story in his autobiography, published on Tuesday, April 21.
The book Aber's Gonnae Get Ye! tells how in his prime, he took on the cream of European football playing against the likes of Platini, Cruyff, Gullitt, Dalglish and Souness.
But his professional career almost came to an end before it started after being signed for St Mirren by Alex Ferguson in June, 1975. Immediately after, the 17-year-old Billy went on an ten-week, having-a-good-time holiday in Great Yarmouth and didn¹t turn up at Love Street for training until after the season had started. Billy was one of the first players to feel the full force of Fergie's famous "hairdryer" treatment.
And with the St Mirren fans' chant of "Aber¹s Gonnae Get Ye" ringing in his ears, the football hard man who was infamously sent off three times in one game – experienced the ultimate joy of leading the Saints to Scottish Cup glory. But within months, he found himself on a downward spiral into the dark, dark pit of alcoholism.
He fell as far as you could go. Spending his days drinking bottles of sherry with his booze buddies by a canal, Billy was given one final stark message from doctors as he lay in a hospital bed you're one more bevvy session
from the grave. From that moment, Billy made himself a promise he would beat the booze and
with the same fighting spirit, courage and determination that made him the scourge of opponents on the football field, he is winning that fight. The wicked grin, the laugh-a-minute patter and the mischievous look in his eyes
have returned.
This is an amazing and heart-warming story that reveals the secrets of what goes on behind the door of a football dressing room, a brutally honest insight into one man's battle with the demon drink and an uplifting
conclusion that tells us Billy Abercromby has made the biggest comeback of his life.
Aber's Gonnae Get Ye? You better believe it!
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REVIEWS.
Abercromby: back from the brink
by GRAEME MACPHERSON, the herald. 21 Apr 2009
Chalked up on a wall inside a tenement close in the Lambhill area of Glasgow is a simple but heartfelt statement: I need hope. Its author is unknown but the sentiment is one shared not so long ago by the building's most famous resident. A decade or so after lifting the Scottish Cup as captain of St Mirren, Billy Abercromby's life had disintegrated to the point that his only concern was where his next drink was coming from. A short walk from his flat took him to the nearby canal where he would meet daily with an assorted band of similarly troubled souls. All hope had effectively vanished. "Two minutes from my flat and you're out in the country at the bird sanctuary," he recalls. "That became my sanctuary every day. We called ourselves The Crazy Canal Crew and we used to hang about drinking every day. It was hard to break that cycle. It was 10 years of oblivion that were just wiped out. If you asked me what I did over those 10 years I couldn't tell you. Nothing stands out." The football annals are replete with players who struggle to adjust to life after retirement, and endure a long and sorry descent into despair. Abercromby's plight began not long after he collected the Scottish Cup in 1987 and almost ended with his premature death, before the age of 50, after a decade of sustained self-abuse. It took the intervention of one of his brothers two years ago for the former midfielder to belatedly address the consequences of his actions. Jaundiced and ill to the point where he had become, in his own words, "like the living dead", the cold, clinical words of a doctor carefully spelled out how close he had come to dying. "My brother took me up to the hospital where they did all these tests," he added. "The doctor put a camera down my throat and showed me my liver on the screen. It was 99% black. He showed me a tiny pink part and told me that's all I had to live on. One more drinking session and I would have been dead. The doctor asked me, Billy, do you want to live or do you want to die?' And that was when it hit me. There were three other guys in the hospital room with me and they all died months after being released. It wasn't a hospital – it was a mortuary I was in. When I got out I went cold turkey. I went to one AA meeting but it wasn't for me." The subsequent period has been one of gradual rehabilitation and re-assimilation into society. Broken relationships have been mended. The grey beard that made him look twice his age has gone. As has the straggly hair, replaced with a short, sensible crop. The skin tone has paled from yellow to a rather more healthy hue. In person he is much sharper and more quick-witted than had been suggested. He recalls chapters in his life with a dark sense of humour. "Someone was trying to get hold of me but they didn't know the postcode of the canal down there," he grins at one point, his eyes twinkling mischievously. The convalescence has been aided by the decision to commit his memoirs to print. "Aber's Gonnae Get Ye!" tells the tale of how a promising 17 year-old caught Alex Ferguson's eye, an eventful 14 years with St Mirren, his drink-fuelled demise, and subsequent recovery. Written with Fraser Kirkwood, a St Mirren supporter who located Abercromby at his lowest ebb while researching a magazine article on the 20th anniversary of the cup win, the subsequent meetings and chronicling of facts and events have acted as a form of therapy to help him through the darkest days. "Writing the book probably brought me back to life because I was in a bad way at that time. Fraser got hold of me and him being a St Mirren supporter helped a lot. We spent over a year working on it and it was great to meet some of my old team-mates, some of whom I literally hadn't seen since 1987.
"When the idea of a book was first mentioned I had to take time out and think about it. But I'm glad now that I did it. It brought me back to reality. I thought a lot of my memories were gone but just writing this book brought them all flooding back as if it were yesterday. It was a bit like therapy in a way – free counselling from Fraser even though neither of us realised it at the time." In the book, Abercromby makes no attempts to gloss over the difficult moments. "I just put my cards on the table and told the truth," he shrugs. "It was very difficult remembering all the highs and lows but I wanted to be brutally honest. I had to tell all. There are no secrets any more. I had my family to think about and that was tricky. But it was great doing it and kept my mind occupied for all that time." Happier times are recounted, too. Abercromby became virtually part of the furniture at Love Street during a golden era for the club. His agricultural style allowed players like Tony Fitzpatrick, Lex Richardson, and Billy Stark to flourish in a St Mirren side that reached the latter stages of the cup competitions most seasons, and regularly qualified for Europe, too. Abercromby believes the depiction of him simply as a midfield hardman is slightly one-dimensional, but has no regrets about his playing career. "I probably didn't get the credit I deserved when I was playing. People probably just saw the hard image but I like to think there was more to me than that. Jock Stein seemed to think so, too, as I was selected for the Scotland under-21s seven times. "Maybe my style of play took away from my skilful side. People would say I was a dirty bastard, and they were probably right. I would have kicked my granny for two points. That's just the type of character I was. But I've no complaints about my playing days. "Getting recognition from the Scotland squad and picking up the Scottish Cup were my two dreams and I did them both." The future for Abercromby remains unwritten. He will return to Hampden on Saturday, for the first time since 1987, when St Mirren take on Rangers in the semi-final of the Homecoming Scottish Cup, while a move into coaching with Fitzpatrick remains a long-term ambition. For now, though, he's just glad to be alive. "The book gave me a lot of time to think and reflect. I don't like to plan too far ahead though I'd like to return in some sort of coaching capacity. Tony has his own coaching school and he's asked me to give him the nod when I'm ready. Every day is a struggle. You fight with yourself constantly but it's a good fight. Every day I get stronger and stronger. I'm back now. I've touched down."