“Fire away,” says Roddy Collins breezily. “No holds barred!” Nearly an hour into the interview, though, and it briefly gets a little too much for the former Carlisle United manager.
It is not remembering the turbulence, the controversies or the challenges of his two years at Brunton Park that tips him over the emotional edge. It is the rawer, more tender side of management.
Collins at Carlisle frequently appeared a man on the verge of eruption – and many a time went over that verge – yet, like many of his peers, has resembled an addict in the way he has sought out managerial job after managerial job since.
When I ask if a person has to be just a little crazy to crave everything the profession offers, he says: “You’re not mad – you love it. At its best it’s pure joy. If you can get that on a regular basis, and share the joy with other people, and see young people running up and wanting autographs and photographs, and fathers walking with their kids…”
Collins suddenly pulls up in mid-flow. For the first time in 56 minutes of rapid-fire chat, the line goes silent. “Give me a minute here,” he says. It sounds like he’s trying to claw back a few tears that have bubbled forth.
“That’s what it’s all about,” he eventually continues. “And I’ll tell you this. I’m ready to go again tomorrow, one million per cent. There’s no-one more determined or experienced.
“And don't worry about my health – I’ve got five stents in my heart, so that’s ready to go again too. There’s 20 more years in that one!”
He bursts out laughing, and we are swiftly back to what seems the natural Collins state: big claims and large hopes, bolstered by that quick-talking style and underpinned by a history which the word “eventful” barely does justice.
One way or another, the 60-year-old is a survivor. He has managed nine clubs since leaving Carlisle in 2003, and his outspoken punditry style has emphasised his household name in Ireland. His newly-published memoir, ‘The Rodfather’ is already selling by the bucketload and has been nominated for an award.
There has always been an alternative view on Collins – one summed up by a Twitter user who wrote: “Giving Roddy Collins oxygen is a cardinal sin” – yet the lack of middle ground in perception explains his notoriety, and the fact his book is hotly in demand. Indeed, the publication itself opens with Collins reflecting on an...unkind six-letter word that has been used to describe him in a terrace chant.
“I can’t get my head around it,” he says of the book's popularity. “I didn’t plan my life to be written into a book – I lived the life. I’d been offered the chance to do it four or five times since Carlisle, and I had no interest. But the chap who wrote it [Paul Howard], I’ve known him 30 years. He’s a brilliant fella, a brilliant author. We sat down for ten months and he moulded it into something presentable. My kids and wife are very happy with it and that’s all that matters to me.”
Collins' story is, as you’d expect, colourful and forthright. “It was the best therapy ever,” he adds of the process. “People said to me when my father died I needed therapy. People said when I got sacked by Carlisle I needed therapy. Those were the two worst moments of my entire life.
“I came out the other end [of doing the book], and the weight of the world was off my shoulders. I was vindicated that I could tell my truth. Now I feel reinvigorated.
“Two years ago I was thinking, ‘Why did I waste my whole life on football?’ Now I realise I’m still fit enough. I applied for a League Two job last week. You know what my dream would be? To walk into Brunton Park in any capacity as a football coach, stand there, and see if I get abused or recognised as the one that got Michael Knighton out.”
Collins, who is not limited to one such “dream”, says he has unburdened himself by writing the book, but over our conversation still seems to have plenty to get off his chest.
He has lots to say about John Courtenay, the former Blues owner who died in 2020, and about a period at Brunton Park from which he insists he emerged with an unfair reputation.
He is also full of stories, full of craic, full of claims; typical Roddy, but with a few softer reflections too. So let us begin.
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He was appointed Carlisle’s manager in the summer of 2001, having enjoyed memorable success in Ireland with Bohemians. He credits Tony Hopper, the much-missed former United midfielder, for helping open the door.
“Tony was an absolute gentleman, as was his father [John],” he says. “Tony came to Ireland to sign for Cork City. We [Bohemians] had a lad called Rob Bowman who knew Tony from their time at Carlisle, and he asked if Tony wanted to do a couple of days’ training before he went down to Cork with Derek Mountfield.
“But I grabbed him. Some people didn’t rate Tony, but he was brilliant, a very integral part of what we went on to achieve at Bohemians. When the Carlisle job became available, after [Ian] Atkins left, Tony rang me, and said ‘Would you work in England?’ – and I said I’d be there in the morning.
