MUCH-MALIGNED Mark McCammon was not afraid to stand his ground, answer his critics directly and to challenge injustice when he felt aggrieved.
Fans of Brentford, Brighton and Millwall voiced some strident – nay, downright offensive – opinions of his ability as a footballer.
Remarkably, the Barnet-born striker played in a FA Cup final and Europe for the Lions before Mark McGhee signed him a second time – for Brighton – having previously taken him to Millwall from the Bees on transfer deadline day in 2003.
When his suitability to contribute to the Seagulls’ flagging cause in the Championship was called into question in a post-match radio phone-in, McCammon took umbrage and called the show himself to argue the toss with presenter Ian Hart.
Also, in what was something of a landmark case, McCammon took a subsequent employer, Gillingham FC, to courtand won a claim that he had been racially victimised.
It certainly wasn’t uncommon for McCammon to be at odds with the people running whichever club he was playing for.
He first joined the Seagulls on loan when he was out of favour and on the transfer list at Millwall.
He made his debut in a 1-0 home defeat to Stoke City in December 2004 and said: “I just want to get back playing and enjoying my football again.
“I have been in and out at Millwall and my fitness has dipped a little bit because I haven’t played. I’m happy to be playing under Mark again and I want to show what I can do.”
Although he didn’t get on the scoresheet in five matches, when McGhee made it a permanent move in February 2005 he told BBC Southern Counties Radio: “Not everyone understands the contribution Mark makes. We have become a much more effective team with him in the squad.”
McGhee was a great believer in the ‘one big one, one little one’ striking line-up, and was sure McCammon’s presence would help pint-sized Leon Knight to score goals.
Because of what followed, it is easy to forget McCammon scored three goals in his first two home games after signing on a permanent basis.
He scored a brace and won the man of the match award in a 3-2 defeat to Derby County and he got 10-man Albion’s second in a surprise 2-1 win over promotion-chasing Sunderland (Richard Carpenter scored the other, and Rami Shabaan made his debut in goal).
The Argus enjoyed building up the visit of McCammon’s old side Millwall to the Withdean, interviewing the player and the manager, who we learned called his new signing ‘The Fridge’.
McGhee urged McCammon to stay cool if he managed to score against his old club, but it was fellow striker Gary Hart who got the only goal of the game, in the 89th minute.
Ahead of the game, McCammon told the newspaper: “It would mean a lot to me to score the winning goal against them. I wasn’t given a chance there, but I’ve got a fresh start here. I’ve got a lot to prove.”
In the following game, he was subbed off at half-time in a 2-0 defeat at Stoke when he gave away a penalty. He underwent blood tests and McGhee said: “Mark is seeing a specialist to find out why he was feeling lethargic. It wasn’t the back injury he suffered against Millwall, he was just feeling ill and weak.”
That game was the first of a run of six defeats and Albion only won once in 11 matches – form which saw them avoid relegation by a single point.
One of several infamous McCammon incidents occurred following the Seagulls’ 1-1 draw at Turf Moor on 16 April.
After a lucklustre first half display when Albion went in 1-0 down, McGhee ripped into the team at half-time and McCammon and fellow striker Chris McPhee were told they weren’t holding the ball up well enough.
According to an account in the Daily Telegraph, McCammon argued back in a fiery exchange with the boss, claiming a lack of service from midfield was the issue. He didn’t reappear for the second half, being replaced by fired-up teenager Jake Robinson and Albion managed to salvage a point courtesy of an equaliser from Dean Hammond.
A delighted McGhee said of Robinson: “We say when people get their chance they have to take it and I thought he took it absolutely brilliantly. He was different class.”
But McGhee’s ire with McCammon hadn’t cooled at the final whistle – he ordered him off the team bus and told him to return south in the kit-carrying vehicle instead.
Not fancying a tight squeeze alongside sweaty shirts, shorts and socks, McCammon chose to return by train.
“After the match I told him I didn’t want him travelling back on the team bus with the rest of us and that he was to return home with two other members of staff in another club vehicle,” McGhee told Sky Sports News.
McCammon apologised to McGhee afterwards but any subsequent first team opportunities were few and far between after that.
