Burnley and the strange impact they had on Mark McCammon
There must have been something about Burnley that set Mark McCammon over the edge. Twice he played against them during his brief Brighton career and twice he managed to make the headlines for completely losing his mind.
Blaming your manager and captain for the fact you got hauled at half time and them refusing to let you travel back on the team coach as a result is impressive enough. But to follow that up less than a year later by calling into a fans phone in to remonstrate live on air with the presenter who has just said you aren’t good enough, and then going on to criticise you manager, team mates and supporters, well that is absolutely superb. Take a bow Mark, take a bow.
McCammon had been enduring a frustrating time of it when he first lost the plot during our visit to Burnley in April 2005. He’d managed only three goals in 17 appearances since signing from Millwall, not helped by the fact his arrival came at the same time as some of the family silver such as Danny Cullip and Darren Currie were being sold off.
Selling your best players and not replacing them adequately isn’t the best strategy for a football club already struggling at the wrong end of the table. We were finding that out the hard way as 29 points in the first half of the season was being followed by only 16 in the second half before our trip to Turf Moor.
That meant relegation was a real possibility and the Albion arrived in Lancashire having picked up a solitary draw from their previous seven games, the other six all ending in defeat.
Things weren’t looking any better at half time at Burnley. Former Brighton loanee Ade Akinbyi had given the Clarets a first half lead and it had been another woeful showing for the Albion.
Mark McGhee didn’t hold back at the break, apparently letting several individuals know just how dreadful they’d been, which was something that McCammon took exception to when it came to his turn to feel the managers wrath.
A heated row ensured in which McCammon decided to try and lay the blame for his poor performance at a lack of service from captain Charlie Oatway, who was obviously well known at the time for being a Paul Scholes-esque creator of chances.
McGhee had seen and heard enough and as a result of his indiscipline, McCammon was hauled at half time in favour of 18-year-old Jake Robinson, fresh from a highly productive loan spell at Aldershot. That decision was vindicated as Robinson changed the game, setting up Dean Hammond for an equaliser early in the second half while running Burnley ragged in his 45 minutes.
McCammon, having had 45 minutes longer than everyone else to get showered and changed afterwards, was first to board the coach for the journey home to Brighton after the game. He was also the first to get off of it shortly afterwards, McGhee telling him he wasn’t welcome to travel with the rest of the squad.
When it was put to McGhee that he’d thrown McCammon off the bus, the Albion manager protested his innocence, telling the BBC. “I told him (McCammon) I didn’t want him travelling back on the bus and he was to return in another club vehicle, but he chose to make his own way home.” Kind of sounds like you did chuck him off, Mark.
McCammon didn’t fancy joining the party van with equipment men Matt Hicks, Ken Barnard and the players unwashed kit and so he wandered off alone into Burnley Town Centre where he was last seen walking bewilderingly towards the station for the long journey back to Brighton. Hopefully, he picked up a four pack of Strongbow and a doner kebab pizza along the way for the authentic away day train experience.
McCammon wasn’t even playing when he next suffered a meltdown against Burnley. Fast forward nine months to January 2006 and we were well on the way to relegation from the Championship, a turgid 0-0 draw at home to the Clarets on a horrible Tuesday night at Withdean leading BBC Southern Counties Radio phone in presenter Ian Hart to offer some harsh truths about the state of the Albion squad.
What Harty can’t have imagined is that McCammon would be listening to the show and would take so much offence to Harry’s description of him as “not good enough for this standard”, that he would actually call in to vent his feelings on air.
“Good evening,” the call began. “I just want to know what you meant by I wasn’t good enough for this standard?” Absolute radio gold followed as McCammon justified his return of zero goals that season by bringing out the old age classic of “When you kick a ball in professional football you can come and tell me I’m not good enough, but you don’t know anything about me.”
Harty wasn’t the only one in the firing line as things took an even more extraordinary turn when McCammon aimed his fire at his teammates and their lack of creativity. “Do you think they (the strikers) are getting service from midfield? How many crosses were put into the box? How many people put through on goal?”
Next up it was McGhee himself who McCammon turned his guns on. “Myself and Mark McGhee, I’ll be frank, we’re having our differences at the moment. He wants me to go on loan to a lower-league team and I think I’m better than that.” McCammon wasn’t happy about being recalled early from a loan spell at Watford “for no apparent reason. I think I was hard-done-by.”
Team mates and manager thrown under the bus, finally it was the turn of the Albion supporters. In a classic example of how not to endear yourself to the people who pay your wages, McCammon came out with, “The supporters need to get behind the team more. There needs to be more atmosphere at the Withdean. All we hear when we play is supporters whingeing.”
“All I hear on the radio is criticism, criticism, criticism and I’m fed up with it.” McGhee was pretty fed up as well by the end of the 10 greatest minutes of local radio Sussex has experienced and McCammon was instantly transfer listed.
He never played for the club again and he wasn’t better than a lower league team as he claimed during his diatribe to Harty, who maybe did know something about football after all. McCammon spent the rest of his career in the bottom two tiers with Bristol City, Doncaster Rovers, Gillingham, Bradford City, Braintree and Lincoln City.
That was probably for the best as it meant he never had to experience Burnley and the strange impact they had on his mind again.
