375: Paul McGregor, Nottingham Forest, Merlin's Premier League 97 Official Sticker Collection

Richard Allinson delves once again into the close relationship between the beautiful game and music with today’s post. It was pretty cool when Olof Mellberg got the lads from In Flames round to visit his Aston Villa team-mates and the multi-talented TV presenter/percussionist/striker Dion Dublin famously joined Ocean Colour Scene on stage with his Dube but neither of them can claim to have fronted their own Britpop ensemble. Over to Rich with a man who did.

Recently, whilst taking a break between hand-sanitising and blog writing, I completed a quiz on the BBC website called ‘which footballer shares your taste in music?’ I have often wondered if there are any footballers out there who also had a taste for emo tinged punk rock played by bearded American men in their thirties and so I was intrigued to see the results of the quiz. Was Raheem Sterling actually a massive Spanish Love Songs fan? Was Jesse Lingard secretly doing his woeful dancing to I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral by The Wonder Years? And were Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood’s international indiscretions actually a direct result of listening to Killer Parties by The Hold Steady too often? 

The quiz was pretty much the hardest thing I have done since GCSE Maths in 1999, mainly because I didn’t understand most of it. J.Cole turned out not to be Joe Cole of Chelsea and West Ham United fame; 21 Savage was apparently not Robbie’s squad number; and Aya Nakamura wasn’t the Japanese lad that played for Arsenal, Fulham and West Bromwich Albion in the early 2000s. Despite all this confusion I muddled my way to the end to be told my ‘football music match’ was, rather surprisingly, Dele Alli. I never knew he was a massive fan of The Menzingers. 

This did get me thinking about footballers that had an association with music. I knew that Joey Barton in a (now rather unwise) bid to sound intelligent declared his love for Morrissey; that Marcus Hanehmann had presented Five Finger Death Punch with a Wolverhampton Wanderers shirt emblazoned with a Remembrance Day poppy; and that David de Gea was a massive Slipknot fan - maybe he thought People = Shit was a reference to Manchester United’s defence. However, my mind eventually worked it’s way back to someone I haven’t thought about in almost 20 years: former Nottingham Forest striker and lead singer of Merc and Ulterior Paul ‘Honey’ McGregor. 

Much like a lot of Britpop bands, McGregor started out in 1991 to little acclaim, finding a modicum of success in 1995, before calling it a day in the early 2000s. His breakthrough season came in 1995/96 when he scored two goals in 14 games for Forest. Despite this early promise, the 1996/97 season didn’t take off as a lot of people expected with McGregor only appearing six times and failing to find the back of the net. Clearly aware that he was experiencing his Be Here Now moment, Forest moved McGregor on and initial loan spells to Carlisle United and Preston North End were followed by a permanent move to Plymouth Argyle in 1999. Obviously buoyed by the sea air, McGregor hit the ground running with the Pilgrims and he banged in 16 goals and claimed the club’s Player of the Year in 2000. However, curiously this was as good as it got and after only scoring eight goals in 2000/01 he was packed off to Northampton Town for the 2001/02 season. He stayed with the Cobblers for a couple of years scoring seven goals in 71 games before hanging up his boots in 2003, presumably to “concentrate on the music, man.”

Paul McGregor then. He wasn’t as successful at music or football as he would probably have hoped and some people might choose to deride him because of this. These people would be wrong of course. After all, he scored against Manchester United, played in the UEFA Cup, supported Sisters of Mercy and played the NME tour. And there aren’t a lot of people who can claim all that.