We saw it through no matter what

“I wanted you to see something about her – I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do…” – Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird

   I love that quote. If my quote wall was an actual wall, rather than just a series of haste scribbles on the back of a refill pad, that one would be wedged firmly atop my diamond nine. I could write a whole essay on what I love about To Kill A Mockingbird, but I don’t think it’s difficult to work out why I picked that quote out for this article.

   For me, that sums up City’s cup final. To a letter. In that paragraph, you can find everything about that game against Swansea. In many ways, there’s really no point in me writing this now. What I need to say is right there. The score? It didn’t matter. Most of us – admittedly, not me – knew the result weeks before a ball was kicked, even if we’d allowed ourselves, for a moment, while we were whipped up in the middle of the media tornado, to dream up a happier scenario. We didn’t win, but we had a go. We were under the cosh, but we mustered a shot on target towards the end and celebrated like we’d actually qualified for the Europa League. We felt hurt, dejected, betrayed and ruthlessly deserted by the football Gods as a lonely Duke slumped off the pitch to a veracious reception, but we kept the flags waving long into the night.

   We saw it through no matter what.

   Looking back on it is odd. It’s not so much that it was a year ago – the time feels about right. It’s more that it happened at all.
   I’d long accepted that City would never reach a cup final. I’d dreamed of the play-offs, of my club reaching the national stadium, but even the JPT final, the most plausible of all the annual Wembley showpieces, had almost always seemed an utterly outlandish prospect, so how could I have possibly envisaged this? My brother’s team, Liverpool, were the side that blessed our house with grandeur and glory and major cup finals, so how had we stumbled into this world? What kind of mad foray had brought us here? Surely we would be rumbled, caught out, shown to be the impostors? I stepped off the coach tentatively, half expecting to look out along Wembley Way and see the blue and white of Chelsea, or the red and black of Manchester United. Seeing the claret and amber brought a wave of stunned relief. It seemed an hour or so before the Swansea clan rocked up.
   When we were on the concourse, I was confident. Being at Wembley felt… right. We were there on merit. There was no reason to be scared. Even as I ran the pole of those now famous flags between my fingers (I genuinely didn’t believe they were free), I felt relaxed. ‘Claret and Amber’ blared from the speakers and I felt even more at home. Even when the teams lined up in their black tracksuits, I was bizarrely composed. When Swansea got their first, for crying out loud, I still thought we’d pull it back.
   What I remember about that goal, though, is the pain. To this day, I’ve only seen the goals back once (my dad tactfully deleted the game from the Sky planner as soon as we got back from London, in a bid to protect me from some semi-repressed memories), but I can recall someone losing their marker and knowing the worst was to come. Dyer prodded. Duke stretched his arm to the side. McArdle threw himself forward. But that was it. Dyer celebrated in front of us as we struggled to believe City were trailing. An ebb of doubt flickered in my mind and, for the first time, I genuinely feared for the result. This wasn’t a part of the dream.
   Five goals against, a red card and one meek shot on target was never part of the dream. One foray forward was never part of the dream. Watching City chase shadows for 90 minutes, recklessly made human and demoralised before our eyes, was a concept dismissed at the drawing board. But I couldn’t have been prouder.
   Because we saw it through no matter what.
   In that final half an hour, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. As I stood up and waved my flag, nothing else on the pitch mattered. I knew most of my friends would have turned off their televisions by now, but some would still be watching – and this is what they would be seeing.
   Us. Here. Trapped in this moment.
   In that period, I felt more affirmed than I ever have as a football fan. We stood, unified, united, together, the vocal and proud – so, so proud - personification of the mantra and mentality that had carried the team since Burton.
   It’s only a cup.
   At the time, though, it hurt. I burst into tears in the stands, sobbed away in the toilets, sighed all the way back to the coach. Women in the queue scowled at me, muttered those words of consolation that never actually offer any consolation – “It’s only a game”. I thought back over the months of media coverage and blasted fate for not giving us what we’d been rightly entitled to – reality, it seemed, bites hard. It was a selfish way of looking at the cup run, but I feared my time supporting City had already reached its apex; that the next few games would be the hangover, some desperate, contrived attempt to rekindle the magic of something that would never happen again. I slipped into the darkened Wembley night ironically humming ‘Premier League? You’re Having A Laugh!’, not particularly thinking anything other than that I had to keep my emotions in check or risk my mum would veto my plea for play-off tickets should City make the season finale. My auntie reminded me I had the bread and butter delight of Dagenham and Redbridge to look forward to just days after. The elitist part of me died inside.
   And then the coach driver tipped me over the edge by playing Emeli Sande, which is the last thing you want to hear (after Adele) when you’re stuck behind 20 coaches in a London car park and wallowing in the self-pity that comes with witnessing your team fall victims to the heaviest cup final defeat of all time.
   You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
   And we did. We were winners by just reaching that stage. A cup final? We’ll never dp that again. Swansea might. Liverpool will. Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City - easily. A Championship team? Maybe. But someone from the fourth division? No chance. That’ll never, ever happen again. The cup final has become the preserve of the elite once more.
   A cup final. And I was there. I’ll have to put up with some stick at school tomorrow, and this car park will undoubtedly take an age to get out of, but I was there. I was at Wembley. I was waving a flag. I was there when Gary Jones tamely flashed the ball towards goal. I was there on the day that Bradford City reached a major cup final.
   I was there when we made history.
           

