The Valley. A football stadium that means more to many Norwich City fans than most grounds outside of Carrow Road.
May 3, 2009. Deon Burton’s hat-trick in southeast London resigns Bryan Gunn’s Canaries to League One for the first time in 49 years. Little did those City fans know how different things would be almost 12 months later.
One of 11 signings made during the summer transfer window, Gateshead-born defender Michael Nelson left home for the first time to move to East Anglia after 306 appearances in all competitions at Hartlepool United.
“I had six years at Hartlepool, so I was at home,” he told canaries.co.uk on Thursday afternoon. “We trained at Durham, and it was 15 minutes from my house, so I had six years on my doorstep and then, all of a sudden, I upped sticks and went to Norwich without the family.
“I had two kids at the time, and we didn’t want to move them away from home and put them into different schools, so the wife and the kids stayed in the north east. Wherever I went, I went on my own and got back when I could.
“It was difficult at times but with the age I was and the opportunities that were around at the time, I just had to run with it and try to take the best opportunities that came up. That meant having to live away from home for quite a long time, but the family were really understanding, and everything seemed to work out well, so it was something that sort of happened naturally.”
Following City’s relegation to League One, there was a high level of expectation, a high level of pressure to return to the Championship at the first time of asking. Nelson, a commanding centre-half whose work rate could never come into question, thrived.
“That’s the reason I went to Norwich at the time, I honestly believed that we would get promoted out of that division that season,” he said. “I thought it was a great opportunity.
“After the start we had, that didn’t look likely, but we managed to dig in and get it. Having that expectation of 25,000 fans week in, week out expecting you to win every game and get promoted, that’s the pressure that you want to have.
“You don’t want to have the pressure of having to go and snatch points to try to stay in divisions. You want that pressure of people thinking that you’re always going to win. That’s what every player should strive to have rather than going and playing in front of 3,000 or 4,000 fans.
“You should embrace the pressure of playing in front of 25,000. We did that that season and ultimately coped with it and thrived off it.”
As Nelson alluded to, things didn’t exactly go according to plan to start with. Despite a promising pre-season, the Canaries began their return to the third tier with a 7-1 defeat to Colchester United. At home. It’s not often that the manager on the right end of a score-line like that immediately goes to take charge of the team he had just beaten, but that’s exactly what Paul Lambert did.
“As soon as he came in, he had a presence about him when he walked into a room, be it the changing room, the canteen or whatever,” Nelson said. “People just seemed to sit up and take notice of him. He had this aura about him.
“He sort of changed the way the players were at the time. Everyone tended to pay a little bit more attention and I think you saw that on the pitch with the performances and the results. He was brilliant as a manager and his coaching staff were as well.
“There was a really good blend there and the players responded really well. I think some of the signings he made, he went and signed people out of League One and League Two and turned them into Premiership players. He had a knack of not only being able to get the best out of people, but probably make some people play at what a lot of people thought was above their level.”
Get the best out of them he did. Just three weeks later, Nelson was giving City the lead with an immaculate overhead kick against, who else, Hartlepool.
“Over the last few years, every time I went back or went to watch a game I’d get comments on Twitter,” he recalled. “I do get a little bit of stick for it, but it’s one of those things. When you play for a club, you invest fully in that club, regardless of whether you’re playing against a club you played one game four, no games for or, in my case, 300 games for.
“You’re playing for the club you’re employed by at that time, and I was fully invested in Norwich. If I score a goal for Norwich, then that’s absolutely brilliant regardless of who it’s against, so I had no ill feelings towards Hartlepool. At the end of the day, I was doing a job for Norwich and that goal and those three points ultimately helped us get promoted that year, which was the aim.
“Where I am at the minute, just south of Newcastle, there are lots of places you can travel to. You can go to Durham, Newcastle or Sunderland with just five or ten minutes in the car.
“In Norwich, once you’re there, that’s it, and you have to travel a fair amount of time to go somewhere else, so you become immersed in the city. It was a nice feeling, and the family came down quite a few times and really enjoyed it down there. It was a good place to be and, when the football was going so well, that just made it even better.”
Towards the end of the 2009/10 season, the football really was going so well. After being unbeaten in November, December, January and March, City travelled to The Valley, the scene of the previous season’s devastating defeat, on a gloriously sunny April 17, 2010, with the knowledge that, should other results go their way, three points would secure a return to the Championship.
