Stephen Charles Frail (born 10 August 1969) is a Scottish
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
Dundee
Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...
Tranmere Rovers
Tranmere Rovers Football Club are a professional association football club based in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England. The team competes in , the fourth level of the English football league system.
Founded in 1884 as Belmont Football Club, they ...
Dundee
Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...
in 1985, gradually developing into a first-team player by the end of the decade. He helped the
Dens Park
Dens Park is a football stadium in Dundee, Scotland, which is the home of club Dundee F.C. and has a capacity of . Tannadice Park, the home of rivals Dundee United, is just 200 yards (183 metres) away.
History
Dundee moved to "Dens" from the ...
side to victory in the inaugural
Scottish Challenge Cup
The Scottish Professional Football League Challenge Cup,1990–91, however his progress was hindered by a serious
knee
In humans and other primates, the knee joins the thigh with the leg and consists of two joints: one between the femur and tibia (tibiofemoral joint), and one between the femur and patella (patellofemoral joint). It is the largest joint in the hu ...
ligament
A ligament is a type of fibrous connective tissue in the body that connects bones to other bones. It also connects flight feathers to bones, in dinosaurs and birds. All 30,000 species of amniotes (land animals with internal bones) have liga ...
injury, causing him to miss almost an entire season.,
Frail joined Hearts in a £130,000 deal in March 1994 and his form during the 1994–95 season as a right wingback led to media speculation of a call-up to the Scotland national side. He was named in the SPFA Team of the Year for 1994. Injuries continued to hinder him though and in an away match at
Dundee United
Dundee United Football Club is a Scotland, Scottish professional association football, football club based in the city of Dundee. Formed in 1909, originally as Dundee Hibernian, the club changed to the present name in 1923. United are nickname ...
on 21 March 1995 he suffered similar knee ligament damage to that he sustained while with Dundee. He missed the entire 1995–96 season and upon his return to fitness found his previous role in the team taken by
Gary Locke
Gary Faye Locke (born January 21, 1950) is an American politician, attorney, and former diplomat from the State of Washington. Locke served as the 21st governor of Washington from 1997 to 2005, where he was the first Chinese-American governor ...
.
Unable to maintain a permanent position in the team he filled-in as a defensive midfielder when required as well as deputising for Locke but left
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
for
Merseyside
Merseyside ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial and metropolitan county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Wales, Welsh county of Flintshire across ...
when
Tranmere Rovers
Tranmere Rovers Football Club are a professional association football club based in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England. The team competes in , the fourth level of the English football league system.
Founded in 1884 as Belmont Football Club, they ...
paid £90,000 for his services in January 1998.
Following a familiar pattern, Frail's time with Tranmere was decimated by injuries and he made less than 30 total appearances during his two seasons with the club. He is best remembered for his involvement in a controversial incident in an
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in domestic Football in England, English football. First played during ...
tie with
Sunderland
Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...
, when a bureaucratic mix-up resulted in him being substituted on for Clint Hill who, unbeknown to Frail, had just been sent-off for a second bookable offence. After several minutes of commotion another player left the field to ensure Tranmere didn't avoid their punishment.
Frail returned to Scotland with St Johnstone in 2000, signed for a second time by his former Hearts manager
Sandy Clark
Alexander Clark (born 28 October 1956) is a Scottish professional football manager and former player who manages Scottish Lowland Football League club Albion Rovers.
Career
Clark played for several clubs in his playing career including his h ...
. After a single season in
Perth
Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...
he moved to
Greenock
Greenock (; ; , ) is a town in Inverclyde, Scotland, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. The town is the administrative centre of Inverclyde Council. It is a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, and forms ...
While at Morton, Frail began to become involved in coaching, firstly under Peter Cormack then former teammate at Hearts Dave McPherson. He retired from his playing role at the end of the 2001–02 season and became a full-time assistant to Morton's third manager within the year, John McCormack. McCormack was sacked in 2004, and Frail and the rest of the coaching staff left with him. Later that year, after attending Hearts
UEFA Cup
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star.
Computer scientists and Mathematici ...
tie with
Sporting Braga
Sporting Clube de Braga (), commonly known as Sporting de Braga or just Braga, is a Portuguese sports club from the city of Braga. Best known for the men's professional association football, football team playing in the Primeira Liga, the top fl ...
, he was invited to join their coaching staff by then manager
Craig Levein
Craig William Levein (born 22 October 1964) is a Scottish professional association football, football manager and former player who was most recently the manager of Scottish Premiership club St Johnstone F.C., St Johnstone.
During his playing c ...
. Initially coach of the under-19 side, he was promoted to become assistant coach when John McGlynn left to manage Raith Rovers in 2006.
Frail, along with sporting director Anatoly Korobochka, took temporary charge of Hearts' first team in March 2007 after the departure of Valdas Ivanauskas. It was confirmed in June 2007 that Frail and Korobochka would take charge of the Jambos for the 2007–08 season with Bulgarian Angel Chervenkov coming in as assistant, though it was left ambiguous which one of the pair had responsibility for team selection. After poor form, which saw Hearts drop to tenth in the SPL, Frail was promoted to
caretaker manager
In association footballing terms, a caretaker manager or interim manager is somebody who takes temporary charge of the management of a football team, usually when the regular manager is dismissed or leaves for a different club. However, a caret ...
in January 2008 as the club planned to appoint a new permanent manager. It was announced Frail will be replaced as manager at the end of the 2007/08 season.
In April 2009, Frail was appointed a coach at
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foot ...
, working with their reserve and youth teams. He left this position on 1 September 2015.
After leaving Celtic, Frail worked with the Scotland U16 team and scouted for
Bolton Wanderers
Bolton Wanderers Football Club ( ) is a professional association football, football club based in Horwich, Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, which competes in EFL League One, League One, the third level of the Englis ...
before the Irish Football Association appointed him to be full-time manager of the Northern Ireland Under 19 and Under 17 teams in August 2016. Frail returned to Scotland in July 2020, becoming assistant manager at
Dundee United
Dundee United Football Club is a Scotland, Scottish professional association football, football club based in the city of Dundee. Formed in 1909, originally as Dundee Hibernian, the club changed to the present name in 1923. United are nickname ...