Interesting story about him. Although hopefully he won't be playing against us next season. http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/sport/viewarticle.aspx?id=369542 THE fingers all point in one direction when you ask Carlisle United’s players for the identity of the comedian in their ranks. You wouldn’t be surprised to see a jester’s hat hanging from the same peg as Chris Lumsdon’s number eight shirt in the Brunton Park dressing room. Banter, however, remains a two-way street, and Lumsdon is happy to confirm that, for every joke he dishes out, he is the butt of another one. “And that’s the right word – ‘butt’,” he says. “All the lads keep going on about the size of my backside. They say it’s getting bigger and bigger. “I don’t think it is, but my lass said the same thing the other day. I must be getting to the age when I’m putting weight on. “There’s so much stick flying around here. The lads were having a go at Glenn Murray when the dolphin got into the harbour at Maryport, where he’s from. Dolly (physio Neil Dalton) cut a picture of the dolphin out of the paper and stuck a picture of a school uniform on it, and pinned it up with the words, ‘Glenn Murray’s Class Photo 1994.” The tales are related with a smile, but there is more to the man known to his team-mates as ‘Ginger Pan-face’ than his jovial exterior. Ask him which League One fixture he is most looking forward to next season, for instance, and you are suddenly confronted with a feeling of injustice which remains ablaze inside the midfielder. “Barnsley away,” comes the instant answer. “I left there because of financial reasons – in the end I couldn’t play because they hadn’t paid Sunderland the rest of my fee. “So Paul Hart (then manager at Oakwell) had his reasons for not playing me, but you can have your reasons and still treat people with respect. But he didn’t treat me with respect at all. He made me train on my own. “I’m not a vicious person. I’m a nice lad. But he made me train on my own and it was a really hard time. It was so depressing. “So I would have liked to go back to Barnsley and beat him, but he’s out of work now. Still, I’ve got a few friends down there and I’m looking forward to showing them what I can do.” Lumsdon will have to wait until June 22, when next season’s fixtures are released, to find out exactly when he will be able to mount his mission of retribution at Oakwell. For the moment, the fact he is discussing League One opponents at all is more than enough to take in. The 26-year-old playmaker joined United two months after they had been relegated to the Conference, two years ago. The Cumbrians’ near-vertical trajectory since then, which has seen back-to-back promotions and the League Two championship, has surprised many in the game – not least the club’s set-piece expert and penalty-taker. “When I signed two years ago, I thought I might get back up to League One in four or five years,” Lumsdon says. “So to do it in two is incredible. “Last summer I said if we finished third bottom in League Two it would be a success, because we were looking to establish ourselves as a league club again. “To go up again, and to do it as champions, is actually unbelievable when you sit down and think about it. “And there’s no place I would rather have done it. I absolutely love it here and I would happily stay for life. I know it probably won’t happen, but say a Premiership or Championship club came in for me – I honestly wouldn’t be bothered. “It’s not about the money – it’s about being happy. My fiancée thinks I’ve become a happier man since I’ve been here and she’s right. I love the place. “You just have to look at the party we had after we got the championship trophy. Everybody brought their mams and dads along and it was a brilliant night. And that’s the thing about Carlisle – it’s a family club. “I’ve been at clubs where players aren’t treated nicely, but everyone looks after each other here.” Ask Lumsdon for his personal highlights of United’s glorious season, and his mind wanders back to the 5-0 derby win at Darlington. “Being from Newcastle, I knew they were really building it up in the north-east, and I thought it was going to be a tough game. But we were different class on the day, and to win 5-0 was just brilliant.” Then you remind him of the 2-1 triumph at Underhill, Barnet, and he immediately reorganises his hierarchy of magic moments. “Oh aye, that was the one,” he smiles. “The way they went on the season before when they beat us, and won the Conference…..I just don’t like them, it’s as simple as that. “I didn’t play in the home game, when they beat us 3-1 again, and I was absolutely gutted about that. But when we went down there and won….I’ll admit it, when we scored our second, I ran over to their bench and gave them some. “The icing on the cake would probably have been us going up and them going back down, but just to beat them was fantastic.” Despite being a pivotal figure in Paul Simpson’s team of champions – indeed, he played 46 games last season, scoring seven goals – Lumsdon believes Carlisle fans did not see him at his best. He attributes this partly to the hernia operation which wiped out his pre-season preparations and forced him to miss the first month of League Two combat. “Simmo and myself have both agreed that when you miss pre-season, you never really get that back. The season before, when games got to the 94th minute, I still felt I could run all day, but this season I’ve felt really tired, and that’s because I didn’t get that pre-season in. “So I’m looking forward to starting from the beginning this pre-season, and hopefully I’ll be flying once the season starts.” He continues: “I’m looking forward to next season, because I’ve played about 100 times for Barnsley in that division, and I know what it’s about. “In League Two, if you let other teams have the ball, more often than not they’ll give it back. But in League One, they can pass the ball and really hurt you. “There are players dropping down to that level from the Premiership, and it’s going to be a hard season. But we’re looking forward to it. All the lads are buzzing for it.” Rarely can a gamble to plunge down two divisions and into non-league have paid such handsome dividends. Lumsdon acknowledges this, and pays tribute to the former Carlisle captain and ex-Barnsley accomplice who first encouraged him to make Brunton Park his footballing home. “It was Steve Hayward who first told me to come here. I saw him at the last game of the season at Stockport the other week, and he said, ‘I told you you’d enjoy it.’ And he was right. I’ve never looked back. And I’ve pleased we’ve won the league so we can dedicate it to his lad (Hayward’s son Stevie, five, is fighting leukaemia). “There are some great games to look forward to next season, and it’s all for the fans. Teams like Nottingham Forest, Barnsley….it does seem a long time ago that we were looking at Dagenham and Redbridge, Forest Green and Farnborough. “In the week after the season finished we all went to Magaluf, and we sat and drank a toast to Forest Green. Just to say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. Not any more.’” No conversation with Lumsdon would be complete without referring to his influence in United’s signing of Michael Bridges – one of Brunton Park’s all-time transfer coups. It was Lumsdon who peppered his former Sunderland team-mate with phone calls when Simpson decided to pursue the striker last November. It was Lumsdon who convinced Bridges that he would not regret moving to Carlisle, even if it meant a drop from the Premiership to League Two in the space of three months. Bridges, of course, embraced the challenge and scored 15 goals – several provided by his old Black Cats buddy – to usher United into League One and an exciting future. “Aye, I’m still waiting for my agent’s fee for that,” laughs Lumsdon. “Anyway, this season I’m looking at getting Kevin Phillips up here and talking Niall Quinn out of retirement.” A pause, and another smile. “Nah, not really. They wouldn’t get in the team.”