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It is 20 years since one of the famous and farcical weeks in the history of Swansea City Football Club. It was on February 8, 1996, that the Swans – the club of John Toshack and Ivor Allchurch – appointed an unknown part-time youth coach from Cradley Town as their manager, with the events before, during and after his seven day reign still baffling two decades on. As described by Football Correspondent CHRIS WATHAN, this is the story of Kevin Cullis.

It was one of those headlines that just got it so right.

Splashed over the front and back pages, the unveiling of Swansea City’s new manager was brutal in its accuracy.

“Kevin Who?”

It had been the same question asked over and again, by fans, the bemused journalists gathered at the Vetch and even players assembled on the training pitch to meet the man supposedly there to save their season.

Rush linked... Cullis arrived

In many ways, it did not need answering. The very fact the query had to be raised about the broad-shouldered, 17-stone former road-worker now being presented as a vision of the future for the club said everything about the surreal situation that had somehow played out at a club who had only 15 years earlier been among the elite of the old First Division.

The question summed up the farce; the answers only confirmed it.

Kevin Cullis looked the part as he sat in one of the Vetch’s modest hospitality lounges, facing the microphones and the incredulous looks from the assembled media in front of him. The same press pack who had been teasing supporters of the club at the foot of the third-tier of a big-name appointment to go with their new takeover.

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Trevor Francis, Mike Walker and, perhaps most appealing at the time, Wales striker Ian Rush had all been mentioned as someone who could either add experience or star quality after the loss of Frank Burrows as boss earlier in the season.

(Image: Media Wales)

It was deemed possible too. Thompson had been Swansea’s much talked about ‘Mr X’, a mystery figure long speculated about but only recently unveiled as the Shropshire “legal executive” taking control from chairman and owner Doug Sharpe with the promise of money and Premier League football.

Yet, instead, he turned to Cullis, the part-time coach of Cradley Town’s Under-16 side who also doubled up as chairman of the West Midlands League club.

“People laugh at it now when I tell them but it was a disgrace,” says Jimmy Rimmer, the man who had been in caretaker charge of a Swans side before Cullis was whisked to South Wales following a 3-0 defeat to Stockport.

'I had never heard of him'

“It is one of the worst things I have experienced in football. It should have never have happened, he should have never have been there.”

Yet he was. Quite how it happened is another thing.

At the time, Thompson – a business partner of the son of the late Jack Walker – spoke of a mutual friend who had recommended Cullis following his work at Cradley.

“I had never heard of him,” recalls Paul Molesworth of the man he would end up being appointed to assist at the Vetch.

“The first time I came across him was the previous season. I had been working for Liverpool as a scout and noticed a goalkeeper playing for Cradley. He had all the attributes and after the game I went into the bar and asked to speak to the chairman about taking this kid on trial. Twenty minutes later Kevin Cullis appeared.”

Molesworth tells the story of how the young goalkeeper impressed enough at Melwood to be offered a YTS contract but how permission was given for him to play in a cup match for Cradley before the move went through.

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“The next thing I had Steve Heighway at Liverpool on the phone asking me what had gone on and that Cradley were now asking £50,000 for the kid,” Molesworth adds. “He had turned 17 over that weekend and they had got him to sign a contract so they could ask for a fee.

'I asked if a pig was flying outside'

“Liverpool weren’t prepared to pay and I had been made to look an idiot so I phoned up Cullis. He was quite a big bloke, he had the appearance of a nightclub bouncer and he was not someone you’d want to tangle with, but I’d was annoyed about what had happened. His response was to tell me not to worry about it, that he had something for me and wanted to set up a meeting.

“A few weeks later he introduced me to Michael Thompson and I was asked there and then how would I like to be the next assistant manager of Swansea City

“I asked if a pig was flying outside but he told me he was buying the club, Cullis was to be his manager and they wanted me to be the assistant.”

