A career spent chasing glory up and down the leagues of Scottish football may not sound like ideal preparation for life as a criminal defence solicitor, but Partick Thistle’s Gerry Britton has always looked beyond the touchline and is used to fighting hard. 

It’s not easy being a Partick Thistle fan. Just ask Gilbert Anderson. Amongst the many nebulous benefits of playing for, as well as co-managing one of the lesser celebrated teams in Scotland’s footballing firmament, taking on difficult challenges against long odds must surely be right up there.

Gerry Britton has been a pro-footballer since leaving school, spending time at Glasgow giants Celtic FC, and joining Thistle in 1992 where he served variously as player, co-manager and assistant manager before taking on his current challenge of overseeing youth development, which he is undertaking on a part time basis, as he has elected to dedicate himself to a different type of uphill struggle, joining Criminal Law Firm of the Year Liam O’Donnell and Co as a trainee solicitor, where no doubt he will be able to apply the experience of spending years as the underdog towards the good of his clients.

We caught up with Gerry during the midwinter snows at Firhill, home of Partick Thistle, the cold making it difficult to imagine what would make someone want to be a pro-footballer in Scotland, but we wondered what in particular keeps bringing him back to Partick Thistle, especially after tasting the brighter lights of the Old Firm.
“I also went to Dundee, Dunfermline, Livingston, Motherwell, Brechin, Stranraer, but I always seem to gravitate back to here. It’s a club that, once you’ve been involved in it, it’s part of you,” he says.

“Some clubs don’t have the same appeal. For me it is definitely the people. There is a great atmosphere about the club because of its size, and maybe the way it is viewed by others. It is harder to be a Partick Thistle fan in Glasgow. Especially thinking back to school days, and the abuse that Thistle fans get. It is hard, and it is a different type of person that can stick with it and handle that. So you get a very passionate support, which is great. And that permeates throughout the whole club. You’ll find that the people that work here have been here for 15 years and more. Once you have experienced it, it is hard to get it out of your system.”

 ”Every Thistle fan that you meet, they are diehards and so passionate. Compared to the other two teams in Glasgow we have had far more shares of ups and downs. We went from the SPL to the 2nd Division and back up and down over the course of the last 25 years. We have experienced the lows, but it means that when you do get a bit of success, you appreciate that all the more.”

 Aside from Grant Johnston of Thorntons, there are very few former footballers who make their way into the law after their years on the park. The skills are not readily transferable, and the time demands of the game from an early age make the necessary education difficult to attain. It is certainly not a smooth or straightforward career progression, and it is even more remarkable that Britton has been able to transition into his traineeship whilst continuing to work at Partick Thistle, where he has been appointed director of youth development.

“When I left school I wanted to concentrate on football. In my early 20s I realised I had spare time on my hands, and I had left school with 5 Highers, so I wanted to do a degree. But I realised then that football probably was going to be my career, so rather than wait until finishing I tried to study part time,” he says.

“You could only do law part time at Strathclyde, but I did a degree in politics first while I was playing at Dundee, and then did the degree part time at Strathclyde.  It was an interest I had always had, and I wanted to go for something I was really interested in. The life experience you get, all that I have done in my football career and outside has been great experience for getting to this stage and going into the law. I’m hoping the experiences I have had will stand me in good stead.”

 Britton is clearly modest, and underplays the level of dedication and commitment that must have been required to achieve his legal qualifications. Perhaps those are the characteristic traits that can be best transferred from the football field to the legal arena. The advantage of a prior career and the maturity that comes with it also gives Britton - and indeed any mature student Ð a perspective that differs from those that came to tertiary education straight from school with the momentum of their teenage years.

“When you are younger half the time is spent in the boozer, and study gets in the way of your drinking. When you are a bit older and have other commitments, your time is scarce and you value what you’re learning,” Britton says.

”I was part time manager at Stranraer and was working for the players’ Union, as I was going into the final year of the degree. With the Union you are dealing with boards of directors as well as players. We also did a lot of work with Show Racism the Red Card, so were out at schools, colleges, Universities, and working on presentational skills, organisational skills. It was great in that respect.”

As we go to press, Partick Thistle look as though they have a fair crack at gaining promotion to the top tier of Scottish football, and the club will still occupy a fair chunk of Britton’s time as he settles into the practice of criminal law, as he grapples with the long term challenges of nurturing its young talent.

“It is something we haven’t been big on over the years, we haven’t brought through a great number of players. Everybody realises it is the only way to go, especially for smaller teams,” he says.

“Our problem is the legacy of [former manager] John Lambie. He was so successful in terms of picking up free transfers of players of from other teams and getting something out of them. That meant that developing our own players wasn’t top priority because he had this magic wand. Managers since then have been expected to do the same, and it’s not easy. The club realise that you need to be very, very clever and very, very lucky to be able to do that. So the youth strategy is the way forward, and I’ll be doing that on a part time basis.”

 Being both clever and lucky will also come in handy at Liam O’Donnell and Co, a firm that has gained a reputation for solving insurmountable problems and giving the strongest fighting chance to those most in need of help.

“I’ve been very fortunate that I have the opportunity to go and work with Liam. Probably if I didn’t have that opportunity I’d have had to look outside the criminal law for opportunities. But this is the ideal scenario for me. I realise its really difficult to get a traineeship now,” he says.

“It’s fantastic, I’m really looking forward to it. There were big problems on the diploma; a lot of training places were getting deferred. Criminal law is the area that I really have an interest in, so I’d like to stay there. We’ll see what happens. Liam O’Donnell is a great place to learn. I’ve spoken to other lawyers in commercial firms, and they have said that no matter what I do, I won’t get a better training than I would in the criminal law.
“In some respects, especially when you are younger law has a glorified image to some people. As you get a bit older you realise the reality, not just of the law, but of life. That experience probably sets you up better for what things are going to be like.”