At the start of the 2005-06 season, he managed a recall for a Carling Cup match away to Shrewsbury Town and pleased his manager by scoring a goal and laying one on for Robinson, even though the Albion went down 3-2.
“I thought Mark was much better. That type of performance is what we expect of him and it’s what he can do,” said McGhee. “Now he’s got to reproduce that in the Championship.
“He set his standard tonight in terms of his effort and the simple way he played the game. He didn’t complicate things; he laid it off, held it up, laid it off, then got in the box; he won a lot of headers; took a lot of stick and kept going. He got a goal, made a goal and I thought he was terrific.”
But McGhee, with other forward options in the shape of Colin Kazim-Richards, Robinson, Knight and Gary Hart only called on McCammon for three starts and five sub appearances.
“He (McGhee) asked me to go out on loan to a lower league team and I think I’m better than that,” said McCammon when, incensed by criticism of him on the BBC Southern Counties Radio post-match phone-in after a game in February, called in and took issue with show host Hart.
“I went on trial at Watford and I got called back to train for no apparent reason. I think I was hard done by there, a bit unlucky. I’m back but I’m not in the squad but I don’t think I’ve been given a long enough chance.”
Once again suggesting the team’s issue was service through to the front players, he responded to Hart’s personal criticism of him saying: “When you kick a ball in professional football you can tell me whether I’m good enough for this standard.
“You don’t know anything about me. What you said is very disrespectful.
“I’ve been out since the beginning of the season with ankle and knee injuries. I had surgery on both. I came back and made three first-team starts but it takes about seven or eight games to get your rhythm back. I think it’s a bad comment you have made.”
The striker also took aim at the Withdean faithful, claiming: “All we hear is supporters whingeing.
“If they get behind the team it will give the players an extra boost. All the first team players at Brighton listen to the radio and they hear the supporters being 100 per cent negative.
“It’s a team game, it’s not about individuals. The supporters need to get behind the team a bit more.”
If the player didn’t think much of the fans, it would be an understatement to say they were none too impressed by the player.
Amongst a veritable litany of abuse from Albion supporters, this from ‘The Full Harris’ on North Stand Chat encapsulated the opinions of many.
“Mark McCammon is the worst player to have played for us in this division … he just simply doesn’t have a clue. He is unfit, he doesn’t know where he is meant to be running, he can’t shoot. For a man of his size, he is pathetic in the air.
“He is clumsy, he has the touch and control of a Sunday league centre half, he is about as prolific as an impotent monk, he is an embarrassment, he is a disgrace, he is lazy and, personally, I object in the extreme to my paying his wages when I believe many of the crowd around me could do a better job and they would do it for free.”
Long before Dominic Cummings referred to his erstwhile boss, Boris Johnson as “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”, supporters voiced something similar of McCammon. The song went like this:
Super, super Mark
Super, super Mark
Super, super Mark
Supermarket Trolley.
Perhaps it was no surprise that McCammon was allowed to leave Albion on loan, linking up with League One Bristol City, where he scored four goals in 11 appearances.
He didn’t play another game for the Albion and, in the summer of 2006, joined Doncaster Rovers after impressing boss Dave Penney on trial.
Although born in Barnet on 7 August 1978, McCammon qualified to play for Barbados through his mother and he won five caps for the Caribbean country. He scored on his debut against Antigua and Barbuda in a 3-1 win in September 2006 and two days later hit a hat-trick when Barbados beat Anguilla 7-1.
Two years later he returned to international action for two World Cup qualifiers against the United States. Barbados lost 8-0 in California and 1-0 in Bridgetown.
McCammon was with QPR as a teenager but it was Cambridge United who took him on as a YTS and he joined Cambridge City on loan at 19 to gain experience.
He played just six games for United between 1997 and March 1999 but was signed by Premier League Charlton, managed by Alan Curbishley.
After relegation to the old First Division, McCammon played five times for the Addicks as they won the title with a squad that included John Robinson, Steve Brown and Paul Kitson on loan from West Ham. McCammon also spent time on loan at Swindon Town in January 2000.
