Where are they now?
The Saddlers glorious season of
2000-01 saw them promoted to the Championship after play-off triumph against
Reading at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff.
During the course of that season, heroes were made.
The names of Walker, Aranalde,
Tilson, Keates, Goodman, Byfield, Matias, and Leitao will all bring back
wonderful memories for fans of the club.
There were other people involved in
that campaign though. The likes of Bryan Small, Barry Horne, Dion Scott, Karl
Hawley, Alfie Carter and Ian Gaunt may not have played many games that season
but they all contributed to our success.
Although Ian Gaunt didn’t play any
league games, he will be a familiar name to any of the 3,346 fans that attended
an LDV Vans Trophy game against Wigan on 30 January 2001. This is because the
then 19 year-old centre-half, making his debut, scored a
last-minute headed winner to take us through to the next round, with
a 2-1 victory.
Ian wasn’t even meant to make his
debut that night, but heavy traffic on the M6 meant many players were delayed. Ian
takes up the rest of the story: “Mick Halsall was looking after the team that
night and he had difficulty working out which players were in the dressing
room, and who needed to be promoted from the bench,” he recalls. “The whole
experience was great. I played really well that day and obviously scoring the
winner in the last minute was brilliant.”
When Ian, who is from Bromsgrove,
was 16 he joined Walsall on an YTS contract and signed professional terms when
he turned 18. During the successful 2000-01 season, he played regularly for the
reserves at left-back. The reason why his chances with the first-team were
limited was because we had arguably our greatest ever squad of players and
three experienced centre-halves at the club: Ian Roper, Andy Tilson and Tony
Barras.
“Being a centre-half I learned a
lot from the likes of Andy Tilson, who was really good to me,” reminisced Ian.
“The best players during my time were probably Andy Rammell and Jimmy Walker.”
And what of living legend Sir Ray
Graydon? How did he get on with the disciplinarian manager who got us promoted
twice to League One? “He made sure you knew who was boss, which is not a bad
thing. I cleaned his boots so the pressure was always on me! Unfortunately for
me he was great at bringing in centre-halves who did brilliantly in the last
few years of their careers.”
After Ian’s glorious debut, he went
from hero to zero, getting sent off in the next round of the LDV Vans Trophy against
Stoke for a professional foul, as we capitulated 4-0. “The Stoke game was a
different level to the previous week against Wigan. Aside from the sending off
I didn’t play well so was really disappointed with that more than anything.”
That was the beginning of the end
for Ian’s career at Walsall. Whilst the players and fans celebrated the team’s
success together at Cardiff, Ian watched the game from the corporate box. “I saw
a few of the players afterwards. It was obviously a great result for the club
but, ironically, probably had some bearing on me getting released.”
How did he feel when he was told
his contract wasn’t going to be renewed?
“I was gutted. I thought I’d done
more than enough, but the coaching staff has to make difficult decisions based
on many factors, which I completely understand.”
After a very short spell at local
non-league side, Moor Green, Ian left the professional game for good and took a
sports science degree at Loughborough University.
Ian, who is now 31, tells us more
about what happened next: “After graduating I worked at Loughborough University
for three years before in 2008 getting a job at the University of St Andrews in
Scotland. I am now fortunate enough to be the assistant director of sport at
the university and live and work in a beautiful part of the UK.”
Last year, Ian got married and the
best man was fellow ex-Walsall trainee, David Hunt, who is currently a physio
at Birmingham City. Ian and his wife, Heather, are expecting their first child
together in August this year.
We wish Ian and his family the best
of luck for the future.
Once a Saddler, always a Saddler!
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