THERE are one club men and then there is Eddie Hunter – the ultimate one club man.
Numerous footballers have managed a team they have previously played for over the years in the Scottish game. But precious few have spent their entire careers, both playing and coaching, with the same side. Hunter was one of a small and select group who did.
The Queen’s Park legend, who passed away peacefully on Saturday evening at the age of 82, devoted his entire life to the venerable Glasgow institution and left an indelible impression on everyone he encountered.
He was a youth player with the famous amateur outfit for five years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, featured nearly 200 times for the first team as a wing-half or centre-back after that and then spent no fewer than 15 seasons in the Hampden dugout between 1979 and 1994.
The plumber was, as anyone who ever lined up against him would readily testify, a ferocious competitor and a formidable opponent. He represented the Scotland Amateurs on 15 occasions before they were disbanded in 1974 and also turned out for Great Britain once in a friendly. But it is as a manager that he will be best remembered.
Malky Mackay - whose father, also Malky, is a former team-mate and one-time coaching colleague as well as a lifelong friend of Hunter – played part-time for Queen’s Park as a young man in the early 1990s while he was working full-time in a bank in Glasgow city centre.
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The former centre-half attributes the success which he subsequently enjoyed in the paid ranks with Celtic, Norwich City, West Ham United and Watford to the man who became his mentor – and he knows there are many, many more exactly like him.
“I wouldn’t have been a professional footballer without Eddie,” said Mackay. “He was a huge part of my football life. He was an enormously influential character in my career. He is someone who I'm deeply indebted to.
“I was 32 when I won my first cap for Scotland. It was 15 years or so since I had played for Queen’s Park. But I can remember sending Eddie a signed strip, just to say thank you for what he had done for me. I knew that without him I wouldn’t have reached that level. That's the type of man he was for a lot of people.
“I can't say enough good things about him. The values, standards and discipline that he instilled in me at an early age have lasted forever. They stood me in good stead, not just through my playing career, but in my management career as well.”
Mackay, who went on to manage Watford, Cardiff City, Wigan Athletic and Ross County and who is now the sporting director at Premiership high flyers Hibernian, acknowledged that Hunter could be a hard taskmaster.
“I joined Queen’s Park when I was 14 or 15 and remember him being a hugely intimidating figure at the football club at that time,” he said. “He had a big personality, was a person who drove everything.
“When I moved up into the first team, we trained on Monday night, Tuesday night and Thursday night. Most of the part-time teams only trained two nights a week. But Eddie was a fitness fanatic. He believed he had to get his teams as fit as possible because he was the manager of an amateur club and couldn't buy players. He thought his players had to be fit to compete in a professional league.
“The demands he put on me at times felt unfair. I'd go home after training and complain to my dad about him. I would say, ‘He was shouting at me again tonight! I was one of a group and he picked me out!’ My dad would say, ‘Son, you should worry when he stops shouting at you’. He was right. Eddie drove the ones he could see potential in.
“His demands were so high that a lot of people couldn't cope with it. But a lot of the players who could cope ended up pushing on to other clubs. Eddie’s absolute obsession, other than Queen's Park being successful, was to get as many players into the professional game as possible. He was someone who had a great name in the game in Glasgow and had fantastic connections and rapport with Celtic and Rangers.”
Mackay continued, “It all stood me in good stead. After a couple of years under him at Queen’s Park, I had played about 100 games for the first team and was doing okay. I was told, ‘Okay, there’s now teams in for you. You either sign with us again or you go to St Mirren or Celtic reserves’. Eddie was the person who guided me as I took my next step.
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“I said, ‘I’d like to try Celtic’. He said, ‘Okay, we'll go in to see the manager Liam Brady together’. He was the one that did the deal for me. Nowadays, agents do that and take a commission. But Eddie didn't ask for a penny, didn’t take a penny.
“He was a plumber to trade and was given a stipend by the club every year. But he was paid peanuts, expenses effectively. As I say, he had this pride in his players becoming professionals. I've got so much to thank him for.
“So do Queen’s Park. His legacy at the club is something that will rarely be matched. He played, coached and managed them. Later on in his life, he went back and did some charity work in the community around Hampden as well. It was never about the money with Eddie.
“He put resilience, perseverance and a work ethic into the players who were with him for a period of time. There's a host of people who ended up in professional football, who went on to have good careers, because of him. At times, it was tough. It was relentless, it was unforgiving. But you definitely benefitted from it in the long run.”
Ian McCall, the Dumfries-born midfielder who played for Dunfermline, Rangers, Bradford City, Dundee and Falkirk and then went on to manage Airdrie, Falkirk, Dundee United, Queen of the South, Partick Thistle and Ayr United, started out at Queen’s Park in the 1980s and is grateful for the grounding in the game which he received from Hunter.
“I had been at Motherwell under Jock Wallace as a kid,” he said. “But I got really homesick and nearly gave up the game. Then I got a trial at Queen’s Park. I thought Eddie was going to be a little softer than Jock. I was in for a shock.
“But he was responsible for me getting all of my hunger and my ambition back. He didn't let up from the first day I walked in until I walked out. A lot of people just couldn't handle that type of approach. It was the hardest training I ever did and it was the fittest I ever was. But Eddie wasn’t just hard, he had a great knowledge of football too. He was like John Lambie in that respect.
“Eddie was big, big pals with Billy McNeill and was a huge, huge influence on my career. Not just my playing career either, my management career too. I was impressed by his drive and determination. His desire to win was absolutely incredible.”
McCall added, “I can remember taking over as manager at a club once and thinking he might be a good man to get in as my assistant. When I called him up he answered and said, ‘McCall! You wee b******!’ I’ve never forgotten that.
“I used to see him whenever I went back to Queen’s Park and would always have a chat with him. I had a half-decent career I suppose, but it could have been better. I always felt that I disappointed him a little by not going on and doing more in the game. Eddie wasn’t for the faint-hearted, I’m not going to lie. But he was great for me.”
Mackay, who was pleased to catch up with his old manager at an event at Lesser Hampden last year, knows that Eddie Hunter was great for Queen’s Park as well.
“When my dad had his book launch, Eddie came along with his son David, who played for Queen’s Park and had a spell as their president,” he said. “He was quite unwell with dementia at that stage, but he recognised my dad and I. He was a fabulous man, great for Scottish football. We'll never see his like again.”