“He said he spoke with the Knightons, and they were very impressed with my CV. Tony, God rest his soul, was a huge part of my life.”
Carlisle were in crisis, bleakly accustomed to fourth-tier relegation battles and in the teeth of a bitter civil war between owner Knighton and supporters. Collins, who had veered from his family’s boxing background into football - and was also a trained plasterer - says he was not deterred by the outlook.
“I got Bangor out of a relegation battle in my first job, I then got Bohemians out of a relegation battle then cleaned everything up, including European results [they famously defeated Kaisterslautern in the UEFA Cup, and won a domestic double]. When I walked in, and seen the ground [Brunton Park], I just had a gut feeling. ‘This is gonna be brilliant, the best thing ever’.
“I’ve no problem with a challenge. I’ll face any man, any situation head on and I’ll always be honest about it. On my first day, there was a malaise about the place and I thought, ‘This has to go first’. There was a group of players there…they didn’t give two fiddlers about the club, all they wanted was money. So they had to go.
“I had to build a mentality of being proud to play for the club, and being honoured to play for the club. The people of Carlisle are hard-working people, so let’s show them hard-working people.
“The next step was trying to sort out the problem with Michael Knighton and the supporters. I had that meeting at the Sands Centre, and I saw that [relationship] was gone: irreparable damage. I knew people with money who I thought could buy the club.
“I also tried to bring in a few players that would dig in in a relegation battle. My first season…it was hard. I was getting £200 a week, and I sent most of that home.”
Seriously? Collins is adamant that was his initial wage. “And I had to pay my rent out of that,” he says. “One of the players was on £1,700. So imagine why his opinion of me was what it was. I was Paddy Irishman, walking in from a pub league as they called it. But I didn’t care, because it was never about money with me, ever.”
Collins, in his book, comically describes approaching Luke Weaver and mapping out a bright future for him as a centre-forward, not realising he was United’s goalkeeper. He adds that his abrasive style to a struggling squad, whilst scorned by some players, was appreciated by others.
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, he says he was made “100 per cent welcome” by some, naming physio Neil 'Dolly' Dalton, coach Billy Barr, kitman Andy Horn, secretary Sarah McKnight, doctor John Haworth and director (now chairman) Andrew Jenkins.
What about his interaction with the Knightons, whose tenure over the club had become toxic? “I thought Mark [Michael’s son, and also a director] was a lovely lad. He was in a difficult situation and he always put the case forward to his father. I begged him to get me Richie Foran, and that was a huge signing.
“Michael was different. I liked him, but I didn’t like what he was doing to the club. I didn’t like the conflict between him and the supporters – that saddened me. And I dealt with him the way he would deal with me.
“People would say I was a mouthpiece or a puppet for Knighton – not in a million years. In the end, when I took him on and told him what I thought about releasing the club quicker, he sacked me. But I didn’t mind because the league position was secured.”
Collins had indeed led Carlisle to 17th in the 2001/2 Division Three season, and it says much about the state of the Blues that it was their best finish for a few years. At this point, his countryman John Courtenay had emerged as a would-be buyer. As the deal slowed and stalled, Collins openly expressed his frustration. Before the end of the campaign, his outburst cost him his job.
It was, he maintains, a calculated move. “That was why I done it. I called them out and thought, ‘He [Knighton] might just fold here, put his cards on the table’. But he didn’t. So he sacked me.
“But at the end of the day, the club was going nowhere. We would have been in another bad situation the following year. My idea was to go and get promoted. I thought, ‘What’s the point in all this? I’m gonna state the position’. I wanted to be clear with supporters.”
Collins said he had introduced other people to the idea of buying United, such as his brother Steve, the boxer, and the Dublin businessman Des Kelly. In the end he says Courtenay, who was the managing director of Umbro Ireland, buttonholed him in a pub and had his interest piqued by what was happening across the water.
He describes a meeting between Courtenay and Knighton at Leeds-Bradford Airport, and the takeover was eventually agreed in the summer of 2002. Collins was reinstated as manager and had to hastily put a team together at a time of widespread relief in the fanbase.
The new owner and returning manager entertained supporters at a talk-in on the pitch, before more than 10,000 attended the opening game of the new season against Hartlepool. A 3-1 defeat underlined the rebuilding required, but the mood was hopeful.
