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O’Neill has right geezer to bridge the Walford gap
Scotland on Sunday 06/08/2000
Andrew Smith
Steve Walford’s relationship with Martin O’Neill could not be categorised along the lines of any of the above. In appointing the Islington-born Walford as first-team coach at Celtic just under a fortnight ago, the Irishman simply brought to the club an extra pair of eyes and ears.
O’Neill, by his own admission, finds delegating hard. But in their period in charge at Leicester, Walford became the man that could put his theories into practice in training whenever the Irishman found himself unable to be directing operations himself.
As with the best partnerships, the adhesive that glues them is trust. Leicester offered Walford a wedge to assume the position of assistant to O’Neill’s successor, Peter Taylor, that would have put him in an earnings bracket in excess of a number of Premiership managers. His reason for passing this up to take on a post which provides little in the way of job security reveals his empathy with the man he discovered was a like mind when both signed for Norwich within a week of one another back in March, 1981.
“It never entered my head that we could come to Celtic and fail and be out of work,” Walford says. “Maybe I’ve got a lot of faith in Martin.”
Such belief is mutual. O’Neill is the domineering influence in a partnership that has blossomed thanks to Walford’s easy-going nature complimenting the Irishman’s obsessiveness, and because the man who could say ‘geezer’ without sounding naff knows his place.
“On matchdays Martin takes over,” Walford reveals. “I never go against anything he says because matchdays are when Martin is at his best. He is good at getting his points across. He keeps everything simple and he is very good with players. I am more placid on the day of games and might be more aggressive on the training field.”
Those who know the pair say this is where Walford comes into his own. But even in this environment he is a willing conduit for O’Neill’s ideas, those who know the pair insisting it is not shortcomings in the Irishman’s own tactical armoury that lead him to place such store in Walford’s expertise in this area.
Rather, O’Neill recognises the pedigree of Walford, who, in a 20-year playing career, came under the tutelage of such luminaries as Bill Nicholson, Terry Neill, Don Howe and John Lyall. Walford describes himself as “a ball-playing defender who didn’t like the rough stuff”, a man whose talents were nurtured first at Spurs before he moved to Arsenal. A ‘Gooner’ by inclination, he was pitched in to the Highbury side for the last five minutes of their 1979 FA Cup win and was an unused sub in the north Londoners’ defeat on penalties by Valencia in the final of the Cup-Winners’ Cup a year later.
Walford’s arrival at Norwich nine months later, within days of O’Neill, led to the two rooming together and becoming confidants, but their paths diverged once more when Walford returned to the capital with West Ham in August, 1983.
His itinerant career then brought stints of varying lengths with Huddersfield, Gillingham and West Brom before he decided his coaching certificates might not be enough to sustain him in retirement and that the licence he desired required him to be versed in The Knowledge: the precursor to becoming a London taxi-driver.
But a call from Hong Kong side Lai Sun took his life along paths he had never travelled previously, and, after a spell in Turkey followed the Far East sojourn, O’Neill persuaded him to sign on as a part-timer at Wycombe Wanderers.
“I didn’t play many games for him,” he admits. “I had a bit of a dodgy knee that blew up once or twice. I stayed with him as a player for two years then left.”
He returned with a coaching remit, demonstrating to O’Neill he had The Knowledge in football by overseeing the creation of a player production line at Wycombe Wanderers, having been involved in this area of work at White Hart Lane.
“Wycombe were in the league by the time Martin asked me if I would start up a youth development scheme and I jumped at it. I got a YT intake in the following season, set-up a scouting network and ran the youth teams at under-15 and under-16 levels. It was hard doing it from scratch, but I thought I did okay.”
O’Neill patently agreed and promoted Walford to reserve coach when both moved to Norwich in 1995. Within a season the future Celtic coach was responsible for training Leicester’s first team.
As with the most natural pairings, there was no moment of epiphany when the two men became aware of their symbiosis. “I always quite liked the coaching side. Even as a young player I was interested in it,” says Walford. “But when Martin and I were at Norwich as players I never thought we would work together as coaches.”
In four and a half years at Filbert Street, a bond was forged that made the two men more potent through being an extension of one other, the League Cup captured twice as a provincial club carved out a niche for themselves in the upper echelons of the English Premiership. Observers viewed Walford as, what in American football parlance would be termed, a ‘defensive co-ordinator’, but the man himself rejects such parameters being placed on his abilities.
“If the team’s not defending well we’ll work on defending, but if it is not attacking well we’ll do that. Basically, I go from the performance the week before until the following week. It is about whoever we are playing, and how we should play.” Problems are ironed out in discussions involving Walford and O’Neill.
They do not, it would seem, ever arise between the two men.