Mind Over Matter...

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
So welcome back to the upfront and unfiltered podcast where we've made it to a 10th episode
i'm your host dean turton and this time around i've got a
great lineup for you joining me this week are the most
decorated father and son duo in manx football chris bass
senior and chris bass junior both of them are going to
talk through their incredible journeys in manx football the highs the

(00:24):
lows and what they think of the current state of manx football as well
and then we'll round this out as we always do with our
seven si team in select seven so seeing him
i'll start with you where does manx football start well manx
football oh good evening dean manx football started for me when i came from
portsmouth just before my 16th birthday and i met a group of people that were

(00:48):
playing football in derby square park in douglas kicked around with them for
a bit and then And through that,
I think it was through Glyn Prescott and Robbie Prescott,
who were brother-in-law to Brian Carney, who was at Old Boys at that particular time.
Brian came out the house and played football with us. And then from there,

(01:09):
I got introduced to Old Boys.
My first season as a young 16-year-old lad, it was spent mostly for about six
months on the bench behind a very aging Alan Palmer, Sharma,
Sean Collister, Ian Colquitt.
But patience, you know, you just had to do that. That's what you did.

(01:30):
You know, you didn't complain that you weren't getting on.
I remember the first game of football was down at Jim's in the combination.
I think I scored five in the first game.
But then from there, once you got into the team, it was tough.
Once you got in, it was a tough introduction. And I always like,
historically, the way we used to play football because, Because,

(01:51):
you know, everybody used to say, you know, they can't run without legs.
And it was just get out there, get in his face, kick him up in the air,
drag him down, do whatever you got to do just to stop him from playing.
And that was the way, you know, a decent centre forward was treated back then.
But, you know, at the end of the game, after you've, you know,
you're covered in blood and dirt, you shook hands and you got on and you went to the next game.

(02:14):
So it was a really good introduction for me because you look at the,
I feel that there was always tough centre halves. It was like Roger and Kevin Christian.
Then there was Bones and Eric Nelson at Russian.
There was Jeff Goff and Dave Perry at Ramy and all these people.
They're all like probably bigger than myself, a lot broader than myself.

(02:36):
And, you know, they weren't accustomed to being nice, you know,
an elbow every sort of like two or three minutes.
Got used to but you just had to get on with it when you could properly get stuck in
yeah yeah i used to do an awful lot on loan at the referee for
more protection but it was never coming and then i remember
one day i can't remember the team we were playing kevin manning
came to the island man now that was a different gravy when you

(02:59):
bring kevin manning to the island man from liverpool leagues you
brought somebody that was used to giving it out and not taking
it from the center halves and i remember playing up here
at blackberry lane and i was playing center forward and
he was playing just off me and I was
getting a bit of a tough time and Kevin said
to me he said just hey Bassey Bassey just move

(03:21):
out to the left for five minutes I'll bring you back in a minute just go out
to the left for five minutes okay Kev I went out to the left for five minutes
the referee's not looking and someone's been chinned right on the nose and whatever
sorry chinned and it's like you can come back in now okay Kev thanks very much
and it was like leave Leave the kid alone.

(03:42):
But that's what football was like. And it was great.
And were you spelted? Oh, I got my dad. That was by David Cole up at Strenaby
in Laxy. We went in for a slide tackle.
Unfortunately, his forearm hit me in the teeth. I lost one. One was hanging
out. Cotton wool, carry on.
There was none of this business of going off.

(04:07):
No, no, you just played. and you know everybody was the same back then and it
was it was just such a joy to be involved it's a shame that some of that didn't
rub off on nick on friday isn't it i was good well well the family consensus
was get on the pitch stop whining stop whining about calling your chin,
well that's it isn't it so from there obviously you have quite a successful

(04:30):
career obviously So you see Old Boys and then on to Jims as well and Times.
Yeah, Old Boys was the first league title that I won.
And that was a pretty good team with Gary Cox and Lee Cox and Trevor Peace,
Steve Roberts, myself, Colin Purvis, who was, you know, very,
very quick fullback and a bit like myself, you know, very good to give it out, you know, cheekily.

(04:54):
He was doing things when the ref wasn't looking, used to make you laugh all
the time just to wind people up as you do. Was it Ted Pepper was brilliant at that down at Russian.
That was his main role. I think, you know, rather than playing football,
it was just to wind people up.
But every club's had them. Yeah.
Listen, it takes all kinds to make a team. And if you've got one of those,

(05:16):
then you've got to use that attribute. Yeah, definitely.
So old boys. Yeah, that was, that was the first one, Nikki Smith,
alongside Brian Carney. Yeah.
I remember there was one season where we had Ricky Riley in goal.
I think we only conceded 10 goals in the year, which was pretty phenomenal back
then to, you know, to concede. It's mental, isn't it? 10 goals over what?
And that was probably a 26, 30 game season? I think it was more like 26.

(05:41):
Yeah. I think it was 24 or 26. I can't remember.
Yeah. I'm knocking on now, 64 this year. So the memory's not what it should be.
I can tell because he asked you about gyms, not all of us. Yeah,
but no, he said that he started it. Started it. He said started it.
It's Jim's days, it's fine. Yeah, so you go to Jim's and that was...
Jim's was a very special team playing up front with John Garland. That was a laugh.

(06:03):
He was another one that we used to wind people up. He still does it now? Yeah.
I was down the other day. It was more of a laugh when he got sent off. That pumps the balls.
Yeah, so we were up front and then I think you had Steve Harrison,
Vinnie Ellison, Gary Blackburn, Brian Osborne, Keith Brew was in goal.
The midfield was Steve Faulkner, Nicky Gerrard, Sam Kenny and Albert Harrison.

(06:28):
Two very good subs or rotating within the squad. I do like to call them subs,
but they were also good players. Martin Feely and Ray Hicks.
That team won the Grand Slam and we went to 10 consecutive cup finals.
So you consider that's three years in Manx football being in every cup final.

(06:48):
It's mentalised. So that was a very, very good team. Sam Kenny was a special player.
He was a great leader, great organiser. Had a bit of an edge,
Sam. And he could be nasty when he needed to be.
But yeah, he's a very intelligent footballer. Well, that's what you want,
isn't it? Like you say, every team has a wind-up merchant.
Every team's also got one of them people that can have that little bit of nastiness in them.

(07:11):
But after that final whistle goes, shake your hand and you're done, aren't they? Yeah.
And then, yeah, from there it was to, it was, I think, I can't remember the
order now, but I played at Braddon, I played at St John's.
I made a deal with family members, like Steve Ingham and Nick Ingham. you come and play for St.
George's, I'll come and play for St. John's. I don't know who got the better

(07:33):
of the deal, but it was fun, just the same.
I do remember when we went to St. John's playing with Nick Hurt for the first
time, another very good footballer, intelligent footballer, reads the game well.
Two-footed, yeah, he was a bit special, Nick.
And he also scored 14 goals against us when I started managing at St.
George's. Not happy about that. No, he won the Golden Boot, wasn't he?

(07:54):
Eight behind, one game to go.
John Palmer was worse off than me because he lost to Golden Boo that day.
He was eight ahead of her. One game left and her team scored 14 against her. Yeah, yeah.
So we've had so many ups and downs. I had a great season at Braddon playing
with Tam McLaren down at Clucas Laundries.
So, yeah, I was a bit of a journeyman, which once I went into management,

(08:16):
I was completely the opposite way. You know, show some loyalty.
So you do change. You do change.
But yeah i had a fantastic playing time
i loved it i love what made you call quits on your playing days
we went up to air united and we were playing a league game up there and i was
player manager at the time and the lads had come in at half time and i'd given

(08:39):
them the right rollicking for not doing the correct things and then i decided
to put myself on and from the minute i put myself on And there was 42 at the time,
I believe, and nothing went right.
Everyone, everything literally went wrong. And you could hear the murmurings,
like, you know, oh God, here we go.
And so, so the minute I walked off to the pitch, I went into the dressing room

(09:01):
and said, right lad, you'll never see me on the pitch again.
That was it but i did have a special memory when
i was not gonna remember that oh yeah it's i did have
a special memory when we came up here and we'd
won the league and i managed to take to the pitch with myself
andrew nick and chris and luck would have it the ball fell to me in an overhead

(09:24):
kick on the edge of the box and for all love ball money i thought it was going
in and my My whole family was hoping it didn't go in just so they didn't have
to live with it for the next 10 years.
And the ball came back off the crossbar. And I think that was about my only
contribution in the game, really.
I think me and Andy had our hands on our heads as it came back off the ball. I think we celebrated.

(09:47):
Celebrated as much as the defence did. It's gone out, it's gone out.
It's not very odd, is it, when your own team say, no, don't go in, don't go in.
Yeah, I've had some fantastic memories in terms of playing.
And I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change a thing.
If I could, I'd probably say I would like to have been a little bit fitter, which was hard.
Yeah. But that's what I would like to have been because fitness means everything in football.

(10:11):
Yeah. Especially the last five minutes. It does, yeah. It does, yeah.
We'll get on to that. So, Junior, I'll come to you now. Yeah.
And I'll ask you the same question as I asked your dad. Yeah.
Where does Manx football start for you?
Watching my dad. I grew up watching my dad every Saturday.
Every Friday night, I'd clean his boots. He'd give me his boots from the week before.
I'd take them outside and I'd clean them I'd scrub them with soap and water

(10:33):
the next day I'd polish them put dubbing on them there you go dad there's your boots
brought to you every Saturday proper apprentice every Saturday I loved it that's
what I grew up doing wanted to go and watch my dad play football and if you
like he was my hero growing up because I just loved watching him play score
goals because he'd score every type of goal but when I first started playing I think I was 6.

(10:54):
And again, my dad got into, he was the coach at the time, wasn't he?
It was Dave. Kevin McKean.
I thought, wasn't it Dave Powell? Was it before? Dave McKean.
Was it Dave McKean? No, it wasn't. It was Tony McMeekin. Tony McMeekin.
I'm sure he was the coach. You went to three. Yeah, I'm sure he was coach.
He went down at Peel, first game.
Yeah, and it was Richard Clarke. Was it Richard Clarke?

(11:14):
It might have been. It was Richard Clarke. It was Richard Clarke.
It was Richard Clarke, didn't he? Yeah, I was six years old and that's when
it started. I started playing for Joy's at six. Yeah. So.
Scored two, had one disallowed in the under 12s at six.
I don't remember the game too much, but I've seen a few pictures on it.
It was tiny, so small, but it was 11 side.
Back then it was 11 side in the big goals. It's not like now when you see the football on Sunday.

(11:35):
Yeah, the little pictures with the little goals. This was the full size,
11 side pitch, full size goals.
You can imagine the size of me at six years old, but yeah, I loved it.
Not growing up since, have you? No, not growing at all.
He learned how to do a lot of good things but he also learnt not what to do
because remember that goal I
tried to score up here diving header the ball was only about sort of like,

(11:59):
two to three or four inches off the deck and I tried to dive in header and as
I did it the ball just got wedged between my face and the turf and didn't move
and then I looked up behind the goal all I could see was Chris just rolling
around I think it was me Coxie.
Might have been Patrick Manning and we just sat behind the
goal here on the bank and the ball was stuck stuck in one we're all
pointing and laughing he looked up at us i was

(12:22):
at so i was at geordie's from six and then they didn't
have a team one age group i think it was under 12s maybe they didn't have a
team so i left and i went to keon droggers which is it which was on back then
so i'm gonna call kenny hewitt he's the manager so i went with him and it was
like mark walmsley was playing and some of the quirks were playing,

(12:43):
Trevor Moffat was playing as well, yeah. Some of the players were playing.
But then I was there for a year, maybe, I think.
As soon as Geordie's had a team, I think maybe I was there two years because
Geordie had started back up again.
Right. And when I come back, that's when Johnny Myers was there and I think
Sean was playing. Stephen Underwood, one of my mates from school,
was playing. So it was back to St.