“When we went in at the start, we were a bit too bombastic,” says Collins. “We should have been more realistic. But we were as exhilarated as the crowd, and we surfed on the wave of optimism and enthusiasm.
“We should have gone in and said we needed to plan, and that it would need four years or whatever. But I was never a politician, and got carried away.
“That first game, against Hartlepool, we had a kid on the bench on loan from Blackburn [Ryan Hevicon]. We were getting outclassed and needed a sub. I turned and said, ‘What’s that kid’s name? Warm him up’. That’s how bad it was. We’d only had a week to prepare.
“We got a couple of results, beat Southend and Lincoln, and John was going around saying we were gonna get in the play-offs. I said, ‘Those six points are gonna keep us in the league this year’. Ultimately that’s what happened.”
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The Lincoln game, an eight-man victory which saw owner Courtenay and players involved in scuffles with stewards, was in many ways the hallmark of a wild United era. Chaos was a constant friend of the Collins regime, as results declined again and certain players were guilty of further indiscipline.
A drinking culture took hold, with some members of the squad embroiled in violent altercations in Carlisle nightclubs. The publicity this achieved suggested United was a club keen to have the party before any achievements.
This happened on Collins’ watch, but he blames Courtenay. “He introduced the drinking culture,” he declares. “I sacked two players and John reinstated them, because he was the chairman. He accepted he brought them out drinking. He was drinking with them.”
Does Collins not consider that, as manager, he should carry the can for this? Did it not reflect on his recruitment and his handle on his squad’s behaviour?
He robustly says not. “I used to go out and catch them [drinking]. I had an instinct of a route, and would find two or three of them. But there were players who came in who weren’t drinkers, who suddenly became drinkers.
“Trevor Molloy was never a drinker in Ireland. Richie Foran…he was a bit volatile but would only have a few pints, not too many. Willo McDonagh was only a kid. Peter Murphy was certainly not a drinker, nor was Brendan McGill. Matty Glennon wasn’t a drinker. Brian Shelley, another great kid, never drank. Dessie Byrne – when the lads were drinking, he was on 7-Up.
“But there just became a group of lads with too much time on their hands, ‘Should we have a couple of beers? The chairman doesn’t mind’. What chance did I have? That was the beginning of the end for me.”
It must be pointed out that Courtenay is no longer here to respond to the picture Collins paints, nor the other allegations he levels: including claims that the owner, after sacking him, in some way warned other clubs not to employ him, something of which he also accuses a senior figure in the Football Association of Ireland (“they destroyed me for 12-15 years”).
Collins, for the record, managed Dublin City, Shamrock Rovers, Floriana, Cork City, Monaghan United, Athlone Town (twice), Derry City and Waterford United after leaving Carlisle. Courtenay, I also point out, commands respect in Carlisle for ousting Knighton and changing United’s course away from seemingly terminal decline.
I put this to Collins, and ask if he thought twice about being so one-sidedly critical of Courtenay in light of his recent passing.
“No,” he says. “My only wish is that he was still alive, so I could sit with him face to face, and he could admit everything.”
Collins goes on to say he was “vilified” at the end of his time at Carlisle despite keeping them up twice and leading them to the 2003 LDV Vans Trophy final, where they lost 2-0 to Bristol City in front of a 50,913 crowd at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
He says he always managed the club on “limited resources”. But is that the case? What about, for example, the £100,000 he shelled out for – some would say wasted on – Derry City defender Darren Kelly?
“That was the only money I spent,” he says. “That was John’s decision, by the way. I just brought Darren in to have a look at him. He was still learning the game at that level. He was all aggressive, honesty, real toughness, brilliant in the dressing room, but didn’t have the positional awareness, and needed Paul Raven next to him for that.
“The truth is I wasn’t there long enough to look after the players and help them develop. I also reckon we would have got nearer the play-offs [in 2002/3] if we’d forgotten about the LDV. I told John to forget about that cup, but he said we needed the money. That cost us points.”
Considering Carlisle only survived on the penultimate game of that season, through Brian Wake’s famous hat-trick at Shrewsbury Town, it feels like a stretch to argue that only a cup run stopped them being top-seven contenders. Yet Collins is adamant about this – and also about his belief that some dark goings-on were behind his sacking early into the 2003/4 season.
