“I still get people coming up to us saying they remember that goal against Peterborough,” says Brent Hetherington who, for a moment, can see himself back on Carlisle United’s pitch, running down the left, cutting in, unleashing hell.
“I think they were my favourite team to play against. I scored a couple down at their place too. But my favourite was the one here, when I cut inside what’s now the East Stand side. I cut in and put it in the top corner.”
That description barely does justice to Hetherington’s second goal on the opening day of the 1988/89 season. It was the sort of swerving, spectacular strike that became something of a hallmark in his time with Fourth Division United.
“That day was the first time my father [Robin] came and watched us play,” Hetherington adds. “He was never into football, but he actually came that day. I can remember the News & Star headline on Monday: ‘That was for you, dad’.
“It was emotional, but it was nice. Another favourite was my second one at Peterborough that season, a volley. I was never a snibber…”
Hetherington winks in the bustle of Brunton Park’s Kingmoor Park Legends Lounge. It is the opening day of a different season, 2023/24, and he is making what turns out to be a rare trip back to his old haunt.
A local-born player who helped keep the Blues honest in an era of hardship, Hetherington has had little cause to come back since he left the club in 1990, after three eventful years.
“When Michael Knighton took over [in 1992] I came down for a couple of games, but then I got into my full-time job, driving wagons,” he says. “I was doing nights, working Saturdays. It was a bit of a shock at first, not coming down. I missed it.
“But it’s been 30 years now, and I’ve been driving wagons for 29. I’ve been asked a few times by Colin and Derek [Colin Carter and Derek Walsh, who run the ex-players scene at Carlisle] to come, but with working on the Saturday I haven’t been able to make it. But it felt as though I had to come back one day.”
Much at Brunton Park remains, but much is also different. “This [lounge] certainly wasn’t here,” Hetherington says. “I remember the old Sporting Inn, where you could look out of the old glass windows.”
Hetherington’s vision was clear in the eighties, when he joined his home-city club. He was late into the professional game at 25, having played non-league football until that point. Carlisle, by 1987, had just suffered consecutive relegations to the basement division. Financial struggle and supporter gloom was enveloping the club, whose horizons were diminishing. Yet it proved an opportunity for a home-town boy.
Hetherington, sitting opposite son Liam, cradles a pint as he goes back. “When I was 16 I had trials with Aston Villa, and shared a room with Gary Shaw,” he says. “I then went to Middlesbrough, but not for very long. I was homesick.
“My dad wasn’t interested in any sport, so I had nobody to push us. I was young and stupid. As the years went on, I was playing local and scoring goals, and people used to say, ‘You could do a job for Carlisle’.”
Hetherington had a job at the Post Office as his strong-running style earned him plaudits at Penrith and then Workington Reds. “That’s why I came down and asked Harry Gregg for a trial. He was a gentleman,” says Hetherington of United’s manager in 1987.
“I believed he was watching us when I was playing for Workington. I got wind of it. I was at the Post Office at the time and I was sick of getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning. I came down and says to Harry, ‘I believe you’ve been watching us. I believe I can do a job for you’. He says, ‘Well, come down for pre-season training…’ and that was it. He gave me my chance.”
Hetherington started at an impressive clip, scoring on his second appearance at Stockport County in the League Cup, then on his home debut against Scunthorpe United in the league. He got two more in the Stockport second leg, then another against Hereford United before the first month was out.
“Whereas I’d been homesick as a young lad, down here I just thought, ‘I’m at home – my home town’. It was just nice to be a local lad, and to fit in. It was brilliant.”
Carlisle went on to struggle again in an often desolate 1987/88 season, but Hetherington scored 15 goals and lightened the mood even as crowds dropped to the 2,000 mark, sometimes lower.
“We were always fighting relegation,” he says. “You got a bonus if you were in the first three, or the first seven. We never got a bonus because we were always at the bottom!
“People say to this day about that season, when Newport County went out [relegated], that my goals kept Carlisle in the Football League. But it wasn’t me who kept them in the Football League, it was a team performance. I just scored some goals.”
Carlisle finished 91st out of 92 but Hetherington thinks fondly of the characters, of which he was unquestionably one. “There were the jokers in the camp. Myself, Ian Bishop. Halpy [John Halpin] was funny, especially when he was with Bish.
“There was a real bond in that era. It was so good to be in it. On the bus, you wouldn’t have cliques – you sat with each other, played your cards, had a drink. We all went out together. There was no animosity anywhere. It was just good.”
Another local player who had burst through from non-league was Tony Fyfe, who had been working in a supermarket when he signed for Carlisle in 1988. The two local boys scored in the last game of the season against Cambridge United. “I was just on the phone to Fyfey,” Hetherington says. “He’s still at the Post Office now. I was telling him I was coming down today. He said it wasn’t his cup of tea but wished us all the best.
