Athletic article on Kev

[tim-sanchez]

https://theathletic.com/2085048/2020/09 ... mployment/

“He went flying backwards and cracked his head on the pavement, so they rushed him to the hospital in an ambulance and he was straight into a coma.”

Kevin Ellison is explaining what happened to his father, also named Kevin, on June 25 — the night Liverpool became English champions for the first time in 30 years.

Ellison Sr lives in Anfield, not too far from the stadium. Sixty years old, he had worked as a labourer as well as a demolition man before retiring, “so he thinks he knows a thing or two about awkward climbs.”

When a Chelsea goal against Manchester City sent Liverpool to within 12 minutes of the title, he decided to hang some red and white bunting across the street. This required a ladder. That was when he fell and went out like a light.

The final whistle had still not been blown at Stamford Bridge and he entered a world of darkness without knowing whether Liverpool were champions. Doctors had told Ellison’s family to prepare for the worst — even at best, his life could have altered forever because nobody really knows with brain injuries. It was obviously a good sign when some of his first mumbled words having woken up in hospital almost a month later were, “Did we win the league?”

Not everyone will be able to relate to the sort of pressure the Ellisons have been under this summer, particularly Kevin Jr, who was released by Morecambe in the middle of a pandemic and with that became an unemployed footballer at the age of 41, carrying limited qualifications and zero experience of working as an adult in any other industry.

Given that he was one of the first players in the lower leagues to speak about his battle with mental health in 2018, you believe him when he fixes his eyes on you with a penetrating stare and says, “You never really know for certain where your mind will take you.”

It had not helped that his exit from Morecambe — a club he’d represented for nine seasons — was so painful.

Jim Bentley was the longest-serving manager in English football and Ellison had been his first signing in 2011. When Bentley resigned in November to take over at AFC Fylde in the National League, Ellison says “it felt like a death for the club”. He was walking around Conwy Castle, on the north Wales coast, during a late October day out with his daughter, Ava, when he received a call from Morecambe chairman Rod Taylor, asking him to succeed Bentley as caretaker manager. He would work alongside Barry Roche, the 37-year-old goalkeeper whose time at the club exceeded both Bentley’s as manager and Ellison’s as a player by three seasons.

In his first meeting with the team the next day, Ellison admitted that his neck was on the line. He was desperate to carry on playing but figured that if another manager came in as Bentley’s permanent replacement, he would probably now be considered as a potential threat to his control considering his age and status. “That’s how football works. A new gaffer comes in and gets rid of people who are closely associated with the old gaffer,” Ellison, who scored 88 goals in 388 appearances for Morecambe, tells The Athletic. “They never think, ‘I could lean on some experience here…’”

The first offer of help came from another manager he knows well. Ryan Lowe also grew up in Liverpool, near Anfield, and at Plymouth Argyle he had already beaten Leyton Orient, so he told him how he thought Morecambe could break the Londoners down that Saturday. Ellison enjoyed the role, which lasted only two games, because he was warned someone else would be appointed as permanent manager so was able to work without pressure. The experience was enough, however, to make him realise he would prefer to be an assistant or a first-team coach in the future.

“I hated having to leave the WhatsApp groups and the car school in the drive up from Liverpool,” he admits. “It’s impossible to laugh and joke with lads in cars and then tell them you’re dropping them.”

After beating Orient in the league and losing at Blackpool in the FA Cup, Derek Adams was appointed as Bentley’s successor.

In Adams’ first meeting with the squad, Ellison says he stood up and told him that he still considered himself a player and would do everything he could to help ease Morecambe’s relegation concerns, but Adams did not seem interested in discussing his role.

“To me, that meant, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be here for long’,” Ellison thought. Across the next two months, he featured in seven games but after an 86th-minute substitute appearance in a defeat at Bradford City on New Year’s Day, his career at Morecambe was unofficially over. Adams made seven signings in the January transfer window and this meant Ellison was no longer making the bench.

