WINNING UGLY
No frills philosophy helped Non-League’s very own Crazy Gang reach the summit
Relive Chester’s 2003-04 title triumph when Mark Wright’s old school methods triumphed
IN THE latest of a new series in The Non-League Paper this summer, we take a look back to the 2003-04 season to relive the fortunes of a Chester side who, led by former Liverpool and England centre-back Mark Wright, swept to the Conference title by mastering the art of winning ugly
ARE Chester the ugliest team ever to win the Conference? Wayne Brown, the keeper in that famous side of 2003-04, certainly thinks so.
“Oh yeah, definitely” laughs the 40-year-old, who made 289 appearances in a legendary tenyear stint at the Deva. “We were totally workmanlike.
“Hereford were our big rivals that year and they were the flair team. They played the nice stuff, passed it around, scored goals from all over the place.
“But we ground out the dirty results. Nobody bullied us. We had some tough old boys in that team. Real hard b ****** s. They knew their jobs, how to manage each other.
“And they knew how to mix it up when the going got tough. That’s half the battle in the Conference and a lot of teams didn’t like it. But did we care?
“One game – I can’t remember who it was against – we went down to nine men. We won 1-0 and all I can remember is kicking balls as high as I could, straight into the stand.
“It was ridiculous. As a footballer, you’re thinking ‘What am I doing?’ But we were so bloody-minded and determined to win, we’d do anything. It was a great year.”
Chester were a team built in the image of their manager. Mark Wright, the former Liverpool centre-back and hero of Italia 90, had arrived from Oxford in January 2002.
Though renowned for a silky playing style, Wright was an unyielding, battle-scarred warrior skilled in the dark arts of defending. “Nobody intimidated him,” said Jamie Carragher, who played with Wright at Anfield as a teenager. “He was our rock, the best we had until Sami Hyypia.”
On arrival at the Deva, Chester sat second-bottom of the Conference, a self-pitying giant bereft of belief or fight.
Wright immediately recruited no-nonsense defenders Phil Bolland and Scotty Guyett from Oxford, the first of several spine-stiffening signings.
“Mark wasn’t the greatest tactician,” said Brown. “But what he did very well was sign players who could manage the game themselves. You’ve got to give him credit for that. We had some talented lads but, mainly, we all knew our jobs and we all knew how the game worked.”
Within three months, the Blues were safe. Within 16, they had reached the play-offs, losing on penalties to eventual winners Doncaster in the semis. And by the summer of 2003, everything was in place for a tilt at the title.
Finisher
Brown and Ian McCaldon vied for the No.1 shirt. Bolland and Guyett continued a defensive double act that had started at Southport, continued in Oxford and was now into its seventh season. Shaun Carey and skipper Paul Carden patrolled midfield, Kevin McIntyre supplied set pieces.
Up top was Daryl Clare, one of NonLeague’s all-time great strikers. The catalyst behind Boston’s promotion in 2002, the 24year-old missed the first 16 games through injury, yet returned to bag an incredible 29 goals in 30 starts.
“He was a great finisher at Conference level,” said Brown. “I don’t know what it was, but everything he hit found the target or worked the keeper. He scored some ridiculous goals.”
Aussie Guyett added: “I always thought we were lucky to got Clarey at a good time. The previous three seasons, he’d scored constantly. All the best centre-forwards are the same – they have periods of six or seven seasons where everything they hit goes in. Daryl was right in the middle of that.”
Alongside Clare, Darryn Stamp weighed in with his share. The rangy Yorkshireman, a £15,000 summer signing from Northampton, scored
20 goals and formed a potent little-and-large partnership with his 24-year-old sidekick.
“Playing alongside Daryl that season was fantastic,” said Stamp, now 38 and working as a player-coach at North Ferriby.
“He was such a prolific scorer and it was great to be the target man that was setting up chances for him. To miss so many games and still finish with 30 goals tells you everything you need to know about Daryl. We were great friends off the field as well.”
Clare would leave Chester just six months after promotion, a pre-season injury and subsequent hernia operation prompting a return to Boston.
He failed to hit former heights at York Street and, after three goals in 20 games, Clare moved to Crawley, his final shot at the Football League gone.
One title-winning player who had far more luck was centreback Danny Collins. An ever-present in 2003-04, Collins would go on to play in the Premier League with Sunderland and win 12 caps for Wales.
A Chester native, Collins was released by the Blues as a schoolboy striker and worked as a wood machinist whilst playing for expenses at Buckley Town.
Demolition
Alerted by interest from Wrexham and Tranmere, Chester rectified their error in 2001 and chucked Collins in the reserves where he scored scored 16 goals from midfield. Wright’s arrival, though, changed everything.
“Mark told me I should be playing at centre-half,” recalled Collins. “He’s played for England there so he’s a pretty good judge I suppose!
“He sent me to Vauxhall Motors on loan as a centre-half in 2002-03. I played 30-odd games there and we beat QPR in the midst of a good Cup run. By then, clubs were looking at me so Mark called me back. I played the rest of the season at the back and that was that.”
Collins’ improvement was rapid, with contemporary match reports marvelling at the youngster’s burgeoning authority and technique.
“Danny had all the attributes,” said Guyett. “He was a good size, he was athletic. He was left footed, which helped. Even now, 6ft 3ins left-footed centre-halves are hard to come by. It was no surprise to see him kick on.”
Brown agrees. “Looking back, he was a great fit for Premier League football. The way he was built. He was fairly quick, composed on the ball, good in the air. And he was an intelligent guy as well, so he read danger even as a young lad. He’s done so well for himself.”
