Legendary Scotland manager Tommy Docherty once delivered a memorable quote that summed up his view of Press relations within football.
“I’ve always said there’s a place for the Press,” he said. “They just haven’t dug it yet.”
A mass grave for the media.
Steve Clarke can often give the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he would raise no strong moral objection to the idea of the diggers being sent in and an unmarked spot being dug for the communal burial of the allegedly negative forces at work against him and his team.
I happily exhume, to use the only appropriate word, the Doc’s dark take on journalists – first said 50 years ago – because it highlights the fact strained relations between Scotland managers and media is anything but a recent phenomenon.
I still treasure the text from Gordon Strachan that informed me I was a “pain in the a**e” but good at my job.
Internal warfare between those who play or manage and those who write or talk about football is as much a part of the game as penalty shoot-outs.
And it can occasionally be just as dramatic.
Steve started to take the huff, though he may dispute the terminology, when a former Scotland manager Craig Levein criticised team selection and tactics following the defeat from Ukraine that ended our hopes of playing at the World Cup.
Then the journalistic profession got it in the neck for showing their disdain for Scotland’s abject performance against the Republic of Ireland in the Nations League last weekend.
I have a theory.
It used to be the case that elimination from the World Cup was followed by a suitable period of mourning.
Two vital games in two separate tournaments, and two losses, was a close proximity too upsetting.
The atmosphere went from euphoric prior to the kick-off at Hampden to toxic following the final whistle at the Aviva Stadium.
But a breakdown in communications always begins with a team fault leading to unattractive performances and unacceptable results.
If games weren’t lost then tempers wouldn’t be lost either.
It’s how you deal with that state of affairs that’s important – and revealing.
Which leads me to the conclusion the Press and Steve are taking a break from each other in the nick of time.
We’ll meet up again in September for the resumption of the Nations League group and we’ll all be better, hopefully, for the opportunity to draw breath and pause for reflection.
It would be nice to think that, when we do reconvene in each other’s company, the manager might have contemplated the occasional error of his ways.
Clarke can be intransigent, irascible and incandescent whenever he’s irked by media intervention he dislikes.
Wherever we’re going in September, whatever we’re doing as a national team, it would be good if the manager looked and sounded as if he was a bit more happy about it all.
And a bit less intolerant towards the utilisation of free speech.
Clarke was commendably candid when, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s win in Armenia, he said that it, and the defeat of the same side a week earlier, had been an irrelevance.
The main objective, qualification for Qatar, had ended in “failure”.
The three-goal drubbing in Dublin four days earlier was, to use his word “damning”.
Scotland captain Andy Robertson observed that the booing of the team in Dublin was “completely correct”.
It would surely be hypocritical, then, to deny people who are paid to give an opinion of the team the same access to freedom of expression.
I’m told Steve formed an instantly unfavourable impression of the media on the day he was unveiled as Kilmarnock manager in 2017.
A slip of the tongue by a broadcast media representative caused one man to refer to him as Steve McClaren, not Clarke, at the Press conference. Twice.
This prompted Steve to ask out loud if this was the standard of questioner he was likely to encounter up here.
Time to get over all of that – like the six goals lost to Ukraine and the Republic and the reputational damage that went with those disappointing defeats.
Time to do an Ange Postecoglou.
The Celtic manager arrived to hostility that would have affected anyone’s temperament and he has, I would argue, a job every bit, if not more, stressful than the national team manager’s gig.
But Ange has turned his Press conferences into an exercise in thoughtful expression that has become the manager’s personal trademark.
I’m not a psychologist, mate, but the Press are not your enemy, Steve.
Ukraine and the Republic of Ireland assume that role because they stand between Scotland and the top spot in Nations League group B1.
Incidentally, Steve, your long ago predecessor, the Doc, wasn’t held in contempt by the Press in spite of suggesting they’d be better off entombed rather than encouraged.
The Scottish Football Writers Association invited him to be their guest speaker at their annual dinner in 2015 when he was a still sprightly 87.
None of us get off scot-free in this business.
I remember going home after one evening of robust engagement with the listening audience in a radio phone-in and telling my wife of the fractious nature of the programme.
“You deserve all you get,” she said.