“We had some good times. It was like a family-run club then. We had the players’ bar, and all the lads, going back to the likes of Paul Proudlock, Paul Fitzpatrick, Paul Gorman, Halpy, Walshie…we were all just together.”
The 1988/89 season became a gradually improving one. Carlisle, now under Clive Middlemass, who had replaced Gregg the previous autumn, started poorly before shooting up from the bottom to halfway in the second half of the season.
The catalyst for a change in mood was an FA Cup third round tie against Liverpool at Brunton Park in January. Some 18,556 people packed into the ground on a misty winter’s day. Hetherington led the line against iconic opponents who included John Barnes, Peter Beardsley, Ronnie Whelan, Steve McMahon, Steve Nicol, John Aldridge and other Anfield stars, managed by Kenny Dalglish.
“I support Liverpool, as everybody knows, and they were the main team back then," Hetherington says. "Dalglish had the full team out. We held them to 1-0 at half-time but then they stepped up a gear.”
Before Barnes tapped Liverpool into the lead, Hetherington had given the aristocrats a scare with a volley from just inside the Waterworks End penalty area that skimmed the crossbar.
Can he still picture the time he came so close? “Oh, yes,” he says. “And I remember another one. Fyfey, when he came on, passed it to us at the Warwick Road End, I was in the six-yard box and I hit it, and [Mike] Hooper, the goalkeeper, dived and it hit his legs.
"I should have scored two that day. But they scored three and we didn’t.”
McMahon’s second-half double meant a 3-0 win for Liverpool, leaving Carlisle with their memories. “Jan Molby marked us that day. He was like a brick ****house," Hetherington says. "He was from Denmark, but sounded like a right Scouser. I remember standing next to him and saying, ‘Where did they get you from, eh?’ He just laughed. He was massive – absolutely massive.
“They were a fabulous team. At full-time, their players didn’t just jump on the bus. The whole squad came into the players’ lounge. We had all the kids and wives in, and John Barnes was such a gentleman. He got all the programmes off all the wives and went around all the Liverpool players to get them signed.
“To have played against them…it was an experience. It was nice to play here in front of 18,000 too. I would have preferred to play at Anfield. Having said that, it’s your home town and it was a good experience.”
Hetherington got 12 goals in 1988/89 but his days at the forefront, in the blue shirt, were numbered. “To be honest, I didn’t really see eye to eye with Clive. I don’t know why. I was banging the goals in, and I was 27 at the time, doing really well. He brought Archie Stephens in from Middlesbrough, and he was 35. He was on a zimmer. I thought, ‘I’m like a little whippet here and he’s brought a 35-year-old in’.
“He [Middlemass] kept dropping us. He had his favourites, but as everybody knows, every manager wants to bring in their own players. When I was sub, I used to get the Paddock shouting, ‘Bring him on’, and I used to come on and get the goal that gave them the three points. Next week, same again.
“I’d think, ‘What have I done wrong here?’ We didn’t have any arguments. He just had his favourites. The latter end of my career, it was just as sub, which was disappointing because I thought I could have done a lot better and scored more goals. But it wasn’t to be.”
Hetherington does not express this with bitterness, and says ‘God bless him’ when mentioning that he still appreciates how Middlemass, who died last year, gave him that chance against Liverpool. He was released in 1990, his last goal a winner against Hartlepool United at Brunton Park, and the non-league scene embraced him again at Penrith.
“I was a bit upset at the time, but that’s life,” Hetherington says. “I do look back and think that I could have probably bettered myself in the game when I was younger. I did come in late. But I’ll never forget my times down here. I think of them as good times, and no bad times.”
He has cause to be proud of that short but sweet professional career. “After 30-odd years, I still hold the record – I was top goalscorer two seasons on the trot, and player of the year two seasons on the trot. People have been coming here for years and say that record’s never been broken.”
Hetherington says it’s “nice” to be remembered like this, with his invitation back to Brunton Park today – and other reminders that linger down the decades. “I go into town now, even though I’m only 56…” – he laughs (he’s 61) – “…and I can go into a pub and hear the young ones singing, ‘Oh, Brenty, Brenty...'
“You think, ‘They weren’t even born!’ They read up on you, I suppose, and my son’s friends know. They’ve seen videos of a lot of my goals.”
The finest of them all, that moment of Brunton Park fantasy against Peterborough which is now 35 years old, is among them on YouTube (watch the goal above). “If that was Messi or Ronaldo it would be getting talked about all over the world,” says Liam.
“Aye, well,” smiles Brent. “Mine get talked about in the Beehive...”
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