BILLY BREMNER MEMORIAL JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN
Date: 23rd March 2025
International travel.
Don’t you just love it?
The opportunity to go to places to put your feet up, sit back, relax, smile as the drinks flow and the sun is warm on your face.
Mr. Clarke, however, does not enjoy any of that whatsoever.
His recent sojourn, however, to Greece, demonstrated a different side to the man altogether as he now stands in Hump Den, in his office, with his old fashioned and battered, valises down on the floor, one on either side of him, standing looking out over the car park.
Mr. Clarke does not smile.
Picture the Scene
Late March 2025.
Overcast.
Glasgow.
Hump Den.
A place where many have come, often failed or overturned by their own hubris.
Mr. Clarke has been to Greece and come back with a win in his pocket but not a smile on his face.
Why? Because he knows he’s only halfway there.
The rest of the people who are down below, running round wanting to find a winning formula are awaiting his words of wisdom as he stands for a moment contemplating where he is, not just in life but also in his career.
Mr. Clarke came into this top job and knew that it was going to be a difficult one.
Having made his name at Kilmarnock, Mr. Clarke, was not somebody that people in the upper echelons of the Hump Den hierarchy felt was “one of us.”
After all, he had been critical.
He had said harsh words.
He had pulled them up for not being able to see beyond the Govan and the East End double act.
He wanted to make a difference, and a difference he had made.
Now there was confidence where before there had been woe.
Now there were people cheering when before people had been wailing.
Now he had been at the top of a force to be reckoned with for several years.
But the end was nigh.
He was beginning to feel the toll.
He was beginning to feel his shoulders rounding.
He was beginning to feel that perhaps his last hurrah was on the horizon.
But until then, he had to get everybody ready to take on those Greek upstarts who had proved to be so difficult to shake off in their home turf.
Turning to contemplate life beyond the desk that he now looked at, there were some expectant faces.
In the room, his number 2, Mr Carver, was looking on. Mr Gordon and Mr McTominay were also there. They were two of the senior members of Mr. Clarke ‘s squad and they were the people who were most important to him, to the rhythm of how everybody performed.
Mr. Clarke opened his mouth and mumbled, “a different side.” Mr Clark, Mr McTominay and Mr Gordon lent in, not quite hearing him.
Expectation on their faces, Mr. Clarke repeated, mumbling, “a different side.” At that point, all three heard the words and realised what he meant.
They had had to go out to Greece and show a different side to how they had performed, and performed they had.
This rag-bag group of individuals had been formed into a team. There were people who had been lent to Mr. Clarke, who back home, working where they did, had not been given opportunities that Mr. Clarke was now handing them willy-nilly.
He was giving them responsibilities that their own managers had never given them.
Mr. Clarke was the only one felt able to hand that out to them.
Mr. Clarke had faith.
Mr. Clarke had vision.
Mr. Clarke had the best out of them.
Not managing to get their rhythm for part of their time over in Greece, they now looked out across Hump Den as a place where they had to find that rhythm, so they could bask in the battle. They would reign over these Greek Adonises that were going to turn up in the next few days and attempt to disrupt the Scottish verve and vitality.
Verve and vitality.
Mr. Clarke, having weathered the storm in Greece, Mr. Clarke had managed a smirk – in private. There had been people who’d performed out of their skin for him and now the opportunity to come back to Hump Den and do the same again was something that people out there were doubting. Instead of muttering now, Mr Clarke pulled himself up to his tallest and said clearly, “a different side. We needed to show a different side. Now we need,” he continued, “to show another different side.”
You could almost hear the rousing elements within his speech, but that is not Mr Clarke’s way.
As they stood watching him, Mr Gordon, Mr Carver and Mr McTominay parted like the Red Sea as Mr Clarke walked towards the door, opened it, swivelled on his heel, turned round and looked at each of them and said, “halfway there. We are only halfway there. Now we need to do better.”
And with that he left the room and closed the door.
Mr McTominay, Mr Gordon and Mr Carver all looked at each other. That had always been Mr Clarke’s way. And they knew that every single one of that team down there, were waiting in respect for Mr Clarke’s presence.
And that presence did not involve high praise.
It did not involve shouting and bawling.
It did not involve the very brashness that had served so badly in the past, to bring these people up to a point where they believed, only to be slapped back down to a place where they lost all faith.
Now was the time to turn this place into our Athens of the North, where Olympian effort would show these Greeks just exactly where Scottish metal lay, and it wasn’t just in the national drink, it was in the legs and the heart of the people that were going to show these Greeks just how to do it.
In the corner, a big lanky drip smiled on his behalf as The Big Levein emerged from the shadows once everybody had gone, touched the desk that had once been his, looked at the handle of the door that he had once turned and slunk through it, disappeared.
He was tearing off into the corridors like a large ghostly presence, trying to find a place or a cupboard to hide in until there was a ta-da moment that he could come back. He didn’t wish, Mr Clarke ill, he just hoped there would be a point where the people at Hump Den would realise their mistake and return to him, to lead this glorious group of people off to greater glories, greater glories than he’d ever made.
But for the moment, like all of us, he was content to wait and see just exactly how Mr. Clarke would fare in the latest big moment in all of our lives.
Whilst the author asserts his right to this as an original piece of work there is no evidence, unless you know differently that Craig Levein haunts Hampden wanting to return to manage the Scotland team, so this is clearly a work of fiction.
The fact is that Steve Clarke managed a win in Greece in the first leg of the playoff for the Nations League and we are aw dead chuffed, but know we are halfway there. He said we had been “a different team” – maybe he could ask Argentina to turn up for us and be the next “different team…? Or maybe we all just need to believe once more and be in that happy place… Hope and aw that…
Posted in: Latest News