Tom Hendrie

Name: Tom Hendrie

DOB: 24/10/55

POB: Edinburgh

Position: Centre Midfield

Clubs: Dundee, Arbroath, Gateshead,
Goole, Meadowbank Thistle, Berwick Rangers

Clubs managed: Berwick Rangers, Alloa Athletic, St Mirren

The managerial career of Tom Hendrie is a cautionary tale in
many ways. When the young manager took St Mirren up to the Premier League it
was already the second time he had won promotion, having previously taken Alloa
Athletic into the Second Division. At the time he was touted as potentially the
next great Scottish manager as everything he touched turned to gold with his
teams seemingly unbeatable on the park. Then it all fell away. As soon as
defeats started to come they wouldn’t stop. Hendrie went from respected and
promising to belittled as a football boss, while the club in which he made his
name, St Mirren, were punished for being too loyal to the man that had taken
them from the foot of the First Division to the SPL and right back down again.

Hendrie’s playing career was an unspectacular one spent
mainly in the depths of the Scottish football league. It started promisingly
enough at Dundee, but he failed to make the grade at the club in the mid-70s
and started to drift downwards first to Arbroath and then in the English
non-leagues with Gateshead and Goole.
Eventually he landed at Meadowbank Thistle (now Livingston for those lucky sods
who can’t remember Euro 96) where his name would become most highly regard as a
player; tallying over 300 league appearances in his time for the club before
leaving to join Berwick Rangers in 1992.

It was in the Borders that he gradually made the switch to
coaching and accepted the vacant manager’s job when the opportunity arose in
1994. Had it not been for a cruel twist of fate he would have had the English
minnows playing in the second tier of Scottish football. Hendrie led the club
to 2nd place in the league table but, unlike previous seasons, missed out on
promotion due to reconstruction of the leagues. Two years later he left to take
charge at Alloa and in 1998 guided the club to the Third Division Championship.
The team then consolidated the club’s place back in the Second Division and
Hendrie earned hero status amongst the fans for overseeing their 7-0 win over
local rivals Stirling Albion. The reputation he had built up over the previous
five years encouraged St Mirren to acquire the rising young coach and he became
their new manager early in 1999.

When the 1999/2000 season started, St Mirren were 20/1
outsiders to lift the First Division crown. Those odds may not sound all that
long but the bookies often don’t offer too much in lower league betting in case
the inevitable crap shoot occurs. The more telling observation is that they
were second favourites to get relegated to the third tier of Scottish football.
Bookmakers, and pundits, didn’t think much of an obscure former player turned
part-time manager arresting the perpetual decline at the Paisley club.

He’d been given the job the previous campaign but there was
little to suggest in the time frame that he was ready to lead them on an
unlikely charge to the premier league. Hendrie had kept St Mirren up when it
was a real danger that they would go down. It was a commendable achievement,
but nothing spectacular. In retrospect it was a period the new manager spent
getting to know his players; identifying the strengths and weaknesses of his
squad and attempting to build a winning team around it. It was a method he was
renowned for in his managerial career. Players were not bought to fit the
system; the system was implemented to fit the players.

Practising football management with such flexibility,
Hendrie and St Mirren got off to a storming start in the summer of 1999. By the
time the first league defeat was inflicted by Falkirk
in late September the club had won five games, drawn two and sat comfortably
upon the First Division table. It wasn’t just the results that were
eye-catching, but the manner in which they were winning. 22 goals were scored
in the first seven matches, including a 6-0 away win at Raith Rovers and a 5-0
humbling of Airdrieonians at Love
  Street.

The defeat at Falkirk was soon followed by a disappointing
1-1 draw at home to newly promoted Livingston
and the critics didn’t hesitate to pounce of the squad, predicting a fall from
grace that they considered long overdue. The league leaders responded to such
dismissiveness by reeling off eight consecutive league wins that brought with
it an eight point cushion over Dunfermline in
second and a 13-point advantage of third place Raith Rovers in a year of
reconstruction which would see two clubs promoted. The 3-4-3 utilised by
Hendrie in the primitive world of the SFL seemed almost revolutionary as the
team continued to defy the odds.

Then followed the worst spell of the season, a period where
they would win only three times in ten games, culminating in the 0-2 home
defeat to Dunfermline that saw the Buddies slip from the top spot for the first
time since the second weekend of the season. The knives were out; the bubble
had burst.

Facing adversity they responded once again, hammering Clydebank a massive 8-0 at Love Street, kicking off a sequence of
seven wins from their final nine games and only losing when the title had been
wrapped up. Not only would they go up as champions, but as the division’s
highest scorers.

Unfortunately this would the pinnacle of Hendrie’s career.
As expected the SPL was a cruel and unforgiving world for a group of players
suited to plying their trade in the second tier. They struggled all season long
to adapt to demands and were hampered by loss of players to injury. Along with
the poor luck, Hendrie was not standing up as a manager who could be counted on
to pluck an unappreciated player from obscurity and turn him into dependable
first team players. The situation demanded that this was how he work and
attempt to strengthen in squad for the swift rise up the table did not bring
with it a financial war chest with which to tackle the big boys.

The club sat at the foot of the table for the majority of
the campaign before a flurry at the finish saw St Mirren threaten to pull off a
great escape as they took the relegaton battle down to the last day of the
season. Unfortunately a Dundee United win and a St Mirren draw put paid to that
dream and they finished in last place, five points behind their nearest rivals.

Survival might have been secured if Hendrie had been
successful in securing a signing target in March. Ronaldinho was ready to move
from Gremio to PSG for 20 million euros but it did leave him in football limbo
somewhat with the Brazilian season finished and him unable to make an immediate
travel to Paris.
The St Mirren boss thought he had the perfect solution: Ronaldinho could come
to Paisley. The player could stay match fit
and PSG could have their new man acclimatised to football this side of the
world. Apparently there was a real possibility of a deal being struck before a
legal dispute between the player’s former and future employers put a hex on
things. In the end, St Mirren had to make do with Stephen McPhee.

St Mirren almost did what will soon be known as “doing a
Wolves” and plummeting through the trap door in successive seasons. Their
charge at another First Division title started slowly, never gained any
momentum and they slipped dangerously close to the drop zone after a late
season slump. Hendrie managed to steady the ship enough to keep them in the
second tier, but he didn’t avoid the chop for too much longer.

The scenario sounds completely bonkers but is actually a
common practice for cash-strapped clubs in the Scottish lower leagues. For
Hendrie was not sacked, he was just kindly asked not to come to work anymore.
The club could not afford to pay him off, but after a similarly poor start to
the next season they felt that they could not afford to keep him in charge of
the team either. It was well over a year before an out of court settlement
finally ended the legal dispute between club and former manager. In his place
St Mirren appointed his assistant Tom Coughlin, who did nothing in reversing
the club’s fortunes.

A second stint at Alloa soon arrived but it was little like
his first spell and he found himself out of a job once again in 2006, where he
took a scouting role at Hearts and soon retired from football.

Where is he now? Hendrie is a maths teacher at Craigmount High School
in Edinburgh.

Show: I’ve Been Places, Eh!