"I still miss it – massively,” says Paul Proudlock in a moment of candid reflection amid an amusing and entertaining conversation with a player who defined a particular Carlisle United era.
Proudlock was the dashing, blond-haired creative force in a period of hardship at Brunton Park. It is often said by supporters that the Hartlepool native would have graced better United sides than those he did in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Perhaps, though, that way he would not have been cherished in quite the same way: as an impudent and at times classy individual who shone light in times of darkness. He is 56 now and appeared in enviably good shape as he played in the recent legends game back on his old Carlisle pitch.
“It was wonderful,” he says of the experience. “I was pleasantly surprised by the pitch – it was like a mudheap when I used to play on it.
“Mick [Wadsworth, the 1994/5 legends team manager] asked how long I wanted to play. I said I could do 20 minutes – any more and I’d have been knackered! I haven’t played football for so long. I was playing over-40s about ten years ago, then did my knee and then I retired. I work for myself too, so if I get injured I don’t get no pay.
“But I do miss it – everything about it. The training, the hard work, even the horrible pre-season training. Coming back just brings back how it felt.
Proudlock has, for a long time now, been in the building trade, and it is still hard for some fans who enjoyed his football to believe that he was only 27 when he left the professional game. Before then, he gave the best of his pro years to Carlisle, from 1989 to 1993, a star of Clive Middlemass’s teams and also a performer under Aidan McCaffery and David McCreery.
He is in cheery spirits as he clutches a pint and skips back to a time of Carlisle United life which included an agonising tilt at glory but also some gritty times. He came to the Blues in the spring of 1989, a time Middlemass was working at building a better side after a period of steep decline.
Proudlock had been on Middlesbrough’s books, having joined them from home-town club Hartlepool. “I signed for them [Boro] just after the bankruptcy – there was the likes of Gary Pallister and Tony Mowbray – top players,” he says. “We were all young kids coming through, the same age. I played a few games, scored a few goals but did my cartilage.
“I came back from that, Clive came to watch me a few times, and signed me on deadline day 1989. I did well for Middlesbrough, but I wanted to play. I needed to play. Sometimes you have to take a backward step to take a forward step.”
Proudlock says he had “no reservations whatsoever” about joining a Brunton Park club becoming sadly accustomed to bottom tier life after dropping from the Second Division in the mid-eighties. It was, though, in some ways still an eye-opening introduction.
“On my first day of training I went in the changing room and saw the old training kit with holes in,” he says. “I thought, ‘What have I done here?…’
“But I soon found there was a great set of lads. There were characters like Paul Fitzpatrick; he was a cheeky Charlie. John Halpin used to moan like hell. Paul Gorman was very quiet, but we were good pals. And Brent [Hetherington, the Carlisle-born striker]…he liked a pint, Brent. But a lovely lad. Good goalscorer, too. If he stuck at it he would have made a good living from the game.
“There were other good lads: Ian Dalziel, Dave McKellar, Micky Graham. Derek Walsh, Keith Walwyn, Nigel Saddington. And Clive was a lovely man, a gentleman. I really enjoyed it here.”
After 1988/9’s mid-table finish, Carlisle rose into a promotion race the following campaign when Proudlock’s goals and creativity glowed. In a division where the football could still be lumpen, his skills were a welcome sight as United, from nowhere, built a certain fragile hope.
“I just liked to play football,” he says. “In the lower divisions everybody liked to just launch the ball. I liked to play to feet, play more football.”
United topped the table in February but injuries exhausted a thin squad and 1989/90 ended with infamous anti-climax. “We really should have got promoted,” Proudlock says.
“But we had such a decline. Getting beat at Maidstone on the last day [which cost Carlisle even a play-off place]…we were absolutely devastated.”
The following summer, United invested in the ageing qualities of the former Ipswich Town and Sunderland star Eric Gates. The idea was that his experience would equip Carlisle to go further. The reality, in an underwhelming season, turned out differently, as Gates became disliked by Blues fans who felt he did not put in the effort that had justified the outlay.
“When Eric signed, he was the big superstar,” Proudlock says. “I remember the time in pre-season, when we were doing long-distance runs – which I’m not very good at, by the way; I’m better at short distances because my legs are that short.
“Anyway, we were running up this hill in the Lakes, and I’m second last in the cross country, and I turn around and Eric Gates is last. You know he had long hair – he looked like Michael Bolton, the singer. Clive Middlemass used to have a red Honda Accord and I saw it coming up on the right hand side.
“The car goes past, the window comes down – and Eric Gates is in the back. They've picked him up! He’s shouting, ‘Get up Proudy, put it in’. I just looked at him...”
