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The Bhoy in the picture – Frank McAvennie
St Anthony 2013
CU site: http://celticunderground.net/the-bhoy-in-the-picture-frank-mcavennie/
I well recall landing in Dover the day after Celtic had lost to Borussia Dortmund in Germany in September 1987.
The hangover I suffered from was two fold; firstly the physical kind which was a result of too much German lager; secondly there was the mental anguish of another early Celtic exit from Europe.
It’s interesting to recall the aftermath of that game when hundreds of Borussia fans invaded the park and ran towards the Celtic end of the ground. Had it not been for the 20 foot high wire fence that separated them then it would have resulted in serious incident with 2000 Celtic fans boozed up to the eyeballs and ready for anything that was coming. The irony is that both sets of fans now have a wonderful relationship going back many years.
Upon arriving in Dover the English newspapers reported the shock news that Celtic were in the closing stages of signing Frank McAvennie for £750,000, a Celtic club record fee.
McAvennie was rated as one of the best strikers in Britain and had a wonderful spell in London with the Hammers and this was seen as a great coup for Celtic in their centenary season. They hadn’t played badly against Dortmund but they had lacked punch up front and McAvennie was exactly the man to add that to the Celtic attack. Literally.
In October 1987 during a highly charged game at Ibrox between Rangers and Celtic Frank had became embroiled in an incident with Chris Woods and Terry Butcher which resulted in all three being sent off. This was also the game when Graham Roberts famously conducted the Ibrox ‘choir’.
rangers 87 oct
You can imagine the headlines in the media but matters took a serious turn when the non footballing authorities got involved. It is said that an over zealous Glasgow Procurator Fiscal decided to make an example of these beastly footballers (McAvennie and those three named Rangers players or Goldilocks and the Three Bears as the press christened them) who had made a spectacle of themselves on television.
Truth is that none of those players should ever have been inside a court of law. Legend has it that when the decisions where read out in court, Frank heard firstly that Butcher and Woods were guilty and Roberts was not proven. Fearing the worst he was then informed that his was a not guilty verdict and he burst out laughing in the dock at the ridiculousness of the entire situation.
Frank’s early form was not convincing and he looked a tad unfit to begin with. However his match fitness improved and when Joe Miller arrived in November the last piece of the jigsaw was now in place. With Celtic now playing a brand of football the fans hadn’t witnessed for years the attacking triumvirate of McAvennie, Miller and Andy Walker was the focal point of their attack backed all the way by the sublime talents of Paul McStay.
rangers 88 jan
Frank was always at his best in the big games and he scored twice in the vital 2-0 New Year victory over Rangers. As the Celtic fans broke into a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday dear Celtic’ it was Frank who was the Celts’ hero with two fine goals, the first a shot from a Chris Morris’ cut back and the second a cracking looping header from a Morris free kick. The New Year celebrations were long and loud.
As 1988 wore on Celtic went from strength to strength with the partnership of McAvennie and Walker flourishing into the best strike partnership in Scotland. The league was clinched in April but Frank’s glory day was to come in the Scottish Cup final in May.
Against Dundee United Celtic were 1-0 down in the second half until Frank headed in an Anton Rogan cross and then with minutes remaining he grabbed the winner when he turned in a Billy Stark cross and Celtic had their first double in eleven years.
1988 SCF 6
The future looked rosy for Celtic but it was not to be. No serious investment was made in the squad that summer and any momentum gained was quickly lost to the big spenders at Ibrox. Rumours began to circulate that McAvennie was restless and that he was spending most of the weekends in London visiting night clubs with his ‘model’ girlfriend Jenny Blyth. He was arriving late for training on Monday mornings and running up a fortune in club fines. All was not well.
In early 1989 matters came to a head when he asked for a transfer back south. His last game in the hoops was a Scottish Cup tie against Hearts and the Jungle turned against their former hero and a chorus of boos could be heard every time McAvennie touched the ball. Despite the heated tempers Celtic won 2-1 and Frank was back off to Upton Park for another record fee £1.25M.
rangers 88 jan 3
McAvennie was a genuine died in the wool Celt and had spent many years following the team all over Scotland. He had came into the game as a professional fairly late on and it’s maybe because of this that he obviously looked upon the fact that he could make more money in London as well as enjoy the night life and the glamorous females who came with it. And apparently there were plenty of them.
In recent years Frank has tried to make out that he was dragged from Parkhead kicking and screaming. That’s not my recollection of the situation and when you add that the notorious Bill McMurdo was Frank’s agent then Celtic and Frank McAvennie were never going to have a long and happy existence together.
