Final chapter

Stewart Fisher

Sports Writer

Thursday 12 April 2012

ARILD STAVRUM has just completed his second novel for high end Norwegian publishing house Oktober.

Arild Stavrum scored as Aberdeen came from behind against Hibs to reach the Scottish Cup final in 2000. Picture: SNS

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Stewart Fisher

It is called Golden Boys, it is a yarn about the murder of Norway's most successful football agent, and he is currently on the look-out for a UK publisher in an attempt to emulate the success of Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell in the list of Scandinavian crime writers who have all made a killing in recent years. But more pertinently, at least as far as Scottish football is concerned, Stavrum also wrote the book on beating Hibernian in a Hampden semi-final and booking Aberdeen a berth in the Scottish Cup final.

As the two teams prepare to meet again at the national stadium on Saturday, with a combined 132 years since their last triumph in the competition, minds will inevitably be cast back to the turn of the millennium, when goals from Stavrum and a right-foot volley from the left-sided Andy Dow took Aberdeen past Hibs from a goal down and into their last Scottish Cup final, against Rangers. Season 1999-2000 was a capricious old campaign for the Pittodrie club, as Ebbe Skovdahl's outfit finished rock bottom of the Scottish Premier League only to be saved from relegation due to league reconstruction, but also managed to record an appearance in the League Cup final against Celtic."A few Aberdeen fans have been posting it on Facebook so I have seen that goal quite a few times in the last few weeks," Stavrum told Herald Sport. "It is strange when you are footballer, often you don't remember too much about the actual 90 minutes because you are too busy focusing on actually playing. But I do remember the goal and I do remember winning, celebrating and all that stuff."We finished bottom of the league that year but got to two cup finals. That season was quite strange because we understood at quite an early stage that no-one was going to be relegated. Quite clearly the focus started being that the cups were more important than the league. I think if we had been in danger of being relegated it might have been different."It does surprise me a little bit that Aberdeen haven't been back to the cup final since then because they are the kind of club who should always be battling it out for cups and third place in Scotland and things like that," he added. "But when it comes to the cups it can be difficult to predict because so much luck is involved, like being drawn against the Old Firm or difficult teams away from home."In the final, christened 'Orange Day' by the Rangers fans, it was Aberdeen who got murdered. Jim Leighton was sent off in the first minute and, with no substitute goalkeeper on the bench, striker Robbie Winters was called upon to deputise. Despite holding out bravely for a while, he was unable to prevent his side collapsing to a 4-0 defeat. "We had beaten Rangers earlier that season so we knew that it was possible but we also knew that we needed to have a great day and have lots of luck," Stavrum said. "After a minute everything changed, and we knew it really wasn't going to work out like that. Robbie wasn't the greatest goalkeeper so it was always going to be tough."If a poignant footnote to the memory resides in the fact that Hicham Zerouali, a member of that 2000 squad, is no longer around to tell the tale, having died at the age of 27 in a car crash in Rabat, Morocco, Stavrum's own playing career went on to Besiktas in Turkey, then Mainz in Germany, but his managerial career never really got off the ground. After a decent start at Baerum SK, Stavrum took charge of his former club Molde as they met Paul Le Guen's Rangers in the Uefa Cup in 2006, but relegation and the sack followed. Following a stint at lower division Skeid, he now devotes himself to his literary endeavours and media work."I had a perfect time in Aberdeen but I had an offer from Turkish football which was very interesting and I knew that I would regret not trying it," said Stavrum, who was twice capped for Norway. "But there were also times I regretted leaving Aberdeen. I loved being a manager but the problem with Norwegian football at a lot of clubs is the economy; there is no money to pay anybody, so it becomes difficult to work full-time as I think you have to if you want to be a successful manager and you are basically running the club."It became an impossible situation at Skeid but we parted as good friends. But I always had a dream of writing books and I have really enjoyed the process of writing, the process of meeting people and talking about ideas, and speaking about football. I don't know what I will be doing in five years time but I am going to focus on writing."Whether his personal narrative has a happy ending or not, Stavrum hopes Aberdeen can write a new chapter in their cup history at Hampden on Saturday.

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Final chapter

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