Ellison was told to train with Morecambe’s youth team players each Saturday morning. When he asked Adams why he had taken a decision he considered to be disrespectful, “he brushed me away — I’d rather he’d admitted that he just wanted me out of the club in January.”

Three months slipped by. Ellison had gone from being one of the main players in the team, to taking over as manager, to getting frozen out of the squad. He picked up on how staff members were cooler with him in their conversations. Some players appeared reluctant to talk to him, “maybe because of what it might mean for them”.

He says he was mostly separated from the rest of the squad and trained a lot through this period alone at the gym in Lancaster University. “It was very isolating. I didn’t want any special treatment. I didn’t ask for any time off or anything like that. I wanted to train more, because I didn’t feel like I was doing enough.”

He became aware of loan approaches from non-League sides Hartlepool United and Chester but he is still unable to figure out why Adams did not tell him about them straight away because he might have made compromises to ensure they happened. Ellison says that when he confronted Morecambe’s manager the day before a game at Cheltenham Town in February, Adams admitted there had been inquiries but the interested clubs did not follow up with further calls to discuss payment plans around wages.

That, says Ellison, was the last face-to-face conversation between the pair.

“I don’t think he saw me as a bad egg,” Ellison says. “We never had any arguments, other than a conversation about why I wasn’t involved — the sort which happens every single day at every football club. I never downed tools and I wasn’t hanging around for money because that wouldn’t make sense, knowing I was out of contract at the end of the season and instead could have been laying down some foundations at a new club.

“Ultimately, I don’t think the manager liked confrontation and I think he saw me as a threat to his job. New managers tend to be insecure about having older pros knocking about. I was a leader in the dressing room and loud with it.”

He hasn’t been back to Morecambe since. After lockdown, Ellison received a WhatsApp message from Adams asking him to attend another meeting where he would find out whether he was going to get a new contract. “I took my time replying to him because I didn’t want to lose my rag, but in good time I told him in no uncertain terms that there was no point in driving an hour to Morecambe when I knew already what the outcome was.”

He was then was advised by a club official that Morecambe were trying to end their working relationship with him in a professional manner but this rankled with Ellison, who reminded them that professional standards towards him had been lost since his last game on January 1.

Next day, his release was announced on Morecambe’s official Twitter feed.

“I’m watching the telly and lots of people are losing their jobs. I’m thinking, ‘I can’t get a job in football — how am I going to get any sort of a job given my lack of experience in anything other than football?’”

Ellison’s history with depression meant he was able to identify the warning signs early.

They started this time at some point in March or April.


“I was overthinking and went to speak to the counsellor at the PFA, because I was letting my thoughts run away with me. I was in a bit of a dark place for a couple of weeks.”

His mood picked up after that. The calls from managers began in May. It might be tempting to think a player looking for a new club experiences pangs of excitement whenever his phone starts ringing but Ellison has “been in football long enough to know that it could be a wind-up call from one of the lads”.

Some of them were offers to attend training sessions. “They’d say, ‘You can come and have a look at us’, but I was thinking to myself, ‘Is that more like a trial?’ I’m 41 and people in football should know me well enough now. I’d rather go and play Sunday League football with my mates than go on a trial.”

Most of the opportunities were in non-League where the money Ellison was getting offered was “pretty good” — but only if he managed to find other work, away from football. It concerned Ellison that non-League football was expected to start again after lockdown later than the EFL — possibly as late as October — and this would have an impact on his earnings because part-time contracts only tend to last 36 weeks. “What do I do for money until then? You’re left with a situation where you’re getting fit on your own time across many months before you kick a ball in anger and get paid for it.”