(13:03):
George's at under 14. Under 14, probably.
Yeah. Yeah, so I'd only missed out one, maybe two years while I was at Keown
Jogging while they didn't have a team. so then I've played for Geordies ever
since there's someone who do I see I keep seeing someone that works for I used
to work with at the Ingham's and he's like remember when you signed up for St.
John's and I didn't it was when my dad was playing for St. John's and I played

(13:23):
in the friendly when I was about 15 or 16 I never signed gone down just signed
me up to watch and just played one game no I've only ever played for St.
George's yeah your boots your boots are in the van do you fancy a little run
out with your dad yeah let's go it's a Saturday afternoon what are they going
to be watching that was the Easter festival.
Everybody likes it myself and probably dicko as well they
used to walk around cool rose with a pair of boots in your hand because the

(13:46):
you know when they came over from england half of them were drunk couldn't make
the game so you've got to get you can you can end up playing two or three games
a day yeah that was really good fun yeah we missed out
on all that beast festival but yeah so but that on the
14s team i went back to was myself and
i just showed you that picture didn't i yourself julian ringham johnny
mike and sean quay in the under 14s and you're all still playing still

(14:07):
playing chris coxon's in there as well he was in that geordie's team
he's still playing for old boys which is good to see yeah so but i was trying
on that 14 i was with dicko at the school of excellence which is great it's
the school veterans was brilliant which is something that maybe the other man's
lacking a little bit now maybe for the young kids we had school excellence we
had kevin manning our coach.

(14:29):
And dicko was the coach and we were away trialing myself myers steve oh yeah
steve priestnell got a a couple of trials away and I was at Oldham for a bit
and I was there I was at Oldham every half term every school holiday yeah for
one season the season before I left school,
and I didn't get taken on there was a game we played at Macclesfield on

(14:49):
a park pitch terrible weather terrible pitch we lost
1-0 and no one spoke to me after the game just left me
to it and I got picked up and went away never heard back from them never got
taken on but over there that's the ethic of football back then isn't it it's
no one turns around you don't you know if you weren't good enough that's it
you're done you're out but I was I was good enough and they were ringing up

(15:10):
to me they were ringing up my dad and saying he's doing really well,
we'll probably look to take him on in the summer give him a scholarship the
coach the coach that you had was Billy Armstrong and Billy Armstrong was army
physical trainer right initially you know during the.
The war or whatever and and he he
he used to he used to swear and scream
and shout at chris and chris would phone me up and he's always

(15:33):
having a go and i used to say to chris listen if he's
screaming and shouting at you he believes you have something
when he's not talking to you that's the
time to start being concerned but then chris
was unfortunate because billy ermston you know he said to
me that chris was the top player in
the academy at that time but because of his size back then

(15:54):
it was all about Ian Dowey now Ian Dowey is a very intelligent guy but in terms
of his football he was a bit of a dog really it was a bit of a yarp dog in terms
of elbows and he just believed in strength and size but now you look at modern
football today and look how many world class smaller players there are,
and it's just changed the world you look at Ian Oleski for example he's five

(16:18):
foot not often isn't he that way different yeah because I didn't get taken on
for a scholarship which disappointed me but my family moved away to the Isle
of Wight because you used to live at the Isle of Wight didn't you?
Yes. So my Uncle Pete moved to the Isle of Wight with his family and my cousins
of the same age started playing for.
Newport College in the Isle of Wight who were just starting up an affiliation

(16:39):
with Newport County Isle of Wight so they were playing the English Leagues so
they started up this college affiliation so I went because I hadn't got a scholarship
I left the Isle of Man at 16 and went and played there that lasted I don't know,
till february the next year and it sort of fell apart
the money fell out of it and it was it was brilliant at the tracks which
we went to college you know i can be playing getting away playing games on

(17:00):
a wednesday and saturdays but it sort of fell out fell
apart a little bit so i ended up going to science then
it's funny because coxie plays here for all the boys he he came with
me to the l white then he came with me to science esther as
well so we were playing at science esther for i think i was there for 18 months
maybe and they were the only college team in the uk that played in the what

(17:20):
was called youth alliance league so they play the pro teams right so we play
against the pro teams under 17s under 18s every every week twice a week maybe so,
why are we doing that so so that was like a learning curve that's a like what
you'd say a better standard than the other man but i was giving it a go i was
trying to get elsewhere and better myself and then from there i got picked up

(17:41):
by the england schools team yeah so i played for england schools under 18s the
british colleges under 18s and we were away we We played against Scotland.
Scotland, Ireland, Wales in the tournament.
They used to have it on Skype, not the one I was in, but they used to have the
schoolboys, the victory school.
Yeah, I think a couple of weeks ago they got the schoolboys on Channel 4.
This was the colleges, like if you weren't affiliated with clubs,

(18:04):
this was the colleges equivalent of it.
So I was playing there and then my granddad George, a big Oldham fan,
rang Oldham back up and said, this is what he's doing now.
He's played for British College, he's played for England schools,
he's playing for Simon Sester and that's when Then Oldham took me back on.
They said, well, come for a trial. And that's when Ian Dowey was the manager.
That's why I got taken on a non-contract.

(18:24):
So I played for Oldham for a season, basically. Played a few reserve games.
Played some good players. Played against Alan Fletcher for Man United.
Played against Kenny Miller at Molyneux for Wolves. So I got into the reserves,
but I just, I think I let myself down there because, like Dad was saying,
Ian Dowey was this big, he was a big, strong fellow himself.

(18:45):
He didn't play. So he's a unit, wasn't he? And he's just hired.
He had a coach called John Harbin. He was an Australian coach,
like a rugby league coach.
So they were coming to training, coming to the club in the morning.
They were swimming early in the morning, going to the club for breakfast,
footy training till dinner time.
And then some days going to the boxing gym. So he trained three times a day.

(19:05):
And I wasn't a good swimmer and I wasn't a big, strong boxer.
But I could have done a bit more myself, to be honest, to get better at them
things. But I wasn't his type of player. Yeah.
And I used to listen to the players that he signed that come up from London,
like some lads from Wimbledon.
We used to turn up in the mornings, play five-a-side for an hour and a half
and then go home. They weren't used to it either. No.

(19:27):
But he's doing quite well. I think he just missed that promotion with Oldham from League One.
Wigan went up and then Wigan went up again to the Premier League just after
that with Leighton Baines.
Yeah. I played against Leighton Baines on the first game of the season for the
under-18s. Yeah. And when Wigan came to...
Boundary Park after the new year he was in their first team and they won the

(19:48):
league by a mile mad isn't it yeah and the difference is because I signed at
exactly the same time as a lad called Mark Tierney who'd been at Preston he
was a year younger than me,
same same side same left foot would play but more defensive bit stronger,
probably better in the box a bit better swimmer as
well probably understood the game a little bit more because he'd

(20:10):
lived there and been coached by Preston when I
left he went to colchester then norwich and played in
the premier league for knowledge it's mad isn't it it's been mad and i
used to watch him play with the prayer yeah you played
football with him and yeti that's it well that rolls in
nicely actually to a question from dave matheson because he's obviously
a matter of all yeah yeah and he basically said

(20:31):
obviously in dow he was a manager you lost in the playoffs versus qpr
and stuff yeah but did you have like any funny
stories or any like about the older players
out there some people like he's like David Ayres Fitz Hall
Chris Armstrong Clint Hill I just remember Fitz
Hall that was his nickname was one size Fitz Hall
Fitz Hall one size that was his nickname but I remember Clive Wynard came and

(20:55):
he'd been at Leeds and he turned up in his brand new BMW soft top turned up
in the game turned up the ground and he was a good player and he was Ian Dowey's
type of player big strong centre forward scored loads of goals.
Well yeah he had Dylan David Ayres was a 38 year old left winger,
he was 38 he was going up down the wing he was brilliant he was Michael Clegg was playing for,

(21:18):
Oldham and Michael Clegg couldn't get the team Michael Clegg had played for
Man United a couple of seasons before in the Champions League and he wasn't
getting in the side three and that week he wasn't picking him but I remember
I remember doing it a pre-season friendly,
and they'd signed on this Portuguese fella,
and and they had an old Really old Scottish pro.

(21:38):
Yeah. And they signed on this Portuguese fella.
And then he was a young lad. And he was getting changed in the dressing room.
And this Scottish fella started going, watch for the cock, watch for the cock,
watch for the cock. He took his kegs down.
This thing started swinging around. Everyone just started going, whee!
And he didn't have a clue what was going on. He had no idea.

(22:00):
It was just hilarious. And this young kid started going...
I had no idea what was going on even at this point you had no idea.
That's why that must be what I think it's just
some of the Scottish pro giving up I can't remember
his name actually they had some good players so in that age group where Will
Hayden was the year above me he ended up playing in the Scottish Premier League

(22:24):
Scott Vernon was my age in my age group he played in the Scottish Premier League
for Aberdeen so there's not many that went on from there on from there no It was like,
if you were good enough, you were going.
If not, it was that level. Well, I had Adam Griffin in front of me. He was the left winger.
But again, because I never got taken on when I should have done for a scholarship,

(22:47):
some of the lads, when I went back two and a half years later,
they were there. And they were asking, how come, what happened?
And loads of players never turned up that they'd actually given scholarships to.
But he was in front of me and he's a left winger. So then when he went on loan to Chester,
January, February time, that's when i got into the
reserves and that was really my chance to yeah and i
didn't do enough i always remember when my dad dad saying

(23:09):
to me when i was growing up if you ever get a chance if you
get taken on by a club be the first person in and the last person to leave at
night and i didn't because i wanted to be one of the lights one of the like
yeah i just want to fit in first yeah i want to be like i wasn't staying in
digs with them we'd met family on holiday in oldham yeah years before and I stayed with them

(23:31):
so I wasn't in digs I didn't get to know them really so I just wanted to be
liked by the lads that I was playing with.
So and then when you did extra things you get the old oh he's a busy bastard
and all that so I kind of went into my shell a bit and just wanted to just fit
in first but I wish that now,
you should be there for yourself it's all about you it's not about them,
I want to be a footballer now and that's me I don't care what

(23:53):
you want to do I want to be a footballer now if I had my time again I'd
do that I'd be in the first and I'd be out last and I'd do
whatever it take I'd be into that coach John Harbin saying listen I know
I'm not the biggest or the strongest what do I need to do and that's the experience
you gain when you get past that stage and I wish I'd have done that but I didn't
and then obviously come back to the Alleman back to the Alleman listened to

(24:14):
my dad he said come back and I did get an offer from I went and tried to Rochdale
train with their first team for a bit,
and then I was offered Mosley they
were offering me a couple hundred quid a week to go and play for them but my dad said
to me come back get a trade so you've
got something behind you and then you can maybe try again but yeah come back
to St George's went and done the Brick Lane trade in the college and that's

(24:37):
it then I started playing with all my mates again from back here from school
just going off the stories that Chris was telling Johnny Myers at the same time Chris was away,
he was away at Stockport when he went on trial to Stockport they had a few tough
guys and one of these guys that what they reputedly called the toughest in the

(24:58):
club went straight through Johnny Myers. A young kid, they went straight through him.
But Johnny Myers, being Johnny Myers, you know, got up.
When we talked to the coaches about how did they do, they knew that they were
going to take Johnny Myers' YT the minute he stood up.
So again, it goes back to how strong you are, how mentally strong you are.

