LIFE WITH TERRY WAS JUST CRAZY
PAUL Carden has seen almost everything in a storied career spanning 24 years, 14 clubs and five different divisions.
But for the Warrington Town boss, nothing will ever match the sheer insanity of his time under maverick American Terry Smith at Chester City.
From chanting the Lord’s prayer before kick-off to training with an invisible football, it was an experience the 41-year-old will never forget.
“It’s become a cliche to talk about rollercoasters in football, but that really was,” says the former Cambridge midfielder, who joined the Blues from Rochdale in early 2000.
“Terry was off his rocker. Absolutely crackers, and you just didn’t know what would happen from one day to the next. One day, you might be studying a 100-page dossier, the next training without a ball. Terry would say ‘You pass to him, play it there’ and we’d be looking at him like ‘What? There’s no ball’.
“He’d say ‘I know, I know, but you’ve got to pretend there’s a ball’. I remember running around kicking an imaginary ball thinking ‘What am I doing here?’.”
Smith, a former linebacker with the New England Patriots, bought Chester out of administration in 1999 and, before long, installed himself in the dugout.
A successful general manager in American Football, he told sceptical reporters that “all coaching is 90 per cent the same, regardless of the sport”.
Sixteen points from a possible 75 soon soon made a mockery of that theory – and Carden says Smith was fortunate to reach that meagre tally.
“I don’t know why he believed he could take over a football club and actually do something with it,” says Carden. “He was absolutely clueless about the game.
“It would be like me having a load of money and trying to run an American Football side. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I don’t even know how many players are on the field, and I don’t think Terry knew much more.
“He had three captains. A captain of defence, a captain of midfield and a captain of attack. And because of his background, he’d be shouting things like ‘Hustle’.
“And he’d sign anyone. Absolutely anyone. Someone would turn up and say ‘Oh, such-andsuch has sent me down and told me to ask for Terry Smith’.
“So you’d point them in the direction of Terry, wake up the next day and read in the paper ‘Smith adds X to the squad’.
“Nobody knew him. Nobody had played against him. Terry didn’t have a clue either. You’d end up in the dressing room with lads saying ‘Have you actually played for anyone?’. And it would be ‘No, no, I just chanced it’. They knew he was a mug.
“He’d have people ringing up saying ‘Oh, I was at Man United’. But the player would be like 26 and hadn’t played for Man United since he was 12!
Wacky races
“Lads would drop famous names in, saying they were coached by this person and that. And Terry would fall for it every time.”
On the pitch, Smith eventually relented and appointed Ian Atkins, who came within a whisker of keeping Chester in the Football League. In the end, a final-day defeat to Peterborough ended their 69-year stay.
Off it, though, claims of cleared debts and financial health were undermined by a monthly scramble for wages.
“Terry used to pay you by cheque at the end of the month,” recalls Carden. “And if you were 14th in the queue or late getting out, you knew it would bounce. It wasn’t even worth going to the bank.
“It used to be like wacky races on payday, with lads trying to get it cashed. Some of them even changed banks to the closest branch to the club just so they could get there before everyone else, others would go to Cash Converters and take a hit on their money just to get their hands on something. It was nuts.
“Some days, you’d get to training and the whole place would be locked up. You could see Terry in his office but when you went to ask what was happening he’d peek through the blinds and pretend you weren’t there. So you just had to give up and go home.”
Smith would scarper across the Atlantic midway through the 200102 season, but Carden was already gone by then.
“I’d actually been offered a new contract,” explains Carden.
“But Terry had sacked Graham Barrow as manager and the way he did it was just wrong. He tried to provoke Graham into reacting, which was disgraceful.
“I think Doncaster paid a few quid for me in the end but they had a bad start, transfer-listed everybody and I ended up back at Chester a few months later. Thankfully, though, Terry was gone by then.”
Smith’s replacement, Stephen Vaughan, would bring a whole different set of problems, but he did at least build the side that won promotion back to the Football League in 2004 under Mark Wright.
“I think I was the only player who played in the game we got relegated and the one when we got promoted,” says Carden, who lifted the Conference title as captain, left. “It’s funny but when you achieve something like that, all the craziness is forgotten. It’s such a defining moment in your career. “It’s a great shame the club didn’t go on and re-establish itself in the league like an Oxford or a Luton, but it’s good to see they’re doing well now. “Anthony Johnson and Bernard Morley have got them flying, got them buzzing again and I know from experience that the place will be rocking.”