It is undoubtedly a sad day for all concerned, in particular John Courtenay, who had to make a very tough decision, backed up by the board, to part company with a man he could call a close friend and confidante. It is never easy sacking a manager but when he's your pal it must be ten times tougher. However in making such a decision I think Courtenay's standing will have gone up in the eyes of many supporters. The Collins era will be remembered as a time of turmoil at Brunton Park. There were good times and bad, there were many players who came and went and there was supporter unrest as well as a kind of messianic zeal amongst those who fervently hoped that Roddy would be the man to lead the Cumbrians out of the doldrums. Alas, it was not to be. The majority of fans will be happy to see the back of him. That is the brutal truth. For all his blarney, Roddy just didn't have the results to back up his own faith. As John Courtenay said at the press conference today, "that's football". He is right. Football always has the final say. Fans are fickle and managers don't have time. Roddy is no exception. His time simply ran out. You can analyse his results until your head hurts. But the stark reality is that he won only 25 league games out of 92. That is, in a nutshell, relegation form. The one thing that can be said is that he didn't actually get us relegated. We survived and for that, if for nothing else, he will be remembered. It's a big shame that he wasn't more successful because you get the feeling Roddy Collins would have made a great winner. For all the unrest and unease that surrounded his time at the club, he was never one to hide from the limelight or become introspective. He was a fantastic presence at all times. Going back to August 2001 and you have to understand the desperation of the situation at Brunton Park. The previous manager Ian Atkins, having been denied funds to sign new players and having seen four of his senior professionals sacked, unjustly and unfairly, had walked out. With two weeks until the big kick-off, Collins was hastily introduced. Most of us knew nothing about him. Our knowledge of Irish football was extremely limited. He had won the Irish domestic double with Bohemians the previous year. He had guided his side to victories in UEFA Cup clashes with Aberdeen and German club Kaiserslautern that had entered Dublin folklore. He had walked out after a disagreement with some ancient committee of the great and the good who ran the club. In he came with a whirlwind round of interviews and photo-calls. He was not slow to talk up his own abilities. This I suppose was necessary to placate fans who were always going to be very sceptical about the appointment of someone they knew little about and coming so soon after the departure of the popular Atkins. But Collins was already making his first mistake. He chose to get involved in the political exchanges between disaffected supporters and the Knighton family. This was undoubtedly a crass error on the part of the outspoken Dubliner. He didn't really understand or appreciate the depth of ill-feeling that had built up over the years and ended up looking rather silly. To be fair to the man, he was very apologetic afterwards. Half-way through that first season, things were rapidly turning against him. Having upset fans with his 'appeasement' of the Knighton regime, he had managed to get through an incredible number of short-term signings and had taken Carlisle to the foot of the table. Chay Hews, Dave Rogers, Austin Berkley, Alex Haddow, Mo Harkin et al - they were soon forgotten. But things did eventually begin to improve. In the early weeks of the season Collins had publicly labelled the signings made by Ian Atkins as losers who would take United into the Conference. He had humiliated players such as Ian Stevens and Mick Galloway by forcing them to run through the middle of the city centre and made them train with the youth team. However, by December, after many calls for his return, Stevens was brought back into the starting line-up. He helped Carlisle defeat Scunthorpe 3-0 and climb off the bottom of the table. He then starred in a 6-1 crushing of Leyton Orient in January that saw the Cumbrians go 5-0 up inside the first 40 minutes of the game. A run of results followed that saw the Cumbrians climb out of relegation danger and towards mid-table safety. But Collins is never one to sit back and put his feet up. He was soon in trouble again. John Courtenay had met him in a Dublin pub early in the New Year and Collins had raised the possibility of his friend making a bid to buy the club from Knighton. Courtenay didn't need much persuasion. He had already unsuccessfully tried to buy Shamrock Rovers. Weeks of heated negotiations followed. The deal first appeared to be done, then to be hanging in the balance and finally, around April time, to be dead in the water. The volatile former plasterer had already 'resigned' for a few hours only, before an away game at Lincoln. Following some none too subtle comments about the state of the negotiations after a match in Shrewsbury, Collins was sacked by Mark Knighton. As we all know, he spent the next three months sitting by his phone, waiting for some good news from his friend Courtenay. Along the way there were some hilarious stories, most of them cooked up by Collins himself, about 'imminent' moves to Huddersfield, amongst other places, where he was said to be favourite to take over the vacant manager's seat. In reality, he