(25:20):
That's how I remembered it. But he told it slightly differently when he was
here, didn't he? He told it slightly differently.
But that's how I remember that he was playing in a certain position.
One of the biggest lads went straight for him. He got straight up and carried on.
Whereas me and Steve were smaller quicker yeah technical players yeah and like here.
You'd look at us and you'd go what are the best two on the

(25:42):
island at that age but over there for every one of us there's another ten of
them that live just down the road so you have to be special at the size for
the size of me and Steve Priestnell we have to be special to get taken on yeah
and that's it like when Johnny was on Johnny said to me himself he said the
only reason obviously he didn't stay on in the end was the IEV deal that went
otherwise he'd have been over there.
He was trying to get they were trying to get into Merkel's field as well just after.

(26:06):
I think the thing you've got to look at is when Chris talks about there being
another 10 players over there you know it's not far wrong but it's the cost implication.
Massive. To have those other 10 it's costing the club nothing because their
mums and dads would drive them to train and then they'll take them home.
But to make a big commitment to somebody from the Isle of Man that's going to cost money.

(26:27):
Yeah. And that's the downfall that little bit of water between us and England
is a massive... I think it'd be very interesting to speak to someone like Adam
Long now and see what that impact was on him. You know what?
Like, in this sort of day and age where he's gone over and...
But they follow him all the time. He's at Fylde now and he scored on you last weekend at Fylde.
I just mean, like, the financial costs and how did his parents find it and how

(26:50):
did things like... You know, it'd
be interesting to see comparison to what you've done to how Adam's gone.
I think with Adam Long, I think, and this goes down to Jeff Dobbin,
I think, you know, when they're at Union Mills, all those kids that came to
St. George's from Union Mills.
Weren't likely to get the first team opportunities because of the way,

(27:10):
you know, who was at the club and who was managing the club and the story I got.
You know, it was a case of they've been here a long time. We're going to stick with them.
So all those kids came to us.
And when we went down to, I think we were playing Peel at Colby.
Colby semi-final, yeah. And we were down there.
And the minute Adam Long, at the tender age of what he was, actually had an

(27:34):
outstanding game against Peel, he'll go
he's got it so the minute we were walking out the ground Dicko and I travelling
back we need to get on the phone you know Dicko's got the contacts let's get
it sorted and then the rest is his and he wasn't the best one it's just the size again.
Like he had the legs already for it his legs were

(27:57):
massive he was 16 and he just sent the half left footed sent
the half and Dicko knows from where he's been in the game he knows people look
at that the size of him the age of him left-footed centre-halves so he could
get him somewhere but yeah for me when I come back then like you say I started
I played first team at Geordie's 14 when Dad took over or just before you took over wasn't it?

(28:19):
I was on the sideline with Stephen just before he took over I played at 14 in
the first team imagine again go back to my size then I wasn't I was never going
to be big enough strong enough I remember I remember,
Steve Moran saying to me up at St. George's because you were on the bench.
And he said to me, he says, do you think he's up to it? Do you think he's ready?

(28:41):
And I said to Steve, I said, if you put him on the pitch, I'll guarantee you
he's the only player in your team that won't give the ball away.
And true to a word, that particular afternoon when he came on in the second
half, didn't give the ball away once, kept possession all the time.
And then there was somebody up in the background on the bank at St.
George's. Go, oh, what the bloody hell's going on? What's he doing on the pitch?

(29:03):
Christ, he's far too effing small. La-di-da-di-da-di-da.
And then we go down to, I think it was either Castletown the following week.
And I think he had a blinder and he scored or something. And we go back to the clubhouse.
And the guy that's doing all the gobbing off the top of the bank was stood next to me in the urinals.
And he was going, oh, you're a young lad, son of a player. I said,

(29:23):
oh, I said, you've seen a change of ref and attitude, haven't you?
You know, you were up on the bank and he's gone, it wasn't me in particular,
you know, man's tradition. It wasn't me. I said, yes, it bloody was.
It's mad, isn't it? It's mad. and that's it so obviously both of you you know
Chris you then come in you go back into senior football at St.
George yeah tell us about what was it like to be in that team.

(29:47):
Yeah because I come back so do you know what and I missed it and I came back
towards the back end of the season we finished fourth in the league so I remember
when we first started at 40 when my dad first took over I think he said 32 players
over the course of two seasons 32 players left right,
for different reasons and obviously he annoyed them when he was playing with

(30:08):
some of them because of his mouth and he probably thought, I don't want him to be my manager.
So they cleared off. But he knew he had the likes of myself and the lads of
my age coming through and he thought, well, I'll just stick with them.
We'll just see how we get on.
And we gradually got better. And then when I came back from across,
Johnny Myers had come back the year before from Stockport and all I heard about

(30:28):
was how good this Johnny Myers, how good Johnny Myers had been because he was
lean and he'd shaved his hair off.
He looked like an absolute machine and he would go box to
box to box and I missed that season only the
back end of it when I got released from Oldham around about April I'd come back
and played a few games Get that hospital cup sort of spirit Hospital cup yeah
and we finished 4th in the league no I think yeah we finished 4th just I remember

(30:52):
and I remember one game one game does stick in my mind That was with Steve Moran
in charge because my first season that I was in charge we finished,
in Oh yeah no we finished no this is when I first come back No,
we finished the year before we won the league, I think we finished fourth.
The year I come back, because I played only a couple of games at the end of
the season, and one game I remember playing

(31:15):
was at Pulley, and we were playing against St Mary's who were going for the
league, and we were kind of still maybe round about, we were getting better
obviously, and we thought maybe next year we've got a chance.
We were beating St Mary's 2-0 at Pulley, and Sam Kenny was the player manager.
I don't know how old he was then, but he brought himself on.
We lost 3-2, never touched the ball.
Sam Kenny brought himself on when they were 2-0.

(31:38):
I never touched it good boy so we just kind of snowballed from there dad was obviously going out and,
speaking to players like he recognised players that
played against him which ones were good and which ones he wanted and he was
good at getting them he was very good at going out and getting players
we'll come on to that with your dad I've got no
qualms in asking your dad how good he was at poaching players I've no qualms

(31:59):
in that and I know he'll answer it as well well yeah I was a better poacher
of players than Steedo is as a fisherman yeah but and he's not bad but yeah
so we've done all we've done all going through the leagues playing and you know one of the things is,
you're playing with your brothers because Andy was playing Nick played you're
playing with your best mates that I knew from school from junior football and

(32:21):
you're adding in one or two others that you know and then your dad's a manager
and then we've been since then I've been,
I played well I'm what am I on now 86 caps for the Isle of Man I'm still trying
to chase the latest record.
We've done MIFA yeah and we've done on FC Altman and I've pretty much done it
all together and do you know what I've been playing football the amount of places

(32:42):
around the world I've been just playing football,
it's amazing and there's nothing I'd change the one thing maybe I do regret
is deciding not to go to Gotland when the Arn team won the gold medal because
I've got two silvers never won the gold and I decided one year not to go Would
you not change that penalty against Nice?
Yeah probably Yeah Because we win the World Cup Yeah, but we should have got

(33:06):
a penalty when I got fouled before that.
It was a penalty, but he actually apologised afterwards. The referee got it
wrong. Yeah, well, Austin, we're talking about changing things.
Tristan Ringham sent me a question for you. Yes. Would you change the time you
went off and celebrated at Union Palace when the ball hadn't crossed the line?
So, you know, and this has come up. That's brilliant. This has come up a few

(33:27):
times recently because, right, because history may well repeat itself this year because St.
George's are struggling in the league and we've got to go away to Union Mills.
Yeah. And when Dad first took over and I was away in the Isle of Wight with Coxon. Yeah.
And sometimes when we didn't have a game, St. George's would pay for us to come home.

(33:49):
So we'd play. We'd been playing all week. We'd train every day.
So we were fit and we were getting better at football. St. George's would ask
us to come back because they were short on players.
Union Mills and St. George's were struggling to stay in the league.
And it was up on the old pitch. while the hospital was being built.
Pissed down all week. Union Mills wanted the game off and we wanted it on because
me, Cox and my back and the other strong team that day.

(34:12):
Union Mills said it's not playable and seeing it's like, get the referee.
The referee decides. So we're walking around the pitch with the referee.
This pitch is playable. We play on this. Easy. So we bullied him a bit, got the game on.
Referral the ball. Sorry, James Robb. We quoted the rule book.
Yeah. If the ball rolls and bounces, the pitch is playable.
So we kicked the ball up in the air. Luckily enough, found the driest spot.

(34:34):
It ran the hardest spot on the pitch. It bounced.
I remember George nicking a couple of bits. He shoved a load of building sand
off the new hospital building site. He did.
The hospital was getting built, and they had over 100 tonnes of sand there.
And George says, look at all the sand over there. Go and get some of that sand.
Put it... That sand doesn't belong to us. Then you wouldn't do it.
So George jumped in his car.

(34:55):
He went up to B&Q. Oh, to go to B&Q. Bought 12 bags of sand in the back of his car.
Come back, put them all on the pitch. In the meantime, I'd actually demanded
the head of referees or who figures, yes, come up to the ground,
look at the pitch and say, you know, what are they doing?
This isn't, you know, this is football. People come to watch games,
not come to see, you know, games get called off.

(35:15):
So anyway, the guy said that the game is playable. So the game went ahead.
But the moral of the story is Union Mills could have said, excuse me,
we're responsible for this ground.
Now you F off because the game's not on. but they didn't know the rules well
enough so the game went ahead and there's quite a few people down watching and

(35:36):
obviously they knew that me and Coxie were playing away so we were getting a
bit of stick because we'd come over especially for the game and I think we were
winning 2-1 at the time and I raced through and.
Went round the goalkeeper, slotting it in the goal. And so I thought,
shirt over my head, ran down the line to celebrate, passed or left,
because there was quite a lot of people watching and they'd been giving me sticks.

(35:57):
So I put the shirt over my head, ran past them all, and they all turned around,
it's not even in, not even gone in, swearing at me.
And I turned around and the goalkeeper had the ball in his hands.
I was like, what's going on? And I was adamantly gone and the goalkeeper jumped on it and rolled over.
We hadn't crossed the line because it got stuck in the muck because it was that wet.
It was memorable. We still won. we stayed up

(36:18):
when Union Mills went down brilliant and that was the biggest talking point
in their annual dinner by the way they were still complaining about St George's
and that game but like Chris says history's come down again now we're both struggling
in the league this year that'll be a game but it's watching definitely I'll
turn up to that when I've watched,
just hopefully you can get all of London and if not I'm going to video it because

(36:41):
everything's it's sad I mean if you've worn any guns anyway it doesn't matter
well you obviously you mentioned you've got like 86 Ireland caps now which are
all crisp like what's that being like you know representing the Isle of Man,
just for the Isle of Man FA first it's amazing I love playing for the Isle of
Man at any level whenever I play for the Isle of Man because and I always had
this attitude when I came back from playing away at Oldham and the place I'd been,

(37:05):
this is like Manx football you can't when you're playing Manx football you can't
go and play at a higher standard while you're on the island so my attitude was
well I'm going to play it as if it's the Premier League I'm going to play and
I'm going to look after myself as if it's the highest standard of football that
there is because this is the highest standard that I can play in at the moment while I'm here.

(37:25):
So that was always my attitude. So if there was an opportunity to play for the
Isle of Man, I wanted to play and I've loved every single minute of it. I always do.
And I went to the Isle of Man games last year and unfortunately I got an injury which, touch wood.
That was my first serious injury in my whole career, and I'm 39.
I remember coming up, because I came to training at Al Fletcher,

(37:46):
and we were speaking before the game. Yeah, you were training.
And I said to you, Chris, what's it like? How are you feeling?
And this was only probably two weeks before, or was that a week before?
And you said, I don't know, it's touching gold. And you said that to me dead
over. Well, I had problems when I was playing with FCL.
Because of my age, and I've had to change my game, obviously, I've got slower.

