Where soccer meets sobriety
HAMILTON, Scotland — Twelve miles outside Glasgow, at the tiny New Douglas Park soccer stadium, Colin McGowan was talking about divine intervention.
McGowan is the chief executive of Hamilton Academical, a soccer club founded by a school in 1874. It has experienced little success in its 140 years; at the turn of the 21st century the club was close to extinction. Wages were unpaid, players went on strike and the team was relegated to the third tier of Scottish soccer.
But this season, after an unlikely ascent to the Scottish Premier League, Hamilton Academical, or the Accies as it is known, had risen as high as first place.
The club moved up to the top of the league with a surprise 1-0 victory over nearby Celtic, which, along with its Glasgow neighbor Rangers has dominated Scottish soccer for three decades.
While Celtic and Rangers can command 50,000 fans for a game — approximately the entire population of Hamilton — the Accies have the smallest fan base in the league. No more than 1,000 home fans attend matches.
“Something very special is going to happen here, things that could be close to miracles,” McGowan said as he walked through the stadium. One of the bleachers is sponsored by the Spice of Life, a local Indian restaurant. Another is adorned with a large green sign advertising Cocaine Anonymous.
“The amount of good fortune we’ve had, it’s odd,” he added. “But as they say, good things happen to good people.”
About 10 years ago a group of local businessmen bought the club for £1 (about $1.60) and committed to building a team with young players that was intimately connected to the community. McGowan vowed to use the club to help overcome what he saw as the biggest problem facing Hamilton — and, more broadly, the country.
“I’m a co-owner of the football club, but I’m also an alcoholic and a drug addict,” he said. “I’ve been in recovery for 31 years. I don’t forget the pain and suffering I caused others. I’m putting a wee bit back in.”
Scotland has the highest rate, per capita, of cocaine use in the world, according to the United Nations’ World Drug Report 2014. The club hosts regular meetings for recovering addicts, giving away hundreds of tickets for the families of those affected as well as providing meals for the homeless.
One side of the stadium has been given over to a sculptured Serenity Garden, murals and a beach, built and maintained by children and by those in recovery. “Some people joke that they built a football pitch next to my office,” McGowan said.
Hundreds of addicts have come through the club, he added. Not every case is a success. “Some relapse, some die, some take their own lives,” he said. “There’s always going to be casualties. But it’s the ones that make it.”
Nearby, Hamilton Academical was training alongside its under-20 team. Both, at the time, were in first place in their divisions.
“It is a bit of a bizarre feeling, being top of the league,” said the club’s chairman, Les Gray. “We’ve got a good young squad. They don’t play for a lot of money, they play for the opportunity.”
Despite Hamilton’s storybook rise, generating interest in the team remains hard work, especially with two of the most established clubs in the world nearby.
“The reality is that more buses leave here to go to Rangers and Celtic every week than come here,” Gray said. “We’re only 10 miles from the city. That’s what we are up against.”
After training, the team’s coach, Alex Neil, returned to his small office to prepare for Hamilton’s league match, against Partick Thistle, last Saturday. Next to his desk was a wall planner with a card for each of his players, arranged to show who was injured and who was ready to play. Neil, 33, masterminded last season’s promotion to the top division. He still plays for the team.
“The team’s been doing that well I’ve not been playing myself,” he said of his dual role of player and coach. “It’s a delicate balance. You pick yourself, you’re taking someone else out. At times it can be a wee bit tricky.”
Neil arrived at the club 10 years ago to play in the midfield. Back then the team was at the bottom of the second tier. “I thought, Pfft, what am I doing here?” he said. “I thought, I come here, play one season, do well and move on to something bigger and better. But I fell in love with the place and stayed 10 years.”
No one, not least Neil, is talking about winning the championship just yet, even if the club has already beaten the teams that finished in the top three last season. “Winning the league? That’s unthinkable, really,” he said. “We are the smallest club in the division. But if teams work as a unit we can overcome teams of superstars.”
Neil chose not to play himself, and Hamilton Academical jumped to a 2-0 lead against Partick Thistle. A small group of enthusiastic Accies fans banged a drum and chanted.
“We are winning games constantly and the other teams can’t stand it,” said one fan, Brandon Coshill, 19. “They sing: You’ve got two fans and a Jack Russell dog. We sing back: We’ve only got two stands!”
Partick staged a comeback and took a 3-2 lead into the final minute, seemingly consigning Hamilton to its second league defeat in a row. But a shot by the French midfielder Tony Andreu salvaged a point for Hamilton on the last play of the game.
The draw meant that Hamilton dropped to second, but stayed ahead of Celtic in third. It has been 30 years since a team other than Rangers or Celtic won the title. The last team was Aberdeen, then coached by Alex Ferguson, who went on to fame as coach of Manchester United.
For McGowan, the comeback was another example of the spirit of the club and the town. “If someone said we’d guarantee you’d win the Premiership if you give up your addiction stuff, I’d say I’d rather drop a division because we’d be traitors to the community,” he said. “Sometimes you have to surrender to win.”