‘I wasn’t sacked. I resigned.’
‘Every year it’s the same old game of musical chairs. You know, Scott, I think people should bear in mind that it takes time for a manager to turn things around when a club is not doing well. But if you give a manager that time, then quite often he’ll prove his gainsayers wrong. Nine times out of ten, the manager’s just the scapegoat. It’s the same in business. Take Marks & Spencer. How many CEOs has Marks & Spencer had since Sir Richard Greenbury left in 1999?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘The problem there is not the manager, but the whole retail business model. The fact is that people don’t want to buy their clothes where they buy their sandwiches. Am I right, or am I right?’
Looking at my travelling companion’s clothes I wasn’t too sure about that. In his brown suit and salmon pink shirt he looked exactly like a prawn sandwich but I nodded politely and hoped for a moment when I might get back to reading Roy Keane’s riveting book on my Kindle. It never came and I got off the plane wishing I’d thought to wear a cap and a pair of glasses, like Ian Wright. I don’t need glasses. And I don’t like caps. But I like chatting about football with strangers even less. Looking like a cunt is a lot better than spending a whole flight talking to one.
It was very strange being back in Edinburgh after so many years away. I ought to have felt more at home here — after all, it was the place where I’d done the larger part of my growing up — but I didn’t. I couldn’t have felt more alien or out of place. It wasn’t just the past that made Scotland seem like a foreign country to me. Nor was it much to do with the recent referendum. I hadn’t shared the Scots’ dislike of the English as a boy and I certainly didn’t share it now, especially since I’d chosen to make my home in London. No, there was something else that made me feel separate, something much more personal. The truth was I’d never really been permitted to feel like a proper Scot on account of the colour of my skin. All of the kids in my class at school had been freckle-faced, green-eyed Celts. Me, I was half black — or, as the Scots used to describe me, ‘a half-caste’ — which was why I’d been nicknamed Rastus. Even my Edinburgh schoolmasters had called me Rastus and although I wouldn’t ever have shown it, this hurt. A lot. And it had always struck me as amusing that the minute I arrived at a school in England — with a Scots accent long since scraped off the bottom of my shoe — my nickname should have become Jock. Not that the boys of Northampton School for Boys weren’t racist, too, but they were a lot less racist than their Scottish counterparts.
I’m lucky in that I have a seat on the board of my dad’s company to fall back on, but that certainly didn’t stop me from putting myself around a bit to see what was out there. My agent, Tempest O’Brien, was firmly of the opinion that it was important for me to see as many people as possible.
‘It’s not just your achievements that make you eminently employable,’ she’d told me, ‘it’s you, the whole GQ package. You’re one of the most articulate and intelligent men I know, Scott. Christ, I nearly said in football, but that’s not saying much, is it? Besides, I think it’s crucial that people see you’re not just sitting back and living off your earnings — which according to the newspapers are substantial — as a director of Pedila Sports. So it’s important you play that down. If people think you don’t need to work then they’ll try to buy you cheap. So the first place I’m going to send you is Edinburgh. There’s a job going at Hibs. No one is going to try and buy you cheaper than a side in the Scottish Championship. I know your father was a Hearts man through and through but you should go and talk to them because it’s a good place to start. Better that you should make your mistakes and hone your interview skills there where it won’t matter than somewhere more important where it will, like Nice, or Shanghai.’
‘Shanghai? Why the hell would I go to Shanghai?’
‘Did you see Skyfall? The Bond movie? Shanghai is one of the most futuristic cities in the world. And the place is just rolling in money. It might be good experience for you to work there. Especially if they start buying football clubs in Europe. And the rumour is they’re looking to do just that. The Chinese are a can-do people, Scott. Can do and will do, probably. When the Russians get tired of owning clubs or when the rouble finally collapses and they have to sell out, who are they going to sell to? The Chinese, of course. Within twenty years the Chinese are going to be the world’s number one economic superpower. And when China rules the world, the capital of that world is going to be Shanghai. They started building a new tram in December 2007, and it was open less than two years later. Contrast that with Edinburgh’s tram. How long did that take? Seven years? A billion quid spent on it and still they’re bitching about fucking independence.’
The tram — which was supposed to run from Edinburgh Airport to a stop just across the road from my hotel — was out of action that particular morning; a power cut, they said. So I got the bus. It was an inauspicious start. And Tempest was right about something else, too: they were still bitching about independence.
I checked into the Balmoral Hotel, ate some oysters at the nearby Café Royal and then went down Leith Walk towards Easter Road to see Hibs play Queen of the South. The ground and the pitch were better than I remembered and I guessed there were between twelve and fifteen thousand there — a big difference from the record attendance of sixty-five thousand in 1950, when Hibs played their local rivals Hearts. It was a cold but beautiful afternoon, just right for a game of football, and while the home side had the better run of the play for most of the match they were unable to take their chances. Paul Hanlon and Scott Allan both went close and Hibs lost a chance to go level on points with a side they ought to have beaten with ease. The Queens looked happy to have come away with a point in a goalless draw that did not please the Edinburgh fans. Jason Cummings was about the only player who impressed me when his swerving thirty-yard shot was saved by the Queens’ goalkeeper Zander Clark, but it was a less than memorable game and on the evidence of what I’d seen, Hibs, who were more than ten points adrift of the league leaders, Hearts, seemed destined to be spending another year out of the SPL.
I went back to the hotel, ordered some tea which never came, had a hot bath, snoozed my way through the football results and Strictly For Morons, and then went around the corner to a restaurant called Ondine, where I’d arranged to meet Midge Meiklejohn who was one of the club’s directors. He was an affable man with a large head of red hair and green eyes. In his lapel was a Hibs crest which served to remind me just how old the club actually was: 1875. And of course this proud tradition was a major part of the club’s problem. Of any old club’s problem.
We talked generally about football for a while and drank our way through an excellent Sancerre before he asked me what I’d thought of the game and, more importantly, Hibs themselves.
‘If you’ll forgive me,’ I told him, ‘your problems aren’t on the pitch but in the boardroom. You’ve had how many — seven? — managers in ten years? Who’ve probably done the best that could be done, in the circumstances. The manager you’ve got is doing a great job, and things aren’t going to get any better until you address the fundamental problem which is that football clubs are like regional newspapers. There are simply too many of them. Prices are going up and readership is declining. There are too many papers competing for too few readers. The same is true of football. There are too many clubs competing not just with each other but with television. Your gate today was maybe twelve thousand, while some of your players are on two or three grand a week, maybe more. Your wage bill must take two thirds of your gate. Which leaves running costs and the bank. Your business is dying on its feet. Full-time football is just not a viable option for you or, for that matter, for nearly all of the Scottish clubs, bar two.’