Tony Gallimore on Carlisle United's glorious 1994/5 season: 'Football had more soul then...'

“I’m not usually on any social media – I'm clueless with technology – but I’ve just got on there and it’s great,” says Gallimore, who was left-back in the team who took the Blues to the Division Three title and a first Wembley appearance in the iconic green, red and white ‘deckchair’ shirt. “The group starts up every now and again and someone will put something on.”

All the old favourites are involved: David Reeves, Derek Mountfield, Dean Walling, Rod Thomas, Tony Caig, Jeff Thorpe and the rest. “Paul Conway’s on it as well,” Gallimore says. “He’s a lawyer in America now. I was probably as close as anyone to Paul when he was here. I liked a bit of Neil Diamond and Simon & Garfunkel, and so did he…

“Dave Currie’s on there too. Big Derek Mountfield got hold of him and he’s said he’s coming to the reunion. He was always a cracking lad – quiet, but a really nice bloke. He used to come in on a Monday with some terrible jokes from Billingham Social Club where he used to go on a Sunday.”

The reunion, at Harraby Catholic Club on October 9, is a Covid-delayed celebration of the 25th anniversary of that Wembley appearance, when Mick Wadsworth’s team played against Birmingham City in the Auto Windscreens Shield final.

It came in a time of dramatic success for the club and made heroes of men like Gallimore, who is now 49. “They were some of my best years in football,” he says. “When you think of the good times, it still doesn’t seem that long ago, yet I’ve been retired for coming up 15 years.”

Gallimore is often back in Carlisle, since his son Marc lives in the city, and his visits remind him of on and off-field days. “Is the Howard [Arms] still there?” he asks. “I used to pop in there of an afternoon after training with my newspaper and have a few pints.

“I was in digs at the club with a load of the young lads and there was a games room with a pool table, but I’d get bored and toddle off to the pub. I should have taken up golf instead. That was too sensible for me…”

Gallimore first joined Carlisle on loan from Stoke in 1991 and, after returning for another spell the following year, signed permanently in 1993. It was a year after Michael Knighton had taken over the club and progress was accelerating with the appointment of Wadsworth as director of coaching.

United made the fourth-tier play-offs in Gallimore’s first permanent season – then, enhanced by the experience of Currie and Mountfield, swept to the championship in 1994/5. Gallimore’s left foot delivered quality set-pieces and penalties as well as good defensive contributions in a reliable back four.

Wadsworth, who orchestrated things, had the persona of a dour Yorkshireman. What was he like in reality? “A dour Yorkshireman!” Gallimore laughs. “He was dry. He’d say stuff and have a serious face on, then turn the other way and have a smile on his face.

"But he knew what he was doing. I remember one week we'd practised pull-backs from the byline - Mick really drilled us in it - and then in the game against Barnet three of our goals came that way. I missed that game with food poisoning, mind you. There were supposed to be a few scouts coming to watch me that day..."

United received growing attention as they dominated the division and attendances swelled. It was a welcome uplift after the barren times of the early 90s. "You can put our success down to the coaching, with Mick, Mervyn Day and Joe Joyce, and recruitment," Gallimore says. "We invested a lot more in players, Mick had come in with his own ideas, and I think they worked straight away. We had Reevesy and Dave Currie up front, Rod Thomas, Darren Edmondson, myself, Deano, Caigy, Derek Mountfield, Simon Davey, Steve Hayward, Warren Aspinall, Richard Prokas, Thorpey…”

Tony Gallimore, third right, with team-mates at Wembley (l-r) David Reeves, Tony Caig, Steve Hayward, Derek Mountfield, David Currie and Paul Conway

Knighton, as chairman and chief executive, was a huge presence above this popular group of players. “He was involved with everything,” Gallimore says. “He turned up at my first wedding, at the Crown & Mitre. He was dancing away. That was a sight…like a bit of jelly getting knocked around.”

Camaraderie was considerable among the squad. “We would all go out and have a laugh together,” Gallimore says. “You were allowed Wednesday nights back then and we had some good ones.

“We didn't take the mick and I never went out when I shouldn’t have done. Okay, maybe once. We’d been doing a training exercise, doing a centre-forward’s movements, and I did really well with it. They must have thought ‘Gally can do a job up front’.

“Anyway, I was in the Crown and had about 12 pints. Next day they said, ‘Are you alright playing in this reserve game tonight?’ I thought, ‘I’m knackered here’. But I scored! The keeper came out and I dinked it in the far corner. That’s about all I did, mind you…”

Gallimore was known as ‘Trigger’ after the Only Fools And Horses character, and would often live up to the nickname. “Me, Thorpey and Deano went to Cambridge to spend a weekend with Steve Holden. We’d been drinking all afternoon in his house and then been shopping, buying new Armani clobber.

“We hadn’t even got to the first pub and I saw these boats on the River Cam – these punts, like Cornetto boats. I thought there was a jetty going out and I was gonna get on one of these boats. But there wasn’t – it was just a load of leaves that had gathered in a pile on the water. So I stepped on these leaves and went straight in the river. They were all rolling around. I was out that fast I hardly got my hair wet.”

Gallimore and his team-mates were popular both for their superb football and their engaging nature. “We mixed with the fans when we were out and about. I don’t know how much you get of that now. It’s a bit more professional now. But I liked them days. I met a lot of nice people in Carlisle.”

