IT SEEMS fashionable to flag up nationalities in any list of football folk these days. Search the net for a run-down of Preston managers and, to the right of their names, the St Andrew's cross appears to have taken up near permanent residence. Of the past five men to lead the Deepdale club, four of them have been Scots. Indeed, present incumbent Alan Irvine is the third man hailing from north of the Border to lead Preston into play-offs for the Premiership, across the past eight years alone.
Glaswegian Irvine is looking to make the leap that has recently proved elusive to David Moyes and Billy Davies. In the semi-final second leg away to Sheffield United tomorrow, he will seek to build on a 1-1 draw and set up a Wembley final. If that is
successfully negotiated, it will bring to an end a 48-year exile from the top flight and elevate the former Queen's Park winger into one of the club's immortal Scots. One of about 103.
Club historian Ian Rigby can't think of a Preston team that didn't contain at least one Scot. "We have had our fair share of good ones," he says, Ross Wallace, Barry Nicholson, Callum Davidson and Michael Hart carrying on that tradition this season. In 1888-89, they had more than their fair share as Preston became the first team to do the league and cup double, in the inaugural year of the championship. They did so without losing a single game. A total of ten Scots helped them to do that. It earned them the name the Invincibles but it also caused controversy. Club secretary William Suddell had enticed players from across the Border with nominal jobs in his cotton mill, essentially a means of circumventing the amateur rules, and heralding the professional era in the English game.
"We were the Manchester United of the 19th century, a top, top club" says vice-chairman David Taylor. Who just happens to be a Borders Scot, a Hearts supporter by upbringing and a Lancastrian of 26 years. For the past 12 years he has shaped a club who came close to going out of the league and existence in the 1980s. That he has done so with the efforts of fellow nationals isn't deliberate. "It is just that when it has come to recruitment, good Scottish talent has been available," he says. Taylor was involved in the appointment of Moyes. "They said then what were we doing putting in charge an old player who wasn't even then a young manager," he says.
What they were doing was getting it right, Moyes dragging them from the lower reaches of the Second Division to the cusp of the Premier. Scots have tended to be very important persons when the club has been hobnobbing, or threatening to do so. Seven of the 1938 FA Cup winning side were Scottish, most famous among them Bill Shankly, Andy Beattie and Bobby Beattie. Then there is the famous photograph of the Scots in the 1966-67 squad. All 16 Scots of them. Assembled by Dundonian manager Jimmy Milne. Followed in the post by Coatbridge man Bobby Seith.
Little more than a decade earlier, Scott Symon was moulded into a manager at Deepdale before being poached by Rangers. Frank Hill, the fellow who replaced him, was a Forfar man. Tommy Docherty both played and, unsuccessfully, managed Preston, a club that boast such as Alex Dawson, Jim Forest, Archie Gemmill, Willie Cunningham, and, more recently, Brian O'Neil and Graham Alexander, as former players.
Ask anyone why Preston has so often seemed an footballing enclave of Caledonia, and the all say the same: it is the first major stop-off after Carlisle on your way out of Scotland. "Two hours and ten minutes by train," says Craig Brown, who managed the club through a transitional period between 2004 and 2006. He believes to many Scots there is a comfort of the familiar about an area that brought heavy cares with heavy industry in the last century that were handled by heavy helpings of humour and kinship. "I always think of my Scotland goalkeeping coach Alan Hodgkinson when looking to explain why we Scots feel at home in Preston," says Brown, who still lives in the town, as does Moyes, despite now being in his seventh year as Everton manager. "We used to rib Alan about the fact he was an Englishman in our set-up and he would mump: 'I'm not an Englishman, I'm a Yorkshireman'. Lancastrians think of themselves as northerners rather than English, and we Scots are northerners too."
Preston's long-held links with Scotland didn't impact on Irvine's decision to take the job but the manager is happy to embrace them. "It wasn't something that influenced me in terms of coming here but obviously there are strong links," he says. "Historically it was easier to come to Preston than travel down to London. It is nice to be another Scot (at Deepdale] and if I can do as good a job as the others before me then I will have done OK." Irvine has no explanation as to why so many Scots managers have flourished in England. "It's very difficult to say. If I say Scots do this and English don't it will sound a bit wrong. All I would say is that we have a very good work ethic and I like to think we are students of the game and we are very thorough and it doesn't harm to have a Scottish temper from time to time."
Taylor says Preston would never consciously drag themselves in a saltire. Equally, though, they were in no way apprehensive about giving yet another Scot the gig after Paul Simpson was dismissed in November 2007 as the team dropped towards the floor of the Championship. Like Moyes, Irvine was untried as a manager and had been the former's assistant at Goodison Park. The club's chairman, Derek Shaw, knew Irvine, through his associations with Moyes, and knew his work as academy director at Blackburn and Newcastle, under Kenny Dalglish, had prepared him to run a senior side.
Brown, as you would expect, does not miss telling you that chief among Irvine's credentials are that he is a "Largs boy", in the Moyes mould. If wanting to package the shared qualities, it could be said Irvine possesses diligence and a welcome disregard for dazzling in front of the camera.
"Alan is a quiet, considered and conscientious guy," Taylor says. "He doesn't seek out the limelight and goes about his job in an understated way. Plenty of people would have given up on the play-offs." With the exception of Irvine, frankly no-one, inside and outside the club, thought a month ago that Preston had an earthly. Then they whipped Cardiff 6-0 and won 2-1 at Birmingham in a four-game winning run that allowed them to sneak ahead of the Welsh side by a solitary goal.
"Alan would not allow the players to think it was gone and let their minds drift to their summer holidays," he says. "He kept at it, kept the engine running, and the team revved up at just the right time." Taylor dares to tick over in his mind visions of Preston's top tier return. Just like haggis and shortbread, we in these parts could claim it as a product of Scotland.
