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The National (Scotland)

Sport

Matthew Lindsay

Scott Kellacher on Henrik Larsson wind-up, Tommy Burns and ICT saviour Alan Savage

Tommy Burns Henrik Larsson John Hughes Caledonian Thistle John Robertson Inverness Caledonian Thistle Billy Dodds Celtic Duncan Ferguson Paul Lambert

LIKE so many outstanding young footballers who have dreamed of one day emulating Murdo MacLeod, Paul McStay, Charlie Nicholas, Chris Sutton, James Forrest or Callum McGregor after signing for Celtic, Scott Kellacher failed to make it at Parkhead.

Kellacher returned to his home town of Inverness after being released and went on to turn out for Highland League sides Nairn County and Clachnacuddin as well as, very briefly, Elgin City instead.

Yet, he still loved every minute of the time that he spent as an apprentice in the East End of Glasgow during the late 1990s and definitely made, quite literally it turns out, an impression in his spell there.

“All of the first team players were brilliant with the young lads back then, just brilliant,” said the Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager during a coffee and a chat in a function suite at the Caledonian Stadium earlier this week.

“Paul Lambert, Mark Viduka, Henrik Larsson, they were all great. I stayed in Paisley when I was down there and Paul lived nearby in Johnstone. I used to travel with him quite a bit and speak to him about football a lot. I was always asking him questions.

“But they were all good guys. The young lads used to sort the first team kit and we would speak away to the players when we did. I’ve always been like that anyway, have always been the sort of guy who will talk to anyone. So I would always be blathering away.

“Henrik was phenomenal. I got on really well with him. I was pure Inverness at that time and he would try to impersonate my Highland accent in his Swedish accent. Do you know what? He was absolutely horrendous at it.”

Kellacher has shown he is far more than a pale imitation of the great managers who have preceded him at Caledonian Thistle – and Steve Paterson, John Robertson, Craig Brewster, Terry Butcher, John Hughes and Billy Dodds all enjoyed noteworthy successes during their respective tenures - since replacing Duncan Ferguson in October last year.

He took over in the most difficult circumstances imaginable after the stricken League One outfit went into administration. Ferguson, who had been working for free as the financial crisis engulfing the club had worsened, was sacked. The SPFL then docked them 15 points and they dropped to the foot of the third tier table.

But the man who had performed a variety of different roles during the preceding 20 years – he had been a youth coach, a kit man, a reserve coach, a first team coach and an assistant manager – rose to the considerable challenge and then some. He ensured they avoided relegation with a game to spare.

It is easy to understand why catastrophe was averted after spending a little time in the company of the 44-year-old. He has an engaging, infectious personality, laughs and jokes a lot, radiates enthusiasm and positivity. But he acknowledges there have been tough moments.

“Over the years, I have been asked by a lot of people if I was going to go for the job when a manager has moved on or been let go,” said Kellacher.

“When I used to talk about it with my wife Audrey I would say, ‘I'll know myself when the time is right’. Bizarrely, the time came when the club was in the worst position it could be in.

(Image: Calum Chittleburgh - SNS Group) “When I was asked to do it, I thought, ‘Do you know what? If I step up I can try to really pick everybody up’. I like to feel that's the sort of person I am. I like to be upbeat, I like to drive things on. I thought, ‘I'll step up and give it everything I've got’.

“I’ve loved it. Don’t get me wrong, there's been a lot of sleepless nights. People don't see that side of it, don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. I don’t think I realised myself. I take my hat off to managers now. It’s so different being the manager. But I've loved it.”

Kellacher continued. “It's been a real rollercoaster. I've used the word a lot in recent months. But there's been a lot of ups and downs. I knew there would be with the young squad we had.

“I probably felt every emotion going, relief, joy, pride, when we beat Arbroath and stayed up. There were so many things going through my head. If we had beaten Kelty a couple of weeks earlier that would have taken us away from Annan, would have given us a bit of breathing space. But we lost at home. So the pressure was mounting.

