Slim Jim by Tom Miller

Author:Tom Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2014-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

16

Baxter’s Bosses

‘Just give the ball to Jim’

Jim Baxter was never one for authority and he gave a succession of managers a headache they could have done without. Even the best of them took flight when offered the great man as an ‘asset’. Leeds United boss Don Revie refused to take Baxter to Elland Road at the peak of his powers because he ‘liked to sleep at night’. But when Baxter was focused and delivering what he was capable of on the park, most managers were prepared to put up with his indiscretions, which were at times outrageous. As he matured, whether it was in Glasgow, Wearside or Nottingham, they definitely grew more regular.

During his time in the game, Jim worked under a total of twelve managers, at both club and international level. Willie Butchart was the first, and as manager at Crossgates Primrose he was the man who gave sixteen-year-old Jim Baxter the platform to play football and be paid for it. Butchart had an association with Primrose that stretched for a period of sixty-six years, starting from his involvement at the Fife junior club as a mascot, aged twelve. Butchart also took Jim’s second cousin George Kinnell to Humbug Park, named after a pit that was part of Cuttlehill Colliery, which operated on that same site in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Butchart was secretary–manager of the club and prided himself on the fact that he had signed a player who had played in a Rest of the World team. Every visitor to the neat little ground was shown the framed picture of Baxter and the global legends from Wembley 1963. Crossgates Primrose actually closed down in 1960 after Baxter had left, but Butchart started them again in 1983. It’s fair to say Jim had a special affection for Butchart and Primrose, and was quoted as saying, ‘Willie Butchart did a lot for me and when I go back to Fife I always look him up.’ When Baxter left Crossgates for the seniors and joined Raith Rovers, he bought his mother Agg a new washing machine with his signing-on fee.

It was Bert Herdman who next took a gamble on Baxter, signing the skinny miner from Crossgates. Herdman immediately sent him back to Primrose on loan to continue to toughen up. Herdman was Raith boss from 1945 to 1961 and consistently had the Stark’s Park side punching above their weight, despite having to sell his best player almost every year just to balance the books. Herdman was old school. A suit, shirt and tie topped with a bowler hat was his normal working attire. He saw something in the young Baxter that others might not have noticed and was hugely influential in allowing his team to play to their strengths; he was one of the first managers to deploy the tactic of ‘Just give the ball to Jim’.

Baxter valued the faith Herdman had shown in him and was actually originally reluctant to leave Raith for Rangers, as he felt he still owed the manager for giving him his chance.

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