A bandage for Butcher

Published on Saturday 31 January 2009 18:46

EX-England star hopes Caley job will help heal wounds left by Sydney and Brentford, he tells Moira Gordon

ACCORDING TO his new director of football, Graeme Bennett, when Terry Butcher walks out of the tunnel at Caledonian Stadium this afternoon, he will be greeted by the sight of home fans paying homage, heads swathed in bandages. Almost two decades after his exploits in a World Cup qualifier for England, the image of him with blood streaming down his face, the dressings and white strip stained a deep red, is an easy one to conjure up. In football, as in life, certain memories endure.

Which is ironically what troubled Butcher most before he met the club's board last week. He feared that recent blights on his curriculum vitae would spring too easily to mind and deny him the chance of returning to the game. Things quickly turned sour for him at Sydney FC and then Brentford and he feared they would undermine the good work he carried out at Motherwell, taking them from bottom of the SPL and into the top six and a League Cup final, during his last managerial stint in Scotland.

He had resigned himself to being a football voyeur, still passionate about what he was watching but unlikely to be asked to join in. "I'd thought my future might be as a pundit," said the man who had carved a niche for himself as a studio guest for Setanta. "There had been no real chance to get back in and people might say I've jumped on the first one that's come along but you don't get many chances in the SPL."

But he still had to weigh everything up. A man who knows the politics of the game, he recognises that chances are not infinite. Another failure and there could be no way back.

"The criticism and the way those two jobs worked out hit me hard. The doubts were there because you think, will they want me after what's happened? How has it affected my profile? You wonder what people think because you don't want to suffer rejection again, you don't want to miss an opportunity to put things right by having success again. But the directors were great and I'm good at selling myself. I could sell cold chips to customers when I ran a hotel!"

One major selling point was his desperation to get back into the game, another was his enthusiasm. It spews forth as he talks about the first couple of days of training, the facilities, his directors, the players, heck, even the venue he met the directors in to iron out his deal. Following his first day working with the players he phoned his wife, informing her he hadn't wanted the day to end. "It was perfect," he states before joking that "football matches actually get in the way to a certain degree. We were at the training ground at Fort George and it was a bit of a wind machine on Thursday but on Wednesday it was magnificent, the hills had snow on them and we're surrounded by trees and you look around and go 'wow, this is one of the most picturesque training grounds in Britain'. It's fantastic."

It wasn't a case of trying to convince his wife that the Highlands is a wonderful place to settle – she is already sold on that idea and is used to following her husband around.

"Rita's been great about it. She's just said here we go again... is there a team in Siberia you want to manage because we haven't tried there?" Gone for now is the London life of restaurants, trips to the theatre, museums and art galleries. In recent times it was the Andy Warhol exhibition and the West End version of Mamma Mia! Now, with his own blank canvas, he is hoping to paint his new charges in a fresh light and remind them that the winner takes it all. No more griping about misfortune, the Scotland assistant manager believes you make your own luck. He knows his new team have been playing well but without securing the points but he also says they are the only ones who can alter that.

That's where the renowned motivational skills come into it. Desperation, enthusiasm and motivation, all worthwhile credentials, but the clincher for the manager as well as his employers was the reuniting of Butcher with his former assistant at Fir Park, Maurice Malpas. The pair went their separate ways after leaving Motherwell and neither prospered.

"I didn't have Maurice with me on those two jobs (at Sydney and Brentford] and I would have had more doubts about taking the job if he hadn't been joining me. That was a major factor for me because we got on really well at Motherwell, had a great working relationship, he's very experienced and we're two different characters which works well. We certainly loved Motherwell because we could see the progress we were making but you don't always get time at clubs to do that. I did get a full season at Sydney and got them into the play-offs, which they failed to do this season, not that I'm bitter!"

It is his candour that rankles with a few but is lapped up by the majority. Honest self-appraisal works but when you are as tough as nails and have the blood-soaked shirts to prove it, there is no harm, in the right circumstances, in showing some vulnerability. In Butcher's world, that does not apply to the field of play. Graeme Souness once described him as "six foot four of solid muscle" but it is his players' psyche he will have to toughen up first as they battle to stave off relegation. So far this season, their longest unbeaten run in the league is two matches – one win and a draw – but there are 15 games left in which to salvage SPL status, as well as pride, he says.

In his first meeting with the players he asked how many had been relegated before. "It was about four or five of them. You don't want that because it sticks with you. You don't want that stigma and you don't want people at this club to lose their jobs as a result of that, so the players have a big responsibility, which is a sobering thought for them."

At the moment it is a case of going back to basics, rebuilding confidence, stressing the way he wants them to play. "It's like a machine that's not quite right and you have just got to reprogramme it a little bit, that's how I see the job," he says, momentarily serious, before breaking into grin. "Hey, that's pretty good, I'm pleased with that." He has added a few new pieces to the machinery. Richie Foran and Eric Odhiambo were the first acquisitions and others are expected before tomorrow's transfer deadline.

According to Bennett, the mood is already buoyant following Butcher's appointment. And the sense of optimism will only increase if the side can take anything from this afternoon's match against Celtic. "Inverness have had a great results against Celtic in the past, probably more than I've had as a manager," says Butcher. "It's a perfect start because there's no expectations on us to win. From that point of view it's perfect in a bizarre way but I think in bizarre ways."

Not too bizarre. He watched the League Cup semi-final on Wednesday and when asked for his assessment he says simply that he's glad it went to extra time on a heavy pitch. But what advice did he give his players in training the next day? "I told them not to concede a penalty because Boruc will probably take it and what a penalty his was, it was the best of the lot!"

OK, maybe a wee bit bizarre but anyone who watched that bloodied defender, almost two decades ago, refusing to come off, heading one high ball after another despite the fact it was ripping open his stitches, will already have known his mind wasn't wired the same way as others.