United began the campaign dismally, yet he believes the seeds were sown sooner. “There was actually a coolness towards me on the day of the LDV final. When we played Shrewsbury to secure our league position, there was a horrendous atmosphere towards me.”
This, he claims, overlapped into the new campaign when, despite summer signings such as Chris Billy, Steve Livingstone and a certain Paul Simpson, Carlisle began with a 2-1 home defeat to York City, Livingstone and York’s Chris Brass sent off in the first half for fighting.
Was it not, in reality, failed signings like Livingstone that cost Collins, rather than mysterious moves behind the scenes?
“You must remember, I brought in Livi for two reasons – his experience, and that he could play both centre-back and centre-forward if we were struggling. His legs weren’t what they were, but he was great in the dressing room.
“That game against York…we didn’t play badly, but he was sent off. A fella behind the dugout, who was John’s drinking partner, says, ‘**** off back to Ireland with your donkey and cart’. I thought, ‘One game in?!’
“I remember, in pre-season, there was a quote from Paul Simpson in the News & Star. He said the training was brilliant and Roddy’s methods were conducive to good football – every run we make, there’s a reason for it. He lauded my coaching ability.
“When I signed Paul, he’d been player-manager at Rochdale. People said, ‘Don’t do it – he’ll take your job’. I said if Simmo can do a better job than me, he’s entitled to my job. I just felt he was a brilliant player, a local lad, a nice lad and I liked him.
“Don’t forget that Paul couldn’t win a game for a while either, after he took over [Simpson replaced Collins early in the 2003/4 season, which resulted in relegation], so you have to ask questions about that. Under normal circumstances we could both have done it with our eyes closed at that level. There was dark stuff going on behind the scenes.”
Was it not more simply that Simpson, once a company voluntary arrangement was lifted, was able to sign better and more professional-minded players, and was also, however uncomfortable this may be to Collins, a much more credible manager?
“Look, that narrative about me not knowing players is a load of bull****,” he replies. “I’ve won leagues with the fifth lowest budget and players who wouldn’t get a kick of a ball anywhere else. I’m telling you, there was dark business going on that continued when I left.”
Collins was eventually sacked after a 1-0 defeat at Boston United, the manager sent from the dugout during the game and appearing a forlorn figure behind some railings at York Street as he watched his final match unfold.
“I knew before kick-off I was gone,” he says. “I knew because, that week before, I couldn’t contact John Courtenay. There were two couples who would stand on the bank when I went out training, who would always have a chat about life. One morning that week, one of the women was crying and she walked away.
“I wanted to hug her. I thought something was wrong in her life. I asked John to come into the dressing room to say a few words before kick-off because I felt something wasn’t right, but he never turned up. Richie Foran asked if I was alright and I said, ‘Something’s going on, I can’t get my head around it’.
“He said, ‘There’s a bit of a rumour out there John could be turning on you’. I was shocked. But I knew. During the summer, I heard there were private meetings going on for hours. You’re the last to know, because your whole focus is on winning the next game. But when you sense your instructions are not being received as intensely, or when some players are looking at the ground when you’re talking to them…that’s the loneliest, saddest, horrible feeling for any person, that feeling of pure rejection.
“I had my whole family over. We’d just bought a house, my daughter was at Ponteland, just enrolled at Newcastle University to finish her studies. It was going to be full-on for me at Carlisle for ten years. The way it was done wasn’t right. I left being painted as the worst human being on the planet, not a nice person or a good man. I was an idiot – that’s the word I was called. Oh, for ***** sake. I didn’t deserve that.”
Collins says that, soon after he was sacked, he was contacted by the controversial owner of Darlington, George Reynolds. “I went to George’s house on a Friday night, and he asked me to be in the dugout the next day. But it was against Carlisle, and I said it wasn’t a good situation, so leave it ‘til after the weekend.
“And I never heard from George again. So someone got into his ear.”
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Collins, you sense, could fill a book on its own with his rebuttals of the idea he was a bluffer who didn’t know what he was doing. His reign will never be remembered as a success, though his hand in helping oust Knighton remains in United’s history – likewise his signing of the man who turned out to be one of their greatest managers in Simpson.
There were many other interludes during his time at Carlisle, some amusing, some controversial, some dramatic. He recalls, for instance, the time two of his players nearly drowned on a training trip.
