JOHN HUGHES collected the Premiership Manager of the Month award for April yesterday and then attempted to bring a touch of realism to the game that so often loses sight of the fact that there are very many more important considerations in life than winning football matches.
Take, for example, the tragic death last weekend of former Scotland Under-21 midfield player Chris Mitchell, who was hit by a train at a level crossing near his home in Stirling.
Hughes has been deeply affected by the 27-year-old’s untimely passing, to the extent that he found it extremely difficult to keep his emotions in check when recalling that he had signed Mitchell for Falkirk.
“It's absolutely tragic and all our thoughts are with the family,” said the Inverness manager. “I signed the kid from Livingston and I’m starting to get emotional thinking about him. He always had a smile on his face.
“We had great laughs with him, too. One story about him really makes me laugh. We were in Holland for pre-season and he and Scott Arfield, who was one of his best mates, were part of a group of young lads with the squad.
"I said to them on the last night that they could have an evening out and I told Russell Latapy to keep an eye on them. He was the worst one I could have asked!
"They all ended up in a club and got blootered. Then Mitch decided go outside and start climbing on cars. But, unbeknown to him, one of the cars belonged to the club owner and the bouncers grabbed him and he was arrested.
"I was woken at 3am to tell me that Chris had been arrested. But as some of us had a drink earlier, we had to wake the waiter to drive us to the police station to pick Chris up.
“But when we went to get him, the police breathalysed the waiter as he'd been drinking, too, and he ended up being chucked in jail.
"The police decided not to charge Chris. But the waiter got done for drunk-driving! Every time I saw Chris after that I reminded him of what had happened.
"You can try and put your finger on it – and this doesn't just go for footballers – but when they've not got that get-up-and-go in the morning, it affects them. Look what happens to a lot of boxers when they stop going to the gym.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here