Bantams Blogger Meets... Peter Jackson

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Bantams Blogger meets former Bradford City player and manager PETER JACKSON to find out about his career highlights, the rise of Nahki Wells and his ill-fated spell in the Valley Parade hot seat.

   It’s a Saturday morning in Waterstones, and a trickle of City fans line up at a table in the doorway. Sat next to a stack of books alongside his wife, Alison, is former Bantams boss Peter Jackson, scribbling his signature as he poses for pictures and talks enthusiastically to supporters.

   In his autobiography, Living With Jacko, Peter and Alison talk emotionally and candidly about Peter’s battle with throat cancer, his football career and that fateful day in 1985. It’s a beautiful read, but not one that’s failed to attract controversy: Mark Lawn told the Telegraph And Argus last week that the board “don’t agree with what he has said in certain parts of it”.

   “[It’s about] mostly what’s happened in my life and my wife’s life as well, really,” Peter Jackson says. “It’s not a typical football book but it’s the truth about my career, my problems with throat cancer and basically my life in general.”

   Jackson played over 300 games for the club and returned to manage the side at the end of the 2010/11 season, eventually keeping the Bantams up with just one game to go. Though his stint in charge was ultimately doomed and he resigned after just four league games the following year, Peter describes his time at the helm – which saw the arrival of Bantams hotshot Nahki Wells - as his ‘dream job’.

   “[It was] brilliant. I loved it. I absolutely loved managing the club,” he begins. “To go down to Apperly Bridge, where it all started when I was a kid, as manager was really special for me and I’m just sad it didn’t work out.”

   ‘Work out’ being an underestimation. The start of Jackson’s tenure was blighted by uncertainty, with fans worried the team would slide out of the Football League and be forced to leave Valley Parade in the process. But for Peter, originally drafted in as interim manager, his priority was simple.

   “Just to keep the club up,” he says. “Just to keep the club up, simple as that. It was in freefall. There was no spirit within the club, there was no passion or pride - at least I gave that to the club, if nothing else. I brought some smiles back to people’s faces but my main aim solely was just to keep the club in the Football League.”

   Jackson secured survival at Hereford on the penultimate day of the campaign. The achievement saw him appointed permanently and he began recruiting for the new season, with his sights set on that elusive promotion to the third tier that had so far escaped all his predecessors. And Peter thinks the team he assembled could have cracked it.

   “Yeah, I believe so,” Jackson explains. “You only have to look at that couple of games before I left. For the Leeds game, where we should have beat Leeds United that night and they were a Championship side, we gave a really good account of ourselves, and with the emergence of Nahki Wells, a player I signed, I firmly believe that we’d have been up there.

  “Nahki came through Mark Ellis and Dave Baldwin. Different people had recommended this player and he’d been released by Greg Abbot at Carlisle. We brought him down, had a look at him and I signed him. He wasn’t on massive money so he was worth the risk because he had a lot of pace and he can destroy teams with his pace alone. But he’s matured now and he’s a really good finisher who’ll go for millions of pounds.”

   Just before his departure, Jackson’s side had taken just one point from a possible twelve and lost to Dagenham the week prior. Did he feel a pressure?

