ALAN McRae, the SFA president, is available for national team manager announcements and Scottish Cup draws. But he doesn’t appear in front of the cameras very often. Yesterday, as he displayed that rare sense of comic timing to the full, we saw precisely why.
It is easy to characterise this former Cove Rangers player, now chairman, as the latest in a long list of bungling SFA blazers, hopelessly out of date for the requirements of leading our national sport, particularly at a time when the organisation currently doesn’t have a chief executive to speak of. Sadly, one slip of the tongue as he introduced his old pal Alex McLeish for his second stint as Scotland manager in front of the Sky cameras yesterday did little to dispel that notion.
Read more: Tam McManus: Critics are wrong, Alex McLeish will bring back glory days
It had all started so well. “I’d like to welcome you all to the national stadium at Hampden Park for the official appointment of Alex McLeish who will be our new national manager, our new national coach,” said McRae to the assembled throng and the countless millions watching or listening across the country, gesturing to the man seated to his left.
So far so good. But unfortunately, he kept on talking. “Alex and I go back a long way,” he added. “In fact, I can recall his debut in 1978 against Dundee United. I think it was the second of January.
“In those early 90 minutes I could see he had character, to say the least,” continued the by-now rambling McRae. “Anyway .. during the next few years Alex and I became quite close friends. In the years ahead, Alex would go on to win many domestic trophies and, of course, the famous European Cup-Winners-Cup final against Real Madrid where Aberdeen triumphed. During Alex’s career, he earned 77 caps for the country, this country, our country. In season 1888-89, I was appointed chairman of Alex’s testimonial committee.”
Yes, McRae had clearly meant 1988-89, not 1888-89, a year when Queen Victoria was still in her pomp and Brother Walfrid was still knuckling down to the task of getting Celtic FC off the ground.
It was a slip of the tongue, nothing more. But, at a stroke, not only had McRae added ammunition to the critics who have accused the SFA of being amateurish in their pursuit of Gordon Strachan’s replacement – this appointment, after all, came after the tortuous process of missing out on Michael O’Neill and Walter Smith – it had strengthened the suggestion that this ultimately all boiled down to an old pals’ act. One hundred and thirty years, that really is an old pals’ act.
McRae’s power over this process should not be downplayed. This is the man who led the sub-committee on the SFA board making recommendations, and the man who had the casting vote, he and Rod Petrie – the man who will almost certainly succeed him as president in the summer of 2019 – cast as the traditionalists who won the day against the modernisers. And all this, of course, is precisely the opposite impression which the SFA’s svengalis and spin doctors are desperate to project.
Thankfully, from their point of view, McRae then finally left the floor clear for McLeish to work some magic of his own. Okay, so he might not have been the sexiest name on anybody’s managerial shortlist, but none of what has transpired in the last weeks and months is McLeish’s fault.
There was a quiet dignity about the way he took ownership of day one of a job so many of his peers seem to regard as a poisoned chalice. Already comfortable with dealing with the media, the 59-year-old seemed to warm to the task the longer this went on.
There is much to admire on McLeish’s CV, even if some of his greatest successes are a bit too much in the rear-view mirror for some. Again, just as at Rangers and Scotland, he inherits a team which is generally functioning smoothly.
But there are also echoes of his ill-fated time at Aston Villa, where from the outset he was battling a rather nonplussed supporter base. He may find that interventions from his old friend like yesterday’s don’t exactly help his case.
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