Obituary: Bryan Cooney, Scottish sports journalist

Bryan Cooney had the respect of peers and sportspeople alike

Bryan Cooney, whose full-time career ended due to ill-health, aged 58, while head of sport at the Daily Mail, has died, 12 years after a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Despite his father, John, being headmaster of an Aberdeen primary school, Bryan left school with virtually no educational qualifications and tackled a variety of jobs including driving taxis. Belatedly, he began a career in sports journalism, as a racing page sub-editor on The Press and Journal newspaper. Save for a brief interlude at a weekly newspaper in south London, there followed four decades of working for national newspapers – the Daily Express, Scottish Sun,Daily Star and, from 1997, theDaily Mail in London – the much-desired pinnacle of his career.

Two years previously he had been appointed sports editor of the Scottish Daily Mail which had been relaunched as a stand-alone title. The born-again mid-market tabloid rapidly achieved a significant presence in Scotland, and Bryan’s success in producing compelling, circulation-boosting content – building and moulding an entire departmental team from scratch – led to the Mail’s legendary, demanding editor, Paul Dacre, luring him back to London as his highly-paid head of sport.

The tall, well-built and hard-working Aberdonian was immediately ordered by Dacre to undertake a massive reorganisation of the Mail’s allegedly too laid back sports department. Bryan acquiesced in firm, if perhaps a trifle brutal fashion, rationalising: “People had to go. And soon they went.”

Yet, just four years later he was forced to resign through ill-health – caused by excessive potassium in his body. Devastated, he headed back to Scotland, taking the brave step of seeking to establish himself as a Glasgow-based freelance sportswriter in a notoriously competitive market.

Fortuitously, he almost immediately struck up a relationship with the Sunday Herald, and over the next 11 years delivered a most readable, beautifully crafted weekly column for the sports pages, while also producing feature articles. He was voted Sports Journalist of the Year three times in the Scottish Press Awards.

He also diversified into broadcasting via BBC Radio Scotland. One series, The Pain of the Game, won him a Sony bronze award. He also wrote four books. The debut book paid homage to his beloved Aberdeen FC, Stand by Your Reds; followed by a profile of Celtic FC footballer George Connelly, then the story of the enigmatic but brilliant Scottish musician, Gerry Rafferty, of Baker Street and Stuck In The Middle songs fame.

Most fascinating was his autobiography, Fingerprints of a Football Rascal, on Amazon Kindle. The book’s blurb pointed to an early life lived fully if not wisely: “The mayhem of my young life: the wild drinking and aberrant escapades, precipitated by the lunatic lotion.”

Bryan had dark episodes trying to combat his alcoholism, but ultimately conquered his addiction and embraced teetotalism in the latter part of his life with apparent ease.

However, his accumulative drinking on duty had led to his dismissal from The Scottish Sun – not helped by being banned from travelling on the Scottish Football Association’s official charter flights after a drunken episode in Spain when he was found sleeping in the hotel bed of an SFA bigwig – not even in his own hotel.

The handsome, articulate Aberdonian readily owned up to vanity, and was always the dapper man about town – immaculately dressed and groomed.

Bryan’s fall-outs with leading sports figures were legendary – including Sir Alex Ferguson, Jock Stein, Sir Alf Ramsey, Kevin Keegan and Sir Nick Faldo – but he also won the respect and lasting friendship of many leading figures in sport.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 but did not initially appear noticeably fazed. It wasn’t until his condition was pronounced as terminal two years ago that he began writing a stream of anguished, fearful, introspective blogs. He declined a third life-extending blood transfusion in May because of the threat of catching coronavirus, and reluctantly agreed to recce a Glasgow hospice.

The hospice’s culture, ambience and the staff’s obvious dedication to duty won him over, and he was very happy to be looked after there during his last few days.

Predeceased by his two elder brothers, both dying young, Bryan is survived by his wife, Margaret, his valiant mainstay in both the good times and the bad. They were very happily wed for 45 years and the marriage was blessed with four sons – Glen, Scott, Mark and Darren – and then, to Bryan’s delight, five granddaughters.

The eulogy at his Humanist funeral was given by Jim Black, former chief sports writer of the Scottish Sun, a close friend of Bryan’s for 46 years, and co-founder with him of an unconventional sports website, No Grey Areas.

Jim told the mourners: “Bryan built a huge reputation as a fearless story-breaker who was never afraid to shoot from the lip. Indeed, he pulled fewer punches than Muhammad Ali… but underneath that occasionally intimidating exterior lurked a kind and very generous heart.”

And he impishly recalled, amid laughter: “I made Bryan a promise that I would carry out his wish not to turn this into a sombre homily on his life. He instructed me: ‘Now I don’t want too much gloom, James. Introduce some lightheartedness’, he commanded, adding: ‘Mind you, a bit of homage would be good – just not too much’.”

Exceptionally unusually for him, in this sombre setting Bryan was not getting to have the last word …but he was damned determined, as always, he would at least influence his own valediction!