“There's so much that goes through your mind at that point. Am I doing this right? Can the young players handle the pressure? Because it is a lot of pressure. You're playing for people's livelihoods. You're trying to make sure the club survives.

“But we produced one of our best performances of the season against Arbroath. With Annan losing at Dumbarton, it was a perfect day. It was just euphoria. That’s probably the best word to describe it.

“Saturday nights change when you’re a manager. Saturday nights are not what they used to be. Whether you win, lose or draw, you are thinking about the next game. That night I just wanted to go home and sit. So that is what I did. I sat on the couch with the wife and kids. With a big smile on my face.

“I was really, really proud of what we achieved. I was involved when Caley Thistle won the Scottish Cup in 2015. I was first team coach along with Russell Latapy. It was an incredible achievement, was comfortably the biggest thing this club has ever done.

“But what we did last season, probably because I was in charge, meant that bit more to me. I knew what was at stake, I knew the importance of staying in the league. Who knows what would have happened if we had gone down again.”

Kellacher has worked alongside a fair few Caledonian Thistle managers during his coaching career and has learned a little from each of them. But he emphasises that Hughes, the man who oversaw that aforementioned cup triumph, has been the biggest influence on his career by far.

(Image: SNS Group Kenny Smith) “In terms of team talks, Terry was unbelievable,” he said. “When it came to getting a team pumped up for a game, he could be incredible. I was a coach at that time, but at the end of his team talks I would be saying, ‘Let me out that door! I want to go out there! I want to play!’ He had players in the palm of his hand. He knew how to motivate them, knew how to get the best out of them.

“But when John came in I really got an apprenticeship. I thought I knew the game as a coach, but he opened my mind up to a whole different way of playing football. He made me a massive part of things. He took me in with the first team, showed me how he wanted his team to play, how he wanted to create overloads on the pitch, how he wanted to get extra bodies into areas so that situations were always in our favour.

“His attention to detail was frightening. We were in here from seven o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night. The work we did was ridiculous. The one thing he always drove home to me was to leave no stone unturned, to make sure you had covered everything.”

Kellacher added, “The best example I could give of that actually came in the Scottish Cup final. The referee was Willie Collum and John saw that he had sent off players in his previous two games. So we shaped our team with 10 men in the week leading up to the game.

“We were prepared for, God forbid, one of our players getting shown a red card. And what happened in the final? Carl Tremarco got sent off and we went down to 10 men. We were ready for it. It is quite incredible really.

“I'm really, really close with John and still speak to him regularly. We just hit it off. I think we got on so well because we're very similar. We both love football, enjoy our jobs and want to do well. But we don’t take ourselves too seriously either. You want that togetherness, that feelgood factor.”

Kellacher witnessed first hand how Tommy Burns was able to foster exactly the same sort of unity at Celtic when he was on the books at the Glasgow giants as a kid. He had enormous admiration and affection for the late Parkhead legend as well.

“I had a few options when I was a boy,” he said. “Arsenal and a few other clubs were in for me. I was quite keen to go down the road. But my dad originally comes from Castlemilk and he and all of his family are big Celtic fans. The moment they came in for me my old man said, ‘There you go. Job done’.

“But it was a wonderful time. I learned a lot from Tommy. He was a great, great man. He treated everybody exactly the same, had a wonderful way about him. It didn’t matter if you were a first team player or a youth player. He just had this aura about him.

“There was always a great craic, really good banter, when Tommy and his assistant Billy [Stark] were around. I watched the Tommy Burns documentary on television the other night and found it quite emotional.”

Learning that the Caledonian Thistle creditors had accepted a company voluntary arrangement and that Alan Savage, the founder of oil and gas recruitment firm The Orion Group, was finally free to complete an £800,000 takeover also brought a tear to his eye and a lump to his throat last week.

Kellacher is effusive in his praise of Savage – entirely understandably as the successful local businessman has single-handedly staved off the very real threat of liquidation - and is optimistic that far better times lie ahead both on and off the park following months of turmoil and uncertainty with him at the helm.

