Walsall legend Jimmy Walker: Where would we all be without Chris Nicholl?
Jimmy Walker’s story is just one of many when you analyse the sheer scale of Chris Nicholl’s impact at both Walsall and beyond.
Nicholl enjoyed a storied career in football which spanned four decades both as a player and a manager. He made more than 250 appearances for both Villa and Southampton – achieving two promotions and two League Cup successes with the former and a League Cup runners-up medal with the latter.
He finished his career with 51 caps for Northern Ireland – a feat made all the more remarkable considering he only made his international debut at the age of 28. Nicholl, known as an uncompromising centre-back, would go on to play all five games at the 1982 World Cup, including his nation’s iconic 1-0 win over hosts Spain.
After hanging up his boots, Nicholl spent six years in the dugout at Southampton – providing debuts to club legend Matt Le Tissier and all-time Premier League top scorer Alan Shearer.
Then came Walsall as he added to his legend in the West Midlands by leading the Saddlers to automatic promotion from the Third Division at the end of his debut season in 1995. Twenty-seven years have past since Nicholl ended his three-year stay at Bescot but those who worked under him remember his first day as if it was yesterday, as club record appearance holder Walker was quick to recall.
“I remember his first day well,” Walker smiles as he casts his mind back 30 years. “He ushered the chairman out on his first day, went around the changing room and said if you’re not with me wanting promotion then get out of the door now.
“None of us left. We dared not leave because he had a stare that would turn you to stone. We all looked each other thinking what have we have got here?
“Then he said, ‘I want to win promotion and this is how we’re going to do it’.”
The players looked at one another stunned as Nicholl painted his vision for the future on a tactics board.
Solid defensive foundations would provide Kevin Wilson and Kyle Lightbourne, flanked by Chris Marsh and Scott Houghton, the licence to clinically punish opposition defences on the counter-attack.
It looked simple in motion but was achieved by both the discipline and countless hours of repetition on the training pitch.
“He was ahead of his time. He was on the tactics board drawing triangles in possession and boxes out of it. I’d never seen anything like that before. It was amazing,” Walker remembers. “Then he took it out on the training pitch. I was playing for the reserves against the main XI doing work on his shape and his tactics.
“It was a 50/50 between me and Kyle Lightbourne. I pulled out of it and Killer half pulled out but just nicked it in front me. I could’ve cleaned him but it was in training, he was our top striker and we needed him.
