Carlisle United’s play-off history is a story of four chapters – three parts agony, one part ecstasy, all parts compelling.
In 1994, 2008 and 2017 their hopes were cut down in semi-finals of differing nature. In 2005, there was glory. It is a story of ambition, anti-climax, optimism, improbable drama, one or two thoroughly insane and/or excruciating nights, and a few personal stories brought to the surface too.
It is, typically of Carlisle United, an eventful journey, one that leaves a deep mark in the memory. Ahead of chapter five in the coming days, this is the Blues in the play-offs, as told by those who experienced it.
1994 – Carlisle United 0 Wycombe Wanderers 2; Wycombe Wanderers 2 Carlisle United 1
“My over-riding memory of the season is how football can change so quickly,” says Tony Caig, Carlisle’s goalkeeper against Wycombe Wanderers – the first time in their history the Blues had been involved in the play-offs since their inception in 1987.
Caig, in many ways, defined what happened to Carlisle in 1993/4. Come the winter, they were struggling in the fourth tier, then called Division Three. It was a time of change at Brunton Park, the second season of Michael Knighton’s ownership and the first of Mick Wadsworth’s management…and the young goalkeeper from Cleator Moor was far from the front line.
“I was the number three back-up goalie behind Mervyn Day and Tony Elliott,” says Caig. “I didn’t see myself getting an opportunity any time soon.”
Wadsworth, Caig says, was exploring loan opportunities for the youth team graduate. There were talks with non-league clubs in Yorkshire, while Scunthorpe United had a vacancy on their bench. Day was the vastly experienced No1 and Elliott, four-and-a-half years older than Caig, was next in line.
“Then Merv got injured, with his knee, so that [loan] was put on hold. Then Tony Elliott got injured almost immediately after getting in the team.”
Caig had made one appearance the season before, having been summoned from a youth game at the Sheepmount to make his debut when deputising for the ill Kelham O’Hanlon against Halifax Town. Midway through 1993/4, he was spirited back into the side and performed well enough to hold the place. Day’s knee thwarted his own comeback and Caig, who kept goal for the Blues in a big FA Cup third round tie at Sunderland in only his fourth senior appearance, did well enough to hold off the fit-again Elliott’s challenge.
“Then it just snowballed,” says Caig.
Carlisle went on one of their best late-season surges of all-time, rising from the lower reaches to an unlikely play-off race. “We went on an unbelievable run at the right time from January to May,” says Caig. “Towards the end, we had Ian Arnold coming back from his loan in the Conference and scoring goals. We’d had big occasions like the Autoglass Trophy northern final [when United were agonisingly denied a Wembley trip by Huddersfield Town]. Reevesy [record signing David Reeves] was hitting form…all the stars just aligned.”
The season climaxed with a four-game winning run which included a memorable 3-0 win on Preston’s plastic pitch, a thundering 2-1 home victory over champions Shrewsbury Town which featured an incredible Simon Davey free-kick, then a 2-0 home win over Colchester United which saw Carlisle claim a top seven place on the last day.
The prize was a two-legged meeting with Wycombe, who were themselves riding a wave. It was their first season in the Football League after coming up from the Conference, and their very first game at the level had been at Brunton Park: a 2-2 draw on the opening day of 1993/4. They were led by Martin O’Neill in the infancy of his managerial career, and had progressed boldly through the Third Division season.
“It was a new experience for us as a group,” says Caig of the play-offs. “Maybe not for some of the older players, lads like Dave Burgess and Pete Valentine, but in my case just playing first-team football was new, never mind the play-offs.
“After the run we had, I think there was a feeling of, ‘Wow, we’re there!’ In January we were worrying about a relegation dogfight – then you’re talking about potentially going up. The feeling was almost that we were just happy to be there.”
Carlisle’s preparation for the first leg at Brunton Park suffered the unusual disruption of a crucial absentee. The American midfield player Paul Conway had, late in the season, emerged as a new and bright Brunton Park performer, but was ruled out of the opening Wycombe encounter…because he was getting married in New York.
“Paul was a big miss,” Caig says. “He’d come from nowhere, trained with us on trial – probably through Mick and a friend who’d known his dad [the former Fulham star Jimmy Conway], and next thing he was in the team.
“He became an integral part really quickly. He had a calmness in possession and also had a goal in him from midfield. In England, players organise weddings in the off-season – it’s just what you did. Paul was probably coming in from a slightly different culture. ‘Paul, we’re in the play-offs!’ ‘No, I’m getting married – this has been arranged a long time’.”
Conway’s absence meant an opportunity for Shaun Rouse, a player formerly on Rangers and Bristol City’s books who was also known to Wadsworth through the director of coaching’s time with the Football Association. Rouse had only figured briefly in United’s run-in and so it was not an ideal reshuffle for such a big game.
