Davie Caldwell

Mornin' all!

That game after Bristol City WAS at Coventry and Highfield Road is also memorable to me for the kindness shown by the Sky Blues when we returned there for a League Cup tie some years later and they made us welcome in a dedicated bar of our own in the Sky Blues Stand................I believe it was the final season Highfield Road was used.

The first game is also memorable to me for that annoying little "wasp" David Speedie and it was the Scottish forward who almost single handedly hauled the home team back into the game after we had been on top.

We only got Caldwell in the first place because he was a flawed diamond, and following his sending off in the fifth minute at Aldershot*, Lew Pope was insistent that Cyril Knowles unload him pronto. The only club that would have him was some obscure lower league Belgian outfit and that transfer eventually cost us Cyril as our manager as a row developed between him and Lew, Cyril resigned - withdrew his gesture but the chairman refused to accept it!

I won't go into the details of it, but it was a rather tawdry tale and reflected little credit on either party.

* I watched that game at Aldershot in the company of our former keeper and colleague of my "Plainmoor Days" John Turner and I bumped into him (courtesy of Romford Gull) in the garden of the Green Man pre-match at Wembley the other week.................a good job Kev introduced us as we had BOTH changed dramatically in appearance!

Do you know the CGs had an interest in a greyhound Dave?

Capital Gull, Stepho, Kipper and I had a share each in one B'Ville Pride.................what a dog!

He only ever won once (at Crayford one Saturday lunctime when we were all down at Swansea watching the Gulls and I never had a penny on him!) but was more memorable for his aversion to "turning left" on occasions and had been known to take out half the field because of that ;D

I am the proud recipient of a cartoon of him (courtesy of Crooky) on which the number of his racing jacket is replaced by a "No Left Turn" road sign!

I must take issue on that assumption Dave. DC had a shocking disciplinary record before he came to us, that's how we came to get him! Cyril thought he could "do a job" with him and in the end Lew was crapping himself over the lad.

I personally think Tim Sills is quite cynical and uses his undoubted intelligence to some effect against anyone with a bit of an "IQ" deficiency which Danny Seabourne obviously had judging by his stupid actions on Boxing Day. I expect Paul Tisdale had to put in a lot of effort to get some sort of reliability into the player and would have been furious with him for getting himself suckered into a red card that day.

At the end of the day, discipline is all important in the professional game. Discipline in adhering to pre-match instructions, discipline in playing one's part in the team keeping it's balance and shape and discipline in keeping oneself on the pitch for the full duration of the match.

Any player who shows a tendency to be lacking in any of those aspects will be living on borrowed time with any good manager, and whilst it is easy to spot the player who can't keep his temper, not many fans are as adept at picking out the ones who cannot carry out the manager's instructions and often it is these type of player who's departure or disappearance from the side brings protests from the terraces.

Perhaps Lee Phillips fell into that category as I suspect his opinion of his own contribution and that of the manager might have been poles apart on occasions.

Cyril didn't end up leaving over the Caldwell affair.

Caldwell played for us in the first Cyril season – 1987/88 – when we reached the play-offs. Towards the end of that season he was handed a ridiculously long suspension, eight games I think, from the start of the following season. That is why Pope was so keen to get him off the payroll in the close season of 1988. I don’t know exactly what went on between Pope and Knowles, but I got the impression that Pope refused to honour promises that Cyril had made - leaving Cyril feeling that his authority had been undermined. There was a picture in the paper of Cyril ripping up his contract and chucking it in the bin – although it turned out later it was just a piece of paper, not his contract. I don’t know how, but the differences were smoothed over somehow and Cyril stayed for another year or so – leading us out at Wembley in 1989.

During the summer after Wembley, Pope and Knowles fell out again. Knowles wanted profits from Wembley to be spent on the playing budget whereas I suspect they had already been swallowed up in the black hole of TUFC’s finances. Pope upped the ante by publicising the fact that a fair chunk had gone into Cyril’s pocket by way of a bonus.

Against that background, we made an awful start to 1989/90 and were second bottom above Hartlepool when Cyril felt he’d had enough and threw in the towel. Just to show he liked a challenge, he became manager of Hartlepool and grabbed them by the scruff of the neck just as he had done at Darlington and Torquay. Unfortunately, he passed away just before the team he built there clinched promotion.

Dave Smith took over from Cyril and had Caldwell back on loan, but wasn’t interested in making the deal permanent.

As a silly aside, I seem to remember that the Belgian club was amateur and so found “bogus employment” to pay players for – like rugby clubs used to do here. Apparently, they had Caldwell down as a “mattress tester”. Given Enzo’s comments about his “social life”, I imagine he would have been quite good at that!

OK, I get your point. But I would say "history" wouldn't be confined to a particular division as numerous players move between divisions................as indeed, DC did.

I once remember one player confiding to me that he had been bawled out by Mike Green for not following instructions. "he thinks I can't even remember my name" he said "but I'm just not playing that way, it's crap" He didn't last long after that!

Didn't Bennett end up being a team mate of Speedie's at Coventry later on?

KFC Lommelse were the club we signed that player "Ford" from - I've forgotten his full name..................nearly as bad when I started interviewing him at Dorchester for the CGs magazine only to be halted in my tracks by "him" saying 'actually I'm Matt Hockley, you'll find Fordy over there'

Did Sean Haslegrave leave at the same time as Cyril? As far as I recall Haslegrave took charge for a midweek game against Burnley during Pope and Cyril's first spat and his phantom resignation.

I thought Haslegrave had a massive impact in the side that Cyril built.