“Every time I speak to him and see him, he says that I didn’t have to do anything,” Nelson said, referring to the king of Spain’s 34th-minute corner delivery when the score was tied at 0-0. “I just had to let it hit my head. Simon Lappin does let me know and he does remind me all the time.
“It was a great ball in, and he put one on my head the game after against Gillingham as well. It was a fantastic team effort, not only in that game, but the whole season.
“Obviously, once we got the goal in the first half, it was a case of just making sure that we ended up winning it. Fraser Forster had a fantastic game that day and managed to keep us in the lead and see the game out.
“Everybody dug deep in that game because Charlton were fighting to get into the play-offs and get themselves promoted as well. It was a really good victory under the circumstances.”
Norwich did their job. They held on for a 1-0 win and, when news filtered through that Leeds United had fallen to defeat at Gillingham, pandemonium ensued.
“The memories of that stand behind the goal packed out with the Norwich fans, they never stopped singing from start to finish. Once the final whistle went, it was just… a big wave of emotion. Getting the news through that it was done and we were promoted, it was a fantastic day all round.
“We were hoping when the final whistle went that that was it. As soon as it went, we sort of realised just by looking at the bench and seeing the reaction of the manager and the lads who were still in the dugout and that sort of gave it away.
“The reaction of the fans behind the goal, they were up to speed with checking results as the game was going on, so we pretty much got to know just by the atmosphere around the away end and dugout as well.
“For the fans and the club as a whole it was a little bit of redemption, and for anyone else who was involved in that team the previous year. The season didn’t start very well, and we were in a little bit of a dark place.
“Then to come out the other end after a little bit of adversity was just brilliant. It showed the character of the players, the fans and the club because everyone stuck together, and we came out the other side and got promoted.
“The club just went from strength to strength after that with an unbelievable season in the Championship to finish runners-up to get into the Premier League. The 18 months I had at the club were fantastic, the most successful 18 months of my career and I really, really enjoyed my time down there.”
Naturally, jubilant celebrations followed victory at Charlton, City’s hard work rewarded with the elation of returning to the second tier.
“We were on the pitch for a little while and then went into the changing rooms,” Nelson recalled. “There were some beers flying around and stuff like that, and then we split up.
“We were in London, but some of the boys had plans to go home, so I was leaving straight from Charlton. Me, Grant Holt and Michael Rose got on a train right outside Charlton’s ground into King’s Cross and then a train back up to the north of England.
“Rosey went to Manchester, Holty went to Carlisle, and I went to Newcastle. We were on a train from Charlton to King’s Cross with a load of Norwich fans. They were giving us cans of beer to drink on the way, so it was a bit of a carnival atmosphere back into London!
“I’d just gone home to see the family. Obviously, we had promotion parties and nights out when we went back down to Norwich with all the lads. We went and won the league in the next game and had a bit of a carnival atmosphere for the final game of the season against Carlisle.
“We normally ended up in… was it Mercy? I think we normally ended up in there and had a few nights out during the time down there. It was a great city to be fair. The lads were all quite close knit because of where it was. Everybody sort of had to live locally in the city. Not many people travelled from outside.
“Even the lads whose families lived in different areas of the country, we still lived on our own or shared places in the city. We tended to go out for a lot of meals together, so it was a really good camaraderie within the group. We were always together going out for coffees and stuff like that, so everyone was really close, and I think that made a big impact on the back-to-back promotions.”
When Admiral Nelson successfully commanded the British Fleet during the Napoleonic Wars of the 1700s, chances are he didn’t expect a newly signed Norwich City defender to take his name after winning supporters over following a chastening 7-1 defeat on the opening day of the season three centuries down the line, but Michael’s nickname remains.
“It’s actually called Nelson’s County after him as well isn’t it, Norfolk? I remember when I scored that goal at The Valley, somebody actually changed the sign on the way back into Norfolk where it says ‘Nelson’s County’ to ‘Michael Nelson’s County’, so I think that got a mention on Twitter and might have been in the local paper as well,” he said.
“That was quite a nice thing to see. It sort of stuck and I’ve still got it now. Plenty of people still call me it and it’s not a bad tag to have.”
After this time at Norwich came to an end, The Admiral received a warm reception at Carrow Road upon his return with his next club, Scunthorpe United.