Carlisle were an emerging side, where players such as Reeves, Davey, Arnold, Dean Walling and Tony Gallimore were prominent. Yet Wycombe were, all in all, even more tuned up.
“They had a bit more know-how,” Caig says. “They looked like a team that had been up in the top six all season and, if anything, expected to go up. They had Simon Garner up front, someone who’d scored so many goals in his time at Blackburn. Steve Guppy [the future Newcastle United winger] was there, and Martin O’Neill starting out his management career. They were a solid team who’d been together a while.
“They’d come out of the Conference, and added one or two, but looked really settled. They looked like they had more experience of these kind of games.”
Brunton Park attracted a hopeful 10,862 crowd for United’s maiden experience of the play-offs, yet the surging form of recent weeks deserted them in the first leg. On a grey Cumbrian day, with a firm wind, a nervy opening spell gave way to a Wycombe opener on 33 minutes, when Guppy and Dave Titterington combined on the break before Garner’s shot deflected off Gallimore for Steve Thompson to score.
United attempted to respond yet the best they could offer was half-chances. One came to Joe Joyce, who had nearly lifted the roof off Brunton Park with his goal against Huddersfield in the Autoglass, but there were no such heroics this time. Rouse, Conway’s deputy, made minimal impact and was replaced in the second half by Burgess. Davey, Reeves and Joyce again were narrowly off target with attempts, but there was never a sense of Carlisle seizing the game.
In the 84th minute, the task became greater still, Garner rifling past Caig on the counter-attack; the old goal king’s eye for the target crucial for Wycombe. It ended 2-0 to the visitors – and the day also attracted a particularly sour note through pitch invasions, of which there were two.
Amid one of them, a fan made a dash of about 80 yards across the surface, pursued by members of Topguard, a private security firm Carlisle had engaged for the game. Four security guards wrestled the man to the ground, and one, shockingly, kicked him in the back as he was being held on the floor.
The incident attracted front page controversy in the Evening News & Star, complaints from other supporters and pledges from Topguard that the steward responsible would be sacked, as well as Knighton’s insistence that the individual would be dealt with.
It was not how United wished their first taste of play-off life to be remembered. “Back in those days there were quite a lot of pitch invasions,” Caig says. “As soon as the fences came down [after the Hillsborough disaster], it was basically a case of jumping a wall. Clubs were probably hiring private companies because they felt they were going to be skilled security people.
“Whenever anything like that went on, I tried to not even think it was happening. It might end in a minute or five minutes, and you’ve got to be ready as a player.”
The period between first and second legs, Caig remembers, was upbeat despite Carlisle’s deficit. “Mick wasn’t going after the team or getting down on us. His message was, basically, that we’d done so well to be here, and we now needed our biggest performance of the season.
“The realisation was that the first goal was massive. In knockout football, you might be playing a team that, over the piece, is slightly better, but goals change games. If we score at Wycombe, it's game on, and they’d get nervy. If they score, it’s done.”
Sadly for United, it went Wycombe’s way at Adams Park. Carlisle had the newly-married Conway back in their side but went 1-0 down, and 3-0 on aggregate, in the eighth minute through Dave Carroll.
“I don’t particularly remember the first leg goals, but I remember that one at Wycombe,” Caig says. “Guppy crossed to the far stick, the lad headed in at the far post, and that put it to bed. You could feel the energy going out of people. It was just another game too far for us.”
United clung on, Caig defying Thompson with a brilliant save, but conceded again to Garner. In the 80th minute, Rod Thomas was fouled in the box and Davey drove in a consolation penalty. Carlisle were out, 4-1 on aggregate, and Wycombe advanced to a Wembley final against Preston North End, where they would win 4-2 to reach the third tier.
Carlisle were deflated, but in a position to build. Their terrific finish to 1993/4 lit the way for crucial progress. “Straight after that from Mick it was a case of, ‘Look, lads, be disappointed, but take a lot of heart in what you’ve done. We want more and expect more now. We’ve got a great opportunity to put something together’," Caig says.
“There were probably some players who shot up over those 20-odd games from January to May, and changed how they were looked at by the manager, ownership…even the fans. They were used to seeing some of those players fighting at the bottom end of the league. All of a sudden you’re in the play-offs.”
Carlisle built thrillingly on that promise. Wadsworth added the canny experience of David Currie and Derek Mountfield to a flourishing young team, and United won Division Three in colourful style in 1994/5. This is a constructive message for the current side, and those putting it together, Caig feels.
“There’s a tendency for people to make quick decisions on things,” he says. “But I’ve been to a couple of Carlisle games recently – the Stockport game and the Salford game, and before that it was the Bradford game on Boxing Day – and the difference in the team in how solid they are, compared with where they were in previous times, is really noticeable.
“Whatever happens, there’s not a lot wrong. If they get up, brilliant. If they don’t, and you add one or two like we did [in 1994], they can be up there again.”
