Coaching kids is the day job. For the time being.
But just because Kevin Thomson still has big plans for another crack at management – after winning a title in his first season as a boss – doesn’t mean he’s simply killing time until the next one comes along. On the contrary, he launched his own academy pretty much as soon as he hung up his boots. And from beginning with nothing more than a bag of balls, he’s grown his own baby into one of the country’s gold star coaching projects.
So much so he could be in line for a return to the Rangers youth set-up, where he cut his teeth as a coach before going it alone at Kelty Hearts. His work at Auchenhowie – coupled with the relationships he forged with players such as Alex Lowry and Leon King as he helped them find a pathway into the first-team squad – has helped cement his reputation as a developer of talent.
Now he’s revealed how he has been driven to encourage the progression of youngsters through his own experiences as an up-and-coming wonderkid at Coventry and Hibs. Speaking on the latest episode of our Off The Record podcast, Thomson has lifted the lid on the culture of bullying that forced him to rip up a four-year contract as a traumatised, homesick teenager at Coventry.
And the bizarre daily weigh-in ritual under John Collins at Hibs that fuelled his £2million move to Ibrox in 2007. He said: “I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I went through because it’s unacceptable, really.
“But it probably has made me what I am now. And that’s not me justifying it – it should never have happened. But as a young lad, it made me durable. I had to find a way of being able to look after myself.
“I’d signed a massive contract at Coventry and I gave up a lot of money. I gave up a brilliant opportunity not because of my talent but because of what I had to endure. That was the reason why I left.
“The football I loved, the training I loved, the exposure I loved. I was highly, highly thought of. The contract I was offered, I probably shouldn’t have been offered – it was astronomical for a 15, 16-year-old back in the day.
“It was a huge contract to give up. There was frustration from my mum and dad because I never opened up to anyone about what was going on.
“My sister would take me to the airport and I used to miss my flights. I used to sit in the terminal until, ‘Last call for Mr Kevin Thomson!’. I’d just sit and wait until the flight had left. Then I’d say I had just missed my flight. The boys were horrible and some in specific.
"At times there was a lot of verbal bullying and then verbal would turn into physical. I was probably a wee mammy’s boy. I needed my mammy to support me and always be there to reassure me.
“From never knowing any different to being away from home was difficult for me. I was the baby in the group, which never helped either. Externally I probably showed I was big enough to handle it. But internally I just wasn’t.
“It was fundamentally the reason why I did as much as I possibly could to make sure I got straight back up the road to what I knew, being with my pals, my mum and dad and my sister.”
Thomson joined boyhood club Hibs where he became captain at just 20, part of a production line of talent which included Scott Brown, Steven Whittaker, Michael Stewart, Derek Riordan and Garry O’Connor. But it turned sour when Collins took over from Tony Mowbray and within months Thomson was leading a mass exodus, which later led to a full scale dressing-room revolt against the manager.
He said: “I stayed in a flat across from Easter Road and walked to work every morning. I felt like I had the best life in the world. A lot of people want to drive an agenda that it was only me and John Collins who had an issue. But the fact is John had an issue with a lot of the players.
“I felt it was almost a fight every time we had a chat. The communication between us as players and the staff at that given time was... I don’t know if toxic is the right word but it was difficult.”
Thomson believes the routine of being forced to strip down to their underpants to get weighed helped to tip a simmering situation over the edge. He said: “These wee things of going in and standing there every morning was becoming quite resentful with the players – having to go along, take your T-shirt off, drop your kegs down to your slips and stand on the scales and tell him your weight.
“It wasn’t that big a problem, It didn’t bother me one bit. But when you’re starting to have a not particularly great relationship with somebody, you start to resent it.
“It was him saying, especially to me, ‘You need to be a wee bit stronger here or there...’ while looking at your torso. I’m standing there as a 21 or 22-year-old thinking, ‘I’d run through walls, man. I don’t need muscles anywhere I don’t need!’
“It didn’t mean I didn’t want to get better – I wanted to eat better, sleep better and become a better player. But when you don’t have a great relationship with somebody and he’s telling you you might need better abs on your right-hand side or whatever... and it was every day.
“I get the importance of sports science. But in that period he probably never had a good enough relationship with the boys to be saying these type of things. By the way, he was ripped to bones.
"He was brilliant in the gym and an unbelievable player. But when it came to the wee bits of managing that group and getting the best out of individuals, he failed massively.”
