JOHN HUGHES was the Scottish Cup winning manager this time last year and enjoyed the joy of walking past the trophy every day when going to his office at the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium.
Life was good for big Yogi in Inverness. That final win in May 2015 over Falkirk meant European football for the Highlanders, another first, for a club which under Hughes also reached a League Cup Final.
And then he left at the end of last season. Apparently to spend time with his family, brushing up on his backswing and getting fitter by taking up cycling. That’s what MPs say when leaving before being pushed out of that den of iniquity on the banks of the Thames.
Surely there was more to this than met the eye. If Hughes was so happy then why voluntarily walk away from all that and why is this football man from his baldy heid to the tips of his toes spent the best part of a year away from the game?
Hughes was at Hampden Park yesterday, the scene of his greatest day, to look ahead to Celtic and Inverness, now a legendary tie in this tournament, but before that he looked back to why it all ended so suddenly in the Highland capital.
“I was quite happy and had just signed a two-year deal but there was a few clubs sniffing about including Dundee United,” said Hughes who was far more effusive than he ever was as a manager when sat in front of a line of tape recorders.
“I was content and happy but wanted to move it on in terms of players leaving and new ones coming in. The chairman (Kenny Cameron) said: ‘no, I want to keep him.’ He is a lovely man and it is his club. I didn’t fall out with them.
“He was going to be there for the next ten years and I wasn’t. So I left. Everybody said it was budgets but it wasn’t. I wanted to keep competing, getting to cup finals. There is a great saying; 'If you want me to make the dinner I buy the groceries.'
“There were one or two that I wanted to move out, even though I understood they had been good servants. But it is my expertise – that is what I get judged on.”
Cameron may well be regretting questioning Hughes. Inverness are rooted at the bottom of the Premiership and while the club have beaten Celtic three times in the Scottish Cup, and are the only domestic team not to lose to Brendan Rodgers’s side all season, they really don’t have any chance on Saturday with the best will in the world.
Richie Foran, who replaced Hughes, is one of the good guys but his players have not got going at all. What that club had last season seems to have left with Hughes.
“I have no hard feelings whatsoever towards Inverness,” he said. “I’ve spoken to the chairman since then and wished him all the best. You’ll never hear me say a bad word against that club. It was good for me and I really enjoyed my time up there.
“I also had great success. Don’t forget, there was a League Cup final as well. Also, nine men against Hearts with five minutes to go, and we pulled it off. Plus, into Europe for the first time in the club’s history. So we had great success. I wish Inverness all the best.”
You just have to look at a trim Hughes today to know he hasn’t spent his time in the pub.
“I have kept fit by cycling,” he said. “I am battering it, up to 150 miles a week. It is quite competitive with my mate John Collins. You know how competitive he is, he’s like a wee mountain goat.
“There is a great environment even at the golf club. There is about a dozen of us and it is like being in a dressing room. Out on the course, I swing it like I am chopping wood but I really enjoy it.”
Hughes would like to get back into now. He can be a prickly character and does play the daft laddie from Leigh card too bit too often; however, there are some managers in jobs right now, and at big clubs, whose CVs don’t come close to the former Falkirk, Celtic. Hibernian and Ary United defender.
“I have never been too far away from it,” he said. “My natural habitat is on the coaching pitch. I just love coaching. I love to coach footballers, more than I do in terms of results. That is maybe a strange thing but I really love to stimulate players and get the best out of them. If you can see all your work coming to fruition on the pitch then, even in defeat, I am buzzing.”
Hughes’s Inverness beat Celtic in the 2015 semi-final thanks in a large part to Ronny Deila’s side being denied a blatant penalty; however, he did get his tactics spot on and scored three goals against a team going for a Treble.
The man-management wasn’t bad either.
“I went to watch them against Kilmarnock on the Tuesday with a former team-mate of mine, Neil Oliver,” Hughes recalled. “He asked if I’d seen anything and I said I was going to press them right from the start.
“I had the Edward Ofere who was built like a tank and I wanted him to bully Jason Denayer. That was his job. I did a bit of psychology saying Denayer was in the paper saying he was easy to play against. Of course there wasn’t any newspaper article at all but Edward turned to me and said he would take care of him.”
That last bit is said with a Yogi smile and a glint in his eye. He’ll be back in football soon enough and the world will be a more interesting place for it.
'John Hughes was speaking at a William Hill media event. William Hill is the proud sponsor of the Scottish Cup.'
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