Having the experience of moving up and down through the levels of Scottish football as a player definitely gave me a great education in the intrinsic qualities needed to succeed as both a player and a coach.

Although I don’t consider it as a real success, my four years professional and year and a half in the youths at Greenock Morton will be considered in some quarters as a good achievement.

Starting from my local boys club team Tass Thistle and moving on to Ayr Boswell at 15, I didn’t adapt my game very much. The real difference was that the standard of opposition was better which helped me develop in my position as a striker or wide attacker.

From there, I knocked back the chance to sign with the newly formed Kilmarnock under 18 side in preference to stay at Ayr Boswell and shortly thereafter signed S-form with Greenock Morton.

I fitted in comfortably to the Morton youth team with the strange quirk being that for the first time ever, I was employed as a defender at right back. This had materialised over the course of three trial games I had played with Morton.

Playing wide on the right in the first two games, I had played well and scored in both games. This gained me entry into a final trial match at Cappielow, with the other top performers from the trials, against a decent local boys club team. I started wide on the right again but after 20 minutes our left back got injured and for some inexplicable reason, I made that well known footballing transition from right winger to left back! To this day that decision (which was most likely made by European trophy winner John McMaster) still bamboozles me. Which way it ultimately effected it is up for debate and will never be truly known however I like to believe that in an alternate universe, I continued my rise as a raiding, goalscoring right winger all the way to huge success in Europe!

In my final year in the youths, I was moved to the sweeper role and also made the transition into a few reserve games where I played at right back.

My first game in the reserve team was against Clydebank at Kilbowie Park where I was fortunate to share the pitch with Davie Cooper who was coming back from injury. Although I felt the pace was quicker than the youths I managed to settle quickly and I don’t remember being outwith my comfort zone in my development.

Later in the second half just as I had played a pass up the line, an opposition player came in late and stood right on my ankle with his studs. It’s my first real recollection of being really angry on the pitch. Nevertheless, I bided my time and gained some retribution when the opposition player received a short pass and I went through him with a sliding tackle to pick up my first booking in senior football. I thought I was going to get a rollicking but when our coach John McMaster spoke to my dad and I after the match, he said that it was good to see that I had a bit aggression about me. What he was getting at wasn’t that you should be running about kicking people and getting booked but rather that being able to handle yourself physically when the situation demanded it. If it had been an experienced player in my position then they would most likely have been given a hard time however as I appreciated then, and do so even more now, he used a mistake by a young player at the beginning of his career to give me a lesson about taking care of myself physically on the pitch.

After signing part time at Morton, I was a constant feature in the reserve team for the next couple of seasons. I didn’t feel that the step up was a struggle and was included in the first team squad a few times during that period.

My debut for the first team was Tuesday 4 March 1997 against Falkirk at Cappielow and was very much a one off at that time. The first team were due to play Kilmarnock in the Scottish Cup quarter final on the following Saturday and manager Allan McGraw started a couple of the reserves in order to rest the first teamers. I played centre half with the job of marking Mark McGraw, our manager’s son. The one real thing I took out of that game was the speed at which it was played. At the time, I was playing in the juniors with Dalry Thistle at the bottom end of the top Ayrshire Division and I had watched the games in the second tier of Scottish football many times before. I hadn’t see a great deal of difference in the pace or ability between that level and the top Junior games. Oh how wrong was I!

The game was way beyond the pace of any games that I had experienced before and it took me by surprise. It wasn’t that everyone was fitter but the speed of thought and passing was on another planet. You had to be tuned in to the game every time the ball was in play.

This point was proved after about 25 minutes when we went to sleep at the back and the Falkirk keeper’s early kick put Mark McGraw in behind us. He ran through and scored. He then scored a second goal later in the second half and I came off the pitch at full time scratching my head wondering how I had actually had a decent game against McGraw but he scored two goals. It was a hard lesson.

On signing full time with Morton in 1998, I managed to break into the first team at right back on the heels of Derek Collins being transferred to Hibernian. It had been a year and a half since my debut but I had been playing a main role in our reserve team and felt better prepared this time.