HAD Derek McInnes failed to cut the mustard in professional football he might have been able to turn his hand to a role he learned as a callow youth at Greenock Morton, that of furniture remover.
McInnes’s early days as a YTS kid at Cappielow in the late 1980s bordered on Victorian considering the tasks he and other apprentices were set by John McMaster, then assistant to manager Allan McGraw.
McMaster was one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Gothenburg Greats, a member of the legendary European Cup-Winners’ Cup-winning side of 1983 and was held in high regard by Morton’s young Turks.
And so, when the former left-back announced to McInnes and his cohorts that there would be a reward for them helping him move house, the anticipation was palpable.
“John McMaster was the guy who really moulded me,” said the Aberdeen manager, who’ll lead his side into the Betfred Cup semi- final against Morton at Hampden on Saturday.
“He and Allan McGraw played me in the first team at 16 as they had a lot of confidence in me and I have much to thank them for.
“Every day as a YTS player was eventful, tough and demanding but it certainly didn’t do me any harm as it was always enjoyable.
“John had been brought up with Sir Alex’s demands at Pittodrie so he made sure as young players we had a lot of work to do. John would inspect all the jobs and you wouldn’t be allowed to leave unless they were done properly.
“We even had to help him move house to Erskine. There were six or seven of us involved on the promise of a reward at the end of it. We worked for five or six hours lifting all his stuff up to the house at Erskine, but we weren’t allowed to go in. We even helped lift in a shed and build it as the rain teemed down but I kept reminding myself of the reward.
“At the end of it, with the last bit of furniture off the truck, he told us to take off our shoes and he led us into the house. We were soaked through and he took us to a cabinet where his European Cup-Winners’ Cup medal from the great win over Real Madrid in Gothenburg in 1983 was and he said: ‘There you go; look at it’. That was our reward.”
The fondness for the club that gave him his start and for which he played more than 220 games over a seven-year period has never waned and he tries to see them when time and commitments allow.
But he will set his Dons on them on Saturday as he aims for a place in the final against Celtic or Rangers, the other semi-finalists who will be in action a week today.
He said: “We were told the first-team players were kings and we had to make sure everything was right for them and you couldn’t go home until everything was checked.
“I was in charge of the dressing room and shower area and he would sometimes say ‘get it done right’ when you had already spent two hours cleaning it.
“I’d get the train from Paisley at seven in the morning and would get one home to seven at night. But I just loved every part of it as I just loved being a footballer.”
The link with the Greenock outfit is still strong and recently McInnes had McGraw and Ian McDonald, a former Cappielow team-mate, at Pittodrie as guests.
“It’s a club that I like to see do well as I have a lot to thank them for and I go down to see them as much as I can,” he said. “I always want Morton to win games and it’s good to see the good work that’s going on there now.
“I was eight-and-a-half years there and while I had a serious injury during that time and it wasn’t all singing and all dancing I only have good memories.”
Such sentiment, however, will be set aside for Saturday’s semi-final as McInnes and his players aim to replicate their achievement of 2014 when they emerged triumphant in the competition.
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