A couple of months ago, I published a long article comprising former players’ tributes to David Wilkes. It was the very least the great Carlisle United youth coach merited, and the piece was well received.
One thing, though, niggled at me in the days afterwards. It was a message from a former player, who had read the article and appreciated it, yet asked a question that was respectful but pointed.
Why, he wondered, do we so often wait until someone has passed away before gathering up the tributes? Why don’t we put our appreciation in front of them when they are still with us?
It’s the sort of agonising dilemma many will have wrestled with, in football and in life. David Wilkes might well have modestly brushed off all those thousands of words of appreciation had he been able to read them. Yet one still wishes he could have sat down and taken them in, seen in black and white how much he was loved – even if, on some level, he must have known.
There is no easy or comfortable answer to the question my friend posed but it does make me want to devote this space today to some people who are very much with us, some who are not, and a collective who warrant the biggest and most heartfelt tribute, where Carlisle United is concerned, that any of us could offer.
Let us wait no longer before saying such things. To the boys of 1974, then: thank you.
Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the moment those lads took Carlisle into the old First Division: a stunning, stellar achievement, one that defies credibility today but was flesh and blood and raw and gloriously real five decades ago.
The 12 months that followed put together a story no Blues side has since been able to write. United in the top flight – even at the top of the top flight for a few precious days – a season when they could call Liverpool and Arsenal and Everton and the others (but not Manchester United, poor Division Two dwellers in 1974/75) their league equals.
How wonderful is that, was that? How much more reason could be needed, at this milestone, to say thank you?
It is, of course, a sadness that some of those boys are gone. To the memories of Allan Ross, Chris Balderstone, Bill Green, Joe Laidlaw, Frank Clarke, then: thank you.
Those words, really, feel like meagre offerings in exchange for what they gave Carlisle United, what they inspired at the place: Ross, the longest-serving player of all, Carlisle’s greatest goalkeeper; Balderstone, perhaps the classiest player to have worn the blue shirt; Green; defensive rock, young captain, top-flight leader; Laidlaw and Clarke: scorers in the game against Aston Villa that (ultimately) took United up, the rampaging Joe and the canny Frank.
And to those who are with us, who played against Villa and in so many of the other vital occasions: thank you, lads. Thank you John Gorman, left-back of gliding potency. Thank you Tot Winstanley, scorer against Roma, enduring rock at the back. Thank you Les O’Neill and Ray Train, midfield dynamos, small in stature, giants of heart; thank you Dennis Martin: all those goals, those runs, those timeless moments.
Thank you Bobby Owen, finisher supreme, scorer of big goals, lots of goals. Thank you Peter Carr, characterful right-back, mainstay of the best of times.
Thank you to the other men who helped United construct 1973/74: Stan Ternent, Brian Tiler, Bob Delgado, Mike Barry, Tom Clarke, Mike McCartney. Thank you to the late leaders, Alan Ashman and Dick Young; the mild managerial genius and his inspired, long-serving trainer. Thank you to their trusted physio, Herbert Nicholson.
Thank you to the administrative staff who, in fundamental ways, made it happen. Thank you to David Dent. Thank you to George Sheffield, the chairman, and his directors. All steered the ship towards Division One. All escorted United to a place they hadn’t been and haven’t since.
The other week, in preparation for this anniversary, I reunited O’Neill, Dent and the former Evening News & Star reporter Ross Brewster in United’s Legends Lounge. It is far from an exaggeration to say we could have talked about those old days until the sun set.
The article arising from our conversation was long but also short. It could have occupied ten times as much newsprint. How, after all, do you begin to edit living history? How do you deem anything said by those gentlemen on the most brilliant era in Carlisle United’s long story dispensable?
Yet it was not just their words that were to be treasured, but the air about them. How they spoke, as well as what they said. When Les O’Neill held forth on the bond between players, the coaching acumen of Dick Young, the flawed power of Joe Laidlaw, the abiding defensive resolve of Bill Green and the sheer pride at becoming a First Division player, it felt like the walls of the Legends Lounge might not contain him.
When David Dent recalled the detail, the demands, the arising challenges and stunning rewards of United’s top-flight time, it was as though he was back in the office, diligently making it all happen again.
When Ross Brewster took his mind back 50 years he may as well have been there once more in the press boxes of the Second and then First Division, phoning across his reports, sweating to beat the Sports Special deadlines, spelling Balderstone one more time for the copytakers, committing the whole, wonderful thing to print.
Well, thank you, fellas; thanks all of you. Thanks for your part in something that’s now 50-years golden. Thanks for letting Carlisle United live and breathe at the very top – and thanks for giving so much of yourselves to that cause, that achievement. It, and you, will shine on forever.
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