DICK Campbell has discovered the secret of football management after almost 1300 games standing on a touchline barking orders at players and offering advice, helpful or otherwise, to referees.
As he approaches a tenth promotion of his managerial and coaching career with Arbroath, surely a Scottish football record, with his team sitting 13 points clear at the top of League One with seven games to go, this youthful 65-year-old at last has the gig sussed.
“I do **** all,” Campbell tells me with real glee. “I sit back and let Pink, John and big Rab do it now. They don’t let me near the players. I’m lucky to get 15 minutes with them on a Saturday.”
Pink is twin brother Ian, John Young is his old pal and comrade and making up the quartet now is Rab Douglas who became goalkeeper coach when last summer John Ritchie, one of the original “old gits”, passed away.
“John and I would go for a walk every morning,” said Campbell. “I would look in the window at 6.30am and there he was, ready to go, and the pair of us would sort out the world. Even on the worst days, John and I would walk.
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“He got eleven weeks from the day of his diagnosis, which was cancer, and that was him. A terrible loss. John always said that I was the brother he never had. He was a great man. If we win the league this season it will be the John Ritchie championship.”
If they win the league? Campbell is almost prepared to admit that his Arbroath team are champions-elect. It’s a remarkable achievement for a club that was in League Two just two years ago.
But should we be surprised at anything this man does? He is many things; history-maker, the oldest manager in Scottish football, king of promotions, cancer survivor, raconteur and incredible swearer.
“I’ve never enjoyed a season like this one,” he says. “It’s been special. The players have been magnificent, absolutely magnificent. I have no trouble with them at all. They are an easy group to work with.
“I don’t like to say we’ve won it but it would be some disaster is we ****** it up now.
“That will be ten promotions when you count up Dunfermline, Partick Thistle, Brechin City and Forfar. Has anyone else had so many?
“I have good players and they attract other good players. Last summer, guys turned down more money to play at Arbroath. They just wanted to be here. They have been magnificent. I have loved watching them.”
Campbell became the first manager to take a club – Brechin – from the fourth to second tier in successive seasons. He almost repeated the feat last season with Arbroath but they lost, narrowly, to Dumbarton in the Championship play-offs. This is the record of a football man who knows what he’s doing.
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“Have I been given credit during my career? No, and I could write a book on that,” said Campbell.
“Do you know what annoys me? It’s when people go on about managing in the lower league and how it’s easy. What a lot of nonsense. Is it easier to manager Arbroath than Celtic? I’m not so sure. Ach, it doesn’t bother me.”
Campbell is too busy to worry what others think or, for that matter, retire and play golf.
“Neil, son, Saturday is fitba day. It’s as simple as that. I’ve no thoughts about retiring and that’s the honest truth.
“I get up in the morning of a game, have my poached eggs on toast, meet Pink and John, and the three of us have a right laugh together on the way to the game. If we win I have a pint, if we lose I have a pint.
“I am eight years healthy, touch wood, after the cancer nearly got me. I enjoy my life, I love my football. I’m a changed man. I used to get involved in all the ***** players get themselves into. I’d have players up against the wall at half-time. I can’t do that anymore. I have taken a step back.”
Campbell and his teams are now a couple of wins away from taking this tiny Angus club to the second tier of Scottish football. It’s remarkable.
“I’ve been really lucky. Look, if you’re going to praise anyone in your article, then give it to Pink, John and Rab. They have been superb for me.
“I think we’ve done alright. I’ve won a few games, a few leagues, and worked with really good people, folk who still call me gaffer. We’ve never left a club in a mess. I think we’ve always made them better. And we’ve had a laugh along the way.”
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