My earliest memories of football were the grainy black and white images of ‘THAT’ turn and the subsequent nineteen seventy four World Cup Final. “Who’s that”? “Who’s he play for”? I’d eagerly ask, “That’s Johan Cruyff and he plays for Holland” my father replied! “That’s who I support, Holland and when I grow up, I’m going to be a footballer and play for Holland”! The dye was cast and my unwavering support for the ‘Clockwork Orange’ has, to this day, never diminished!
…It may also have had something to do with an older cousin marrying a Dutch lad who, at the time, I thought was the coolest person in the world! (AND ALL THESE YEARS LATER, STILL DO & TO BE HONEST, HE UNDOUBTEDLY IS!)
It’s just about the only real footballing loyalty that I’ve managed to maintain, you see, my love of the beautiful game has always far outstripped any love I might have felt from time to time about one particular team or another, Man City, Everton, Bolton Wanderers, Rangers, Celtic, Hearts, Hibs, Orient (because I liked their 1970’s Admiral kit), West Bromwich Albion (because we passed their ground on the way to our annual summer holidays in Devon), Derby County (because they won the league), Plymouth Argyle (because i had an auntie who lived a stones throw from Home Park), I’ve had more clubs than Tommy Docherty!
My late father wasn’t one bit interested in football! Horse racing was his sporting life whilst keeping one eye on the cricket, but not football, never football. My apprenticeship as a bona fide football fanatic would have to be done the hard way! I would catch whatever minuscule of footballing news that I could glean from our newly rented colour television (GOD BLESS RUMBELOWS!)
Friday night would be Kick Off with Gerald Sinstadt, Saturday lunchtime consisted of Grandstand and World Of Sport with regular football updates and the much beloved vidiprinter and of course, the classified results read out by the distinctive voice of Len Martin. Saturday evening was a constant battle to stay up for Match of the Day, with either my parents succoming to my demands or I succoming to weariness and sleep during Starsky & Hutch and finally, Sunday afternoons would always be reserved for ‘The Match’ with Gerald Sinstadt! Radio was my constant friend on a Saturday afternoon and on occasions a Wednesday evening. I soon mastered the tender art of tuning into BBC Sport-on-Two on our small wireless radio whilst utilising a dirty white single earphone so that I wouldn’t disturb anyone else. The ever endearing, dulcet tones of Peter Jones, Maurice Edelston and Bryon Butler would be my childhood companions throughout the season and they did more than most to shape my apprenticeship!
Those three commentators could paint pictures with words and spoke with an elaborate vocabulary that was both eloquent and vivid! The three of them were extremely articulate and bore levels of professionalism that will never be bettered in sports commentary anywhere or by anyone!
Cup Final day would be looked forward to weeks before and we’d play out the game on our makeshift pitch at the side of our house and indoors on a Subbuteo table, throwing up some magical results,
WEST HAM UTD 4 – 11 FULHAM SOUTHAMPTON 6 – 15 MANCHESTER UTD LIVERPOOL 8 – 5 MANCHESTER UNITED
Those halcyon days were to be treasured, the best days of our lives and I pity today’s young football fans for they have nothing sacred in these days of over saturated, twenty four – seven, wall to wall television and money driven footballing overkill!
The nineteen seventy eight Word Cup was being held in Argentina and while the whole of the country were on the march with Ally MacLeod’s tartan army, I stood steadfast behind Ernst Happle and his men in orange! I was convinced Holland would go one better and win it this time, I told all and sundry in the school playground, the local park and indeed anyone who would listen, that Holland would win the World Cup! I strutted about like some modern day footballing Nostradamus proclaiming my superior knowledge of all things football related. (THEY COULDN’T LOSE THIS TIME)!
On the 25th of June on a balmy Sunday evening at the Estadio Monumental in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires, Daniel Passarella stood with arms aloft holding the World Cup and I stood in the bathroom of a holiday chalet in Devon and uncontrollably broke my heart! (FOOTBALL CAN BE A VERY CRUEL MISTRESS FOR AN IMPRESSIONABLE BOY)!
I would mete out my own personal retribution on Mario Kempes when on the sixth of December 1978, I listened intently to our little wireless radio complete with dirty white single earphone, fingers crossed and prayed for a West Bromwich Albion victory over Kempes and Valencia. Prayers answered, Albion into the fourth round of the UEFA Cup, Kempes sent packing and I’d like to think I’d played my part in this ultimate act of self revenge!
Getting to see a live game at this time wasn’t an easy task and I would rely on neighbours and the dads of friends for a live fix. Trips to Burnden Park to see the likes of Worthington, Whatmore and Morgan, Gigg Lane to see Craig Maddon and Danny Wilson & Maine Road to see the likes of Bell, Barnes and Channon were rare delights but lapped up and fully appreciated none the less! My first trip to a frozen Old Trafford came at Christmas in nineteen seventy eight, little did we know what lay in store as we shuffled through those tight red turnstiles wrapped up warm in new Christmas jumpers and snorkel parkas! The first half produced six goals, another two crackerjacks would come in the next forty five…
Manchester United………………3. West Bromwich Albion………..5.
read the scoreline and having yearned for an opportunity to see the brilliant West Bromwich Albion in all their unmistakable pomp and glory, here they were in front of my very eyes dismantling the mighty Manchester United! At the end of the game, I stood shoulder to shoulder with the other fifty six thousand in attendance and clapped in appreciation at what we’d just witnessed. I gave an extra clap or two on freezing cold hands as a personal thanksgiving for that result against Valencia some weeks earlier!
