SFL managerial positions are increasingly being filled by experienced players within the dressing rooms

Saturday 13 October 2012

THE distance from the dressing room to the manager's office is growing shorter.

Cowdenbeath's Colin Cameron, left, led his team to the second division title in his first year as player manager. Picture: SNS

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Chris Tait

It used to be a fairly uncomplicated task to predict the identity of a Scottish Football League club's new manager; you simply checked which coach most recently left a post and went from there, each appointment acting to prove the managerial merry-go-round was in full swing. Or that club chairmen were putting all their keys into a bowl before getting into bed with a new coach.

Yet such a practice has become increasingly archaic. Of the 30 SFL clubs, 12 have appointed player-managers or handed control to an experienced player, seven of them taking office since the end of last season. The collateral damage has been established coaches; the likes of Gus MacPherson, Jimmy Calderwood, Ian McCall, Jocky Scott and John Robertson have all been left out of work since leaving SFL clubs. Their cvs are extensive – Calderwood can count European competition at Aberdeen and MacPherson a League Cup final with St Mirren – but such statistics are at odds with the number of offers they have been given since coming back on the market.Their chances have been hampered by the collective success young managers have had despite being required to learn on the job. Any gaps in their knowledge have tended to be filled with trophies. In the last two seasons the oldest manager to win a league title in the SFL was 39, while all four managers in tomorrow's Ramsdens Cup semi-finals were playing competitively only a year ago. Three still are; Paul Sheerin, the Arbroath player-manager, and Queen of the South's Allan Johnston could share midfield as they try to steer their sides towards the final.The success of this new breed of coaches might seem remarkable but there was a precedent. Derek McInnes was plucked from the dressing room at St Johnstone and the aptitude he showed for management at the Perth side drew covetous glances from England, the 41-year-old now in his second season in charge of npower Championship club Bristol City. "What you'll find is that a lot of owners and chairman have the benefit of seeing an older player looking to become a young manager working close at hand," says McInnes, who led St Johnstone to promotion to the Scottish Premier League in 2009."In my case I was taking the reserve team when I was still playing at St Johnstone. At the moment it is senior players that are getting an opportunity. It can be a financial gain for the club initially as they get two jobs for the price of one basically, although I wouldn't be cynical and say that's the only reason they get a chance."It is a central question facing a player-manager: do you play? Do you bench yourself? Or do you resolve simply to set down the cones and then tell someone else to dribble around them? For McInnes the answer presented itself during the first half of a League Cup tie with Morton not long after taking over at McDiarmid Park – "I took myself off at half-time. I needed to concentrate on being a manager and get the players to see me more as a manager. That was the best decision I made," he says.An experienced player can be a venerable member of a squad, his authority affording him a parental role in the team. The transition to manager requires that relationship with team-mates to be severed and the white line which separates the pitch from the technical area can represent the divide which has to exist to ensure a young coach is able to flourish. Yet sentiment can often bleed over when it comes to axing a player who had been regarded as a team-mate and a friend."When it came to the end of my first full season [at St Johnstone] I could only keep either Kevin Rutkiewicz or Allan McManus. Both were out of contract," says McInnes. "The budget only allowed me to keep one so I had to let go a very close friend in Allan McManus. We had been travelling together for the best part of a year and that was tough; letting go a guy who I was very close to, whose family I was very close to, letting him know that there wasn't a contract there for him. I always thought after doing that one then the rest would be easier and that has been the case."McManus would go on to work in tandem with James Grady as the management team at Morton, the pair stepping up from the squad to stave off relegation from the first division only to then be denied a second term. Their experience illustrates a truth that not all young managers are allowed time to grow into the role, with Mark Roberts attracting a degree of criticism after a somewhat unconvincing start to his tenure at Ayr United. Yet while more seasoned coaches have weathered similar situations, the conditions are not necessarily unfavourable to a younger manager."I think they can get a handle on the feeling in the dressing room, what the players like, what stimulates them; they know the players well because they are team-mates," says McInnes. "I think there is a lot to take from that. For a younger manager there are a lot of things with which they can relate with the players other than just their football."

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SFL managerial positions are increasingly being filled by experienced players within the dressing rooms

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