John Boyle feels he's paid his dues after reign of highs and lows

HE CAME in to the strains of My Hometown, the Bruce Springsteen track about having pride in the place where you are from. The tune as the credits prepare to roll is more Frank Sinatra. John Boyle did it his way.

Troubled times had indeed come to his hometown by 1998, when Boyle stepped in to purchase the local football club. He had earned his fortune from a company called Direct Holidays, having bounced back from the indignity of being sacked as chief executive of a Stock Exchange company in 1990. Upon hearing this news he called his mother from a phone box in London's Notting Hill Gate. "Mum - I've just been sacked!" he shrieked down the line. Her reply adequately sums up her son's entire career. "Aye son, one minute you're a peacock, the next you're a feather duster", she wisely informed him.

Boyle employed this phrase on his arrival at Fir Park. He acted the peacock when he began investing heavily in the club, having appointed Billy Davies as manager. While this choice has since been made to seem perceptive - Motherwell could not attract Davies back to Fir Park now, with the manager having gone on to greater things - the splurging of cash on players' wages saw the club travel down a ruinous path. Boyle revelled in the attention guaranteed when signing the likes of Andy Goram, John Spencer and Pat Nevin, with Nevin attracting further headlines when he took an unusual player/chief executive role.

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It all came tumbling down, however. Even now Boyle betrays a fondness for publicity when, during a valedictory address yesterday at Fir Park, he scolded one reporter who referred to Motherwell being the first club in the country to enter administration, nine years ago. "We were the first club in Britain to go into administration - not Scotland," he pointed out. "Don't belittle my achievement!"

Boyle was always the showman. As with many colourful characters, he is perhaps guilty of glossing over the facts. He accepts only "partial responsibility" for the heartache that was visited upon 19 players and their families when redundancies were the inevitable consequence of this bleak episode.

"It was against a backdrop of some unprecedented goings on, especially in regard to the (collapsed] TV deal," Boyle explained yesterday. "There were casualties, but I had to do what I had to do to ensure that this club survived."

It would be churlish not to salute the part Boyle played in Motherwell's recovery, or acknowledge the fact that he, too, lost something in the fire. He estimates having spent 10 million on a club he has now gifted to a fans' trust company.

He has walked away to spend more time with his new wife, Donna, and also his children. They have already been entertained by him. Part of Boyle's appeal is that he often lets his heart rule his head, something which is perhaps uncommon in a businessman. It possibly goes some way to explain Motherwell's spell in administration as well as the sad fate experienced by Zoom, the airline company formed by Boyle, which went bankrupt in 2008.This tendency to act on impulse certainly led to Boyle thinking it would be a good idea to confront Craig Brown, one of eight managers he has appointed, at the end of a match with Aberdeen in April. Brown had severed his ties with Motherwell in unsatisfactory manner a few months earlier, and Boyle did not feel like exchanging pleasantries. Instead, he provoked Brown by uttering something in his ear, and was handed a fine by the Scottish Football Association for his troubles.

"The Craig Brown incident is something my children find highly amusing," he smiled. "There are 106,000 hits on YouTube, which shows me that people have too much time on their hands.

"I'm appealing against the SFA decision, because I've been here 13 years and this is the first time they've had any cause to have a word with me. What can I say? If you can't have a quiet word in somebody's ear, what's the world coming to?"

However, Boyle has a good word for most of his other managers - even Jim Gannon, who spent an unhappy spell at the club at the beginning of the 2009/10 season. "He brought a lot of knowledge of the English lower leagues and brought those players here. You are talking about me having personality issues with him, no question about it. But I think you all had personality issues with him, too.

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"Terry Butcher was wonderful, he was my friend. Mark McGhee left to go and do better things. We're still friends."

The bond with McGhee was perhaps sealed by their need to provide strength and support to those at the club, and beyond, following Phil O'Donnell's death in 2007, after the midfielder had collapsed during a game against Dundee United. There is no hesitation when asked to pick his lowest moment. Administration doesn't rate a mention compared with one bleak December's afternoon nearly four years ago.

"The absolute lowest point for me was the death of Phil O'Donnell," Boyle said. "From everyone's point of view that was our blackest, darkest moment."

O'Donnell's memory will be toasted again tomorrow, before, during and after the Scottish Cup final against Celtic, another of his former clubs. The match is also Boyle's high-profile farewell.

He has been criticised, but Scottish football has been a better place for Boyle's involvement.Loyal to the end to his hometown, Boyle prefers to focus on those streets through which he hopes a cup might again be paraded this weekend.

"I bought this club at a time when this town was on its knees after the closure of Ravenscraig," he reflected. "Now a football club has never put bread in anyone's mouth, but at least it gave the town a glimmer of hope and expectation. In that sense, I don't regret it for one minute."