IN THE last two months, Carlisle United have dispensed with one man who led them to eighth in League One, and demoted another who has nudged them up to fourth at the onset of autumn. In their place strides someone who came to rest in 17th spot at the end of last season, and who now leaves his old team in 23rd after a 3-0 whacking in his final game in charge. So why, precisely, is John Ward the right man to pilot Carlisle United towards the Championship, a job that was deemed beyond the capabilities of both Neil McDonald and Greg Abbott?
First, those monochrome statistics need a splash of colour. Seventeenth with a club on such modest and meagre resources as Cheltenham is a triumph, a considerable one at that. If anything, it is more impressive than Carlisle finishing eighth.
Analyse what Ward achieved at Whaddon Road over the past year and the evidence lands with a thump to suggest Carlisle have just appointed one of last season’s best-performing managers. As for the Robins’ current position of second-bottom, the explanation for that is also the explanation for Ward’s decision to swap the Cotswolds for Cumbria at the second time of asking. It is that the Cheltenham squad, by grim financial necessity, has been stripped bare of most of its major talents over the last few months.
Kayode Odejayi, JJ Melligan, Brian Wilson, Grant McCann – all now excelling on a higher plane. And generally irreplaceable on the rations offered to Ward at Whaddon Road. Put simply – and the man himself will describe it in infinitely more polite terms – he has had enough.
If Cheltenham now find someone who is able to top Ward’s achievements of League Two promotion and League One survival, the Magic Circle will be missing a member. The likelihood is that they have smashed against the ceiling of their capabilities. And so, even at 56, Ward has now heeded the call of his ambition.
He chose Carlisle because the canvas is bigger, the potential undoubtedly more enticing. But why did Carlisle choose Ward? In a word – and, ultimately, a word you can only body-swerve for so long in football – experience.
In Ward, they have appointed a man who they expect will know the terrain and spot the obstacles a fraction earlier than his rivals for the job, and, significantly, his younger predecessors. After the single-minded drive of Paul Simpson which led Carlisle out of the wastelands; after the ideas of McDonald and the energy of Abbott which have carried them to current heights, they have settled on the notion that an older hand is required at the controls now the distant dream of the Championship moves startlingly closer to reality. Set against previous appointments, it is a deliberate alteration of policy.
The certainty of age now beats the novelty of youth. Is the board’s key change correct? Only time can provide the answer.
Certainly, it’s worth saying that if Ward’s past record suggests modest achievement rather than wave after wave of glory – promotion to the second tier with Bristol City in 1998 a notable highlight – it also hints at general improvement with each fresh step. The job he has just left is arguably the one where he has excelled the most. Another reason why Fred Story scribbled Ward’s name at the top of his pad once Neil McDonald had cleared his desk (and, indeed, when Paul Simpson departed the previous summer) is that his reputation in football is impeccable.
If you want a player or a coach to tell you good things about John Ward, expect a queue to form quickly. Search for someone to question his abilities and impugn his character, and you’d better take a Thermos flask. You’ll be gone a while.
The idea, according to Story, is to marry Ward’s calm and wisdom with Abbott’s enthusiasm and spark. A football club cannot thrive without all four qualities. The feeling is that Abbott’s combustibility has probably counted against him when the final reckoning came, but don’t doubt the importance of such raw energy on the training ground.
Whether Abbott can cope with the psychological deflation of reverting from caretaker manager to an assistant’s role at Brunton Park is the question on which Story’s planned “dream team” currently hangs. A personal suspicion is that, once the smoke clears, Abbott will decide that there is more to be gained by staying and learning at Ward’s knee than striding out, alone, into the uncertainties of a managerial job-hunt after just 10 games as a boss himself. The local media’s flag is lowered to half-mast with Abbott’s departure from the manager’s chair, since the 43-year-old, in victory or defeat, brought passion and zest to any post-match inquisition.
When the microphones approached, he supplied the electricity. But the colours will soon be raised again when Ward’s thoughtful, measured briefings enter the public domain. A confession: over the last couple of years, the onset of a Carlisle v Cheltenham fixture has always been a favourite time, since it brought with it the chance to hear Ward’s honest and detailed thoughts on football matters of the day, and also to dip into the pool of his enthusiasm for all things Carlisle United.
Here he was, for instance, on the eve of this season’s meeting between the sides at Brunton Park: “I’ve been lucky enough to work at clubs like Burnley and Wolves, and Carlisle is in that category because it is a proper football town where people support their team and aren’t running off to watch Liverpool and Newcastle. There was plenty more of this, which hindsight marks down as a subtle job application on Ward’s behalf, especially at a time when he was voicing his frustrations a touch louder than normal on the restrictions at Cheltenham. Significantly, Story and his directors will have scanned his words and reckoned that Ward was unlikely to say no to the Blues if they rapped on his door a second time in as many summers.
He said something else in that interview which deserves decent billing again. “From what I’ve seen in this league, they have got as strong a squad as anybody….yes, I do expect Carlisle to be challenging this season.
” Remarkably, it now falls to Ward to make good on that promising prediction. A bringer of calm? Perhaps.
But the Brunton Park high command will demand plenty more for their four-year contract. At least he is guaranteed a low-key start to his life at Carlisle United. Saturday’s visitors?
Millwall.
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