GLF50: The Boyle Years

THE BOYLE YEARS


The AGM on Monday 27th October was a significant one in the history of the club as Chairman John Boyle stood down from his position to be replaced by Bill Dickie. When Boyle took over in 1999, after buying out the shareholding of then owner John Chapman, he raised our hopes of becoming the " third way " in Scottish Football.

This was to be a land free from bigotry and sectarianism and therefore would be family friendly and subsequently would attract a host of new fans and growing the fan base by a thousand season ticket holders over three years!

He appointed Pat Nevin as his Director of Football ( and player ) and the first act that the two undertook was to remove the manager Harri Kampman and appoint their own man in Billy Davies. Then not only did we lose the manager we lost the then Chief Executive in Alan Dick, whose face quite obviously did not fit, and he was replaced by one of Boyle's men in Alisdair Barron.

On the footballing side it was soon apparent after Davies' first game in charge, a 5-0 defeat at Perth, that the cheque book needed to be brought out. This was done and John Spencer was brought on loan from Everton and we were transformed over-night into a side capable of beating Rangers with Spencer scoring the winner.

Just after Christmas we looked as though we were heading towards a European place and then a disastrous run after Christmas saw us lose at home to Kilmarnock and Hearts in the League and Ayr in the Cup. But we rallied and by the end of May we still had a chance to reach the UEFA Cup, but despite beating Rangers on the last day we finished fourth and missed out. For me this was failure as this position should have been secured despite the excitement of the last few weeks of the run in.

The following season saw us struggle to match the success of 1999 / 2000 as we finished outside of the top six and struggled to avoid relegation. As the season wore on it was apparent that the great experiment wasn't working as experienced player after experienced player was released to bring down the wage bill, Spencer, Goram, Brannan, McCulloch, McMillan and Thomas all heading out the exit door.

This was only the forerunner for the roller coaster of 2001 / 2002, we had the excitement of the signing of the magnificent seven, including Ready, Brown, Cosgrove, Dow etc. We started the season disastrously and Billy Davies was asked to leave, ( sorry he left by mutual consent ) and was ultimately replaced by Black and Butcher.

It was apparent early on that they didn't fancy any of Davies' players with Twaddle and Dow banished to train on their own and most of the rest dropped to the Under 21's. They were replaced by any unemployed Frenchman that Eric Black could find, even if they had never played football before. Although we did have the highlight of David Ferrere's second half debut hat trick against Hibs.

We then heard that the SPL TV deal in April of 2002 was not going to be of the same value as in previous years and that our cloth was going to have to be cut to suit the new financial circumstances, and the fact that we never drew the extra season ticket holders that the master plan was set out to do! So the club was put into administration by John Boyle to stop the debt spiralling out of control and possibly seeing us going out of business. This immediately saw nineteen players either made redundant or not having their contract renewed, and a number of office staff being made redundant. It also saw Nevin and Black walk out on the club, Nevin claiming that he wasn't happy about the way things were done and Black into a job as Assistant Manager at Coventry!

This left Terry Butcher in charge as manager and Chris McCart as his assistant, and they saw us through to the end of the season undefeated, including a draw against Chievo from Serie A in a friendly. This spell also saw some of the " kids " make their debuts as we managed to put a team together.

We all know the story of last season as we defeated the Old Firm at home and then struggled to win a game in the weeks following these games!! We finally finished bottom and as a result administrator Brian Jackson was struggling to find anyone to purchase the club which was part of going into administration.

As a result we finished bottom of the SPL and were left to sweat on the position of First Division Club X ( otherwise known as Falkirk ) on whether their ground would be acceptable or not. Thankfully they saw the light side of the force and we were okay for another SPL season and no one had to be sold in the short term.

We then got to the start of this season and we started well with James McFadden attracting interest from all over the place and eventually on the day that the transfer window closed he was sold to Everton for £1.25 million. It was quickly announced that the money realised from the sale would be used to clear the creditors and allow the process to be kicked off to bring us out of administration.

Looking back over his time in charge at the club I believe that he shot for his dream but unfortunately the people of Lanarkshire are not ready for a bigotry free zone and still drive past Fir Park as they head for the homes of the big two every second Saturday. He has almost admitted his mistakes by the fact that he is prepared to write off his sizeable portion of his debt. Therefore the man who has lost the most out of this has been Boyle himself, but the club has survived and is now debt free to face the future ( whatever that may hold for us ).

I enjoyed the ride in the early days, then I was scared stiff as we looked to be heading for oblivion but I am now happy to look forward to a future that looks as though it could be the same as the Chapman era when we lived within our means. Looking back, when we lived like that we won the Scottish Cup and qualified for Europe on two other occasions - so maybe the future isn't all that black after all..

Graham Barnstaple