MEMOIRS OF PENN ARE ALL WRITTEN UP
RUSS PENN might never have reached 600 games of football. The York City midfielder’s first wasn’t until he was a 20-yearold when he made his Kidderminster Harriers debut against the club he now calls home.
“It wasn’t a thriller – 0-0!” Penn laughs.
But it could have all been very different.
“I did my YTS at Scunthorpe but I never had my chance really,” he says. “Brian Laws, at the time, didn’t really look into the youth so that was it. I went back home.
“I worked at my mate’s pub pulling pints and going out and I thought, ‘This is me now’. I lost all love of the game.
“Then I had a random phone call asking if I wanted a couple of weeks’ trial, get fit and see what happens. Because it was on my door step I did – and that was it. Stuart Watkiss signed me on a one-year contract for minimum wage and that’s where it all began.”
The former England C man hit the milestone in the Minstermen’s win against Guiseley last weekend.
“I knew I was around the 550 appearance mark last year but then I lost track and forgot about it,” he says. “But you know these reporters and commentators, they know everything. I looked on Wikipedia and, yes it was, last Saturday – 13 years down the line and it’s 600, which is not bad going.
“I’m really proud. The last couple of years I’ve flitted around some clubs but I’ve always contributed well and played the majority of games. Of course, it tends to be at this level you don’t get those two or three-year contracts I was getting in the League.
“I started at this level, I went into the League for nine years and came back to this level. Nothing has really changed – the bigger clubs are spending a lot more but the smaller ones are pennypinching as they have to, players are on six-month or rolling contracts and there’s no stability.
“It’s not all it seems to people on the outside at times but we do it because we love it – God knows why sometimes, but we do.”
Pathway
Perhaps it’s because of moments like scoring in the FA Cup third round against Everton, as Penn did for Cheltenham Town.
He had great success in the FA Cup, remembers scoring four against Halifax in his early Kiddy days and enjoyed many years in League Two with Burton Albion, Cheltenham and, in his first spell, York.
Still only 32, he’s getting used to the old age question.
“I feel great! I’m 33 next month but I feel fit,” he says. “I think my body will tell me when it’s ready to give up.
“Fans and coaches have a perception of when you hit 30 or 31, The first question they always ask is, ‘Are his legs gone?’ But you do get those players who keep playing until they are 36, 37, 38 – look at Jamie Cureton! He’s 43 and at Bishop’s Stortford now still scoring goals. We were at Cheltenham together and still keep in touch. He’s a great lad.
“Back then was when he started changing his diet, no carbs and all the rest of it. He was 36 or 37 and I thought, ‘Just rest your legs!’ But he’s fit as a fiddle.
“Everyone is different and your body will tell you. I did a lot of travelling the last couple of years and my back was in bits. I thought, ‘I haven’t got long here’. But now I’m local I feel great. It’s how you manage yourself, I live right, and if I can pinch another two or three years, fantastic.”
A qualified A Licence coach, he expects to naturally progress down that pathway when the time is right.
But he’s even getting his reporter’s notebook out for The NLP these days, quizzing former team-mates or rivals on the beautiful game.
“I love doing the pieces,” Penn says. “In the last ten years I’ve built relationships with a lot of people. You go to away games and I tend to know two or three lads. It’s good to chat with them and hear their stories.
“There’s been some great ones in the pieces I’ve done, going back to Steve McNulty last year telling the one about Fleetwood passing a 50p around during a game after they’d won the league – whoever was holding it at the end had to buy the first round!”
And what would his favourite tale be? Gillingham away, trailing at half-time, enter a boss he loved playing under at Cheltenham, Mark Yates. “He could get very irate the gaffer,” Penn says. “Anyway, in a rage of madness he booted a plastic mesh bin in the middle of the changing room, which was there for dirty kit etc. He kicked it that hard his foot went straight through it!
“He was fuming, but the best thing was he was unable to get his foot back out. He was that angry he continued the rant with a plastic bin on his foot walking around the changing room. He eventually pulled his foot out but only at the expense of a ripped suit trouser leg.
“Even funnier was when we arrived in for training on the Monday. His right leg from the knee down was heavily strapped – all as a result from Bin Gate!”