was never in the running, but he obviously felt that by threatening to be on the verge of taking another job, he might in some way force Knighton's hand and drive him to sell his shares to Courtenay, who had made it clear he would only remain in the frame if Collins was still on the menu. It is history that in the end, the deal was done and Roddy was back faster than the proverbial speeding bullet. I don't know how he crossed the Irish Sea but he would have probably have swum across if there was no other method available. It was a case of deja vu for him. 12 months earlier he had less than a fortnight to prepare for the start of the new season. At least then he had the makings of a full squad of players. Now he had barely enough for a game of five-a-side. All friendlies were cancelled. Ryan Baldacchino, Trevor Molloy, Brian Shelley, Brendan McGill, Darren Kelly and Ryan Hevicon were hastily added and the season kicked off in a frenzy. The Cumbrians were 7th after 4 games and bottom by the end of October, having gone through more players than most clubs manage in an entire campaign. In November Collins engineered four straight wins, the first man to do so since Mervyn Day in the 1996-97 season. But then came a significant turning point in a home game with Bury. A Peter Murphy free-kick had put Carlisle one-nil up. But two quick goals turned the match on its head and the visitors ended the winning streak. The form of that three-week stretch was never to return. By the New Year we were in serious trouble again but it was around this time that Collins introduced Adam Rundle and Jon McCarthy and slowly but surely a slow renaissance took hold. It was pock-marked by nightmare defeats such as the 4-1 and 5-1 home thrashings handed out by Lincoln and Hull. However away from home, United produced the best results of the Collins era and it was these gutsy performances that kept them just above the relegation maelstrom. Success in the LDV Vans was either a handy or dangerous diversion, depending on your point of view. Collins took his team to the Cardiff final while they were still in a relegation fight. Defeat there didn't appear to dampen our chances of survival. Well, not at first. Then came Wrexham. Wrexham was a disaster. A 6-1 hammering could have destroyed confidence totally and made demotion a certainty. Instead Roddy roused his players and they pulled off two cracking away wins, 3-2 at Torquay and 3-2 at Shrewsbury. It was survival and Roddy was a hero for a few days, but in hindsight, it was just delaying the inevitable. The man had started the season saying he was expecting promotion. Courtenay backed him up. He had taken us to 22nd place, one point clear of the drop. Just one draw from those two testing away trips to Devon and Shropshire would have been enough to send us down. We had needed all six points and we had managed to get them. His summer acquisitions of Chris Billy, Steve Livingstone and Paul Simpson brought a rather mixed response. We needed experience but some doubted whether these players were good enough to make the necessary difference. The pre-season went deceptively well. Good, but hardly unexpected results in Ireland were followed by less exceptional performances against the likes of Motherwell and Kilmarnock. But we still kicked off with Roddy predicting a play-off place at the very least. Well we now know that it all went wrong and the only performance which could be described as being worthy of a United team was that at Walsall in the Carling Cup. You can't get off to the worst start in 46 years and expect not to have your position come under scrutiny. Roddy paid the ultimate price. He wasn't the first and he certainly won't be the last. As I said, it's a shame not to have seen Roddy as a winner, strutting around like a peacock on the sidelines. He never stopped strutting whatever the outcome. He was a charismatic figure, a Jimmy Cagney in sharp suits with a mouth to match. At times, it looked like he might emulate his brother and deck some hapless official who might just get too close. Indeed the rather shambolic sight of him walking along the touchline at Boston was one that touched on tragi-comedy. Walking along that line, and then having to stand behind a gate, peering over the top was a bit like Eric Morecambe. All he would have needed was an old mac and a plastic bag to complete the image. Sadly, that actual sending off was a symbolic sign that the ultimate early bath was imminent. I don't know about anyone else but I had sort of knew after that defeat and the subsequent interview he gave on Radio Cumbria that we had seen the end of his reign. He was given 48 hours to ponder his future and I felt he could have fallen on his sword there and then. He was too proud a man to just walk away. He gave a rather desperate sounding interview to the press just a day before the axe fell. He talked of himself and John Courtenay as fighters who were backed up into a corner. It almost sounded like he was taking JC hostage - one down, both down - that sort of thing. Ultimately he must have known he would be the one to take the rap. Sad then, but somehow inevitable. All his blarney couldn't disguise the fact that the time had come and to recover lost ground a new man would be needed. He departs into the sunset like the Wild West hero he maybe wanted to be but never was. But he may be back. Somewhere else, somewhere perhaps far removed from deepest Cumbria. We haven't heard the last of Roddy Collins. Al |