   “No, not really,” he says. “It was early stages in the season but there were things going on around me that shouldn’t have been happening at a football club. That was my reason for leaving and everything in the book is true.”

   Where did it go wrong?

   “Different people trying to do different things really – probably the emergence of Archie Christie,” Jackson sighs.

   It’s these comments, about then-head of development and chief scout, Archie Christie, that have led to City cancelling the book signing originally planned in the club shop. In the book, Peter writes, “Day by day, week by week, I felt my authority was being undermined… and not only by Christie… Mark [Lawn] also used to come down to the training ground while Colin [Cooper] and I were taking training sessions, something none of my previous chairmen had done.”

   In spite of this, Jackson doesn’t regret coming back.

   “No, not at all,” he says.  I loved it. I really, really did enjoy it. Being able to keep the club up, which I did, build for a new season… But, as I say, the arrival of Archie Christie killed it all.”

   Of a career encompassing the honour of being made the Bantams’ youngest ever captain, 60 games at Newcastle and 155 appearances for Huddersfield Town, as well as three promotions, what stand out as the highlights?

   “Winning, obviously, the Championship with City,” he begins, “winning Newcastle United’s Player of the Year and my promotion with Huddersfield Town at Cardiff many years ago.”

   And at Bradford City?

   “As a player, lifting the trophy and meeting so many incredible people - the spirit we had at Bradford City after the fire. I started there as a kid and to think I’m stood now, in the centre of Bradford, Mario’s, where I used to have my hair cut, 100 yards away… It’s quite emotional to think there’s a book on Peter Jackson in Bradford, sold in Bradford bookshops, so that’s quite pleasing. And the biggest low was obviously the Bradford City fire and another one is my sad departure of what I call my dream job.

   “The fire was a really awful time, as you can see in the book. The emotion was really high and, as I say, it was a very sad day for everybody connected.”

   Jackson’s current pursuit takes him far away from the pitch - but it’s one that, he says in his book, comes with even more pressure than managing a football club.

   “We’ve got a home care company,” he explains. “We provide carers to go to people’s homes and we employ over 90 people, so it’s quite a big business we’ve got.”

   And Jackson, who went to the cup final and was ‘even waving a flag’, says it’s great that City are finally moving upwards after six years of rotting away in the doldrums.

   “[It’s] good, excellent, really good,” he enthuses. “They’ve brought in good players, they’re doing well and they need to get on a roll. I’ve always said at one time, with the turnover of managers, someone will eventually get it right, and Parkinson’s getting it right.”

Living With Jacko is out now and available to buy here.

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Party Like It's '99

As the Class of ’99 reunion game gets fans remembering years past, I wonder where the next fourteen years will take us 

   It’s scary to think about where you’ll be in the next 14 years. It’s scary to think of how you’ll be and who you'll be, and of what major milestones will have whizzed by. It’s scary to think of dreams: whether they’ll have been broken or achieved, or remained unfulfilled and locked away in some sacred corner of your heart, never to be attempted for fear of failure. It’s scary to think of where Bradford City will be.

