GLASGOW'S West End, Ian McCall and Rangers proved a troublesome combination at one stage during the Partick Thistle manager's playing days. Today, McCall sets his sights on eliminating his former club from the Scottish Cup in the same part of town.
It wasn't so much the coffee shops of Byers Road, in which McCall can generally now be found reading broadsheet newspapers of an afternoon, which proved his undoing during Graeme Souness' tenure at Ibrox. Rather, a tendency to stumble out of Ashton L
ane bars in the early hours was not conducive to a long-term future at an Old Firm club.
Smiling about such colourful times now, McCall is back on the road to re-establishing a managerial career which had promised so much. A mercurial left-sided midfielder, his time at Ibrox yielded only 21 appearances and two goals between 1987 and 1989. "One from a yard and one from 25 yards," he recalls.
"I still remember Walter Smith coming to pick me up when I was going to sign for Rangers," McCall added. "I was at the café I always used, I went along with a lasagne stain on my Levi jacket and met Graeme Souness and David Holmes. But it was a bit too much for me. I went mad, drank too much, did too many stupid things. Graeme phoned me from Blackburn a few years ago to ask about Barry Robson when I was at Dundee United; it was the first time we had spoken since I left Rangers.
"The first thing I said to him was 'Look, before we start, you were right; I was a total arsehole'. He just laughed."
The ever-engaging McCall is rather self-deprecating now when the subject of his talents as a player is raised, a far cry from the arrogant status he has frequently and unfairly been afforded. Believing he "lacked a yard of pace to be a top Rangers player", such a theory was contradicted by managers such as Iain Munro who felt, at a time when Scotland was suffering from a shortage of left-footed creative midfielders, McCall had what it took to be an internationalist.
That's not to say he was as dismissive of his own ability two decades ago while struggling to break into Souness' first team. "I went in to see Graeme at the start of a season," McCall said. "I was really fit, playing really well but on the bench for the first 10 or 11 games while Mark Walters, who is a great friend of mine, was struggling. We had won the Tennent's Sixes and I had played in that, we were doing well in the reserves.
"I told him all that and he just said 'Son, see winning the Tennent's Sixes? That doesn't keep me in a job'."
McCall is riled by the widely-held view that his boyhood affiliation was with today's opponents. Raised in Dumfries, Queen of the South were the only team McCall stresses he followed throughout his youth. "It's my pet hate when people say that, that I was a Rangers supporter. My team, who I supported, was where I grew up. I went to games with my dad."
These days, McCall is charged with reinvigorating First Division Thistle, a club at which, by the manager's own admission, a malaise had been allowed to set in before his appointment last summer. There will be an all-too rare occasion of Firhill being packed to capacity this afternoon; McCall hopes days such as these will return as he oversees almost a complete overhaul of Thistle's structure from under-13 level upwards.
"I'm very strong on discipline with the players here," he explained. "I recognise how important it is, and I rarely drink now myself. I spent too much of my career super-unfit.
"That's why the people I really admire in the game are guys like Christian Dailly, guys who have made the very, very best of what they have got. Ally McCoist was the same; he was never the most gifted player in the world but my goodness he wanted it so much and worked his balls off."
McCall is on record as stating he wants to remain at Thistle until the Commonwealth Games come to Glasgow in 2014, in which time he plans to "step upstairs to a chief executive's role or something". Yet it is difficult to imagine the 43-year-old, whose powerful character is ideal for management, being anything other than front of house.
And so to this afternoon's cup quarter-final replay. Thistle, who were perhaps unfortunate not to beat Rangers at Ibrox at the first time of asking, have genuine aspirations of winning. "If we manage to win, I could get three big hitters in for next season and maybe get close to the top of the league," McCall says. "Every underdog has a chance. It will be a great day."
The full article contains 832 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