Many of those people followed Wadsworth’s team devotedly. The buzz around the city was huge. “The crowds we were getting every week…we played Hartlepool on Boxing Day and then Bury the day after, and there was about 3,000 locked out of Brunton Park.

"The away support, everywhere you went, was amazing too. We played Sunderland twice in the FA Cup, and the first one at Roker Park…that’s the loudest I’ve played in.”

Wembley, in April 1995, was an epic community occasion in front of 76,663 fans. “There were about 28,000 from Carlisle," Gallimore says. "It was fantastic getting there, but I remember, before the game, thinking, ‘What am I gonna do if the ball comes to me?’ I felt that nervous, like my legs had gone,” Gallimore says.

“But early on I hit one down the line – the one where Paul Conway got on the end of it and it went straight through Rod Thomas’s legs in front of goal. After that I was ok.”

United valiantly held the third-tier leaders to a goalless draw before Paul Tait, in golden-goal extra-time, headed Birmingham’s winner. “Thorpey always reminds me that I forgot it was sudden death. I was like, ‘Come on, we can still get back in this’.

"That was one of my Trigger moments. I’ve had a few more. There was one occasion at Brunton Park when someone pointed out just before kick-off that I’d put a number 2 shirt on instead of 3. I shot back in the dressing room, came back out with 3 on, and thought, ‘This bloody top’s stiff’. I still had the coathanger in it.”

After the title and Wembley, United went on an open-topped bus ride around Carlisle and fans converged outside the civic centre to salute the players. It was a stunning, tantalising time, but did not last. “The following season Mervyn [Day] called and said they’d had an offer for me from Grimsby – ‘I don’t want you to go but the chairman says you can go’.

“At the time there were a few players leaving, and Mick had gone to Norwich too. I thought I might as well take the opportunity to play at [second-tier] level. I don’t know if I would have done that if we’d all been still together. It was a shame, really.”

United were relegated in 1996 and rebounded to promotion in 1997 but then declined into an era of hardship and civil war. As this took place, Gallimore enjoyed a substantial career at Grimsby and then had went to Barnsley and Rochdale before departing the game in his mid-30s.

Gallimore back at Brunton Park with Rochdale in the 2005/6 season

“I went to Northwich in the Conference, but at that time my hip had started going. I had an operation on my knee at Barnsley and my hip must have compensated. I went on loan to Hucknall, but I was nearly crippled. I couldn’t sleep at night after I’d played. I’m still hobbling around now. Eventually I’ll need it replaced. It’s like your knuckles cracking when I put my shoes on. I try and walk every day, but I can’t go running.”

Gallimore says he now regrets not pursuing his coaching badges upon retirement, but at the time simply wanted a clean break from football after those hard final stages in his career. He took a scaffolding job, and now works for an engineering company which deals with machinery in food factories. This, he says, offered greater security, but provided a painful moment four years ago when he was injured in an accident involving a steel blade from a fan.

He is limited in what he can mention about this as a compensation situation remains ongoing. “It took my thumb clean off, above the knuckle,” he says. “Someone found it and put it in a bag of ice, but they couldn’t put it back on. It does take some getting used to now; little things are hard to pick up.  But I was lucky – it could have taken my hand off.”

Gallimore's connection to the game has been maintained through the progress of his 18-year-old son Dan, a promising midfielder on Scunthorpe’s professional books. “He’s been there since he was eight and he’s doing well,” he says. “He’s right-footed, and at least two inches taller than I am.”

Gallimore has played the part of the footballing dad, ferrying Dan to multiple training sessions every week over the years, and says he does not need to offer much lifestyle advice based on his own time as a player. “He’s never had a drink in his life. I think I’ve put him off…”

Tony Gallimore's 18-year-old son Dan has already made his professional debut as a midfielder for Scunthorpe (photo: Scunthorpe United)

Academy and professional football is different today but the approach of the United reunion makes Gallimore wistful for simpler times. “I used to love watching football in the late 70s and 80s. I just think it had more soul to it. I know the Premier League’s fantastic, but the amount of money…they’re out of reach now, footballers.

“My basic wage at Carlisle was about 400 quid. But we had win bonuses that bumped it up. And for a year I was in free digs where Joyce, the lady who looked after us, would feed us well. There’d be me, Lee Peacock, Marc Cleeland, Caigy. We’d have a glass of whisky at night with Joyce, all sat in the kitchen.”

Next month's reunion will also raise money for Eden Valley Hospice in memory of another young player from that era: Tony Hopper, who died in 2018 from motor neurone disease.

“I know it’s a cliché,” Gallimore says, “but I can’t imagine anyone at any time having anything bad to say about Tony. He was such a genuinely, lovely, nice person. He was the same when I met him at his charity game [in 2017]. Cracking lad, didn’t have a nasty bone in his body. Proper gentleman.”

The stories, about Tony Hopper and a treasured Carlisle United time, will flow on October 9. Memorabilia will also be up for auction but Gallimore will not part with his Wembley kit. “I gave that to Marc when he was little. That’s staying in the family. Dan got my Wembley shirt from Grimsby.”

The green, red and white stripes formed a lurid palette for a glorious campaign. “I liked the shirt,” Gallimore says. “Other people saw it and went, ‘What the hell’s that?’ But it was our identity, wasn’t it? We stood out, and so did those packed away ends. Fantastic season. Great memories.”