Billy Brown says working for nothing at Hearts is his way of repaying them for the good times

Hugh Keevins

THE former assistant to Jim Jefferies insists he is only staying true to the working-class values instilled in him from an early age.
Billy Brown is happy to work for nothing Billy Brown is happy to work for nothing

BILLY BROWN knows why it made headlines when he went back to work for Hearts for nothing in order to help Gary Locke in the face of adversity.

When Brown was just nine he delivered leaflets on behalf of his local Labour MP, John P McIntosh, on a Musselburgh council estate.

Now, at 62, Brown retains the same working-class values that were instilled in him from the time when his uncle was a full-time Labour Party official.

“Thatcherism changed the way everyone thought in this country,” he says, explaining his take on why people were fascinated by him going back to a club that had once sacked him.

Particularly when the man who wielded the axe when Hearts were third in the SPL table, Vladimir Romanov, is also the one responsible for putting the Jambos into the poor house on the back of reckless spending.

Hell mend him, and them, might have been the attitude most people would have adopted.

But Brown’s resistance to taking that stance is rooted in his political leanings.

“There was a belief that greed was good during the Thatcher years and people strived to embrace that philosophy,” he says. “That was never for me.

“But there’s still a feeling which persists among others that there’s something strange about anybody doing anything for nothing.

“I earned a good living at Tynecastle and I’m giving back to the club but not nearly as much as fans who are putting Hearts before personal needs.

“I’ve had people come up to me in the street since I started to help Gary and say, ‘Thanks for what you’re doing for us’.

“But what’s really humbling is watching folk devote their savings to the club when I know they can’t afford what they’re contributing to Hearts.

“I was doing nothing anyway after leaving my job as East Fife manager and my wife Ann is glad to get me out the house.

“I’ve reached a stage where I’m not a multi-millionaire but comfortable. Now there’s someone I have a lot of time for who could really do with some help.

“I’m not getting wages but so what? We live in a cynical world and some will believe this is an elaborate way of trying to get myself a full-time job at Hearts once again.

“But I’m here because Hearts isn’t a football club, it’s a Scottish institution. And I’m doing my bit to preserve it.

“All I’m doing is paying for my petrol from Musselburgh to Edinburgh. That’s nothing special or heroic.”

Brown, East Fife and YouTube became inextricably linked when he was filmed, without his prior knowledge, while ranting at the treatment his players had been receiving from a minority of fans.

It became an overnight sensation and threw open the suggestion Brown was being held up to ridicule deliberately.

But he’s rejoined Hearts without thinking his credibility has been in any way impaired.

“I’ve only watched the first 30 seconds of it,” he says. “I was pacing up and down like a caged animal and I’d have understood it if anyone thought I was behaving like a raving lunatic.

“I’m not proud of it but the response it provoked went more in my favour than against.

“I got lots of letters of support and it galvanised the team because they deservedly avoided relegation after that.

“I’m not ashamed and I don’t feel my credibility had been affected, far less destroyed.”

But when you’re at the age to hold a bus pass, and the players are the YouTube generation, there is a need to be image conscious.

“Who wants a fat old man taking training?” is how Brown puts it. “When you’re working with a squad of 18, only four of whom are over 21, you need to show them you still have the same desire for the game.

“I’m not finished and still have an ambition to be a manager in my own right. I see ‘62’ put before my name every time a story is written about me. They didn’t do that when I was 45 so there’s an element of ageism involved in what you do after 60.

“The thinking is you shouldn’t have ambition after that but you can’t beat experience.

“And I don’t care how many coaching badges you have, if you don’t have the will to win and the ability to transmit that they’re no use.”

Brown is taking that spirit into work and it will be a necessary weapon in the fight against the drop after Hearts were docked 15 points for falling into administration.

“If I could help Gary contradict the argument we’re favourites to go down it would match the feeling I had when Jim Jefferies and I were the management team who beat Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final in 1998,” he says.

“And that was the greatest day of my life in football.

“It will be the moment that defines Lockey if Hearts beat the barriers put in front of them.

“Jim and I made him Hearts captain when he was 20 and I’ve come back to help him now because Gary has the potential to be one of the best managers in the game. We also brought him back to Hearts
when his playing career ended at Kilmarnock and he had spent months out of the game.

“I respect him as a person and I don’t know anyone in the game who doesn’t like Lockey.”

History has repeated itself, with Locke now the one who has put a managerial roof over Billy’s head and ended his inactivity.

“What’s a Saturday without football?” Brown says. “I like horse racing but I’m so bad at picking winners I couldn’t afford to take up that habit.

“Saturday is a loose end without football and Tynecastle is going to be some place to visit for every home game next season.

“This will be about a team and a cause. A siege mentality can be invigorating, like the days when Alex Ferguson convinced the Aberdeen dressing room there was a Glasgow bias. And he came from Govan.

“Fifteen points is a big deficit but not insurmountable. We have nothing to lose.”

It’s the “we” that’s important. Brown feels he’s back where he belongs – and with a club who can’t be lost to the front of the game. It feels like a perfect fit and a valuable contribution to make, with or without money in return.

Taken from the Daily Record