Back at primary school it was with much heartache that I was never chosen to play in the school team but I would still go on mazy runs in the school playground with the ball glued to my feet and unleash twenty five yard screamers into the fields beyond whilst pretending to be Arie Haan or Rainer Bonhoff, players nobody else had heard of, looking back, I was more like Peter Kay than Haan or Bonhoff! I tempered my disappointment with the knowledge that my own knowledge of the game was far superior to everyone else’s, nobody knew as much about football in our school or our street than I did! I’d read the evening paper sports section studiously, almost devouring every word! I’d wait by the front door on a Saturday for the Football Pink and Bolton Evening News Saturday Buff, reading them from cover to cover over the weekend and analysing every result, goal scorer and league table.
…I could tell you who were in what league, where they played, their starting eleven and team nickname etc, etc! I was a walking football encyclopaedia! Our teacher of that time, Mr Colley, (the best teacher I ever had) would give us lads ten football related questions on a Friday afternoon to which a prize would be won! These prizes would be along the lines of a Bartholomew’s Football History Map, Subbuteo catalogue or an old Esso Football coin, I was eventually barred from taking part when it was argued that I had more than enough Bartholomew’s maps and an almost complete collection of Esso coins! (A JEALOUS BUNCH MY CLASSMATES)! I still have one of those Bartholomew’s maps in mint condition, a souvenir of a near perfect childhood!
The end of the punk fuelled nineteen seventies was also signaling the end of my dreams of one day being a football superstar, if I couldn’t even break into the school team, a class of sixteen boys and I wasn’t even good enough to be in the top eleven out of sixteen, what chance would I ever have of turning out for one of those continental teams with cool names such as Anderlecht, Grasshoppers of Zürich, Ajax, St Étienne, Locomotive Leipzig or Werder Bremen? (HAVE I MENTIONED THAT FOOTBALL CAN BE A CRUEL MISTRESS TO AN IMPRESSIONABLE BOY)?
Listening to the beautiful dulcet tones of Bryon Butler & Peter Jones on the radio led me to believe that my path into footballing glory lay in that direction. I could do that, I could talk about football for hours on the radio, “easy peasy”! Reading the wonderful wordsmith and chief scribe Hugh McIlvanney on a Sunday Morning in The Observer also led me to believe that I too could do that, I too could write for hours about sport, any sport, in the newspaper, my path was set, I’d be a sports journalist!
Failing my Eleven Plus wasn’t part of my master plan, I really would be doing this the hard way! The local secondary modern would be my route to a well paid job in sports journalism or so I thought, but alas, it would be a rocky road and one that wasn’t paved in anything remotely golden! I worked and tried hard at school, I honestly did, but nothing could catch my imagination in the way football did. I’d yearn for the weekend and a kick about with mates, watching Kick Off whilst having tea on a Friday, a Saturday game at Maine Road, Goodison Park or Old Trafford, Peter Jones on the radio waxing lyrical about how John Robertson had just glidded down the wing before chipping an exquisite ball into the box for Gary Birtles to head past an hapless Peter Fox to send the Forest fans into delirium at the City Ground & the weekly ritual of reading the print off the Pink Final before watching Match of the Day later on, this was the now the Mod/New Wave fuelled, nineteen eighties where pubescent lads of the same age up and down the country did the exact same things, wearing the exact same clothes whilst listening to the exact same music each weekend. We were mini Paul Wellers, wedge haircuts, Lois corduroy trousers, Adidas samba and full of teenage angst! While Margaret Thatcher did her utmost to ruin our futures, we wouldn’t let her ruin our weekends!
I was fortunate enough to have attended some iconic games of those early nineteen eighties, I was at Old Trafford the night Bryan Robson tormented Deigo Maradona and his Barcelona team mates, at Goodison Park the night Bayern Munich were put to the sword and before that, at a nervous Maine Road the day David Pleat hugged future Manchester City manager Brian Horton at the climax of his jig of joy across the pitch after sending City down to the second division!