That summer, McCammon left The Valley to sign for Second Division Brentford for a fee said to be £100,000. He scored six times in 33 appearances in his first season at Griffin Park. He scored 10 in a total of 75 appearances for the Bees but it seems their supporters were also unconvinced about his merits.
Stan Webb, on the excellent BFCTalk website, said: “Mark McCammon was yet another misfit who cost a significant fee. Despite looking every inch a footballer, he signally failed to deliver.
“He is best remembered for his cataclysmic miss from a free header at Loftus Road which might have changed our recent history had he scored, as he surely should have done.
“And yet for all the criticism he faced, he eventually became a sort of anti-hero as fans recognised that he was always giving everything he had and appreciated his efforts even though he was just not up to scratch.”
By contrast, McCammon’s time in south Yorkshire was relatively successful, although if he felt he was dogged by bad luck, in November 2006 he had a headed goal away to Brentford chalked off after the ref didn’t notice the ball went through a hole in the back of the net. Thankfully Donny still won 1‑0.
Across two seasons, he scored 13 goals in 70 matches for the south Yorkshire side and went on as a 71st minute sub for Richie Wellens in the 2008 League One play-off final at Wembley when Donny beat Leeds United 1-0. Leeds had Casper Ankergren in goal and Bradley Johnson in their line-up.
However, McCammon chose to head south that summer and signed a three-year contract with recently relegated League Two Gillingham.
He scored five goals in 35 matches in his first season at Priestfield but 2009-10, when the Gills were back in League One, was a different story.
By February 2010, a lack of starts saw him seek a loan to get some match fitness. Gills boss Mark Stimson told BBC Radio Kent: “Going out on loan will be good for him and the club. He needs games and if he comes back fit in four weeks that would be great.”
He added: “We want him sharp and scoring goals then he could come back because we might need someone like him. Last season he stepped in and put in a good shift.
“At the moment he’s frustrated, like all the other boys who are not playing. He didn’t want to drop down to League Two. Now he’s seriously thinking about it because it might get his career back on track.”
McCammon joined Bradford City for a month, playing four games, before returning to the Gills. But the following season, when Andy Hessenthaler had returned as manager, saw the final dismantling of McCammon’s league playing career.
The club dismissed him in 2011 for alleged misconduct but he didn’t go quietly and took them to an employment tribunal claiming he had been unfairly sacked and ‘racially victimised’. He won £68,000 in compensation and Gillingham and chairman Paul Scally were subsequently each fined £75,000 by the FA “for failing to act in the best interests of the game and bringing the game into disrepute”.
Furious Scally appealed the fines, which were set by an independent regulatory commission, saying they were “manifestly excessive, totally disproportionate and completely unjust” and, although the board reduced the club’s fine to £50,000, the sanction against Scally was upheld.
McCammon told the original hearing in Ashford, Kent, that he and other black players at the club were treated differently from white players. For example, he said, he was ordered to attend the ground amid ‘treacherous’ snowy driving conditions or be fined, while some white players were told they were not required.
The club tried to “frustrate him out” by refusing to pay private medical bills for injury treatment, while a white teammate had been flown to Dubai for treatment at the club’s expense, he claimed.
McCammon, who, on £2,500 a week, was the club’s highest-paid player, was also told not to blog while others were permitted to, he said. During an injury spell, he had to stay behind at the club for four hours longer than other injured and non-injured players, he claimed.
The tribunal heard he was dismissed after a disciplinary hearing following a confrontation in which he accused club officials of being “racially intolerant” regarding the decision to order him in during the heavy snow.
The tribunal found in McCammon’s favour and his solicitor, Sim Owalabi, said it was believed to be the first time a footballer had successfully brought before an employment tribunal a case of race victimisation against a professional football club.
After all the legal to-ing and fro-ing, the player himself, by then aged 35, said: “It was traumatising and it sort of sabotaged my career in the football world, my progress.
“I had football clubs after me and that just deteriorated. It’s very, very unfortunate.”
He dropped down to Conference level with Braintree Town in October 2011 and later played for Lincoln City, on loan and then on a permanent basis, when they were in the same division.
In parallel lines 