“I brought the lads to Ireland for a little get-together and a few games. I knew this place called the Forty Foot – a brilliant swimming spot. There was a buoy about 500m away and Livi and Ravo decided to swim out. I knew it was dangerous, a really bad current.
“I started to panic, because numerous people had been swept away. I’m going, ‘Jesus Christ, imagine this on my head’. Thankfully they made it back. Ravo only told me last week that the two of them went into shock that night in their room.
“But I put it down as, ‘Well, I could have got rid of two players I didn’t want!’ Ah, I jest…”
Then there was the time he ordered some players to run through Carlisle, with Collins behind them on his bike, as a disciplinary measure. “That went down well with supporters, I can tell you. They were four players who were swinging the lead. I did it to show the hard-working people of the city that we were here to do business. If someone had told me that if we didn’t win the next game, I had to jog behind a bike, I would have done it. We were all in it together.”
On another occasion, an angry Collins ditched a half-time team-talk and sent his players back out to spend 15 minutes shivering on the pitch before the second half. Was this, the city-centre bike punishment, and those times he would theatrically remove his coat and fling it into the dugout, all for show, rather than cornerstones of proper management?
He does, after all, say in his book that he regards football as entertainment, and that he was a performer on a stage. Yet he insists: “The cycling wasn’t for show. It was to show players who were earning more in a week than some earn in a month what it’s like to go to work with your lunch under your arm, support a couple of kids and pay a mortgage.
“The half-time one was anger. It was an ice-cold night, we’d not performed, we had the LDV semi-final coming up and the players were posing. I said, ‘The league is what matters. It’s minus two, there’s people standing in that crowd who can’t have a cup of tea or a sit down, so you’re not having one. Get ******* back out’. I didn’t do a team-talk on the pitch, I just threw them back out. I don’t regret it, no.”
Nor does Collins regret taking his club car with him back to Ireland after his sacking. “I’ve still got the News & Star headline at home – ‘ARREST WARRANT OUT FOR RODDY COLLINS’,” he says. “Michael Knighton said if I ever found him a buyer for the club, I could keep the club car. I found him John Courtenay, so I did my end of the bargain. So I drove the car home. I then got a phonecall from Dolly, saying, ‘You’re all over Carlisle in the News & Star’.”
What happened to the car? “Oh, I got it back over. It was a Rover. I traded it in for a Merc!”
Then there was the surreal time when Vinnie Jones wore the United shirt for a specially-arranged game in Ireland. “That was just a one-off, for a charity gig,” Collins says.
At the time he was quoted as saying he was keen to sign the footballer-cum-actor. “Nah,” he says. “Vinnie was committed to the acting, and was making big money.”
He says they are still in touch and spoke two days before our interview. I wonder how Jones remembers the day he played for Carlisle.
“The proudest moment of his life,” Collins booms, laughing.
He is more serious in his reflections on another well-remembered feature of his tenure: ‘The Rod Squad’, an Irish-made documentary series showing that Brunton Park era in all its curious glory.
Its insights were raw and fascinating, yet to some minds also presented United under Collins as a laughing stock. “A production company rang me up and asked if they could meet when I was back in Ireland,” he says. “They wanted to do a story – Irish manager, Irish owner – and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’.
“There were two reasons. First of all, the profile of the club would go through the roof, so if there were any players in Ireland we could get, it might help. Second, I wanted to educate people in the hardships of life in the battle of relegation, stuff like that.
“I don’t regret it. Some of the scenes in it were cringe, but that’s life. Nobody’s ever come up and slagged me over it. And the amount who’ve commented on the size of Carlisle and the club have been phenomenal. If you came to Ireland in that era and asked if people knew a club in England, 99 per cent would have said Carlisle.
“It won an industry award over here. People talk about it to this day. But you know what? I’ve never once watched it back. My wife was crying her eyes out at it, and I’m softer than her. She said, ‘Don’t put yourself through it’. It’s that thought of what could have been…”
Collins says his family is at the core of his life – he met wife Caroline when they were teenagers, and they have five children – and as such found his early days at Carlisle lonely. He says he felt the coldness of isolation when, as a teenage player, he travelled to England from Dublin for trials at Fulham and Arsenal, and this returned during his big managerial chance at Carlisle.
