There are two chapters in Billy Dodds’ roller coaster story with Dundee. But there should really be three.
When the Dens Park club appointed Jim McIntyre as manager in October 2018 (ironically replacing Killie boss Neil McCann), former Dark Blues striker Dodds was in the building and set to be unveiled as his assistant.
That was until managing director John Nelms was given a brief but impactful history lesson about events on Tayside seven years earlier.
Dodds and former Dens skipper Gordon Chisholm, the management team who were brutally removed when the club entered administration for the second time in 2010, cast their votes against the creditors voluntary arrangement required to save the club from financial oblivion.
Fast forward to 2018 again, and Nelms was told that the Dundee supporters would not accept Dodds as part of McIntyre’s management team, given the perception he and Chisholm had voted to kill the club off years before, and Jimmy Boyle got the role instead.
Speaking to the Courier at the time, Nelms said: ‘I’m responding to the well-written emails I’m receiving which have true animosity.
Striker Billy Dodds was a key player for Dundee in the early 1990s
Dodds won 26 caps for Scotland and also played for Rangers, Aberdeen, Dundee United and St Johnstone
‘I’m looking at this from a third party perspective and we weren’t here. I understand what happened at the time. It was a horrible situation for everyone – the fans felt shafted, the staff felt shafted, everyone felt shafted.
‘Some people handled it in ways which — in hindsight — they might have wanted to do differently.’
Asked whether he thought the animosity towards Dodds was misplaced, Nelms responded: ‘I don’t know if I can answer that.
‘There are true feelings why it happened and I think Billy probably thinks that he could have done some things better not knowing that it would come back and have this kind of reaction.
‘If they talked to him they might have a slightly different opinion, but it’s the same thing — the vote was the vote.’
We now understand there is more nuance to the story than that.
Speaking to the Dundee Sole podcast back in August, former Dundee chairman and administration firefighter Harry McLean cast new light on the episode.
Yes, Dodds and Chisholm voted against the CVA back in 2011, earning them the pariah status they still have in Dark Blue circles. But they did so only AFTER receiving assurances that the CVA would succeed regardless of their actions.
Their votes were symbolic, another act of defiance in a season that would eventually be remembered for that very word. The acts of two men who were among the many victims of the club’s financial mismanagement.
The pair took over at Dundee in March 2010 charged with the task of ending the club’s damaging spell in the second tier.
Dodds himself spoke of building the club back up, reawakening the latent part of the Dark Blues support. Seven months later they had the rug pulled out from under their feet as administrators were called in over tax arrears.
As McLean put it: ‘By all means have a go at Doddsy for playing for United but he and Chisholm did NOT try to kill the club.
‘Chisholm and Dodds get a lot of criticism for their decision to vote against the CVA. They only voted against it after coming to see me and making sure it was going to be OK no matter how they voted. They came and made sure that Dundee would be OK before they voted against it because they didn’t want to put the club under, they wanted to make a protest about how they lost their jobs.
‘It’s one of these things that needs to be put straight before we are all too old to remember.’
Dodds is currently assistant manager to Neil McCann at Kilmarnock
Speaking to The Sun after McIntyre’s appointment, Dodds himself said: ‘Dundee fans saw me as a hero when I was there as a player. They now see me as someone who tried to bury their club.
‘How does that make me feel? It hurts, no doubt about it.
‘It’s always been about what’s right and wrong for me and that’s what gets me about this thing with the Dundee fans.
‘They’ve got it completely wrong. I can sit here and say that Chis and I did everything we could to help Dundee at that time. If people don’t accept that, then there isn’t much I can do. But I’ve got nothing to apologise for. The idea that I voted against the CVA for money is nonsense.’
Given McLean’s revelations, perhaps it’s time Dodds is recognised as he should be, as one of the club’s greatest players of the late twentieth century.
Dodds scored 77 goals in 195 appearances in dark blue between 1989 and 1994, not bad considering the club spent most of that time in the doldrums.
They were fairly traumatic times for the Taysiders as relegation followed a prolonged spell in the second tier. Absentee owner Ron Dixon was more interested in racing greyhounds around Dens Park than setting the club up for success on the pitch.
Dodds, though, can stake a claim to be one of the shining lights of the 1990s, alongside Morten Wieghorst, McCann and Darius Adamczuk.
The young striker was part of the team relegated under Gordon Wallace in 1990 but stuck around to help them return to the top flight in 1992. Everyone remembers Simon Stainrod’s fedora when Dundee beat Rangers 4-3 at Dens in 1992 but Dodds was the best player on the park that day amid a star-studded and all-conquering Rangers team.
In a career that saw him score goals by the bucketload at neighbours Dundee United, St Johnstone, Aberdeen and Rangers, Dundee is the club he played most games for. Dodds should be lauded at Dens, paraded on to the pitch to do the half-time draw, holding court in the hospitality lounges.
Instead, when he and Kilmarnock manager McCann take their seats in the Dens Park dugouts for tonight’s match, Dodds will likely face boos and catcalls.
McCann himself is a bona fide legend at Dens, making his name as a fleetfooted winger before returning as a ‘trialist’ in 2011 when the club successfully fought a 25-point deduction.
Anyone who witnessed his stoppage-time winner against Raith Rovers, at the age of 36, will take that golden memory to their grave. His managerial reign at Dundee may have turned sour but not before he masterminded a Red Adair rescue act to save them from relegation in 2017.
Dodds deserves a bit of that adulation and McLean’s revelations should be a game changer on that front. It’s time he was re-evaluated through a dark blue lens: as a goalscoring talisman who carried the flame through dark times.