Around about the same time as all this was going on, the ‘football casual’ had already arrived on the terraces. Young, smartly dressed men wore the latest in Italian sportswear, British knitwear and Adidas trainers! I would embrace the movement with open arms, the only problem was, we weren’t the wealthiest family in the world and couldn’t afford the latest Fila Bj tracksuit top or a couple of Pringle jumpers! (I WOULD NEED A PAPER ROUND & MORE THAN ONE)! This minor problem would be offset by the fact that I was the first kid in our school to have a pair of Nike trainers and I’d wear a different football shirt in P.E. every week! I was able do do so due to my Uncle Keith having a mate who ran his own sports shop somewhere in south Manchester. Celtic (away) one week, Orient (home) the next, followed by Sheffield Wednesday (home) and Newcastle United’s classic silver away shirt with black pinstripes, I even had a Dukla Praha away shirt three or four years before Half Man Half Biscuit told the world that they wanted one for Christmas! I was once again the envy of every football mad kid in the school. My vast array of football shirts was almost a match for my vast array of knowledge, even the girls in school were starting to notice the kid with the Nike trainers and newly acquired pale blue Cerruti 1881 track top, courtesy of wages accrued from delivering two and a half million newspapers!
The discovery of girls around this time would introduce problems of its own as trying to follow Aston Villa’s quest for European glory in 1982 on the radio wasn’t easy when you were trying to throw your tongue down Wendy Riley’s throat or Justine Johnston wanted you to walk her home! They were nice problems for any fourteen year old boy to have, let me tell you, although, I’d have liked to have heard Bryon Butler describe how the Villa had doggedly fought out a nil-nil draw away at Anderlecht without too much interference! Nights once spent with mates playing Soccerama were now being put to better use, if you know what I mean!!!
All this extra attention was nice but it wasn’t helping me in my quest to become a professional sports journalist. I knuckled down at school and headed into exam time, no distractions, none at all…
well, apart from Everton reaching the Cup Winners Cup semifinal, we all decided we weren’t going to miss this one! On the twenty fourth of April we did indeed make the trip by train to Goodison Park to see the likes of Lothar Matthäus, Sören Lerby and Dieter Hoeneß in the flesh. That night, we witnessed ‘The Grand Old Lady’ rocking on one of my greatest nights as a football fan as firstly Graeme Sharp and then Andy Gray and finally Trevor Steven made the ground tremble and sent Everton to Rotterdam for a European final!
Whilst Everton headed for Rotterdam, I was heading for the exam halls to sit my CSE’s and O Level’s, the future was bright but, just a week or so later ‘the beautiful game’ would be brutally murdered, killed by fans of Liverpool Football Club rampaging across the terraces of a ramshackled Heysel Stadium in Brüssels! The event would have everlasting consequences for some. I knew two older lads who went to Heysel, one came home with a head fracture, the other with shear disquietude etched into his heart, neither would go to another football match in over a decade! The end result, once the dust had settled was that thirty nine innocents had lost their lives, some families across the continent wouldn’t be welcoming loved ones home and it was official, the ‘English disease’ was finally out of control!
One of the most disturbing aspects of Heysel was the way in which the directors of Liverpool Football Club addressed the situation in the subsequent days after the tragic events by trying to lay the blame on fans of both Chelsea & Millwall Football Clubs and The National Front and by falsifying evidence in stating that right wing literature had been found on the terraces! It was a lie, a despicable act and a truly a dark chapter for the game! For me it was so much more than that, IT WAS THE DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL GAME!
I managed to pass my O Level English Language exam (by the skin of my teeth) along with maths, geography & technical drawing, an eclectic mix of O Level passes to take into the battle of further education or impending employment! In the end, the events of Wednesday 29th May, along with the advent of a fledgling drinking career, the ever growing opportunities with the fairer sex and the fact that I didn’t really fancy up to five more years in what would effectively be ‘school’ would lead me away from my second childhood dream! I settled in the end for an apprenticeship in a stonemasons yard. Looking back, the decision has been kind to me, it’s taken me all around the country, allowed me to work on some of the lands most prestigious buildings and be very well paid for the privilege! From time to time I still wonder if I’d have made my way in the murky, cut throat world of sports journalism and when I pick through the inane, puerile drivel written by the likes of Martin Samuel, Charlie Wyett, Joe Short and the foul rantings of Brian Reade, I’d like to think I’d have more than held my own!
FOOTNOTE;-
Holland and I are still waiting for that elusive World Cup triumph, although we did enjoy our day in the sun when in 1988, a team led by the legendary Rinus Michels conquered not only European football but their own self doubts and in house demons to see Ruud Gullit lift the Henri Delaunay trophy in Munich’s impressive Olympic Stadium.
While the likes of Gullit, van Basten, Rijkaard and Koeman were partying on champagne in Bavaria, I celebrated with a heady cocktail of copious amounts of strong continental lager and LSD somewhere in London’s west end, the ‘acid house’ movement had found its way over from Chicago and over the next few years I would embrace the culture as only I knew how to! Football along with my own childhood dreams may have died but I was very much ‘Alive & Kicking’!
BEDANKT VOOR HET LEZEN, IK HOOP DAT JE ERVAN HEBT GENOTEN! VAARWEL.
…Dedicated to the memory of two men who helped shape my footballing journey…
David Meek, a football journalist of immense integrity, honesty and dignity who we sadly lost last week & Hendrik Johannes Cruyff, a true footballing genius!
THIS SPORTING LIFE 