CALEY THISTLE SPECIAL: Rangers and England legend Terry Butcher opens up on his regrets at leaving Inverness – and is ready for a return
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Terry Butcher has spoken for the first time of his great regrets about leaving Caley Thistle – just as he prepares for a return.
The former Rangers and England captain will be special guest and spectator at the Highlanders’ home match against Ayr United this weekend.
Just over a decade after his controversial departure, the visit marks the 65-year-old’s first trip back at the invitation of the club since making the ill-fated decision to leave and join Hibs.
Butcher will be accompanied by fellow Ibrox legend Richard Gough at the Championship game ahead of a special nostalgic evening the pair will headline at a local hotel.
While the reminiscences on Saturday night will be mostly about Rangers, Butcher has also been reflecting with a mix of sadness, wonder and delight at his near-five year spell in charge of the Highland outfit.
It proved a rollercoaster time featuring a relegation, a bounce-back First Division title triumph and then the thrills and spills of life in the top half of the top-flight, finishing fourth in 2012/13.
In one incredible winter week that season, Caley Jags went to Celtic Park and won 1-0, triumphed 3-2 at Pittodrie a few days later and then shared six goals with Highland derby rivals Ross County – seven days Butcher has never forgotten.
“That was one of the best weeks of my life, in terms of management, it really was," he recalled. “We did have some incredible times.”
The remarkable, fluent-passing, characterful team he built – mostly with shoestring bargains from south of the border and local talent – became a constant thorn in the flesh of Scotland's big city clubs.
Soon after Butcher left, successor John Hughes took the team to the heights of third place in the Premiership, won the Scottish Cup and secured a maiden venture into European football.
Butcher insists that Hughes’ success is not the root cause of his sense of sadness and regret.
It is simply an acknowledgement that he may have given it all up too hastily after building something special in what he now looks back on as one of the best periods of his distinguished professional career.
That is saying something for a man who experienced World Cups, a European success with Ipswich Town and three league titles and two cups with Rangers.
The big Englishman, who lived in idyllic surroundings at Abriachan in the hills above Loch Ness, said: “Caley Thistle was just a wonderful time in our lives – unbelievable, really, when I look back.
“I thoroughly enjoyed working at the club and Rita and I loved living up there, we really did. It was a beautiful way of life.
“It is great to be heading back this weekend. I’ve done a few television games as a pundit over the years, principally with the Old Firm, but that tended to be whirlwind visits.
“We still have some very good friends up there who we keep in touch with. It is just a beautiful part of my career and a beautiful place to live.
“It was a shame the way it ended. I do have regrets, I’ll admit. It was possibly the wrong thing to do, but that's football sometimes, isn’t it?”
Butcher, with the benefit of hindsight, recognises he had a rare thing going in Inverness.
The board had placed full trust in him, not just to build a team but to build the club.
They were heady days for Highland football with Ross County joining them in the top-flight, bringing great derby occasions as he and Derek Adams squared up – literally at times.
Butcher insists a lot of it was showmanship to promote the fixture, although video footage serves as a reminder that some of it, at least, was deadly serious.
He compares the scope he was given to enhance the club to the kind of freedom and longevity Sir Bobby Robson was granted at Ipswich and Sir Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen and Manchester United.
He also regrets the degree of acrimony that had him departing under a little bit of cloud after forcing the issue with the board in the last days of his Inverness career.
At the time he left, in November 2013, Caley Thistle were second only to Celtic in the league.
Hibs, after Pat Fenlon, were languishing a distant 10 points behind.
Butcher recalled: “I had the team there in Inverness, with all the work that takes.
“But at the time, we were talking about a new contract and it was stalling. There was a lot of humming and hawing.
“I looked at Hibs and thought ‘it’s a big club’, in the doldrums, and as a manager you always believe you can make it better. You believe you can change the world!
“I could have left Caley Thistle in better circumstances, the way that it played out.
“I do regret it, not for their Scottish Cup final win or anything like that, just that I’d left something that was quite perfect in a way.
“I had moulded it, with the help of terrific people around me at the club.
