“Football is football because of people like Kev.” Those are the kind words of Peter Crouch, the England football international, about Cwmbran man Kevin McCormack.
Kevin McCormack has just retired after a 27-year career working as the kitman at the heart of Portsmouth FC– a club where Peter had two spells.
“It’s a working-class city and I’m a working-class lad and they love their team,” said Kev. “You don’t see people with Tottenham or Liverpool [shirts], they’re all Portsmouth. No matter what league they’re in, the stadium holds 21,000 and we get 21,000 in. It’s a special place.”
But before we get to why one of England’s most recognisable footballers is wishing Kev a happy retirement, we have to go back over 50 years to Coed Eva boxing club.
Two Locks
The 59-year-old married dad-of-two grew up on Waun Road in Two Locks. His lifetime in sport began as a child when he and his brother Brendan (also a successful amateur boxer) made friends with the Manley brothers, Michael, Ian and Stuart.
Kev said: “I had strict parents and had to be in at 7pm every night and Chris, their brother, used to run a boxing gym. When we were about six or seven, me and my brother said ‘the lads have asked us if we would go to the boxing gym’. Dad loved boxing. We asked him and he said ‘yes’. It was a way of getting an extra hour.”
Kev paid tribute to Chris, who passed away in 2019, for running such a successful club from a tin shed just off the incline.
“He [Chris Manley] kept so many boys off the streets. You trained harder to get warm. The effort and money they used to spend. You look at Coed Eva, a small club and how many Welsh and British champions they had.
“Instead of being in bed by 7 o’clock we went up to the gym and just fell in love with it.”
ABA titles
Chris didn’t only start Kev on an amateur boxing career that saw him win three ABA titles and multiple Welsh titles- if he hadn’t walked into the boxing gym at that young age, he’d have never moved to Hampshire.
Kev said: “I went down to Portsmouth because of Chris [Manley]. I came out of my bricklaying apprenticeship, which I did with my dad. My cousin came over from Australia and he wanted to move around. Chris had a big scaffold job down Portsmouth on a place called Port Solent.
“They were building this marina. He got me and Skippy (nickname for his cousin] a job.
“We had digs down there and Chris set up a boxing gym because I was still boxing, and we used to train above a pub.”
“I used to train three nights a week and just carried on doing that. I was still on that Port Solent for about three or four years, and then around 87/88 the work dried up. I’d won three British titles at that time and a load of Welsh titles, and the old [armed] services kept pestering me to join up.
“I was going ‘nah, I can’t do that’.”
Royal Navy
He thought about turning professional but decided to check out the Royal Navy.
Kev said: “I always remember it. A bloke in the careers office, he said to me, ‘I can offer you a steward, a chef…or the Royal Marines‘, then he looked me up and down and said, ‘I don’t think you can do that.’
“Anybody that ever said that to me in all my career, everybody said that ‘I wouldn’t do this, I wouldn’t do that’ and I loved proving people wrong.
“So I said, ‘give me the Marines’.”
He was “beasted” for three days on a “potential recruits course” before being told: “McCormack, you’re thick as s**t academically-wise and can work on that, but you’ll make a great Marine.”
A trip back to Wales that weekend was cut short when he had a phone call telling him he would start the 30-week Royal Marine Commando course on Monday morning at Lympstone in Devon.
He was then pulled out of training to take part in qualifiers for the Olympic Games and was “backtrooped” on his return- moved to restart with another new troop.
“It was an eye-opener and if I’m brutally honest, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it was one of the proudest things, getting the green beret.”
Another link back to Coed Eva ABC came up during training. A corporal sat down with Kevin and said: “‘I know a lad who is Welsh, Steve Spiers‘.”
Kev said: “Steve is from Cwmbran. He used to box with us at Coed Eva and he used to look after me and Brendan when we were kids. Great lad.
“I loved being a soldier but then they pulled me back on the boxing team. I missed my mates because you get a bond that you never break. It was brilliant. I was based in Portsmouth. I was in for about ten years.”
Portsmouth FC
His service was cut short following several knee operations and problems with his lower back discs. But during his time at Portsmouth, working out of HMS Nelson, he built up a link with the city’s football club.
Injured players, including Welsh international Kit Symons, would come to the base for fitness rehabilitation sessions and Kev started a boxing class for them.