Radcliffe from the seventh-tier Northern Premier League were the first to get in touch, and willing to combine his playing contract with an academy coaching role. Guiseley in the National League North, a rung above Radcliffe, came next but they train in Rotherham from 7pm until 9pm every Tuesday and Thursday, depending on fixtures, and the drive from Merseyside to South Yorkshire concerned him. “If I got a job outside of football, it would have been touch and go whether I’d get there on time in rush-hour traffic if I left at five. Then you’re probably getting back at midnight…”

Guiseley reassured him he wouldn’t have to attend every training session but Ellison was worried that arrangement would leave him feeling less a part of the club, particularly the dressing room. “I don’t want to be seen as an ex-pro who plays, picks up his money and gets off as quickly as possible every time. I want to be involved as much as I can. When you’re not there all of the time, people question your commitment.”

Inside three or four years in an earlier part of his life, Ellison had gone from playing in Liverpool’s Sunday League to Leicester City, making his Premier League debut as a 21-year-old against Manchester United at Old Trafford. He had since represented Stockport County, Lincoln City, Chester City (twice), Hull City, Tranmere Rovers and Rotherham United. Conwy United had provided the platform for that journey when he was just 18 and his career could have gone almost full circle had he decided to take up either of the offers from rival League of Wales clubs Bala Town or Connah’s Quay Nomads, both of whom had qualified for the Europa League preliminary rounds.

He was reluctant to sign anything, though — because none of the calls were from EFL clubs. He was desperate to play for as long as he could at a professional level because of his “passion for the job,” as well as the chance to test himself against “so-called better lads”. He remained desperate to prove himself to those coaches at Liverpool who once told him he wasn’t good enough to earn a professional contract anywhere, but also to the figures at Morecambe who he felt had driven him away from where he wanted to be.

“I’ll stop playing when I decide, not when other people tell me,” he told himself.

Ellison’s career has not built a nest egg. A separation from his partner at the height of his depression had hit him hard financially. “I’ve got no savings.”

He thinks most players below the Championship lead the same kind of life, with wages only contributing towards a modest standard of living. “People go, ‘He’s a footballer, he’s got this and that…’ We’re privileged to do our job but I can guarantee you there are players in League Two in their early 20s who might still be living with their parents but they’re still travelling up and down motorways for training despite being on £140 a week.”

Ellison’s last wage at Morecambe after tax was around £2,000 a month (on average, £500 a week or £24,000 a year). He has friends in Liverpool who have dreamed of professional contracts in football but have ended up earning a lot more than him having spent their working lives in offices, where there is also more security.


In other careers, workers tend to increase their wages as they move through their 30s but a footballer’s salary reduces as they get older.

Ellison was 32 when he joined Morecambe and for the first two years there his contract involved small increases. As he reached his mid-30s, he says a minimum of £50 a week was shaved off each contract offer that came his way (which amounts to an annual pay cut of roughly £2,600 every summer). Even though he was still one of the main players and sometimes their leading scorer, it always felt like the club held the strongest card because of his age and, since he’s still playing six years after the first conversation about a decrease happened, you can understand his frustration. Though he had higher offers from other clubs outside of the EFL, he liked playing for Morecambe. Given that he stayed for so long, it shows he isn’t motivated only by money.

By the end of July in his home in West Derby, not far away from Liverpool’s Melwood training ground, Ellison was looking at “the bigger picture — I don’t want to be in the same situation 12 months down the line if I do sign in non-League”. He’d spent much of the summer applying for jobs online. “Anything, really; I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty. I’ve got two kids to support and a house to run…”

He was interested mostly in coaching sport but there were other adverts that caught his eye. One was as an immigration officer at the Port of Liverpool. There were opportunities at the local Tesco supermarket as well.

“I’ve been in football 23 years. It’s all I’ve known. Going into the real world is fucking daunting.”

Gradually, Ellison’s father came around — regaining some of the faculties the doctors feared he might have lost. By the middle of August, he was still not quite his old self but he was learning to get back on his feet again and eating well, considering that only six weeks earlier there were warnings about being fed through a straw for the rest of time.

Ellison was still unable to visit him in hospital and there were concerning telephone conversations with doctors about his behaviour. “He’s saying he’s lost a parrot from a cage by his bed and he’s asking us to find it,” was one of the stories. There was another occasion when the patient placed his sock on a plate and told a nurse that he was refusing to eat that pasty.

