Goram's take on Craig Brown & the 98 World Cup. Apologies for the lengthy article, parts of it pretty much echo Gough's criticisms of Brown and his "school teacher" coaching style ....
QUITTING Scotland after being overlooked for the starting jersey at France 98 ripped me up.
I’d worked my b*****ks off for my 43 caps, and I live with the regret of never having played in a World Cup.
I did it with a very heavy heart, but I could see no other way to save my career at that time.
My decision to retire from international football would see me hung out to dry, branded a traitor to the cause and a disgrace to the nation.
But I deserved the shout to face Brazil in that World Cup opener in Paris, the biggest game my country had ever played in.
I’d earned it but Craig Brown took it away from me.
Even now, I still sit and think about that situation sometimes. My conclusion? There was no reason to think that I would not start as Scotland’s keeper at France 98.
I should have played in that tournament, not Jim Leighton.
Typically, I didn’t hear the bad news directly. Instead, a prominent member of the SFA had a quiet word in my ear.
Two weeks from the tournament I had waited all my life for, my confidant sat me down and warned me Craig Brown wasn’t picking me.
He would be going with a near 40-year-old Leighton instead.
Brown was consumed by the desire to keep everyone happy. He was a schoolteacher and a good coach, and his achievements for Scotland should be saluted, but that’s where it stops for me.
Before I got the nod on the quiet that I was missing out, I knew deep down he was going to leave it until the last minute then hit one of us with the bombshell news and leave us shattered.
I’ll never forget going back to my room in the hotel as it sank in that the manager was snubbing me.
I was sharing with my Rangers team-mate Gordon Durie. I was ashen-faced, and Jukey was worried for me when I told him I was quitting Scotland. There was no point in me sitting there on the bench at the age of 34. What would that have achieved?
He asked me to pause and reconsider what I was doing, because it was such a big step.
I couldn’t be swayed and I made my arrangements to fly back to Glasgow and see Miriam. I knew flak would fly.
Then Brown arrived at my room and said, ‘I want you to reconsider’.
I thought that this was it, the moment I would come to respect him more as a man. I expected a heartfelt plea to make me stay in the Scotland set-up, maybe even a change of heart and a pledge to play me in front of Jim.
Instead he said, ‘I want you to reconsider, because I don’t think you should fly into Glasgow. The press will be waiting for you there’. That was it. He only cared about the impending media storm and how it would reflect on him. He had no interest in trying to keep me in the camp.
I didn’t do what I did lightly. Born in Bury or not, I was a Scot, and it meant the world to me.
I believed that this tournament would set the seal on my career. Now I was being dumped. I have all the respect in the world for Jim as a goalkeeper, but nothing will ever sway me from thinking that I should have been picked for France 98. I still feel a sense of injustice.
My relationship with Brown had always been tense and uncomfortable.
We had played a couple of World Cup qualifiers at Ibrox, and he was roaming around agitated, going on about how the home dressing room was too big. It bewildered me. He kept muttering: ‘It’s too big, too big. I must be closer to my players. We have to be together.’
Then, when we played Italy there and drew 0–0, all the kit hampers had been used as a makeshift wall to cut the dressing room in half.
My peg, my space — first on the left after the door when you walk in — was where I had changed for seven years of laughs and fights, titles and glory at Ibrox. Now it was on the wrong side of this divide.
I looked at it and said: ‘F*** that. I’m going to sit in my normal seat’. Goalkeepers are superstitious animals and I wasn’t breaking with my routine for this b****cks.
Brown walked in and said: ‘Goalie, I don’t want you to change there. We need to be closer together’.
I said: ‘I’ve changed here for seven years and won all my medals from this seat. I’m not f*****g moving’. We stood and glared at each other as people stared at the floor and shuffled their feet. We ended up having this needless clash about where I should get changed! Pointless.
I sat in my normal seat behind the hampers and then came in for the team talk.
I saw all of that stuff as needless. Things like everyone having to tuck their shirts in and making sure the tape for their shinguards was the same colour as their socks is laughable.
Yet Craig gave us the impression they were deeply important. I felt like a schoolkid in one of his classrooms, and it constantly grated on me. There are rules you accept when you’re in a squad situation like codes of discipline, but matching tape on your socks? Give me a break.