(38:09):
But I was having a lot of problems with my hamstrings and just the strength
in my muscles and things like that. So my hamstring was twinging.
And we played FCL, a man-and-walk game, and I lasted five minutes.
And I thought, that's it, that's me done, I'm not going.
But it hadn't hauled, it hadn't turned. It was just, I think it was just fatigue.
It just kept pulling me back. And then, so I ended up going still.

(38:30):
But the same leg, I was playing, I came on a sub in the first game,
sub in the second game. And in the second game, I don't think I was strong.
My muscles were strong enough. off and I went into a tackle and
I ended up not knowing at the time after the tackles because
I carried on playing but I'd done a grade two
grade three term MCL which is the first time I'd ever
done anything like that yeah in in my career on the only

(38:52):
time I've had a knee injury was when I was away with Morrissey on holiday and
someone knocked me off this we were on scooters and someone some drink driver
drove into the scooter I was in the back of knocked me off the bike and I fractured
my skull my elbow and damaged my knee so I was in and out of football for a
year after After that, a year or two until I got a little up on my knee.
But yeah, so that's the Island Games last year. And if I've got a chance,

(39:16):
obviously, I've got to get the support of my wife.
You have to have good support from your family back home to do all these things.
Like my dad's had support from
my mum, Karen, and they have to understand what type of person you are.
And she's supported me through everything I've done since I've been with her football-wise.
So if there's an opportunity and if the management feel like I'm good enough,

(39:36):
I'd love to go back and represent them again next summer Chase that Cap like
last time I seen him he said to me have you still not broke that record and obviously.
That's always been my goal and he knows that I've always wanted to be the most
capital man player if I can and for reasons like,
But my own fault, sometimes not going on trips and then a lot of injuries.

(39:58):
I've been to loads of tournaments where I got injured in the first game,
missed the next two or three. Yeah.
It's a local game, isn't it? It's a local draw and it's injuries that I've had.
I would have easily, I reckon, I would have had 100.
Yeah. And a lot of people probably would say, you know, I could have done that
if I didn't get injured as well.
But I should have had it. But yeah, I just love representing the other one.

(40:19):
Even Mipha, I loved representing Mipha when we were away.
Some of the best trips I've ever had was with the football teams
and then obviously you've gone on you know you were in that
first FC Allemagne team amazing and gone through that amazing memories it's
like I said I'm doing it with my best mates the mates that I've grown up with
and then you you have you gain friends along the way through football because

(40:41):
it's social and you just gain friends and then you get to do all these things
with the friends with your friends and then your family come along and it's just such a nice feeling
but the memories that you have you'll never ever ever
recreate them with anything else and i'm doing it well i'm doing
it with family and friends and it's just been amazing and that's and that's
it so that comes in nicely for to a question from ryan

(41:02):
gartland actually yeah and he just wants to know who your favorite roommate
at an island games was he wants me to say ryan gartland you want me to say ryan
gartland because his mom said to me when we're away and he was like he's on
the phone all the time and uh his mom kept saying to me He is the most dirtiest,
untidy person ever.

(41:24):
And do you know what? In that room, he wasn't. He was as good as cold.
So I'm going to say, my God, and the quietest one when we were in Keneath, it was...
I was rearing with Joey Morland on my way in Sweden. Didn't say a word.
He was only young, wasn't he? Yeah.
Only 16, which you're not allowed to do now because I know last year we went
to the Island Games. Yeah.
Tina had to have rearing on his own because he's 16. Yeah. I was going to say,

(41:47):
I think you've got to get some sort of dispensation from your parents and things like that.
When we went to Sweden, Joey reamed with me and he was the quietest.
But yeah, I was going to say Ryan then just because he asked the question.
That's fair enough. To make him happy, wasn't it? So, ka-ching.
Well, segue back now. Senior, your managing days, everyone knows what a manager

(42:07):
you were, the trophies you won, you know, how you were, what was it like for you from the inside?
Well, I never really thought, and I don't believe anyone else thought that I'd
ever be a decent manager.
I first came to the job when Steve Moran was at St George's.
It was Barry O'Leary who asked me, he said to me, would I take over?

(42:28):
And I said, why do you want me to take over? You've got Steve Moran. around he said
well the club would like to go in a different direction next
year anyway and he said
you know would i be interested in doing it you're the person that
we'd like to do it and i said well if that's what you want okay then i'll do
it but providing that you know if i take it on you've got to give me three years

(42:50):
because there's an absolute shed load of dead wood here and they all need to
pretty much move on. And that's where it started.
And as Chris said, you know, from the first campaign we finished.
Out of goal difference, I think it was, we stayed up. And then the following
season, it was by one or two places.

(43:11):
Then the next season after that, I think it was third or fourth that we finished.
Then after that, we won our first league title.
But it was, to me, it was all about discipline. And I've been a great believer,
and I've said to Chris on many times, and players will tell you,
we'll have won games five or six nil, and they'll have come in the dressing

(43:32):
room, and I'd have been chugging things around like a screaming banshee.
Just because you're winning a game, you start to show both. That's no good to me.
We had one instance, I remember up at Geordie's and it was an end of season
game and we're playing against Brown, who, you know, at the time were quite a decent team and we won.
Didn't we? We were winning. It was about eight or nine. I think it was either

(43:56):
six or seven at the time. And Gareth Jones gave an offside or something.
No, it was a penalty and he never gave it. He didn't give it.
And he went mad on the sideline for not giving the penalty. and someone shouted over.
Nigel Shearman. Yeah, Nigel Shearman, who was an unbelievable footballer.
He shouted over and he said, you're winning 6-0 already.
What more do you want? He said, come on, Bassey. He said, you know,

(44:18):
show some respect. You're winning 6-0.
I said, it's my effing job to win by as many as I can. That is showing you respect.
Us giving up and showboating is not showing you any respect.
Yeah, because you shouted on to, I don't care if I'm winning 6. I want to win 26.
And Shim said to me at the end of the game when you shake everyone's hands he
said I thought that was really disrespectful and his response was,

(44:41):
well what would have been more disrespectful from us is being 6-0 up and all
of our players then trying to take the piss and showboating that would have
been more disrespectful not the
fact that we want to try and score as many goals as we can and I was like
you can't argue that response because you know I don't think Shim had anywhere
to go with it and that's the type of manager he was
Well it was all about doing the right things Right to the last minute. Yeah.

(45:05):
It doesn't matter what stage of the game is, you just do the right thing. You keep it simple.
And if you, you know, if you square the ball, for instance, let's just go all
the way back to Russian and we call it mumps gate.
Frank Jones, great player, great energy.
You know, he's the sort of guy that, you know, makes, makes a team with,
with his, you know, determination. Yeah.

(45:25):
He went through with the keeper to beat down at Russian the last couple of minutes.
He could have squared it to Sam Kane for an open goal.
Frank was in a good position to take the shot, but that's just a matter of choices.
But if Frank squares the ball and Sam Kane puts the ball in,
St. George's don't lose any games in 97.
It's mad. That's mad to think in Manx football. I think in Manx football, you've always got them.

(45:50):
97 games is a massive run, but there's always one in 20 games where three of
the lads or someone's stag do or something and you miss your team, don't you?
Well, you only play 24 games and we went for eight years on the spin with averaging
a plus 100 in 24 matches, plus 100.
We actually scored 163 in one particular year.

(46:14):
So we averaged 6.7 goals per game, every game of the season.
So these are records that are just absolutely mind-blowing.
In a run of eight seasons, there's four seasons where we never lost a game.
So what did I say to you before? I think in, was it about nine or 10?
In something like since 2007 to 2019, St. George's lost only eight games.

(46:41):
It was mad. Yeah, it was something like that, wasn't it? It was 2007 to 2019
or something. Eight games.
Eight games. And all the goals that they scored. And again, it all comes down to mental attitude.
How much of the credit do you take for that, though, yourself?
Well, in terms of badges, I've never had any.
That's why I doubted myself, you know, with all the coaching badges that they

(47:05):
have today in terms of would I make a good manager?
But I always believed I knew how to win games. Yeah. And I knew how to get people across the line.
And I felt by challenging them the way I did that I would get the best out of them.
I mean, I remember going to Isle of Wight to watch Chris play when Kevin Manning was the manager.
He was having a torrid time when i was effing and

(47:25):
jeffing at him from the sideline he responded by effing jeffing at
me and then the second half is game upturned so
there's trigger points just to give you
another example of how i wanted to do so well chris being like he's always talked
about being little yeah i remember at the time where his mental psychology wasn't

(47:46):
to get stuck in so i took Took him to see a psychologist to try and get the better out of him.
More of a more aggressive person in there somewhere.
Yes. And the following Saturday he got sent off for fighting.
So that might have worked it might have worked it did work it was with Chigby
wasn't it from Maxi what you've got to take all the credit for is giving the

(48:07):
players that mentality of how to win and how to how to.
Motivate yourself to win and be as fit as you can because it was okay we had
lots of comments at the time when we were winning stuff we've got all the best
players it's dead easy got all the best players but it's that mentality you
could have the best players but you have to have a mentality and that's what
he gave us was the mentality to win and train we lost the cup final one so we

(48:31):
lost the cup we started the season,
we drew with Union Mills at home we were winning 3-0 and drew 3-3,
we lost at Russian didn't we we lost at Russian and we drew 3-0 drew 3-0 at
Mills and probably should have lost the game in the end we were 3-0 up half
time should have lost and we'd start the season really poorly and he came in
the changing room and said if you want to effing win this league again
we're going to train three nights a week from now on and we trained three nights

(48:53):
a week for the rest of that season I remember that it was Wednesday night I
used to always go for a run, didn't you? I used to see three nights a week.
And that was the mentality. You can have all the best players you want,
but you have to have that.
You can imagine the players that we had, like Kyle Morrissey is unbelievable.
But some of the things he could do for a big fella was amazing.
And you think of his attitude towards it. But Barsy, it was always, but Barsy, but Barsy.

(49:16):
And you think he'd know more than what my dad was saying. Sometimes I don't
need you to tell me, but you've got to have someone to keep them in check.
And that's what he did. But when you consider the fact that Laxi won a grand
slam and then won nothing.
Russian won the league and then won nothing. So people can talk about having

(49:38):
good players and great players, but to actually get the best out of those players
for sort of like 15 years, and we're talking about three football teams.
We're not talking about one. We're talking about the mainstay of Chris and Sean
and one or two others and likes of Callum and what have you,
but bringing in players likes of Stewie Belscott, Robin Bates,

(50:00):
Neil Brogan, Michael McHale, Michael McHale, Chris Mellie. Yeah,
Chris Mellie was good. Craig Lund.
Yeah. You know, so it's actually knowing which position that you need to build
on to get you across the line for the following year.
And Neil Brogan, great footballer. He was another one that did YT.
I think he was up in Aberdeen or might have been. But in the Premier League. Yeah.

(50:22):
So, and he came to St. George's being this super fit person.
Couldn't be Chris or Frank in a race. so he's actually
come to somewhere where he's getting challenged whereas at laxey he
was the number one yeah so when he's come to st george's
again brogie's another one massively mentally strong look what he's doing today
yeah so it was it it is that and if you can get that i mean the amount of games

(50:48):
that we got across the line and we would regularly score three or four goals
in in the last 15 minutes.
Everybody else is tying up. Now I watched the cup final with old boys and Foxdale. Yeah.
The other day. And the football was pretty good, actually. It was pretty good from both teams.
Now, Foxdale weren't really in the cup until the last 70, last 20 minutes.

(51:12):
Yeah. The fact that all boys are playing with 38, 39 year old players,
Jay Chatwood wasn't in the game until 15 minutes to go.
And it could have finished to all. And if you'd gone to extra time,
Foxdale was going to win. Yeah.
But old boys sort of like, you know, it's just home on in there.
It was fitness, wasn't it? If Lee Garland got one because they've got to push.
We say that all the time. That was always the thing that you said. It's the fitness.

