Why Paul Cook is unique and his refreshing approach is bucking the trend in modern day management
Paul Cook stood in the Walsall dressing room and addressed a bunch of opposition players who had just ruined his dream.
Chesterfield had just missed out on having the chance to contest the League Two play-off final and secure successive promotions. Inside, he will have been hurting. He said as much to me in his post-match interview, saying he needed the weekend to ‘get the pain out of his head.’ But instead of being ‘salty’, as the kids say nowadays, Cook wandered into the home changing area and will no doubt have congratulated them and wished them well at Wembley.
Just weeks before, when Walsall’s fans were calling for manager Mat Sadler’s head after losing top spot following an awful run of form, Cook rang Sadler and offered some words of support. Cook speaks regularly and passionately about managers needing time, and he probably saw a young boss in his first job who was struggling and he decided to reach out to him, which Sadler really appreciated, calling Cook an ‘incredible person.’ In hindsight, maybe Cook wished he had not done that! Jokes aside, it just shows the kind of man the Spireites have at the helm. A proper salt of the earth bloke when it comes to football.
Cook always calls things exactly how they are. He does not try to pull the wool over fans’ eyes. He absolutely hates losing but he will always praise the opposition afterwards. Rather than give a delusional view of a game in an attempt to cover up shortcomings like some managers do, instead of trying to spin things, to paint a different picture of a match we have all seen with our own eyes, he will come out and say what we were all thinking. It is a refreshing approach which fans of other clubs respect him for and wish they had.
Cook will jog out of the tunnel around five minutes before every away game and applaud the travelling Spireites, give a fistbump or two, before taking up a seat in the dugout. He doesn’t get involved in any post-match celebrations, preferring instead to shake every hand of the opposition as they walk off the pitch.
When he goes into the referee’s book at away grounds, he spins around and joins in with the cheers from the home sections and laughs along with them. Without fail, they all turn to each other and chuckle, probably thinking ‘he’s a good laugh isn’t he.’ Cook even sometimes intervenes when another opposition boss is about to get a yellow card. In freezing weather, he will stand on the touchline in his shorts with a cuppa. In the final minutes of games when he is enjoying watching his team play, he claps along to his own song.
Cook is one of a kind. He is a unique character and personality. He is classy. He has brought laughter back to football. In a world where some managers trot out the same nonsense and are like robots, refusing to credit the opposition, he bucks the trend. He is gracious in defeat and humble in victory. He calls Chesterfield ‘my club’ and we hope it stays that way for a very long time.