The two words players who worked under Colin Calderwood during his Northampton era used the most were ‘professional’ and ‘gentleman’.
He could afford to have a professional approach – few managers before or since have been able to have the luxury of a full-time goalkeeping coach and a specialist fitness coach freelanced in for pre-season, let alone the budget to pay for all of them (and the entire squad) to use an elite training camp in Austria for 10 days.
The gentleman comment relates to how he was with the players on a personal level. He very cleverly bridged the gap between being their boss, their colleague and their friend, being close enough to earn their trust but not too close that it reduced the respect they had for him.
Among us press boys he was well liked, too. In the build-up to one big game, he made the national journalists wait while he spoke to the local lads, his view being that our presence at Sixfields every week made us more important. Small touches, but they all helped.
He was always immaculately turned out, wore sharp suits that looked expensive but casual at the same time. In presentation terms, he was first class and he had plenty of natural charisma but was not always the charming young manager some felt.
At Doncaster Rovers’ old Belle Vue ground one night, he almost kicked a hole in the dug-out after losing Marc Richards to a bad injury and falling behind to a soft goal.
And on one occasion he telephoned me to give me an earful of four-letter words after I linked the club with signing Sean Dyche. His view was it would unsettle the players currently in the squad whose contracts were coming to an end and who were worried about their futures. That was Colin, protective of his players even when he had made up his mind that he wouldn’t be keeping them.
History will, I feel, judge him to be a successful Northampton manager, even if he had two huge factors going for him before he even took the job.
Having been brought in to replace Martin Wilkinson in the autumn of 2003, he discovered a squad full of quality players who were never going to be moulded into a cohesive unit by Wilkinson, who was always more of a scout than a manager.
Wilkinson, with an eye for talent and a free rein over the club chequebook, brought in serious attacking talent like Martin Smith and Josh Low, as well as spending big at the back on players such as Ashley Westwood and Peter Clark.
These players would carry the team to the play-off semi-finals in Calderwood’s first season in charge, although they would fail to reach the final after a hugely controversial second leg at Mansfield’s Field Mill.
They perished at Southend again the following year but on both occasions they met sides packed with class. Mansfield had Rhys Day, Lee Williamson and Wayne Corden. Southend were even better – they had Adam Barrett, Spencer Prior, Kevin Maher and Freddy Eastwood to name just four.
But even though they were up against class teams, they still showed a weakness for big games under Calderwood. In his first season they won well at Rotherham to set up a home tie with Manchester United but a brain freeze by the manager saw the side line up in a totally alien 4-5-1.
They lost the game 3-0 and although a defeat was almost a certainty if they had been more attack-minded, it should be noted they hit the woodwork three times in one of those ‘what might have been’ afternoons.
The game at Mansfield taught Calderwood a valuable lesson. Of the starting 11 that night at Field Mill, only two were signed by the Scotsman – Eric Sabin and Rob Ullathorne. Des Lyttle had been jettisoned after the final game of the season when it became clear Josh Low could play right wing-back but Calderwood was onto something with such signings, even though it took him some time to work it out.
The basis of the promotion-winning team two years later was experience. Quality players in the twilight of their careers (Ian Taylor, Eoin Jess, Dyche) were snapped up and moulded alongside more traditional lower-league players (David Hunt, Scott McGleish) to take the side up.
At a dinner at the end of that season, a video aired on a big screen that, for want of a better description, openly mocked every member of the squad. Westwood, whose injury problems at Sixfields remain the stuff of legend, was depicted as Professor Stephen Hawking. Luke Chambers was Shrek.
It was pretty unsubtle stuff but illustrated how perfectly Calderwood struck the balance between giving the players enough free rein to enjoy themselves without it ever bordering on taking the piss or that thing Calderwood hated more than anything, a lack of professionalism.
That summer he was hot property and I rang him in Dubai to inform him Ipswich were interested and to get his reaction to it. It made for a great story, and it was really good of him to take my call and give me some good quotes.
But then, he was a gentleman after all. Even if he did bugger off to Nottingham Forest a few weeks later.
Tags: Colin Calderwood, football, Hibs, Northampton, Nottingham Forest
