Back Where They Once Belonged - Number One

The first in an occasional series looking at Wycombe players who played for the opposition. Wednesday’s opponents Wrexham provided Wanderers with Craig Faulconbridge in the summer of 2002. THIS IS HIS STORY.

Craig Faulconbridge was rumoured as a Wycombe signing for some time as Lawrie Sanchez found that more and more players did not want to sign for him, and more and more managers were hiding in cupboards when the abrasive manager rang. The “Faulcon”, or the “Falcon” as BFP idiot Dave Peters mistakenly called him, was lined up on a glamorous Bosman, with insiders claiming the transfer fee originally reserved for the player eventually found its way into his pocket as a healthy signing on fee. Whatever his take-home cash payment, the size of it soon rankled with his new manager.

Wycombe fans travelled to Notts County in August 2002 for the start of a season that would see Sanchez’s reputation shredded. But on that hot midlands day, Faulconbridge lined up front with Sean Devine in what breathless Chairboys fans were calling a DREAM PARTNERSHIP. There was not much evidence of any dream football, though, as Wycombe laboured meekly against the Magpies. But trailing 1-0 with only a minute of normal time remaining, the Faulcon rose to nod home a Darren Currie cross and cause mayhem in the away end.

As some Wycombe fans spilled onto the pitch to celebrate with the players, others at the back screamed “Wycombe doesn’t want you” at their leisure colleagues. It was the first split in the ranks of a season that saw the Wanderers resurgence of the early 2000s collapse and then some. As for Craig, fabled WWFC website COTN noted that “Faulconbridge made up for an overall quiet game by heading home from around six yards.”

A week later the Faulcon scored again as Wycombe drew 3-3 with a poor Mansfield side, followed by a third goal in four games as Wanderers routed QPR 4-1 in late August. But this was the high point of the season for Faulconbridge, Sanchez and the club as a whole. Just three more goals in the following 36 games saw the ex-Wrexham forward branded as an expensive flop by most people, other than those who don’t understand how free transfers work in modern football.

Poor Craig was even lambasted by Sanchez at one point, the deranged Wanderers coach sniping that Faulconbridge had a “nice big house and now has to show he deserves it”, handily ignoring the fact that the player’s contract was his decision. 2003-04 saw the striker score only two goals in an injury-ravaged season as Sanchez was finally sacked and Wanderers were relegated for the first time since 1986. Even a cameo spell in the bottom division in 2004-05 did not work out well for Faulconbridge, with his increasingly desperate supporters defending their goalless hero by arguing that he was now a “pure playmaker”.

In January 2005 he came on with two minutes to go in Wycombe’s 1-1 home draw with Macclesfield. It was to be his last appearance as a professional footballer. Further injury saw his season curtailed and after being released in the summer, he failed to find another club.

Craig Faulconbridge started his Wanderers career alongside Sean Devine and ended it alongside Nathan Tyson, arguably Wycombe’s two best strikers in the post O’Neill era. Despite the weight of expectation on his shoulders, he never even came close to fulfilling it. In many ways he optimises the sharp decline at the club from the fervour of Villa Park in 2001 to abject relegation three years later. When he signed for the club he said “My ambition is to score as many goals as I can and to get promotion because Wycombe are definitely a promotion side”, yet virtually every year since Faulconbridge came to the club we have finished in a lower league position than the year before.

Some say he can still be seen waking his shaggy dog around the bourgeois estates of Aylesbury, defending his unfeasibly large house, but to all extents and purposes he has vanished. Though Lawrie Sanchez and some Wycombe fans may wish he had never signed on the dotted line in summer 2002, Craig Faulconbridge must regret it even more. Somewhere down the M40 he lost his career, and there it lies, rotting in a ditch.

06.11.2007. 20:26

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