(51:34):
You can't work on, amongst football, you haven't got a facility where you're
going to, and you can't train every night.
You haven't got facilities to work on the shape of your team or we do set pieces
maybe before a cup fight.
You can't really have a set off.
You've got to do fitness work. And we were gas work steps all the time.
I remember one time, Falky was managing Laxey, wasn't he? and he couldn't beat us.

(51:54):
He sat in his car one time by the C-turn and watched us go up and down the gas rig steps.
Went back to Laxey and told them what we were doing. Rick Holden stood outside
the dressing room listening to our team talk. Yeah.
So people were trying to find little bits of information that will help them.
But then when we were training, and you know, it's like you do these ball skills
in and out cones and the team that loses.

(52:15):
It was always the case of the team that, you know, the losing team's doing press-ups, right?
So they would go through all the cones and I'd say, right you lost
you're doing 20 press-ups and the likes of the winners will
be all smiling and laughing and say you won so you're doing 19 and i
go what are you on about i said you won't you're doing one less get on with
it yeah yeah and then i always used to say to chris he said if i give you 20

(52:35):
put 25 in because you're putting five in the bank for next week yeah and and
that's the mentality of them and we just kept going and going and going and
now if i was a wealthy person really really wealthy person,
I'm so mentally driven to get the best out of you.
I would get that guy over from the SAS who does the TV.

(52:56):
I would have the players train for three months.
You know, if I had the money, pay the wages, get them trained for three months
and then go to that guy and say, right, which one of them have got the capacity to play for us?
What a challenge that would be. Brilliant. I mean, that's the sort of thing
that Chris would love to do.
Frank Jones would love to do it. Neil Brogan would love to do it.
So when you've got people that love to

(53:18):
do that kind of thing you know that you're
going to get the best out of them on the football pitch 100 and
i think that segues in quite nicely actually to
a couple of questions i've had this is just about you'd
say george's time managing ones from craig cowan from
fcl man he's a kit man down there craig said did
you ever have like a thorn in your side was there always a team

(53:40):
or a person when you were managing St George's
that would either get the better of you
or really annoy you in that way to you
know push you on I think the only time I was in terms of management and losing
the only time I was really annoyed was when Laxey won the Grand Slam because

(54:01):
we were put out of the semi-final I think by Laxey we lost the other two finals
I I think, against Laxey.
We came second in the league to Laxey. And the fact is, and this is where you
get your mental strength from, the fact is...
Laxey weren't necessarily a superior or greater team. They were better.

(54:22):
You can't take anything away from them. They were definitely very well organised.
They were definitely better.
But when we came in after being down at Laxey, I think we lost 6-3 or 7-3 or something like that.
I went mad at my team. I went into the dressing room and said,
you lot, you've just allowed yourselves to be effing bullied out there.

(54:45):
Never mind the football match. every tackle they won
every second ball they won because you played like
a bunch of cowards that will never have that happen
you will never ever walk in this dressing room again and have
not crossed that line and got stuck in and that's a turning point yeah so then
you go you go went and got players like james mcstay and liam cowan yeah yeah

(55:05):
james mcstay and liam cowan were like they were a godsend yeah because if i
said to liam cowan or james mcstay.
See him over there when the referee's not
looking i want you to clobber him yeah right
they would do that oh if i said to
you if i said to james mckstay there's a

(55:26):
bottle of water over there go and grab it pick it
up and spray it in the center half space just to
wind him up they would go and do it yeah yeah so they were your
dogs of war you could they were your go-to people and and
they would sort of like upset the team
and it was great because the minute you upset set someone their focus
has all gone away from the game yeah and that would open up doors and avenues

(55:48):
for us to get through so we could pick the players that we needed to upset to
just sort of like make room for you know for people to score goals we were very
good at doing that kind of thing and that's that's fair enough and well i'll
ask you this one because we touched on it before.
You were and i think everyone knows you were great at poaching the best players
on the alabama and Bassey and

(56:08):
like fantastic at getting them was there anyone that ever said no to you?
I think there probably was but I can't remember because we got Steedo Steedo
had the best year of his life playing up in St.
George's and when we talk about discipline here's
a story for you you know the lads like Callum
you know they want to answer back and certain players

(56:29):
want to answer back and at the particular time I think Paul O'Brien
was with me Keith Lunt was with me and by the way Paul O'Brien was a godsend
for me because he was with me for like 21 years what a guy what an absolute
start so anyway going back to this game before the game starts sit them all
down we've done all the tactics and by the way before you go out here.

(56:51):
Any one of you effing little la-di-da-di-das, answer me back,
or Keith, or Paul, don't look at me, just walk off the pitch because you're
coming off, right? So that was the order.
We get in, Steedo, Steedo's such a funny guy.
He's such a, he's such a, so anyway, and he's having the game of his life.

(57:13):
I'm saying to Steedo, Steedo, get forward.
Steedo, get back. Steedo, get forward. forward
steedle and he went oh for father dada
f f f f steedle and off
he walked that was it and he apologized to me he
scored a hat trick in about 25 minutes and but he
only gave his last but that's the point the point

(57:34):
is we're all in it together and the
one thing i will say is i never ever criticized
anyone on a personal level no
yeah when you're a football manager you're a
a football manager the amount of arguments i've had
with karen blesser over the fact that my
kids and holly and not picking them and

(57:56):
not doing this and not doing that and and i would say listen when i'm at football
i'm their manager when i'm here i'm their dad but sometimes they found it difficult
to but you could separate yeah to separate that so it was never always easy
but i was driven and And I just hate losing.
My kids have never won anything against me unless they've done it on merit.

(58:19):
And I'm talking from snakes and ladders, tiddlywinks, hallway football, anything.
If they beat me, it's a shake of the hand because they've done it.
Not because you've let someone do it. Because if you let someone do it,
it's a false thing. It's just not real.
I gave up playing chess. Nick Caron, I'm playing chess. Nick was very good at chess.

(58:43):
It was very good he's just not good at riding bikes I remember just after Covid
when you had to go and pick him up from around on the back of the wheel because
he was dying couldn't even keep up with me it was funny that was a funny one
that but yeah might be good at chess but you can't ride bikes so St.
George's obviously glittering career three grand slams you know 97 games unbeaten

(59:05):
you know 10-11 years there's records here that they'll never beat but,
One of the records, and as a striker, I would love to have this record.
St. George's won eight railway cups on the spin, probably played in about 13
out of 14 cup finals on the spin, winning eight of them.

(59:27):
But the eight that they won on the spin, Frank Jones scored a goal in every game and won.
Now you can play football for 500 years and that's not going to happen.
No that is that is that is memorable the
team going and winning and having a plus 100 for
eight years in a row not going to happen like we

(59:49):
touched on about you know a team scoring 6.7 goals every
game for 24 games in a row not losing
four games in you know going four seasons in eight years without losing a game
that that's just phenomenal that just shows you that's not about having good
good players that's about having the mental capacity the right attitude desire and belief.

(01:00:15):
And no one missed training because they knew if they missed training they weren't
playing i remember johnny saying johnny myers when he's on here saying that
we'd won cup finals and you get in the changing rooms everyone'd be buzzing
to be loving it it'd be like right then next one onto next one forget that you've
won that now onto the next one that's the way it was for years when my My thing,
they could probably tell what I was going to say at every annual dinner because

(01:00:38):
I thought that one of my roles was not just to make good football players.
I said, we're not here as good football players here. We're here to make good men.
And people, what I mean by that is if you've got the right mental attitude out on the pitch,
you can walk into any job, whether it's banking or building or whatever it is,

(01:00:58):
and be strong enough to have whatever's thrown at you and deal with it.
That's what we talk about in mental strength.
And that's fair enough. So there's St. George's, wonderful time.
You then had the opportunity to manage that Mephysite, that Malcolm Blackburn
settle. Yeah. What were them days like?
Well, I think Manchester United should be looking to Malcolm Blackburn to get

(01:01:21):
him and do what he can for us. The new stadium. The new stadium, yeah.
Because I can tell you now, with all the football that we've played,
I have the greatest respect for Malcolm in what he managed to achieve.
And I don't know how he managed to achieve it from private jets to five-star
hotels to go to Sweden, Cyprus, Hungary, France.

(01:01:44):
Like Chris said, you know, you feel like you've traveled half the world representing a small island.
And when we were in Sweden, that all the games were actually getting zoomed
back to Jacks. And then by the time we'd reached the final, they were getting
zoomed into Port Air and into Peel, into Ramsey.
Once again, it's something that's excited the community of the Isle of Man coming together.

(01:02:08):
And the players knew what they had to do. So when they scored a goal, they ran to the camera.
Yeah that wasn't for them that was for everybody else at
home that's really satisfying when you
you know the players appreciate what the people at
home are doing for them and you think them players that you brought in there
you know you've talked a lot about mental strength was that squad mainly picked

(01:02:29):
on their mental strength knowing you were going to them places to play teams
that were going to be better than well supposedly better than you i think there's
situations where where they will get stronger.
Yeah. One of the, you know, I spoke to Dicko before one of, one of the things
that I sat them down when we were at King Williams college and said to them,

(01:02:49):
if we go to this tournament and you're in the squad.
We go as a squad. Now, when we're putting the teams out on the pitch and we're playing,
if I hear any one of you complain about the fact that somebody's in ahead of
you or somebody else should be playing because you don't hardly doubt,

(01:03:11):
whatever reason, the minute you open your mouth and you begin to talk like that,
you are disrespecting the squad.
Not that particular person. Yeah. Because we're in it together.
We win together we lose together so when you talk negatively like that you're
disrespecting everybody yeah so when you so sit down and think about it and

(01:03:34):
if you're not playing try harder yeah that's it try harder show me that you
want to play show me because we played one particular game.
Unfortunately i had to take a player off in in i think when i'd been playing
10 15 minutes or or something like that. And I have to change it and take a player off.
And they were on the dugout. Somebody in the dugout says, you can't do that.

(01:03:58):
Or somebody else sat next to him and said, yeah, I think can. And he will.
And fortunately for us, the change that we made work, we won the game.
Yeah. So you can't go anywhere with that.
If you don't win the game and those particular instances, then that particular
player, you know, my doors always open, come and speak to me,
talk to me and then I'll give you my reasons and that's where it finishes,

(01:04:21):
and that's it so obviously after Mipha you were still at St George's at the
time as well you know that all happens FC Allemand comes about how do you get
that FC Allemand job to start off with?
Well I think the let's first of all say.
They've done a fantastic job Paul Jones has done a fantastic

(01:04:43):
job job in creating the
club that's where he's done a really good job then then
you have the situation of who's going to
be the manager yeah fortunately enough just
fell my way it fell my way and obviously
it was it was a pride thing it was yeah you've got
to you've got to be the first manager to take that into you know

(01:05:06):
the english leagues uh so for me again it
was because of your your your links and i think it's
your joy is because of lee dixon i think
helping paul jones create the club and it yeah started i think
it was dico that mentioned to paul do we go to it was
i think it was dico that mentioned to paul look if you're
not going to do it but i.e paul jones if you're not prepared or ready to do

(01:05:29):
it yeah then obviously he said he's got to be the go-to guy based on everything
and like he said to you would he asked lee would you work with him and obviously
So they work so well together for St.
George's, for MIFA and everything.
So it was really the, the obvious choice.
Oh, for that was, I think it was the obvious choice.

(01:05:52):
And then you could get Paul O'Brien to help with the goal.
Paul O'Brien and Lee Dixon and myself, and this is not in an arrogant way.
But I often walk past the Bee Gees statues down the promenade and I think to
myself, the three amigos, Paul O'Brien, Dicko and Bassey. Get one of them.

