schedule to navigate and after defeating Partick Thistle home and away they ran into Dick Campbell’s Arbroath.
The games were tense and tight, not least in the second leg at Gayfield when Inverness at one stage were reduced to eight men following a combination of red cards and injury. Whatever can be said of referee Willie Collum’s performance and indeed the run of play, Campbell’s post-match assertion that ‘Christmas has come early for Inverness’ seemed perversely one-eyed.
Exasperated by what he’d seen, Dodds was oddly serene as the game moved into a penalty shoot-out.
‘I just sat, calm,’ he recalls. ‘The game itself, it felt so unjust. I couldn’t believe what I’d watched from the referee but also my players, who’d gone down to eight men but stuck in.
‘The effort they gave me was incredible. When we got to full-time, Barry Wilson pulled me and I just
sat down. I watched the first few penalties but for Broaders’ (Kirk Broadfoot) I didn’t look. Barry had to let me know.
‘I felt as if my team had got us to where we deserved to get to, against all odds. They’d ran through a brick wall for me. How we stayed in the game, I don’t know.
‘I kept saying to them, at full-time, half-time in extra-time: “I’m telling you, give it your tank and we’ll win it — because there’s something happening here. We’ve been badly treated but it’ll be our night”.
‘That was a different emotion to anything I’ve experienced before.
‘It’s not like when you’re a young and carefree player who scores a goal and feels the elation. This was an older, wiser emotion. It’s about perspective and life experience.’
Ultimately Caley Thistle would come up short. A St Johnstone team that had toiled all season entered the play-offs with fresher legs. Two down after 24 minutes of the first leg, Inverness had enough energy and drive to come back and claim a 2-2 draw but by the second leg at McDiarmid Park they were spent. ‘We were the better side for 45 minutes in Perth but Callum Davidson and his players handled the pressure well. It was 4-0 but they didn’t blow us away. That might sound daft but we got caught chasing the game and it killed us.’
In an intriguing twist, season two has pitched Dodds against McIntyre, who made a surprise management comeback with Cove Rangers over the summer.
They’ve met twice already, drawing in the Premier Sports Cup and then when Inverness defeated the newly-promoted side by a 4-1 scoreline last weekend.
Their friendship proved strong enough to fulfil a dinner reservation later that night but their working relationship has been indefinitely paused.
‘We always spoke about getting back to working together again,’ says Dodds. ‘And now he’s back in at Cove. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy being a number two because I did. My attitude was, if I get a number one gig, great. But if I don’t, I’m happy coaching.
‘Now I make the decisions and it’s down to me. We have a solid base at Inverness now. It would be weird going to another club and not being the one making the decisions.
‘I always had a drive to be a manager but I could never have stood on anyone’s toes, that’s just not me. I always knew I could do it but could I do it well? I could have been bad or brilliant. I’m glad I waited because it made sure I was ready for it — learned to coach on a field, handle players properly. I probably thought my time had gone — it wouldn’t have defined my life if I hadn’t.’
Although life in the Highlands continues to nourish Dodds personally and professionally, he insists his roots remain in the west of Scotland.
‘Because I played with Aberdeen, Dundee and United people have said to me: “Aye, you’re a good north-east boy” but, naw, I’m a wee bam from Ayrshire!
‘I’m still down the road a lot. My missus comes down to see my mum and I spend time in Glasgow, too.’
Which begs the obvious question of ambition. Still relatively young in managerial terms, one wonders how his career might yet unfold.
‘It’s just like my playing career — I want to see how high I can go,’ he adds. ‘I never worked hard all my youth days at Chelsea, Partick on loan, not to get to the top.
‘It’s the same as a manager. If a bigger club wants to come and take you then you are ambitious.
‘You want to go as high as you can. What that height is? I don’t know. But I’d like to have a go.’
He may specialise in arriving late to the party but write off this wee bam from Ayrshire at your peril.