I’ve more or less recognised in the last couple of years that retro-content is the best content. We all like to reminisce and as a club we have a far deeper and richer history than modern football media ever really acknowledges. Therefore the tales I tell aren’t overly told, so to speak. Gladly in contrast to the mainstream the club has gone quite the other way and the former players being welcomed to the pitch last week was one of many events and pieces of coverage that have nodded to the past recently, not least the kit that celebrates our one hundred and twentieth year with it’s rather magnificent badge. Anyway my “The Boy was a Larker” series which I originally started for the HCST newsletter seems to have been really well received and whether that’s by paying tribute to all time greats like Geovanni or cult heroes like Neil Mann, you, the blessed reader, seem happy to tag along with me.
Anyway… this is an awfully long winded way of saying I began to consider recently, who is below that level. The hall of very good so to speak, and lots of names spring to mind of players who had clear talent and did solid or just plain good jobs for the club, but are perhaps not likely to be inducted to the club’s official HOF any time soon. A few examples? Ahmed Elmohamady, Steve McClaren, Gary Brabin, Ben Burgess, Linton Brown, Caleb Folan, Richard Garcia for a few. Massive variation in talent there, with some way ahead of others but similar impact for City, whereas for an amount of time, they were key players and good players but perhaps lacking that X-factor in what we’d recognise as all time greats.
Then… I went a bit deeper, and thought what about the players who are the next level down? Players who had undeniable talent, who may have even shown that off elsewhere, before or after their stint in East Yorkshire, but for one reason or another, it just didn’t quite happen. What about the nearly men, who at one point we thought were destined to be really special, but their star faded and they never really fulfilled that talent with us. Well I’ve wracked the remains of my brains to think of five such cases. I hope you enjoy it and as ever, send your hate tweets to @thelikesofhull and tell me all about why I was wrong. We’ll go in order of time.
- Daniel Batty
York City just drew a team in the same league as where I coach in the FA Cup, Biggleswade FC. Now they must have the smallest following of any Step 4 non-league team I’ve ever known. They play in Bedford, 15 miles from the town where they started and share a ground with a local team. They’ve done remarkably well to rise through the leagues, but they quite literally have around 50-100 well wishers as fans, and possibly less. So BFC vs York this month will be quite something, as York will bring maybe 1500 fans, to find out there isn’t anyone there to support the home team really. Quite odd. Also York City is also the home to one Daniel Batty, who is still only 26 years of age. I watched some highlights the other day, he’s still really very good and maybe it’s my city goggles on (a mate calls them Huggles) but I think he’s better than the national league.
When he first came onto the scene after we’d been relegated in 2016 he looked quite a talent. He was part of the all juniors team we put out against Donny in the league cup. Clever on the ball, diminutive in size but with a really good range of passing he seemed very confident and assured for someone so young. By 2018-19 he was more or less in the starting eleven mainly and the same again the next year, but this was now a sinking ship the young man was on. Too often, especially in his last year with us, 4-3-3 FC were outmanned and outgunned in the middle of the park and he seemed more and more of a shadow of his former self. As we were relegated that season, Dan was one of the players that signed a short term extension so he could play on, but after the collapse of the century and inevitable relegation, halfway through the next season in league one he quietly cut his contract and moved on to Fleetwood.
I think (prove me wrong City fans) most of us would go “Yeh, not a bad little player” when you say his name. But I always felt he didn’t quite fulfil the promise and outward confidence he first showed when he burst onto the scene. I hope the eighty two Biggleswade FC fans appreciate his talent in the next couple of weeks.
2. Cameron Stewart
We seemed for a period of time to have a very strong connection with Manchester United, I would say it was Steve Bruce, but it started before. Anoraks could probably tell me who or why it was, but City did very well out of it. Paul McShane, Robbie Brady, James Chester, Joe Dudgeon and Cameron Stewart all came in during the late noughties and early twenty tens and we were generally better off for it. Injuries did for Joe Dudgeon and you could argue they didn’t help Cameron Stewart either. But when he first came in on loan in late 2010, he was sensational. A lightning quick, direct and creative winger that counter attacked teams and lit a fire under the crowd. He was like a great winger of the past and just like Askew, or Jenkinson, the fans loved to see him take on his man.
I remember us beating Sheffield United away on Boxing Day of 2010, we’d thrown away a two goal lead but then in injury time we broke from a
Blades attack via Cameron Stewart and old glass knees himself Jimmy Bullard scored an unlikely winner. He injured his knee (he being Cameron Stewart rather than the tedious curly haired mouthpiece) in February of 2011 but we still signed him permanently in that summer. He played well under Nicky Barmby in 2011-12 after the spanner faced bag of misery Nigel Pearson went somewhere else to put 12 men behind a ball, and indeed the lemon juice slurping, never lost and deserved to, cretin came back and bid 1.5 million pounds for him. Luckily for us (or unluckily in the long run) the Allams held grudges and told him stick it.
