Buckley&District Reds

Remember Dave Bayliss? He left Wrexham just over a year ago but with all that’s happened on the pitch since, it seems like many more years since he played that single season for us. An experienced centre-half he’d played over 10 years as a professional making over 250 league appearances for Rochdale, Luton and, Chester. 

He joined Wrexham in the summer of 2005 following the departures of Steve Roberts and Craig Morgan, as well as the retirement of Brian Carey, he started off well but his form faded with injury, positional changes and a deteriorating relationship with Denis Smith doing him no favours. After hearing that Dave was involved in the coaching at a soccer course being run locally for kids in the community, I arranged to meet him at Flint Town United’s Cae-Y-Castell ground to have a chat about his time at Wrexham.

Dave started by saying how much he liked the club and how he really enjoyed his time at Wrexham. He’d spent part of the previous season on loan at Chester but the set-up and atmosphere at Wrexham was so much better.
“The training ground and facilities were better than those at Luton, who’d just been promoted (to the Championship) when I left”. He really enjoyed the pre-season tour of Northern Ireland, and the end of season ‘Player of the Year’ awards at the Lion Quays.

 We talked about Denis Smith and despite Denis saying that he rated Dave and that he was unlucky with injury, Dave didn’t see it as being that simple.
“When I first came to talk about my role at the club Denis seemed more interested in talking about himself, how he was a great centre-half and nearly played for England in the 70’s. He was an old-fashioned manager. He gave me his word I would get a two-year contract. I had an offer from Bristol Rovers of a guaranteed 2-year deal but after being at Luton I wanted to move back nearer to home.
Because of being in administration he said he could only offer me one year but that when we were out of it I’d definitely get another year. He went back on that and released me. He could be two-faced at times. I told him that I’d joined to give him two years of my career and had had other offers.

Not long after I signed though, I felt he began to turn against me a bit. Later on in the season he wouldn’t let me join Stockport even though I wasn’t in the team. It was frustrating”. Dave mentioned the Shrewsbury away game in the New Year when he was substituted 5 minutes before the end for Paul Warhurst. “We were losing 1-0, had done nothing all game, yet 5 minutes before the end he took me off thinking we could get something out of it. I questioned him about it afterwards but he accused me of thinking I was more important than the team. I said I didn’t think that, I just couldn’t understand his thinking given how the game went. I looked across at Fergie and he agreed with me”.

We talked about how the hard-working Jon Walters had been offered a deal at the end of the season on less money than he was on before. Yet at the same time Lee McEvilly had gone to Bradford, failed a medical, and returned to Wrexham on a 2-year deal.Walters subsequently joined Chester and is now playing and scoring in the Championship for Ipswich. McEvilly has just received a pay-off from Wrexham to leave the club and has re-joined Accrington Stanley.

Dave shook his head and believed it was Denis’s fault for a misplaced faith in ‘Evil’ that it had come to that.
“We called Lee the gaffer’s ‘lovechild’ because he could be lazy but do no wrong, Denis had his favourites”.
Amongst Denis’s other favourites Dave confirmed were Ingham and Roche, but Dave didn’t think much of them as players. Darren Ferguson was another, so we then discussed ‘Fergie’.

“Fergie was great. A really good player, brilliant passer of the ball…” (Laughs), “but he couldn’t run that’s why we played 3-5-2”.
I asked Dave what he thought of that formation. He thought it was OK but that we should have been able to play a different way as well.

Dave quashed the Fergie rumours of bust-up’s and fights “I heard about the one after the Orient game when Fergie was supposed to have hit Brian. I was there in the changing room. There was a heated argument, Fergie did have strong opinions and let people know, but it was nothing. Fergie and Brian are good mates. I’m still in touch with Fergie now and spoke to him the other night actually”.

After Smith was sacked in January, Dave said he wasn’t at all surprised
“He wasn’t getting the results. He was talking about making the Championship while the club was on the slide in League 2. Sometimes things go stale and you need a change”.

He was surprised that Fergie wasn’t managing the side with Brian but that he might have been had he not got the Peterborough offer.
“Fergie did want the Wrexham job. He told me the Peterborough job was too good to turn down, he’s got a free reign and an ambitious Chairman with a lot of money”.

 He tipped Brian to do well though. “Brian really knows his stuff but he was a bit quiet. When he was first in charge, while Denis was having his hip operation, we couldn’t understand some of his team-talk because he was so quiet, he’s probably improved since then though. He will be a good manager and showed it by keeping the club up last season”.

We spoke about some of the younger players who were coming through during Dave’s time at the club. He rated Marc Williams, Jamie Reed, Gareth Evans, but particularly Mike Williams and Matt Done. He seemed surprised Matt Crowell is still here and Simon Spender too. “Spends was a good lad but a bit on/off. One good game, then a bad one, I wasn’t sure if he’d make it”.

He seemed pleased for him though when I told him of ‘Spends’ improvement and consistency at the end of last season earning him a regular place, but he wasn’t surprised about Roche (without a club at the time of writing). Dave rated Levi Mackin but said Fergie’s presence in the squad restricted his opportunities.

He finished by mentioning other people he got on with in and around the club such as Danny Williams, Dennis Lawrence, Alex Smith, Rooster, Geraint Parry and Mark Currie. He’s still in touch with Joey Jones and speaks to him regularly. He also said that he really rates his successor Steve Evans and thinks Michael Proctor is a quality signing.

Unlike many footballers who struggle once they leave the full-time game, Dave Bayliss seems to be handling working in the ‘real world’ easily, he now works for ‘Xtra-Time Soccer’ working in the community coaching youngsters.
He enjoys this and combines it with playing competitively for Barrow in the Conference North.
He’s a great bloke who freely gave up most of his lunch hour to talk to me with enthusiasm about his time at Wrexham.

It’s a shame things didn’t work out for him here. He’s not bitter and has many good memories of his short spell at the Racecourse which goes to show what a great and special club Wrexham FC is. Dave really cared for the club and still does whatever your thoughts of him during his time here, being delighted we managed to stay up last year.

He wished us good luck for this season and was sure we’ll do well as the set-up of the club is geared up for success. I wished him good luck with Barrow, thanking him for his time and for agreeing to talk with me.