With 50 goals from 328 appearances, Matt Lockwood will go down as one of the greatest left-backs in Leyton Orient’s illustrious 141-year history.
But it all could have been so different for the Southend-born defender….
Up until the age of 20, Lockwood was a central midfielder before a chance encounter in training as a young QPR player had a lasting impact on his career.
“All the left-backs were injured and so being left footed I did a job there in a practice match against Trevor Sinclair”, the 45-year-old told The LODown Podcast.
“Ian Holloway, who was a player at the time, came up to me and asked ‘have you ever played left-back before?’ I said “no” and that was as far as the conversation went.”
A short while later Holloway was appointed player-manager of Bristol Rovers and came in for Lockwood, converting him from a midfielder to a left-back.
Living in an annex in his manager’s house on the outskirts of Bristol, Lockwood enjoyed a fruitful two years at full-back with the Gas, making 63 appearances before eventually leaving in 1998 after another larger than life EFL character came calling- the then Bury manager, Neil Warnock.
“I met Neil (Warnock) and we went to a game together. He’d never watched me play but had heard so many good reports about me.
“Anyway, when we went to watch this game, one of the left-backs went in for a crazy tackle and he went, ‘Oh I love that.’
“So I was like, I’m not sure you’re going to like me then because I don’t do that!”
“From that point, I had a little doubt in my head that it wasn’t right to go to Bury because I wasn’t sure he’d like me.”
After spurning the interest of Warnock’s Championship side Bury, Lockwood ended up on trial at fourth-tier Orient, where he soon got to grips with the unique recruitment style of O’s gaffer Tommy Taylor.
“When I was on trial we went and trained at Hackney Marshes and nobody spoke to me”, the defender recalls.
“Once I signed, I realised why nobody spoke to me. Tommy (Taylor) used to have loads of trialists every day, you’d see them once and then never see them again.
“I’m talking about lads who couldn’t even do their boots up who were probably just walking down the street at the back of the main stand kicking a can down the road and Tommy was there saying, ‘right get in here we’ll give you a trial.’
In his first season with the club the O’s reached a Wembley Play-Off final, a game which Lockwood feels was a missed opportunity as they lost 1-0 to Scunthorpe.
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“I think Tommy got the tactics wrong on the day. It felt like he wanted to give all the experienced players a game because it was at Wembley and they might never play there again.
“We’d played a back three all season and switched to a flat back four for that game and it just didn’t work.”
However, he is a lot more accepting of the Play-Off final defeat his side suffered at the hands of Blackpool two years later at the Millennium Stadium.
“We went into that game as underdogs. Blackpool had a really good team and the best team won on the day.
“You always felt in that game their quality would come through. Although it was disappointing, especially as we took the lead a couple of times, it was always going to be a big ask to win that one.
Following consecutive PFA team of the year appearances, Lockwood was earning plenty of admirers around English football but found himself unable to pursue these advances due to the brinkmanship of owner Barry Hearn.
“All the Premier League clubs were sniffing around me. I knew they were making offers, I was being told that but Barry just wouldn’t accept them.
“I was under contract, I’d signed a long-term contract and he wanted a certain level of money for me.
“Those Premier League clubs had concerns about my pace. They probably would have taken a punt on me at half of what Barry was asking but they weren’t willing to take a risk by paying the full whack.”
Then came a brutal injury during a match at York City in August 2001 that almost cost Lockwood an awful lot more than a big Premier League move.
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“Their centre half came in and clattered me, at the time I thought I was winded. I walked back on the pitch, and I just felt horrific.
“On the way home, I was sick on the team bus and Scott Houghton actually told the gaffer that I needed to go to hospital because he thought it was a ruptured spleen.
“So, we stopped off at Pontefract hospital and the lads had to wait on the bus for two hours while I was in A&E.
“I had x-rays, and they couldn’t find anything so they sent me home. That was the Saturday and then on the Monday the lads had organised a pub crawl, so I actually went out, I was in agony but I didn’t want to miss out.
“It got to midnight, and I ended up getting Andy Harris to take me home.
“The next morning, I drove myself into the hospital and got a CT scan where they realised what had happened.
“You could tell straight away that something was wrong because the doctors just went mental rushing me around, they said, ‘we can’t believe you’re still alive, if you weren’t as fit you are you would have definitely died between Saturday and Monday.’”
Following his recovery, Lockwood and Orient bounced back after two Play-Off final defeats to eventually get promoted in 2006 under the stewardship of now O’s Director of Football Martin Ling.
It’s clear what Lockwood felt was so special about that team and it could perhaps apply to the current O’s side who are riding high at the top of League Two – again with Ling playing an integral role.
“We all got on so well that year, that’s the secret. The most successful teams I’ve ever played in have been the ones where you have a real bond as a dressing room.
“We also had a team of leaders, Lingy put those characters together so all credit to him.”
Orient’s promotion came in the most dramatic of circumstances as they secured it with a last-minute winner on the final day against Oxford. Lockwood attests that it was almost the perfect way to get promoted.
“You couldn’t have written the story any better could you? To go down to the last minute and hear that there was an equalising goal in that Northampton game and we didn’t need to win but we went on the charge and did anyway.
“It was a fantastic end to the season – it couldn’t have ended any better.”
Fittingly, Lockwood finished as the club’s top scorer with eleven goals in his final season with the O’s – that tally including a phenomenal eleven-minute hat trick against Gillingham which saw Orient come from three down to rescue a point.
But eventually the time came for the left-back to move on as Nottingham Forest came calling.
“I had nine fantastic years at Orient. I loved every minute of it. There were always these constant rumours about bigger clubs and it just got to the stage where I asked Barry (Hearn) to just let me go. I was 31 at the time and got the opportunity to go to a bigger club.”
Lockwood only managed 11 appearances in his one season at Forest before moving on to Colchester and, reflecting on his legacy, it’s clear how much the O’s meant to him.
“When I look back, I ask myself do I regret going? And from a playing point of view I think no but I regret leaving the club because I had such a good time there and if I hadn’t left I’d probably still be there now. I’d probably be the groundsman or kitman or something like that.”
And, following a brief spell in management with Dundee, don’t rule out a return to E10 for Lockwood one day…
“I always apply when the management job comes up. I send my CV off to the chairman and I never get a response, but never say never…”
You can listen to the full version of this interview on The Lo Down Podcast.