The intensity of the play-offs was a novel experience for the 20-year-old Caig who, 29 years on, has this to say to the younger players in Paul Simpson’s squad as they prepare for their semi-final first leg on Sunday. “They would seem to have a very similar sounding board and coaches to what I had,” he says. “I had Mick Wadsworth and Mervyn Day, two really experienced operators who could speak to me in a certain way, especially Mervyn, a keeper who’d played at the top all his career.
“He could talk to me about playing the game, staying calm, don’t get wrapped up in things. I know it’s not just another game – you feel that emotion from the fans, that drives the adrenaline – but you have to stay calm.
“You’ve got an unbelievably experienced manager and staff. Knowing how Simmo talks, and how he is, the information will be really clear and concise, and understandable for the players. Listen to that, try to carry that out, and don’t go off plan.
“It’s dead easy to say to players not to get emotionally involved – it’s a play-off game, how do you not? But as long as you can keep it under a certain level, not at boiling point, you’ll be alright. And keep your discipline. Remember these are big games for the officials as well.”
Carlisle go into the 2022/23 play-offs with, by comparison, the worst form of the four teams. Yet that does not have to be conclusive. “In 1994 we were the form team,” Caig says. “Wycombe probably thought, ‘No way, we don’t want to play them’. But in the event, they must have felt they caught us at the right time.
“In the middle of that winning run, we knew we had to win every game. When you’re there, it feels different. This season at Carlisle they’ve been up there all season. There should be no inferiority complex about the players. Some of them might be thinking they should have gone up automatically. They’ll want to use that to drive them in the play-offs.”
2005 – Aldershot 1 Carlisle United 0; Carlisle United 2 Aldershot 1 (5-4 pens); Carlisle United 1 Stevenage 0
“Eighteen years? That’s ridiculous. The memory’s still there, crystal clear. That’s why you get involved in football, for days like that…”
Danny Livesey could be talking for anyone, playing or watching, who experienced Carlisle’s play-offs of 2004/5: a multi-game epic in the Conference where the Blues took everyone to the brink and back again, before a finale that ranks among the club’s most important.
It was their first season in non-league, the result of a relegation that felt a long time in coming yet was so nearly averted by a revival led by a certain Paul Simpson in 2003/4. The moment Carlisle fell, they had already been galvanised by Simpson’s transformative management and an overhauled, newly-hardened squad.
Unusually, there was positive momentum despite the regret of going down. After a summer takeover which involved the Cumbrian building tycoon Fred Story replacing the Irish businessman John Courtenay, Carlisle set about life below the Football League with optimism of an immediate return.
They were the biggest deal in the Conference, the scalp most teams wanted. United started the season powerfully but a mid-season slump, when key figures were out injured, set them a recovery task. In the winter, Simpson had signed the 19-year-old Bolton Wanderers defender Livesey, who had made his Premier League debut against Liverpool but was ready for first-team football down the divisions.
Livesey started against Morecambe with a performance that was castigated by many fans. Gradually, he grew. “I was feeling fitter, and my confidence had started to come back, which is massive,” he says of United’s run-in. “Some games I felt I did well but still got hammered because we’d lost. That’s football, you get used to that. Results can mask performances either way.
“I’d missed nearly eight months of playing when I came to Carlisle. As time went on, I was starting to feel really good again.”
As a team, United returned to their old selves late in the season. “A little bit earlier we were in some dreadful form, and you don’t see a way out of it, but we played Leigh RMI and got a win which kind of turned our season around,” Livesey says.
Barnet had, by then, pulled clear at the top of the table and by the time Carlisle went to Underhill for their penultimate game, Paul Fairclough’s Bees were champions. That game in north London proved a stormy one: a 1-1 draw which saw both Livesey and Tom Cowan red-carded by a referee, Ray Lee, who was branded a “numpty” by Simpson afterwards.
“I got sent off when he gave a dodgy penalty,” Livesey says. “Then we got done in the last minute.”
It meant Livesey had to miss the first play-off semi-final leg at Aldershot, who had finished fourth, level on points with third-placed Carlisle, behind Barnet and runners-up Hereford United.
He says: “As the lads all went out for the warm-up, Simmo came to me and said, ‘I want you to watch what they do at set-pieces so that, for the home game we know what they’re doing’. I think he just wanted to make sure I was watching the game.
"I remember just making stuff up. Later I gave him a piece of paper, and quite clearly nobody looked at it. I don’t remember watching one set-piece…”
Carlisle lost 1-0 on a frustrating day in Hampshire, yet Livesey says there was an inbuilt confidence that they would turn things around at home. And so they did – but only on a night which would enter the Brunton Park annals for melodrama.
“It was absolute madness,” recalls Livesey.
“It was an end-of-season evening game, when it’s still light as you’re kicking off. We were still riding Football League crowds and it was a great time to be at the club. It felt we were never going to lose.”