Ellison knew straight away what was happening. While everyone else was worried because of the potential for brain damage, his dad was just having laugh at his own expense.

“I called in and warned him to stop fooling around, reminding him that he had to be careful what he said. Otherwise he’d be in hospital forever.”

Ellison was recalling this period from south Wales in the middle of September. At the start of the month, he achieved his ambition of signing for a club in the EFL. He had always hoped something might happen with Newport County, in League Two, because of his friendship with their manager Mike Flynn. They had played together at Bradford a decade ago, in what was a loan spell for Ellison.

When he told his father about the move, his response was, “Nice and close then…” Kevin Sr’s sense of humour was another reminder that his health was improving, and a further indication of this was when he returned home to Anfield and asked his son if he could take him to the nearest bookies to place a bet on the horses. This development made it an easier decision for Ellison to move to away but the first people he spoke to about the opportunity were his kids, Charlie, 15, and 10-year-old Ava.

Ellison was conscious he had missed parts of their childhoods when he was living in Sheffield and playing for Rotherham. He would be able to make the near 200-mile journey home from Newport a couple of times a week if he was lucky. “Straight away my lad said I should do it, and Ava agreed. They ultimately gave me the go-ahead.”

The money at Newport is less than his last contract at Morecambe but it was the best deal on the table. The opportunity to train with the Welsh club had arisen quickly and the timing proved to be particularly convenient.

He was due to start a job at a warehouse in Kirkby on a Monday morning when, over the weekend, Flynn called inviting him to Newport instead. Before setting off on the journey south, he tried calling the factory to explain his change of plan. Though voicemail messages went unanswered, he has since received a series of texts congratulating him on the completion of an induction process which never happened.


Ellison had been keeping his options open. He was due to clock on at 6am and had been told that the workers break for a short rest every two hours. This meant he was able to plan another interview as a teaching assistant, via video link, on what would have been his first working day at the warehouse. He ended up doing that interview from the toilets of a service station on the M5 as he stopped off on his way to Newport. “The gaffer (Flynn) stressed that I wasn’t on trial because he knows all about my abilities. He just wanted to ensure he was fit.” Yet after leaving a job at a warehouse he didn’t even start, he could not take any risks. “So I did the interview as I sat on a toilet at Strensham.”

Newport was where he wanted to be. “The money is obviously among my thoughts because I’ve got to put food on the table for my kids but I’m also still desperate to prove people wrong, because I still think I’ve got a lot to offer in League Two.” Ellison was reassured by Flynn that he would be receiving a contract, but he needed to get a couple of players off the wage bill first. Despite his experience, Ellison was still nervous when he turned up at training and entered an unfamiliar dressing room for the first time in almost a decade. “You convince yourself the odd one will be saying, ‘He’s 41 — what’s the gaffer playing at?’”

His record against Newport since they became an EFL club again in 2013 had been impressive. Aside from six goals and six assists, he had won three penalties. They were not the only club he had shared a playful rivalry with across social media but having gestured to their fans after scoring twice in a 2-1 Morecambe victory in September 2017, he ran towards Newport’s Hazell Terrace to celebrate an equaliser the following year. “I probably make an enemy with someone in every game I play,” he reflected.

Midfielder Matty Dolan was one of the first team-mates at Newport to approach him. In the past, Ellison had attempted to “get inside his head” during a match — one of the tools in his armoury. When he sees a defender who has clearly spent lots of time fixing his hair before a match, one of the first things he tries to do is run his hands through it. “You’ve got to find ways of unsettling your opponent and try and get them to play on your battleground rather than theirs. It’s one of the reasons I’m still playing. I like to create mayhem.”

There were a few familiar adversaries in the Newport squad but players tend to put old differences aside when they get to know one another. Dolan found out Ellison was staying in a hotel and offered him a room on the top floor of his house, even though the 27-year-old is married with a young child. “It was another moment that made me feel valued.”