Molesworth is adamant it was around September 1995 when they met, going on to meet Thompson again at a service station on the M40 where he was shown the documents appearing to lay out the proposed purchase of Swansea City. Thompson was to pay a £100,000 deposit with the remainder of the buy-out money to be paid at a later date.

“He told me to go and watch Swansea and evaluate the squad and tell him how much each player was worth,” says Molesworth. “It seemed a little strange but when I asked why he told me it was because he wanted to know the value of what he was inheriting before he went ahead, which I thought was fair enough.”

Molesworth watched his games and drew up his list containing the market values of the likes of midfield star John Cornforth, captain Dave Penney, striker Steve Torpey and up-and-coming centre-back Christian Edwards, players now under the charge of Cradley’s very own Cullis.

Morning of the unveiling

“It actually wasn’t a complete surprise for us,” says Dave Attwood, secretary of Cradley Town. “He seemed a good family man and he had done well for the club and he was very charismatic. He was larger than life and it didn’t seem that much of a shock or a step-up to make.”

The view was not shared in South Wales. ‘Mr Nobody’ had arrived.

“He was smoking one cigarette after another in this guest house and turned to me and said ‘Aren’t you nervous?’,” says Molesworth of the morning of the unveiling. “I told him he had every right to be, that this was going to be the biggest damp squib in Swansea’s history given they had been expecting Ian Rush. When he stuttered and stammered his way through the press conference I asked myself if I was dreaming, was I actually there? When I look back now, I was a prat to have got myself involved with him.”

(Image: Mirrorpix)

Cullis was bullish through the interviews, telling reporters that the game was same be it “Inter Milan or Cradley”, that he wanted six new players and attacked the side’s style of play, claiming he had told several of them they were not good enough.

“When I met the players to tell them this, they were very quiet, very subdued,” Cullis said at the time. “I think they got the message.”

There was a different view among the squad.

“We were horrified,” wrote goalkeeper Roger Freestone in his autobiography. “I thought it was a joke. After the first training session he said that we had played the best he had seen us in a long time but it was the worst training session I had seen in years. All the lads looked at each other and sniggered. I thought that he knew little about the game and this confirmed it."

Training arrangements

Not that Cullis took the session.

“He phoned me and told me he was too busy to take training because he was looking for players,” says Rimmer. “It was the same the next day and the day after. The players were just laughing at him.”

Indeed, Swansea had become a laughing stock, although the fans managed to display some gallows humour in the 1-0 loss to Swindon in his first game in charge where the matchday programme welcomed the new manager “Mr Keith Cullis”. The lyrics of Living Next Door to Alice were suitably and not so subtly adapted to ask who their new manager was.

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Plenty knew by now and his name would enter football folklore come the midweek match with Blackpool at Bloomfield Road a few days later.

“It was like a pantomime,” recalls Edwards. “Before the game he pulled me and Roger to one side and started talking about new contracts, four year deals, and it was monopoly money, fantasy stuff. I was 20 years of age earning £125 a week, living with my mam and dad and he was on about three or four grand and a new Mercedes."

He had lost the players, if he ever had them in the first place.

“He wanted to change the team and the formation and there was a bust up before we’d even left the dressing room,” adds Molesworth. “Penney challenged him, asking him what the hell he was doing. Cullis was shouting that he was the manager and a player shouted back ‘You won’t be for long’.”

Swansea were 2-0 down by half-time and in disarray.

“It was worse than a scene out of Dream Team or Footballers’ Wives,” Penney said in 2005. “The manager just didn’t have a clue what he was doing.

'Trust me boys, they are history'

“All hell seemed to be breaking loose at half-time. Everyone was shouting and going mad. We had a right-back playing left-wing and things like that.

“Cullis didn’t know where people were supposed to be playing and what was required at that point. So as the senior pro I stepped in and tried to calm everyone down and change a few people around.”

The story goes that Cullis was told to shut up and sit down by players he didn’t even know the names of.

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“When the game was over the coach doors flew open and there was Mr Sharpe. I thought we had seen the last of him. He looked like he could do murder,” wrote Freestone about the eventual 4-0 loss.

