David McKechnie hears how the Luton boss longs to be up where hebelongs
Sometimes it seems like the club Joe Kinnear now works for was given to him on prescription. Few names in English football are as well-equipped to stop the pulse racing as Luton Town, who possess all the glamour and charm of the plastic pitch they used to play on. But to Kinnear, who has harboured several regrets since his 1999 heart attack while Wimbledon manager, a lower division rescue effort doesn't exactly feel like what the doctor ordered.
Last Saturday afternoon at run-down Kenilworth Road, Kinnear watched his Division Two team take the latest step in their own recovery with a stirring 3-0 win over Swindon Town. At full time, the manager headed for the tunnel, dressed in a shirt and tie, suit jacket slung over his left shoulder, spring in his step. Ever the populist, Kinnear stopped to accept the fans' acclaim, making the scoreline out with his fingers in the air with the swagger of a champion at charades.
The Dubliner is in the unusual position of being grateful for a new lease on life, while regretting the toll his illness and subsequent sabbatical from the game have had on his career. His managerial CV contains no black marks, no failures, yet he seems destined to spend the rest of his career answering the call of cash-strapped clubs in need of resuscitation.
For a man whose name was once routinely linked to every medium-sized Premiership job available, not to mention the Republic of Ireland post, the anonymity isn't easy. "I'd been out nearly two years," he reflects quietly. "You're soon forgotten in this business after two years. And the nature of my health was covered world-wide and a lot of stuff was documented, stuff was coming out from various GPs and surgeons advising me not to go back.
"It's always hard to get the message across that you're fit and well. Because you don't really know what people are thinking; is he employable, does he have a dodgy ticker? I'm aware of those things.
"I felt I'd earned the right to have a go at a club like Tottenham. I'd love to have had a job with a chequebook. I'd love to have been in David O'Leary's position at Leeds and had those sorts of finances. I think I could have won stuff.
"Probably that's my biggest disappointment in football, that I never actually got around to having the chance. It's probably all behind me now.
"With Tottenham I hit the crossbar on a couple of occasions. I was very near, I would have loved that, it would have been the job of a lifetime. I could maybe get with one of the struggling (Premiership) clubs, I suppose. I don't know whether I'll ever get to a sexy club. Time will tell.
"Now on Saturday I look at the fixtures and think Man United, Arsenal ... I wish I was there and had something to do with it. We're going off to Stockport this week. But it's a job and whatever job you're in you have to give it your best. And that's what I've always done, give it my best."
After he was rushed to hospital before Wimbledon's game at Sheffield Wednesday in March 1999, Kinnear left the club, with designs on tackling something bigger when he recovered. Weeks soon turned to months and the only call that came was from Wednesday, relegated, broke and looking for a manager to work on a shoestring. Kinnear turned the job down, but nothing else came up until the end of 2000, when he became Oxford United's director of football, scouting for new players but keeping his distance.
When Luton's silver-haired chairman, Mike Watson-Challis, called in February last year, Kinnear was disillusioned and desperate to return to management, even if it meant returning to a level he thought he'd never see again. Luton had no money and a ramshackle ground, with nothing but the chairman's enthusiasm and new stadium plans to entice him. Although he couldn't save Luton from relegation to Division Three, he soon began to leave his mark.
"What I liked about it was the tradition of Luton, the history of it," he says. "And to be fair, it's a decent club, a smashing crowd. They've been on hard times and it was a massive challenge. If I have a problem it's that we probably need to be a bit more ambitious. But I knew the score when I came here. I knew the finances would be tight.
"I think I made a rod for my own back in some respects. I was always looked upon as a miracle worker and I think sometimes that's gone against me."
Kinnear soon began living up to his reputation, uncovering inexpensive gems and polishing them in Luton's first team. Steve Howard, an unheralded striker with Northampton, arrived for £50,000 and scored 24 goals last season as Luton stormed back to Division Two. Others, like centre half Russell Perrett, came on free transfers and became trusted regulars. Meanwhile, the team's best player, Matthew Taylor, left for Portsmouth for £400,000 in the summer.
Luton have begun this season in patchy form, but Kinnear has had few of the sleepless nights that were such a feature of his time at Wimbledon. Management used to be his obsession, now it's simply his profession. "I've delegated better since I've come back. And when I was at Wimbledon it was Man United Tuesday night, Liverpool Saturday, away to Arsenal the following Wednesday. Fucking hell, that's pressure.
"I'd be racing in the car because one of them had a European game, and I'd go have a look at them myself, and they'd steamroller some team by five. And I'd be driving all the way back thinking, fucking hell, how am I going to deal with that lot Saturday? My head was spinning.
"But I miss all that type of action, it's a different feeling. I just felt that week in, week out I had to keep proving myself irrespective of the resources I had. I miss all that. I used to drive myself nuts, though, I was paranoid. It just took over my whole life. I hardly remember any family life at all.
"Now I think I'm fit enough and well enough to do it again. I think I'm better off now I've come through my heart attack. Now when I go to away matches I always take a driver. I know more about myself, know more about my heart. I go for a check-up every six months and have my blood tested for everything. I'm still on four tablets a day.
"I've never played golf in my life, never been round a golf course. I've never had a second sport, it's been football, football and more football. I've got friends now who go horse racing, so I'm gradually going that side. I haven't got a horse. I've thought about it, but if I want to do something outside in life, I want to have a proper say in it."
Even now, Kinnear remains the highest-placed former Republic of Ireland international managing in English football, but if the job became available tomorrow few would tip him to be in the running.
"Possibly I regret it. I'd like to think I'd get a chance again, without jumping all over Mick McCarthy's grave. But if Mick decided himself to pack it in and do something else, I would hope that I'd have my hat in the ring, same as everybody else. I hope the fact that I turned it down in the past wouldn't stand against me."
As for McCarthy, Roy Keane and autobiographies, Kinnear is adamant a book is the wrong place to air private grievances. A conviction that may boost his chances of finishing his own story with a flourish.
