Montford memories: Cup of tea kept Stein sweet, while Shankly was hooked on that winning feeling at Anfield

FOOTBALL managers are a unique band of brothers, knowing as they do that somewhere along the way they are almost certain to get the sack. He will take the rap, even if the players miss a vital penalty, get ordered off in the tenth minute or don't turn up for training.

The price of failure comes more quickly today. Fans have a bigger forum than ever – more space in the papers for their hard-hitting comments, radio phone-ins where they are often given too much time to vent their anger, and televised interviews outside the ground after a bad result.

I doubt if Jock Stein had the faintest idea where his football path would take him when I got to know him in 1949 when I met him regularly at Cliftonhill, which was part of my beat covering Albion Rovers for the Coatbridge Leader – my first job after national service. He was a squad player with Rovers and didn't always get a game which is how I discovered he loved a cup of tea, because it was in the tearoom under that ancient stand that we used to chat at half-time on days he wasn't playing.

He couldn't have envisaged what lay ahead for him, not just his moving south to Llanelli then back to Celtic as a player-coach, but his remarkable impact on the two clubs he managed before he went back to Parkhead – Dunfermline, with whom he won their first Scottish Cup in 1961, and Hibernian where in the space of 18 months he transformed the club.

Not only did he persuade Real Madrid to come over for a sell-out friendly which Hibs won 2-0, but a Summer Cup final win, beating Aberdeen over three games in 1964 and finishing fourth in the league, plus a semi-final appearance in the Scottish Cup. A move to Celtic came quickly and Lisbon was just two years away. Sadly, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Stein's tragic death in Cardiff.

THE night Scotland qualified for the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina with that memorable win over Wales at Anfield, the Scottish dressing room door was flung open by Ally MacLeod as the delighted Scottish media descended. I got down, eventually, from the TV gantry to join in the celebrations and there standing quietly in a corner with his trademark raincoat over his arm was Bill Shankly, the legendary Liverpool manager.

He had no real reason to be there of course, but I went over to him to ask, politely, what brought him down from the stand to the joyful bedlam of the Scottish dressing room. "Just couldn't stay away son. You see there's nothing in the world like a winning dressing room." He looked every bit as happy as the half-dressed players shouting and singing.

His brother Bob Shankly could not have been more different. Where Bill was brisk, no frills, outspoken and chatty, Bob was the complete opposite. Yet what Jock Stein did for Dunfermline and Hibs, Bob did for Dundee.

In the spring of 1962 Dundee won their last seven league games and clinched their first League championship with a 3-0 win at St Johnstone. But I couldn't persuade the Dens manager to give me an interview – the one and only time in 32 years with the Scotsport microphone that a manager knocked me back.

In the European Cup the following season Dundee beat Cologne 8-1 at home then Anderlecht 4-1 away in front of 60,000, yet the only quote from Bob I can find was after the 8-1 game: "The boys rose to the occasion, as I thought they would."

At Easter Road, Eddie Turnbull, with his unchanging match-day outfit of shirt and club tie, never shirked a bad result to give his honest verdict. Gentleman Tommy Walker was always immaculate, likewise was always courteous and honest regardless of how Hearts had played.

Willie Waddell and Willie Thornton liked the media and both eventually wrote for newspapers. Waddell and I conducted the TV negotiations for Rangers' European ties and, over a cup of tea, never had a problem. And at Parkhead, Stein knew exactly how to maximise any opportunities with press, radio and TV.

I CAN still envisage particular images of certain managers in my mind's eye. Who could forget Dundee United's manager Jim McLean being carried shoulder high by players and fans along the track at Dens Park in 1983 when United had clinched their only Scottish League championship to date? The European Cup campaign which followed confirmed the quality of the likes of Narey, Kirkwood, Hegarty, Milne and Dodds.

Their defence record in that run was astonishing – one goal conceded in the seven games before the second leg of their semi-final against Roma, where their 2-0 lead was cruelly overtaken. United went one better in 1987 with another fantastic defensive display, conceding just four goals in 11 games including the 1-0 defeat in the two-leg final against IFK Gothenburg only to lose out with a 1-1 draw at Tannadice. McLean would have been an excellent Scotland manager.

I always got on particularly well with Aberdeen boss Alex Ferguson, to the extent that he would invite me into the dressing room after the game and if he didn't do the post-match one-to-one with me, would select a player to do it. Nobody ever declined the invitation. He loved talking about the night the Dons beat Real Madrid.

Perhaps the most remarkable was the man who wasn't really a manager at all – Hal Stewart of Morton, initiator of the Scandinavian "invasion" of the Sixties, who took Morton to the top of the old First Division during the 78-79 season. Tactically Hal left everything to the players – "Go out and enjoy it, lads" – but he was the master of the media and superbly persuasive when it came to signing players who had been recommended to him. He would have been proud of the sell-out reunion of the team of 1979 held at the tail of the bank last October.