It's McNamee you're looking for

Published on Sunday 23 May 2004 01:00

HE IS hoping to earn his first cap next week, but David McNamee has never been far from the Scotland team. Brought up in Mount Florida, he and his mates tried countless times to sneak through the doors of the National Stadium and out on to surface, but never succeeded. They settled instead for scaling the walls of Lesser Hampden or, if a game was on, started a kickabout on the ash pitches nearby. "Obviously you had to watch out for broken glass, syringes and stuff like that," he says.

He remembers the international matchdays, the crowds passing his house, the cars parked outside. Now he is closer still to wearing the dark blue, having played so well for Livingston in this season’s CIS Cup final at Hampden that Berti Vogts called him up for the friendly against Romania in March. He would have started that match at right-back had it not been for a hamstring injury that forced him to withdraw from the squad.

Last month, he travelled with the rest of Scotland’s players to Copenhagen, but never made it off the bench. This week, he is preparing for a double-header that offers him his best chance yet, a prospect so tantalising he can almost taste it. If, as expected, he makes his debut against Estonia in Tallin on Thursday, or against Trinidad and Tobago at Easter Road three days later, he will become the first Livingston player to win a Scotland cap.

McNamee is only 23, but after a whirlwind start to his career, it seems to have been a long time coming. Half a season with St Mirren when he was only 17 was enough to persuade Blackburn Rovers that he and his team-mate, Burton O’Brien, were worthy of a contract. In over three years at Ewood Park, however, neither Brian Kidd nor his successor as manager, Graeme Souness, offered him a single appearance in the first team.

"I could count on one hand the number of words Mr Souness spoke to me, apart from the meeting when he said that he wasn’t interested in playing me. I would walk past him in the corridors, but that was more or less it. He has his players he is interested in, and the ones he is not. If you’re not on that list, you can say cheerio."

When he finally escaped the cold shoulder two summers ago, there were more obstacles in his path. He struggled at first to displace Philippe Brinquin from the Livingston side and, after eventually succeeding, he sustained a groin injury that sidelined him for over three months. "I was beginning to think my dad had annoyed some gypsy somewhere and a curse had been put on us."

The hype, they said, had been excessive. McNamee’s early leap into the big time had denied him the development he needed. "I would probably agree now with the people who said it had come a bit early. I could have stayed with St Mirren for another season or two, and got more experience, but it is difficult to turn down an opportunity like that."

Now, judged at last on an entire season of first-team football, McNamee is proving himself. The cup-winning display at Hampden was the highlight of a campaign in which he has established himself as the best wing-back in the country after Didier Agathe. "The thing I kept holding on to was that Blackburn wouldn’t have bought me at such an early age if I didn’t have the ability."

Even before the start of this season, McNamee was saying that he hoped to win a cap before the end of it. "I knew that, if I could get myself fit and playing every week, I would have a chance, especially with the wing-back role. It is a position a lot of people can’t play. Darren Fletcher is too creative to play wide and you could argue that Jackie McNamara, who is capable of playing on the right, is more of a full-back. It’s an opportunity for me."

The problem for McNamee is that Vogts’ favoured system of late does not include a wing-back. The young defender will have to play either on the right side of midfield or compete with McNamara at full-back. An energetic, tough- tackling defender, he is at his best rampaging up the right flank, as he has done since Livingston adopted a 3-5-2 system after Marcio Maximo’s departure in October.

It has been the season in which McNamee has managed at last to distinguish himself from O’Brien. One could not be mentioned without the other from the moment both moved to Blackburn, shared digs in the Lancashire town and then joined Livingston together in an attempt to end their frustration. "It got a bit annoying at times. It was as if people thought we lived together or something. They treated us like Siamese twins."

The two, in fact, could hardly be more different. McNamee is a right-footed product of Rangers Boys Club, O’Brien a left-footer of Celtic origin. The budding Scotland international maintains that he is more laid-back than his colleague, although 12 yellow cards and two suspensions this season suggest otherwise. Given Vogts’ liking for passionate players who put themselves about, it is a wonder it has taken the national coach this long to discover the Livi Lion who roars loudest.

In November, when referee Stuart Dougal awarded Hearts an injury-time penalty in what turned out to be a 3-1 defeat at Tynecastle, McNamee called the decision a "fucking disgrace" and was sent off for the first time in his career. "That was a bit excessive, especially as the referee in question was caught later on swearing at Rangers players. I wouldn’t consider myself a dirty player. I have never gone in to hurt anybody. Being aggressive and having that fiery temperament is part of my game, but I wouldn’t say I have ever been over the top."

It is not difficult to see why McNamee is a bundle of energy. His father, Kenny, was a footballer who played for Possil YM, and his sister, Karen, now a doctor, won three silver medals as a runner in the British Athletics Championship. "I don’t think I could have worked in an office or even gone to university," he says. "I’m too fidgety. If I hadn’t made it as a footballer, I might have gone into the army or the police, but I don’t have the attention span for anything else."

In the photo shoot to accompany this interview, the wheeze was to have him washing his BMW with bucket and sponge, but within a few minutes he and his girlfriend, Becky from Blackburn, were throwing water over each other. This, after all, is the man who posed for a tabloid newspaper as Vincent van Gogh, a reference to the chunk of ear he has been without since somebody bit it in a nightclub last season.

It was part of his attempt to deny any wrongdoing that night. "The last thing I wanted people to think was that, just because I loved a tackle on the pitch, I was some kind of ned who gets himself into bother off the pitch. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m not one for going out, I’m not a great clubber, and I’m not even a good drinker."

McNamee is too ambitious to allow his reputation to be tainted in that way. Having already tasted English football, he makes no secret of his desire to return there, or even play for Rangers, the team he supports. He is one of only five Livingston players still under contract, but the poverty-stricken club are in no position to reject an offer by Alex McLeish, who is reported to be interested.

Last Saturday night, after the final match of their season, the Livingston players sat round a crate of beer, wondering whether any of them would be back there after the summer break. "It has been a weird season," says McNamee. "Even at the cup final, the thing I remember most is going into the dressing room and finding Emmanuel Dorado just sitting there cleaning his boots. Being in administration had something to do with that. We knew we were losing some friends."

McNamee knows how it feels to be rejected. Now, at least, with a cup-winner’s medal and international recognition just around the corner, a move elsewhere would be for the right reasons. His motivation, as it has been since the day he left Blackburn, is to satisfy himself that Souness made a mistake. "I said to his face that he was wrong. Maybe some day soon I will be able to prove it."