BACK IN BUSINESS QUEEN OF THE SOUTH QUEEN OF THE SOUTH Gordon

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Apr 6, 2008 | by Michael Grant

THE one thing Gordon Chisholm wasn't going to do was lie in his bed all day. Others might have been tempted to in his situation. It was 2006, he had been sacked as manager of Dundee United months earlier and he could easily have felt that football was finished with him. Gradually he began to discover who his real friends were and who he could count on. It was the equivalent of watching a telephone which never rang. An initial burst of enthusiasm for keeping in touch, for going to watch matches, ebbed away. Chisholm and football were growing apart.

It was a chance meeting which turned everything around and began the chain of events which drew him back into the game and, next weekend, will propel him to the centre stage of Scottish football. Chisholm will become the first manager in 58 years to lead Queen of the South out in a Scottish Cup semi-final, and all because he was walking in Glasgow's West End one afternoon a couple of years ago and happened to bump into Ian McCall.

He had been McCall's assistant at Clydebank, Airdrie, Falkirk and United but the pair were no longer quite so close. Their meeeting rekindled something. McCall was Queen of the South manager at the time and offered Chisholm coaching work. Eventually he became McCall's assistant again and, when McCall resigned last summer, took over as his successor.

As far as Chisholm is concerned there is something wrong when managers and coaches can drift in and out of football in such an arbitrary manner, left to fend entirely for themselves between jobs. How can a manager be out of work one minute and in charge at a Hampden semi-final the next, just because he bumped into an old pal in the street?

"I have a lot of issues there, " says Chisholm. "You find out who your friends are when you're not working.

Even something like having to phone pals to get tickets put aside to come and watch a game. Eventually you stop phoning them because you don't like to keep doing it. Where is the backup? I think there should be something available in Scotland so that if you're a coach out of a job you should be able to go to games through the SFA. After all, we have to do all their courses. I spent so many thousands to go through my full Uefa licence and there I was sitting in the house having to phone pals to get a ticket. There are boys out of the game now in exactly the same position.

They shouldn't have to do that." Chisholm apologises for going off on "a tangent" but he is unequivocal about it. "A few good friends kept in touch after I left United. At first I thought 'I need to get back in watching games again' but after a while I thought 'nah', and just stepped back from it. I wasn't going to keep phoning people." He had established a mortgage company with his wife and also busied himself with renovating city flats. "I was out of football for 10 months. One thing I didn't do was sit about in bed feeling sorry for myself. I was out of the house at maybe half eight every morning, grafting. I kept myself active." If Queen of the South defeat Aberdeen in Saturday's semi-final it will be the pinnacle of his managerial career.

For the moment that remains the Scottish Cup final of 2005 when his United side took on Celtic.

Alan Thompson scored in the 11th minute but United, who had conrmed their SPL survival by winning their final league game only seven days earlier, made John Hartson, Chris Sutton, Craig Bellamy and the rest sweat for their 1-0 win.

It was never so good again for him at United and the following January chairman Eddie Thompson red him when they were ninth in the SPL. Chisholm doesn't go into detail but he felt let down, not by the decision so much as the way it was handled. It was widely understood that Thompson was actively looking for a successor while he was still in the job.

"I got quite a hard time at Tannadice in some ways but the experience stood me in good stead.

It was a steep learning curve. It was a big blow for me at United and it took a wee while to recover. But I always believed in myself and I was always determined to get back in. I had to try it myself again and see if I was capable of doing it. I won't go too much into the United thing but I didn't think my record there was too bad. Maybe I'm stronger and wiser now. I have flung myself into this job at Queen of the South and I'll see what happens. If I get to them to the Scottish Cup final that is going to be number one in my managerial career." They could win. There is experience in captain Jim Thomson, 36, and Steve Tosh, who is nearly 35 and one of four ex- Aberdeen players along with Neil MacFarlane, Jamie McQuilken and John Stewart. Stephen Dobbie and Sean O'Connor had 32 goals between them going into this weekend. The squad turned full-time last summer and trains together at Glasgow Green, turning up in Dumfries only for matches.

It was Chisholm who suggested being based in Glasgow to chairman David Rae, arguing that it would be easier to recruit players from the central belt, and got the backing he wanted.