Ellison was pleased with his performance in a friendly with Bristol Rovers, where he was listed as Trialist 2, but in the second half against Hereford in his next game, he felt a pain in his thigh. “I was thinking, ‘Oh no, I’m not even signed for these yet and I’m injured. They’ll reckon I’m too old and get rid of me’.”

He had done very little ball work over the summer and in the days before the Hereford game there was an increased training focus on crossing and shooting. Ellison says he has heard about lots of players in the EFL suffering muscle injuries after a sudden return to ball work and though he became one of them, Flynn was sympathetic. On September 4, they agreed a one-year contract.


Though he is yet to make his debut, he feels like he is getting fitter and fitter.

“My debut for Newport could be inside the next seven days,” he estimated earlier this week. He can’t wait to play again but wonders what it will be like without fans there. “The atmosphere fires me up, especially when I’m getting stick,” he says. “To not have that is going to be weird. I hope I don’t lose something…”

For the time being, he is focused and happy. Yet thoughts about the future are bound to return in the New Year — possibly earlier if the pandemic intervenes and lower-league football stops again.

“I know a lot of people say you should focus on one day at a time but I don’t think I’m able to do that really, because tomorrow is just around the corner. That’s certainly not me feeling sorry for myself. It’s just the way it is.”

[Potted Shrimp]

Very good and interesting article.

Absolute club legend. Inspiring on and off the pitch.

Kevin, if you read this: Thankyou.

[marky No.1]

Some interesting facts in there, shows you the knife edge footballers and managers are on, thought he was a higher earner than that with us.

Good luck Kev

[BerlinWaller]

Some interesting facts in there, shows you the knife edge footballers and managers are on, thought he was a higher earner than that with us.

Good luck Kev

Compare that with what Ryan Croasdale was reported to be on by his Chairman. Ryan was playing conf north/conf footy and was on double Kevs money.

[redrobo]

An interesting read but I'd hate for our club to make any kind of comment on what Kevin alleges about wages and treatment by DA and in particular the discussions he had with a current Board member.

Kevin will always be a legend so let's remember him in that vein.

[paschahound]

Such a very interesting article. The salary, if correct, is chickenfeed and he surely deserved more than that.
I will always remember him as a great striker, entertainer, comedian, an absolute gentleman and a fine ambassador for the club who, despite after a hard defeat and ready to go home, took the time to get out of his car and suggest a walk to the front of the stadium to take a photo with my wife.
A true legend.

[HALMA 1983]

No half measures and what a truly selfless man, God had a great plan when he created Kev.

[Shrimpy]

Such a very interesting article. The salary, if correct, is chickenfeed and he surely deserved more than that.
I will always remember him as a great striker, entertainer, comedian, an absolute gentleman and a fine ambassador for the club who, despite after a hard defeat and ready to go home, took the time to get out of his car and suggest a walk to the front of the stadium to take a photo with my wife.
A true legend.

Not sure how you can say its chicken feed. Even last season when he was getting paid the lowest during his time at the club he was still on £31,200 a year. If we had 22 players earning that much thats a yearly wage budget of £686k which I would hazard a guess isn’t far off what our actual budget it.

Even at £500 a week after tax I bet he was somewhere in the middle for what players in our squad earn, there will be some on less than that.

[Gone_Shrimping]

Such a very interesting article. The salary, if correct, is chickenfeed and he surely deserved more than that.
I will always remember him as a great striker, entertainer, comedian, an absolute gentleman and a fine ambassador for the club who, despite after a hard defeat and ready to go home, took the time to get out of his car and suggest a walk to the front of the stadium to take a photo with my wife.
A true legend.

Not sure how you can say its chicken feed. Even last season when he was getting paid the lowest during his time at the club he was still on £31,200 a year. If we had 22 players earning that much thats a yearly wage budget of £686k which I would hazard a guess isn’t far off what our actual budget it.

Even at £500 a week after tax I bet he was somewhere in the middle for what players in our squad earn, there will be some on less than that.

And there won't be many 41 year old footballers earning more.