From today's "Scotland on Sunday"

WHEN Dick Campbell was appointed Partick Thistle manager in January, he enthused over the prospect of facing brother Ian in the First Division next season. If only the requirement for this had extended no further than the lesser-known Campbell taking over from his departing twin at then Second Division leaders Brechin City.

It didn’t, of course. And Ian appears certain to be the only manager bearing the family name who will be guiding a team in a set-up to which the Glebe Park side won promotion yesterday, while the struggle to remain within remians an uphill one for Thistle. "Ian said the other day that he would wave to me in the passing," says Dick. "Makes me want to knock his head off the next time I see him."

Thistle’s manager must be tempted to knock his own head off the nearest wall when pondering the three-and-a-half-months since he ended his five-year association with Brechin. The Campbell brothers used to be defined by their similarities. Now, so contrasting are their fortunes, it as if they were separated at birth rather than early 2005.

The other day, the soberly considered Ian could sit in his plush, spacious Dunfermline office - from which he controls operations as managing director of human resource company Avenue Scotland - and offer effusive praise of his players for their "attitude, performances levels and athleticism that has been second to none this season". Only hours earlier, in a cubby hole at Firhill thick with the cigarette smoke of the Maryhill manager and cohorts Jimmy Bone and John Lambie, the slightly crazed Dick was forced to give out about his charges. More specifically, the necessity to terminate the contracts of Steve Fulton and Andy Dowie and put Jamie Mitchell up for transfer after they spent the previous Saturday afternoon in a Kirkcaldy pub instead of watching their team-mates lose to Raith.

"At the end of the day there is a f***** code of discipline in life, never mind fitba," says Dick, whose language is often choice. "This was broken, and I’m not prepared to accept that. What I did I would have done if we were top of the Premierleague or bottom of the Third Division. I’m disappointed for the players because they are experienced and should have known better. But you must show respect to your club.

"There is a time to play and a time to work, and they got that mixed up. Now we have sent out a message, not only to the players here, but to the ones we are going to bring in. And that is: do not f*** about."

While, in no sense as flat as his ever-worn cap, the Thistle manager’s demeanour is sterner than would normally be true of a man fabled for fizzy, funny conversation. Mention of his brother, however, draws out the Dick Campbell who earned the ‘character’ label while taking Dunfermline to mid-table respectability in the top flight and hauling Brechin from the Third to the First Division and into the black, as well as suffering relegation scunners along the way.

"Ian is a very high quality guy, educated, a lecturer and all that," Dick says proudly. "He is a big player in industry, so he has management skills. Brechin are very fortunate to have Ian Campbell and Bert Paton [his assistant] to move into my shoes. They are not three peas in a pod."

Neither are the Campbells two peas in a pod, despite their identitical genetic make-up. "We are alike in so many ways, and yet so different. There is a real dichotomy," says Ian. Certainly, they branch out in different directions in attitudes to football management. While his brother is driven by the game’s challenges, it is more a case of being excited by these for Brechin playing legend Ian. Equally, though Dick is general manager of their nephew Christopher’s roofing firm QFI, Ian has professional concerns and interests outside football that he places above his Brechin post.

Dick is at pains to highlight the pressurised situation he considers his brother was plunged into when called to Thistle after the sacking of co-managers Gerry Britton and Derek Whyte. Yet Ian, who exudes conviction, has a different perception of the job he inherited.

"I didn’t feel as if I had anything to prove, and I’m certainly not out to make a name for myself. I have belief in my experience and ability, and with Bert and John Ritchie and John Young alongside me, we have about 100 years coaching involvement at Brechin. I took the job on as there was unfinished business at a club where I have the backing of the chairman, committee and fans. This is another reason my new duties have not fazed me.

"My work at Brechin is no more intense, just different. I still run every day, play golf and ride my horses, and managing Brechin is never what I’d call a daunting task. Not compared to making sure a company remains profitable enough to pay 400 employees, for instance."

Ian confesses that he misses Dick, "a talisman loved by all at Brechin. But I’m not pining for him," he stresses of the sibling he speaks to every day.

In more contemplative moments, Dick must pine for the relatively simple life he enjoyed at his previous posting. Thistle have been everything good he expected of a big institution club, he claims. It is just his failure to elicit the response from players to prevent the Maryhill side’s second successive demotion that has disappointed him.

"Someone in football said to me: ‘Dick, have you ever thought the players are not good enough?’ Managers don’t think like that. We always think we can get something more out of them. You don’t know players until you work with them. Everyone told the Thistle players they were favourites to go up this season. I’ve spoken to every one of them, and they’ve said they never, ever thought they’d be in this position. But they f****** are.

"In the last two months of a season, when you are in our position, you need a special type of player to perform, and I don’t think we’ve got that. Now, we have got to lick our wounds, take the medicine and get on with it. I can’t say it is not my fault. I won’t run away from it. I can say it is not my team, because that is the truth. And that certain players won’t be here next season, which tells you what you need to know."

Their replacements will have to be recruited on a budget that, it has been reported, could be half the £10,000-a-week currently invested in players’ salaries. The final arbiter of Firhill football affairs is insistent that downsizing will not involve going part-time, and unwilling to play a numbers game over speculation that a cull could remove 20 players - leaving him with only 18 senior performers.

"The squad of players will be determined by the size of the budget but, in saying that, you could have 20 players on £100 a week because you only pay higher earnings to a first 15. The number of players will ultimately rest with me, and this is where my 24 years in the management side can come in.

"Inexperienced managers often lose their jobs because they don’t know how to work the system. I do, and know from the business side that, while you have to live within your means, you have to be prepared to take the odd chance."

Ian has complete faith in his brother’s ability to "cement Thistle’s place where they belong with his own foundations". But the Brechin manager has no concerns that those of his club will be weakened when preparations for next season kick off.

"Dick is a great manager, but I was the one who always put together our training programmes and game schedules, and I already have them in place for July."

Perhaps that comes easy when you aren’t the Campbell in the soup.