He did return to Parkhead to a desperate Liam Brady in 1993 but injuries and age had taken their toll. When his old West Ham nemesis Lou Macari turned up as Celtic manager in late 1993 then it was all over for the Frankie Bhoy.
mwell 93 jan
The second spell shouldn’t diminish the memory of McAvennie in the hoops during his original foray at Parkhead. He truly was the perfect centre forward. He was quick, strong, good in the air, a great finisher and had a physical presence which meant that no defenders would take liberties with him. And he had that other trait native to Glaswegians. He was ‘gallus’. He feared no one and this came across on the field and gave his team mates confidence not only in him but in themselves also. Without McAvennie it has to be said that Miller and Walker never reached the same heights again without him.
In later years it has to be said that Frank was to have some unfortunate personal problems but he still comes across in the media as a likeable guy. In Celtic’s centenary season Frank McAvennie certainly left his mark and when future Celtic histories are written the name Frank McAvennie will figure prominently.
Scoring at the wrong time
(Soccer.net Link)
A voracious appetite for birds, booze and drugs rarely complements a fruitful footballing career but Frank McAvennie, a striker who once scored goals as freely as he partied, made a genuine effort to marry the two.
From roadsweeper to the World Cup is quite a journey for a man who came to the game late. Though the Scotsman’s footballing achievements have long been overshadowed by brushes with the law, admissions of Class A drug use and headline-making dalliance with glamour models.
His star may have shone brightly at times but McAvennie’s is a classic tale of diminishing returns, rather like the cocaine he regularly shoved up his nose. Saturday 22 November will see the former St Mirren (twice), West Ham (twice), Celtic (twice), Aston Villa (briefly), Swindon (briefly) and Falkirk (even more briefly) player hit his 49th birthday. At one point that may have seemed an unlikely milestone for him to reach. Yet he’s still alive and he’s still causing trouble.
At the three clubs he revisited during his helter skelter career, he is remembered for a fantastic first spell and a second stint that failed to reignite the old magic. At St Mirren he was something of a late developer, only making the breakthrough to the Paisley club’s first team at 21 after abandoning his previous occupation as a streetcleaner and the amateur football in which he honed his skills. In his first full season he earned the Scottish Young Player of the Year award. At the twilight of his career, he returned to Love Street for a brief but fruitless spell.West Ham fans will never forget the season of 1985-86 and he was the name on everyone’s lips that season, where the Hammers achieved their best league position in a 113-year history.
McAvennie scored 26 goals while part of a wonderful partnership with Tony Cottee. Yet the season he came back to East London – 1988-89 – the Irons were relegated. It was during this latter period that his love affair with the mirror and the razor blade developed. Celtic was the team McAvennie had supported since childhood and he achieved every Bhoys’ dream when he scored the goals to secure a league and cup double in the club’s centenary year – 1988. McAvennie maintains this was the proudest moment of his career. His return, at 34, saw him fail to match previous Parkhead heights as the Hoops languished in the doldrums.
Like pal and fellow Scot Charlie Nicholas, McAvennie’s move south saw him exposed to a world of glamour models and flowing champagne. Yet at first, the bright lights seemed to inspire the man at West Ham, in contrast to Nicholas’ poor start at Arsenal. Signed for £340,000 in the summer of 1985, McAvennie’s pace and goalscoring exploits soon saw him hit the headlines.
By Christmas 1985 he led the First Division goalscoring charts. Yet he was not quite as famous as he might have been. A TV blackout after a contractual dispute saw no league football shown live or even as highlights for the first half of the season. It was not until the Third Round of the FA Cup, a late win at Charlton Athletic, that an English TV audience even saw McAvennie’s fashionably flowing blonde highlighted mullet in action. ITV’s Saturday lunchtime Saint and Greavsie proved McAvennie’s anonymity among the general public by introducing him to pedestrians wandering through London’s West End.
Very few recognised him. By the time the cameras were switched on in early 1986 perhaps McAvennie’s best had already been and gone, though he continued to support Cottee’s own scoring exploits. West Ham went into the last weeks of the season with a genuine chance of the title only to fall four points short of champions Liverpool. Everton beat the Hammers to second too.
Meanwhile, McAvennie narrowly lost out to Toffees striker Gary Lineker in the scoring charts, which the Scot put down to the England man’s taking of penalties. Lineker’s ability to escape the tabloid glare when McAvennie was hitting the headlines for reasons outside football was long a bugbear too.
