Allan McGraw, in charge of young talent at Morton, has paid the price

for a brave but reckless playing career. And he is determined

no-one else should suffer, finds Ian Paul.

IF THE football gods had played fair, they would have seen to it that

Morton, the team managed by Allan McGraw, were the winners of the B&Q

Cup at Hampden last Sunday. But McGraw has long since learned that it

can be a very long wait if you expect favours from the great dug-out in

the sky.

The defeat by Hamilton left him depressed, but the vicissitudes of the

old ball game do not dampen the McGraw psyche for any length of time. He

has good cause to consider the odd defeat as relatively minor in the

great panoply of the game.

McGraw is a limping, live example of the extraordinary gamble some

footballers can take with their limbs. He was one of the most prolific

scoring centre forwards of his or any other era but paid a price which

is far too great.

It is a wincing irony that his best total of 58 goals for a season, a

record for any senior striker in Britain, came in 1963-64, the same

season in which he suffered the knee injury which in due course was to

leave him walking with sticks.

He has replacement joints in both knees, suffers constant pain and

prays that science will yet come to his rescue. It is a scenario which

he hopes will serve as a warning for all young professional players,

for, to a certain extent, he was a conspirator in the strategy that has

left him in this unhappy situation.

''I had my cartilage removed earlier but it was in that season I took

a knee knock. Morton were going so well -- 23 winning games in

succession -- that I took cortisone injections every second week and

just kept playing.'' If it seems astounding now to hear that this went

on for a year, McGraw recalls that it didn't raise much of a fuss then.

''The older players told me I was daft, right enough, but when you're

young you just want to play and enjoy it while it is going well.

''The only criticism I have is that no doctor ever told me the damage

it could do. Maybe I would just have played on anyway but it was never

pointed out to me.'' His routine will sound mind-boggling to many a

current player, with highly skilled physios and medical experts around

the place. He didn't train during the week, to allow the swelling on the

knee to come down. After the rest ''cure'', he would then play on the

Saturday and restart the cycle.

''It was very painful but, ach, once you got on the park it was OK.''

Five years later, now with Hibs, still playing and still suffering, he

was hurt playing in a League Cup semi-final against Dundee. His last

game, like so much of the McGraw story, included a painful irony. He was

injured and taken off but brought back on when another player was forced

to leave the field. He adds ruefully: ''I scored a goal . . . in injury

time.'' He knows now that he should have been rested from playing for at

least three months following the original injury. ''Don't get me wrong,

I don't knock cortisone. It is a great drug if used properly but I

mis-used it.'' The consequence was a succession of operations to his

knees . . . ''the strain put on the other knee ended up doing it damage

too'' . . . with one artificial joint being inserted eight years ago and

the other four years later.

''When I was 33 I was told by the surgeon that I had the knees of a

man of 70. Now I hope that there will be a new discovery that will

help.'' All of which should not be presumed to make this man a

self-pitying depressive. The opposite is the case. His love of the sport

transcends even his own devastating experience. The inability to

demonstrate in a track suit the coaching knowledge he possesses is a

drawback but it has not stopped him discovering and nurturing some

tremendous young talent at Greenock, where he has spent most of his

football life. His scoring ability as a player with the club is never

going to be equalled. In his seven playing years at Cappielow, he scored

at least 30 goals a season.

After finishing with Hibs, he spent a couple of seasons coaching

junior clubs before becoming reserve coach at Greenock. A succession of

managers came and went before he was given the reins in 1985, since when

he has ridden the roller-coaster that is the inevitable lot of managers

in the lower regions of the league.

But his talent for finding players, encouraging them and sending them

on to higher grades is well proven. He reckons he has brought in more

than a million pounds in his dealings with bigger clubs.

Why this love affair with Morton? ''I suppose it is because it is a

family club, a welcoming club. When you see the number of players who

left here that come back to see us, you realise it has a special

attraction. It is just a great wee club.'' He won a second division

championship with Morton as a player, lited the same title as a manager

and played in the League Cup final when Morton lost to Rangers. Victory

in last week's final would have given him and the club another milestone

but, as you might expect, he takes it philosophically.

That is not to say the McGraw ambitions have been dimmed. He points

out with pride that Morton owe nothing. ''We will never get into debt

again. We vowed to get out of the situation where this club was owned by

the banks. And we have.'' If he stops short of visualising the European

Cup at Cappielow, McGraw refuses to curtail thrilling imaginings like

premier divsion status. ''I believe this club can get there but more

important, because we have been there before, is to build a team which

can stay there. Our role model has to be Dundee United and Jim McLean.

He showed us all that it can be done.''

Yet he scotches the notion that he will remain an integral part of the

Greenock scenario. ''People say I am in with the bricks but I know

things can change easily and I could get the sack. Nobody is

indispensable but I will never resign. They will have to throw me out.''

McGraw's earthy, self-deprecating style, typical of his generation of

football folk, disguises a pride which is disturbed only by the nuisance

of his physical problems. His knee joints can lock at any time without

warning and the consequent collapse can come at the most inappropriate

of moments. But the pride swells when he talks of his family, wife Jean,

and sons Allan and Mark. Perhaps it should come as no surprise to

discover that the junior Allan's football career has been shattered by

injury and that Mark, now with Hibernian, is off injured at the moment.

The fact that Mark never saw his dad without sticks remains an inner

pain but, more than anything else, the unintentional but nonetheless

self-inflicted disability angers him because of the extra burden it has

put on Jean.

''That is what is the worst part. She has to do the decorating in the

house, the gardening, the lot. She has been behind me 100 per cent but

it has been tough.'' McGraw did not receive any insurance benefits from

his enforced retiral from the game and calls the #4000 compensation

handed out to one of his own players, Jimmy Simpson, a few years ago ''a

disgrace''.

Understandably, he is specially careful about fielding players who are

recovering from injury and genuinely wants to make sure that his brutal

experience is used as a warning for footballers everywhere.

Take him away from the hustle and bustle of the dug-out on a Saturday

and he will confess: ''It is the little things you miss. I would love to

be able to take my wee niece out for walks, for example, but I can't.

But it is all done with now. There's no point complaining.''