Long before Stuart Pearce
came to prominence or before anyone had the curious idea Vinny Jones could be a
professional footballer, a young man born in Streatham earned the nickname –
“Psycho”.
By the time he was aged twenty-six
he’d been sent-off ten times. In a
career which spanned twelve years, he received his marching orders twelve
times, although he recently defended this record claiming “only ten of those
were straight reds”.
Mark Earl Dennis was born
on 2nd May 1961 in Streatham.
Despite being born in London, City lost the game, 0-3, but
Dennis impressed enough to make a further thirty times in a season which saw
The Blues relegated from the First Division.
He had tried to get into the Youth team at Stamford
Bridge but when his efforts seemed unappreciated he moved to St. Andrews. He remained a Chelsea fan despite claims to
the contrary years later.
The following season he
missed just two matches as Birmingham bounced straight back up, finishing above
Chelsea on goal difference, a team they experienced the drop alongside twelve
months previously. Over the next three
seasons he only made fifty-nine appearances as suspensions started to take their toll. His performances in their promotion season
earned him a place in the PFA Second Division Team of the Year.
Dennis soon became part
of a notorious group at St. Andrews known as “The Birmingham Six”. It was a play on the phrase given to men who
were wrongly accused of the IRA bombings of Birmingham in 1975. Mick Harford, Howard Gayle, Robert Hopkin, Pat
van den Hauwe and Tony Coton all joined Dennis in various scrapes, often late
at night around the city. The team was
regarded as one of the hardest around, but unlike the circus at Plough Lane a
few years later these boys were hard but fair and embraced the physical side of
the game. It was a common held view if
you kicked one of these men, they’d just kick you back, but harder. They were regularly seen in places such as Rum
Runner, Peppermint Place and Mr Moons. They
drank like fish, fought fans of rival teams, mixed it with taxi drivers,
trashed cars and got run over by buses.
Many players of the era when asked who the hardest player they ever came
up against was would reply “what, you mean after Mick Harford?”
A young apprentice called
Julian Dicks was also at the club so you get the idea of the sort of team they
were.
In 1983 Dennis was sold
to Southampton for a nominal fee. He
joined a side managed by
He saw through the indiscipline with Dennis and uncovered a talented left-back,
a tenacious tackler who loved an overlap and one who many Saints fans came to
consider as one of the finest they’d ever seen.
Dennis made his debut in a 1-2 defeat at Leicester City in November
1983. McMenemy had opted for the formula
of experience alongside promising youngsters, and when Dennis arrived he took
his place alongside Mick Mills, who’d lifted the FA Cup as Ipswich captain and skippered
England during the 1982 World Cup, the mercurial Frank Worthington, who was on
his seventh club and had been at Birmingham with Dennis, and England goalkeeper
Peter Shilton. Out had gone former
England internationals, Kevin Keegan and Mick Channon. Dennis was one of the youngsters McMenemy was
looking to take the club places, along with Steve Moran and Danny Wallace.
Under McMenemy’s
man-management Dennis blossomed. Often
seen as a father-figure, he was able to harness the talent within his young charges
and Dennis was able to concentrate on his football to the benefit of both
himself and the team. The club ended the
1983-84 season in their highest position ever as they finished just three
points behind Liverpool. They also
reached the FA Cup Semi-Finals but were narrowly beaten by an Adrian Heath goal
late into extra time, as Everton went onto lift the cup.
The following season they
were knocked out of the UEFA Cup at the first hurdle by the club Keegan had
left to join them back in 1980, Hamburg.
Fifth place in the League would have meant they qualified for Europe
again but due to the ban on English clubs after Heysel, they were never allowed
to compete. Dennis played in forty-one
League and Cup games but at the end of that season Lawrie McMenemy decided to
end his twelve year reign at the club and resigned as manager. A few days later he was unveiled as the new
Sunderland manager.
This event was the
beginning of the end of a promising career at Southampton for Dennis. Southampton plumped for former captain, Chris
Nicholl as their choice of manager. Dennis
just didn’t have the same connection with Nicholl as he had with McMenemy and
soon the two started to clash.
Southampton reached another FA Cup Semi-Final where they again bowed out
after extra time as Liverpool marched onto a double. But in the League fourteenth place just wasn’t
what the faithful had expected after the progression of the previous years and
soon the manager was under pressure.
