There is no doubt that Bill Struth was one of Scottish football's great managers. Under his guidance for a third of a century from 1920 to 1954 Rangers would win the Scottish Cup ten times and the League Cup twice. In itself that would have been impressive but it was almost as if it were a sideshow. What really mattered was the League and that in the same period was topped an astounding eighteen times. Yet Struth also remains an enigma for he was never, perhaps out of choice, to test himself outwith Scotland, that is in England and, in spite of his obvious successes his approach to football was never developed, even duplicated either within or outwith Scotland at a time when there was tactical innovation throughout a World of football that was rapidly expanding. His tenure at Ibrox was precisely the period when the structured, professional game was "coming out", that is casting off the pretence of shamateurism and taking hold not just in Continental Europe but North and South America.
From our viewpoint now almost a century beyond Struth assuming managerial responsibility at Rangers his approach to what we like to think of as "the beautiful game" but which more often than not is not may seem formulaic. However, that is to diminish it unjustly. It was a product of the times. In the second half of 19th Century the social ethos, or at least society's great hope for the future, was "scientific" and the approach to football was the same. In the first half of 20th Century, particularly between the Wars it was aware of mechanisms but dominated by structures and again football was not immune. In that light Bill Struth's success at Rangers was not so much formulaic but systematic, structured on and off the field of play. True it somewhat gave the club the impression of being a machine but it also belied a considerable flow of identified, real talent through it and a collective ability that was passed on year by year and endured. In that sense it no different to Pep Guardiola except that he has had the opportunity to implement, indeed refine, his philosophy at several clubs. And it was an approach no doubt helped by Struth not having been a footballer but an ex-professional athlete. At previous clubs he had worked as a trainer and at Ibrox he began with fitness. All his teams and the players within them could run and run and all were aware what was required of them, yet they could also play.
Adam Little, a Rangers player mainly after the Second World War, recalled some of Struth’s techniques. With regard to fitness he wrote:
“Struth was at the top of the club but day to day fitness was in the hands of the trainers.”
but not wholly so:
“Weather permitting, training at Ibrox started with a brisk mile's walk around the track in shirt sleeves with Struth's expert athletic eye - he had been a professional sprinter - watching for faults in gait or step.”
In other words he was looking for injury that might impinge on an ability to perform at the highest tempo for ninety minutes. Any sign of a problem and an equally well-drilled replacement would be inserted for the coming game.
During the game itself tactics on the field, were decided by the team captain in response to the opposition but they would be within the context of not of a certain style of play but a system, a method, a way, The Rangers Way. Whilst Struth himself, once in the early years of his management the system had been set, seemed to concern himself predominantly with club philosophy and player psychology, it was left to successive captains and senior players to transmit, to inculcate that “Way”.
Little recalls that:
“Playing for Rangers was easy - you were surrounded by good players and they helped you play. You were weaned in the method of play.”
and it was:
“handed down from generation to generation. You were introduced to a system and the first team players told you what to do. If you didn't you wouldn't last long.”
adding:
“It was more the spirit of the club that the captain instilled. You couldn't tell a bloke how to play football in those days because that was all you did so it was natural talent that came to the top and so it was case of getting the players mentally together and dovetailing them together.”
However, there were certain principles that were adhered to.
“Simple things were drummed in - throw-ins should always be used to pressure the opposition - “no-one can be offside at a throw-in.””
and most importantly of all:
“At Ibrox we swung on the pivot of the centre half. Left half tracks back - the right half went forward - the same thing happened up front - if the left side went back the right side was up.”
But, of course, the centre-half referred to was not what we understand today. Struth was still a product of his times and his nationality. His formation was still the Scottish Cross. The difference was that with him it was able to deform as required but then return to convention. His centre-half at least at the beginning was the Scottish, attacking one. As time went on it might have dropped back a little but was never a centre-back and remained his teams' fulcrum. And it was this system, pivoting around his centre-half in defence and attack and incorporating the Off-side Bogey, the offside trap, that was from 1920 onwards at the core of Rangers’ ability season after season, rather than in one-off Cup games, to win League games weekend after weekend.
However, no matter what the system on the field, if a club’s “head” is not right success will be intermittent at best. It is perhaps this that in the period distinguished Rangers from Celtic. Rangers’ “head” was better than its rivals and the source was Struth. He was man with standards, from the way he looked after himself and dressed to his behaviour, bordering on the fastidious. He also demanded the same standards from his players, said to be a deliberate strategy. Paying attention to details of appearance, it was said, got them to think about their bodies and thus about effort on and off the pitch. Little recalled how he was called into Struth office for just knotting his tie wrongly. And behaving poorly was totally unacceptable on the basis that, if it were off the field, it could equally be on. Little remembered how Archie Macaulay was,
“out on the skip on a Thursday night”
and found himself transferred the following week but noticeably not to another, competitive, Scottish club but West Ham.
There was a hierarchy too. First team players got the best of everything but then were expected to get on with the job. Struth was not a man to give the hair-dryer treatment. Little remembers a defeat by eight goals against Hibernian as the only occasion, when Struth came into the dressing room after a game. But he did not rant simply saying,
“God help the team you will be playing next week.”
Nor did he give pre-match pep-talks. Little’s final memory was that
“he’d position himself at the tunnel to shake a hand or clap a shoulder as the players went out and leave them with the same last thought that became his mantra - “Every post is the winning post.” What he meant was that every free kick, every restart, every move should be played at full pelt as if it was your last or your only opportunity.”
However, none of this casts even spluttering candle light on why Struth's methods did not become de rigeur firstly in Scotland, in England and therefore Worldwide, since at the time the football World still looked to Britain for most innovation. Certainly the ideas of John Cameron,
Peter McWilliam,
John Harley,
Archie McLean and
Jimmy Hogan on and off the pitch were in precisely the same era taken up both in Britain and elsewhere. Perhaps Struth's ideas were simply considered too difficult, too demanding just as in modern times are the playing system and fitness demands of another maverick football thinker, and more importantly, do-er. Bielsa is his name, Marcelo Bielsa.