He said: “I used to take them up the boxing gym and we’d do an hour up there. I’d put the gloves on all the players and give them a minute [sparring] with me, and I’d say ‘if you mess around in my gym, you’ll do three minutes with me’. It was quite funny.
Alan Ball
“We did that for about a year, and then as I was getting medically discharged, Portsmouth FC wanted another kitman and Alan Ball [Portsmouth FC manager and 1966 World Cup winner] pulled me in. I used to work the door at the players’ lounge at Fratton Park.
“Bally said ‘come and be my kitman’. I said ‘what does that entail?’ and he said ‘don’t worry about it’ and he spat on his hand, and I spat on my hand and just shook hands with him.
“I was there ever since, 27 years.”
Kev said his background in boxing helped when working in a professional football changing room.
He said: “Bally knew I could handle a changing room because I was a sportsman in my own right. We had a laugh, it’s about banter, you’ve got to have a good changing room, if you don’t have a good changing room, it’s dead.
“Bally knew when I boxed, if I felt good, looked good, I performed good. It’s all a mindset.
“He knew I’d do that. I’ve always done it. I’ve never treated anybody differently from Premier League down to the lowest division.”
FA Cup win
A career with Portsmouth FC was not for the faint-hearted. Kev was there when they won (2008) and lost (2010) the FA Cup Final, suffered consecutive relegations down to League Two and went into administration. The club enjoyed promotions and a return to the Championship in 2024.
Growing up, Kev remembers not “leaving the telly” on FA Cup final day at his house in Two Locks. He has enjoyed seven trips to Wembley, including a memorable 1-0 win over Cardiff City in 2008.
He said: “Some kitmen don’t get there once. It’s an experience. One of the best experiences I’ve had was the 2008 final and Katherine Jenkins was singing the Welsh National Anthem and stood right from here to there [a couple of metres away].”
He said as he was singing the anthem, he heard one of his colleagues joke: “Sit down, you Welsh git’.
Following the win over Cardiff, he was trusted to keep the famous silverware safe. He laughed as told how, while sitting on the team bus with the trophy on his lap, a mate from Cwmbran called to ask where he was.
Open-top bus tour
The open-top bus tour around Portsmouth the next day was “unbelievable” with 250,000 people cheering them from Fratton Park to Southsea Common.
Kitmen get asked to do all sorts of unusual things. Kev stepped in when players realised there was no bottle opener on the bus. So for 90 minutes, he used his teeth to open bottle after bottle for the celebrating players.
I finished the interview by asking Kev about a Peter Crouch story. It has nothing to do with football, but gives an insight into the crazy world of the football kitman.
Peter needed a hand moving a new sofa he’d bought into his flat in Port Solent- yes, the same development Kev worked on when he first moved to the city.
Kev said: “I always helped the lads move. I was like Fox The Mover. I had a kit van. We were driving there and I was sat there laughing and he said ‘what are you laughing at?’ and I said, ‘you ain’t getting that in there [up to his flat]. He said, ‘you what?’ I said, ‘I built them.
“I did all the lift shafts and it’s a spiral staircase. You ain’t getting it up there’. He was in the penthouse.
“He said, ‘what am I going to do? It cost me a fortune.”
“I could see the balcony, big French doors. I went ‘go and get a ladder’. We got a big ladder up to it. I said ‘right, stick the settee on my head there, down my back.’
“I had him, Courtney Pitt and Shaun Derry (Portsmouth FC players) holding the bottom of the ladder. I got it up to the top, got it over. It must still be there now as there’s no way you’ll get it out unless you threw it in the oggin [slang for the sea].”
Final home match
Kev was a special guest of the club for their final home match of the 2025/26 season- a 1-1 draw against Birmingham.
He was brought onto the pitch at half-time for a round of applause from fans. He was then surprised with a series of video messages from former players, colleagues, and friends played over the big screen at Fratton Park. Watch the video here.
This Friday, he’s the guest at ‘A Special Evening with Kevin McCormack‘ event at a venue in Southsea.
Watch Kevin McCormack on The That Peter Crouch podcast
The episode description says: “First up is Portsmouth legend and cult hero Kit Man Kev, who delivers an all-time segment. From washing players’ kits for cash, to lifting sofas over balconies, to wild dressing room stories and boxing sessions with players — Kev gives a brutally honest take on how football has changed, why “the game’s gone,” and what modern players are missing.”