(01:06:13):
Three unlikely people that you should be making statues of and stuff like that.
But just as a fun side of the thing, because that's, and being a manager is
being able to listen Listen to everybody.
And it's my job to take all the information in and then put the team out there.
That could be Paul O'Brien would advise me on goalkeepers.

(01:06:35):
Dicko would advise me on how players are performing and understanding the coaching systems.
So you listen to your coaches. You're not stupid enough to go,
oh, no, I'm just going to ignore you because those coaches aren't going to be with you for very long.
No. We always used to have these little powwows and talk about it.
And I'm through that. You become very, very good friends. And Dicko is a very,

(01:07:00):
very nice guy. Paul O'Brien is a really nice guy.
Dicko, you don't get into an argument with Dicko because he just speaks that
quick. He'll just lose you.
The only unfortunate thing for you is you had to room with him every time we went away, didn't you?
What was that unfortunate for him? It's unfortunate for him because I was snoring a bit. So, yeah.
He might have drowned the head because he's in. He might have drowned his head.

(01:07:22):
Yeah, it was an out, wasn't it? By the way, while I'm snoring,
I don't want to tell you what he's watching.
I've got a funny story for you about him. Someone came away,
someone come away on their very first island trip. It might have been Callum.
Their first island trip in Gibraltar and they got ruined with Dicko and that's
not one person you want to be with.

(01:07:42):
So he's in there and then he's come back into the room. I might have this wrong.
It might not have been Callum, but he's come back into the room and there's
Dicko Lannan's bed, nothing on.
Absolute buddy starkers he's
gone what are you doing you can welcome to your own
team i think where
i think again where it worked for myself and lee as it always has done he's

(01:08:08):
very close to the players yeah so he picks up on all the little emotions and
keeps his ear to the ground on what's going on.
And in football, it can also be a very dangerous game because the person that's
confronting you is an honest guy. Yep.
Ones that aren't confronting you they're the ones that

(01:08:30):
you got to be wary of because they'll be the ones that talk about you and not
to you so in that respect when you've got people that want to get the information
from you that's a good thing because you know where they are it's a fine line
as a player it's a fine line looking from a player's point of view to have somebody,
as a coach or a manager that wants to

(01:08:52):
be your friend but could also just cut you as also your
your manager and has to make or coach it has to make the choice
for the good of the team yeah and i
think lee was always really good at that he still is good at that he's always wanted
to he'll be your friend but he'll be honest with you yeah
and if you're not quite good enough you're not doing it he'll tell you and he's
always been good at that that is a very fine line to have and i did they worked

(01:09:14):
really well together for me i always used to sort of like distance myself when
the when the players want to go out for a drink or they want to do certain things
I always distance myself purely on the basis that they could probably drink more than I could.
And when you've had too much to drink, sometimes you can start talking a load
of nonsense and the players would remember a load of nonsense.

(01:09:35):
Yeah. And you can trip yourself up. So from a management point of view,
I always used to try and step back from going for a drink with the players and
things like that. We had lots of hot tub parties at his house and he wasn't
involved. He wasn't involved.
I was looking out the window though. Yeah. they're dropped on you.
Why are they up here on a Friday night they're some

(01:09:57):
of my fondest memories is actually we used to have a badminton
net and we used to play head tennis and all the players
used to come up and have barbecues and it was very very competitive which we
wouldn't have it any other way and even down to the ball was in the ball was
out and all this painting lines on the ground so we did paint plants didn't
we we painted lines people getting fed up and kicking it into the field with

(01:10:19):
the cows and stuff like that so it all went Well done, but again,
you're building character and you're building...
Mental strength it's like you know i've heard some
people talk about you know the per sleep per sleep or
whatever you call it effect yeah um and then the
gas work steps the gas work steps doesn't make
you a better footballer but it sure as hell makes

(01:10:41):
you a better team a group of people so if you want
to go into a game you want to be in that
game with the same people that you're prepared to stand in the
trenches with and you'll you know that every
single player has got your your back regardless of where
you are on the pitch like johnny said when he did when
he came on speaking to you the week he said about football the social
side of football yeah there's that and that is really

(01:11:04):
really important to have that social side of it in and out on
and off the pitch yeah after the game which is gone now
it's completely gone especially from st george's point
of view now where we are it's completely gone but there is also that side
of it when you're training together as well
and you're working hard and you don't want to do it
because you know it's going to hurt but he's doing over there he's doing

(01:11:24):
it and then he's going to push you and he's going to make you do it
and then you're all bringing it and you're dragging each other along and you
know at the end of that session when you're all absolutely flat on you're you're
dying on the pitch you're looking around and you're going we've all done it
together and that builds a team and that builds that builds a character within
your team and we were doing the gas work steps all the time and we would be

(01:11:44):
he's not coming to why is he not going to get yourself down and they'd be be there and they'd do it.
We had, this is, there's a couple of things I can go back and tell you about
training with Dean Pinnington, with Adam Long, Shane Maxwell, Scout Chetton.
And I can talk to you about little things like we used to go up and down the
steps and then we'd go around the keep and they'd go up the hill and down,

(01:12:06):
we'd do whatever until, you know, they're all half dead.
But they were doing all this training. And I noticed that these young 16 year
old lads that had just come from Union Mills were,
And they were coming in last, second to last, third from last.
So they were sat on the bottom of the steps and I laid right into them.

(01:12:27):
I said, these people that are beating you are 33 years old.
There's absolutely no way that you should be coming in here.
If you want to get in this team, you need to pull yourself together.
But from that point on, Adam Long, Max Voskantje, because they were good.
And they were never last again. again. Yeah. And Maxwell Skelcher spent the
next year or two trying to beat Chris and I think he beat him once going up

(01:12:51):
the hill past the Mount Sands.
I think he beat him just once and that made his whole life.
But I used to do when Dad played for the Old Boys. Yeah. I used to be a trainer when I was like 12.
Yeah. Brian Garland didn't like him. Yeah. We'd run across the prom from Summerland
across the prom and back and back to Summerland for the Fiverr side and I never
really joined in the Fiverr side.
It's just because Popeye was in there and I remember Dean doing it, Dean Pennington.

(01:13:13):
And we used to train at Ben Mahiga on a Monday night on the AstroTurf and there'd
be this young lad on his own kicking a football into the goal all night and
it was like it was half seven, eight o'clock getting towards nine o'clock at
night and he must have been 10,
11, 12 on his own just shooting into the goal smashing the ball and we learned,
who it was eventually because I ended up seeing him play and I thought what?

(01:13:37):
The best young player I'd ever seen on the Isle of Man for that age group.
Ability. Ability wise. And then Dickle knows him and knows his family.
So he ended up coming and training with us. 12, 13 years old,
training with our first team, sprinting up Bray Hill, trying to beat us when
I was senior players and he was sick at the top.
We used to go do the triangle and you do three laps, but you jog across the

(01:14:00):
bottom of the school down the hill to the lights.
But from the bottom of Bray Hill to the top, it was a sprint.
It wasn't a jog. It was just a full-out spring.
And I remember Dean coming this particular time, and he was paired up with Callum,
and they were going up the hill.
I used to stand up on the opposite side of the road so I could actually see what's going on.

(01:14:20):
And Dean, I think, was about 12 or 13, wasn't he?
Yeah. And they were going up this hill, and I was like, Callum,
if he effing beats you, you're finished.
And Dean, if you don't effing beat him, there's going to be hell to pay.
And these two were going hammer and toggles up this hill. and Callum ran out
by about 12, 13 yards in the end.
Dean got to the top of the hill, went round the corner and started throwing

(01:14:45):
up and they're all going, all the lads are going, Bassey, Bassey,
Mark Pennington, he won't be happy with you.
Dean's round there throwing up on his new trainers and all that.
And I said, I tell you what, Mark will be proud.
He will be proud, not unhappy. He will be extremely proud that his son gave everything.
Thing and that's the way we work in training so obviously

(01:15:08):
we're coming to the end of like you're playing days you're managing
days everything comes around FCL man has comes to an end they want to go to
a different direction yeah and they ask you to move on yes how hard do you find
that as a person oh at the time it was it was it was actually it's probably
the worst I've felt of football,

(01:15:30):
It was, yeah, I don't want to go into the detail too much, but yeah,
it was probably the worst that I felt in football because I look back at it
now and I still watch it today.
I still watch the Newmills final. I watch the cup final.
And I only mentioned it to Chris, I think it was about two or three days ago and other people.
To me, it wasn't about winning the trophies.

(01:15:53):
It was about seeing the faces in the crowd, knowing that the players had left
everything on the pitch.
I mean, I had this ethos at times. It was a bit mental, really,
because I used to say to them, if you walk off that pitch, you could have done more.
If you crawl off that pitch, you've given everything.

(01:16:13):
And that's the limits where I wanted to take the players. So they actually just
literally had to crawl off the pitch.
And if they did and they won, that's great. And if they hadn't won,
they've given everything.
And that's where I was all the time. but yeah i
felt really disappointed i won't what i
will say is it's an incredibly tough job incredibly

(01:16:37):
time consuming mentally physically
so anyone doing the job will have good days they'll have bad days but overall
it's it's what we do that's what football is yeah and that's fine and that i
think that segues nice into like a couple of final questions really just i'll

(01:16:58):
just add to Sorry, Dean, I'll add to that.
At the time, I mean, everybody could see the results weren't going so well.
And they weren't doing as well as we'd liked in the league table.
Results just weren't happening. We had a lot of players injured from the previous year.
And it is the fact of the time, how time-consuming it is.
And you were training twice a week at six o'clock, half six in the morning.

(01:17:19):
You come straight up and you're getting into an intense training session twice
a week. A lot of the players were getting injured.
They had a long season, a season that they've never been used to before. Yeah.
Because you're playing midweek games, which we'd never done before.
Players have gone from... You're going from playing 24 games a season,
or let's say 30 games, a cupcake, 46 this year. Yeah, to four to... Yeah.
So, and we had a lot of injuries. So at the turn and put, at the point that

(01:17:39):
it happened, there was players coming back from injury and you think results might pick up.
And I could see the effects it was having on him anyway.
Yeah. He was tired. We were getting to airports and it'd be six or seven weeks
in a row and I couldn't do it all because of my job, my work commitments.
So I couldn't do it all, but because he's self-employed, he'll do it.
He'd take time out of work on a Tuesday, go straight to the airport,

(01:18:00):
play the game, take time out of work on a Wednesday morning because he's at
the airport travelling back and go straight back to work.
And trying to run a business and trying to run a football team for anyone and
you've got Lee Dixon doing exactly the same as his coach, that is time consuming
and I could see the effects it was having on him.
He was mentally drained, he was tired, the results weren't going so well.

(01:18:20):
So that weighs on you heavily as well.
So at that time, I thought during the season, this will probably be without
even asking him I could see it in him I thought this will probably be his last
season the results aren't going well things were happening behind the scenes anyway,
and from my point of view what should have happened is had the discussion,

(01:18:41):
let's go to the end of the season see what you can do you've got your players
coming back let's keep going as we are to the end of the season thanks very
much for everything that you've done,
next season we'll go our separate ways and that's what should have happened
it should have gone to the end of the season kind of like a bit like Jurgen
Klopp saying look I can see my time's coming up here I'm drained I've had enough,
I want to just see the season out with you and then I'll go my way you go your

(01:19:06):
way but for some reason some reasons or other reasons,
it didn't happen but that's exactly what should have happened and if they've
had that conversation instead of trying to take things from underneath them
from behind the scenes which is what was happening that's what they should have
done just said to them look thanks very much for all your time and effort but
everyone appreciates what you've done.
Let's go to the end of the season. I look back now, like I say,

(01:19:28):
I watch those two finals and I just see all those smiling faces and I'm like.
You know, we went to the World Cup in Sweden. By the way, we played against
the best football teams that any island team has probably played against.
You've been playing against professional footballers. Apart from when you played,
when Kevin played England, Scotland, Ireland, that might be another good level.
But what we achieved down the bowl, what we brought to the Isle of Man will always live with me.

