Third Division Queen’s Park became the first amateur club in Europe to crack the da Vinci code last season when they saw off competition from professional sides to benefit from the European Community funded Life Long Learning programme, ‘The Leonardo da Vinci Coaching Initiative’, and just for good measure, The Spiders have done it again this season.
Earlier this year, the Hampden clubs Under 19 squad and coaching staff left the cold of Glasgow for two weeks in the Algarve and just four days into 2011, they will head off again, this time to Turkey.
The trip could hardly have come at a better time for Head of Youth, David McCallum, as he only took on the position last month and the intense workings of the training camp will enable him to get to know the players and the coaching staff inside out.
McCallum is a well known face in Scottish football having started his career at Motherwell before having spells at Stirling Albion, Partick Thistle and Queen’s Park however, a knee injury saw him retire aged just 27. The Hampden side guided him into a coaching role and just seven years later, McCallum is in charge of one of the biggest youth development programmes in Scotland.
“I started off at Fir Park under Alex McLeish after playing for their Boys Club and Bearsden Boys Club,” said McCallum, “although I waited until I was 18 until I turned full-time as I was studying for a National Certificate in Sports Technology.
“I was always a midfielder or occasionally left back and I made the bench a few times but never got any first team games. The Motherwell team was full of good players like Tommy Coyne, Dougie Arnott, Owen Coyle, Mitchell van der Gaag, Stevie McMillan, Stephen Woods and Ian Ross. I was there for two years and it was a great learning experience for me.”
McCallum’s days in Lanarkshire came to an end when Finnish Manager Hari Kampman took over and he joined the exodus of claret and amber players that moved to Stirling Albion under former team-mate John Philliben.
He said: “John took a few of us over including Brian Martin even though it was a drop to the Second Division. That was where I first came across Mark McGeown, who finished his career at Queen’s Park last season, and is now a goalkeeping coach in our youth set-up.
“I played there for a couple of years and the highlight was beating Hibernian in a Scottish Cup replay in February 1999 and I scored in that game.
“I moved on to Partick Thistle in the summer of 2000 and that was the last time I was involved in football on a full-time basis until now. I initially worked in Greaves Sports shop before setting up my own Driving School.”
The first season at Firhill was a success with the Second Division Championship being won and McCallum walked away with Thistle’s Young Player of the Year Award. However, a knee injury was beginning to emerge and first team appearances were restricted over the next two seasons.
McCallum explained: “During that first season in the First Division, I had my cruciate ligament repaired and early into the second season, I played and scored in a Challenge Cup game against Raith Rovers. Unfortunately, I picked up the same injury and that cost me the rest of my season.”
No new deal was going to be offered at Firhill and Kenny Brannigan, who was in charge of Queen’s Park at the time, recruited McCallum to Hampden in early 2003 and he played on for a further eighteen months in black and white hoops. The world however, changed for McCallum when he went in for what he believed to be a tidy up operation on his knee in the October.
“I went in expecting to be back playing soon,” said McCallum before adding, “and I came out being told that if I played again, I would be struggling to walk in my thirties.
“I had not long turned 27 and did not know what to do next but people at Queen’s Park stepped in and looked after me. Billy Stark, who was in charge of the first team then, and Andy McLennan, who has worked behind the scenes for years, directed me into coaching.
“I started with the Under 17s and took them for the rest of that season.
“The following season, I started working with the Under 19s until Billy asked me to help out with the reserves and first team.
"I am still not sure why he did that but I am glad he did. I can only presume that he saw that I fitted in well around the dressing room and having played at a reasonable level, he felt I could help Bobby Dickson and him.”
The chemistry worked as Queen’s famously knocked out Aberdeen in The CIS Insurance Cup in August 2006, won promotion via the Play-Offs in May 2007 and kept their place in the Second Division until the team broke up as the youngsters reared in Mount Florida moved on to full-time football.
McCallum said: “Everyone remembers that side and the fact that more than half of them left for professional clubs.