A year earlier, owner Stephen Vaughan, emboldened by a 12-game unbeaten start, had issued a cocky “catch us if you can” challenge to the rest of the Conference. Yeovil duly obliged, winning the title by a
mammoth 17 points.
This time, the boxing promoter let his players do the talking. One defeat in 16 games and clean sheets galore ensured a smooth ascent to the summit. By February, the gap to secondplaced Chester was a yawning eight points, with Hereford boss Graham Turner all but conceding defeat.
“It is now a position that we are relying on Chester to lose the championship,” he admitted after a 9-0 demolition of Dagenham.
“They have been the leaders for a long time and if they continue with the sort of results they have achieved for most of the season, they will be worthy champions.”
Little did anyone realise that Hereford – inspired by 25-goal striker Steve Guinan – were about to embark on a ten-game winning run, setting up the tantalising prospect of a final-day showdown at Edgar Street. “We were winning every week but so were Hereford,” recalls Stamp. “We could never seem to open a real gap over them. It was so frustrating, especially knowing and we had to got to their place for the last match of the season.”
Scrappers
Sky moved in. Tickets flew from the clubhouse. But for the do-or-die clash to materialise, Hereford needed Chester to drop points at home to Scarborough in the penultimate game of the season. Wright’s belligerent scrappers were in no mood to oblige. “It was a big old game,” says Brown, now a coach at Oxford United. “The crowd, the expectation. The pressure. But I’ll always remember the boys being quite relaxed. “You walked into the dressing room and there was no atmosphere or anxiety. It was like ‘Right, this is what we’ve got to do. And if we don’t do it today then we’ll do it next week’.”
And do it they did, Clare – whose newborn son was in intensive care – crossing for Stamp to seal a 1-0 victory.
“I can remember everything about the goal like it was yesterday,” said Stamp. “It was a left-foot shot, and how I scored with a left-foot shot from that angle no-one will ever know! But the ball went in and the stadium exploded.”
Turner gracefully hailed a “great side”. Wright returned the compliment. The Bulls would extend their run to 11 straight wins with a 2-1 victory in the anti-climactic showdown, only to lose to Aldershot in the play-off semifinals. “I’ll tell you what Chester had,” says Brown, by way of explaining Chester’s remarkable resilience during that run-in. “One was money. We spent more than anybody else, and there’s no getting away from that. We had a good back four, which always gives you a chance. But we also had a bond. We all used to live round Chester way and everything we did, we did together. “Chester didn’t do food or anything like that, so we all went to a cafe on the High Street. Some days, there’d be two or three players who’d had a fight in training – and I mean a proper punch-up. But 20 minutes later we’d all be sitting in the cafe having a laugh about it. “It was a bit – not Crazy Gang – but spiky at times, as you can imagine with 20-odd scousers in one team! “And there was quite a big drinking culture at that time. A few us were the team leaders in that respect! We’d have a ‘Super Sunday’ and that would get quite messy. Saturday night after games, maybe a midweeker. “I know it’s frowned upon these days but bloody hell –- if you’ve got 15 lads all sticking together, drinking together, all knowing each other inside out, it makes a massive difference.” Guyett, who joined Yeovil following promotion and now works as a therapist at Premier League club Crystal Palace, concurs. “We were all good mates and the fact we still keep in touch tells you a lot. It’s missing a little bit now, even at top level football. That old school, hard as nails mentality has left the game. “I was talking to one of the analysts at Palace recently, and the big thing now is playing out from the back. Everyone tries to play this beautiful style of football. It’s great to talk about, but you need the players to do it, the coaches to teach it. It isn’t always possible and that’s when you need that mentality.
“At Chester, we found a formula that worked. We were a strong team. We were physical. We worked hard. We basically had a group of mates who’d travel down to Gravesend or Hayes on a Saturday morning and say ‘Right, we’re going to put a shift in for each other’.
“When you look back on those two years in the Conference, we probably only lost half a dozen games. We had incredible mental strength.
“The level I work at now, the amount of preparation that goes into facing an opponent is huge. You’re talking three weeks of work. Back then, you didn’t have the resources. It was a case of turn up, get out there and do what we’re good at. You relied on you and your mates.”
In the champagne-drenched aftermath of promotion, Vaughan spoke of emulating Doncaster and Yeovil in shooting for League One. It never happened.
A day before their return to the Football League, Wright resigned amid accusations of “personal and professional misconduct”. Among them were an alleged affair with a player’s fiancee and deliberate attempts to exceed his playing budget. Bizarrely, he would return to the club in April 2005, orchestrating a run of wins that narrowly averted relegation.
Mis-management
“Wrighty had his moments, as all managers do,” shrugs Brown. “Teacups and that. I could tell you all sorts of other stories but there’s no point because they couldn’t go into print. But he was alright, as managers go.”
Worse yet, underlying money problems swiftly bubbled to the surface. Quizzed on losses of £65,000 a month in the Conference, Vaughan blamed the mismanagement of previous owners the Smith family.
But debts – mainly in the form of directors loans from Vaughan – continued to spiral. In 2009, the Blues were relegated from the Football League and entered administration.
Vaughan, implicated in a £500,000 tax fraud, became the first owner of a professional club to fail the FA’s fit and proper persons test. Chester were expelled from the Conference and, in 2010, went out of business. Now a Phoenix club, they are back in Step 1.
“It’s such a shame what happened because they’re great fans,” said Brown, who was awarded a testimonial in 2004. “They’re so loyal and so passionate about the club. Just look at how they’ve built it back up. Incredible.”
For Stamp, meanwhile, nothing can sully the memories of that day in 2004. “I’ll never forget it,” he says. “It was – and is – the best moment of my career.”