Livesey’s redemption came early. “I had a knack of getting on the end of crosses and should have scored a few more. I felt, ‘I’ve got a chance of scoring in this game’. I made that near-post run and the ball just found me. It felt like I owed them that because of missing the first leg. I felt I’d restored the wrong I’d done.”
Livesey headed home Peter Murphy’s 13th-minute corner to level the tie on aggregate. In the 35th, Brunton Park was then set aflame by an even less likely scorer.
“As a man who was in his car pool, I can tell you now, Ceebs [Chris Billy] didn’t even drive that fast,” says Livesey, remembering the experienced midfielder’s blistering charge upfield to volley home Brendan McGill’s cross. “His game was sitting in front of the back four, breaking things up…he must have had a mad rush of blood.”
It was a beautifully-timed run as Billy met the delivery from the inspired winger McGill. Carlisle were superior – but could not kill the tie dead. “We had chance after chance and sometimes you think it’s coming…but sometimes you then start to worry, and think, ‘We’ve had too many chances and not taken them’," Livesey says.
“But we felt so comfortable and in control of the game. Until the frantic last ten minutes. We just blew up a little bit.”
With the final beckoning, Aldershot’s Jamie Slabber crashed a header past Matty Glennon to take the semi-final into extra-time. It was a devastating blow and required Carlisle to regroup.
“Simmo’s really calm, but he has that steel,” says Livesey, recalling the manager’s approach. “He basically, said, ‘Right, let’s put that to bed, let’s go and win the game’. The way he said it was kind of forceful – you knew he was annoyed with it, and you can’t blame him. But there was never any hint of nerves with him.”
Neither side could win it in extra-time, meaning a penalty shoot-out. “I was taking my boots off, it was done and dusted,” Livesey says. “It was never getting to me in seventh.
"I’d never, ever been involved in a penalty shoot-out before that. We must have practiced in training, but I think by then me and Grandy [fellow defender Simon Grand] would have been inside messing about.”
Carlisle fell 3-1 adrift on spot-kicks after McGill and Glenn Murray had weak efforts saved. Another non-league season prepared to embrace the Blues. Aldershot, with their kick to win it, then hit the crossbar, and things spun.
“The two saves Matty then made were unbelievable,” says Livesey. “One of them was one of the best saves I’d ever seen.”
United held their nerve to bring the shoot-out level. Glennon's second heroic save duly set up a victory chance but, in the madness, many in the crowd miscalculated. Fans swarmed onto the pitch to salute a triumph that had not even happened yet. Carlisle still had to convert a sudden-death kick to win it.
Lost in the madness, a young defender held the ball.
“It was really good for me, because I’d have been much worse if everyone had been watching me take the ball and put it on the spot,” Livesey says. “By the time they’d cleared the pitch, I was ready.”
After an eternal wait, Livesey sidefooted the penalty home, and Brunton Park abandoned itself to delirium. “I remember just getting mobbed, and you could see how happy everyone was. That was when I realised how big the club was," he says.
“Growing up in Manchester, nobody ever really mentioned Carlisle, other than the Jimmy Glass goal. That season, and that moment, made me appreciate what a monster it is up there: a proper football club.”
Livesey recalls his mouth running away with him in a post-match interview with BBC Radio Cumbria’s Derek Lacey, announcing to the county that he had been “crapping myself” before the winning penalty. He remembers “having a few” that night but professionalism resuming as Simpson shaped the team for the final.
It was against Stevenage, a nuisance of a team who had beaten Carlisle twice in the league season and celebrated boorishly as they did so. Graham Westley was their manager.
“You knew you’d get all the gamesmanship, all the horrible stuff they did, and you had to stand up to it,” says Livesey. “The thing was, when you looked around our changing room, and saw people like Kev Gray, Tom Cowan and Ceebs, you knew you’d be alright. Those lads could play, but also mix it a bit.”
The final, at Stoke City’s Britannia Stadium, saw Carlisle fans dominate the 13,422 attendance – and their team floored Stevenage in the 23rd minute when Cowan crossed and Murphy headed home.
“I honestly can’t remember that much about the game,” says Livesey. “It seemed sort of routine. We just went and did a job on them – year after year in that period, we were good at soaking up pressure then scoring goals when we needed to. We knew how to manage a game.”
United were resolute and limited Stevenage’s ability to come back. This being Carlisle, there was still a little surreal drama in added time when Brazilian substitute Magno Vieira broke upfield with the opposition net empty thanks to goalkeeper Alan Julian having come forward for a late set-piece.
Vieira did not realise the goal was vacant, and continued his dribble until a desperate Stevenage player fouled him. This unwittingly launched another iconic moment as Chris Lumsdon, having received confirmation from referee Jonathan Moss that it was over, heaved the free-kick high into the stands.
Carlisle were back.
