MAC’S READY FOR HIS LAST HURRAH
CRAIG McAllister says he will play on beyond 40 after coronavirus denied him another championship medal.
McAllister, who celebrates the milestone birthday next Sunday, will make Lymington Town the 20th club of his senior career.
The much-travelled striker will have another crack at the Wessex League, which he looked set to win with Alresford Town before the season was halted.
McAllister, a title winner at Crawley, Eastleigh and Sutton, still has the fire in his belly.
“The plan was, if Alresford had gone up to the Southern League, that I was going to have one more year anyway,” he said.
“My son’s six now and he’s getting into a team so the next chapter of my life will be going to watch him.
“But I’m happy with my fitness, considering my age, and I’m still enjoying it. I was never blessed with pace anyway!”
McAllister has come full circle, having started in the Wessex League with Eastleigh.
He was prolific for Basingstoke in the Isthmian Premier and QPR lodged a substantial bid for him but the clubs couldn’t agree a fee. A trial at Tony Pulis’ Stoke City came to nothing and, determined to move his career on, McAllister stepped up into the Conference.
Ruthless
It was to be a division he called home for the best part of the next 15 years, settling at Woking for two years after short spells at Stevenage and Gravesend & Northfleet.
However, the big target man soon resumed his nomadic existence.
McAllister said: “Justin Edinburgh was at Grays so I went there. The team they had was phenomenal and I thought they’d have a real chance of going on to win the league.
“But I was travelling from Southampton to Essex every day and it just didn’t work out.
“In hindsight, it was the wrong move for the wrong reasons. I made the decisions too easy, when I didn’t have to. I wasn’t directed very well by anyone. I didn’t have an agent at the time to advise me. I was making rash decisions and saying ‘yeah, I’ll just go’ because I wanted game time.
“Looking back, I probably made five or six moves in my career that I shouldn’t have.”
But after finishing the 2007/08 season at Oxford, the maturing McAllister got his break in the Football League with newly-promoted Exeter.
“I never thought it was going to happen,” he said. “The switch only went off in my head when I got to the age of about 28, the seriousness of it, being more professional and more dedicated.
“I took it for granted. I just wish I’d listened better to people around me because football is a short career.
“I feel like I under-achieved; I believe it could have been better.”
But the switch hadn’t been flicked too late. McAllister helped Exeter to a second promotion in as many seasons and played in their League One opener at Elland Road.
A move to Crawley the following summer may have represented a drop of two divisions but it was a pivotal moment in McAllister’s career.
“That season is up there as one of my best,” he said. “We won the Conference, broke the points record (with 105) and the icing on the top was playing at Old Trafford. Some of the best players I’ve played with in my career were at that club.
“As for Steve Evans, he was Marmite – and I loved him. We had a great relationship. He was a lunatic on the side of the pitch but he would do everything he could to get that side to win matches. He knew exactly how to talk to people, one-on-one. He was ruthless but it worked for him.
“From the outside, a lot of people probably disliked him and laughed at him but when you played for him, if you did well for him, he’d give you everything. He had high standards, he was a winner.”
Mistake
McAllister scored 13 goals that season playing alongside Matt Tubbs, the man he rates as the best strike partner of his career.
“If you wanted goals, you had Matt in your team,” he said. “He could score out of anything.
“He was a fox in the box and he scored 40 goals that year. Me and him had a partnership that we didn’t even need to work on – it just happened.”
Crawley went up again the next season – but McAllister wasn’t there.
“My biggest mistake was leaving Crawley,” he admitted. “I was offered a two-year deal but I had a few personal issues going on with my partner and we ended up moving away. I signed for Newport because she was from Devon.
“I massively rushed into that decision. If I’d stayed, we would have got through those moments in life. Crawley went on to win promotion again so I could have spent the next four or five years in the Football League.”
McAllister suffered play-off heartbreak at Luton and Eastleigh before helping the Spitfires reach the National League for the first time in their history.
He was part of their run to the play-offs in 2014/15 and was spraying more champagne 12 months later as Sutton hunted down Ebbsfleet to hand McAllister another Step 2 gong.
He said: “By that stage you’ve got a name for yourself and people know who you are. When you’re new on the block, it’s difficult for players because they’ve got to prove themselves – to the players as well as the manager.
“But as you get older, you don’t worry about it. You go into a changing-room and you just get on with it.
“People will say ‘you went from club to club’ or ‘you didn’t get it right for five years somewhere’ but something must have been right because I won seven promotions.
“The decisions I’ve made have been worth it. I was fortunate to play in some very good sides with some very good players and the promotions will live with me forever.”