There is, firstly, something disappointing to report. Kevin Gray will not be turning up to Sunday’s Carlisle United reunion game in one of his old steam engines.
“I’d have had to set off a few weeks ago to get there in time,” says the former Blues captain who, as well as leading Paul Simpson’s team with inspirational strength, also loved nothing more than donning his overalls and bringing his steam engines to club open days.
“I remember Lummy’s [Chris Lumsdon’s] response when he first saw that,” Gray adds. “I don’t think you’ll be able to print it.”
Gray, Lumsdon and a host of heroes will be together again this weekend for a match involving 2005/6 and 1994/5 stars, in aid of a former players’ fund. The occasion at Brunton Park promises to be a hugely nostalgic affair.
Even Gray, the iron centre-half who led Simpson’s side to consecutive promotions, concedes it will be emotional to be back with his old pals. “Oh, it will be,” he says. “Definitely. Some of those lads I’ve not seen for years.
“I met up with Lummy, Karl Hawley and Chris Billy a few weeks ago when we went over to see Dennis Booth in Hull. It was nice to have a couple of pints with Dennis. But everybody else…it’s been ages.”
Gray reckons the last time he was at Brunton Park was for Peter Murphy’s testimonial in 2012. He also notes, with amused trepidation, that this Sunday will be the first time since then that he will have played in a game.
Now 50, he says: “I have had the boots on since then, but only because I help out with a kids’ team. But I don’t even join in five-a-side with them any more. I can’t do it. My legs, my knees and ankles are shattered.
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“It’s gonna be quite funny on Sunday. There’ll be about 11 of us coming off after about five minutes. I'm not sure about having physios on standby - ambulances, maybe..."
Gray, in his formative playing days before he became a solid and ultra-competitive centre-half, had been a left-winger. Those particular years certainly won’t be rolled back on Sunday either, he laughs.
“No. There’ll be none of that. The only way you’ll see me on the left wing is if I go up for a corner and can’t get back, and just go and stand on the wing…”
Talking to Gray in such lighthearted spirits makes it easy to overlook the stature of the man. He is, after all, one of just three players to have captained Carlisle to a league championship.
He is also the most recent, from the League Two season of 2005/6, Gray having skippered the Blues to Conference promotion via the play-offs the previous year. Along with players like Hawley, Lumsdon, Billy, Murphy, Danny Livesey, Keiren Westwood, Michael Bridges and all the others, it was United’s last period of true success.
Along with the deckchair army boys of 1994/5, who’ll also return in their numbers on Sunday, Simmo’s heroes of the mid-noughties are remembered with special fondness. Gray has never seemed the sentimental type but it is clear how special he regards his time with United.
“It was probably the place where I had the best years of enjoyment of my career, with all the staff that were there and all the players that were there,” he says. “Simmo and Dennis were great, they got a very good squad of players together, and there was a great group of people running the club.
“That helped massively. Everything at that time just dropped into place.”
Gray signed from Tranmere Rovers in the autumn of 2003 at a time Simpson was rebuilding United from a bleak fourth-tier position. Although Carlisle could not survive in the Football League that season, the recruitment of hardened campaigners like Gray would transform the Blues.
“Tranmere was probably my worst time – injuries, I was travelling far too much, sat in the car a lot, and I just didn’t get on there. The lads were great, don’t get me wrong, but it just didn’t work,” Gray says.
“Coming to Carlisle, you turned up and had Chris Billy sat there already in the dressing room, there was Tom Cowan who I knew, and once you got to know the rest, you’re thinking, ‘There’s a good group of lads here’.
“Simmo and Dennis had their ideas on getting people in and out, they got us fit, and the more games we started winning, it was just breeding confidence, from players and club and the city. Even when we were 11-12 points adrift at the bottom, we were getting great crowds. That was ace.”
Carlisle fought valiantly before a 1-1 draw with Cheltenham Town on the penultimate weekend of 2003/4 consigned them to non-league. It says much about Simpson’s renovation of the team that Gray picks this game out as one of his most memorable experiences.