   Surely, no one there on that day in 1999, when the Bantams beat Wolves to secure promotion to the Premier League, could have predicted the dramatic downward spiral that followed. Those days were ones of optimism, promise and chasing the dream. Not of, well, the other stuff. Especially not of the other stuff.
  Time has slipped all too quickly by since those heady days of Molineux, promotions, Premiership football and relegation survival, since the days when the club had the world at its feet. Then, there was the fall back down again: the administrations, the heartbreak and the hurt. Life in League Two became a struggle, the club still bearing the scars of the foray into the top flight. Bradford City, once standing toe to toe with Manchester United, were a symbol of shattered dreams.
  The years in the bottom division were generally unremarkable and forgettable. The first two seasons were ace, of course: Stuart was there, and there was an odd novelty to being amongst the likes of Barnet and Accrington Stanley. But that all ended. Taylor came in. You know the story. Trips to Valley Parade became a tale of ‘Well, there are 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back’.
  Then, Parkinson entered. He gave us hope. He gave us tactics, strategies and form. He gave us those characters: Hines, the doomed West Ham winger whose tenure with the Hammers was blighted by injury; Stephen Darby, the Liverpool graduate who had been released by the Premership giants; Gary Jones, the midfield powerhouse who never stopped running and the one man embodiment of what this club is now all about. James Meredith, Rory McArdle, Garry Thompson, Alan Connell, Kyel Reid. He handed them a stay of execution. They took it. The rest, as they say, is history.
   For the first time in a long time, we cared about the team. They were more than a quick ticket out the division, cannon fodder to plug the gaps, more, even, than footballers. They became brothers, standing arm in arm, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, on the hallowed Wembley turf, harbouring our hopes, our dreams, our fears. Everything we are, everything we have, everything we’ve ever wanted to be. There. In them.
   Superhumans. Superheroes.
   That, I am told, is how it’s meant to be. The class of ‘99 are just as revered, just as loved, just as appreciated, as the 2012/13 boys. They trigger the same offset of emotions as Matt Duke and Will Atkinson. James Hanson and Nahki Wells hold their own in the same echelon as Stuart McCall’s band of merry men.
   And, fourteen years from now, will there be another charity match? Most of the players will have finished their careers by then. Wells’ time as a footballer will be coming to an end. McHugh’s will also be winding down.
   It’s hard to picture the scene. A balding Matt Duke, perhaps, in between the sticks, ducking and diving and tipping shots over the bar, and clambering to his feet to deny some daring challenger from the penalty spot? A greying Alan Connell? Gary Jones, though approaching half a century, will still, no doubt, be playing with the youthful exuberance of an 18 year old. A Google search tells me the years have been reasonably kind to most of the 1999 squad, especially McCall, Jacobs and Beagrie. The pressure’s now on our lot to make sure they age just as well.
   I’ll probably be there on such a date, if ever there was one, having squeezed into my hooped shirt one last time and sent some hardy soul up into our attic to retrieve my Villa and City half-and-half scarf. Waving one of those Wembley flags. Recalling those days.
   And there’ll be a time when I’m grey and old, sitting on some elaborate, gold-encrusted throne as I count my millions and field calls from agents and A-Listers (Pfft! I wish!), and I’ll stop and look back on that season. Look back on the Will Atkinson flick-on and Garry Thompson volley. Look back on Rory McArdle swooping in to double City’s lead in the play off final. Look back on Gary Jones climbing the Wembley stairs, rubbing his hands together with glee and jubilantly holding the trophy aloft as the pyrotechnics glittered and sparkled and the party got into full flow. Dreaming, with a glint in my eye, of a bygone era. Dreaming of Nahki, of Meredith, of Darby, of Duke. Dreaming of Wembley. Dreaming of promotion. Dreaming of Bradford City.
   And it still won’t quite seem real.

 

 

Do You Remember... Luke O'Brien?

Part two of the Do You Remember? series focuses on Luke O’Brien. The left back made over 100 appearances for City, but left for Exeter as starts began to prove rare.

 

O'Brien playing for Bradford City

   Luke O’Brien is up there on my (admittedly rather short before the 2012/13 season) list of all-time favourite City players. A bold statement to make, maybe, but one that few supporters who saw him play would struggle to justify.

   O’Brien was a product of City’s youth system, having been on the club’s books since the tender age of eight and rising through the ranks to bag himself a professional contract. Equally endearingly, he was a boyhood Bradford fan: a former season ticket holder, O’Brien had grown up with the Bantams, claret and amber the only colours he’d ever known. He was one of us. The passionate fan. We cared about him. He was living his dream as he pulled on the City jersey and took to the Valley Parade turf on a matchday, and there were never any qualms about his effort or motivation.

    No wonder he rapidly became a fans’ favourite.

   2007 marked his first season of senior football, although, initially, it seemed as though a sniff of first team action would be hard to come by for the young O’Brien. Paul Heckingbottom had established himself as the first-choice left back, and he was a good performer, bringing an air of experience to the role that rookie Luke couldn’t offer. As Heckingbottom excelled, O’Brien was confined to the bench, watching on as McCall’s team aimed to assault the promotion spots. Heckingbottom was reliable, and there were few grumbles about his performances. After all, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

   But the system did break. Eventually. Because Heckingbottom got suspended. The left back spot became vacant. The gauntlet fell to Luke O’Brien, and this was his chance. Would the teenager be able to produce?

