Another exclusive extract from Bolts From The Blues, a new book featuring interviews with the scorers of memorable Carlisle United goals.
When old footballers reflect on their careers, it tends to be the matches, the goals and the noteworthy teammates that come to mind first. Carl Heggs had enough of these to sustain his memories of an eventful, itinerant journey, but there was another companion to all the positive aspects.
As he spoke about the pain that he had endured and which the game had left him with, it was akin to a mechanic listing the defects which might just see the vehicle survive another year on the road with a bit of careful work.
“I’ve got chronic arthritis in my left knee – been to see a specialist, can’t do anything about it,” Heggs said. “I’ve had my stomach wired, had my shoulders pinned, had my ankle pinned, had my nose reconstructed. I played in an era when your manager used to call you a softie if you didn’t play. ‘I need you today.’ ‘But, gaffer, I’ve got a bad knee.’ ‘We need a good result. If you don’t play, I’ll have you by the throat...’
“I’m nearly 50 years old. I keep myself in good shape, but my ankles, knees...” He paused. “But it was all worth it because 20 years later someone phones me up and asks me about the goal I scored for Carlisle, so I’d never knock it.”
The goal to which Heggs referred – the one that he defied a particular outbreak of pain to put away – marked one of United’s classic late survival exploits. It was the major moment in the penultimate game of the season at Lincoln City’s Sincil Bank amid a period when springtime in Cumbria traditionally entailed a battle to stay in the Football League.
The tussle of 2001 was particularly concerning because Carlisle were going deeper into disarray under Michael Knighton. Nobody would argue that Ian Atkins’ team produced association football at its finest in 2000/1, but there was a kind of grubby beauty in the struggle considering the chronic lack of resources available to the manager and the political and financial hellhole that Brunton Park had become.
It was approaching Knighton’s bitter end-game and the impact was stark. Listing the circumstances requires a gulp and a hardened acceptance that not all nostalgia is rosy. That summer the newly-appointed Atkins inherited a squad of professionals amounting to single figures. He was unable to sign players until a week before the season and they were in the form of trialists upgraded to short-term deals when he did so.
After half the campaign United were six points adrift at the bottom of Division Three and, even when they received the fillip of an FA Cup third-round tie at home to Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, farce tagged along. There was an absurd takeover debacle involving Stephen Brown, who was duly exposed as a penniless chancer who worked at an Indian restaurant. Knighton professed to have been hoodwinked by the bizarre Brown, and then there was another mooted buy-out involved a mysterious Gibraltar firm, MAMCARR, whose initials, some eagle-eyed fans worked out, just happened to match the first names of some of Knighton’s family.
The owner – who in 2000 was banned from being a company director by the Department of Trade and Industry because of his running of a private school in Huddersfield, and whose son Mark was now in a position of seniority at Brunton Park – dismissed it as coincidence, but United were still heading risibly south. The Football Association were also taking an interest in the club’s finances, and fans, who were preparing to mobilise against Knighton with the formation of a supporters’ trust, feared the dreadful worst all over again.
In this environment Atkins somehow had to prepare an effective football team and it said a great deal about his doggedness that United remained in the scrap. Their rearguard season included tenacious contributions from players such as Steve Soley, Ian Stevens, Scott Dobie, Mark Birch and Mick Galloway. Heggs, the journeyman striker who joined them from Rushden & Diamonds, also played his part.
“Ian signed me for three clubs,” he said. “I played in a play-off final for him with Northampton and he was just straightforward. He knew exactly the way he wanted his team to play and you weren’t playing if you did anything other than that. Some players would say they hated Ian, but I knew where I stood with him.
"It was a long, tough season, especially when we got to the end of it and were fighting for our lives. I’d been at Chester with Ian the season before, on loan from Rushden & Diamonds, so I’d already relegated a club to the Conference. I didn’t want that on my CV again.”
United were up against it in so many ways, but a defiant spirit fostered by Atkins produced results against the odds. The closing months involved critical victories against Barnet, Leyton Orient, Torquay United, Macclesfield Town and Blackpool, against whom Heggs scored the winner. They also, though, brought unsurprising strain.
“There wasn’t really any pressure on us for most of the season,” Heggs said. “The Arsenal game in the cup, for example, was brilliant. A full stadium, all my family there and we lost only 1-0. It’s when you get towards the end and you’re still struggling in the league – those are the games when it hits you.
"Pressure was everywhere and every player felt it. I remember standing up in the dressing-room and having a fight with Stuey Whitehead after we’d lost to Scunthorpe on a Tuesday night. We found out that five of the players had gone out in Glasgow on the Saturday night and got steaming. I went absolutely mental.”
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Heggs’ sanctuary from this simmering vessel was the countryside near his home on the outskirts of Carlisle: “I lived in Hayton in a little cottage and I used to get my trout rod and do some fishing in the River Eden after training. I had my dog, a big lurcher, and at the end of the road there were some big woods where we used to go a lot.”
It provided peace from the turmoil consuming the club and the physical discomfort attacking Heggs: “I played on for about four months with a really bad ankle. Specialists told me on three occasions I needed to get it sorted out. But I didn’t want to get to the end of the season and not be playing. There was talk about us not being paid, there was all the unrest with the fans and in the back of your mind you were thinking: ‘I’ve got to get away from this club as fast as possible because they might go under.’ So I had a couple of cortisone injections and barely trained. I just played the games.”