Those West Ham goals soon won him a call-up for his country. Alex Ferguson – as was – was interim boss of Scotland after the death of Jock Stein and McAvennie was taken to the Mexico World Cup after scoring in Scotland’s play-off win over Australia.
It was always likely to happen… McAvennie fell foul of the disciplinarian’s discipline. Barricading Ferguson and assistant Walter Smith into their rooms so that he and Nicholas could head out for a ‘bevvy’ when the team were altitude training in Santa Fe was hardly likely to secure selection and McAvennie was only used a substitute during another failed Scots campaign.
The dream move to Celtic in the summer of 1987 followed a goalshy second season at West Ham, where a burgeoning relationship with ‘Page 3′ girl Jenny Blyth took his mind off the football but kept him in the headlines. As at Upton Park, success on the pitch swiftly arrived at his new club. The proud Celt secured his place in the Parkhead pantheon by scoring two late goals in the Scottish Cup Final but there were already problems. McAvennie was commuting to London and back while playing in Glasgow to spend time with his busty lovely. Agent Bill McMurdo – who also represented George Best at the time – told how his charge was spending £4,000 a week while earning just £3,000.
The Bhoys were unable to pay him the cash he needed, his time at Celtic was soon over and West Ham were able to lure him back before the end of the 1988-89 season. Arsenal, going for the league title, had been sniffing around but McAvennie chose to go for the devil he knew. It was the wrong decision; the Hammers were relegated at the end of the season.
Lou Macari replaced the sacked John Lyall as Hammers boss and the relationship between manager and star striker was never remotely cordial. Further disaster struck when McAvennie suffered a broken leg at the beginning of the next season, which he missed almost totally. Not only that, a £400,000 purchase of an Essex mansion proved to be at just the wrong time. The housing market crashed and the house, shared with Blyth, was repossessed within a year of purchase.
It was during that long injury lay-off that his use of cocaine began. And, as he eventually admitted, continued once he was back playing. He eventually departed Upton Park for Aston Villa after scoring a hat-trick on his last game for the Hammers in May 1992. It was too late, as they had again been relegated.
At Villa, Ron Atkinson was able to use him just three times before a return to Parkhead, where he again found himself at a club in crisis amid Rangers’ nine league titles in a row. And in came Lou Macari as manager… brief periods at Swindon, Falkirk, back at St Mirren and out in Hong Kong followed.
A brief period in America signalled the end of his football career but not his time in the tabloids. A split from Blyth, a failed marriage and being twice being arrested for possession of cocaine all made the red tops over the years. In 1994 he rocked British football by admitting his use of the drugs and confessed to blowing £700,000 on the repossessed house, booze and drugs.
Worse nearly followed when customs officers in Dover found £100,000 of McAvennie’s money wrapped like a wedding present alongside cannabis and methadone. The money was confiscated, making him instantly bankrupt, and he faced a long term in jail for charges relating to drug-dealing.
After a long wait, a court in 2000 agreed with McAvennie’s claim that the money had been meant for a hunt for treasure buried beneath the sea in a shipwreck. Now resident in Newcastle, the man who had been earning £5,000 a week in his latter West Ham days was penniless and jobless, being supported by a younger new wife.
In the years since, with the old “devil’s dandruff” now long forsworn, McAvennie is able to carve something of a living as an after-dinner speaker and match-day host at West Ham and Celtic, living off tales from his colourful career. A tell-all confessional autobiography was knowingly called Scoring: An Expert’s Guide.
Yet trouble continues to follow him. A brawl the night before a charity match on the Isle of Man saw him charged with affray and disorderly conduct in July 2008. A boozy binge with fellow hellraiser Andy Goram had gone badly wrong and McAvennie faces a court date in January 2009.
“Bad boy Frank McAvennie in pub fight” said the Daily Mirror headline. At 49, he might enjoy being given such a youthful label yet the continued controversy and brushes with the law show he may not yet have learned the lessons of a career that should have delivered far more.
Spiers on Saturday: Frank McAvennie is back in town and back on the market
Spiers on Saturday
Graham Spiers
Saturday 18 May 2013
The Herald
You might have heard by now…Frankie Boy is back in town.
I had heard bulletins of Frank McAvennie ducking here and diving there, so the time seemed ripe for a catch-up. “Aye, sure,” Frank says to me on the phone. “I’m in the gym tomorrow morning . . . how about a coffee afterwards?” Sure thing, Frank, I tell him.
I find McAvennie at 53 looking pretty well, though he has the faintest hint of a pot at the midriff and he hobbles a bit when he walks. “I’ve almost just got one leg,” Frank explains. “This one [his left] is finished.” He tries to wiggle the ankle. “Look, it can hardly move,” he says. The years catch up.
