IT IS easier to present George Burley as a George Formby figure of fun than a George Patton leader of men. Not least when it has taken the Scotland manager more than a week to get his story straight on the Loch Lomond and V-sign malarkey and start speaking some sense about it all.
Yet, in finally being unambiguous about Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor letting him and the country down; the unacceptable behaviour of the pair and fellow night owls at the bar Scott Brown, Gary Teale, Alan Hutton and Steven Whittaker and the fact
the SFA's handling of the episode has hardly covered them in glory, at least he's got there in the end. In changing his tune from the laughable position of last week when he seemed to want to be the three wee monkeys rolled into one, Burley has mercifully dispensed with the ukulele and donned the tin helmet.
It might be too late to save a genial and decent bloke from the almighty flak that has flown in every direction this past fortnight. But, it is legitimate to ask how warranted was the blackening of his name and coaching reputation just because he staggered, seemingly unthinkingly, through a hellish minefield.
Burley is a match player and not a media player. God knows, the post he occupies was crying out for him to be the latter from the moment his coach, Steven Pressley, found Ferguson and McGregor burling when other Cameron House patrons were setting down to brunch two Sundays ago. Ultimately, however, couldn't it prove more significant that he came good in the domain he is asking – and has the right – to be judged on: the field of play? He selected an adventurous line-up to face Iceland in a World Cup qualifierthat had to be won and illicited from a young, vibrant group a performance to admire. All the more so with the "circus" caused by news of the Cameron House carousing having leaked out the previous day.
"I had so many huge decisions to make on Tuesday and Wednesday and I did. Nobody else spoke to me. I made them myself," Burley said this week. That is undeniable.
The charge laid at his door is that he made the wrong decisions. He publicly backed the miscreant players before and after their boozing-and-bench antics, told no-one within the SFA hierarchy about what had gone on until he feared the story was going to break on the Tuesday afternoon, and bowed to pressure from other players not to banish Ferguson and McGregor from the squad – players who, incidentally, he says have subsequently expressed their disappointment at the reprieved pair's digit dangling. Burley's take is that, had he ejected the two players on the Sunday, there would have been a shitstorm for the three days leading up to the game. By his clemency, he at least restricted this to a highly uncomfortable 27 hours before kick-off, he reckons. There is surely some merit in this reasoning.
"As a manager, I have to manage a squad," Burley said. "We are talking about a game which meant everything to the country. Everybody steps out of line; what I said was never let it happen again. I kept the squad together, I kept them motivated, I kept them focused, I got them prepared together, and I got a good performance. People might say otherwise, but for me that was good management and that is what got Scotland the three points. If I had done it the other way, you are talking about losing your captain, you are talking about a big influence on the dressing room, so for me I managed it properly."
The whole issue of Ferguson and McGregor never being selected again by Scotland couldn't have been handled more wrongly, it would appear. The other day Burley pottily pronounced "in life nothing is forever" when asked if the international ban for the two players could ever be rescinded, following the obfuscation route unwisely headed down by SFA chief executive Gordon Smith on Thursday. But it has since transpired they had been warned by the Association's lawyers not to be so condemnatory about the two players as to be guilty of comments actionable under damage-to-reputation legalities.
One of those situations proving not what it initially might have appeared, it seems Burley's fate is to take it in the neck for these. Lee McCulloch and Kris Boyd, anyone? The Scotland manager has been slammed for not laying it on the line that Ferguson and McGregor had become ex-internationalists in his eyes. Never mind that doing so is not within his remit. There is no precedent for a Scotland manager issuing life bans to players. Willie Ormond was not responsible for ultimate sanction being dished out to the Copenhagen Five in 1974, or the rescinding of the bans for two of that group – Joe Harper and Arthur Graham – following further investigation. Likewise, Willie Johnston was banished by the SFA following his pill-popping in Argentina 31 years ago, not Ally MacLeod.
By then, MacLeod was a broken man. The job might eventually do for Burley too, but it hasn't yet. He has admitted "the last week has taken its toll on me but I try not to show it and am lucky to have a strong family" but stressed that, never at any stage did he consider walking away. Respect for Burley is notably thin on the ground from the media, To the extent that a friend the Scotland manager had up from south of the Border for the Iceland match described the post-match coverage as "vicious". Vicious in victory, it will be damnation in defeat. That is the line Burley must walk unsteadily as long as he can dodge the bullets.
