GARY LOCKE has known the full wrath of it. Recently a Kilmarnock supporter, feeling that he had plenty to be irate about, bawled from the main stand: ‘For God’s sake, Locke, get yer hauns oot yer pockets!’ The Kilmarnock manager stood there and mused that, had he been using his hands to wave a magic wand, it still wouldn’t have made much difference.

Kilmarnock are floundering in 11th place in the Ladbrokes Premiership, the cushion beneath them only puffed-up by Dundee United’s even more desperate plight. The league table doesn’t lie – this Kilmarnock squad is not good enough – but while Locke will attempt to address the situation in January, every pound is a prisoner at the club. At Rugby Park in recent years, they have cut and cut until the white bone is showing.

Many things may faze Locke – adversity isn’t one of them. Throughout his career – from the cruel injuries which robbed him of a rich life at the top of the game in Britain, to the administration horrors as coach of Hearts – he has been through it all. If you were suddenly thrown back into the days of trench-warfare, Locke is one of those characters you’d want there beside you.

“I’ve been through a lot,” he says. “Though funnily enough, I still see myself as a pretty young football manager. I’m still only 40. And I still think I’ve been fortunate, after everything I’ve been through in football.”

It is easily forgotten now how good Locke appeared to be as a young, skilful, gutsy defender back in the mid-1990s. By the time he was 20, under Jim Jefferies, he was Hearts’ youngest-ever captain, and the 1996 Scottish Cup final loomed for him and his team against Rangers. But fate would heap a diabolical experience on Locke.

Six minutes into that Hampden cup final, he turned quickly on the grass and ruptured his right knee. In that single moment, the full potential of his playing career was taken away from him.

“It is hard to look back and wonder what might have been,” he says. “I still consider that I had a good career – playing for Hearts, Bradford City and here at Kilmarnock – but it might have been very different.

“I was 20 years old. I was the Hearts captain. Everything was going so well for me and I knew there was interest in me from big clubs down south. If I hadn’t got injured in that Scottish Cup final, who knows where I would have ended up at the time?

“Back then Hearts would not have been in a position to turn down big money for me. A number of Premier League clubs in England were keen on me. But what happened in that final happened: I did my cruciate early in the game against Rangers and my career probably changed that day.”

In fact, by the time Locke was 22, he had suffered two bad knee injuries. It turned the boy into the man almost overnight. As deeply-dyed as Hearts is in Locke’s veins – an affection inherited from his dad, also called Gary, and a Hearts fanatic to this day – he might have gone on to have a stellar career in England on top of numerous Scotland caps.

“I probably missed out on a really big move after that 1996 cup final,” he says. “I was disappointed because I’d played a lot for the Scotland Under-21s, and I also missed out on a European Championship that summer.

“The injury probably kept me back in my career. When I did get back to full fitness, up and running again, it was my knee that held me back a bit. I lost a bit of pace and I knew I didn’t have the full range of movement I once had.

“When I look back, the rehab I did was night and day compared to what I see today. We’ve got Chris Johnston here at Kilmarnock with a similar injury to mine – he’s got facilities and medical knowledge, like moving his knee as soon as he’s had the op, that I never had. My knee was in a brace for two months – I never got to move it once.

“But, that said, the most important thing was to get back fit, and I did, and I played football – not without further injuries – until I was 34. I still had a pretty good career. I still managed to play at the top level. I see a lot of players today who retire early and don’t get to play to the level in their careers that I did. So I still feel pretty fortunate.”

A surgeon finally urged Locke, with his ailing right knee at no more than 80 per cent of its true value, to hang up his boots.

“By the time I was 34 here at Killie, I was taking pain-killers just to get through games, and sometimes on a Sunday morning I genuinely couldn’t walk down the stairs. I had to stop, I was fed up being in pain. The surgeon said to me, ‘if you don’t stop playing now, you are going to have a poor quality of life from now on.’ That was it. The fight was over.”

From fire to fire, Locke’s career continued without respite. He was appointed the Hearts coach in March, 2013, but then administration happened, the Tynecastle club was left fighting for its life, and Locke was released from his duties at the end of the 2013-14 season.

“I still say it was the most horrendous thing that has ever happened to me in football – being sat down by the administrators at Hearts and being told the club would close in two or three weeks’ time. It was my very worst football experience to date.”

And then being replaced by Robbie Neilson as coach? “I was forced to play a lot of young players for Hearts that were never ready for first-team football. But I take great pride in seeing a lot of these young boys now doing so well.

“A new owner [Ann Budge] comes in to any club and has their own ideas. It is part and parcel of football. I accepted it. I was disappointed, but I knew that’s how football works.”

In the here and now Locke has a passion for Kilmarnock that many don’t appreciate, in part due to his Hearts connections. He spent seven seasons as a player at Rugby Park – almost as long a time as he did at Hearts – and is devoted to trying to hoist up the Ayrshire club.

“I know this club very well, I respect it, and I want to be as successful here as I possibly can be,” he says. “Kilmarnock – the town as well as the club – has been hit hard in so many ways. I really enjoyed my time here as a player and I’d love to enjoy it just as much as the manager.”