Frank is back in Scotland, it would seem, after another “domestic”. Wife no.2 has just been jettisoned, the result of some pretty stark talking by Frank.
It seems he is also temporarily divorced from his driving licence, though he is keen to point out this is due to speeding offences, and not drink-related.
“My wife and I had been together for a while; 14 years I’d been down in Newcastle,” he says. “But there’s been a split. I’m getting divorced. Two times married, now two times divorced. It’s a shame, but it was on the cards. What can you do? I’m back on the market…”
Just as I was expressing regret over this turn of events, Frank clarified it for me. “Thing is, my wife found out I wanted to come back up to Scotland . . . but not with her. That speeded things up a bit, in terms of the divorce. It went downhill fairly rapidly after that. I don’t think we’ll be keeping in touch. Saying that, once the bitterness passes, maybe we will. But not just now.”
Whenever anyone in Scotland sees Frank McAvennie they cannot get the Jonathan Watson caricature out of their heads. I was just the same sipping coffee with him yesterday.
Does he mind this infamous send-up? “Naw, I think some of the things Jonathan does are hilarious,” he says. “But there’s not much reality, really, between me and him [the caricature]. Yes, I was Jack the Lad, everyone knows that. I loved chasing after girls . . . the chase was great.
“But I’m older now. I was in Corinthian [the Glasgow nightclub] recently and this girl came up to me and said, ‘you know what Frank, you’re a lot better looking in real life than you are on the telly.’ She was referring to the Johnnie Watson character. I said to her, ‘but we’re different people, can’t you get that?’ But, naw, she couldn’t. Actually, a few people have told me they think I’m better looking than the character on the telly. So I’m delighted about that. I take it as a compliment.”
It is now 25 years since a McAvennie-inspired Celtic won the double in the club’s centenary year. He was a terrific striker – all headers, running and goals – whose greatest season had actually been two years earlier, in 1985-86, when, newly arrived at West Ham United, he scored 26 goals and came as close to winning the First Division title.
In Scotland, McAvennie is lauded and loved for his time at Celtic. My hunch, though, is that his own most prized memory is of his time in the east end of London. “I did something at West Ham that will never be done again,” he says.
“We didn’t win the league but I will never get back what I had there. I scored 26 goals; only Gary Lineker beat me and he took a load of penalties. It was a brilliant time. I loved West Ham, and the fans really took to me.”
It was while in London that Frank dated the busty wench-***-model, Jenny Blyth, whose mere appearance virtually made his tongue fall out. The two of them were regularly photographed out on London town. Frank was besotted with Blyth. I used to imagine a cartoon image of him skiing down the great ravine of her cleavage, his scarf flapping behind him.
Ms Blyth was one reason (perhaps two) why, after just 17 months at Celtic, Frank was begging Billy McNeill to let him return to West Ham, to which the Celtic manager finally consented in March 1989.
“I don’t know where she is now,” Franks ponders aloud of his old amour. “I’ve lost touch. Five years we were an item but I ain’t got a clue where she is. She was the love of my life at one point . . . but they all were.
“Lots of stories were told about me in London, but not all of them were true. One of them says I left a restaurant at 8am one Saturday morning and went and scored two goals that afternoon. It’s a great story, but it’s not true. I never went out beyond a Wednesday night before a Saturday, never. I wasn’t a good professional, of course I wasn’t, but I was fit. And I scored goals. And in a game I’d cover more ground than anyone for the cause.”
McAvennie’s second tours of duty at both Celtic and West Ham were less successful, and he ended up in a bad way when his career finished in the mid-1990s. “I went off the rails. I got wrecked on booze and drugs. I started waking up in strangers’ houses and would say, ‘what am I doing here?’ I got arrested over drugs and I said to myself, ‘right, that’s it, enough of this.’ I was never addicted to drugs, I was just looking for something else after football. After football I didn’t know what to do with myself – I had nothing.
“It was a hard time, but I got out of it. The only person that can help you in these situations is yourself. I didn’t need to go to a psychiatrist or anything; I knew what I had to do. I was taking too many drugs. I got arrested, I proved my innocence, but after that, that was it. I got out of all that stuff.”
And you’re clean now, Frank, right? “I’m clean now. God, yes, very much so. I still take a drink, but mainly in moderation. And the big thing for me now is that I pick my friends, they don’t pick me. That’s the biggest difference for me.”
Frank says he’s got “a coupla wee business things going on” which he is excited about. In a fraught career and an even more fraught life, he earned well as a footballer but missed out on the boom times.
