Martindale ready for Rangers after a remarkable journey

‘I’m lucky I did not die in a ditch. I’ve been stabbed. I’ve had guns pointed at me. But I’m not dead’: David Martindale spent four years in jail for drug and money laundering offences… 16 years on, he’s preparing his Livingston side for a trip to Ibrox

• David Martindale is currently managing Livingston in the Scottish Premiership
• They sit comfortably mid-table ahead of a big game at Ibrox this weekend
• It has been quite the turnaround for a man who spent four years on jail
• He said he ‘deserved’ his punishment and feels ‘lucky’ to have turned it around

He once had the freedom of Ibrox. He invested that opportunity with hard labour and gentle mischief. He once, too, had the confinement of Barlinnie but saw that as the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ rather than a forbidding wall he could not overcome.

The history of David Martindale has been told relentlessly and uniformly. He is the ex-con made manager, the scheme boy who finally has made good.

The familiarity of the broad strokes should not, however, be a distraction from the reality that there are finer points that give substance to the caricature.

David Martindale is currently managing Livingston in the Scottish Premiership

Sitting in a room inside the Tony Macaroni Arena yesterday, Martindale, 48, was both frank and expansive about his past.

The education of David Martindale was the subject. It was an enlightening lesson. It included references to studying a dossier on Alessandro Del Piero in Walter Smith’s office, discovering life and its tough imperatives in a Livingston scheme, and finding that knowledge, always hard-earned, was a way out, not just of prison but of a constricting mindset.

He divined, too, that football and family were his saviours.

The Livingston manager’s words held no hint of self-pity or self-exoneration.

‘I deserved everything I got,’ he says of a ten-year sentence imposed in 2006 for drug and money laundering offences.

He also retains the capacity to surprise: ‘The turning point was getting arrested, not going to jail. I was arrested on Good Friday 2004 and released on the Tuesday.

‘That night, I begged my partner to allow me to go to play football. She reluctantly agreed.

Martindale feels the day he was arrested is the day his life began to change for the better

‘The next day, I went into my spare room, went on to my computer and enrolled to take a university degree. That was the turning point.’

Prison could not be avoided but the promise of a new life lay beyond. Education and football would take him there. Martindale is now the manager of a top-six club in the Premiership that could, maybe should, be a mid-table Championship concern, certainly in terms of budget.

‘I am a Govan boy,’ he says. ‘I was born there, played in the pond and on the boats at Elder Park.’

His father worked in the shipyards, his mother’s family was wide and welcoming. The extended family met together in Littlewoods store on Glasgow Saturdays. He went on holiday to Scarborough and Morecambe with his granny. His granda would take him to the ex-servicemen’s club, presenting him with a packet of crisps and 50p for the ‘puggy’, while he bolted a quick half-pint and a whisky.

‘He would tell my granny we had been at the park,’ adds Martindale. ‘Well, we had walked through the park to get to the club.’

Life changed and was moulded, not irredeemably, when the family moved to Livingston as part of the Glasgow overspill.

Livingston sit comfortably mid-table ahead of a big game at Ibrox this weekend

‘It was Craigshill,’ he explains. ‘I went to Craigshill Primary then Craigshill High. It was very territorial then. You didn’t mix with other schemes.’

He adds: ‘I was wild between the ages of 14 and 20.’ Football helped him escape trouble. ‘There was a casual culture then of fighting at football and it was rife in Livingston,’ he says. ‘There was Hibs v Hearts, Celtic v Rangers. I missed that because I didn’t go to games because I was playing.’

He was good at football, smart at school. But had no dedication and discipline.

‘I went to high school to play football,’ he says. ‘I knew I wasn’t stupid but I probably did not know how smart I could be. I didn’t apply myself. It was the same with football. If I had applied myself more, I probably could have had a career, but how many good footballers does that apply to?

‘There are thousands of David Martindales sitting in pubs across Scotland.’

There is a moment of reflection before he adds: ‘The penny drops late in life sometimes.’

The first clunk came when his son was born in 1996 and Martindale then decided to be educated. He went to West Lothian College and achieved an HNC in mechatronics — the art of computers, engineering and electronics.

The 48-year-old studied computer engineering after the birth of his son in 1996

Livingston was then a hub of the semi-conductor industry and Martindale went to work installing computer systems and phone connections in commercial premises.

‘We installed all that at Ibrox,’ he says. ‘I put in the computer system in Walter Smith’s office. I had free reign at Ibrox. We were doing night shifts, the only people there. I remember sitting one night in Walter’s seat and looking at a Del Piero dossier on his desk.

