Sunday Times - Ally McC

[BEARGER 1,829]

Ally McCoist: ‘I looked in the mirror and saw an old man with a face I didn’t recognise’

david walsh, chief sports writer

Managing Rangers took its toll on Ally McCoist but it hasn’t stopped him talking about the game he loves


However Ally McCoist’s life is remembered, it can’t easily be dismissed as uneventful. Forget the record number of goals for Rangers, or the record 363 appearances on A Question of Sport. Put to one side his two-and-a-half-years’ hard labour as Rangers manager during the club’s forced march through the byways of Scottish football.

Think of him as he is now. Fifty-six but not old. He plays five-a-side football three times a week. Frank McAvennie and McCoist duking it out with younger ex-pros Lee McCulloch, Simon Donnelly, Scott McDonald and others. They hire a small artificial pitch out by Rouken Glen in Glasgow, three pounds per man in daylight, £5.50 under lights.

The morning after he wakes there are no aching limbs, no voice telling him he needs to slow down. He still needs to compete, to drip with sweat. Eventually his body will say no and then he knows his life will be less.

On a good weekend he watches three of his boys play football on Saturday, and the two youngest are again in action playing rugby on Sunday. If there’s a chance to take in a Rangers game at Ibrox he’ll be there with Arran, the second youngest. And on a really good weekend he’ll get to Scotstoun stadium to support Glasgow Warriors in the Pro 14.

He likes Scotstoun because at least in Scotland, the old rugby hasn’t been entirely swept away by the tidal wave of progress. After games he’ll have a pint with Stuart Hogg or Al Kellock and be reminded of how it once was in football and how conversations over a drink are so often better, for even the most loquacious have to pause to sip.

In two or three weeks Christmas cards will start arriving. Every year, the same routine. Going through each day’s delivery, searching for the American stamp and the card from Robert Duvall. Yeah, same guy, Tom Hagen in The Godfather. Always gives him a kick, makes him smile. Vanity or what?

We’re sitting here in the bar of a Glasgow hotel, he’s sipping a glass of wine, pausing before explaining his long-range friendship with Duvall. They once made a football movie together. It was the late 90s, he was then an ageing footballer seeing out his days with Kilmarnock. Duvall was still at the top and would be for a long time after. Three years ago, at age 84, Duvall became the oldest actor to be nominated for an academy award.

Back in 1999 Duvall was Gordon McLeod, manager of the fictional Scottish football team Kilnockie. McCoist was cast as the team’s ageing star, the former Celtic player Jackie McQuillan. The critics weren’t kind to A Shot at Glory and the movie didn’t do much at the box office but let McCoist tell of a fondly remembered scene.

“We were in the dressing room at Hampden. It’s half-time and Kilnockie are getting beat one-nil. We’ve been s*** in the first half. So the players are arguing among themselves, waiting for the manager [Robert Duvall] to walk in. The Kilnockie players were in fact guys who played for Airdrie at the time; boys like Big Andy Smith, Jimmy Boyle, Owen Coyle, and they’re all wise to the fact that the fellow who is speaking at the moment Duvall walks in is likely to end up in the actual film.

“So everyone is trying to save their best line for the moment Robert enters. Jimmy Boyle thinks he’s timed it perfectly because he’s shouting, ‘I cannae believe what you’ve said there, I cannae believe it’ just as the door opens. But as Robert actually walks in, Coyle speaks up. ‘Hey boys, a bit of hush for the gaffer,’ and what could anyone say after that? Perfect.”

McCoist won 10 Scottish league titles during his 15-year playing career with Rangers; played with Graeme Souness, Paul Gascoigne, Terry Butcher, Brian Laudrup. His 355 goals meant he was often included in the same sentence as the team’s best players. Being from East Kilbride and a Rangers fan from boyhood also helped but McCoist’s career in TV owed much to his outgoing personality and easy way with people.

Rivals complained he won marginal calls on A Question of Sport because Sue Barker, the show’s host, had a soft spot for him. It would be a surprise if she hadn’t.

He got more than most but not everything. Managing Rangers was the job he would have killed for but when it came, it almost killed him. Right job, wrong time. Too much was spent dealing with stuff that had little to do with the team’s next game. It was Vivien who brought him to his senses. “Ten o’clock on the morning of a game and my missus said to me, ‘Come here, look at yourself in that mirror’. I looked at myself and, genuinely, I went, ‘That’s not the answer. That’s not who I want to be.’ I saw an old man, somebody I didn’t recognise. An old man carrying too much weight with bags under his eyes with a face I didn’t recognise. She looked at me and I just said, ‘Don’t say any more. Don’t say any more’.”

Soon he was on gardening leave and his working life is now divided between BT Sport and talkSPORT. He likes the work because he’s paid for talking about stuff he’d be talking about even if he wasn’t being paid. His old manager Souness is his favourite pundit.

He’s sure too that Rangers are, at last, moving in the right direction. Steven Gerrard’s appointment was key, he says. “The club needed a change of direction. We needed somebody of that stature, to bring the thing up, and he’s done that.”

From the rich life he led, he had to learn something. He tells his boys they can’t do anything foolish he hasn’t already done. And he doesn’t forget how stupid he was at times. There is a car journey he remembers. Neil, his dad, had just told him that he and his mum Jessie were separating. He was a 19-year-old at Sunderland and after the bad news had to drive from East Kilbride back down south.

“I was so angry they were separating. It was all about me. F*** all to do with my mum and dad. Never mind their two lives, what about me? And the guilt I’ve got for that feeling, it’s still with me.”

His dad passed away long ago but his 91-year-old mum is still very much with them, living in the house that has been the family home for 64 years. Two years ago they asked her what she’d like for Christmas. “BT Sport,” she said and that’s what Ally and his sister Alison got her.

“I get a text the following Tuesday night. ‘Are you enjoying this game?’ Tuesday night, I’m thinking, what game could be on? So I phoned her, ‘Mum, what game are you watching? ‘Alastair,’ she says sternly, ‘Hoffenheim are playing Eintracht Frankfurt. Hoffenheim are some team.’ She loves her sport. Loves her Andy Murray. She swears blind Andy Murray is her son. It’s our Andy this, our Andy that. Andy Murray doesn’t know this but he’s related to me. The second son my mother never had.”

He tries to be to his boys what his mum has been for him. “I don’t know how history will look back on me as a dad. All I pray for is when I’m no longer here that they will give me a tick in that box. That’s all I want.”

McCoist on his old boss Graeme Souness

‘When he was Rangers player-manager we fought like cat and dog. If I’d complained he would have sold me and there’s a wee element of me that thinks he wanted that, so that was the last thing he was getting. I stayed and I worked. Graeme and I still laugh about it now. I believe Graeme is as good as if not the best pundit. I think he has a great knowledge, a great understanding.’

 

[MacK1950 2,231]

Nice piece despite all his sins Coisty was and still is a Rangers Man?