Positivity was at the core of Jimmy Calderwood's life. He grasped the trials he faced
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Jimmy Calderwood had a simple reason for the range of his football journey that famously included successful spells in the Netherlands. ‘I was nosy,’ he would say. ‘I always wanted to know how other people did it and I was obviously interested in the way they played and worked in Holland.’.
![[Jimmy, here with his partner, Yvonne Buchanan, confronted his condition with positivity]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/19/21/94273549-0-image-a-29_1737321372816.jpg)
It was chilling to watch this restless intelligence hampered and occasionally stymied by Alzheimer’s when I spoke to him five years ago for an interview with Mail Sport. But desperate circumstances can reveal the exact measure of someone’s character. Calderwood, who has died at the age of 69 after a lengthy battle with the condition, showed that afternoon what had made him as a manager and a person.
![[Jimmy was a midfielder with Birmingham City, where his manager was Sir Alf Ramsey]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/19/21/94273487-0-image-a-28_1737320888938.jpg)
The former Aberdeen and Dunfermline manager was intent on dissecting a poor Aberdeen performance against Celtic that week. His enthusiasm for the game broke through what he described as his ‘disappointment’ at his diagnosis that has blighted the lives of so many former players.
This philosophy of positivity was at the core of his life. It did not seek to dismiss tritely the trials he faced but it instinctively grasped the only way to confront it. ‘You just have to get on with it,’ he said in a mantra that has a distinct Glasgow resonance.
