Smarter than the average bairn

Anonymity and John Hughes were never going to co-exist. The Falkirk manager is one of the game's larger-than-life characters, just as he was during his playing career. Gallus, fun-loving; the prankster who may take his football seriously, but never has a smile far from his lips.

"Look at it this way," he observed. "If you walked into a room and saw grumpy Jim Jefferies in one corner and me smiling in the other, who would you want to speak to." It is a joke, but then it is not. There is, as often with the Falkirk manager, a serious sub-text.

For a start, Hughes would never say a bad word against Jefferies. He says he owes his football career to the Kilmarnock manager and assistant Billy Brown. It was they who signed him for Berwick in 1988 and then brought him back to Scotland when he began his first stint at Falkirk more than 16 years ago.

"I'll always be in debt to them for giving me the opportunity and for showing me what it was to be a professional footballer," said Hughes. On Tuesday night, at Fir Park, he and Jefferies will go head-to-head as their sides battle it out in the first semi-final of the CIS Cup.

Which brings us back to the initial joke - Jefferies is grumpy, Hughes is the opposite. Whether that assessment is real or wide of the mark, it has stuck. One wonders whether Jefferies' valid credentials to be the next Scotland manager would have been taken more seriously, both inside the SFA and out, if the perception was different.

And, sitting in Hughes' office at Falkirk's training base on the University of Stirling campus, one cannot but ponder whether the man opposite may ultimately find there is a glass ceiling in football management because some club directors might not take Yogi' seriously enough.

"Do you know what - you could do me a favour," said Hughes, warming to the topic. "If any chairmen are looking at me, and maybe they are saying one or two things about me, write in your piece that I was always captain at every club I played at."

"And tell them that I have good values about life because of what I learned from my father - and one or two things that have happened to me. Everyone thinks they know Yogi, but those with a certain perception don't know the man at all. Aye, I've always had fun in me, but you don't play for Glasgow Celtic and become the manager of an SPL club if it is all laughing and joking."

It is now four years since Hughes and Owen Coyle became joint managers of Falkirk after Ian McCall left for Dundee United. Given the anticipated career trajectory of those involved, you'd have got long odds that McCall would now be struggling at the wrong end of the First Division with Queen of the South and Hughes would be inspiring Falkirk to unlikely heights.

The Bairns have put themselves in a position where a top-six finish is the target, they are already through to one semi-final, having knocked Celtic out in the previous round, and they are looking for an extended Scottish Cup run ahead of Saturday's meeting with Coyle's St Johnstone.

Given that record, and the style of flowing football Hughes preaches, the 42-year-old is building the sort of reputation that should attract the same sort of interest which saw Anthony Stokes use Falkirk as a springboard to bigger and better things.

Yet earlier this season - when Tony Mowbray left Hibernian - probably the only man that was certain Hughes would not leave Falkirk for Easter Road and the hometown team he once captained was Falkirk's managing director George Craig.

"When the Hibs vacancy came up there was an immediate groundswell of opinion that Yogi would be in the frame. But if you had asked me at the time are we going to lose our manager, I'd have said no," explained Craig.

"Why was that? Well, because I always felt there was a view from the outside that Yogi had done OK, but it was a bubble that was going to burst. The public perception and what is actually known here at Falkirk are two different things. We know the real Yogi. Having said that, sustained success and even the doubting Thomases out there are going to have to say there is more to this guy than meets the eye," admitted Craig.

The managing director doesn't have any immediate reason to worry. Talking to Hughes, the over-riding impression is of a man who knows the job of taking Falkirk to where he wants them to be has only just begun. And who probably, in his more reflective moments, appreciates that he fits Falkirk and the club fits him and he might not find that synergy elsewhere.

"If I'm here for the next five years I'd be delighted because it is only half-done. It is something I'm talking to George about. He knows I would be prepared to commit myself to this club for the long term. Also I've never been money-motivated. It is about appreciating what you have got and loving the people you work with," admitted Hughes.

"That is why my attitude is see if you're not smiling, then get your boots and get up the road'. You've got to appreciate how lucky you are - because this is a really happy club with players who just want to be good professionals."

Hughes has reason to smile. It is impossible not to get carried along with his enthusiasm when he starts talking about the developments at the club. He is intensely proud that his club is the only SPL side outside the Old Firm to have a full-time education welfare officer.

He tells the story of how, when a little bit of extra money came in from a sponsor, he asked his board if he could direct it towards their youth policy rather than players for the first team squad.

So now, instead of the standard two-year training scheme, he has been able to offer eight teenagers another year on top of that. Then there are the small children barely past the toddling stage who are already involved in the club's community programmes. Meanwhile Falkirk's academy director reckons their Under-12s are the best bunch in the country.

With sports science experts to hand on the university campus, Hughes has embraced such advantages with the same enthusiasm that once used to send him rushing home from training at Barrowfield to jot down what he had learned under Tommy Burns' tutelage.

Yet all the strength and conditioning and sports psychology in the world will never replace what is at the core of the manager's views of football. And indeed on life.

"I have my parents to thank for the upbringing I had. I shared a double bed with my two brothers and I always joked I could have been an Olympic swimmer because I woke up covered in piss every morning! Serious.

"I also had three sisters and I was the best dressed hand-me-down' on our street, although it got a bit iffy when it was dresses being handed down. It was working class and it instilled values in you for life. Everything I had I had to fight for.

"Hard work gets you results and that is what we demand of each other at Falkirk."

It's not a rallying call you'd expect to hear from, say, Arsene Wenger, yet one of the many intriguing facets of Falkirk's rise under Hughes is the club's strong relationships with the likes of Arsenal, who loaned them Anthony Stokes, and Manchester City, who recently sent Kasper Schmeichel north to learn his trade. Hughes obviously made contacts during his playing career, but he reckons a lot is down to simply "brass-necking it".

"I have no qualms about getting on the phone and brassing my case. My ma always used to say to me that I could get a buttered piece at anybody's door because I would just go and brass my case! And I use the name to my advantage. There are lots of Johns in football, but you are going to remember if someone called Yogi' phones."

He has a point. And as for the favour he wants from this correspondent, if you've read this far, he's made a pretty strong case for himself without the need for further embellishment.