It gave him the best of times and the worst of times but Billy Brown will be forever indebted to the Scottish Cup.
The chairman of the Scottish Managers and Coaches Association might be 72 now – three years younger than Roy Hodgson he says with a twinkle in his eye – but his passion for football remains as strong as it was when he left Musselburgh for Hull City more than half a century ago. Brown the player had a decent career with Motherwell and Raith but it was as half of a managerial partnership with Jim Jefferies at Berwick, Falkirk, Hearts, Bradford and Kilmarnock that he made his name as a coach.
And never was that reputation more enhanced than a quarter of a century ago when the duo led the Jambos to their first trophy success in 36 years, beating Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final. The 25th anniversary of that success will be celebrated next week and Brown admits it didn’t get any better than that in coaching and management.
But the final of the same competition in 2012, when in the Hibs dugout AGAINST a Hearts side he’d left earlier that season, proved it could get a hell of a lot worse. Brown and Jefferies’ second stint at Tynecastle ended in the way of so many managers under Vladimir Romanov, with the sack. They weren’t surprised – in fact they were expecting it almost from the moment they went back through the doors of the Gorgie club after a seven-year spell at Kilmarnock.
“The club had changed,” Brown told the Off The Record podcast. “A lot of Lithuanian players had been brought in and there were some good players but the whole culture had changed.
“There were some loose cannons but it was great to be back at Hearts. We knew we’d get the sack. We weren’t young, inexperienced boys. We knew what we were going into but going back was worth it all and we enjoyed it.
“We could have won the league that season as well. We went to Parkhead and lost 4-0 and Romanov came in and said the goalie (Marian Kello) threw the game. But if it hadn’t been for the goalie we’d have been beaten 8-0.”
A few weeks into the following season, they were out and the stars aligned to give Brown the end to a season that even to this day he finds it difficult to talk about. The Scottish Cup Final of 2012. Hearts 5 Hibs 1.
He said: “I wasn’t out of the job a week at Hearts and Hibs phoned me to ask if I would be interested in talking to them. I agreed but I knew jumping from Hearts to Hibs wasn’t an easy thing to do.
“Colin Calderwood was the manager and I went to meet them, took the job and became Colin’s assistant. When Colin got the sack, they gave the job to Pat Fenlon and I was really disappointed. At that stage of my career and my life I was ready to take that job. I was in contract until the end of the season so when Pat came, I stayed.
“I wasn’t at all pleased it was a Hibs-Hearts final. For a start, that Hearts team was the one that Jim and I had built and left. I knew it would be a difficult time for me but I tried my best.
“I wasn’t doing too much by that point because Pat had brought Liam O’Brien with him and they were in charge, although I was supposed to be the assistant manager. I didn’t agree with certain things they were doing but I was part of it all so I have to take responsibility as well.
“It was a really difficult occasion and what made it worse was that Pat got sent off with five or 10 minutes to go and I had to go to the front of the dugout with all the Hearts fans shouting at me! I have never watched that game back and I don’t like talking about it. I wanted Hibs to win as much as I’d wanted Hearts to win when they were in cup finals but it wasn’t to be and it was a day in my life I don’t want to go back to very often. I wanted Hibs to win, big time.”
It was a very different tale 25 years ago as Brown and Jefferies brought silverware to the maroon side of the capital. “We were disappointed because Rangers and Celtic were there to be beaten in the league that year,” he recalled.
“We had never beaten Rangers that season but we thought we were better than them. We took the team down to Stratford and devised a different way of playing them. We decided to sit back, keep it tight and have a go later on.
“We worked on it all week – getting behind the ball, show them inside into our strengths, and we went there really confident. Then, after all the talk about sitting back, we scored after a minute and a half!
“We got them in at half-time: ‘We don’t need to score a goal, just keep it tight’ and six minutes into the second half we scored a second goal! Rangers scored late on and it was the Alamo from then on but we had the team and the players to win it and we got our just rewards in the end.
“Rangers were on their last legs. They’d lost Paul Gascoigne mid-season. Brian Laudrup had signed a pre-contract with Chelsea. Jorg Albertz, who was a thorn in our flesh, was suspended.
“It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my career. Jim was a player for Hearts for 15 years and didn’t win a trophy. We went to Magaluf on the Tuesday after it and reflected on it, although it’s hard to remember!
“I just hope other management teams get the chance to enjoy the time Jim and I had at the Hearts. We did get on well together, we put in the miles together and we’ve still got a bond that will never be broken.”
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