The way we were: Billy Brown on life with Jim Jefferies and Gary Locke

MIND games? Football has been playing them with Billy Brown for several decades but this season it has upped the ante. As the 2011/12 season reaches its conclusion, he will firstly face up to the reality of trying to relegate one of his best friends, before turning his attention to a cup final, where he will have to go toe to toe with a club which was home for most of his managerial highs.

They are scenarios he could only have dreamed up in his nightmares and, while it would be hard to describe his mood as buoyant as he talks about what has to be done, he is extremely focused.

So tangled is the web that, as the interview trundles along, ‘we’ is used when talking about himself and Jim Jefferies, his boyhood friend and football partner of 24 years, who is now the gaffer at Dunfermline. It is also used when he takes a trip down memory lane and discusses Hearts, a club where his protégé Gary Locke still grafts and a place where he enjoyed two managerial stints, helping guide them to silverware in 1998. More pertinently, for now, ‘we’ is also used to describe his current relationship with Hibs, the club he leaned towards as a lad and which currently employs him. It is also the club which now stands in the way of a happy ending to the season for both Jefferies and Hearts.

Pre-season, Brown was part of a three-man management team charged with building on the third-place SPL finish they had engineered for Hearts last term. The established trio of Jefferies, Brown and former captain, turned coach, Gary Locke, had been together through thick and thin.

“At the start of the season, no one would have predicted this,” says Brown with an incredulous look. “But that’s the nature of Scottish football. It’s an interesting game and, although everyone talks it down, there seems to be a lot happening.

“Lockey has become the man in the middle just now because Jim and I both talk to him and he talks to us. He is our protégé and I often wondered where his leanings lie but I have a feeling it’s not with the Hibs!”

With the key issues at the top of the table all but resolved, the focus is on Monday’s crucial relegation head to head. Dunfermline travel to Easter Road five points behind, knowing anything but a win will see them doomed. The last time Jefferies and Brown went head to head, other than the odd table tennis game on holiday or the frequent “discussions” on team selection, was back at the beginning of their managerial careers. Brown was in charge of Musselburgh Athletic, Jim was the Gala Fairydean gaffer. The fact Brown says he can’t remember the result would suggest the Borders team won. But their friendship survived and thrived and it will also withstand Monday’s pressurised occasion. Regardless of the result, the pair will share a post-match drink.

“In football we are all in it together and I have learned that, if you lose, you have got to go in and drink your poison and, if you win, you have got to go in and help them to drink theirs. Storming off in a huff isn’t on. I have only done that once in my life and I will never do it again. Jim will be in win, lose or draw.”

Perhaps ironically given his position now, Brown reveals that the only time he did spit the dummy was when Hearts lost 6-2 to Hibs at Easter Road in 2000.

“The Hearts team at that time was coming to the end, Gary Naismith had gone, Neil McCann was away and David Weir had gone and we got beat by Alex McLeish and Andy Watson. It was a Sunday night. After doing so well at the Hearts, getting a result like that was hard to bear. I did phone up Alex afterwards and apologise but I just couldn’t go in. I was on that much of a downer. But I have never done that since and I’ll never do it again. It’s bad manners and I think you learn from experience. But that was a hard night, that one. It’s hard to take these things and it hurts your pride.”

There is more than pride at stake in the final few matches of this season. Securing an SPL place is the main priority, the cup win secondary for now. Brown had hoped survival would have been sealed by now and admits taking things into the final two league games is far from fun.

He said: “The way things were going, we had to realise that it could be like that. The results haven’t been good enough to think we were ever going to climb the table. There’s not been any consistency of victories. If we had got three or four victories on the trot, things might have been different but we didn’t and, when that doesn’t happen, you have to realise you are in a relegation battle.

“We are where we are because we deserve to be there and it’s not a fluke that we are there but now there’s just Monday and the following Saturday and we have got to get something out of that and all our focus is on Monday night now.”

As a partnership, Jefferies and Brown have experienced relegation before but in a managerial career that has spanned a quarter of a century, it has only happened twice. The first was at Falkirk. The second was at Bradford. The latter club has never fully recovered.

“When we got there they were already so many points behind but we still just about did it. And I remember the day we did get relegated, we missed two penalties at Goodison Park and Everton beat us with a penalty! We had an impossible task there because of the number of points we were behind and the cuts we had to make and the way the club was at that time. It was unbelievable.

“I don’t think what has happened to Bradford will happen to Hibs or Dunfermline. Bradford were in a position where they were paying players money that was just way over the top. We had guys like Stan Collymore and Benito Carbone getting thousands and thousands of pounds, and there was only one way Bradford were going to go because there was no way they could keep that going.

“But that’s the only two relegations, although now it could either be three for me or three for Jim.”

Brown does hope that it is Dunfermline who go down but doesn’t take any pleasure from it. Not only would it be a relief for everyone at Hibs, it would also allow them to start enjoying the prospect of the cup final.

“Until the job is done in the SPL then it’s very difficult. When we won the cup at Hearts we were chasing the league and that’s a different thing altogether but the build-up is a very, very enjoyable thing. It’s part of the whole experience and I just hope we can do it on Monday so we can start focusing on that.

“Until then there’s only one thing that counts and that’s beating Dunfermline and Jim.”