“I’ve got a decent pension but, put it this way, I’ve still got to work,” he says. “The money I earned in the 1980s was good but it wasn’t life-changing. I got nowhere near the stuff of today. Four grand a week, five grand a week; that’s the most I ever earned.
“I’ve got a wee agency with some good players aboard. When I say an agency, I’m not an agent myself, but we employ an agent. What I do is, I introduce my business partner to my contacts – cos I’ve got a stack of those – and he gets on with it. When I go and talk to managers all they want to talk to me about is football and have a laugh – so that’s what I do. But then my partner does the other stuff, the business.
“I’ve got another wee venture going on . . . I hope there is a business thing gonna happen this year that will be good for me. If it comes off it will be brilliant. Fingers crossed, it’s in the pipeline.”
With this, Frank is off, to play some charity golf with John Hartson. I find the guy highly likeable – perhaps Scottish football’s ultimate lovable rogue.
Boozing, burdz and bust-ups.
BOOZE binges were a way of life for Frank and St Mirren’s other hellraisers.
The Paisley club gave Frank his first crack at the big time – anda very lively social life.
On the pitch,there was European competition.
Off the pitch,there were team-mates including Billy Abercromby,Alex Beckett and later Frank McAvennie to join him.
The Toledo Junction nightspot in Paisley’s New Street wasa favourite Wednesday night haunt.
But the arrival of strict manager Alex Miller triggered a battle of wills.
Frank said:’He wasa fitness fanatic and he tried to tame us.But we had made up our minds we would not be tamed.’
The manager’s main target was McAvennie.
Frank said: ‘There was never a dull moment when Macca was around. He was a good buddy and great with the birds.
‘He knew everybody in Toledo Junction .’
Frank and Macca became close,with Frank even coming to blows with Billy Abercromby over his treatment of Macca in training.Frank admitted: ‘We had a wee brawl, throwing handbags at each other for afew minutes.’
The tell-tale sign that Macca had had female company the night before was him turning up for training in his leather jacket and trousers.
But one day he failed to show up at all.
Miller insisted Frank go with him to Macca’s house in Summerston, Glasgow,to fetch the missing player.
Frank said: ‘We chapped on the door for ages before Macca came to the door b*****k naked, with the bird he had pulled at Toledo Junction still upstairs.’
CAPTION(S):
TEAM-MATE: Macca
COPYRIGHT 2005 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday
Scoreless for Scotland; FRANK MCAVENNIE SCORING AN EXPERIENCE : In the latest instalment of his hilarious book, Macca tells how his date with a blonde was ruined by the national team boss.
Byline: SIMON HOUSTON
FRANK McAVENNIE is still regarded as one of Celtic’s best post- war strikers – despite his off-the-field problems.
And at West Ham, he is remembered as a great, not least for the season he almost pipped England hero Gary Lineker for the coveted Golden Boot award as top European striker of the season.
But despite his goal-scoring exploits, Macca appeared in the dark blue of Scotland just five times – a fact that still galls him.
McAvennie is in no doubt that his run-ins with two Scotland coaches – Alex Ferguson and his successor Andy Roxburgh – cost him dearly on the international front.
While Macca didn’t always agree with Fergie’s squad selections, he has the greatest respect for a man who brought success to Aberdeen and Man United at the highest level.
Andy Roxburgh? That’s a different story. Macca has never hidden his disdain for the former teacher who is now UEFA’s technical director.
Their relationship hardly got off on the best footing when Roxburgh called Macca in his London hotel room in 1988 to tell him he had been picked for a friendly in Saudi Arabia.
Frank had a beautiful blonde at his side and some chilled champagne waiting when he took the early-morning call.
He recalls: “Next to no one knew I was staying at that hotel so I answered the phone assuming it would be the hotel staff checking that everything was all right with the bubbly. I’d tell them as soon as I’d managed to put the glass to my lips.
“`Hello,’ I said. `Hello, Frank, how are you doing?’ said this cheerful, unfamiliar male voice.
“`Who is this?’ I asked – not unreasonably. `Andy.’
“`Andy who?’ `Andy Roxburgh. We were hoping …’
“`Right. This is a f****** joke,’ I said, slamming down the phone.
“There had been some debate in the media about why I hadn’t been picked for Scotland since Mexico, particularly given my good form.
“There were also the jokes about exactly what Ferguson had caught me up to in Mexico.
“I could imagine Charlie Nicholas, up in his house in Glasgow, just back from a night on the tiles getting some mate of his to phone me to take the p***.
