Our Day in May (eBook)

FOREWORD

BY GEOFF BROWN, OWNER

I’LL ALWAYS LOOK back on 2014 with fondness – we all will. Having gone through triple heart bypass surgery, it’s also a year that put things in perspective for me, and made me think about what is important. There is more to life than football, after all. Admittedly, it didn’t feel like that on 17 May! It was a great chance to win the Scottish Cup – and we took it. It was a super day and I was so proud for everyone connected with the club, just as I am to write this foreword for the club’s official cup final book.

It’s funny looking back, at times. One of my best memories from the Scottish Cup run is actually from the semi-final. Alistair McCracken was St Johnstone’s doctor for over 20 years and is a super guy. He practiced in Kinross, did a lot of club medicals and was a real fanatic for the team. For the Aberdeen semi-final, he was over in the Western Isles on holiday and went into a pub to watch the game. Aberdeen went 1-0 up and out he went, away for a walk with his dog. He eventually came back in and it was 1-1. So he sat down to watch the game again and then up popped Stevie May with the second goal. The next thing, they threw him out of the pub! I enjoyed myself after that win, but not to that degree!

After our 4-0 defeat to Aberdeen in the League Cup semi-final, I think there were a lot of people not exactly looking forward to the next semi-final with the Dons. I went with the fans to the first game at Tynecastle and the rain was coming down as we were leaking goals. We trekked back to the bus, heads down, nobody speaking, it was a real fans’ feeling. I admit I was apprehensive going to Ibrox to face them again – but it ended up a marvellous day. I know the Aberdeen chairman, Stewart Milne, exceptionally well and he came onto our team bus and said ‘congratulations’ after our win, which I thought was a great gesture.

I effectively introduced Stewart to Derek McInnes, so every time we met I said ‘when am I getting my agent’s fee?’ When they went on to win the League Cup, I texted him again and said ‘well done… and when am I getting my agent’s fee?’ Wonderfully, the following morning there was a case of champagne sitting on my office table. It was from Stewart with a wee note, ‘enjoy the champagne and you’re certainly not getting an agent’s fee’!

So I still enjoy having a bit of banter with guys I used to see regularly but, of course, things have moved on for me after being hands-on at the club from 1986 to 2011. I was born and bred in Perth – in fact I was born in St Johnstoun’s Nursing Home. I’ve always been a football fanatic. I didn’t always go along every Saturday to watch Saints, with family commitments and such like, but they were always in my life. Coming into the club in ’86, there was nobody else! The previous board had tried all and sundry to see who would be interested. Little did my wife, Joyce, know what I was getting myself involved in! The first horse I bought was in 1986, as well. And I’ve had GS Brown since 1970, so it’s been a busy old time over the years, but good fun.

I’m pleased the club has been, and continues to be, run properly. If you don’t manage properly, you’ve no chance. At some clubs it’s been absolutely crazy. Look at what has happened with the likes of Rangers, Gretna, Hearts and Livingston over the years. There were TV programmes about the Gretna ‘dream’ and their climb up the leagues, but where else could it have gone? You don’t go spending money like they did – nobody can do that. Many believe money is the motivator, but that’s not the case when you are running a football club. Did that therefore make our cup triumph sweeter for me? Probably. But what felt nicer for me was that over the years reporters said we weren’t spending and had no ambition. For years, it was the board’s fault because we didn’t spend money. But you only had to look at the accounts of other clubs to understand why. A lot of situations were false economies, accruing debt. We have run a good, prudent club, and that pleases me, although that’s self praise which I don’t like!

At times it has been difficult, since stepping away to let my son, Steve, come in as chairman in 2011, but I made a conscious decision. I’m a great believer that when you do that you have to stand back completely and not look over people’s shoulders. You have to allow them to get on with it. I don’t think they have missed me somehow, having won a cup and been in Europe three times in a row, so it can’t be said that if I was there we could have been more successful! Joyce is an elder of the church and she has a job getting me to go. She says ‘I’ll go to my church, you go to yours (McDiarmid Park)’. I enjoy going to the games as a ‘fan’ now. But there is a wee problem with me in the directors’ box, because I’ll shout what I’m thinking. I’ve never been shy in showing those sorts of emotions!

