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An Extract from 'Colin Innes: A Life In Football'


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Chapter 16: Four In A Row

At the time this seemed like the greatest moment I could have ever imagined experiencing. Leading a team like Queen's Park to their fourth consecutive SPL title, and seventh consecutive league title was beond all imagining when I took the job after the 2007/08 season. I was by then sixty-nine years old, but I felt half that age as I danced a jig of delight on the Hampden turf and sprayed champagne over whoever came within six yards of me.

The team I had built was one for the present and for the future. Of course we still had Nicolas Anelka, now thirty-three, in his fourth season with the club and his best, on the field. For such a nomadic player to have settled so well in Glasgow and to have walked with me for so long, it was remarkable. At one point during the celebrations he turned to me and said, as was his way, "We can talk about my contract tomorrow. Today we enjoy.". I didn't take any offence, for Nic that was as close to unbridled joy as you could ever expect.

He had been less excited in the early part of the season when his strike partner of three years standing, Samuel Jackson, was sold to Tottenham - the team from which he had arrived - for the princely sum of £20,000,000 plus Dimitar Berbatov. It took the new pairing little time to hit it off, however, and each man surpassed thirty goals in the season as both rolled back the years and played like much younger men. The real cause of that success was the wing play of James McFadden, who started all fifty-two games the club played that season, and Dan Makolli opposite him.

There had been a certain amount of player turnover before the year began, but if I had expected some teething problems I was pleasantly surprised. Vincent Enyeama returned from a year's loan at Betis to win back the starting job in goal and produced the best year of his career whilst an all-new central midfield pairing of Juan Manuel Mata and Andrei Arshavin were almost ever-present, setting high standards and maintaining them all year long. It was one of those years where, in the league at least, whatever I tried seemed to work. Weaker opponents were beaten regularly and often, rivals were kept at arm's length, and the championship was won with a few games to go.

As I get older I often look back on this as one of the moments that defined my career. For certain, I managed a long time, in a lot of places, but it was at a time when my peers were retiring or stepping back that I found a new life, a new energy. I credit that team of players with energising me anew, to the extent that my health, family life and career all benefitted in turn. To think I could have walked away from this job after a year. If I'd done that I wouldn't be here today and I wouldn't have the wonderful memories and wonderful friends to remind me of the best days of my life.

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Colin Innes: A Life In Football - available now from all good bookstores

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I liked the story. As for all this reporting nonsense, it has been reported.

Strathclyde Law Enforcement Force: SLEF isn't very catchy. Unlike Northern Ireland Police Service, as it was to be called until they realised it's abbreviation (that's right, NIPS) and re-jigged (can I say that in this thread?) the letters to PSNI.

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