Mike..

If God had intended me to walk on water he'd have called me Byron Clough

- Randy Wakeman III, 1969-2048



OK, so I decided to give the first challenge of 2005 a go. There’s not a lot to say in terms of background, FM2K5 – running full English setup and nowt else, I’d just started another game in England so I’m cannibalising the save game for this, hence the comments in the opening post.

Mike..

When Randy Wakeman III walked into the Victoria Park ground in the late summer of 2004 there was much consternation amongst those around the club, not just because of the fact that Hartlepool had changed managers after the pre-season program had begun, but also because he was an American.

“You have to remember that as far as the English were concerned, Americans generally knew very little about football, and when the new boss was a totally unknown American – well the fans were up in arms” Mark Tinkler recalls. Tinkler was a well established part of the Hartlepool side by then, going into his fifth season, he likes to be remembered as the ‘voice of experience and reason’ but he admits that he was among those who doubted the sanity of the chairman “it didn’t help Wakeman’s cause that he shook up the formation of the squad too” he says, looking back “he came in with this idea of playing a bastárdised wingback system that immediately meant a couple of well known players found themselves on the transfer list”

As well as uncertainty from the players, and a reaction from the fans that went from quiet interest to outright hostility, Wakeman also faced financial problems. The previous regime had built a squad that was drawing wages at a level a little more than ten percent higher than the board’s budget, and as for transfer funds – they were as good as non-existent.

Monetary problems had been a significant part of the English game for a few years by then, and an article from a Hartlepool fanzine refers to the fact that ‘…the new manager will have to be looking to cut the wage bill and offload some deadwood, particularly with the outstanding bank loan taking chunks of our income’. All in all there seemed to be little doubt that it was going to be a period of change for the people of Hartlepool, players and fans alike.

Mike..

Tinkler recalls the first few days under Wakeman fondly “every player just wants to win football matches” he wrote in a diary that he was keeping for the club website “and we wrapped up the pre-season with two wins, scoring four in both, one home and one away”. The midfielder particularly remembers the trip to Lincoln City, even talking fifty years later he clearly recalls the hat-trick that assured Adam Boyd of his place in the starting eleven for the season’s opener “Adam was a good kid, he’d already been with the club for five seasons and he was still only twenty-two. Most of us thought that he had a bright future, and that day he smashed home three goals from outside the area. Wakeman loved him from that moment on”

With the season due to kick off at Barnsley, Wakeman – who was known to be looking for new coaching staff – had effectively selected his playing squad for the season already. It wasn’t a particularly young team, Darren Craddock was the only teenager in the line-up because Wakeman had acknowledged that, as a newcomer to the English game, he would have to rely on the experience of established players to help him get a foothold.

Adam Boyd still has a copy of the team-sheet from the game against Barnsley “I’d already played something like seventy games for 'Pool” he says “but Randy was the first manager to make me feel like a first-choice player, he effectively gave me the platform from which to launch my career”. The list reads; Jim Provett; Chris Westwood, Darren Craddock, Michael Nelson; Hugh Robertson and Jack Ross as wingbacks; Tinkler and Strachan; Richie Humphreys; and up front Boyd and Joe Porter. Porter was in the squad following an injury to Andy Appleby, who was among the names on the bench, but he was under no illusions about his role, “Joe knew that he was putting himself in the shop window, whilst I was about to embark on my career with ‘Pool, he knew that he was one of a half-dozen names on the transfer list, in fact he’d already been made available even before Wakeman arrived”

Every player on that list had been with Hartlepool since at least the previous winter, with the exception of Ross, Wakeman’s predecessor had made just the one signing in the summer and, with the financials the way they were, the new man had elected not to start adding to that just yet. Michael Barron, the longest serving member of the squad, was suffering from a long-term injury when the season kicked off, “I’d managed to strain my groin in before the pre-season and it was incredibly frustrating to be forced to watch the new squad taking shape from the sidelines. All footballers are creatures of confidence and superstition, the natural reaction was to spend my days wondering if I was going to find myself out in the cold”.