“Well, I’d better things to do and turned my attention to the blonde, who had kicked her shoes off. The phone went again.
“`What?’ I said, getting annoyed now. `Frank, Frank, please don’t hang up,’ spluttered the same male voice. `It IS Andy Roxburgh. Honest.’
“Fair enough. The voice did sound like that middle-class Scots English that Roxburgh spoke.
“The kind of voice I associate with the school headmaster he used to be. In my opinion, he should have stayed in his academic calling. It would have saved a lot of Scotland supporters a lot of grief.
“`So tell me,’ I replied, `how many call-offs have you had this morning?’ He ignored my question, then said, `I was hoping you’d join us on the trip to Saudi.’
“`Not a chance,’ I said, and I hung up again.”
More calls followed, from Macca’s agent Bill McMurdo, friend Mo Johnston, who had also been picked, and Roxburgh once again, before Frank finally agreed.
Macca goes on: “Poor Bill. I gave him the lot about Roxburgh’s style of teams being defensive s***e. That the man hadn’t kicked a ball professionally himself and it showed.
“How he always went with the safe players and ended up with safe teams.
“Boring, in other words. His tactical nous meant Scotland rarely conceded many goals but were as exciting as grey paint drying on a grey wall.”
However, Johnston’s assurance that the trip would be “a hoot” did the trick.
Frank said: “A couple of hours later, still bleary-eyed and not quite sober, I was meeting up with Bill McMurdo and Mo at Glasgow Airport and going to meet Roxburgh at the hotel there.
“This had better be worth it was my view, since I had left both the blonde and the champagne untouched. Some sacrifice.
“Roxburgh took half an hour to tell us that there was to be a meeting the next day. That was it? A bloody meeting to tell me there was a meeting? A******e.”
His view of the Scotland manager didn’t improve when, on the flight to Saudi, Roxburgh went up the isle sticking marked cocktail sticks into the back of the seats.
The squad was to play cards – no one was to opt out – and the sticks were for the betting.
Frank adds: “Was the guy all right in the head? Did he think that playing cards was a good way of building team morale? If so, let’s get the greenbacks out and play for real.
“Imagining Andy Roxburgh and his wife sitting at the kitchen table all night marking each stick individually just split me up. Thanks for that one laugh, Andy.”
The relationship soured further when Roxburgh called him over on the training pitch and told him to turn his bib round and pull his socks up properly.
Roxburgh told him: “So you can see Umbro. They’ll give us hell if you end up in the papers and their name’s not showing.”
Macca was left speechless and Roxburgh walked off, looking the very part in his Umbro outfit.
Frank continues: “More concerned about his sponsor than the comfort and performance of his team. I realised there and then that I would never get on with Andy Roxburgh.
“Bad enough dealing with real football people like Billy McNeill and John Lyall at West Ham, as well as grumpy b******* like Alex Ferguson when I stretched the rules.
“No, I couldn’t work with some guy who cared more about a sponsor than the game itself.”
On the plane back to Scotland after the 2-2 draw, Frank thought he could relax with an alcoholic drink, but was told no.
He and Johnston argued their case and eventually Roxburgh conceded that they could have one small lager. It was not what they wanted to hear.
Frank recalls: “I don’t like lager and, besides, who did he think he was?
“The international match was a one-off and the players were returning to club duty. It was our clubs we were now under obligation to once again, not Scotland.
“My manager, Billy McNeill, had come along to the game and was sitting at the front of the plane.
“Billy had been watching with his usual straight face while sipping a drink himself so I went to speak to him, making sure Roxburgh was close enough to hear.
“I asked, `Billy, you got any problems with me having a few drinks?’ `Of course not, son,’ he replied. `Get p****d if you want to – your next game’s not till Saturday.’
“As I headed back up the aisle I could hear Roxburgh shout after me, `Lager, mind. Just lager.’
“Mo and I ordered bottles of champagne. They only served half bottles so we bought a couple, then a couple more and then a couple more – the whole way home.
“Even before the argument about the booze, I knew I would never play again for Scotland.
“In total, I had five international caps and two of those were as substitute in the World Cup when it was too late to have any great effect.
“Not playing for my country more often was a big disappointment but not while Roxburgh was manager.
“He continued in his way, choosing teams that would hold out for a dull draw rather than going for glory and style.
“Among the guys he chose were some great footballers and characters.
“But he insisted on tactics that were geared to hold the opposition rather than destroy them.
“It’s such a shame because there were great Scottish footballers at that time who could’ve done a lot better if only allowed the freedom to play.”
