Rebooted 1998-99: When Walsall beat Manchester City to promotion from third tier
“At the start of that season, we were Rag Arse Rovers, The Dog & Duck — fucking crap. You will never get a team like
that again. We were thrown together and patched up, and ended up achieving something unbelievable,” says Chris
Marsh.
The Walsall right-back scored the second goal in a 3-1 Walsall win over Oldham Athletic on May 1, 1999, that took
the poor relations of West Midlands football remarkably, improbably, dramatically into the second tier.
In the 132-year history of the club, it continues to be the most illustrious season. In a Division Two crowded with
high-spending clubs, what transpired during the summers of 1998 and 1999 was exceptional.
In order to gain promotion, a team that engaged in mandatory Tuesday drinking, hotel room trashing, curfew
violations, early-morning taxi runs, and evading weight checks defeated high-spending teams like Preston North
End, Stoke City, Wigan Athletic, and—most astonishingly—Manchester City. It’s hardly credible considering how it
all started.
In July 1998, a sparsely populated coach drove around country lanes near the west coast of Scotland looking for a
football pitch.
For their pre-season preparations, Walsall were based in dormitories on the Craigie campus of The University of the
West of Scotland near Ayr, but, owing to a cock-up, their training field had been taken over by an archery contest.
Eventually, they happened upon a council-run pitch a few miles away, piled off the coach and were put through their
paces by Ray Graydon, the former Aston Villa winger and newly appointed manager.
“Pre-season was a shambles,” recalls Marsh, who, by then, was a 28-year-old senior player, having learned his trade in the club’s youth.
ranks and, at one time, attracted interest from Liverpool manager Graeme Souness.
“We went to Scotland with 10 players and drafted in trialists. I remember playing Ayr United up there and Jimmy
Walker, our No 1 keeper, had to play outfield. He played on the wing!
“Results don’t matter in pre-season but the performances were bad as well. Nothing gelled and we just didn’t get
going. We started the season as favourites with the bookies to go down in what is now League One. One or two of us
were thinking, ‘Fuck me, this is going to be a long season’.”
It was a summer of turmoil before they headed north. Jan Sorensen, the former Denmark midfielder who had been
plucked from his job at a Tamworth bowling alley to manage the team a year earlier, had departed after allowing his
players too much leeway off the field.
In his place came Graydon, in his first managerial job at the age of 50 but with a clear idea of his philosophy based
on years of experience as a player and coach.
He left an impression right away, and not everyone liked it. “We had a love-hate relationship when Ray was my manager, but now I love him,” Walker says. “Now that I think about it, we genuinely detested one another.” There wasn’t much affection!
We were all called to meet him when he was hired. I was wearing shorts, flip-flops, a t-shirt, shades and a hat. I also
had a beard and was a little out of shape.
He said, “All right, I think we need to put some rules in place,” as soon as I bowled in. He instructed me that we must
wear shoes, trousers, a collared shirt, be clean-shaven and not wear caps every day.
The trip to Scotland did not improve Graydon’s perception of his team, as their defiance of their new manager
distracted him. The most renowned manager in Walsall history nearly quit after a few weeks, which the supporters
were unaware of at the time.
We were able to secure clearance for a night out because “the place was a shithole — it was university dorms and it
pissed down every day,” Walker adds.
We returned late since we had an 11 p.m. curfew. “Anyone who stayed out past the curfew, stay on the bus,” he said
the following day after training. You can all leave now. Approximately eight or nine of us were still on the bus when
he said, “All right.
Graydon consented to stay, and his players decided to follow his strategies. However, there was still time for one of
the curfew violators to cause more havoc in Scotland.
Walker claims that Ray told him he was fining us a week’s salary. “However, we all came up with the brilliant idea of
covering everyone’s dinner on a night out following one of the games.”A week’s pay wasn’t much, but between us, we
were likely earning between £700 and £1,000, which was a significant sum of money. Rather, we agreed to divide the
cost of dinner. We approached each of the boys and informed them that the cheapest items on the menu would be
soup for appetisers and pasta for dessert.
“So everyone did, with the exception of Ray, the general manager, Paul Taylor, and the chairman Jeff Bonser, who I
believe ordered two bottles of Chateaubriand and a bottle of red wine worth £70!”Danny Naisbitt, Walker’s
goalkeeping understudy, was the only guy who didn’t order the soup and pasta. He sat there and said, in his goofy
Geordie accent, “Please, I’ll have the 12 oz sirloin steak for main and the king prawns for starter.”All of us simply
stared at him and exclaimed, “You fucking what?” He had to really escape off the bus to his room and seal himself in
when we returned to the barracks because (defender) Adrian Viveash was going to kill him.
There would be more manager-team arguments and drunken transgressions, but by that point, the instability in
Scotland had given way to a momentum that had grown during the first few weeks of the season.
In addition to Walker and Marsh, Graydon inherited a number of players, including Walsall-born midfielder Dean
Keates, seasoned former Swindon Town centre-back Viveash, and homegrown defender Ian Roper.
Journeyman forward Andy Rammell left Southend United, Icelandic midfielder Bjarni Larusson joined just in time
to travel to Scotland, and the incredibly experienced Neil Pointon signed to play left-back.
Additionally, on the eve of the season, they welcomed Jason Brissett, a quick winger, and an unidentified Grimsby
Town cast-off who would later leave a lasting impression.
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