JOHN RANKIN looked his players in the eye before the biggest game of their season and saw nothing.
Those eyes were empty, he said, because their bank accounts were empty.
A sentence that should shame the people who have let once-proud Hamilton Accies rot away to nothing.
Some clubs dig deep to put the team up in a hotel before a cup tie, take them somewhere special for a pre-match lunch, promise bumper bonuses for making the next round.
This lot?
They left theirs at home on Friday, fretting over whether their wages would turn up.
In the end, they did. At five to midnight.
No wonder, then, that for the truly decent guy and excellent coach who is Rankin, it was the final straw after too many weeks and months and years of trying to keep dressing room spirits up, in the face of the total collapse of everything around them.
Relegated from the Championship after being docked 15 points for breaking SFA rules.
Kicked out of their New Douglas Park home in a row over who owned it.
Knocked off the top of League One by a second deduction. Left rudderless after the two guys running the boardroom were deemed unfit to be in the game.
On top of this, I’m told there’s a non-stop battery of complaints flowing from that dressing room to the players’ union, moans about pension issues, young lads being paid too little and senior pros not knowing if they’ll be paid at all.
Rankin was the one last daub of glue holding the sorry mess together.
So now that he’s chucked it, swearing that he’d rather dig holes than carry on the way things are?
Well, you just wonder what the future holds for one of Scotland’s oldest clubs.
Or even if they HAVE a future.
After all, where’s the incentive now for those players to carry on giving their lot?
Why would anyone risk a broken leg for a club who might not pay the hospital bills?
Why, for that matter, risk it when they might end up as free agents in a matter of months, weeks, days?
Because make no mistake, that’s not beyond the realms of fantasy. It’s well within reason to think that, barring the swift and decisive intervention of someone fit and proper who cares enough to save them, Hamilton Accies might not survive this season.
That would be a tragedy, an affront to all those who have given so much on and off the pitch since they were founded back in 1874.
It would be devastating to the small but utterly-dedicated band of fans who keep turning up no matter what.
As for Rankin himself, you can bet no one would be more gutted than him to see them fold. But before anyone starts sniping that he should have hung around to try and head disaster off at the pass, I’ll say the same as I have about the players — WHY?
If it’s affecting his home life as badly as his passionate resignation statement made out after Saturday’s 4-0 hammering at Airdrie, who has the right to tell him to plough on?
What’s he meant to be — the gaffer, chairman, secretary and tea lady as well as a full-time counsellor and shop steward?
Trust me, that’s the perfect recipe for an ulcer, for depression, for a heart condition.
See, it would be easy to hear or read Rankin’s words and dismiss them as a young guy letting his emotions get the better of him in the heat of a particularly lousy moment.
If, that is, the catalyst for his outburst had been something immediate and dramatic.
Rather than the drip-drip-drip of circumstances that finally made him decide enough was enough.
The emotional stuff about family and wages and empty eyes and all that stuff was extremely powerful, it came right from the heart and was an absolute gift to the little band of journalists hanging around for his post-match assessment.
For me, though, the key to what managing Hamilton Accies through the horrendous period came when he admitted more with sadness than anger that, ‘There’s no one I can talk to’.
And there you have the point of no return, the bit that cuts deepest when any of us finds ourselves alone, cut adrift, abandoned.
The bit where we’re left asking a question that will resonate with football managers everywhere: WHO MOTIVATES THE MOTIVATOR?
Who’s there to help ease the pressure on the guy who feels like the weight of the world is bearing down on his shoulders?
Who listens to his woes without judging, who does something as simple as put an arm round his shoulder?
In the case of Rankin and Accies, the answer is very clearly that there was no one.
He’d given his lot to try and somehow protect his squad from the mayhem and the decay and the endless squabbling, but there simply came a point where he had no more left to offer.
I’ll tell you this for free though, John Rankin will be back soon enough, refinding his energy and his belief and his love of football and using it to improve another set of players.
There’s a job going at Morton that I’d give him in a heartbeat, but if not, there will be another waiting for him soon enough be it as a coach, a No 2, an academy head.
As for the mess of a club he’s left behind? Somehow, you can’t see quite as many banging on THEIR door with offers they can’t refuse.
Unless it’s a bailiff. . .
Elsewhere, Wilfried Nancy could well turn out to be the best coach on the planet.
But unless he’s done his homework on the s***storm he’s about to plough headfirst into, he’s doomed to failure at Celtic.
If he doesn’t believe me, let him ask the guys from across the Pond who bought Rangers.
Because as much as they’d no doubt try to deny it, Andrew Cavenagh and his crew were about as ready for Scottish football as . . . well, the job lot of mediocrity their £20million war chest has lumbered them with.
In fact, I’ll go further and say that the 49ers thought life here would be easy.
Seemed to me they thought that if they brought in enough players from what on paper was a higher level, the team would perform to a higher level and narrow the gap at the top.
Well, as yet another chorus of boos from those who stayed round to hear the death knell sound on yesterday’s 0-0 Ibrox draw with Falkirk proved, they couldn’t have been more wrong.
And, presuming the deal ever gets done and Martin O’Neill isn’t still in charge when he turns 80, yer man Nancy would do well to learn from the way they’ve underestimated what it takes to survive — never mind succeed — in our bonkers parallel universe.
Yes, we’re short on quality here. So, yes, a man with a plan that gets the best out of the best squad in the land should be a shoo-in for trophies.
Trouble is, what so many arrivals from overseas before Nancy have failed to grasp is the sheer level in intensity and the incredible levels of mental pressure that exist here, especially when it comes to the insanity of the Old Firm’s poisonous rivalry.
In short, tactical savvy is only part of it. Spending money is only part of it.
Fact is it’s the ones who grasp that while it might look like a one-and-a-bit horse race, that horse still needs flick knives in its shoes and a barbed-wire mane to win the prizes.
Maybe Cavenagh and Co will learn that over another few transfer windows and build a team that doesn’t consider itself lucky to have drawn twice with Falkirk before Christmas.
Nancy? Looks like he’ll need to beat league leaders Hearts in his first game, win a European tie against Roma in his second then see off St Mirren to lift a cup.
The world will see very quickly what he’s made of.
Keep up to date with ALL the latest news and transfers at the Scottish Sun football page