(01:19:52):
The fact that people were talking on a Monday, are you going to the game Saturday?
Are you going to the game? And there was posters getting put up in shops downtown
and everybody was over. and you said before we started the interview that somebody's
trying to sell tickets for 50 quid so what's the next team?
It's happened to me personally twice when I
played for the Isle of Man team against Jersey in the NLS final down

(01:20:13):
at the boat people asking for tickets all week
two weeks three weeks I think they were on sale on like Intersport on
sale in Intersport 3,000 people there then you
get to a final and a playoff final and the
cup final for the FC Isle of Man another 3,000 people
there down the bowl and it's not not necessarily about
football like he says it's about the people coming together

(01:20:34):
and fcl man is an amazing thing for the old
man it's about bringing the island and getting them
on the map in the football in terms but also a community coming together and
for them two or three occasions or even the build up to them finals the semi-final
as we built up towards the playoffs the the crowds that we were getting and
you could see people turning up and the excitement was bringing it It was like

(01:20:56):
a Saturday night out. Yeah.
My family were like, we'll meet at the ground at this time and then we'll take,
the young kids will take the tea and then your kids are there watching you play football.
And at times it's like at the end of the game, it's emotional when you get around
and see the amount of people, see what you're doing for the LML.
And that's why I just, I just felt like it was.
It was just wrong at the time. It was too soon. Too soon. Let it go until the end of the season.

(01:21:18):
But what that has done for the Isle of Man,
and brought the community together, especially that first season,
it was a novelty and it was always going to be the case where the bigger crowds
and the biggest crowds were always going to be in the first season,
because you base the model, I believe, on Guernsey and their crowds decline
over the years, which is going to happen.
But for them, two, three, four, five occasions at the ball when you've packed

(01:21:41):
it out, it's just something you'll never forget. Yeah, and you see they come
back now. It was Monday night there, for example. There was a thousand people down. It's brilliant.
You know, yes, there is weeks where you get four, four or five hundred people,
but, you know, it's pissing down on the Isle of Man. They've probably been out in the afternoon.
You know, the missus has dragged them to town. They've been dragged through
town or they've had to go, they've been watching local football and it's like,

(01:22:02):
I'm so, I just want to stay home and get warm.
It's understandable that that will fluctuate. But it's nice.
It was, like I said before, it's for the people. It's to see the kids,
the smiling faces getting you know autographs and
buying shirts and buying memorabilia now that's and
so it's because it's going to be there it's always going to
have a hardcore following and i

(01:22:23):
actually do believe on this year could
you say have they done well have they done bad my point
of view is that if you finished in the top eight it's a
respectable position if you finish in the the top eight
from finishing 13th last year if you finish
10th but it's it's marginal improvements
if any because we talked before if you

(01:22:46):
lost two games you're going to be 15th so if you
win two games you could be you know eighth ninth tenth but the
point i'm gonna make is they've done so well
against the top teams where's it all gone wrong against the lesser teams that's
the questions you've got to ask and this is where we go back to mental strength

(01:23:08):
my teams would never have given up on both sides.
And that's where they are and they need to correct that because they're capable
of going up they are definitely capable of going up but the question is when
you get up there because of the level of football you're going to are you going to stay up?

(01:23:30):
I just think logistics is one thing that will hold it back with,
Being in Ireland and whether they can arrange with the league a different arrangement
where they don't have to play all the midweek games off-island.
I know it's an agreement they had to get it going, but maybe it's something
they can revisit because it's difficult.
The logistics side of it is you can never have your squad available for every game.

(01:23:55):
I know there's injuries, but you can't because of work commitments.
And you're asking these lads to travel off-island. You get the team to come
here, the wind's like mad because they've got to come to Alamad once.
And I know it's something that we knew we had to do, but we're going away every
other week, twice a week sometimes, three times a week.
They're going to hit. The logistics is going to struggle. They are going to hit a platter.

(01:24:17):
Then I think everybody's fully aware of the only way that the Isle of Man FC,
FC Isle of Man gets up into the echelons of like Wrexham.
The only way, you need a multimillionaire backer.
Now the question is if you get a
multi-millionaire backer what happens to the board because if i'm giving you

(01:24:38):
10 million quid i'm telling you what's happening with my money and i'm telling
you who's going to be the manager and i'm telling you who's going to be this
this and this so you have the thing are you going to protect what we've got
and keep it manx and be quite happy to stay,
where we are or one league higher or are we going to diversify and get somebody

(01:24:59):
in with a load of money that's actually going to start paying players.
And by the way, if you pay, if you bring somebody in from England and you pay them.
You should be then paying all the local lads that play for you as well.
So I'm talking about across the board. And the only way you're going to get
up by introducing that kind of football is to potentially have a better youth system.

(01:25:21):
And I'm going to bring you to something that, this is my opinion.
This is nobody else's opinion.
I'm looking around now at Manx football and we're not in the same strength of
league as we were five years ago or 10 years ago or before that.
I feel that too many clubs don't have youth systems.

(01:25:44):
Now, a lot of that can be down to the club, you know, in terms of getting coaches, getting coaches, okay?
But when you have A, B, and C, and D at particular football clubs,
no disrespect to the clubs because they feel that they're doing the right thing.
But what you don't understand is players from B, C and D completely stop playing

(01:26:11):
football at 16 because they're never going to get into the first team.
Yeah, they're never going to be the A team players.
But C and D are A, B somewhere else or somewhere else.
So, but again, that's down to the club in terms of having the coaches.
But the other thing I would like to introduce,

(01:26:32):
and this is completely off the wall, and I think if you were to do that and
said each club was only allowed a squad of 18 players under 14 or under 16,
or if they had an A and B of under 14, under 16, so the B team players can't
play for, you can't swap and change.
But if you had a squad of 18 players, every Saturday or Sunday when they're

(01:26:58):
playing, each person in that 18-man squad should be given a minimum of 15 minutes on the pitch.
So you feel part of the club rather than just being sub, not getting a game, sub, not getting a game.
Because kids are walking away and going cycling.
They're going boxing. They're going to go and do gymnastics.

(01:27:19):
They're going to go running. They're going to do all these other things.
So this is where we need to change. We've got rolling subs now.
And the FA are now talking about introducing four leagues and this sort of thing.
So they can see it coming down the track.
But what they're not getting is the actual, when they leave that 15-year-old
scenario. The play with tension.

(01:27:39):
They all move away. Yeah. But you could keep so many more players. Fantastic suggestion.
You keep so many more players. Playing football, St. George's would have to have a youth team.
All boys would have a youth team. There's teams out there. Do you know what?
I think that's a fantastic suggestion.
But the only stumbling block on that,

(01:28:00):
and I'll come to it, and it's a God-given fact, finance clubs
are making money out of these kids and there's nothing wrong with that because
it's business but if you want football to survive and thrive in terms producing
better players for fc island man to pick from yeah you need to expand the youth

(01:28:22):
system across the whole island.
And you know what? I think that segues in nicely, actually, too.
Obviously, I normally ask people what you think is good and bad about men's football.
You've just nailed your bit on the head there, I think, Chris,
with that. What about you, Junior? Is there anything that you'd add to that?
I would go back, and if anyone's listened to Lee's and Craig's podcast a couple

(01:28:42):
of weeks ago, I agree with everything they said about where they're going wrong at the moment.
And I've said this to loads of people I've spoke to.
Senior football at the moment, and everybody can see it and say it,
but nobody's coming up with solutions.
It's easy to just say that's what's wrong and that's what's wrong with it.
All this, that and the other.
I've said it and I've said it to somebody before in the FA.

(01:29:05):
I don't think the Masters League should be 35 years old. I'm 39 coming up 40,
and I'm still trying to play. I'm still playing senior football.
The amount of players you've lost from this Saturday football because you're...
And then one rule or another that you're now not allowed to play Sunday if you've
played the last first team game for a club. so that the veterans or Masters

(01:29:25):
football should be 40 at a minimum.
And I don't know if this is true or not, but I've been told it's because the
English FA do 35. I know they do a 40 as well, but I don't know if that's true,
whether we have to have it at 35, but it should be 40.
We manage our own league rules over here. We've got a rules revision committee.
We should manage our own rules and it should be 40 for Masters football because you've got that age gap.

(01:29:50):
With them five years, five to 40, you've lost
them and then on the other side of it and i listened to lee about
it and i've had this suggestion before i played
at 14 and i know safeguard is completely different now
look at child protection and i totally agree
with it but at the same time if you've got kids parents love their kids doing
sport and wanting to improve all the time they put any money into i do it myself

(01:30:13):
for my kids they will put anything into their kids to make them better their
sport and keep them out of trouble and keep them do it on the right path when
they get to a certain age at 14, like my dad just said.
They just seem to stop playing because there's nowhere to go. No.
And now I think if you've got kids and Lee's suggestion was of a parent giving

(01:30:33):
permission. Yeah, yeah.
And I believe it. I can sense your belief in that. I've suggested this plenty
of times before and we had an opportunity for St. George.
We're struggling with players and it's widely known we're struggling with players
for our senior team this year.
We've had players train with us through the course of the season that are too
young to play for our first team and they're good enough to play.

(01:30:54):
But they're too young. So, and I've said, one of the dads was playing for us
and I said, why can't you just sign a form to say I'm happy for him to play?
He's young enough. He's good enough, Matt. So I think the 35s should be moved
up to 40 and you get players back there because it's easy to just turn up on a Sunday and play.
And sometimes we're playing once every three weeks and that game's getting called off.

(01:31:15):
And I've spoke to them, spoke to some of the players and they said,
oh, I don't have to train. I don't have to do anything. Just turn up on a Sunday and play.
That's fine, but we're losing all that group with players at the top end and
then at the bottom end, you're losing the 14s.
If you're big enough, if you're good enough and your parents are happy to sign
a waiver for maybe insurance reasons, I don't know.

(01:31:35):
To safeguard, I'm happy for my son, daughter to play at the age of 14 or 15.
Before they turn 16, then they should be allowed to because you've lost all that.
If you go all the way back to where we began and we talked about the fact that
when our players go across and they go on trial and there's 10 Chris Basses

(01:31:57):
or there's 10 Johnny Myers,
the only way we can get ahead of the game is by having that waiver for the 14-year-old
because that will take the water out because he's gaining experience.
If Chris and Johnny had had to wait till they're 16 to play first-team football,

(01:32:18):
they were never going to Oldham. They were never going to Stockport. No.
And that's the fact. I just want to jump in and say I discussed this with somebody
at work the other day because this young lad plays football and we've talked
about it recently quite a lot.
There's a new rule now where you can't, so nobody at the moment,
nobody from the Isle of Man can sign for a club in the UK.

(01:32:40):
That's right. Because they're a certain distance away from the club.
Yeah. So it's amateur football. So the club, if you're able to play.
There's a situation where there's a young girl that plays football and she couldn't,
she was asked to go and sign on for Liverpool school football when she wasn't
allowed because she's too far away.
She lives a travel distance away from football club. Could possibly.
So how is somebody from the Isle

(01:33:01):
of Man You're going to have the opportunity to go and play for a club.
And the Alabama said, okay, that's fine. So where's the opportunities to go
and play for them clubs and train with them clubs?
Anyway, because you live on the island, you can only go, say,
half-term school holidays.
You train for a week. But the kids you're going to be training with are going
to be playing with this club twice a week every week.