“I was still young and didn’t get too much into what it meant for everyone,” Livesey admits. “I just went out and played – I thought that’s what football was. When I look back now, I realise if we’d stayed down, there would have been job losses, cuts, everything. We probably wouldn’t have carried on with the same sort of budget we’d maintained after coming down.”
Some of United’s staff shed tears of relief. In the changing room area after the game, Carlisle delivered loud retribution on Westley and his players. One Stevenage man, the striker Dino Maamria, had been goading Blues players during the game with the legendary line, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
“I remember him – he’s that Conference player,” roared captain Gray in the post-match tunnel.
“There was lots going on because of what they were and how they wanted to play,” added Livesey. “That made it little bit sweeter.”
That triumph launched Carlisle into a positive era. They won League Two under Simpson the following year and an eight-year stretch in the third tier opened up. Livesey was at the core of practically all of it, team and defender propelled by play-off heroism.
“What I would say to the players now is just enjoy it,” he says of United's Bradford City showdowns in the coming days. “You’re a good player – just go and play the best you can. You’re against a League Two team. Don’t make the occasion any bigger than it is. Go and thrive on the pressure that comes with that.”
Livesey is remembered with enduring fondness in Carlisle – and any return visit sees the subject of Aldershot come up. If it goes to a seventh spot-kick and an unexpected taker against Bradford, meanwhile, he says: “Don't worry about the centre-halves – they will be fine. Nobody expects us to score. There’s no pressure on us.”
Not that Livesey sought reasons to have this confirmed. That penalty against Aldershot was the only one he took in his entire career.
2008 – Leeds United 1 Carlisle United 2; Carlisle United 0 Leeds United 2
Carlisle United’s end-of-season dinner was frequently a lively affair, but seldom when the older men in suits were making the speeches. In 2008, the Blues’ function, at the Shepherd’s Inn, was arranged between the end of the League One campaign and their play-off semi-final against Leeds United.
There were words from manager John Ward, and then John Haworth, the club’s long-serving doctor, stepped to the lectern.
“When the doc got up to do his speech usually you would normally switch off,” admits midfielder Chris Lumsdon. “But this time he came up, unleashed his notes and just started caning Ken Bates.
“It fired everyone up at the dinner. It made it all seem to have a bit more needle, which was fun…”
The doctor's jovial lambasting of Leeds' outspoken owner was timely, since United needed a fresh dose of something that May. Under Ward they had come so close to automatic promotion to the Championship, only to falter at the end.
The Blues had, for much of 2007/8 challenged leaders Swansea City and lasted impressively in a race with the likes of Nottingham Forest, Doncaster Rovers and Leeds, who were coming off a points deduction following the previous season’s administration and relegation.
Carlisle had defeated Leeds in November on a stirring, full-house night at Brunton Park. They had won at Forest’s City Ground live on Sky. They assembled a record winning run at Brunton Park…yet their flow became a trickle towards the end. A 3-2 defeat at Elland Road checked them, before an exasperating 2-1 home defeat to Southend United, when Nicky Bailey’s theatrics and David Raven’s red card left the Blues embittered.
United were a shadow of themselves when, in their penultimate game, they lost 3-0 at Millwall. A final-day draw with Bournemouth meant they finished fourth, two points and goal difference adrift of second-placed Forest.
“We ran out of players, to be honest,” says Lumsdon of United’s faltering finish. “We lost Joe Garner [to a cruciate injury] – he would have got us another six points with his goals alone and that would have taken us up. We definitely needed reinforcements, but decided not to do it. That said, we still had enough to go up.
“At half-time at Southend, and at Millwall, there was a different look in some of the players’ eyes – a bit of fear. When it came to the first leg at Leeds, those lads seemed a bit more relaxed. It was as if the pressure of going up had come off them, and they could play their own game again.”
Carlisle, history shows, were progressing with their best team since the early to mid-1980s, when second-tier football was, tantalisingly, the norm. Keiren Westwood was a stunning goalkeeper, Danny Graham scored impressively up front, Livesey and Murphy dominated the defence, Simon Hackney was a darting threat on the left, Lumsdon and Marc Bridge-Wilkinson established forces in midfield.
“I think we saw Leeds as the perfect team to play,” he says. “The thought of going to Elland Road makes you know you need to be on your game.
"We knew it would be a sell-out from their part – and I wanted to enjoy the play-offs. I’d been on the periphery of things at Sunderland when they were in the Championship play-offs, and it just appealed.
“It’s on Sky, there’s bigger build-up, the cameras were coming, players from Premier League eras were talking about us in the same breath as Nottingham Forest and Leeds – and on merit, not as punching above our weight.”
Lumsdon says he detected a “little bit of a hangover” in training as the deflation of missing out on automatic promotion lingered. “We got that thrashed out,” he says. Then came the night at Leeds, where Gary McAllister was managing a home side featuring star players such as Jermaine Beckford, the free-scoring former Blues loanee.