‘Rangers were playing Champions League that season and there was a glazed area in the corner of the tunnel. We would put Windolene on the glass and then make wee holes we could watch the game through.’

There was fun. There was family. There was money. Martindale wanted more.

The road to perdition started with a step into another business. ‘The computer job got me a few pounds and then I got a pub franchise,’ he says.

He had one bar in Livingston and two in Edinburgh. This took him back to the culture of the scheme and some of the people he had known there.

Martindale fell into crime as financial woes led him to bad decisions, culminating in his arrest

When financial difficulties arose, he made disastrous decisions. He was arrested in 2004. ‘The pub game took me back instead of moving me forward,’ he says.

His weekend stay in London Road police station was the moment of epiphany. He was released on a Tuesday and enlisted at Heriot-Watt University on the Wednesday. Martindale reveals: ‘I was on bail for two-and-a-half years. The case was very complex.

‘I knew I was going to jail. I knew what I had done. And that was the worst part of my life, not prison.

‘Every morning, you wake up knowing you are going to prison. Every night, you go to bed knowing you are going to prison.

‘I suppose it built up a mental resilience that helps me to this day. But prison was closure in more ways than one. I said to myself: “I can move on with my life now”.’

The bail years were a time of ‘living hand to mouth’, with the nature of his crimes meaning he had no bank account, no wages.

He enrolled at University before he went to prison, an experience he called ‘life-changing’

But he had found higher education and studied while he waited for prison. He discovered, too, a circle of friends at the university. He played football under the managership, initially, of David Gordon, father of Craig.

‘That was my turning point,’ he says. ‘I played football for the university during the week and for Pumpherston at the weekend.’

He adds: ‘I was changing my life.’

But first, there was prison. He spent time in ‘closed conditions’ at Barlinnie and Glenochil where studying was impossible. His move to Castle Huntly and then Noranside opened a door to his Heriot-Watt past.

He was allowed out every fourth week and, on his first release, he immediately headed to a business centre that offered internet access.

He emailed Heriot-Watt, asking his former tutor if there was anything that could be done for him. Basically, the university offered him the chance to complete his degree in construction project management.

The manager joined Livingston after getting out of prison and completing his degree

It was still a difficult process. He would be given a USB with coursework when he was out of the prison. He would take it back to Noranside where it would be checked by guards and he would go to the educational centre — ‘a room with a couple of computers’ — and do the work.

‘There was no one to call for advice. There was no internet, obviously. You had to work it out on your own,’ says Martindale.

He did. He left prison in 2010 and picked up life as he had left it. This time, he played junior with Broxburn and gained his degree. He joined Livingston and is now in his ninth season at the club.

His coaching qualifications will be finalised with the gaining of a UEFA pro licence this summer, so what has his journey taught him?

‘I look back at that David Martindale of the scheme. I wanted the big car, the nice clothes, the fancy watches,’ says Martindale.

Livingston face Rangers this weekend, the side Martindale watched through the glass as a boy

‘I wanted things for the wrong reason. I wanted material items for social standing.

‘I put money before a lot of things and that seemed to stem from poverty in early life. Now, I never make a decision based on money.

‘I have had three or four offers to leave here for better money. But I haven’t taken them. I want what is best for me and my family.’

Prison also offered courses aimed at rehabilitation. Martindale says: ‘I was sitting with a social worker and she told me: “You live your life like a spy”. She told me I was living a double life. One as the family man, the other… she told me I had flexible moral standards. I would talk myself into believing what I was doing was all right.’

His experience in prison dispelled that illusion. He saw first-hand the impact of drugs.

‘You learn a lot living with people in a confined space,’ he says.

His greatest lesson, though, is to nurture gratitude. ‘I am lucky,’ he admits. ‘I did not end up dying in a ditch. I have been stabbed. I have been slashed. I have had guns pointed at me. But I’m not dead. I have not murdered someone.

Rangers will provide a tough test at Ibrox, as they currently sit second in the league

‘I have been in jail with people who punched somebody once and the victim fell and died. They didn’t mean to kill their pal.’

He is thankful for the support of his partner who stuck with him, the friends who remain at his side, and the camaraderie of football that embraced him. But his past is not forgotten.

‘You work through fear of failure as a manager,’ he says. ‘That applies maybe even more so to me.

‘Other managers with a successful football career might be given another chance, If I fail, I will be known as the ex-con who didn’t cut it. That drives me internally.’

So what are his hopes and fears about Ibrox today?

‘It’s been a poor hunting ground for us and we want to put the record straight,’ he states.

The ground will be familiar but it is a different Martindale from the lad who once sat at Walter Smith’s desk.

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