(01:33:22):
You're missing out on that coaching, but you're still now going to miss out
because you can't train with them for a week at half-term school holidays.
And I know, because the person I spoke to at work.
Jersey have agreed that they are now allowed to
have players go and play for clubs or sign on for
professional clubs right because they complained about this
and said how so how are we going to get players professional footballs from

(01:33:43):
jersey yeah so they've now agreed that if they live an hour from an airport
where they live yeah and then they let they then play for a club within an hour
from the airport they've arrived at they're allowed to go and play that's something
that the other man needs to be looking at as well.
Well, I think, well, from an FA point of view, have we stagnated or are we being proactive?

(01:34:04):
Because by the way, the best things about Mags football is the minute is FC Alleman.
Yeah. And the junior, the junior, the amount of people involved in junior football.
Rather than just saying this, oh, it's the English FA, it's the English FA, it's the English FA.
Why don't they do a form with the questionnaire?
They've actually got one out in a minute. Well, that's good.

(01:34:26):
And it's to drive their strategy for the next five years. Well, that is fantastic.
And it's out. It's an email. I actually, I put it, I shared it yesterday.
It's been out for a week. I think it closes at the end of this month.
That should be a suggestion. And it is. It's fantastic.
There's loads of things in there. It's a great suggestion that we go to the
English FA and say, look, can we have this? The same as Jersey, what they've agreed.
We've got some fantastic young footballers in the LMA. can we not agree in the

(01:34:49):
same system where they live they always live less than an hour away from the
airport in the Alamance wherever they live can they then not have a play for
club an hour away from the airport realistically.
Why can't they it's only 50 minutes on a flight to London of course it is so
you could fly to Gatwick Airport or fly to London City I think it's,

(01:35:09):
if we're going to go to Cornwall this year I think it's an hour from the airport that you land at
or wherever the club is so Ryan you've got training soon Chris so we're going
to have to move this on a little bit I've got a couple of questions so just
want some quick fire answers from these,
seeing in the first one is from your mate and my mate Andy Birchall and he says,

(01:35:31):
what would you differently you do differently if you could start again would
it be Manitou-Allemagne national team,
Well, I was never given the opportunity. I'm pretty sure if I'd have been asked
to do that, I would have managed the national team.
What would I do differently? I would probably listen to my instincts more in
terms of the way we went about training.
Training i think i i listened to people

(01:35:54):
that you know they've been involved in certain
level of clubs but then i i always
believed that if you did a really solid pre-season then that's injury prevention
to me rather than stress load scientifically i don't know whether i'm right
or wrong but that's just my opinion i would probably listen to my own instincts

(01:36:14):
more and that's fair enough chris this is coming from three people it's all the same question you.
Andy Birtle's asked it, Cam Avery's asked it, and Craig Cowan also asked it.
Are you going to follow your dad into management?
I think everyone thinks I am. I haven't got any plans to at the moment. I don't know.

(01:36:35):
So the situation at the moment with St George's, I've helped Johnny because I've been injured.
For the first five months of the season I was injured, so I enjoyed helping
Johnny coach whenever I could. I was helping him on the sidelines because he was playing as well.
So I've enjoyed it. I've looked at it I've started coaching,
with Johnny Fee and others involved at George we've started
up in under six under eight because we had no youth so

(01:36:58):
we've started that up that's gone fantastically well at the minute there's so
many young kids come through I've really enjoyed that I do like coaching I probably
will do management at some point but work commitments will probably dictate
to me that so at the moment I don't know It's a fair enough answer final question
before we go into your seven aside teams,

(01:37:18):
comes from Sean Doyle FC Alleman player played under you Bassey played with
you Junior have you scored a better and more important brace than the goals
you scored in the playoff final for FC Alleman,
important wise probably not so there's the
playoff final and then there's the game we played which we had every single

(01:37:39):
weather condition in one game against Liverpool County down at the bowl when
we were 3-0 down at half time we won 5-3 I scored 2 in that game I scored the
winner directly from a corner and then there's this famous picture of Morrissey,
when he scored he's like with all the kids on the pitch it was snowing because he scored the fifth one.
My best goal obviously FC Alba Man that playoff final but one of my best goals

(01:38:03):
was the one I remember the most probably is one of my first ones when I was
14 and my first start for St.
George when my dad said right you start and you're playing against St.
Mary's Dan the Bold who were the best team in the league at the time I scored
a header from the edge of the box against against, like I say,
the best team in the league.
I'll probably say about 12 yards from the edge of the ball of his grey head.

(01:38:24):
It went into the top corner. Colin McMullen never moved.
It went into the top corner and I turned around and I had my mates on the bench at the time too.
And then we went to training on the Wednesday, School of Excellence on the Wednesday.
Dick was my coach and he played for St Mary's.
In that Saturday we trained down here at the School of Excellence on the Wednesday
crossed and finishing someone crossed it in and I headed into the top corner

(01:38:44):
I remember me coxing and Johnny Myers going Dicko you remember that one on Saturday
I really enjoyed that one but yeah to play a final in that game against Liverpool
in terms of brace yeah it was brilliant so.
We'll move on right select seven so you've both you've both know the rules yeah
seven aside teams Junior I'll start with you okay,

(01:39:05):
seven aside team ultimate Manx football team right this team just so you're
aware just so you know seeing you because I had this out with Dicko this is
a seven a side team that play in the old St John's seven a side tournament full pitch ok junior,
three retired players three current players your keeper can be from any era

(01:39:27):
and you can have any manager start with your keeper mine's easy my goalkeeper.
Wardy John Ward growing up watching John Ward play for the Allman playing for for all boys.
Yeah, and Colin McBowen, you couldn't separate them.
But then I've played with great goalkeepers, Blair, Wadey, Max Thomas,
played some really good goalkeepers.

(01:39:48):
And this isn't a cop-out. People will probably say it is a bit of a cop-out,
but my team, my three that are still playing, I have to think about this because
some of them are dipping in and out at the moment.
Sean Quay, Julian Ringham, who I feel like, for me, is probably one of the most
underrated players Not by the players that played with him, but other players.

(01:40:10):
Spent most of his career for St. George's playing left-back,
and he's all right-footed.
Matt, nobody ever spotted it. You wouldn't. One instance, we played a cut far
down the ball against Russia, and I think we won 7-1.
And I know from that, someone's told me since their team, so it was probably
on Julian Ringham, because he's there with that link.
And we won 7-1. Matt, who was that coach, Chris?

(01:40:31):
I can't remember now, can't see. He wasn't very good, was he?
So yes Sean Quay Julian Ringham and Johnny Myers and then my three retired players,
are Calum Morrissey Kieran McNulty and my dad there's going to be goals in that,
there's loads of goals my dad was probably one of the best goals I've ever seen
and you've got Peck who scored over 400 goals Premier League goals so it's not

(01:40:55):
that they're my mates and family obviously people look at it as a bit of a cop
out it might be but all the things I've achieved in men's football ball I've
achieved with them. Yeah.
And that's my, and that's me missing out like fantastic players.
Like I played with Rob Wigginshaw. I've played with, and you've got Lee Gale,
Frank Jones, Nick Hurt and.

(01:41:17):
Macca, McState, and... You can't pick one, but all them players,
I've grown up with all these lads, and everything I've achieved in Manx football
is with them, and my mates and family, and I felt like it was quite easy.
People go, that's cop-out, but it's not.
I could justify every single one of them being in that team. So who manages it?
Kev Manning. And because he's the only person I know that in Manx football would

(01:41:39):
be able to stop him and Karl Morrissey arguing.
And I got to play, and I probably could have a special mention with Kev,
because Kev, bless him now, obviously he's passed away.
I grew up being coached by Kev from the School of Accents on the 12s all the way through.
He gave him my debut for the All-Ireland
team at 16 and I spent most of my All-Ireland career playing for Kev.

(01:42:04):
And what a person, what an unbelievable person he is and what a man for Manx football.
Mad, mad, and he was. He was mad as well. Yeah. He was, but what a great guy Kev was.
So senior, your team, This is really difficult for me because I would find it
incredibly hard just to pick a seven-a-side team from the players that have

(01:42:24):
played for me in 20 years of management at St. George's.
So I've had to give it a lot of deliberation, no disrespect to anyone else.
I've actually gone for when you consider players at their ultimate prime.
So I've gone for John Ward in goal, just edging out Daniel Wade for me.

(01:42:46):
I've put John Ward in goal and then I've played two across the back.
One's a little bit, well, it's pretty obvious that this guy was probably the
best centre half, centre midfielder, centre forward that was played in the Isle
of Man, he's not from the Isle of Man and that's Rob Wakeenshaw.
I would play him in the back.

(01:43:07):
Back see how competitive he is he's picking a team to win this not just to play
in it he's picking it to win listen listen listen my team is smashing dick at seven,
let's just get that right so I've gone for Rob Wakenshaw and Johnny Myers and
the two players that just missed out are,

(01:43:30):
Nigel Shimon and Sean Quake
Solangor Solangor hey listen they might
make me you sunday dinner on that so going across the middle of the park i've
got sam kenny who i believe to be one of the most intelligent footballers that
has played on the isle of man on the right hand side of him i've got nick hurt

(01:43:50):
again incredible footballer yeah and,
reputedly some would say one of the best footballers ever to play football in
the isle of man certainly the best winger the isle of man's ever seen i put
chris out on the left hand side and then up front,
I know Pekka and I know Callum and I know they're great footballers,

(01:44:12):
but I've purely just gone for out-and-out pace and that is...
Oh, for Christ's sake, I've got to sit in now.
This is good, John Palmer. Yeah, John Palmer it was. It was John Palmer.
That's what I have. I have memory problems now.
So, yeah, so it was John Palmer and he's edging out like Pekka and Callum.

(01:44:33):
He must be pretty good. Everyone's seen John Palmer.
But I think when you look at that, and you've got to look at the seven-a-side
pitch, because we won the seven-a-sides when Chris got to play at the tournament.
It's all about fitness and open spaces.
And Johnny Myers and Wakey and Sam and you and Nick, they're all very,

(01:44:57):
very quick footballers.
They're all very gifted footballers.
John Ward at the back could probably throw the ball, pinpoint it halfway line
just by throwing it so yeah i think i think that's the ultimate seven-a-side
team for me that's that's brilliant and i've got actually who manages your team.
I would also have a joint management, but if I can only have one edging between

(01:45:21):
Kevin Manning and Andy Lodge, because Chris has gone for Kevin.
I think I'm going to go for Andy Lodge because when I started managing,
I based a lot of what I did on Kevin Manning and Andy Lodge,
because one was just a mental strength and no nonsense character.
Kevin, he would run through walls to get what he wanted.

(01:45:43):
Andy Lodge great man management person when you look he's a bank manager he's
a qualified referee he's a qualified top coach that guy's got everything and
it's better makes Neil Warner,
he's got some great stories but do you know what it's so
disappointing that he can't give more time to football because if he did then

(01:46:05):
I'm pretty sure he would have got the FC job before me and then if he didn't
get it before me he would have took it after me maybe you could get Neil Warnock
to do it never know that would be good wouldn't it Audrey and Warnock
maybe some interviews wouldn't it some interviews yeah.
But yeah so it's yeah I've had a fantastic time in football and you know I'll

(01:46:29):
talk all day about football and it's just do you know what it's been a brilliant
chat lads I think it's a great time to end it it's a great point to end it on
so thank you both for your time thanks very much yeah and obviously Chris,
hopefully St George's do well stay up enjoy the rest of your season to say hopefully
senior you enjoy watching football yeah it's going to be some game isn't it
Union Mills St George's the winner stays up wow history repeating itself 25

(01:46:51):
years ago 25 years brilliant all right boys cheers for your time thank you very
much cheers thank you bye.

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