From June, 2007
There was always going to be some sort of angle on which to spin the first League Cup game for Stuart McCall - his first test against a big club - and so the first two names out of the hat gave us Wolverhampton Wanderers vs Bradford City and the memories flashed back to a day, a result, an image of the City number four with his arms aloft at the second of the final whistle.
McCall dragged City to that promotion. He was the heart of a team with capable legs and head. The next time he is in the dug out at Wolves he will be beating heart and pulsing brain.
His task at Bradford City will be brought into focus this week. His number two Wayne Jacobs will officially arrive from Halifax Town to be replaced at The Shay by Peter Atherton. Jacobs is a welcome appointment and does much to answer the once said - but now discredited - suggestion that McCall’s teams would be more about the morale of drinking buddies than modern footballing units. Communion wine aside Jacobs is not cut from that cloth.
By the time Jacobs arrives McCall will have a list of fixtures for the season - they come out on Thursday morning - with names like Barnet, like Accrington Stanley, like Morecambe which are a long way from the results of that Wolves win. Using the old Poker adage of looking around the table to see the sucker - if you can’t tell then it is you - one looks at League Two for the big name and then realise that we are, for better or for worse, the big name.
McCall will also have had his player budget ironed out with Julian Rhodes and Mark Lawn. Today’s exit of Marc Bridge-Wilkinson to Carlisle United, Dean Windass’s move to Hull and Steven Schumacher’s leaving for Crewe frees up the funds and the long list of recruits will get shorter.
At present McCall has ten players - pull his boots on himself and he has a team - but in three months time he needs to take out his team to the scene of City’s greatest triumph and begin to make his mark in management.
Joining the Bantams as a right back aged 17, spending months in the Everton reserves, going to the World Cup as a squad player, low key move to Rangers, free transfer return to City. McCall is a man who goes about his business in a quiet and determined way. Expect similar as City build to the first significant stop on the journey back.
Stuart McCall gave an early indication about the type of team he will be building at Bradford City as he confirmed that Oldham Athletic’s Paul Warne was One of an absolutely numerous list of players as you can imagine that have been offered to us. But he is one of interest.
34 year old Warne is the kind of constant trouble player that City have let go in the form of Dean Windass - more on whom later - but who has been a hallmark of every successful team McCall played in at Valley Parade. He is the robust Bobby Campbell of the 1980s and the constant ball high ball winning of Lee Mills in he 1990s. He is a good player but as McCall says one of many who will be thrown at the Bantams in the coming months.
Mark Lawn’s investment which wiped out the not inconsiderable debts of the Bantams and McCall’s appointment has seen City in the news as a viable club to play for once more. McCall has been fending off calls from agents since the day he got the job and other names alongside Warne include Paul Bolland, Town man Chris Brandon, Wolves midfielder Rohan Ricketts, Orient’s former Dundee United midfielder Craig Easton and Ray Parlour. All rumours. All not outrageous as City’s sink leads the club to being the biggest fish in a small pond and the prospects of a rise return.
In the space of a month - and from more than just a perceptions point of view - City have gone from the team that no one wants to one of the brighter prospects in the lower leagues. Of the bottom 48 clubs in the English division a handful could be considered to have the scope for a Premiership club. Leeds United are obviously one but administration will haunt them as it has us for years to come. Nottingham Forest are filed under “should be higher” alongside Leeds. Swansea have potential, Carlisle have room for a club but perhaps lack people to draw a support from. Few other clubs can match the Bantams for scope. If that scope is realised by McCall and Lawn - and for that matter by Julian Rhodes, Wayne Jacobs, David Wetherall et al - then the Bantams are exactly the sort of club a player would want to join.
In Warne though McCall begins to look for a squad built of players prepared to do the hard work he epitomised as a player. A good beginning.
A strange ending comes to the ears of BfB regarding Dean Windass’s time at Bradford City with the left field rumour that with his move to Hull City all but sealed City got a call about Windass’s availability from Sam Alladyce at Newcastle United. Alladyce’s interest - were it ever to have existed and the sceptic is king here - was for the striker to come in for six months but ended with the signing of Mark Viduka.
Stuart McCall has been expanding on his appreciation of Sir Alex Ferguson who would have said of such talk “Football eh? Bloody Hell”.
So, as our beloved Bradford City begin a new era with Stuart McCall as our new manager and Mark Lawn as the new Co-chairman, those supporters who put their heart and soul into fundraising during the perilous summer of 2004 can say “it was all worthwhile”. At the time, these people who were completing sponsored walks, eating maggots and ground hopping across Lancashire to non league grounds such as Leigh RMI, were raising monies to assist with the survival of the football club. That was the short term aim which provided a platform for Julian Rhodes to then keep the club afloat.
However, without these people’s efforts, there would be no Bradford City today. Make no mistake about it, our club was within minutes of going out of business back in the summer of 2004. Individuals including Julian Rhodes, Colin Todd and ex-Chairman of the Bradford City Supporters’ Trust, Mark Boocock, should be applauded for staying loyal to the football club during some of our darkest hours. I realise that many supporters wanted to see the sacking of Colin last season, but whether you were pro-Todd or anti-Todd, one fact remains and that is that is stayed around at Valley Parade whilst Bryan Robson couldn’t wait to get away from Valley Parade. (All very strange as Robson the player was such a battler.)
So firstly there was the individual supporters’ efforts, then there has been Julian’s tremendous support over the past five or so very difficult years. Now we have a new hero in Mark Lawn. The one thing that impresses me about Mark Lawn, is like Julian, he is a Bradford City supporter, which should count for a lot in the coming months and years.
If you raised any money, no matter how much, stand up and be counted. Your efforts have allowed, first Julian Rhodes, and now Mark Lawn to bring the football club back onto a financial even keel. Be proud of your actions. It just proves that a team effort can have a positive impact. Let’s hope that Stuart gets the team pulling together on the pitch. Now then, where are those map directions to Morecambe?