The Jim Magilton Interview - Part Four
Saturday, 1st Jan 2000 00:00

“I thought we were brilliant in the game, in between them scoring in the first minute and the last minute, we battered them.

“The game ended 3-2 but it could have been 10, we had unbelievable chances in the game and you think of the players that we brought in, the quality of the players, Gio [Dos Santos] and all of those boys. Gio doesn’t come if don’t convince him to come.

“There were a lot of positives but I understood that I was going to have tough conversations with Marcus at the end of that season.

“I had a plan, I was very much sticking to my plan. I had made changes internally, there were going to be more changes internally staff-wise and all for the betterment, in my opinion, of the club. Moving it forward.”

While the sacking was obviously a shock and a disappointment, the manner in which his exit was handled clearly still rankles.

“So we won the game, going home, my mum was in intensive care, it wasn’t good,” he said. “I was going to a reserve game on the Monday or whatever it was and the Player of the Year do was that Monday night.

“I tried to contact Simon Clegg [who had been appointed that day], I tried to contact Terry Baxter. Couldn’t find them, couldn’t get hold of them.

“So for 24 hours my mum is in intensive care and I couldn’t get hold of the chief executive nor the director of communications.

“They never rang me to ask about my mum, or that the manager of the football club, still at that time, was not there, he had to to get an emergency flight home because his mum was on a life support machine.

“So I’m trying to contact them and not one person picked the phone up. Then I had a phone call on the Tuesday evening and it lasted a minute before Marcus actually asked about my mum. And then he just said ‘How’s your mum?’. I went ‘Marcus, too late, you’re too late, that should have been the first thing you asked’.

“And he said ‘I need to speak to you tomorrow morning, 10 o’clock’. ‘No problem’. I sat there with my dad and said to my dad ‘That’s it, it’s done’. My dad said ‘Don’t be stupid’. ‘It’s done, Dad’.

“So, 10 o’clock the next day, we’re down in the hospital, mum had had a tough night. I get the call, four minutes later, again, no ‘How’s your mum?’. Nothing.

“Listen, that’s the nature of the beast, of course. But a little bit of common decency wouldn’t have gone amiss.

“So it lasted four minutes and then lo and behold I had a phone call from Baxter, not from Clegg, because he would have got short shrift. ‘What are we going to say?’. ‘Listen Terry, go away. The first thing you should have said was “How’s your mum”’. That was the first thing he should have said. We’d known each other 10 years, that’s the first thing he should have said to be. Anyway, long story short. Obviously, Roy Keane was unveiled [the next day] and I’d lost my job.”

Reflecting further, he added: “They had 48 hours. The derby game was on the Sunday and I went home on the Monday, so if the decision had been made, and the decision was made prior to the Norwich game [and Roy] was going to be announced on [the Thursday], they still had enough time to contact me. I didn’t get one phone call.

“No problem if they had a timeline they were working from, but all someone had to do was ring me up and tell me. But the last thing on my mind, with all due respect, was Ipswich Town and job or no job, my mum was fighting for her life.

“Unfortunately a job or work has to take a backseat on this and I’m dealing with emotion, my dad and my family, sister, brother all camped around the bed.

“This is not me playing violins, that’s just fact. And I, out of professional courtesy, rang them to say that I wouldn’t be at the Player of the Year do. ‘Why not?’, ‘My mum’s clinging for her f-ing life on a life support machine, so sorry I can’t make it this year’. That’s where I was coming from.

“And what also didn’t sit well was Marcus trying to sort out financial packages on the phone whilst sacking me at the same time.

“‘Marcus, listen, I’ll deal with one thing first, and you know what? I’m dealing with this’. I used the League Managers Association, I didn’t have an agent or a solicitor.

“And without even breathing they’d already set in motion Roy coming in and whatever else.”

A very sad way for such a long association with the club to conclude: “It was, and it shouldn’t have ended that way. There was no reason why. I’m a big boy, I’ve been in the game a long time, there was no need to do it that manner and that kind of left a sour taste but it didn’t leave an indelible mark in terms of my relationship with the club or my relationship with the fans or players or my time at the club. That would have been impossible to do, impossible.”

Legally, matters rumbled on for another two years with no settlement agreed regarding the remaining season on his contract and the club not having paid the outstanding £352,083.33 from that deal. Magilton took the matter to the High Court.

“I was under guidance from the LMA,” he explained. “There was no reason. They made the decision and followed guidance with Richard Bevan and the League Managers Association who were looking after my best interests.

“And it just so happened that at the 11th hour and I’m due to go into the High Court on the Monday, late Friday night, they dropped it and he paid.”

In a statement released through the LMA at the time Magilton said the club “continued to raise more unfounded issues, which they either then abandoned or have now withdrawn”. What were those issues?

“Horrendous. That will always remain absolutely behind closed doors,” he continued. “Horrendous, absolutely horrendous and totally unfounded because Marcus didn’t want to pay out.