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Search: ' Alan Buckley'

Stories

It’s Not All Black 
& White

326 McDerby John McDermott 
& Simon Ashberry
The History Press, £9.99
Reviewed by Pete Green
From WSC 326 April 2014

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In many ways John McDermott’s book is the archetypal lower-league autobiography. You have contractual wrangles and several relegations shot through with moments of glory, laddish hijinks on pre-season tours of Scandinavia, a touching sense of wonder when the player crosses paths with his contemporaries from the Premier League and transcription from interview tapes with a minimum of editorial effort. Rather than leave for a new club every chapter, though, McDermott spends all of his 21-year, 750-match career with Grimsby Town.

This is what makes his story remarkable. He is, perhaps, the last of his kind – not just at Blundell Park, but anywhere. McDermott was long recognised as one of the best full-backs outside the top flight, having perfected the art – as we Town fans sometimes called it – of defending without tackling. “The best defender on any team is the one with the cleanest pair of shorts,” he is told as a young player, and “that became my forte, staying on my feet rather than sliding in rashly.” It’s Not All Black & White sounds only the faintest notes of wistfulness as the author reflects on transfer approaches from Ipswich, Bradford and Watford – all three of whom go on to reach the Premier League. An England scout arrives early on but McDermott has just been sent on a cross-country run by manager Mick Lyons and has a stinker.

As a schoolboy McDermott travels down from his native Middlesbrough for a trial and never looks back. He speaks of his club and adopted hometown with gentle rather than showy affection (once asked by a national paper why he stayed with Grimsby, he cited the area’s low house prices). Over two decades managers come and go, and with them a variety of methods. Lennie Lawrence takes Town to the bottom of the second tier but McDermott admires his futuristic approach to fitness. More typical is the illustrious Alan Buckley, who throws down the scouts’ opposition report and says: “Right, read it if you want but I’m not bothered if you don’t… it’s all about us.”

McDermott’s situation eventually prompts a sad and telling reflection on footballers’ pay. Wages reflect only what it costs to retain a player – not his ability. When an ageing star is performing superbly these are not the same. Supporters vote McDermott player of the year, but at the age of 36 approaches from elsewhere are unlikely, so the then Grimsby chairman John Fenty (who essentially retains the role to date, in all but name) cuts his weekly pay from £650 to £300. Witness a club legend scrabbling around for odd jobs at the ground to bring in an extra £50 a week, and you see the kind of house Fenty has been running.

For all the talk of McDermott’s loyalty, the most striking trait in evidence here is his dignity. He speaks of Fenty with a surprising lack of bitterness and declines to settle old scores with the senior players who bullied him as an apprentice. In 2009, after retiring, he receives the PFA Merit Award – bestowed previously upon the likes of Jimmy Armfield and Alex Ferguson – and his humility shines on. As with the playing style, so with the man: never lunging in, always staying upright. He’s Grimsby’s greatest ever and his story is compelling.

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Pass And Move

325 BuckleyMy story
by Alan Buckley with Paul Thundercliffe
Matador, £18.99
Reviewed by Tom Lines
From WSC 325 March 2014

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Alan Buckley sits just above Matt Busby in the League Managers Association’s Hall of Fame. Admittedly the list is organised alphabetically (it recognises the 18 managers who have taken charge of over 1,000 games in England) but Buckley’s story is certainly worthy of closer examination. Not simply because of his record – he took Third Division Walsall to a League Cup semi-final against Liverpool and achieved back-to-back promotions at Grimsby – but the manner in which his teams played. Buckley was a sort of anti-John Beck, achieving success at unfashionable clubs on shoestring budgets by playing an unusually attractive brand of passing football.

From his early days as an apprentice at Nottingham Forest it is clear that Buckley has one eye on his long-term future and he recounts the bafflement of Forest’s coaching staff when, at the age of 16, he casually announces that he has enrolled on an FA coaching course.Unable to establish himself at the City Ground, Buckley made his name as a prolific lower-league striker at Walsall, scoring over 20 goals in five consecutive seasons and earning a move to the First Division with Birmingham City in 1978. Persuaded to return to Fellows Park the following year, he became player-manager aged just 28, embarking on a 30-year career in management that included successful spells at Walsall and Grimsby as well as unhappier times at West Brom (his one shot at managing a “big” club), Lincoln and Rochdale.

Buckley is, by his own admission, an awkward character. Spiky, quick to anger and with little interest in what he dismisses as “the PR side of football” he spends a fair bit of time here recalling his bad behaviour and then apologising to those who were on the receiving end.

Many of the book’s best moments involve the late Walsall chairman Ken Wheldon. A scrap metal dealer by trade, Wheldon has a mysterious padlocked phone in his office and is described as looking “exactly like Poirot”, something confirmed by the inclusion of a photograph of him standing next to a man dressed as Elton John. The fact that, on closer inspection, it actually is Elton John reminds you what a reassuringly strange place football was in the 1980s. When Dave Mackay is linked with the Walsall job, Buckley demands to know whether there is any truth in the rumour. Wheldon spends half an hour rubbishing the stories and, suitably reassured, Buckley leaves his office – only to pass Mackay sitting in reception.

Buckley’s time at Grimsby is more successful on the pitch but not as entertaining off it and the closing chapters are the most personal; his career enters a flat spin and he writes eloquently about the turmoil of being unable to turn around a failing team. For his longevity Buckley deserves his place in managerial history. But it’s his dogged commitment to playing “the right way” that marks him out as one of the game’s more intriguing characters.

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Where’s Your Caravan

My Life on Football's B-Roads
by Chris Hargreaves
The Friday Project, £8.99
Reviewed by Piers Pennington
From WSC 299 January 2012

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If you were told that a footballer called Hargreaves had written an autobiography you might not be surprised, although Chris is probably not the first name that would spring to mind. Despite the unpromising title, arising from a tenuous connection between the author having played for a lot of clubs and having long hair, it proves to be a thoroughly enjoyable and – in an immediate, haphazard, unpolished kind of way – well-written account of what life as a lower-League professional footballer is really like.

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Destiny bound

Australia have thrown their hat into the ring to host the 2018 World Cup. Matthew Hall watches the bid process unfold

As 2008 eased into 2009, Frank Lowy’s luxury yacht nudged a course through the Caribbean toward Trinidad & Tobago. Lowy is the 78-year-old chairman of Football Federation Australia and probably the richest man in the country, mainly due to his vast Westfield shopping-centre empire, which reaches across the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. But while Lowy no doubt enjoyed the Caribbean New Year sun, he had another reason for visiting the West Indies. After all, there are worse place to be in December than at home at his Sydney harbourside mansion in summer.

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November 2006

Wednesday 1 “You cannot coach a player to score from five yards,” says Arsène as Arsenal squander a sackload of chances in a 0‑0 draw with CSKA Moscow. Man Utd lose to a late Marcus Allback goal in Copenhagen. Celtic crash 3‑0 at Benfica. Former Portsmouth owner Milan Mandaric makes a bid for Leicester City. 

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