“It was the fact that I won them over in terms of the start to the season with that awful start we had against Colchester,” he said. “People write you off after one game and the fact that you don’t go inside yourself and instead come out fighting, that won them over.
“I managed to score the goal that got us promoted at The Valley and I think that really showed the fans at Norwich what I was about. I wouldn’t just accept that disappointing start and go away unnoticed.
“I rolled my sleeves up, got on with it and won them over. I think ultimately that’s what got me a bit of affinity with the fans. I always gave 100 percent, regardless of how well I performed. I would always try to run through brick walls for the team and the club and I think that’s what the fans realised.”
Fast forward to December 2021 and Nelson was appointed as assistant manager back at Hartlepool after spells of coaching at Barnet, Stevenage, Gateshead and Blyth Spartans.
“You get to a certain age and start thinking about what you’re going to do next, so you start going through the process of taking coaching badges and once you start that, you start to pick bits and pieces and think back to other managers,” he said.
“You pick good bits and bad bits of experiences you’ve had with different managers, things they’ve done well, things they haven’t done so well and how you would do things differently. Little things like sessions they’ve put on - did it work, didn’t it work, could you adapt it to suit what you want to do?
“You just sort of write things down or put things into the laptop and start compiling things so that if the chance ever comes along, you’ve got stuff behind you and you’re ready. That’s basically what I did from when I was up in Scotland in Kilmarnock and took my B license in 2012/13. I started compiling bits and pieces from then just in case the chance ever came along, trying to make sure that I was as ready as I could be.
“When I was at Barnet, I turned into assistant manager there for ten games under Graham Westley. I was a player/Under-23s coach as well. I did the same at Stevenage, went there as assistant manager. I had a spell at Gateshead as player/first-team coach, so the transition wasn’t too split from hanging the boots up and going straight into coaching. There was a gradual process to it, so it was quite smooth.
“I got chucked in the deep end when I went to Blyth because I didn’t apply for the job, I just sort of got handed it through the manager losing his job and me being the most senior player at the club at the time.
“After one game, Covid struck, and everything went a little bit crazy. The process and the transition from player to coach was quite smooth, but then went Covid struck while I was in non-league, it was quite a challenging time.”
Since his appointment, Hartlepool have had a number of decent results throughout December and January so far. On Tuesday night, funnily enough, they were drawn against Charlton in the quarter-finals of the Papa John’s Trophy. We [Nelson and manager Graeme Lee] have done alright since we went in there,” Nelson said. “We’ve had a couple of draws which we feel should have been wins, but a nice couple of results in the cup. We’ve beaten a few League One sides as we stand. “We got a good result against Bolton Wanderers in the Papa John’s Trophy on Tuesday. We’ve got Blackpool at home in the FA Cup on Saturday, so it’s been hectic since we went in there in December. “Going in and having games every Saturday and Tuesday, then you’ve got the Christmas period and now the transfer window is open… it’s really hectic with speaking to agents, players and clubs to try to get deals done, but it’s been really good. “This is what I’ve always wanted to be in. As a player, coach or whatever, you always want to be in full-time professional football and I’m thoroughly enjoying it and long may it continue.” Now back in Hartlepool, Nelson can spend more quality time with his family, something he doesn’t take for granted after an impressive career that spanned the United Kingdom. “If you want to carry on playing at the highest level you can, you’re going to struggle to be able to live in the same place the whole time,” he said. “There were a couple of times I probably could’ve dropped from League Two to a National League club closer to home, on my doorstep, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to carry on playing as high as I could. “I signed for Barnet in League Two as a 35-year-old. I think everybody saw me coming down there as just going for one season to be an experienced head for the younger lads to learn off and probably only to play a handful of games that season, trying to coach the younger lads. “In the three seasons I was there, I ended up playing around about 120 games, so I finished playing League Two football at 38. I always wanted to play as high as I could for as long as I could, and I managed to do that. “The trade-off for that was having to spend a lot of time away from home, but luckily enough now I’m back home at Hartlepool and spending as much time as I can with the wife and kids.” It’s safe to say, after everything Nelson’s achieved in the game to date, he’s earned it.Welcome back @5spike & @mnelse6 👋 💙
— Hartlepool United FC (@Official_HUFC) December 1, 2021
📲 First interviews to come! #BackToBusiness pic.twitter.com/XGVtrOG6OK