Carlisle’s fans made what noise they could in the triangular away section in the Whites’ historic, packed ground, which that night held 36,297. Their team involved Paul Arnison, the popular defender who was recalled to replace the suspended Raven at right-back.
It went on to be one of those classic United away displays...mostly.
“Normally, we’d go 4-5-1 away from home and look to nick something,” Lumsdon says. “Before the game, we did our own little huddle and, if I’m honest, I went against what the manager thought we should do
“I said, ‘Let’s just go out and attack. Let’s enjoy it. Whatever happens in these play-offs, let’s do it on our terms’.
“That performance at Leeds is one of the best I’ve been involved with. It should have been three or four, never mind 2-1. But they were a good team and that’s why they hung in there.”
Carlisle were at home on the big stage. After an incredible, fingertip save from Westwood denied Beckford, the Blues took the lead when Hackney’s volley deflected into the net via Graham’s backside. "The highlights make it look like Leeds had more of it than they did," Lumsdon says. “We were right at it, and I remember John Ward, having been cagey before the game, saying at half-time, ‘Don’t be frightened to win this 3-0, 4-0, 5-0’,” Lumsdon says.
In the second half, a slick, overlapping move saw Evan Horwood cross for Bridge-Wilkinson to steer in a second. “But we got to the point where we couldn’t get the third," Lumsdon says.
“I think the best thing they did from their point of view was take Beckford off. He took ages to go off and their crowd were going mad at him. But that rejuvenated them a little bit.”
Late on, Leeds struck, as their Carlisle-born defender Paul Huntington dropped the shoulder to evade an enthusiastic slide by teenage Blues sub Gary Madine. He lifted the ball forward, and it broke for Dougie Freedman to rifle home. “It came from nothing,” says Lumsdon. “I was still confident about the second leg.”
The fear among observers, though, was that momentum had shifted. Events at Brunton Park made that painfully real.
“They had to change their shape coming into the second leg because in midfield me, Bridge-Wilkinson and Grant Smith were battering their midfield, right on top of them,” says Lumsdon. “Grant had a snap shot about ten minutes in and you think if you get something there, you crack on again. But it was all on a fine line. Jonny Howson gets the first goal and it’s level all of a sudden.”
Howson’s close-range finish, in front of a boisterous away end amid a 12,873 crowd, propelled Leeds. On a night of little flow and huge tension, the midfielder then landed a decisive blow at the last.
“It was a nothing game,” Lumsdon says. “An awful game, really. No subs were made, on it went, and then he [Howson] scuffs the winner in the bottom corner. But fair play to him, he’s still making that run in the 90th minute to try and win the game.
"It’s on his weak foot as well. When that goes in, you just know that’s it.”
Carlisle did not have time to come back, and were out on aggregate. For Lumsdon, and others who had experienced Conference glory three years before, the feeling was crushingly opposite. Yet United’s general path in 2007/8 tempered, partially, the misery of Brunton Park.
“The devastation of not making the top two lived with me for a couple of days,” Lumsdon says. “The aftermath of the play-offs wasn’t as bad in a weird sort of way. I thought we had enough to do it again the next season, even though we knew we were likely to lose Keiren and Joe. I thought we just needed to find one or two players and we’d be up there again, because we were such a strong squad.
“I felt pride in how we’d made the city feel that season, the crowds we got, going to places like Forest and turning them over – facing teams like Huddersfield, Bournemouth, Brighton, and turning them over without batting an eyelid.
“Our home record was so good that after games we were already taking our boots off before the gaffer had said his words, because he knew where we were going. After we’d beaten Swindon 3-0, he said, ‘Lads, before you go to Concrete [the Carlisle nightclub], I need to have a few words…’
“We were riding the wave. We’d go 2-0 down against Port Vale but we knew it wasn’t a problem. At half-time we felt we’d win it, and we did, 3-2.”
There can be no knowing how Carlisle would have fared in the final, when Doncaster beat Leeds 1-0. Yet it remains as close as United have got to the Championship since they departed it in 1986. They fell away the next season, Westwood and Garner sold, Ward sacked and Lumsdon suffering an injury that would, in due course, end his career. The joys of 2007/8 were fleeting, then, as well as agonising.
Lumsdon is in a select group, along with Livesey and Murphy, to have played in two play-off campaigns for the Blues. These years later, as Carlisle prepare for Bradford in the League Two face-off, he says: “What I would tell young players about these play-offs is, 'Embrace it'.
“I know some lads in our team [in 2008] got nervous and realised afterwards they should have enjoyed it more. Embrace that you’re going to be on Sky, embrace that people are going to be talking about you, embrace that there’s going to be a big audience watching you...
