Interview: Jackie McNamara, Partick Thistle caretaker manager

Published on Saturday 23 April 2011 17:33

SCIENTISTS WILL surely be intrigued to see how things develop at Partick Thistle, while league managers will be studying matters just as intently.

Because, if Jackie McNamara does lose his hair or his assistant Simon Donnelly suddenly turns grey, then it will provide incontrovertible proof that their job stress levels are through the roof. After all, those two are the Peter Pans of football, looking hardly a day older than the day they turned professional two decades ago.

McNamara laughs at the idea of it, saying it is something he and his sidekick have already discussed. But such is their desire to test the managerial waters, they are willing to wave goodbye to the boyish looks.

For now it is a temporary position at Firhill. Promoted to the role of gaffer when Ian McCall stood down with only a month of the season remaining, still on the books as a player and charged with coaching the under-19s, McNamara was elevated. The aim between now and the end of the season is to impress enough to be awarded the job on a permanent basis.

"I'm not going to lie, I do want the job. This would be a good club to start with and begin the learning process and we know that we will have to bring through the young kids but that's something I can see myself doing, giving them a chance, working with them and, hopefully, making them better players."

But he wasn't always so keen on the idea. "When I was younger I used to say to my dad that I wouldn't bother. I've seen the way some players are with their coaches and I wouldn't like those problems myself but as you get older you see things more and you want to try to help the young players. I wouldn't want to say which ones it was, that wouldn't be right, but I have seen the things some managers have said and done and I have thought, 'no I would do that differently or say things differently'. Now I can hopefully do it my way."

Mild-mannered and laid-back the understandable concern for some is whether he is just too nice to manage. After all, few will have heard him raise his voice in anger. A family man who tries to banish the trials and tribulations of football from his home life where he embraces the distraction of his wife and kids, he says he has already recognised the role they will play in preserving his sanity and youthful appearance if proves to be the way forward. They have been on holiday while he has been at home trying to engineer victories for Partick Thistle and the mental toll is greater when he heads home to an empty house and plenty of time to mull matters over. But McNamara smiles.He doesn't consider understanding, encouragement and honesty weaknesses but the idea of laid-back decency and management being incompatible is something he has heard before. Yet those who know him realise that there is another side to him. He is a winner and he doesn't like being taken for a mug. In his mind there is a line and if someone crosses it then Mr Nice Guy does have a darker side.

The hairdryer treatment will never be his modus operandi, though. While old-timers such as Sir Alex Ferguson still get away with it, he is in an ever-dwindling minority, says McNamara, who maintains that good guys can win. In fact he knows it. "Wim Jansen was about as mild-mannered a man as you could find but very successful. I liked his approach and we won the league with Wim at Celtic, so he obviously knew what he was doing. He wasn't a tyrant but he still got the best out of players.

"But I think things have changed anyway. When I was a kid of 16 at Dunfermline, the way I was spoken to or the way I was treated, things have moved on now. The way society is in general is different. Kids nowadays wouldn't take that and it's a case of identifying with them and dealing with them. It's no longer a case of managers ruling with an iron first and through fear. I don't think that works any more. I think it's about respect. Sometimes players do need a rollocking but sometimes it's about encouragement and about being honest with a player. I think they respond to that.

"Most importantly, I want players to come and play with a bit of freedom and enjoy their football. I enjoyed my football and the times I wasn't enjoying it I moved on because of that."

Having given management serious thought for the past few years, applying for the Falkirk vacancy when John Hughes left for Hibs, he has taken a stance on the style of management he will veer away from and also pondered the kind of gaffer he does want to be.

"I think about the times I really enjoyed my football and think back to what we did. As far as the best manager I have worked with I think most people would immediately think Martin O'Neill because of all the success we had but Tommy Burns was fantastic for me. I went to Celtic when I was 21 and even when I was in the first team he would have me back in the afternoons, along with the other younger players like Simon and Brian McLaughlin, working on stuff and building partnerships. It wasn't just coincidence that Simon and I clicked, we worked on things and that was through coaching and Tommy encouraging good habits. I think we saw the merit in it even at the time. We never saw it as a punishment because we enjoyed it. As far as management goes, if players are not coached and they make a mistake then that mistake is the manager's fault but, if I coach them and they keep making that mistake, then you have a problem because it's down to the player. That's the way I look at it. It's about shared responsibility.That's the best way of putting it."

Football, like life, is about good relationships and teamwork. And making players feel valued. Getting involved in transfer negotiations is not always the best way to achieve that because it can all become too personal, the sense of betrayal too acute. He learned that the hard way at Celtic. "Martin O'Neill had left and there's no doubt in my mind I would have stayed if Martin had still been there. But Gordon (Strachan] came in and he maintains he wanted me - I maintain he didn't. There has to be dialogue. From that experience, one thing I would do with players is be honest and tell them if there is a place for them or tell them if I want to get another player in. Then it's up to them if they stay and try to change my mind but at least I have been honest. I think that's only fair."

In the end, his exit from Celtic was laced with more bitterness than was necessary and was a sad end to a glorious association which reaped the reward of ten trophies and the kind of friendships which sees him regard the likes of Donnelly as a brother and prompts the scaling of volcanoes in memory of another former team-mate, Phil O'Donnell.

By the time the group of players and friends leave for Ecuador on 11 May for a ten-day trek that will see them scale five volcanoes en-route to the peak of Mount Cotopaxi for charity, McNamara hopes to have done enough to convince the Thistle board that he deserves an extended run.

If he gets the job, Donnelly will be his right-hand man because he trusts him completely and their football philosophies are so similar. "I will still have to make the final say, though. It was Brian Clough, wasn't it, who said of course he would listen to other opinions... and then do what he wanted all along! But I think Simon and I have a similar outlook and in all the years we have known each other we have never fallen out about football."

It has been a tough introduction, though. Handed the role totally unexpectedly, he has also had a horrendous roll call of injuries to contend with. "It's a challenge and something all managers have to deal with at some time but it's not ideal when you only have a few games to impress and your trying to get the job."

So far he is not losing too much sleep over it and the hair is still thick and dark. "Maybe we should take before-and-after pics.

"Come back and see what we are like this time next season. I'll probably have pulled all my hair out and be bald and Simon will be pure white! But management is stressful and I think we have to accept that."

Willing to make such sacrifice, surely he deserves a shot.