Heggs had spells in and out of the side, but his committed, rumbustious style drew terrace affection.
He said: "They used to sing: ‘Who let the Heggs out?’ after that song that was in the charts [Who Let The Dogs Out? by Baha Men]. I would come on as sub and they’d be singing that. Brilliant.”
He missed the third-last game of the season because of the birth of his son, Charles, but the chorus struck up again four days later when Atkins, in need of a point to stay up, summoned him from the bench to replace the injured Dobie. Lincoln were leading after a first-half goal by Steve Holmes until United’s Lee Maddison crossed from the left in the 68th minute. Heggs was there and organised his feet into what looked like a sweetly-measured scoring volley.
“I kind of side-footed it into an area, hoping it would go towards the goal, and it ended up going in the top corner. For that ball to drop where it did, it was one in a million. Then everyone went nuts.”
Carlisle’s supporters – and there were a thousand of them at Sincil Bank – went bananas in the manner of those who had yet again been otherwise starved of reasons to celebrate. “I’ve watched it back four or five times and I always see the guy who nicks the corner flag, runs on to the pitch waving it above his head and then puts it back in,” Heggs said. “I still laugh when I see that guy. Big fat bloke, he is.”
“That feeling...” he added, “it’s hard to explain. I scored for Rushden & Diamonds at Elland Road in the FA Cup with 31,000 there and you just lose yourself for a bit. You don’t realise what’s going on. It’s only afterwards when you’re hugging each other in the dressing-room that it sinks in.”
United’s 1-1 draw on that Tuesday night meant they had again defied dark fate. Barnet were relegated instead and Heggs stressed that it was a collective survival by the Blues: “You’re with those lads more than your own families. Every away game is overnight because of where Carlisle is located. You train with them, play golf with them, go fishing with them. They’re like your brothers. Add to that the fact that we were up against it because of everything going on at the club and there was such a massive relief.
“I remember that the next day I got invited to play at this new golf course. No chance that would have happened if I hadn’t scored that goal. My phone was ringing all day. I was like a celebrity. Ian gave us two days off and we all met in Carlisle after the last game. He bought us a load of drinks and we ended up staying out all night.
"That’s when you start to realise the importance of what you’ve done. I wanted to be a footballer so I could have some nice memories and do some nice stuff. I was fortunate to get to Wembley three times and fortunate to play in some big games. I scored a couple of goals in play-off semi-finals. But that Carlisle goal that kept us up...that was the best feeling.”
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This being United, it was again a passing delight. Atkins departed the circus that summer; so did Heggs: “I had a year left on my contract and they asked me to leave the club. They forced me out of the door. I’ve still got it in my scrapbook now, a newspaper article that’s titled: ‘Things to make you proud to be a Cumbrian.’ There are some right big-hitters there and I’m on it. It says how I put an operation back four months to keep you up. Then a week after my goal had saved the football club, the chairman pulled me to one side and said: ‘I’m terminating your contract.’
“There were four of us, not just me. I had to go to the PFA and get them to represent me. I got a bit of compensation. Then I ended up signing for Forest Green Rovers in the Conference. I’d stopped Carlisle dropping to that league, but ended up having to play there myself. I couldn’t sign until the season had virtually started because of the operation I’d put off for months.
“I should have had my ankle cleaned out long before, because the pain would be ridiculous – like somebody was stabbing me in it. I had to have these special moulds fitted inside my shoe to stop my ankle from going over a certain degree, otherwise fragments of the bone would stick straight into the joint. Anyway, I had the operation and in the end I played football for 20 years. I was still player-manager in the Conference North for Hinckley when I was 40. I played until I couldn’t play any more.”
After starting his professional career at West Bromwich Albion, Heggs totted up seven Football League clubs and a cluster more in non-league as he went determinedly on. As well as managing in the part-time game and taking scouting positions higher up, he ran a property development company and a sports diploma academy in retirement. Latterly he also oversaw an outreach department for schools in Leicester, his home city. “It’s for all the kids excluded from school from 14 to 18. I find them an alternative learning path. We have kids who are in care, turn them around, get them into college. It’s about giving them some different life skills, getting them to understand about the bigger picture.”
He still spoke to Atkins, the manager whose lower league redeemer-for-hire reputation mirrored Heggs’ own – while he carried other, permanent reminders of that short, bruising, but, he insisted, oddly happy time in Cumbria: “My son Charles’s middle name is Eden because of the river. He was born in the hospital which had just been opened, [the Cumberland Infirmary]. So Carlisle will always be a massive part of my life.
"I’ve been back to Brunton Park only once, about six years ago, when I was head of recruitment at Notts County. I got my ticket, didn’t say to anybody who I was, watched the game and left.
“I do get requests and mentions on Facebook from supporters and it’s always to do with that goal. I’ve got a lot of affection for Carlisle. Whether or not the football was perfect, the place and the people were great. I would love to come back again one day.”
* Bolts From The Blues, a book by Jon Colman about 40 memorable Carlisle United goals, is published by Vertical Editions, priced £14.99. It is available in Bookends, HMV Carlisle, Waterstones, Carlisle United's Blues Store, and online. The author's royalties are being donated to the North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust's Covid-19 appeal.
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