Ironically it was when former Manchester United legend Steve Bruce came in the next year that his chances seemed to decline. He was then loaned out and you could tell that he was well thought of because of the caliber of clubs that came knocking, Burnley, Blackburn, Charlton and Leeds all had him on loan, but that spark was gone. I don’t know if it was the knee, or the confidence or both, but by the time he’d had his contract cut by Lincoln City in 2018 he was done in the game, at just 28. A very good player on his day was young Cameron, a shame he never fulfilled his promise.
3. John Welsh
Another player who you could argue was the victim of injury was John Welsh. Joining from Liverpool on loan initially in 2005, at the start of our first season back in the second flight in some 13 years, we was a fairly instant hit. You don’t come through Liverpool’s academy without talent and in what was more of a good league one squad (barring probably Nicky Barmby, Andy Dawson and Bo Myhill) he was an upgrade.
He was tenacious, his range of passing was really very good and was mature beyond his years. I still think City got the better of the deal that sent highly touted winger Paul Anderson in the other direction when we signed him permanently that winter. Peter Taylor moved on that summer and despite the poor start under old ice baths no-personality Parkinson, Welsh was still fairly present.
That was until a horror challenge by Welsh on the B and M Stephen Gerrard, Neil Mellor in March of 2007, that left him with a leg broken in two place and his season was done. I think the two are actually mates, and perhaps there was a sense of trying to get the better of your former colleague. We’ve all been there. This was the beginning of the end for John at City, I think technology has moved on so much in the last decade or so, but an injury that serious in the early two thousands was still a career changer.
He was loaned to Chester, Carlisle and Bury, and in his later years rebuilt his reputation with both Tranmere and Preston. A very good player whose injury came just before the biggest season in our clubs history, how’s your luck?
4. Gary Bradshaw
I have to admit it, this choice is based on a really small sample size. In an era where inevitably our best player would come through the youth team, we’d seen several saviours in the eighties and nineties. Dean Windass, Graeme Atkinson, Andy Payton, Adam Bolder had all donned the black and amber shirt after emerging from our youth team (Windass had a quick diversion to do some bricklaying and playing for North Ferriby obviously).
Gary was hailed as one of the next big things, and when he broke into the team in the early two thousands you could see there was talent there. Not the biggest, he played with a cut and thrust, with a cockiness and an arrogance that suggested bigger things were to come.
I’ve never been more certain that we had some talent on our hands (and been that wrong) as after we demolished Mansfield Town 4-1 in March of 2001. Brian Little had been sacked harshly as we’d drifted to the edge of the play off places, and Billy Russell saw us home until the end of the season. The win that night temporarily re-ignited the hope that we’d push to go up again and Bradshaw scored a cracker and was the chief tormentor of the opposition that day.
Unfortunately he also limped off with a hamstring injury, and we’d “Typical City” the rest of the season, winning a grand total of zero games and sinking back to mid-table obscurity. Tubby Scando Jan Molby wasn’t a fan the next year and he barely featured, then he was loaned to Scarborough shortly after Peter Taylor had arrived, so he presumably agreed with the sausage legged, short filler.
A career in non-league football ensued, and he did pretty well by the by. Helping Ferriby as they climbed the leagues and always scoring goals. I’m sure local fans would know just why Bradshaw never made it, but he actually got taken back to the football league with Cheltenham in 2005, however it was short lived, indeed he was sent off on his debut. If you just saw him that night in 2002 though, you’d be utterly perplexed as to why he didn’t play higher.
5. Ben Morley
Speaking of small sample sizes. Here’s Ben Morley, who in an era where “being alive” might have got you a game, he became one of the most unlikely success stories, overnight and then in the blink of an eye, it was gone.
Given his debut by skullet headed Mark Hateley, Ben played mainly in a wide role. He wasn’t yet 17 on his debut at Hartlepool in 1997. We didn’t have the proverbial container to urinate in during this era so youth players were frequently the only option we had.
Then came Ben’s big moment, I think (and I could be wrong) we pushed him into more of a striker’s role against Luton Town who were a division and infinite points ahead of us in the FA cup, in November of 1999. He responded with an absolutely belting goal in a highly entertaining win that day and City would go on to play Premier League topping Aston Villa in the next round.
I think then in the pure need to survive that season Ben didn’t really fit the bill. Warren Joyce brought in big Colin Alcide and played the underrated David Brown off him, subtle we weren’t… but it worked and we stayed up in a story you all know very well.
As for Ben he left in 2002, via Boston United, then Telford, he then went to play for more local non-league teams. Very pacy and a clever touch on him, like lots in this list I feel that timing wasn’t great for Ben. But we’ll always have that wonder goal in the FA cup.
Thanks for reading UTT.