“Before our Leeds games I got photos sent from people watching it in my local pub. You’ll get that more with social media now. And imagine the challenge of silencing a big crowd like Bradford will get.
"The pressure’s on them. So go and enjoy it.”
2017 – Carlisle United 3 Exeter City 3; Exeter City 3 Carlisle United 2
“It was like three or four seasons in one,” says Shaun Miller of a 2016/17 campaign when it felt Carlisle spun themselves a few dozen times in a tumble dryer before the play-offs even came along.
United’s most recent experience of the end-of-season shoot-out had all the typical Blues drama, much of the familiar agony too – plus a sense that it shouldn’t have come to this, along with relief that it had.
How, then, do you begin to make sense of a season which involved a record unbeaten start followed by a record goalless run, and the need for six points from the final six just to sneak back into the top seven?
United, under Keith Curle, were a curate’s egg of a side: dominant at one stage, desperate the next. Miller, the centre-forward, was one of a number of close-season signings, joining as the Blues flourished some new wealth that had come from the recent sales of top young players Brad Potts and Kyle Dempsey as well as big cup ties against Liverpool and Everton.
Armed with those 2015 and 2016 proceeds and the wherewithal to offer lucrative bonuses, Curle signed high-end League Two performers such as Nicky Adams and Mike Jones. Miller and Jamie Devitt, who had both starred for Morecambe, also joined.
“The first 20-odd games we went unbeaten,” Miller says. “We drew a lot at the start but then went on a winning run. We were absolutely flying. We were right in the top two for the whole first half of the season. It was a really good environment to be in.”
Amid that first half, Carlisle entertained Exeter City in November. The Grecians, under the dapper and long-serving Paul Tisdale, did not perform like a side struggling near the foot of the table and the Blues, it was felt, rather stole their 3-2 win thanks to late goals from Miller and the prolific Charlie Wyke.
Yet the Blues were rumbling. “We then sold Charlie in the January transfer window and that really dampened our attacking threat,” Miller says. “We went off the rails a bit.”
You can say that again. United’s dominance faded into a perplexing rut. Wyke’s move to Bradford City, who triggered a £250,000 buy-out clause, weakened them, as did injuries to Jones and Danny Grainger. Curle attempted to strengthen, with mid-season signings such as Chesterfield defender Gary Liddle, Blackburn Rovers winger John O’Sullivan and ex-Derby County midfielder James Bailey, but United’s form deserted them.
For a seven-game period between February and March, they did not score a single goal. Curle added more players of profoundly limited impact: Joe Ward, James Hooper, Ben Tomlinson and, after a fans’ crowdfunding initiative, Junior Joachim. All are almost invisible footnotes in United’s history.
“The way we fell away was a bit of a disaster,” admits Miller. “We were slowly but surely sliding down the table and other teams were picking up and taking over.
“To drop out of the play-off places, we were thinking, ‘Oh my god’. All that good start was going to waste.”
Carlisle recovered somewhat, O’Sullivan and Reggie Lambe ending the drought at Yeovil, but United struggled for the wins to power themselves back into the race.
Dramatically, they then beat Newport County 2-1 at Brunton Park to stay alive, before winning 3-2 in the final game at Exeter’s St James’ Park, when two Grainger penalties and Jamie Proctor’s header snatched back a play-off place.
“Suddenly, we’re thinking, ‘We’ve got a right good chance now’," Miller says. "Finishing a season like that can do that to you. In terms of morale we were right up for it. It was Exeter in the play-offs, and we’d just beaten them.”
Exeter had indeed swept from the bottom to the top seven, the qualities revealed at Brunton Park in November finally acquiring the substance of results. The Grecians had a fluent style, a dynamic young prospect in Ollie Watkins, a supremely effective League Two attacker in David Wheeler and other nimble footballers.
They also had the enduring Tisdale, a different fish to Curle. “Keith was a very old-school type of manager,” Miller says. “When things were going well, it was a good environment. It was a good group of lads that season."
Miller says Carlisle were confident about their Brunton Park first leg but Exeter soon corrected that. Joel Grant headed them in front and, though Adams forced an own-goal equaliser, there was no injustice when Ryan Harley and Wheeler built a 3-1 lead for the Grecians by the 56th minute.
United were adrift and scrambling. “We’re thinking, ‘Christ, we’re 3-1 down and we’ve got to go all the way to Exeter now,’” Miller says. He came on as a substitute in the 61st minute, O’Sullivan having been introduced directly after Wheeler’s Exeter goal.
It was a double-change that has its place in Carlisle’s play-off tapestry. Twenty minutes from time, Luke Joyce passed to O’Sullivan on the right and the winger managed to bend a cross away from his team-mates, over the head of Exeter keeper Bobby Olejnik and into the net via the left-hand post.
“He never meant it, I don’t care what he says,” laughs Miller.