From Frank McAvennie, Scoring, An Expert’s Guide, published by Canongate, pounds 14.99. Frank McAvennie & Reg McKay, 2003
FOOTBALL: Celtic were so tight Souness offered to pay for my lawyer says ex-Bhoys star FRANK McAVENNIE.
Byline: By Hugh Keevins
FRANK McAVENNIE wasn’t surprised when the drawbridge was pulled up with a resounding thump at Celtic Park yesterday after the 5-1 mauling from Liverpool.
Macca has been used to decades of non-communication between the directors and anybody looking for an answer to any question relating to the club’s affairs.
And nothing could ever shock him again in that regard after Celtic’s board refused to pay for a barrister to represent him when he was due to appear in Court in 1987 on a charge of breach of the peace during an Old Firm game.
McAvennie was sent off with Rangers keeper Chris Woods and Ibrox captain Terry Butcher after a goalmouth melee aroused police attention because it could have sparked serious crowd disturbances.
The case caused massive public interest because of the police intervention but the Celtic directors at first refused to pay for legal representation for their player, even though Macca was red carded while performing for the club.
Disaster But what would have been the most embarrasing story of the lot was that Rangers manager Graeme Souness actually offered to pay for a lawyer to handle McAvennie’s case if the Celtic board stayed tight fisted.
McAvennie said:’I went to the manager, who was Billy McNeill at that time,and told him what Graeme had said to me.
‘Billy knew, and I knew, how it would have looked in the Press if the board had refused to hire mea brief.
‘But the directors soon changed their mind after the gaffer pointed out the public relations disaster they were about to suffer.’
Time and board changes have done nothing to alter relations between the Celtic hierarchy and their customer base.
Yesterday there was widespread unhappiness over the lack of information concerning Martin O’Neill and reports that his future at Celtic Park was once again a subject for conjecture because of his wife’s illness.
The fans also want to know why there have been no signings since the end of last season,despite a sizeable reduction to the wage bill with the departure of Henrik Larsson, Johan Mjallby, Liam Miller and Jamie Smith.
Signs of grumbling in the ranks have started to appear with Neil Lennon openly talking about the need to fill the agegap.
McAvennie said: ‘I’ll never understand the board at Celtic Park.
‘It’s only been a matter of weeks since the fans turned out at full capacity to see Henrik Larsson’s so-called ‘Farewell Fiesta’ against Seville and paid the last instalment of Larsson’s wages out of their own pockets.
‘Now they are keeping the same fans in the dark over money, Larsson’s replacement and everything else.
‘Celtic get 60,000 capacity crowds for every home game and yet they are always short of money.
‘Am I the only one who pays the full price to get in when I watch Celtic play?
‘Celtic play Manchester United tonight and I honestly believe they are a bigger club than Fergie’s but somebody should have a word with them about their dealings with their own public.’
The only person McAvennie believes in at Celtic Park is the manager. Macca said: ‘I think he is right to look after his wife during her illness and put Celtic second.
‘But in my opinion there is no doubt that players subconsciously switch off whenever the boss goes away. Which means the Celtic guys will snap to attention when they are re-united with O’Neill.
‘And it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a couple of new team–mates for them to meet when they come back from America.
‘It would give me confidence if Henri Camara was one of them. He would do wonders at Celtic and score loads of goals with Chris Sutton’s help.
‘But the place won’t fall down just because Celtic lost five goals to Liverpool.’
That’s the kind of spirit O’Neill could do with now his players have started to falter and doubts have been cast over the team’s immediate prospects.
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RED MIST: Frank McAvennie fights with Terry Butcher and Chris Woods
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McAvennie falls further from grace
Published: 01:00 Monday 11 June 2001
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/mcavennie-falls-further-from-grace-1-528076By common consent Frank McAvennie is a generous man. “The hardest thing for a footballer to say is ‘No’,” reckons Ally McCoist. “Frank probably said no twice in his life.”
By way of proof, McAvennie couldn’t say no to the makers of How to Score, tonight’s Football Stories documentary, which goes out on Channel 4. But unlike McCoist, who has been re-invented as a cheery media personality, Milton’s most famous son emerges from the twilight world of sporting has-beens as a sad, deluded little man, whose efforts at explaining away his involvement in drugs provoke amused derision even from his friends.
One infamous incident in the mid Nineties led customs officers to a car in Dover which contained 100,000 of McAvennie’s money wrapped like a wedding present, alongside cannabis and methadone. The cash was to fund a hunt for “sunken treasure” said McAvennie, but nobody believed him, least of all the magistrates who sequestrated his cash. Within days the former footballer had been declared bankrupt.
