News and Events | The Pip Yeates Story Part Two

Pip has memories of Trips to Holland with Jimmy Calderwood`s teams, he travelled extensively with Scotland but his African adventure was for entirely different reasons

Africa calling

Pip has memories of Trips to Holland with Jimmy Calderwood`s teams, he travelled extensively with Scotland but his African adventure was for entirely different reasons:-

`Africa, that was 3 months in Rwanda and Kenya. We had 8 weeks in Rwanda doing Gorillas in the Mist! I stipulated I needed to be back for pre-season training, the players thought I was absolutely mental doing that instead of being out there, staying on the film set. I had 3 or 4 weeks in Kenya and then I came home, to look after Gary Thompson and whoever else that was around.`

Pip`s introduction to film stars came about through a clinic in Edinburgh that had contacts down south. Work included clients at Elstree and Pinewood, but the other partner mostly did all that but sometimes there was a doubling up:-

`I got 3 days notice that I was going to Rwanda flown out by Warner Brothers, in the old days of Sabena from Belgium. That was `˜87, the same year as I was going to Chile. I think I had a cardboard cutout at home because I was out there, whatever that was, May, June, July, came back and then I was out to Chile in October.

`Filming in Africa was interesting in its own way because you were doing hiking, I could only treat folk once the filming had finished. We were in tents at the bottom of the volcano in the jungle. There were 2 buildings where I could go and see the director, Michael Apted and Sigourney Weaver they were in them, but the rest of us were in tents. You were up at 6 in the morning, have breakfast, then the 4 wheel drive is probably about 45 minutes to get to the base of the mountain. Then you had to go where the gorillas were and they migrated, so you could be hiking for an hour or 2 hours taking the camera stuff up, everything going up. Who needed to be near the gorillas did the filming and then you would come back down the mountain and then my day would start after we had something to eat so it was interesting.`

Sigourney Weaver and the stars

`The director had an issue so I was out treating him but looking after her in terms of just keeping her nice and loose and whatever. From that you got other things, when you were up in Edinburgh a lot of the stage shows that came up would know our names, so things like Hot Shoe Show, Guys and Dolls, Jimmy Nail when he was on BBC. I thought it was the players winding me up. I got a phone call from the Caledonian Hotel saying there`s a Mr Nail on the phone. I ended up picking him up, bringing him to get some treatment. There was a lot of stage work that came about from doing that as well.

`That was up here as I say. Wayne Sleep was in the Hot Shoe Show and there was Lulu that was in Guys and Dolls, it was that type of thing that I did up here and then I went down to Manchester and helped out down there as well. So yeah, it`s been quite diverse in different ways!`

Hard to leave his `˜own` club

`I had a really good relationship with Jimmy Calderwood and I think he did rely on me and the chemistry between Jimmy (Nicholl), the players and myself. That was really good but I left just before the 2004 Scottish Cup final after 22 years of service to the club. During that season, there were things that I wasn`t happy with so I moved on.

`I was Dunfermline boy, Mel Rennie used to take me to games when I was 10. My dad didn`t go to games and that was before Mel was a director. We were in the Cowdenbeath end watching Dunfermline against Anderlecht or whatever so I mean it`s been part of me all those years but you move on.

`When Ross McArthur was here I was quite happy to help out the club as I did a few times behind the scenes voluntarily. I think he had me on the speed dial at one point when the physio had left and they were in the lurch. Can you help us out? I was helping them just at that time when Covid came along and there was a few of the boys that were still injured. I was just kind of babysitting them all because I couldn`t see them then. I had to phone them up. I did wee bits and pieces like that for Ross and I was happy to because regardless, you still have a soft spot for the club.`

Youssef was a challenge

Asked if any particular player was particularly difficult to work with, Pip recalled one bad memory.

`The one that was disappointing was Youssef Rossi. Jimmy phoned me up at home one night and said I`ve got this boy in Holland, great player he said but, and he knew that something was wrong. He`s just done his ACL, he`s had surgery, he`s only 2 or 3 months into rehab of it but I could get him now, but I need you to say he`s going to be alright in 5 or 6 months time. Youssef came over, he couldn`t speak English, I never spoke French. His brother was his agent, so he came. We guddled on, had a look and I thought right okay the surgery looks alright and there doesn`t seem to be any reason why he can`t do a rehab. It was going to be difficult since neither can talk to each other. So I go back to Jimmy and say everything seems okay. Right, brilliant, we`ll do it then.

`It was one to one in terms of getting him through the rehab and we got there but as soon as he got fit his attitude changed because for whatever reasons, he wanted a better contract, he wanted this because now he was fit and yet we looked after him for 6 months when he couldn`t produce anything and he started getting a bit naughty and I mean I saw him take out a kid at training one day and just went mental at him. He was just stirring things up. So for the good time we had in terms of doing the rehab I was so disappointed in his attitude when he actually got himself fit. To then start messing about, to basically get away I think probably wouldn`t be fair to say. I didn`t know the full ins and outs but that`s how it looked to me anyway.

`Then on the other side you know you have somebody like Istvan Kozma who I saw that score the best hat-trick ever with a left and a right foot and a header against St Mirren. You`ll never see a better, both strikes were from outside the box I think I`m right in saying, unbelievable skill in terms of a player. Dunfermline hadn`t for long enough had that type of quality of player. That was a big step up for the club to make a statement like that, getting folk like him in. George O`Boyle came in at the same time from Bordeaux, as a young boy.

`You would get boys with a wee bit of anger because they`ve got an injury - why me - that sort of attitude and you`ve got to get over that. So apart from being a sports psychologist and a sports scientist, you have that psychology bit to go through as well. You need them on side to do what you need to do without alienating them. You`ve got to understand, if somebody gets a long term injury they need a toughness to handle it. There`s nothing worse than looking at my face every day when the other boys are training.`

A lot of good people

`Football has been good to me, the wee other things like doing the films, that only lasted a little while because I chose not to stay. It just wasn`t for me because I was going down Monday to Friday, coming back Saturday for the game here and I did that for 10 months. Then suddenly you`re maybe away, like it happened to Rwanda and to commit to that we would need to move down south, which I didn`t want to do. That was the right decision for me again in the long term, it sounds glamorous, but would it have lasted? Who knows.

`The football has been the stabiliser right through and then when I got older, the clinic became the stabiliser rather than the football. I`m 64 now, so I`m quite content with the decision I`ve made and look back on fondness of all the things that have come my way and been fortunate to be part of it and met a lot of good people and glad to say not too many the other way.`

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