Subscribe to trusted local news
If you are accessing this story via Facebook but you are a subscriber then you will be unable to access the story. Facebook wants you to stay and read in the app and your login details are not shared with Facebook. If you experience problems with accessing the news but have subscribed, please contact subscriptions@thestrayferret.co.uk. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
- Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.
Already a subscriber? Log in here.
19
Sept
Knaresborough Town's international striker on Leeds United, Usain Bolt and coming back to football
This week, Knaresborough Town announced the signing of a new striker, but the player in question is no ordinary non-league plodder.
In an unprecedented coup for the club, the new boy up front turned out to be ex-Leeds United stalwart Ross McCormack, a former Scotland international who has mixed it with some of the best in the game.
The signing – delivered by Knaresborough Town joint managing director Neil Reaney (son of Leeds United legend Paul Reaney) – has got the Manse Lane faithful abuzz with anticipation, and will no doubt make opposition defenders feel a little queasy.
Joint managing director Neil Reaney with Ross McCormack.
Scoring against FC Porto
McCormack started his professional career in 2002 with Scottish Premiership club Rangers – despite growing up a Celtic fan – and it was there that he enjoyed the greatest highlight of his career. He said:
I scored for Rangers on my Champions League debut. I was 19. I was on the bench that night and thought I’d no chance of coming on. So to get the call to go on and score away to FC Porto – you always dream of those sorts of nights, but you never think you’ll get anywhere near it.
Ken Bates and Cellino 'chaos'
After stints at Motherwell and Cardiff City, he joined Leeds United in 2010 for £350,000.
He captained the team, playing 144 matches for them – more than for any other team in his career – and scoring 53 goals.
But his time there, from 2010 to 2014, was not an auspicious one for Leeds. Although they had just been promoted to the Championship, they were mired in financial troubles, changed ownership twice, and had three managers. They wouldn’t be promoted back to the Premier League until 2020.
But McCormack does not share the animosity felt by many fans towards Ken Bates, the Leeds United owner and chairman whose abrasive style, financial wheeler-dealing, and lack of investment in players rubbed so many up the wrong way.
He said:
I know a lot of people didn’t like Ken Bates, but I actually got on really well with him and his wife. I had loads of conversations with him, he used to send Christmas cards and birthday cards constantly, so actually, I haven’t got a bad word to say about him.
During McCormack’s time at Leeds, the Bates era ended and, after a brief period under GFH Capital. the club was bought by Italian businessman Massimo Cellino. The Italian proved barely less controversial than his predecessor, being disqualified by the English Football League and investigated for tax evasion in Italy.
McCormack said:
Well, that was a different kettle of fish. Cellino bought the club, and that’s when you did feel things were getting a bit too chaotic. Loads of staff were getting sacked from the training ground, and this sounds so petty, but boys were bringing in their own packed lunches and taking their own clothes homes to wash them because the laundry staff had been let go.
One time, the players turned up and the training ground had been locked because no one had paid the bill. It was a chaotic time.
'Top man' Usain Bolt
After Leeds United, McCormack moved to Fulham and then Aston Villa – both then in the Championship – before being loaned out by Villa to Nottingham Forest, Melbourne City, Central Coast Mariners (in New South Wales), and Motherwell.
It was while in Australia that he played alongside world record-holding sprinter Usain Bolt. He said:
He wasn’t the best player, but he was humble – a really nice guy.
One day, Usain was walking down the street with one of his friends to come to the diner where we were having lunch – and there were hundreds of people just following him down the street. I’ve played with a lot of top players, and they get noticed quite a bit, but this was a different level.
If you think of that level of stardom and what he’s achieved, but how humble he is – that's just the kind of guy he is. Top man.
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt after winning the Men's 100m at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and breaking the world record. Photo: Wiki Creative Commons/Richard Giles.
£12 million price tag
This decade, McCormack has played very little football. He played a couple of matches for Aldershot Town in the covid-disrupted 2020-21 season and, two years later, a couple more for West Yorkshire side Liversedge, who are in the league above Knaresborough Town. Most recently, he’s played about six matches – and scored nine goals – for Giffnock Town in Glasgow.
He said:
I retired at 31 and had about five or six years not playing any football. I hated football and I hated the way my career ended.
But this has come at a good time, because I was actively looking to get back down here in the new year.
Details of the arrangement between McCormack and Knaresborough Town have not been disclosed, but it’s fair to say that he no longer commands the £12 million signing fee that Aston Villa had to pay for him.
He said:
Twelve million? Twelve pounds more like, now! But you can’t be the same player anymore, can you? I forget what age I was back then, but... it was a different period in time.
Returning to 'real' football
Knaresborough Town play in the Northern Counties East League Premier Division, which sits in the ninth tier of the English football league pyramid – three leagues below Harrogate Town (National League) and eight below the level McCormack used to play at.
Subject to FA approval, he hopes to be able to make his debut for Knaresborough Town at 3 o’clock this afternoon (Saturday, September 19) at the Manse Lane ground. The opposition will be West Yorkshire side Horbury Town – a far cry from FC Porto and the Champions League.
So how does playing non-league football compare with being in the Championship?
He said:
Football’s football. What happens on the pitch is the same – it’s just a different standard. A lot of people call non-league football ‘real’ football – tackles are flying in, elbows, stuff like that. I enjoy it – I enjoy any level of football. I enjoy watching it, I enjoy playing it, so if you can just forget about where you were in the past, and what you’ve done in the past, and just focus on where you are now, then you’ll enjoy it – and that’s what I’m here to do.
0