“He just said, ‘Those two idiots will be gone in the morning. Trust me boys, they are history’.”

By that night, Cullis’ time was over – as was Thompson’s deal for the club.

“We were at a service station and Thompson told me he wasn’t going to be able to carry on with the purchase of the club,” says Molesworth. “He’d already mentioned to me he had been struggling to raise the rest of the money."

With the cooling off period allowing Sharpe to resume control, Sharpe made sure Cullis knew he would be no longer wanted but confusion and counter claim raged.

Thompson was adamant in public he would complete the takeover by the deadline on the Friday and that Cullis had asked to stand down for personal reasons. But Cullis denied he resigned, claiming the first he knew of it was when he rang the Swansea ClubCall phone news service and adding that he had told six players they had been transfer listed inside the Blackpool dressing room and that “You could put Terry Venables in here and the way we’re playing we’d still go down.” The second shortest managerial reign – all seven days of it – had descended into fitting chaos.

Legal case

There had been no formal contract but, claiming a two-year deal with a survival bonus, Cullis launched a legal battle against Swansea where he attempted to sue for unfair dismissal and wanting a £116,000 pay out. Just 24 hours before it was due to be heard at Birmingham Crown Court, the parties settled out of court with Cullis reportedly receiving a five-figure sum. Part of the agreement included a clause which stopped either side speaking about the events again, perhaps why Sharpe opted against putting his side of things across when asked by WalesOnline.

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Still, with Thompson backing out of the deal – and forfeiting the £100,000 deposit as a result – Sharpe was back. In front of less than 2,000 fans at the Vetch, he was prepared to accept some of the blame for not spotting or stopping the charade sooner, adding: “I am very disappointed with myself. My photo is back in the boardroom but the best thing for this club is still a new chairman, but I am prepared to stay here for as long as it takes. There is no way I will allow this club to fold.”

(Image: Western Mail and Echo)

His first job was to look for the club’s fifth manager of the season, turning to Molesworth for help. Using his Liverpool links, he had already enticed Jan Molby to the Vetch with the Anfield midfielder at the Vetch to watch the Swindon game with the prospect of a player-coach deal. Now he was to be player-manager, Molesworth remaining in the background as a scout before going onto roles with Bristol Rovers, Swindon and Burton.

Molby could not stop relegation, though came within a free-kick of winning promotion at the first-attempt when his stylish side of the following campaign made it to a Wembley play-off final.

Sharpe, who had insisted the day he stepped back in the boardroom after Thompson that he wished to sell the club, finally walked away when the club was bought by SilverShield in 1998.

Swans association

Thompson slipped out of football, though colleagues had questioned why he had ever got involved in a sport he had no interest in, with business partner John Puddifoot admitting at the time: “If he is a millionaire, it isn’t at all evident”.

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As for Cullis, he never added to those seven days in charge, falling out with Thompson – saying just days after the Swansea fiasco “I don’t care if I never speak to him again” – and returning to the West Midlands where he is thought to reside today.

By 2003, he admitted five deception charges for dishonestly trying to obtain £96,000 by providing false details of employment and income, and a further £23,000 of credit card offenses. Described by the Judge at Wolverhampton Crown Court as “acts of blatant dishonesty”, he was sentenced to nine months for fraud.

But it is still his seven days at Swansea City that his name will be forever associated with.

And because of that, there is no longer a danger of Kevin Who.

Other brief managerial spells:

Steve Coppell – Manchester City (33 days, 1996)

Paul Hart – QPR (28 days, 2009/10)

Micky Adams – Swansea (13 days, 1997)

Martin Ling – Cambridge United (9 days, 2009)

Dave Bassett – Crystal Palace (4 days, 1984)

Leroy Rosenior – Torquay (10 minutes, 2007)

Rosenior was appointed as the club were being taken over by a local consortium. They wanted their own man and he was gone in 600 seconds.