Sad you might think, but then “there’s not many people made a career out of treasure-hunting,” says McCoist subsiding into laughter. McAvennie, on the dole and living these days in Gateshead (albeit in a certain amount of comfort) could surely do with the money now.
But then this is a tale of rags to riches and back again. Here is the former road mender, who only signed for St Mirren in his early 20s. There, though he was the first player in Scotland to get sent off for giving a V-sign to opposition fans – the worthies of Heart of Midlothian – he also proved to have bags of skill and scored goals by the bucketload.
That was talent enough to earn a lucrative move to West Ham, where he hit 28 goals in his first season, trailing only Everton’s Gary Lineker.
In one of the club’s most successful seasons, he formed a partnership with Tony Cottee, so fecund it surpassed the exploits of Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush at Liverpool. Looking back, Cottee rates McAvennie as the best he played with, and among the Scot’s fellow professionals there remains a warm loyalty.
“Frank was a football man,” recalls Ray Stewart, now manager of Stirling Albion. “Everybody loved him. He was in it for his team-mates, and he gave 150 per cent every week. He’d make a bad pass a good pass. He lived life to the full, and yes, he liked a drink. But Frank never let you down, on or off the pitch.”
Another from that era is Tony Gale, who reveals in Channel 4’s programme that McAvennie’s big smile, fronted up by false teeth, earned him the nicknames “Trigger” and “Mr Ed”, after the talking horse.
A stable home life served him well for the first few months in London. Those close to him attribute McAvennie’s footballing success in part to Anita Blue, the girlfriend who went with him from Paisley to Gidea Park. “She didn’t put up with any pissing about,” his former agent Bill McMurdo told The Scotsman last year.
Ms Blue herself retains fond memories of the man, and in those early days it’s hard to credit McAvennie with the cynical manipulation of the tabloids which he attempted in later life. “On Saturday nights after the matches he would come home, then he would go to the off licence and buy champagne,” she recalls.
“We used to change into our tracksuits and sit in front of the fire, watching television.”
There’s a point at which one inevitably asks what went wrong. Some folk close to the player see 1986 as a defining year, when all the publicity began to take its toll.
Rangers chairman Dave King ‘nannied’ by watchdogs, court hears
McAvennie’s goal against Australia had helped Scotland to the World Cup finals in Mexico, and by that summer he was writing a regular column for Daily Star. He even appeared on Wogan.
His move back to Celtic in 1987 hardly took him out of the public eye. Again his form was outstanding, but after an Old Firm fracas with the Rangers goalkeeper, McAvennie and Chris Woods joined Terry Butcher and Graham Roberts in court for breach of the peace.
By then, if he had long been good for the back pages, Macca was often front page news and by this stage of his career he had taken up with Page 3 Jenny Blythe.
“We really hit it off,” Blythe has said. “The more champagne I drank the better I understood his strong Scottish accent. I’d barely finished my prawn cocktail before I realised I could fall for him.”
But commuting between Glasgow and London is an expensive business. McMurdo remembers warning McAvennie that he was “spending four grand a week, when you’re only earning three.”
A move back to West Ham brought little relief. McAvennie quickly fell out with Lou Macari, the new manager at Upton Park, and the expensive house he shared with Blythe in Essex was repossessed within a year of purchase after the bottom fell out of the property market.
After that he went through clubs at almost the same alarming rate as girlfriends. To Celtic again (where Macari fatefully turned up a few months later) to Hong Kong, to Northern Ireland, to Falkirk; he split with Jenny, married Laura, got divorced. And then there were those times when he was caught in possession of cocaine.
“I asked Frank once what he would be doing if he wasn’t a footballer,” recalls Blythe. “He said: ‘Probably stealing cars, selling drugs or in prison with most of my mates’.”
In a self-fulfilling prophecy, last September McAvennie was staring at a nine-year sentence for conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs after he had been found in a car with 5,000 ecstasy tablets and five kilos of amphetamines. However, despite his accomplice, Arthur Burke, pleading guilty and receiving a five-year prison term, McAvennie, to his vast relief, left court a free man.
Once, when he sought to ban the BBC Scotland comedy I, Macca, which features Jonathan Watson as a McAvennie-like “Where’s the burdz?” character, the footballer said: “I’m gutted by it. It makes me look like a dishonest idiot.”
The miracle of TV allows you to judge for yourself tonight.
Football Stories: How To Score (With Page 3 Girls: Tonight, Channel 4, 9pm