On Saturday August 7th 2004 Randy Wakeman III led his team into the footballing heartland of Yorkshire to embark on what would be a remarkable career one way or another, with the press raising eyebrows at his pedigree, and the fans at his nationality, he stood tall and took it like a man.

shannon2007

Should be another classic :thup:

Thats not a compliment, its a demand

Mike..

cheers PM, I thank an unnamed author whose work I've been reading recently and whose style provided the inspiration for this retrospective



Wakeman’s early results were received with raised eyebrows by the sporting press in England, many put it down to a peculiar phenomenon known as ‘new manager syndrome’ which, like most other people involved in the game, Mark Tinkler knew all about. “Nobody has ever really given me a good reason for why the new manager thing happens, but it does seem to be far more common than probability alone would account for, was it new manager syndrome that was working for us though? I don’t think so, when you look at what Wakeman did he was actually pretty astute, he’d looked at the squad and decided what would best suit the players he had available to him and the early results reflected that”

After an unusual start to the season, back-to-back games away from home, the Monkey Hangers [see Appendix A – club nicknames] were already riding a wave of confidence. Barnsley and Wrexham had both been beaten without a goal conceded, and then the early pace-setters – Hull City – had come to Victoria Park for Wakeman’s home debut. “Gavin Strachan scored the winner that day, he was a popular lad but then it was hard not to like a Strachan, and his free-kick was worthy of winning any game”.

Tinkler refers to Strachan’s popularity which the Scotsman himself has always put down to one thing, “you have to remember that my Dad was probably one of the most popular names in the game back at the turn of the century, even after he’d announced his retirement from management there were plenty who refused to believe that he wouldn’t make a comeback. I dislike those people who say that my entire career was built on the back of his name – I was a player because of my ability and my desire to be one – but I’ve never denied that my name helped to make it easier for me to be accepted”. Strachan’s free-kick against Hull took Hartlepool into an early second place in the table behind Sheffield Wednesday and he knew what it meant to the fans, “to get a good start to the season was one of the most important things that we could have done, it gave us confidence, and more importantly it gave the boss some breathing space. When Randy first came to the club there were many disapproving voices but they were fading already and those supporters who were less entrenched in pessimism were already starting to predict great things”.

One of Wakeman’s most endearing features in his years as a manager was his propensity for sound bites, he was always comfortable talking to the press but possessed the ability to make mistakes, almost at will, without knowing it - some actually suggested that they were not mistakes at all. Following the Hull game one correspondent asked for his views on the Hartlepool fans’ sudden turnaround in opinion, his response was from the heart and immediately won him even more followers; “I’m just happy to be winning games, but I just hope that the fans aren’t expecting me to be the next Alice Ferguson” he told the world.

Mike..

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
INJURIES CAST SHADOW OVER FIGHTBACK
Sunday Sun, Sunday 22nd August 2004

Hartlepool climbed to the top of League One yesterday with an Adam Boyd inspired fightback over Swindon Town, but injury worries are the main talk of the town as both Richie Humphreys and Mark Tinkler had to leave the field of play in the last ten minutes. We understand that Humphreys, suffering from an elbow injury, should be available for the next league game but will miss the cup tie with Rotherham, as for Tinkler the news is not so positive. John Murray, the club Physio, reports that the midfielder suffered a sprained ankle in the challenge that left him on the floor, and Pool down to ten men with all of their subs already used – he isn’t expected to play for the four to five weeks and speculation is that Randy Wakeman III will be looking to make a short term loan signing to provide cover.

It should have been a much cheerier occasion at Victoria Park, after Grant Smith’s headed opener gave Swindon the lead it was all ‘Pool and a Boyd brace gave Wakeman’s side their fourth consecutive win – the only perfect record in the league. Boyd’s first came on the stroke of half time, a powerful shot from the edge of the area after a cross-field ball from Ross had allowed Robertson the freedom to supply him, his second was almost a carbon copy strike after Appleby found him lurking in the second half.

Wakeman can now take the team into the first round of the League Cup riding a wave of confidence, but with Rotherham starting well in the Championship it will be no cakewalk, especially with Tinkler and Humphreys absent.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The injury meant a spell on the sidelines for Tinkler and he was less than happy about the situation “we’d got off to the best possible start and of course you want to be playing when confidence is that high. We didn’t have a lot of depth in the squad, certainly not for my position, and I think it was Antony Sweeney who got called up from the reserves but Wakeman was already looking at options”.

