Cameron Toshack on living next to a volcano, blazing a trail in Thailand – and the heartbreaking health update on his father, Liverpool and Wales legend John

Living on a volcano – that’s how Arsene Wenger once described the strains of management. For one son of a footballing great, the meaning is less metaphorical.

‘We live next to an actual volcano,’ says Cameron Toshack.

He is speaking to Daily Mail Sport from Buriram, a Thai city 200 miles north of Bangkok. When he rises each day on the road less travelled, he looks across from his apartment to Khao Kradong, dormant for the better part of 300,000 years but you never quite know.

‘There is also a Buddhist training college next to us, where the monks go to pray,’ Toshack adds. ‘There’s a morning call at the college around 4.30am every day. The first time I heard it, when we got here last year, I must admit I was pretty confused, but it’s such a beautiful culture. An entirely different way of life and a different pace.

‘It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we can grow up on our island and grow accustomed to certain things, but travelling and seeing new cultures, it’s one of the best things we can do if we get the chance. Not being afraid to try new things in life and football is one of the lessons I have taken from my dad.’

His dad is John Toshack, of course. With his son’s permission, we can share the sad news that the former Liverpool striker, and one of British management’s greatest roamers from Swansea City and Real Madrid to Morocco, Azerbaijan and Macedonia, has been diagnosed with dementia.

Toshack Snr is 77 now and, as Cameron Toshack says, he has ‘good days and bad days’, but he can still recite entire line-ups from matches he contested and oversaw decades ago. His imprint on the game across those years was substantial.

But the family name is still being carried to football’s outposts by his eldest lad, Cameron, 56. He arrived at Buriram United last October and has been working as No 2 to another wanderer, Mark Jackson, formerly of Leeds United as a player, MK Dons as a manager and, more recently, won the treble in Australia with Central Coast Mariners.

Out of sight, out of mind, perhaps. That would be the parochial view. But a frustrating lack of opportunities at home is a familiar story for British coaches and so marks must be made abroad – together, Jackson and Toshack are about to win the Thai top-flight at a canter. They are also in the quarter-finals of the Asian Champions League, where Toshack rates the level as ‘at least the top six of the Championship’.

‘We had a midweek game in Melbourne, nine-hour flight through four time zones, followed by one at home in the league, which is probably a bit like Arsenal playing in Miami on the Wednesday and London at the weekend,’ Toshack says. ‘It can take some getting used to, but having a view of football in all corners of the world, especially with a guy as good as Mark, has been outstanding. I’ve loved it.’

Toshack’s journey has been an eclectic one. Having retired from a playing career at 23 due to type-one diabetes after stops at Cardiff City and Swansea City, he spent 10 years as a sales manager in pharmaceuticals, from which he moonlighted in his annual leave as his dad’s analyst with the Wales national team and his assistant when the old man led Macedonia.

On his own two feet, he was instrumental to the development of Dan James, Ollie McBurnie and Joe Rodon in a title-winning youth team at Swansea, before managing Pafos to their highest league finish in Cyprus and serving under Jesse Marsch at Leeds United. That’s where he met Jackson in 2022 and formed something of a pact.

‘We said whoever got a management job first would bring the other in,’ Toshack says. ‘We see the game the same way – solid foundations, high-energy, be adaptable – we don’t go somewhere and say it must be a 4-2-3-1. Eyes open. Listen to people. Manage people the right way.’

The frustrations of a limited job market for British coaches at home are clear. ‘Often you’re scratching your head about some of the people who get the posts, whether it’s an agent connection or a playing career or whatever, but on coaching credentials it can seem paper thin,’ says Toshack. ‘I know Mark and I have done the hard yards and we keep doing what we do. A key thing for me was what my dad always said – look outside the island.’

For Toshack Snr, that meant eight different nations abroad and trophies in five of them, including La Liga with Real Madrid, the Copa del Rey at Real Sociedad, the Turkish Cup at Besiktas and the Moroccan league title. At home, he took Swansea from the fourth division to the first, mixing lessons learnt from Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley with other thoughts he developed along the way.

Sharp, combustible and a voracious collector of passport stamps, the big man wrapped up his odyssey after a second stint in Azerbaijan in 2018. Today, he is battling his condition from home in Girona, Spain.

The relief for his son is that the glory days have survived the deductions brought on by dementia. ‘It’s a terrible disease,’ he says. ‘It’s the short-term memory where we’re seeing it – I speak to him most days and if we chat in the afternoon, he might not remember that we also spoke in the morning.

‘But if I ask him about the Liverpool days, or Sociedad or Madrid, the detail is amazing. The other day he was telling me about a Real Madrid game against Arrigo Saachi’s AC Milan and exactly how he tweaked his midfield to deal with Marco van Basten. The game could have been yesterday, his memory was so clear.

‘I’ll talk to him about what we’re doing in Thailand and he still gives great advice. As a manager, he could always see two or three moves ahead, and it was always in the genes for me, really.’

For the time being, that path has led to one of the few countries where his father never made a stop. In the near future, barring any slips from Jackson and Toshack, it will likely extend to another title for the family collection.