   His first start came in the form of a 0-3 defeat to Tranmere at Valley Parade. It was a sobering afternoon: City struggled all over the park and were shoddy and uncomfortable, and it soon became a game to forget as the gulf in class – 32 places on the league ladder – quickly showed. O’Brien, however, enjoyed a solid debut, suppressing their speedy winger. He filled in for Heckingbottom again when City took on Brentford, and even cleared a shot off the line to salvage a point from the clash.

   That was it, but the hype was growing. A composed, tidy youngster who also possessed the attacking intent needed to drive forward, with years to develop and blossom into a first team regular. Keep an eye on him, they said. This one’s got potential.

   And potential that McCall recognised when he offered O’Brien a contract.

   In spite of this, it was Heckingbottom who started the first nine games of the 2008/09 campaign, before being dismissed in shame following two bookable offences.  McCall turned to O’Brien, and his protégé produced. From then on, there was only one candidate for the left back slot.

   It was total role reversal: Heckingbottom was the one sidelined and twiddling his thumbs on the bench while O’Brien flourished to become the name on everybody’s lips. Good one-on-one, not bad at set pieces and never wasteful in possession, O’Brien grew and prospered into one of the strongest and most able players in McCall’s squad, his hunger and desire compensating for any lack of experience. It became a common sight to see Luke overlapping with his winger as he charged forward, whipping crosses into the box and hitting curling balls in for the strikers. What a player. What a find. What a success story for the youth team.

   That pristine season was capped off in brilliant style, and O’Brien won four trophies at the club’s awards night. Paul Heckingbottom departed, and that said it all – we had a keeper in O’Brien.

   O’Brien went on to feature in 49 of City’s games the following season, and survived the cull as Peter Taylor implemented his changes. Taylor quickly became a fan, with O’Brien making 46 appearances under him - an achievement made even more remarkable when one considers the number of players fielded during Taylor’s reign: there weren’t many who started as regularly as O’Brien.

   Like David Syers, O’Brien was one of the few entertaining players in the side. Workrate never wavering, passion never faltering, mistakes few and far between. We all liked him. End of story.

   So, O’Brien retains his place in the squad and is involved in the cup run and the play off final victory and eventually succeeds Jones as captain to lead the side through another promotion and picks up accolade after accolade after accolade at the Player of The Year awards over the years and makes over 300 appearances to become a club legend. Right? Not exactly.

   O’Brien featured little under Peter Jackson and Phil Parkinson as a string of other players were favoured. A spot in the starting eleven proved elusive, and the name ‘Luke O’Brien’ rarely graced the teamsheet on a Saturday.

   To me, the final nail in O’Brien’s coffin came against Sheffield United during the J.P.T. It was a penalty shootout. Penalty number twelve. The next taker just needed to score, and that would be it – City would storm through to the next round.

   Luke O’Brien stepped up, and the pressure was on. One penalty, that was all. Just score, and he’s the hero for the night. One kick away from being the man who won the match.

   O’Brien aimed for the right corner and put height on the ball, but his shot missed by inches and ricocheted off the post. Instead, Chris Mitchell became the side’s saviour, and Luke was left wondering what could have been – and what effect that mistake would have on his chances. 

   Soon, Luke O’Brien left for Exeter, but couldn’t save the team from relegation to the bottom tier. A stint at Oxford United followed, and he’ll start the next season with Gateshead. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to be a part of a Bantams promotion, which was a massive shame for himself and the supporters: he would have loved to represent his beloved City at Wembley, and we would have loved him to lift that play off final trophy. But, sentiments aside, we’ve got James Meredith now, and he’s turned out to be a cracking defender. There’s no doubt that he’ll relish the challenge of League One football next month.

   I’d still go as far as to say that, even with the current squad factored in, O’Brien is one of my favourite City players ever, but, having seen Meredith dominate the left hand side and run riot with Reid, and learnt how Parkinson’s style differs from Taylor’s, I understand why we didn’t keep Luke on.

   He may no longer be lining up for his Bradford City, but Luke will be getting games next season. And, as a young footballer with his best years still to come, that’s exactly what he needs.

Do You Remember... David Syers?

 As part of the pre-season coverage, I’ll be looking back at some of the players who represented City during the six seasons in League Two. First up is David Syers, the non-league gem who ran rampant against Leeds United before injuries plagued his second season.

