John Cockerill

Friday or Saturday there was a show reel of cockers goals to celebrate his birthday.....either on Facebook or somewhere else  ....want to show my lad but can't find it again ....... could anyone help and post a link please

Thank you die hard ...... in my drunken state last night I was trying to describe buckleys style of play and what he could do with this england squad

What a player he was! Might have been a great manager as well

Quoted from buckstown

What a player he was! Might have been a great manager as well

I know he did a few caretaker games but that one against Sheffield United sticks out, super exciting with Neil Woods making some impossibly mazy run into the box to assist livo. Superb players and brilliant football back in those days.

My pleasure, I watched it countlessly when it was put on Twitter over the weekend with a fairly glassy eye thinking just how good we had it!

Spoilt is a word that's become synonymous with Paul Hurst but really we were truly spoilt in that golden era of the late 80's and early to mid 90's.  Buckley Mk II was ace and I'm forever grateful for those double Wembley visits and THAT season.  But 1988-96 was just incredible on so many levels.  

It's unfathomable to think not only good we were but also how we genuinely schooled so many really good sides in that era.  I'm sure we've had other good sides but this was the side of my youth and certainly for the foundation of it, Cockers was just immense.  To this day the partnership he had with Shaun Cunnington is the best I've seen in a Town shirt, bar none.  Better players have come (in fact I think individually the two players that ended up replacing Cockers and Cunnington in Paul Groves and Jim Dobbin were better), but there hasn't been that in tandem approach since.  They were just genuinely perfect for each other, both hard as intercourse, would run all day but could play with it too.  

It wasn't a Buckley system but if you wanted a 3-man midfield that could do it all Cunnington-Groves-Cockerill would have run riot.

Biggest shame for Cockers was how injury stopped him testing himself in the second tier and above.  Loads of that first Buckley team went through from Fourth Tier to Second Tier and didn't look out of place, can damn near as guarantee that Cockers would have made that step up with ease.  

As a manager I thought he was incredibly unlucky.  I've mentioned before how Laws evolved Buckley's side but I think Cockers was a transition to that.  Although only a month or so he took them to that more direct and style of intent that Laws then ran with.  When Laws left it was Cockers who was caretaker at first and I think it was the Sheff Utd game mentioned above where he showed he could get a tune out of a struggling side, oddly the board opted for Kenny Swain who took us down.   Good interview with Cockers during Lockdown on the DN35 pod where he talks openly about those spells.

https://dn35.podbean.com/e/john-cockerill-interview-matt-tees-greatest-goal-winner/  

Quoted from diehardmariner

https://x.com/onthisGTFCday/status/1811655232855695743

I wonder if the club gets drunk off with him breaching copyright?

Cockerill's era just pre-dates me in terms of attending matches (I started going relatively late) but I have vivid memories of following Town's fortunes from about 1989, particularly on the radio as my dad loved the wireless.

The impact he had on that side as it rose two divisions is something we're not likely to see again, especially not from a local talent. We can dream, but if anyone is any good, they'll get pinched by Leicester before they can make an appearance for the first team.

That goal Cockers scored from an impossible angle, out wide... the thing I love about that is the way he struck it. It'd be easy to say he fluked it, but the technique and power proves he was only ever gonna shoot! No argument, just an awesome goal!

Quoted from diehardmariner

As a manager I thought he was incredibly unlucky.  I've mentioned before how Laws evolved Buckley's side but I think Cockers was a transition to that.  Although only a month or so he took them to that more direct and style of intent that Laws then ran with.  When Laws left it was Cockers who was caretaker at first and I think it was the Sheff Utd game mentioned above where he showed he could get a tune out of a struggling side, oddly the board opted for Kenny Swain who took us down.   Good interview with Cockers during Lockdown on the DN35 pod where he talks openly about those spells.

https://dn35.podbean.com/e/john-cockerill-interview-matt-tees-greatest-goal-winner/  

Pretty sure it was later documented that at interview Cockers said they needed investment whereas Swain said he could turn it round....

Quoted from arryarryarry

I wonder if the club gets drunk off with him breaching copyright?

We’re talking about a League Two community football club, not Apple or McDonalds. It’s a brilliant resource, run by a fan, for benefit of fans, that catalogues all the good the club has over the past century and-a-half, that causes no harm whatsoever to the club’s commercial interests.

Why would the club be even remotely píssed off?