By David Leggat
EVEN though I had been expecting it for some time, the shock of Jimmy Calderwood’s death still hit me hard.
Jimmy, who slipped away on Sunday morning at the dreadfully early age of just 69, had been my pal for over half a century.
And until he was gripped by that horrible dementia disease, it was a fun-filled friendship from the moment we first me.
That came about in a Birmingham city centre night club, just a few weeks after I had arrived to take over as the chief football writer on the Sports Argus, then Britain’s biggest selling sports newspaper.
Jimmy, still a teenager, had just broken into the Birmingham City first team and when I was introduced to him by another sports writer, as was ever the case when a couple of Glaswegians met in England, there was some verbal sparring.
On being told I was from Maryhill, Jimmy wanted to know if that meant I went to Firhill and his face broke in his amazing trademark smile when I answered that I only went there when Rangers were playing.
It was the start of a beautiful friendship which endured until his mind slipped into that dark place.
My memories linger on. Such as the time some Brummie gangsters were hunting me. Needless to say, a woman was involved. Jimmy soon got me bundled into his car and put me up until I could get things sorted.
There was the day when I arranged to meet him in my local, ahead of making the trip to Anfield for Scotland’s World Cup qualifier and he walked in around 11am, resplendent in tartan scarf and bunnet, but looking a wee bit apprehensive.
That was because, as he waited at the stop for a bus into town, a car drew up and the then Birmingham City manager rolled down his window to offer him a lift.
Sir Alf Ramsay was the boss in question.
Or the time, just a couple of weeks later when I, by then working for the Sunday People, noticed Trevor Francis started a game with the mother and father of all shiners.
Jimmy told me it had been given to him by City centre half Joe Gallagher during a training ground punch up.
That story stayed under wraps for a week until I broke it the following Sunday and Sir Alf interviewed every player in a mole hunt. Unlike, George Smiley ,England’s World Cup winning manager failed to find the leak.
When he moved to play and later manage, in Holland, I often visited, though there was one occasion when he might have regretted his invite.
He was in charge of Nimegen when they made the short trip to play Arnhem. Jimmy’s team were two down and being outplayed when, with the minutes ticking away, they got a goal.
As those minutes kept ticking, Jimmy’s team kept passing, backwards and sideways in their own half. I could stand it no longer and the staid Dutch were left wondering who the well dressed gent in the directors’ box who leapt to his and yelled was.
Of course they failed to understand my coarse Glesga bellow, but Jimmy understood all right…..get that baw up the park. He just shook his head.
We trusted each other with secrets and the week before he was due to lead Dunfermline into the Scottish Cup Final, he pulled me aside to reveal he would be joining Aberdeen.
It was a confidence kept.
And when I stayed overnight at his family home in Aberdeen after his team had beaten Rangers 2-0 in a wintry night, he could hardly contain his belief that, after an informal chat with Sir David Murray, he was in the running to take over from Alex McLeish as the manager of Rangers.
Alas for my pal, that didn’t happen and as the game turned its back on him we met regularly for a cuppa, during which time I noticed some memory lapses.
Eventually, he revealed the full horror of what he faced. He had early onset dementia.
We kept up our meetings and even when he could no longer go out on his own his partner, Yvonne, brought him to my house.
That no longer became possible either as he spent his final years in hospital and then a care home, imprisoned in a darkness I had not the courage to witness.
Jimmy Calderwood was a fine footballer, an outstanding coach and manager and dyed-in-the-wood bluenose. He was more. He was a marvellous man who I was proud to call a pal.
ENDS