Syers locked in a challenge

   The Peter Taylor era doesn’t hold many happy memories for City fans, and it’s not too difficult to see why. Hoof-ball tactics and a quantity over quality philosophy were employed, and what was the result? Disapproval, outrage and a mediocre side that offered very little to shout about.

   And yet, there was David Syers, a complete contrast to the rest of the squad.

   Plucked from obscurity in the form of a non-league outfit and with Tommy Doherty reportedly commanding a large fee for his services, no one was burdening Syers with too many expectations. He wasn’t the big money signing, the player portrayed as our catalyst for promotion.  He didn’t bring a fanfare with him.

   Which was odd, given what he’d turn out to be.

   Syers was your classic box-to-box midfielder, with a desirable work ethic and the eagerness to make those clever runs as he surged forward. He was endowed with ball keeping ability and a technical flair rarely exhibited so uniquely in the fourth division, and his control and pace made him a fresh alternative to the ugly, long-ball style that so quickly tainted our perception of Taylor. A different attacking outlet to the combination of the winger and the overlapping full back, Syers was one of the only things worth watching in Taylor’s creativity-sapped team.

   He set the benchmark for the other members of the squad to aim for. Only a handful of players – such as Luke O’Brien, Lee Hendrie, Michael Flynn and James Hanson – ever matched the blonde midfielder for effort and/or ability, and so Syers became the shining light. Our beacon of hope amidst the growing gloom and despair of Peter Taylor’s reign. The saving grace of an otherwise forgettable season. The one thing to hang onto and retain as Peter Jackson aimed to wash away the bad memories.

   One could argue that our fondest memory of Syers will always be the Leeds game at Elland Road. The midfielder was at the centre of nearly everything City did, pulling all the strings and acting as a key driving force to nearly prompt Leeds to throw up their hands in surrender. Syers hounded every ball and was constantly snapping at the heels of the Whites. It’s total testament to his involvement in the fixture that Bradford only stumbled when he left the field. Injured.

   Syers had broken and was rampaging forward. But his touch was heavy. Leeds goalkeeper Andrew Lonergan went to collect as Syers chased, with the pair clattering to send the Bantams dynamo tumbling to the ground.

   He was out for around three months.

   Eventually, Syers recovered, and came on as a substitute during the Boxing Day clash with Crewe. By the Shrewsbury game six days later, he was showing signs of returning to his spectacular form of the previous campaign, but (such was City’s luck at the time) a seemingly legitimate challenge was met with a sending off, and a Bradford appeal was unsuccessful. As for the dreaded second season syndrome - Syers never got a chance to see if he’d suffer from it. The darker forces of injury and suspension took care of that.

   For the remainder of the season, Syers’ appearances came largely from the bench, as Ritchie Jones and Ricky Ravenhill forged a strong midfield partnership to secure City’s place in League Two for another season. The set up was not ideal for a player of David’s age or calibre, and Parkinson allowed the midfielder to look elsewhere.

   Syers was offered a contract, and one that Mark Lawn described as ‘good’. But he never signed. Couple some ill-advised remarks on a social networking site with a few misinterpreted comments to the press, and that was it: everything fractured and Syers left for Doncaster Rovers.

   And the questions remain. Were we hasty to let him go? Should we have put in more of an effort to keep him? Could we have developed him into our key midfield engine, like Stuart McCall before him and Gary Jones afterwards? Not then at his peak, Syers could have served us in this role for years to come, perhaps eventually becoming captain and maybe even a legend.

  But you can torment yourself for years about what could have been.

  We’re left to speculate, and perhaps we’d be thinking about Syers more often if Parkinson hadn’t recruited such an impressive midfield unit in Jones, Doyle, Thompson and co.

   Maybe we could have moulded Syers into our little midfield spark, but that’s an issue for another day. Currently, Jason Kennedy seems set to provide us with the same longevity in midfield that retaining Syers would have given us, and that lack of long-term thinking appeared to be the main issue where Syers’ departure was concerned.

   Will we regret releasing him? Only time will be able to tell us that.

Looking Back

How a rare room tidy lead to a trip down memory lane

Luke O'Brien was once a regular for the Bantams

   Tidying my room is a mammoth challenge that I undertake once in a blue moon. It involves being ruthless, being resourceful and being reminiscent of football seasons gone by, as it is seemingly inevitable that an old City programme or newspaper cutting will be unearthed.