Dennis’s on-field disciplinary problems returned which can’t have
improved the lot placed in front of Nicholl.
At the start of 1986-87
season he scored his first goals for the Saints. At Norwich he scored what was described as a
“fierce volley” in a 3-4 defeat. They
lost four of their opening six games of that season. His second goal came about five weeks later at
home to Newcastle which saw him “steam forward cut inside then beat the keeper
with a classic chipped shot”, in a 4-1 victory.
Away from football his
marriage was breaking up and it was taking its toll on the player who the
papers reported was getting into a lot of trouble off the field. The Police were called to domestic
disputes. There was a famous incident
where after being up in Manchester for treatment for a leg injury, he got his
wife to wheel him out of hospital and they embarked on a drunken evening. Needless to say it didn’t end well.
At the beginning of February
1987 he played his last game for Southampton.
After a 1-2 defeat at home to Norwich he clashed with Nicholl in the
dressing room and by his own admittance in the book “Southampton’s Cult Heroes”
his life was spiralling out of control.
After Norwich game they
took on Liverpool in League Cup Semi-Final First Leg. Dennis played but the club discovered he’d
been out till the early hours before the Norwich game playing snooker and that
his young daughter had been with him asleep under the table. The club suspended him and told the press he
was injured. He missed the second leg at
Anfield and was never to play again for the club again.
The tempestuous
relationship Dennis had with his wife often saw them fighting each other but despite
the public perception of him as a violent thug, he gained custody of his
daughter after the marriage broke up.
Southampton shipped him
out of the club where he joined Queen’s Park Rangers in May In mid-November they travelled to White Hart
Lane to take on Tottenham Hotspur and Dennis received his eleventh red card of
his career when he elbowed Ossie Ardiles in the face. QPR manager, Jim Smith, who’d been Dennis’s
manager during his Birmingham days, was initially critical of the Argentinian, apologising
a few days later. The FA handed out a 53
day ban (eight games), then a record, and Chairman, David Bulstrode, wrote a
letter to The FA vowing to terminate the player’s contract if there were any
further misdemeanours.
Months later Dennis
received knife wounds while out one night in Croydon and went on holiday to
Spain without club approval. The club
handed him an official warning for that.
In 1988 he was sent-off
for the twelfth time in his career when he spat at Fulham’s Leo Donnellan in a
reserve match. He denied the charge and
escaped with a three-match ban and a £1,000 fine. QPR really fought his case as they sent a
former Chief Superintendent and two club directors to fight his corner at the
disciplinary hearing. There was also a
certain amount of fortune for the player in that Bulstrode by then had passed
away and so the threat to cancel the contract wasn’t carried through.
But QPR, by then, had
really had enough of the player. In August
1989 he was offloaded to Crystal Palace, making his debut against Luton Town in
November. He only made eight appearances
during a season when Palace were beaten in a FA Cup Final replay and finished
third in the League. His final appearance
came a year later and by 1990 the professional football career of Mark Dennis
was over.
After finishing playing,
Dennis admitted to taking cocaine when he was at Palace. He claimed there were several players on the
drug and he believed he was lucky to still be alive. He became a director at Winchester and
Assistant Manager at Eastleigh, leaving in 2007 after “irreconcilable
differences between him and a board member”.
He also spent time working as a postman in Southampton.
Dennis is still
considered a legend at Southampton with many fans believing him to be the best
left-back they’ve ever had. In an
interview with the Sunday Times in 2010, when asked about his disciplinary
record he claimed it was over-exuberance rather than an evil streak which lead
to many of the red cards he received.
There is little doubt for
a three year period during the mid-1980’s Dennis was as good as any left-back in
the country, yet his disciplinary record definitely counted against him. His CV did register three Under-21
appearances, though, but no full international caps. His tally of twelve red cards is only one
short of the record in England held by Roy McDonough (Colchester, Exeter and
Southend) and Steve Walsh (Wigan and Leicester City). He was booked sixty four times as well and his
indiscipline was such it was suggested he may be expelled from players’ union
in 1986. The union considered the matter
again after his Ardiles moment but they never carried it through. These were days when it was harder to get
sent-off than it is today and so his record really stood out. Red cards can be so frequent nowadays so
Dennis’s achievement was all the more impressive.
