It’s funny as when O’Connor was mentioned yesterday by another poster I thought he meant Martyn O’Connor! Was thinking he wasn’t on the coaching staff so what the link was other than being a great player in late 90s/early 2000s.
Completely forgot about J O’C and I was disappointed when he got frozen out although he was replaced that season by likes of James Wilson (who mid season then went to non league Lincoln…) so at least back then solid regulars were replaced by comparable level players.
One other thing that people were taking the p*** off around that time was taking the squad in pre season to that army camp in the Lake District. Was reading Roy Keane’s book years ago and he did exactly the same thing at Ipswich!
Don’t know for sure but was a story told on a podcast.
I’ve got Harry Harris in my head as the player but not sure if I’m just remembering him as being on the podcast or whether it was actually him who told the story.
So even if fans thought that we treated him badly as a stalwart of the club, he got his just rewards in the end?
I don’t know why we just didn’t give the job to Winsor Davies
Sounds like he was as bad as Fullerton
If Whitney did any of those things, I’m sure in the present climate he would have suffered some quite serious consequences as would Walsall fc. Instead his career has blossomed including a role at villa which probably pays many times more than anything he earned at Bescot. Sean Geddes was released by Dean Smith by the way in 2011, Whitney’s only contact with him ( if any) would have been as physio. Geddes has a massive chip on his shoulder about Walsall and Dean Smith, he was likely one of the first casualties of no knobhead.
Making them box fully clothed would be a criminal offence as it involves coercive control involving physical assault, yet alone naked!! Whitney would be doing time if that was the case, its nonsense.
Lucky for him. Geddes comes over as a self-entitled bitter little failure that managed to dine out on a couple of goals he scored for Worcester City when they had a bit of a cup run, big deal.
Harry Harris ( who wasn’t so lucky) - but looks like he’s dined out at Mcdonalds/Burger King/Pizza Hut and Kebab King on a regular basis en-route to being player-manager at Walsall Wood , was also plying his trade in non-league long before Whitney got anywhere near a coaching/management role at Walsall.
So its very difficult to see how these accusations stack up to be fair.
I listened to that when it was posted ages ago. Can’t recall the naked boxing story but can randomly recall Harris said Whitney drank his own p*** or something and then said in jest they then made him manager although I assume it was many years later as think Harris was coming through around 2006-07?
My God, maybe he ripped out Mitch Candlin’s throat at half time and turned him into a vampire which is why Mitch never quite made it at Stratford Town or got his Sean Geddes FA cup moment, what with the sun being up during the first half even in winter, and that fact that through sheer bad luck they drew AFC Wearwolf in every round of every cup and got bullied at set pieces, especially those involving crosses.
Alfa male managers. Once the only type of manager. But now a dying breed as the balance of dressing room power has shifted to the players. Players who will down tools if you upset them. Hence the coaches at the top of the game do nothing but heap love and hugs on their players and blame everyone and everything for defeats other than the players themselves. Smith was a fine exponent of this.
I fear Flynn is a bit of a throwback too. You can “love his honesty” but once you’ve called out individuals, there is rarely a way back in the modern dressing room.
Whitney would have possibly got us up if he’d have got the gig instead of O’Driscoll. In Whitney’s words, that team managed itself. It was when Whitney started trying to manage it, it went wrong. Sometimes horribly.
I think that, in terms of your last paragraph, you’re absolutely correct in that the team managed itself and everyone had bought in to what they were trying to do and was willing to work really hard and put their bodies on the line. Just the sort of players whitney loved.
The problem wasn’t with him trying to manage that team, it was the fact that we inevitably lost the key players at the end of that season because they all went on to bigger and better things, so whitney was tasked with signing similar level replacements, not just in terms of ability but also in terms of attitude and understanding of what we were trying to do. I’d suggest that would have been a herculean task for a wise, experienced manager, but to leave a rookie manager to do it, pretty much unsupported, was a huge mistake. We now have discussions about a director of football, well that’s exactly what we needed then - a wise old head to guide and assist. All ifs, buts and maybes but that’s where the club turned for the worse. In the circumstances, there have been many clubs who have just missed promotion one season and then struggled badly or even been relegated the next. We were never in danger of that, but the future direction of the club was changed.
The issue for me was that he didn’t stick to system. He purposely went out and supposedly used most of the budget on Leahy and Devlin to play as wing backs. He tried it a handful of games then moved to a back four where neither could defend.
At the time (both after DS walking and SoD getting the boot) he was the right man to jump in. In hindsight, SoD was possibly the right man at the wrong time. With us not going up and the mass exodus that ensued, he would have got players in who would have responded to his methods, rather than a squad he inherited that were the complete opposite