When I decided to leave as chairman, Derek McInnes had left and there was a new manager coming in. To me, there were also younger people coming through the club. The first manager that I employed was Alex Totten and he was close to my age group, so I could relate to that. When people you are employing are younger than your own family, you know that’s the time to go. When Steve was on the board, he really only had a small insight into what was going on at the club, so he got quite a fright when he was asked to get on with it! It’s an entirely different experience when you are in charge. I’m very pleased for him. Things have gone well, yet they can just as easily go poorly if you look at the downturn at Motherwell, for example, after their high finishes in previous seasons. At no time can you get complacent.

While Owen Coyle took us to that step of almost getting back to the top flight and enjoyed some great days, Derek McInnes did a superior job as he changed quite a lot at the club and got us out of the First Division. Steve Lomas then kept things going. I don’t know Tommy Wright that well, but I always saw him as being a big, canny type of individual with principle. He is one of those guys you would be quite happy going to dinner with. I knew, probably like most fans did, that he had a good squad going into the cup-winning season. Stevie May started the season exceptionally well, he was a real spark for the club, but they all did well. Defensively we were well organised and we didn’t look like we would be beaten on many occasions that season, so you are always hopeful of doing something in the cups.

We had suffered all those semi-final defeats, but they were against good sides and our luck had to change at some point. Indeed, when we beat Aberdeen in the semi-finals it was the first time we had beaten a club above us in the league in the last four in recent times. You can have cup runs and meet lower league sides, but we had lost semis to the likes of Celtic, Rangers, Hibs and Motherwell and they were ahead of us in the league at the time.

I’ll always remember it being rather quiet when we met at the club on the morning of the cup final. After all those semi-final defeats, we knew it was a big day, so there were nerves amongst us. Mind you, I was scheduled to go in for the triple heart bypass, so the cup final was nothing compared to what I was to go through! The team came out and they looked up for it. The fans were up for it, and I just didn’t see Dundee United on the day being able to beat us. We had beaten them three times previously without conceding a goal, so why should we have gone out with anything less than the belief that we could do it? If our guys turned up on the day, we were capable of winning, and so it proved.

A lot of noise was still made about our cup win being a big shock, against all the odds, but we had finished in the top six for three successive seasons, and Rangers were out of the equation. We should have been knocking at the door to win a trophy – and we did. Personally, I didn’t see it as being something that was extraordinary. It was extraordinary in terms of the day out, but not in the sense of winning it. We beat Aberdeen in the semi-final and continued our great record against Dundee United during the season to win the final. It was tremendous seeing the smiles on all the fans’ faces at the end. The real reward you get at a football club is seeing other people smiling. If you are winning, it makes everyone feel good. And, of course, we’d love to see more of those 15,000 fans who attended the final come more regularly to games at Perth. People put so much work into the club as volunteers and the club deserves more support. We would all like to see the core fan base higher and I know the club is trying everything they can to achieve that.

It was a proud day to see all that blue and white at Celtic Park, but Sunday in Perth was just unbelievable. I couldn’t believe it when the bus turned up the High Street! The number of people! I’ve stayed in Perth all my days and I’ve never ever seen anything close to the numbers that were there that day. It was simply unbelievable. I remember passing Boots and fans were streaming in the front door of the shop and out the back. I’m sure they were delighted! I recognised a few faces and was hugging people and signing autographs. It was unreal. Although, I’m not sure we would have passed any health and safety test with the number of people on the open top bus!

Personally, I knew there were tougher times to come as it was back at the end of February that I was getting chest pains. It was around the end of April when...