   This time, it was a stack of football cards from the 2007-08 season that entertained, as a certain City talisman was at the centre of the pile.

   “No! Is that… Our Andrew Davies?”

   The blond hair had been shaved off, the trademark beard was nowhere to be seen and he was sporting the red and white strip of Middlesborough, but it was still the very same Andrew Davies who is now such an instrumental part of Phil Parkinson’s squad.

   I knew of his Premier League history, but I had no idea that he’d been immortalised on a football card.

   There was one of Kasper Schmeichel in his Manchester City days, and Glen Johnson as a Portsmouth player. A floppy-haired Gareth Bale, who is now Tottenham’s shining light, was a three-star defender with an “attack” rating of merely 40.

   The moral of the story? Football is fickle. A lot changes in six years.

   In terms of Bradford City, the guarantee of change has been the only certainty throughout the League Two stint, with McCall, Taylor, Jackson and Parkinson all bringing their own plans to the club in hope of securing that evasive promotion. Hanson and McLaughlin have been the closest things to constants, and each reformation has seen new talent drafted in and other players released.

   Bradford under Stuart McCall, for example, differs greatly to the present incarnation of the club.

   Joe Colbeck and Omar Daley paced down the flanks, and Mark Bower shaped the defence alongside David Weatherall and Paul Heckingbottom. Ex-City dynamo Luke O’Brien is at Oxford, but Bantams fans still fondly remember his time in the team and the way in which he charged up from left back and whipped crosses into the box. The teenager who clinched the winner when City took on Macclesfield, David Brown, now lines up for Bradford Park Avenue. Scott Loach is currently plying his trade for Championship team Ipswich Town.

   Dean Furman, such a superb player for City in the McCall era, has since captained Oldham (though, at the moment, he's on loan with Doncaster) and represented South Africa at international level. He may be returning to Valley Parade if Athletic survive the drop and the Bantams win promotion, or if Bradford stay in this division and Oldham don’t avoid relegation.

   More recently, tough-tackling Michael Flynn waved Bradford a fond farewell, joined by Craig Fagan and Chris Mitchell. Personally, I always felt that the latter was unlucky not to figure more in the line-up – 3 assists in one match clearly indicates a footballer of calibre – as he could create chances and knew how to exert influence on the game.

   Yet, Mitchell wouldn’t fit into Parkinson’s squad, and that is why he was given the chop at the end of last season. Under the League Cup miracle man, the team play more flowing, passing football. Gary Jones catalyses City’s offensive efforts. Kyel Reid and Zavon Hines whiz up and down the wing to create chances. Will Atkinson’s link-up play with Jones can perplex defences, and it certainly did cause trouble for Paul Lambert’s side in the Villa home leg. The team is entirely different.

   Football evolves and changes so fast, and is begs the question: is there room for sentiment in football?

   Yes, one could argue. Players will always have their favourite clubs and the magic of representing their boyhood team will never fade. Passion, emotion and spirit drive a team to success – the Bantams team that we’ve got now always admirably give 100% to every game; players like Jones and Ravenhill are a credit to City in terms of work rate. However, players don’t know how long their time in the first team will last, let alone their tenure at the club, and they’ll have to be ready to face the possibility of a move.

   When the transfer window opens and Parkinson makes changes to the team, we’ll all have our personal pick of who to keep and get rid of – just like my room tidy, coincidentally. I’d quite like to retain this whole squad, because we’ve enjoyed so much success this year and we are in possession of a set of players who are capable of beating any side. I expect to win every game, and I’ve never really felt that about City before.

   Bradford City is a magnet for players, especially after the publicity generated through the club’s part in the League Cup final. Phil Parkinson himself is a massive draw, and the huge fan base, the one that was out in such voice at Wembley and which dwarfs the number of supporters of nearly every team in this division, is even more of a pull.

   Thanks to the cup run, we’ve got the money to keep our assets and to recruit that extra talent to strengthen our bid for success next year.

   We’ll have to wait with bated breath to see what Parkinson has planned for the team, but, until then, there’s a promotion battle to fight.

Oh, and if you’re curious about that Andrew Davies football card, here it is: