IT WAS seven years ago yesterday that Stuart McCall lost his last league game at Valley Parade.

Bury’s 1-0 win on February 6, 2010 brought the curtain down on his first two-and-a-half year stint at the City helm.

McCall signed a compromise deal the following Monday, taking less money that he was entitled to, but his mind had been made up well before.

Former chairman Julian Rhodes remembers it as an awful time because the manager who was desperate to bring success to “his” club had not pulled it off.

“It wasn’t great around the place,” said Rhodes. “But it was genuinely a mutual consent thing.

“Stuart had started making noises the previous March when we lost to Bournemouth. It was a year of him getting close to that.

“He had become despondent because he couldn’t get the club to where he wanted to go.”

McCall admitted afterwards that it was the first failure of his career. There were tears on both sides when he said goodbye to the staff.

Results had not been good but it felt wrong to be severing the connection with Valley Parade on such a low. When asked what he would do next, he mentioned watching the reserves the next night to see how Peter Thorne was getting on after his injury.

But Rhodes knew, deep down, that McCall would return one day and more determined than ever to get it right.

He said: “I’m not just saying that now. I said to my wife on a number of occasions that if the manager leaves and Stuart is available, I’m going to ask him.

“I probably got him in the job too early – but I don’t regret it for one minute.

“I still think to this day he was instrumental to the whole season-ticket policy and that being such a success.

“It was no easy job and the club back then was a very different place to what it is now.

“But I always wanted him to come back in the future and do what he had tried to do before. We all wanted that.”

Rhodes and Mark Lawn had handed over control to Edin Rahic and Stefan Rupp by the time that opportunity arose last summer.

But Rhodes was still around Valley Parade on a consultancy basis to help City’s new owners ease their way into the role.

So he was well-placed to voice the opinion that McCall, eager to get back into club management after a 13-month absence, would be the perfect choice to placate fans still stunned by Phil Parkinson’s sudden exit for Bolton.

Rhodes told the T&A: “I said to Edin straight away ‘go and have a chat with Stuart’.

“One of the reasons why I was so keen after Phil left was similar to why I had wanted Stuart in the first place.

“Phil had created such a feel-good atmosphere about the club and it was always going to take somebody special to keep that going.

“No offence to Uwe Rosler, or anyone else who might have been around, but the only person who could do that was Stuart.

“On the same day that Phil went, I told Edin ‘if it was me, I would be appointing Stuart by now’.

“I warned him that there will be a number of people when you appoint Stuart who will be sceptical and point out that it didn’t work last time.

“But you watch how he wins people over with his honesty and his enthusiasm around the place.”

McCall’s close ties with the club he had graced in two magnificent spells as a player were viewed by some as a reason why he came up short on his managerial baptism.

He took defeats to heart and felt the lows too much. There was no detachment because he could understand the pain that supporters were going through.

But Rhodes did not see that as a short-coming then – and doesn’t now. For all the experience McCall has since gained with Motherwell, Rangers and Scotland, he sees the same character forever entwined with the claret and amber.

And he believes that remains a major factor in driving the club forward.

“Stuart will tell everybody he is a bit more savvy as a manager now and less emotionally attached – but I don’t buy that,” said Rhodes.

“He is back at his club, the club he loves. He is Mr Bradford City through and through and that’s a strength.

“I don’t think that was his failing in the first place at all. It never has been.”