“It was like Sir Bobby and Sir Alex. When you have time at a football club, a good number of years to build teams, people know your way, get used to you, and you get used to them.
“But sometimes you can stay too long at one place and that was one concern of mine.
“What I didn’t want to oversee was the decline of the club, for one reason or another.
“Maybe I thought we were reaching a peak but, ultimately, that peak was still to be reached.
“For me, Hibs seemed like a good opportunity to do something like I had done at Inverness.
“I do have regrets, because I left behind some brilliant supporters, brilliant players and brilliant people and it obviously didn't work out.
“I knew, at the time, when we were relegated with Hibs, that my days as a coach were numbered. It had big repercussions for me.
“But it was great for the football club to go on and achieve what they did.
“All good things come to an end, but it was a brilliant time.
“I do feel sad about leaving and I do regret it – and I would probably do something differently now, although hindsight is a wonderful thing.
“I had a great ride – a great journey and experience – and I can say I left the club in a much better position than I found it.
“I just felt that, maybe, it needed someone else to come in and take it on.”
Butcher was present at Hampden Park as Hughes’ men lifted the cup and felt only joy for his former charges, players he knew inside out and valued hugely as people and professionals.
He said: “I was down there pitch-side and I was just so happy for the guys. That’s all I felt.
“We always had the phrase about our team, players like Gary Warren, Richie Foran, Ross Draper, Billy Mckay, and it was ‘stamina, style and steel’.
“That summed it up. They were the fittest team, they had ability, but they were strong as well – tough to the core.
“I always looked at them knowing it was something special, but I didn’t know how far they could go.
“To go and do what they did was just remarkable, like a fairytale, really.”
Butcher delights in looking back at his own highs and lows at Inverness.
He blazed into the club with Maurice Malpas as assistant in late January 2009, replacing sacked Craig Brewster who left the club bottom of the SPL table by two points.
That stretched to five points with a Falkirk win on the eve of Butcher’s first game, home to Celtic.
But they held a Celtic team featuring Scott Brown, Shunsuke Nakamura and Georgios Samaras to a 0-0 draw.
With future captain Foran an inspired first signing, the team took 25 points from the next 12 games and were on the verge of securing safety.
Then disaster struck with Ross Tokely’s final day red card and a killer defeat to Falkirk, sending them down on goal difference behind Motherwell.
Butcher said: “We were relegated on the SPL’s highest points tally. I had been so confident we would survive, but some things you can’t legislate for.
“I remember getting back into the home dressing room. That’s one of the most painful memories of my entire football career.
“I just went into the showers and cried. The players were crying. We couldn’t believe it had happened.
“But I still felt we had the nucleus of players there to get back up and told the chairman George Fraser, a wonderful man, that we would.”
With the likes of Jonny Hayes and Lee Cox recruited, Caley Thistle bounced back in style.
After a sluggish first half of the season, the team ignited on a 21-game unbeaten run to the title.
Butcher recalled: “We learned we had won the title in midweek, before we played at Ayr. The staff were probably still under the influence of one or two beers as we journeyed down.
“I’m not sure whether or not the players were as well!
“But whatever, they were absolutely flying and we won 7-0 with seven different scorers.
“We had a big support in party mode and our fans wouldn’t leave after the game. I had to go back out, at Ayr's request, and speak to the fans. I just asked them to save themselves for a party back in Inverness promise them a party back in Inverness. Some of them were maybe getting thirsty and they eventually left.
“The scenes going back up the road were just incredible. We were known to indulge the players a little bit with a fish supper and maybe the odd beer going up the road after games, but this was just something else.
"I remember we eventually dropped the players off at a nightclub in Inverness and all the staff went home and left them to it.
“The years that followed back in the SPL were some of the happiest and most memorable of my career.”
• Terry Butcher and Richard Gough are appearing at the Drumossie Hotel, Inverness Saturday, 16 March for ‘An evening with two of Rangers’ greatest ever captains at 8pm on Saturday, March 16. A limited number of tickets are available through Eventbrite.