(Image: Mark Scates - SNS Group) “What Alan has done for the football club has just been incredible,” he said. “Honestly, it has been so good of him to come in and step up. For the club, for the staff, for the fans and for the city, it's just been great.

“I’m not going to lie, the way it was going wasn't nice. But I'm not one for talking and thinking about the past, I'm one for looking at what's happening now. What happened will be part of the club's history now. But it wasn't a nice part of the club's history.

“Alan has made it clear that Inverness has been so good for him and he wants to give something back. But it’s a good bit back, let me tell you, a good bit. It's actually incredible what he's done. We can't be thankful enough for it.”

Kellacher has been pleased at the freedom and encouragement the new Savage regime has given to him and his coaching staff. But he is well aware they will need to deliver in the 2025/26 season and beyond.

“Alan has given my coaching staff and I his complete backing,” he said. “He’s said, ‘Just keep doing what you've been doing. I'll be here to support you’. He’s been brilliant with us. When he comes in he will always dip his head in the door and say, ‘How’s it going? Everything alright?’.

“But Alan definitely wants to make sure that he gets it right. He'll keep us all on our toes. He'll demand a standard about the place. He'll demand results on the pitch. That all comes with the job. We know we will have to step up. At the end of the day, he's a winner.”

There appear to be no lingering after-effects of the existential crisis which Caledonian Thistle have just emerged from when you chat to Kellacher. Nor is there any evidence of the near-death experience which he personally went through four years ago.

When he is asked about contracting both viral encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain which can be fatal in the worst cases, and Covid-19 at the same time, though, it is obvious the ordeal took a psychological as well as a physical toll on him.

“There was no warning at all,” he said. “I was just in my bed and it happened. But I've got to go on what the wife tells me here because I can’t remember. She got really frightened. She was told, ‘Listen, you need to prepare yourself for the worst here’.

“I was in hospital for over two weeks. I was on oxygen for most of that time. And I was oblivious to all of it. My kids saw a lot of things they shouldn’t have at that age even though my wife tried to protect them and look after them.

“It isn’t nice having to go through the lumbar punctures and the brain scans. Lumbar punctures aren’t very comfortable things and they are very dangerous. They have to drain fluid out of your spine to see if everything is alright.

“When I came out of the hospital, I said to Audrey, ‘Right, I'll give myself a couple of weeks and I'll be back to work’. It probably took six or seven months. But I would go out for a walk for five minutes and I would be floored for a week.

“The pain that I was getting in my head was horrendous. Think of your worst migraine and multiply it by 10. That is what it was like. And no tablet would make a difference. I was at the doctor’s every couple of weeks trying to find a different tablet, trying a different procedure, trying to take the pain away.”

(Image: SNS Group Ross Parker) Kellacher continued, “I just kept trying to do the same things and slowly but surely, day by day, week by week, I started to get better.

“I do get emotional when I think about it now. I'm an emotional guy. I don't hide my feelings. I don’t bottle things up. If I feel like I want to cry, I'll have a cry, if I want to celebrate, I’ll celebrate, if I want to be angry, I’ll be angry. I'm not very good at hiding things.

“But for a long time I didn’t really want to speak about it. It was a good couple of years at least. I just couldn't bring myself to talk about it at all, even in the house with the wife. I don’t think to this day we've ever really got into the nitty gritty of it. It was a hard, hard time.

“I am a lot better now. I tell myself that I am lucky. I was in hospital at the height of the pandemic. A lot of people lost their lives. I think I am very, very fortunate. I managed to get through it. I make sure that I try to enjoy the job to the full now.”

Kellacher met his wife when they were both pupils at Inverness Royal Academy and he was tickled recently when he was, having been more renowned for his sporting prowess than his academic ability during his school days, asked by his alma mater to give a speech at their awards ceremony. He is sure he will enjoy the experience.

“I laughed about that with my wife and her pals,” he said. “They were in the same year as me at the IRA and all went off to university afterwards. They have all become reporters, teachers, headmistresses, whatever. But I’m the one the IRA have asked to speak to the kids. I told them, ‘You didn’t have to go off to uni to get invited back guys!’”

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