Dick Campbell on 'miracle' Arbroath season and 'irritating' exit

Former Arbroath manager Dick Campbell is now in charge at League 2 East Fife

"I got a phone call from Sir Alex Ferguson on New Year's Day to congratulate us because we went top of the league."

The story of Arbroath's remarkable 2021-22 season is part of Scottish football folklore and should probably be made into a film.

In fact, they did make a movie called A Shot at Glory, which is almost the perfect template. Starring the incongruous combination of Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall and Rangers striker Ally McCoist, it featured a Scottish football club in a seaside town facing almighty adversity.

But truth is often better than fiction.

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Enter Dick Campbell - the Arbroath Godfather. If there was an award for wearing a bunnet, he would beat Duvall hands down.

Here was a real-life, larger-than-life character leading a bunch of part-time players past a division of full-time professional clubs all the way to the top of the Championship - and almost all the way to the top flight.

"At the end of January we had confirmed top four," recalls Campbell, now aged 70.

"By the end of February we had confirmed third place. And in the last month or so we were confirmed in the top two!"

The Arbroath fairytale became the talk of the town, the nation gripped by an incredible underdog story.

It would all come down to a do-or-die showdown with title favourites Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.

"What an atmosphere," says Campbell of that Friday night in Ayrshire, with 11,500 fans inside the ground.

"We had nothing to lose. But I made an arse of it..."

"We're 1-0 up and I see them warming up the wee winger they got from Rangers (Chris Burke). I say, 'I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll go 4-5-1. I should have gone 5-4-1.

"I went 4-5-1 to try and stop the wide players going into deeper areas."

Kilmarnock scored twice in the final 12 minutes of regulation time to clinch the title by four points.

"I was speechless after the game," explains Campbell. "It's only later on you start to think about the love affair. Everybody at Arbroath deserved every pat on the back from my chairman down."

Arbroath scored early against Kilmarnock and led until the 78th minute

Ian 'Pink' Campbell - Dick's twin brother and assistant manager then and now once again at East Fife - has great memories of that campaign.

"I loved it," he says. "The fans are fabulous and we were all together, everyone. The board, the support, the players.

"It became a bit ruptured and dislocated for different reasons in the end but you can't take anything away from the players who were just fantastic."

Arbroath, who would miss out via the play-offs, were a club transformed. From bouncing around the lower divisions they had reached incredible heights.

Season ticket sales that had been in the mere hundreds were now being counted in their thousands.

But maintaining that kind of momentum at a part-time club was always going to be tough. The following season was more mundane as Arbroath set about preserving their Championship status, finishing eighth.

This term began with a painful 4-0 thumping at home from Dundee United and, although form would improve for a while, it would slump once more.

And, as with politics, in football even the most celebrated careers often end in disappointment. The Campbell brothers would depart Gayfield after seven-and-a-half years in November.

"We played Spartans [in the Scottish Cup] and we got beat.", says Dick. "[The board] were disappointed in not going through to the next round for the money.

"I said to Ian five minutes before the end, 'This is going to be a difficult walk'.

"One boy had a right go at me and somebody spat at me. Colin Hamilton had a go back at him!

"I just shook my head and that was it for me. I don't deserve that and neither do any of my staff. I get angry when I hear that - 95% of fans want us, but there is always that wee bit of idiots.

"I think the chairman could have stood up and said 'Dinnae worry about it, if Arbroath go down Dick will be the man who will bring us back up'.

"But nothing happened and that kind of annoyed me and disturbed me, so I said 'Look, things are no right here, I will make it easy for you and step down'.

"And the thing that annoyed me more than anything else, they never tried to keep me. Which I find irritating even to this day.

"But I'm bigger than all that. I have got a hell of a lot of nice friends and we'll go again.

"It was a dream, a miracle what happened, but all good things come to an end."