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From army caterer to Kilmarnock's midfield dynamo,
Ron McKay finds Gary Holt in irrepressible form, cooking up a storm for the Rugby Park side
Sunday Herald 29/10/2000
Ron McKay
A few of us have got good engines, a few of us have got great skills." Gary Holt knows in which group he belongs, he has known it since he was a kid, and if there was coincidence at play in the army regiment he signed up with as a 16-year-old, the 28 Engineers, it's an unlikely one. This is perpetual motion in pants.
The Kilmarnock player is his team's midfield motor, fuelled, seemingly, only by air and determination. What he lacks in external styling is more than made up for by internal combustion. Watching his inexhaustible performances as he ploughs up and down from box to box – the mission is "to destroy people, basically" – is almost physically taxing, playing against him must be intensely dispiriting. No sooner have you knocked him down or by-passed him and he's in your face again. He probably grins too.
"I like just running about," he says. "I'm just the hard-working one," he adds, self-deprecatingly, "others have got the touches. It's a collective effort." More effort from some than others, you're tempted to add.
Kilmarnock had gone 10 games without defeat, before yesterday's event with Rangers, and while Holt has had a staccato season – a good start, a stall and then a resurgence – the side have put together an unmatched run and the player has pulled on the Scotland shirt for the first time. "It was a wee bit special," he puts it in the footballers' argot. "It's something I've always dreamed of but never thought would happen."
He had reason not to. When he signed up for the army it was tantamount to an admission that reality had intruded on his dream. He wasn't going to make it as a professional footballer. He was told so by his first coach at Kilmarnock Boys' Club. But young Gary wasn't bothered, or so he claims, because he had decided to heed his grandfather's advice and get a trade, courtesy of the services. He chose catering and, spookily, there's something of a culinary theme to Kilmarnock: chairman Bill Costley was a chef, now a hotelier, and manager Bobby Williamson clearly enjoys his food.
It was Williamson who believed in Holt, still does. "The manager had faith in me," says the irrepressible one. Under the previous gaffer, Alex Totten, Holt had been used, unsuccessfully, as a winger, but he persuaded the new incumbent to give him a run in the middle of the park. It didn't look likely, Kilmarnock had a slew of midfielders. By then Holt had bought himself out of the army. He had been spotted by Pat Crerand, who recommended him to Lou Macari, then at Celtic, who signed him and then took him to Stoke, and then back to his spiritual home – he is a local boy, a Killie diehard, now with a left calf tattoo to commemorate the 1997 Scottish Cup win – at Rugby Park.
The unassuming player credits the army, or rather his regiment, for creating the engine in him, whether it was the endless square-bashing, the assault courses, the yomping in full gear or tackling the mountains of potatoes isn't clear. His CO was sports mad, so for four years he kept the regimental football team together, which won every trophy on offer, and Holt eventually played for the British Army side, thus coming to the notice of Crerand. In that time the frail youngster, of 5ft 4in and seven and a half stone had shot up to 6ft and put on four stone.
In October of the 1996-97 season Holt came on as a substitute against Hibs and stayed in the team for the next game against Hearts, which Kilmarnock lost 5-3 at Tynecastle, and, apart from injury, and this season's slippage of form, that's where he has been since. There is, then, a small irony in that on Tuesday he will be lining up against the team he first made his breakthrough against, in the CIS Cup quarter-final.
"Hibs are flying just now," he said on Friday, as he cooked his evening meal (chicken, recipe available on request) "but we haven't begun to think about the game. We've got the Rangers game to get over with before we can concentrate on the cup tie. But it will be a cracking game, I'm sure. We're choking on that last defeat (1-0 at Rugby Park in the league in August)."
Kilmarnock have the most daunting of weeks imaginable, seven days which will shape their season. Following Rangers and Hibs in the cup, they have Celtic in the league at home next weekend, the best three teams in the country to be met before all of the leaves have fallen. "We have got to stand up and be counted," is Holt's summation of the task. Fat chance of him staying still for long enough.