“That really got us firing up. At 3-1 down you need a goal from anywhere to kick you back off, so it was a perfect tonic – it instantly changed everyone’s mindsets. ‘Right, come on, we can really get back into this.’ And then I scored not too long after that.”
It seemed to happen while fans in the 9,708 crowd were blinking their disbelief at O’Sullivan’s fluke: Adams receiving the ball on the left, shimmying into a half-yard of space...
“I’d scored the equaliser against Exeter in the first meeting as well, and I knew with Nicky Adams on that left hand side he was always looking to cross the ball – so I was constantly looking at making that run, and it worked a treat,” Miller says.
With textbook centre-forward movement, Miller evaded defenders and powered a header past Olejnik to make it 3-3. His celebration mirrored that of the suddenly delirious Warwick Road End.
“I’d not featured a great deal towards the back end of the season – I’d done well in the first half but was out of the team for a little bit,” Miller says. “It was my first goal for a while. It was probably a frustration thing, that I let out all that emotion, at such a big moment.
“I remember the roar from the crowd after that goal: the atmosphere was absolutely incredible. As soon as they kicked off at 3-3, we won the ball back quickly and were back on the attack again, and the roar was incredible again.
“We were going all guns for it. Then, the last kick of the game, they hit the post. It just had everything…”
It was an exhausting, at times frenetic game, and meant that 16 goals had been scored in three meetings between the Blues and the Grecians so far in 2016/17. The long road to Devon was next.
“To us it felt like a win. It was almost a get out of jail card with the fact we’d got a draw,” says Miller. “Because of that, and how we’d beaten them in the league, we had every confidence going down there.”
Once more, United’s hold on things was fragile. At St James’ Park, Watkins announced himself with a first-half goal and then a 79th-minute second which seemed to dig Carlisle’s grave. Miller and O’Sullivan had come on at similar times to the first leg, followed by Jason Kennedy, the midfield goalscoring talisman who was returning from injury.
“Me and John…we kind of hoped we’d start the next game, and take that momentum to them,” Miller reflects. “Instead, it was almost an approach that if things aren’t going right, we’d come on and make the difference.
“We were 2-0 down, thinking here we go again, but Jason Kennedy nicked a goal and then O’Sullivan got the equaliser. ‘Christ, it’s happening again!’”
Carlisle’s two-goal response in the space of nine minutes, O’Sullivan heading them level in the 90th, came in front of the away end at Exeter and the mad scenes confirmed United’s addiction to this sort of happening.
Yet there were other addictions: the sort that involve former players coming back to wound them. Many individuals have done it down the years and Jack Stacey, for the last six years, has had a special place on that unwanted Sgt Pepper album cover.
“A full-back, up the pitch, about 30 yards on the weak foot…you almost think, ‘Go on then, have a go’,” says Miller. “It’s a one in a million shot.”
Stacey, who had been on loan with Carlisle from Reading the previous season, could not have taken his opportunity more sweetly. United, having retrieved the tie from the abyss, were broken again in added time.
“It was a cracking goal, you can’t deny that,” Miller says. “I think, with another ten minutes, we’d have probably equalised again. But it was so late in the day, unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.
“We’d scored late winners against them during the season. So it was apt for them, in a way.”
A season that had promised so much duly fell to a 3-2, and 6-5 aggregate, semi-final defeat. Exeter fans invaded the pitch and the normally reserved Tisdale danced down the touchline. There was nothing for Carlisle to do but observe the party being held at their expense.
“We were devastated – they’re right in front of your face, and you’re miles away from home,” Miller says.
“A last-minute winner is the best feeling ever, but a last minute defeat is absolutely crippling – and you can multiply that when it’s in the play-offs. We’d given it absolutely everything.”
While Exeter fell to Blackpool in the play-off final, Carlisle hoped to use 2016/17’s near-miss as a bridge to better times. 2017/18, though, was less impressive, and led to Curle’s departure. It again reflected the precarious nature of almost, but not quite, reaching the sun.
“Having felt so good that season, it was devastating then going into the summer when we hadn't achieved what we wanted,” Miller says. “The feeling was, ‘Right, we’ve got to go through it all again’. Losing, after getting so close, makes the next opportunity feel so far away.”
So far, in fact, that it has not come along again until now. The boys of 2016/17, like those of 1993/4 and 2007/8, can only sing songs of play-off regret, but knowing the course still matters. Having been at the heart of the chaos, Miller has this to say to United’s 2022/23 hopefuls:
“During the games, you’re going to experience such different emotions, and it’s vital to try your best to keep those emotions in check. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do.
“I know there’s a lot more riding on it, but it’s still another football game. As much as you can, try and focus on your individual job, as part of a team that will have a game plan.
“The biggest thing is belief. Even if you go down two goals, stay calm and believe you can get back in the game, because we did it in both legs. If you believe you can get a result, you should be absolutely fine – or at least you’ll give yourself a chance.”
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