Mike..

The first arrival of the Wakeman era at Victoria Park was Paul Crichton, “It was a strange feeling, there I was coaching at Leigh RMI and suddenly this American guy, who nobody had even heard of six months before, is on the phone offering me a job. Well I jumped at the chance and the first game I got to see was that League Cup affair, and that was a great game”. Wakeman had identified that the coaching staff needed a boost consisting, as it did, of one coach plus his assistant. He saw Crichton as a promising young talent in the field and spent much of his transfer budget to bring him on board. The League Cup game that Crichton refers to was the clash with Rotherham, a match that Gavin Strachan remembers particularly well.

“I was so relieved when it was all over, I think I went through every emotion in the book that day. Scoring against opposition from the next league up, especially just five minutes in, that was something special but then it all looked like going pear shaped for me. We let them back into the game and you can’t afford to do that with quality opposition, but we somehow had it level again by half-time and then I go and hit probably the worst penalty of my career – I don’t know what to say, I mean my legs were shaking and the keeper obviously knew where I was going to put it even before I hit the ball. I’m just glad that I didn’t mess up the one in the shoot-out, but I don’t think it would have mattered if I had, Jimmy Provett was on such a high – he’d just got a call-up to the England Under-21’s – and he saved two of their kicks before someone blazed another over the bar”

“It was hardly like getting into the latter stages of the FA Cup or anything, but to have got past Rotherham was still a big deal” Mark Tinkler had watched the game from the stands and had been impressed by the spirit of the squad, and the animated way in which Wakeman directed his team from the sidelines, “I don’t think that anyone could question his commitment or his desire back then, even as an unknown quantity, he was quickly becoming a fans favourite for his enthusiasm and outspoken nature if nothing else”.

Mike..

The League Cup was about to provide something much bigger for the Hartlepool fans to celebrate though, after three further victories in the league – and a first ‘Manager of the Month’ award for Wakeman – there was another thriller of a game and a huge boost in the subsequent draw.

“It was almost the opposite of the Rotherham game” Gavin Strachan recalls “Blackpool got the lead but then it was us that overhauled them in front of their fans and with ten minutes to play we went in front. We really should have been able to defend that lead but we’d lost Chris (Westwood) early on and we had to make do with a bit of a makeshift defence, when Blackpool pulled it level we were looking at another extra-time game”. Fate was smiling on Wakeman’s side though, with the American hollering instructions from the sideline Adam Boyd broke into the box and was pulled down by Sasa Ilic, Blackpool’s much travelled goalkeeper “It’s never nice to see someone sent off so late in a game but rules are rules and Sasa knew the chance that he was taking. The Blackpool boss (Colin Hendry) had used all of his substitutes so I think it was Scottie Taylor who had to face me, after having one saved against Rotherham that made my job a lot easier but I still felt bad for Sasa when I put us through”

Mark Tinkler had mixed feelings when the draw was made, he was just returning to full fitness but had seen his place taken by Ben Webster, a teenage midfielder on loan from Newcastle United, “When our name came out of the hat there was almost total silence in the players lounge” Tinkler wrote in his website journal “and when Middlesbrough followed it the roof nearly came down. Mind you, I’m not entirely sure where I’ll stand for selection, Ben Webster has played my position for the last three games now and he looks quite a talent, and he’s already said that he’d be keen to look at a permanent move when his loan expires. All I can do is get back into training and fight for my place”.

The prospect of a north-east derby was a mouth-watering one for the Hartlepool fans, with Boro just a few miles down the river Tees there would be plenty of opportunity for local rivalries. It’s a fact of life that towns with a small football club will see a lot of their local support siphoned off by bigger neighbours and Wakeman was about to experience the real passion of English fans in all it’s glory.

shannon2007

I dunno, writing a brilliant story just to claim the best challenge award :p

Do you play Strachan on the wing? With those ears he'd really fly. Im begining to think having player pics is a bad idea as it really puts me off some guys

Mike..

I don't play with pictures so I can't comment. As for Strach, he plays on either side of a central midfield trio as a defensive base, but boy can he hit a set-piece