“Obviously it was a great disappointment to be relegated, but there was just so much belief that everybody had of us getting straight back up. That’s one thing I think helped us through, because nobody believed we were gonna stay there [in the Conference].
“Paul kept everybody on full-time, and that was proof to everybody he wanted to get back. Everybody thought we needed to do it – and lo and behold we did.”
Gray was appointed captain in the Conference season and, though United’s promotion push was at times chequered, it culminated in a memorable 1-0 win over Stevenage in the play-off final at Stoke, after which Carlisle’s players gave it back with gusto to opposition boss Graham Westley and his team, who’d noisily bragged about beating the Blues earlier in the campaign.
Lumsdon has often described Gray venting so hard at Westley in the hour of victory that veins were visible on his head. The former captain chuckles. “It was all due to what he [Westley] had said about us beforehand. There were quite a few of us getting involved after the game at Stoke. I think Danny Livesey was one banging on the door, shouting things at him.
“It was just a lot of pent-up frustration from us all coming out. But the whole day there was brilliant. To go and beat them as we did…yes, automatic promotion is what you aim for, but you don’t get that sort of day…”
Gray modestly sidesteps suggestions he was an emphatic mentor for young defenders like Livesey. “I don’t know. We all helped each other. Danny was a good player, good defender and a great lad to have around the club. We also had people who unfortunately didn’t play as many games, like Simon Grand.
“When they did get in team they were ready. They had the right attitude, and that went through the whole squad.”
A team galvanised by signings such as Bridges and Zigor Aranalde then powered United to the League Two title. Gray therefore joined Peter McConnell and David Reeves on the short list of Carlisle captains to have lifted championship silverware.
“That is very special,” he says. “I was lucky enough to be captain so I could lift the trophy but credit to everybody that was involved. It was just a fantastic season.
“If I remember rightly that season me and Danny had a bet with [coach] Billy Barr that we’d keep so many clean sheets. It was before a game at Notts County or Bury, I can’t quite recall, where we had that bet. Paul Simpson said, ‘Well, that would be promotion then...’ We both went, ‘Well, yeah, that’s what we’re after’.
“We managed to get a fiver out of Billy Barr come the end of the season, which is nigh on impossible…”
Gray says United’s successes were very much a team effort, whilst Simpson was an adept manager. “He was still playing when I signed – he was still fit, and a very good player. As a manager he had great ideas of what he wanted from us and what he wanted to achieve.
“Pretty much everyone he did bring in was a good asset to the squad. He was a great bloke as well – dead easy to talk to if you needed to.”
Gray is naturally pleased to learn of the upturn Simpson has inspired at Carlisle in his current, second spell in charge. “It’s fantastic. I’m very, very happy for him. I just hope he can have some success and get Carlisle back to where they probably should be.
“If anybody can do it then he can, definitely. And he’ll still have the same belief as when he was there previously. And the fans like him. If they’re on his side then the players are going to respond to that as well, and they’ll start producing.”
Gray, despite being such a fervent player, was never a football obsessive and, instead of remaining in the game in retirement, pursued other well-known passions.
“I work for a mate of mine – we’re doing steam engine work, boiler work and things like that,” he says. “I’ve mainly been into the welding and fabricating side of things for quite a long time since finishing [playing]. Then this opportunity come up – we both like the sort of thing we’re doing now, a few jobs kept coming in and thankfully it was enough to go and do it full-time.”
It is coming up 16 years since Gray and Carlisle won the league. On Sunday, for however long his ageing legs can manage it, he’ll line up with that team again. It’s a fond thought indeed, imagining captain Kev in the United defence one last time.
“Some of the lads still look quite fit, thankfully, like Karl and Simon Hackney,” he says. “At the back I’m kind of hoping Danny will do the running – make up for all them years me and him played together and I had to do it…”
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