Legends and legacies
By IAIN KING, Toronto, January 29, 2020
“IT doesn’t get any better than this, Kingy!”
BSC Glasgow General Manager George Fraser yelled to the heavens and almost collapsed my lung as he crushed me in an emotional bearhug.
May 23, 2015, Ferguson Park, Rosewell in Midlothian, the home of Whitehill Welfare.
We had just beaten Civil Service Strollers 2-0 to win the SFA Challenge Cup Final in our Lowland League club’s first season in the senior ranks.
I’ll never forget that day, alongside my childhood pals Craig Young and Ally Graham we’d coached the team to a little bit of history.
Their first ever senior trophy, a year after we’d guided East Kilbride FC to grasp the same silverware in THEIR debut season.
Those two seasons will always live with us, something to look back on when we reunite for a pint in years to come.
Now, five years on from the day when Gerry O’Connell’s thunderous volley ripped into the roof of the net before Ciaran Johnston clinched it late on, BSC Glasgow under their shrewd coach Stephen Swift are in a dream world.
GLASGOW'S YELLOW AND BLUE...the victorious BSC Glasgow boys make history in 2015
On February 9 they will tackle Premiership giants Hibernian in the last 16 of the Scottish Cup, live on TV.
Turns out George got it wrong. It does get better, WAY better.
The word fairytale gets trotted out all too often when journalists wax lyrical about the romance of the Cup. This, though, really is one.
A true community club that gave birth to a Lowland League team in 2014 now on the screens of a nation at the business end of the premier knock-out tournament when they are just six years old? It beggars belief.
This is now the stuff of legends and legacies.
And amidst all the excitement as the tie looms it should be remembered that this would not have happened without one man. Stewart Regan.
It was the former SFA chief executive who had the vision and the courage to push through the pyramid system in Scottish football
When others baulked at giving clubs like Spartans and Cove Rangers a chance of a seat at the big table it was his determination and ability to explain the benefits to the doubters that pushed the plan through.
Now all of those who contemptuously sneered at the concept have long since been silenced.
MAN WITH A PLAN...Stewart Regan pushed through the pyramid and left lasting legacy
Seven years on from the birth of the pyramid system Cove Rangers have stormed out of the Highland League to lead League Two and Edinburgh City, who graduated from the Lowland, are battling it out with them to lift the title.
One - or maybe even both if fortunes favours in the Play-Offs - look sure to be playing League One football next season.
When assessing the impact of chief executives on Scotland’s national game it is natural that the focus always lies on our failure to qualify for a major tournament Finals since France ’98.
That is a tortured subject for another day but for me the legacy of bringing a chance of the professional game to so many community clubs is something that Regan can be proud of.
Without his campaigning zeal back in the day BSC Glasgow wouldn’t have this dream day to savour.
And there are other clubs now waiting in the wings to emulate Cove and Edinburgh City.
Current Lowland League leaders Kelty Hearts - coached by former Rangers and Scotland skipper Barry Ferguson - and Spartans, who have an infrastructure and leadership that puts many pro clubs to shame, spring to mind.
My hometown club East Kilbride FC too have been to the brink and I have no doubt will regroup and go again next season.
The greatest thing for me that memorable day at Ferguson Park five years ago was seeing the joy on the faces of George Fraser and club founders Kenny Moyes and Steve Prince.
Kenny - the brother of West Ham United manager David - has seen so much in the game as a big-time agent brokering deals involving eye-watering wages.
Yet for those three guys this was about the simple joy of seeing THEIR club, the one they had helped to create, win their first major trophy.
In the run-up to the Final they had given the coaching staff three-year contracts which is almost unheard of at that level of football in Scotland.
It stings a little now looking back that the economic reality of leaving my journalism job as Head of Sport at The Scottish Sun to become Chief Executive at League One Airdrieonians meant I had to move from a club who meant so much to me.
I would never swap that year-long Airdrie adventure for anything, I learned so many lessons in football, business and life. Many of them bitter ones.
I saw one of my best mates Eddie Wolecki Black - who we’d brought in as Head Coach - almost die in the dressing-room at Cowdenbeath when he suffered a massive stroke at half-time of a vital match.
Then with the planning beginning for Season Two I was sacked for the first time in my working life.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say now there are times when I wonder what would have happened if I’d just stayed put in my journalism comfort zone, coaching BSC part-time.
You know what, though? Everything happens for a reason.
I know those two SFA Challenge Cup successes caught the eye of my former Technical Director at North Toronto Nitros when my CV landed on his desk and I was first recruited for a new life coaching full-time in Canada.
I’m coming up for three years now at this brilliant Canadian community club, teaching the Beautiful Game and now helping younger coaches here too.
In a roundabout way I owe Stewart Regan a debt of gratitude too and he wouldn’t have bet on that when I was pulling on the tackity boots to give the SFA a headline-writing kicking when I was at the Scottish Sun!
When BSC Glasgow run out against Hibs, though, and all those kids clad in yellow and blue in the stands look out and dream that it could be THEM one day?
Stewart can watch that on his TV screen and be proud because he helped make it happen. Legends and legacies.