“When I took over the first time, I was living in hotels and Caroline was in Ireland. I was very homesick,” he says. “I’d always go to my wife and kids and share everything with them, and I couldn’t do that. After winning a game, at 6-7pm I’d be sitting in a hotel room and just wishing I could hug my wife and kids and enjoy the euphoria.
“The times I went home, I used to leave them at 6am, kiss them all and get my lift to the airport. All the way there I’d have a lump in my throat. I would cry leaving the house, but the minute my feet landed in Glasgow, all I could think about was Carlisle United. It would get to 8pm and Caroline would say, ‘Roddy, you haven’t rang me all day’.
“It was going from being heartbroken to pure, head-down commitment, to the extent I’d forget to ring my own wife. That’s how it was.”
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Collins says he will be visiting Carlisle soon as part of his book tour. Since 2003, he has only returned to the city the once.
“I came back to a reserve game when I was manager of Derry City, and Graham Kavanagh was [Carlisle] manager,” he says. “I went into the club to see him, and when I was there, Graham asked me to show him how to box.
“So I’m in the office with Graham, showing him how to box. One of the backroom staff walked in, and I was waiting for the News & Star headlines, ‘RODDY COLLINS FIGHTS GRAHAM KAVANAGH IN HIS OFFICE…’”
He laughs. “I stayed in the [Lakeland Gate hotel on Warwick Road] and while I was over, I walked every bit of Carlisle with Caroline. We shed some tears.”
Did anyone recognise him? “No – nobody recognised me at all. I was gonna call in on Andrew Jenkins, but then I thought it might compromise him. I didn’t know how people would receive me.
“We went round where I used to live, and we had a few ‘if only’ moments. But that’s life. You have to move on.”
I ask Collins if it matters to him how he is remembered and perceived in Carlisle. “Absolutely,” he shoots back. “It really matters to me.
“Look at it this way – when I was sacked [by Knighton], I had people writing me letters. One woman invited me to her holiday home with my family. People were ringing me up. People marched around the ground. I get back in, we get to the LDV final, we survive again, and then I get four games – four games, come on – into a new season [it was actually five in the league, before he was sacked].
“That really hurt me. I’d worked hard to try and achieve what we all wanted. I felt a great rapport with the people of Carlisle. I could walk down the street, put my arm around the postman and have a chat with him. My kids loved going to school there. My wife loved Carlisle. We were very happy.
“In the space of a couple of months, I’ve suddenly become the worst manager in the world, the worst human being, the instigator of a drinking culture. Never in my life.
“It would mean a lot to me for the people of Carlisle to really dig deep and look at the good stuff I did, and not listen to the rubbish that I was a bad person.”
He sighs. “Yeah, it was frustrating at times. And I did turn a table over in a nightclub. That was more anger at Courtenay. But I also gave the doorman £100, apologised and offered to clean it up.
“Carlisle, for me, was a lifetime in the space of two years that will be with me until I go to my grave. But mostly, I was happy. I loved it.”
The love, Collins says, lingers. He says he looks for United’s scores every week, and was fearful for them last season until Simpson “did a great job” in turning things around. He maintains they are a Championship club in waiting – and still fantasises, with that old Collins bravado, about being the man to take them there.
It is an unlikely premise. “Ah, but life’s a funny business,” he says. “Things can happen. If the money came in, the first place I would be standing would be as the new owner of Carlisle United. That would 100 per cent fulfil my life’s ambition.
“You know what – my son’s gone into business and is going to be very wealthy. He said, ‘Da, we’re gonna buy a club’. I never mentioned Carlisle to him. But they all know that’s my dream – get the money, come back and get them where they should be, and I’d die a happy man.
“Will it happen? I don’t know. I actually applied for the manager's job a few years ago, spoke to Andrew Jenkins and the chap from Pirelli [John Nixon, another of United's co-owners]. They turned me down, I understand that. But I still believe in my heart.
“People have come to me recently. I know a lot of multi-millionaires. ‘Rod, if you had a club tomorrow, what would you buy?’ And I say, ‘Carlisle’. They sit and think for a while. So one of them might come back to me one day and we repeat the process all over again. And this time I’ll be an older, wiser man.”
'The Rodfather by Roddy Collins with Paul Howard is published by Sandycove and is available in shops and online.
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