99: John McDermott, Grimsby Town, Panini Football League 95 Official Sticker Collection

This week Richard Allinson takes on a longstanding request post from Dan Barker Gray on a man who can only be described as a Grimsby Town legend. With three Player of the Year awards, a record number of appearances and a key part in the Mariners’ Auto Windscreens Shield glory at Wembley it is no surprise he was awarded the club’s Special Achievement Award at the end of his playing career. Over to Rich.

“We can confirm that Manager Paul Hurst and Assistant Manager Chris Doig have left their roles at Grimsby Town Football Club.” And with that, the search for the next Grimsby Town manager began. Hurst, and Doig, over two spells with the Mariners had achieved success that might fly under the radar for a lot of football fans. There were two promotions from non-league back to the Football League (one of which was achieved under an ownership regime which at times seemed set up more to hinder than help); two FA Trophy Final appearances; an FA Cup Quarter Final place; and the club’s highest league finish in seventeen years. A lot of thanks and plaudits should be sent their way in my opinion, but football is football, and so the club and fans move on.

In the not-too-distant past, whenever Grimsby Town’s manager job became vacant, which was a lot, one name always linked with the job was ex-Mariners fullback John McDermott. Macca is a club legend, there can be very little doubt in that. He represented the club for twenty years between 1987–2007, playing 755 games in the process. There was a spell during the nineties where I assumed he had legally changed his name to ‘And Today’s Man Of The Match is John McDermott’ such was the ubiquity with which his name was read out over the tannoy at the end of matches at Blundell Park. His achievements during his time in North East Lincolnshire earned him the PFA Merit Award. For context, previous winners of the award include Sir Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Sir Stan Matthews, Eusebio, Pele and Steve Ogrizovic. I won’t go into much more detail about Macca’s time as a player at Grimsby, other than to say he was a key part of the best football team that I have ever seen live. People may laugh at that, but the football played by the Mariners in Alan Buckley’s first spell at the club was exquisite. It was one touch, give and go, technical, fast paced and fun to watch. That was my introduction to football, and by comparison the lumbering sideways passing favoured by teams today, and the advent of the ‘number 10’ i.e. a short man that wriggles around a lot, plays it into space, holds his hand up apologetically and falls over now and again, will simply never compare. 

McDermott had never made any secret of his desire to be manager at Blundell Park, and in his excellent autobiography It’s Not All Black & White he details the first time he applied for the post back in 2009 after Mike Newell got sacked. A move which came as no surprise given that we were really, really shit at the time. Macca had plans in place for his coaching staff, and had a presentation prepared which would outline his vision for the club. At the conclusion of the interview the then Mariners chairman John Fenty led him to the door and said “don’t be disappointed if you don’t get it.” I’ve personally had the “we’ve got a couple more candidates to speak to” or “thanks for making the effort to come down today” interview rejection sign-offs a fair few times in my life, but it has never been so unnecessarily unprofessional as Mr Fenty’s. There were also numerous occasions when it looked like Macca might end up as Assistant Manager at the Mariners, but once again that never really came to fruition for whatever reason. All of this got me thinking, where is Macca today? I can tell you one place that he probably isn’t, is Italy. This is a tenuous way of shoehorning a story about Ivano Bonetti into this blog, so bear with me.  

I say he probably isn’t in Italy as he didn’t even make it there when he was a teammate of an actual Italian i.e. Ivano. In his book, Macca sets out that during his time at the club in 1996, Bonetti had befriended McDermott, Paul Groves and Craig Shakespeare and even though Town were due to play West Ham United in an FA Cup replay, it a been cleared for them to go to Bonetti’s house in Lake Garda in between matches. A bout of food poisoning in the squad had meant that McDermott wasn’t fit for a league game against Luton Town at the time, but as he said himself, he thought “I’m still going away for the weekend – I’ve never been to Italy before and I’m not going to miss this.” Brian Laws and some chicken had other ideas, for this was the game where our manager assaulted our best player and left his face “caved in… with blood everywhere.” Macca though, was thinking of one thing – what was going to happen to his weekend in Italy.  The planned trip didn’t go ahead, a fact of which was made no easier when Ivano detailed that the plan had been to be picked up by a limousine, to go to a millionaire’s party at Lake Garda followed by clubbing with Gianluca Vialli and Gianluca Pagliuca, and then to watch the Milan derby the next day. Alas, Lawsy f’d it up for them, and poor Macca never got to go, and Ivano was soon to be moved on to Tranmere Rovers. 

As for the thing that started this article, do I think McDermott should be considered for the manger’s job at Grimsby now? No, not really. The club find themselves in a difficult position and it isn’t a time for experimenting. However, do I think he should form part of the coaching staff or take on an ambassadorial role at the club? Absolutely. He is part of the fabric of GTFC, and I think I speak for a number of a generation of fans when I say that he would be welcomed back with open arms by supporters of the club in some capacity. Even if that was to organise pre-season trips to some Italian fella’s house.