WHEN Falkirk visit Hampden Park this Saturday they can feel blessed with such rich football knowledge in their midst.

In the technical area it will seem enough to have men like Peter Houston and Alex Smith steering the ship. Up in the stands, though, another fine football figure will be urging on the Bairns.

Alex Totten, who works behind the scenes at Falkirk, has enjoyed a momentous innings in football. Bill Shankly signed him for Liverpool when he was 15, and he then played for Dundee, Dunfermline, Falkirk, Queen of the South and Alloa, before enjoying a 22-year managerial career of some distinction.

Totten is too easily remembered for the kilt he wore for the 1997 Scottish Cup final while manager of Falkirk. What is more telling about his managerial career is that he improved and hoisted up - sometimes startlingly so - just about every club he took on.

Having played for one of the best ever Scottish schoolboy sides in the late 1950s, teams across Britain coveted Totten, including Arsenal and Manchester United.

"I went down to Manchester United and was shown around Old Trafford, and was introduced to Bobby Charlton, but eventually Bill Shankly signed me for Liverpool in 1961," Totten says. "Liverpool at that time had terrific players - Ian St John, Roger Hunt, Ian Callaghan, Tommy Smith and others. It was the start of the great Shankly era at the club."

Totten never got to play for the first team at Anfield but his character and maturity were fed by the bucket-load. "It was a fantastic period for me," he says. "Even though I was just a young lad, Shankly showed a great interest in me, and what he did and how he did it influenced me for the rest of my life.

"Shankly back then had Bob Paisley in his backroom team. I once said to Bob Paisley, 'Why are you always getting on at me?' Paisley replied, 'Son, the day I stop getting on at you is the day you should be worried.' It struck home with me - they really cared about us as players.'

At Liverpool, the young Totten found himself accidentally in the vanguard, not just in football, but in music as well.

"Even though I didn't make it at Liverpool, I had a fabulous time. The music scene in the city back then was amazing. We used to quite often go to the Cavern Club and hear various bands. I remember one day hearing the [then little-known] Beatles on the radio, and someone shouted out, 'Hey, that's these guys we've seen at the Cavern!' I was a very lucky boy."

Totten, still in his teens, left one Shankly to sign for another: he left Bill's Liverpool to sign for brother Bob Shankly's Dundee, then on the crest of a wave that would bring the Dens men the 1961-62 Scottish First Division title. "The two of them were complete opposites," says Totten. "Bill Shankly was the great extrovert, he just couldn't stop talking. Bob Shankly was much quieter, much more reserved. But what they both knew about was football, inside out."

I couldn't help asking Totten what it was that held him back as a player. The blunt truth is - and he doesn't mind admitting it - his early playing promise as a young full-back wasn't borne out.

"I wasn't fast," he replied. "That was it. Bill Shankly once said to me, 'Laddie, you're one of the best passers of the ball I've seen.' That was my strong point. But I lacked pace. If I'd had that, I might have done more in football. That said, I played from the age of 15 until I was 33, so I had a good innings. No complaints, I had a really enjoyable career."

It is too easily forgotten how gifted Totten was as a football manager. In 1982, he took Alloa from being the worst team in Scotland - not an unfamiliar distinction for the Wasps - to promotion from the old Second Division to a comfortable height in the First. He then took Falkirk to the top of the First Division before Jock Wallace and Rangers appointed Totten as Wallace's assistant in 1983.

Perhaps best of all was his guidance of St Johnstone, then in disrepair, from Scotland's bottom tier up into the old SPL in three seasons. Totten had a knack for coaxing players and building teams, which history can now richly confirm. He was voted Manager of the Year in Scotland in 1991.

"I was a manager for 22 years and I felt I had success at various clubs," he says. "I worked under a pile of great figures - the Shankly brothers, Jock Wallace and others - and learned things from them all. But I always tried to do things my own way, and I always played with wingers, and tried to make my teams better. Looking back, I felt I had some success."

But the kilt is one thing Totten will always be remembered for. He managed Falkirk to the 1997 Scottish Cup final - where they lost to Kilmarnock - and wore the full regalia that afternoon at Ibrox. I confessed to Totten yesterday that one pressbox figure that day turned to me and said: 'How can any player take seriously any instruction from a man standing in a kilt?' Totten heartily guffawed at the anecdote.

"I just had a notion to do it," he says. "About a week before the match I said to Kevin McAllister, 'I'm thinking of wearing the kilt on the day', and Kevin said to me, 'Gaffer, the fans would love that.' I also knew Jock Brown, the TV commentator, and Jock promised to give me a glowing reference in his commentary if I did it.

"As we were standing in the tunnel waiting to go out, one of our players that day, Andy Gray, said to me, 'Gaffer, you look a million dollars.' Ach well, I did it, and I enjoyed doing it. I wore the Falkirk tartan. People still ask me about that to this day."

He has come a long way these past 50 years, this lad from Dennyloanhead in Stirlingshire. A Falkirk fan, a player, a manager, now the club's business relations manager, but more than anything, an inspiration. Falkirk are very lucky to have the great Alex Totten.