Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

8 March 2025

An apochryphal agricultural yarn, an actual factual fact about the softer side of SrrrrAlan and what do kids know, eh?

Going to Walsall in a sieve

Walsall, Walsall, it's a helluva town, the M6 is up, and the art gallery's down!
When you think of Walsall what do you see? A working place much like our own with surprisingly leafy, affluent suburbs but, as Pete Green's Rough Guide back in 2006 noted, the club and the town have a similar image problem to our own:

"Locally the Saddlers' status is that of the 'accidental' little brother and variously underappreciated, patronised and just plain ignored. No matter what they achieve the masses prefer to carry on supporting the other teams around the M6, in the particularly West Midlands sense of supporting - endlessly arguing about which club played 'The Liquidator' at their ground first. Sadly for the self-esteem of all of them that team was Chelsea."

But by Pleck, Palfrey and Wednesbury, they make their own entertainment down by Junction 9, as Pete revealed:

"Have you seen those milk lorries that are painted up to look like a cow? You wouldn't actually mistake one for a cow on account of them being massive and oblong and roaring along motorways at 70 miles an hour. Let's just say they bear the distinctive black and white colouration of cows that are black and white.
When one of them goes past Bescot on the motorway, the home fans go "mooooo!" And you can't see the motorway from the away stand, so away fans tend to wonder what the cowin' 'ell (as they say in the Black Country) is going on. Now you know.”

No matter what, we'll all keep doing our thing. The old will die, the young will grow old, Walsall will keep mooing at the milk lorries and we'll keep gazing dreamily at the ships out in the estuary.

Ah, but when you think of Walsall who do you see in your mind's eye? Noddy Holder? Audrey Roberts from Corrie? John Major's dad? Goldie (the musician, not the Blue Peter dog)? Jerome K Jerome? Nah, gotta be our own, their own, Sir Alan.

Throughout this and other galaxies Walsall are chiefly noted as the club that started the career of Alan Buckley. The 202 goals he registered for the Saddlers remain a club record and the £175,000 fee they paid to bring him back up the A34 from Birmingham in 1979 was only surpassed in 2016. As player-manager he took them to undreamed of heights of sophistication and appreciation. Simply a legendary figure in two lands.

But there's more to the man than goals and gloriously flowing football on a shoestring. Back in 2013, prompted by an interview with Sir Alan in advance of the publication of Pass and Move, the biography written by occasional Cod Almighty contributor Paul Thundercliffe, Dale Houston shared a hidden human side of the great man:

"I was born in Walsall. All my friends in the area used to follow the fortunes of the local "Big Four". My family had their feet firmly planted in the Wallows Lane paddock at Fellows Park, Walsall.

In 1975, as a small boy, I was taken to Fellows Park to see my first football match. My dad told me about a player that the Saddlers had signed from Forest. A small fellow but a giant on the pitch that would be sure to score a lot of goals.

He even had hair in those days. Dad was right, this fella was small and would hardly ever waste a chance and was also extremely adept with the overhead kick.

So I grew up watching Alan Buckley as a great player. I was in awe of him when he became caretaker manager, player-manager and then manager. My parents purchased a business in Skeggy but this didn't stop us from watching Walsall. It was never really the same without Alan Buckley.

You might imagine my excitement when I heard that Alan Buckley was to be appointed manager of Grimsby Town, just an hour up the road. That did it for dad and I. We popped off to Blundell Park to see the fantastic brand of football that Buckley believed in, topped off even with smatterings of old Walsall players like Gary Childs, Richard O'Kelly and Craig Shakespeare.

We have been Grimsby supporters ever since and our enjoyment of everything that Bucko brought to Grimsby is immense.”

So far so nostalgic and eulogistic. But wait, there's more…

"Aged 16 I was a promising young schoolboy footballer. I broke my leg in two places in a county football training session in Lincolnshire. My girlfriend knew of my love of Walsall and the way I had worshipped Alan Buckley. Being upset for me, she wrote a letter telling him of my injury and asking if he could organise a signed football for me.

One day when she got home from work, her parents' telephone rang and it was Alan Buckley. He invited me and my father along to Fellows Park as his guest. What a day it was. With my leg in full-length plaster, on crutches, I was greeted at the players' entrance, allowed in the changing rooms before and after the game and was gifted complimentary tickets.”

Where better to end, than with the man himself, from that 2013 interview, reflecting on how in football time waits for no man:

"(Back in the 80s and 90s) the players knew who I was and what I could do. The youth team haven't a clue about who I am or what I achieved. And why should they?

One session recently, the ball went behind the goal and it got booted back really high towards me on the halfway line. I could feel 15 pairs of eyes staring at me as the ball came over and I trapped it. The kids just laughed.

'What's the matter?' I asked. 'Haven't you Googled me?'"

You might have to Google Walsall, but you should never have to Google Alan Buckley.

These are the full versions of the Cod Almighty programme articles for the 2024/25 season. An edited version was published in The Mariner on 19 October 2024.