Former Scottish international Tommy Hutchison has recently had his autobiography, Hutch Hard Work and Belief, published.
Tommy came from a very poor family. He was the son of a Fife miner and grew up in the impoverished but tight knit community of Dundonald in the forties and fifties. Although football was a huge part of his life and was a game he played for hours on end on the streets and greens of Dundonald, Tommy was never considered good enough to play for his school team. Indeed his first game of organised football didn’t come until he was fifteen years old. The strange thing is that despite his lack of recognition at any level as a boy or as a teenager, he retained a conviction, a certainty, that one day he would play for his country.
That day came at the age of 26 when as a Coventry player, having made his way in the game via Dundonald Bluebell, Alloa and Blackpool, he pulled on that blue shirt for a vital World Cup qualifying game against Czechoslovakia.
In an amazing career Tommy went on to play for the Scots in their heroic 1974 World Cup campaign, score for both his club,Man City and opponents, Tottenham in the 1981 FA Cup final, become the oldest debutant in European competition when playing for Swansea in the Cup Winners Cup at the age of 42 and finally hang up his boots having played a record (for an outfield player)1000 first class games, ending his career at non league Merthyr.
Having worked with Tommy over the past two years in the writing of his story I have got to know him very well. He told me that Denis Law was his footballing hero as a boy and how delighted he was when he got to know him at Scotland get togethers to find out he was a really good, down to earth decent bloke. Tommy was my football hero when he played for my team Coventry. The writing of the book has been made all the better because I have found Tommy to be such a kind and humble man.
His qualities as a person can be seen in his life after football when he spent almost twenty years working with disadvantaged children in South Wales and then Bristol.
Tommy’s story is a funny and inspirational one.If you would like to buy his book and in particular, read his stories about life in the Scotland squads of the mid-seventies (he has strong views on Billy Bremner and on the selection process of the time) then you can order a copy of the book by using the form accessed by the link below.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScfard87yfsj-_jL4Kd3YV7M2glykk0m8s5LtTPqznh9sruVw/viewform