“However, we have had two more recent players that have gone pretty far in the game as well. Steven Saunders was a Queen’s Park player, playing in the Amateur Cup Final of 2008, before moving on to Motherwell and came on as a substitute for Scotland in the recent friendly at Pittodrie against the Faroes Islands. Barry Douglas left us in the summer after a couple of great seasons and is now of course at Dundee United.”
As well as developing players, McCallum was developing himself as he qualified up to A Licence and also added a Youth Licence to his qualifications. The investment in development paid off when a re-structure at Hampden saw the post of Head of Youth created and McCallum came through the application process successfully in the autumn of this year to take up the reins.
It is a demanding post with McCallum saying: “We have over 150 players from Under 11 up to Under 19 all coached by 25 volunteer coaches.
“We have some well known faces in amongst the coaches with former Queen’s Park players like Paul Ronald, Steven Reilly, Denis Connaghan, Graham Connell, Mark McGeown, Keith McKenzie and David Graham as well as Ricky Waddell, who plays for Clyde.
“These guys and all the other coaches give up three nights a week and time at the weekends for games which is great especially when you consider we are competing at the SFA Performance level which is the same status as the SPL clubs.”
“My job is to co-ordinate the activities of these squads to develop players in the way that this club wants to play football. Ultimately I have to produce players for Gardner Speirs’ first team squad and I have a bit of success to replicate as apart from the players I mentioned before, Gavin Lachlan, Michael O’Hara, Paul Gallacher, Waleed Nadeem and goalkeeper Gordon McPherson have all been in the first team in the last year.
“At the other end of the spectrum, I am also putting together a squad of eight and nine-year-olds to start working towards being in our Under 11 squad next season.”
McCallum added: “Thankfully, our Community Programme that does great work in schools around Glasgow and also hosts our coaching classes in the holidays and Saturday mornings is looked after by George Watson.”
With his feet literally slipping under the table, McCallum will lead a team of nearly 30 players and staff from the south side of Glasgow to Belek in Turkey via the airports of Manchester and Antalya on 4th January.
The Hampden Head of Youth said: “The Leonardo da Vinci funding allows you to take 18 players and three staff with you. The club and fans have dug deep to supplement that with a batch of extra staff, a film crew that will tape all the training sessions and games for Gardner.
“The filming of games is an extra expense however, last season Paul Gallacher’s performances in Portugal saw him promoted to the first team squad when Gardner was able to see how well he had done. Goalkeeper Gordon McPherson is another who benefited from that approach.”
The Queen’s Park youngsters, made up of six from their Under 16 squad and 12 from their Under 19 pool, will have three months worth of coaching crammed into 14 days in a full-time environment.
McCallum explained: “There are 36 different coaching sessions arranged and that is the equivalent to what we would spend on the boys over a three month period here. That is a massive amount of work to get through and we will also play a few games out there to put into practice what has been taught.
“We already have a game against Dutch side Den Haag who have also benefited from the da Vinci programme,” said McCallum before adding, “There may be a bit of silverware up for grabs as we are travelling over with Rangers and Celtic who are staying nearby in Antalya so we could maybe see if we can play for the Glasgow Cup when we are there. They are also benefiting from da Vinci funding.”
It is a big commitment for part-time players and coaches to go to Turkey with McCallum saying: “I will be there for the full two weeks and in view of my recent appointment, it is a good opportunity to put my stamp on coaching at the club and also to bounce ideas off the coaches that are there. Three coaches will go out the first week and three will go out the second.
“They are all giving up a weeks holiday to do it so it is a big commitment. Some of the players are at school or college so they will have to study or do homework in their spare time.”
It will not just be the scholars and students that will be taking part in non-football activities as one of the established principles that the da Vinci programme works towards is that visiting football clubs embrace the local culture.
Queen’s Park will be no different with McCallum explaining: “We will be having language classes before we go and will undertake cultural visits once we get there. We will undertake at least three different cultural exercises which can be either going to a local place of interest such as the Manavgat River.
“Last year the team got the chance to see Ajax train and play. It was not a cultural visit but it was certainly one worth taking.”
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