It’s a tale which will tally with many supporters’ impression of Gates. Proudlock, though, regards his fellow forward with more fondness.
“He was still a top player, though. Was he too sharp for us sometimes? I liked him. When you clicked with him, it was great. You could drill it into him and he would hold it up.
“He was a nice man, too. He lives not far from me – Peterlee way. I think he sells bulls and cows now.”
It was on one early evening in the 1990/1 season that Proudlock, with Gates' help, scored the most famous goal of his Carlisle career. Against top-division Derby County in the League Cup, the older frontman bamboozled Mark Wright and crossed for Proudlock, who volleyed beautifully past Peter Shilton.
Both those illustrious Derby players had performed for England in the World Cup semi-finals a few months before. “Shilton had the cheek to dive,” laughs Proudlock. “I won a telly for that. Somebody showed me the footage before. Great goal. Memories, memories, memories…
“There’s no feeling like it. You never get it anywhere. The birth of my children, and scoring a goal – fantastic. Scoring tops everything. You just feel better. You can be having a bad game, score a goal and confidence comes back.
“I just wish I could do it today. I couldn’t. My brain can but my legs and body won’t…”
Another goal Proudlock mentions is a peach against a Wrexham side containing the former Liverpool iron man Joey Jones, and he also speaks affectionately about United’s supporters “who were always brilliant with me”. His main regret, amid these memories, is that he did not base himself in Carlisle in order to build a more substantial stay. “I should have moved up here. My wife at the time wouldn’t move. I stayed up a lot at Doris’s, on the edge of the ground, but I commuted a lot.”
The 1991/2 season saw Carlisle struggle at the bottom of the Football League again as the financial situation grew perilous. Michael Knighton’s takeover in the summer of ’92 promised a new dawn, but not for Proudlock.
“He [Knighton] walked down the corridor and said to me, ‘Hello Mr Proudlock – I’ve seen you play twice and I haven’t been impressed’. Well, that’s a good start, isn’t it?!
“To be fair, I wasn’t on fire then. Before then I’d been offered the chance to sign for Crewe, and maybe my head had gone after not taking it. I went down to see Dario Gradi, and the money wasn’t great, but it wasn’t about the money. My wife wouldn’t move there so that was that.”
Upon leaving United in 1993, Proudlock joined Gateshead and turned semi-professional, combining football with building work alongside his father. “I was 27 when I left the pro game. Sometimes you reflect and think, ‘Was it a wise decision?’
“I do have those regrets. My wife now says I should have stuck at it, and I really should have. Being a professional footballer is the best thing in the world. Playing football’s just what I wanted to do. I was on about £2-300 a week at Carlisle, but the money didn’t bother me. I was playing professional football.”
Proudlock spent ten enjoyable years at Gateshead, and went on to have an eight-month spell as manager. “I suppose I came to the decision I wasn’t going to make a life in football, so had to mix it with my business.
“We had some good times at Gateshead. There were good players there. Being player-manager was harder, mind you. I'd always used to sit at the back of the bus with the lads and have a few beers, a bit of crack.
“One minute I was socialising with them, the next minute I’m leaving people out. It was hard. I packed in, walked away. I didn’t like it.”
That, other than a brief spell at Bishop Auckland under former Carlisle star Alan Shoulder, was the end of Proudlock’s football life. Professionally, he moved on from working for his father in order to set up himself. “I’ve got my own company now. I do extensions for disabled people, adaptations to their homes. It’s physically hard, but I enjoy it. When you see people who’ve got nothing, and you help them with their home – yeah, I enjoy that.”
Proudlock says he seldom attends games now, although keeps in touch with his former clubs and looks out for Carlisle’s results. Now and again he will roll back the years in a legends game – and he freely admits that he wishes it could be 1989 all over again.
“It was the love of the game,” he says. "That's what it was all about back then. I was talking to Derek Mountfield and we were both saying, ‘You miss the crack, don’t you’. I remember I used to have a big old Granada – like The Sweeney – and would fit half the lads in the back…
“It was great. That’s why you come back to things like this [the legends] game. Being back with the lads, a bit of banter. Football’s up and down – one day you’re a king, the next you’re rubbish – but I had some good times, and I wouldn’t swap it.”
Towards the end of our conversation, we are interrupted by a pint-wielding Darren Edmondson, another big character from United’s nineties. “Just checking you’re still awake,” he says to me with Proudlock in full flow.
“Which team were you on today?” Edmondson then asks his former team-mate. “Theirs, I think!” replies the chuckling forward. “My second touch was a throw-in…” And there we go – lost for a while more in the haze of the good, hard, distant, special old days.
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