Pat Van Den Hauwe

by Pat Van Den Hauwe

  A week after the trip to Leeds we played Newcastle off the park at Goodison, beating them 4–0 to go back to the top of the League where we were to remain for the rest of the season. It was an unbelievable run we went on and were unbeaten for 28 games before losing to Forest a few days before our famous trip to Rotterdam. It’s never nice getting beaten but, by then, we had already been crowned champions so, although the run came to an end, I can’t remember Howard throwing any tea cups at us after the game!

  Having got top spot back, we still had almost 20 games to play, but there was a deep belief within the squad that on our day we could beat anybody. Along the way, we had to dig deep at times, none more so than on trips to Leicester and Old Trafford in late February and early March.

  I never liked playing at Filbert Street. It was a horrible, run-down shit-hole of a ground, the pitch was poor and I had not had much joy there with Birmingham. Along with Wimbledon and Luton, it was a ground I never enjoyed playing at. It’s hard to explain, but I never seemed to get out of the starting block at those places.

  In the lead up to the game, the press had been getting on Andy Gray’s back, mentioning that since he had replaced Adrian he had not scored. In fairness to Andy, his game was far more than just goals … just as well really! Joking aside, he had fitted in brilliantly and Sharpy had, according to Andy, been getting goal after goal on the back of his assists and hard work. Strikers, however, lived and died by their goal per game ratio and, as it stood, Andy’s was none in ten, and even John Bailey knew that was not great and he was piss-poor at maths!

  That changed at Leicester and Gray scored a brace, a cracking half-volley to win us the game and a trademark header when he put his nut where very few others would dare to go! Up front for Leicester was a young Gary Lineker, and it took the brilliance of Neville in goal to secure our win and to stop Lineker getting a hatful. I think that day Howard decided that Lineker’s pace could cause any defence problems and noted it in his little black book.

  A draw at Old Trafford was a good point earned despite the fact that we missed a late penalty. Four days later, I made my European début in a 3–0 win against the Dutch outfit Fortuna Sittard when Andy Gray notched a hat-trick to give us an outstanding chance of making the semi-finals.

  Another draw at Villa when we played really poorly gave Spurs a chance to overtake us at the top but they did not take it and when we beat Arsenal at home and Southampton away, our visit to White Hart Lane was regarded by some sections of the media as a ‘title decider’. What a game that was.

  Gray scored early on; then Trevor Stevens went through and rounded the ’keeper to send the Everton masses into ecstasy. But one of their defenders thumped a pile-driver in with a few minutes to go, to set up a finale that was more like the Alamo. With the last attack of the game, they won a corner and it was met by their big forward Falco who beat us to the ball and thundered a header in. I never even bothered to look and stood there thinking our lack of concentration had cost us dearly.

  As I turned round for the inevitable inquest as to whose fault it was, the lads were mobbing Southall, congratulating him on one of his greatest ever saves. Somehow, he had managed to tip Falco’s bullet header from point-blank range over the bar and that was the very moment I knew we were going to be crowned champions sooner rather than later.

  Back in the dressing room, we were ecstatic, apart from Nev, who sat there with his customary cup of tea bemoaning the fact that he had been beaten from 20 yards and had not managed to hold Falco’s header! Southall was a perfectionist; he could keep a clean sheet and get the man of the match award after saving a couple of penalties, but he would still pick holes in his own performance. The man was destined to become one of the world’s greatest ever goalkeepers, which indeed he did.

  I missed the next game at home to Sunderland when we won 4–1 having gone a goal down in the first few minutes. Poor old Bails must have thought he was our unlucky charm but, once again, Andy Gray came up trumps with a couple of classic headers as we coasted to victory. Unlike previous games I had missed, I was comfortable that I would be back given Mr Kendall’s previous call that his strongest 11 contained my good self.

  As well as the league games, we were slowly getting on with our job in Europe. Everton had never won a European trophy and were probably the biggest British club not to have done so. It was a tough ask, though, as we were paired with cup favourites Bayern Munich after we saw off Sittard 2–0 in the away leg.

  My memory is not the best concerning individual games, but I will never forget a streaker running on the pitch in Sittard. To our dismay, though, it was a bloke – and to piss us off further he was a ‘big’ bloke, if you see where I’m coming from! Now I am not one for running around after these publicity-seeking idiots, and this bloke was on the opposite side of the pitch anyway, so I watched as he pranced about a bit before trying to climb over the fence to rejoin the crowd. He was lucky as, just as he was scaling the fence, a police dog handler appeared with this huge Rottweiler that had his eye on the bloke’s sausage and, to this day, I don’t know if the poor fella was ever able to have kids despite his couple of minutes of fame!

  The trip to Bayern was always going to be tough but, to make matters worse, we had a few injuries and both Andy Gray and Kevin Sheedy missed out. Mr Kendall showed his class as a manager and played five across the middle to contain the Germans and we dug deep. Although it was hard at times, we held out for a goalless draw, a truly great result. It was during games like that when we realised how important the likes of Alan Harper and Kevin Richardson were to us; no matter when or where they were asked to play, they came in and never let us down, fantastic lads and model professionals. No matter who in the squad came in as cover, we were like a well-oiled machine and the result was poetry in motion.

  The game in Munich was one of the hardest games I ever played in; those Germans could run all day, were disciplined and were also very good footballers with the likes of Augenthaler, Matthäus, Hoeness and Rummenigge as household names. I’m not sure if they had heard of Van Den Hauwe, Sharp, Ratcliffe or even Andy Gray, but I’ll tell you what – by the time we had finished with them, they wished they hadn’t!

  To get them back to Goodison on level terms made us favourites and that’s all the gaffer had asked us to do. We never went out looking for a draw, but he drummed it into us that if we could get them at our place needing to win by a single goal, he’d be happy. Happy he was!

  A lot has been said about the home game with Bayern. I still stand by what I’ve said about it – to this day, it stands as the best game of my life, it was quite simply as good as it gets. The atmosphere that night will never be bettered. We went on to win cups and, although we never actually won anything that night apart for a game of football, that night, believe me, was the night to end all nights.

  We showed our character and the quality we also had in our side to come back from a goal down and beat them 3–1. They were bit upset about the way we got stuck into them in the second half but there is no other way I can put this – fuck them! We had not gone that far to be rolled over by a bunch of Germans playing pretty football. We had to match them in every department and that’s what we did and the noise that greeted our goals and the final whistle was something I think about all the time. As I have said, nothing has ever matched it since.

  After that game, we let our hair down a bit, but we were a couple of wins away from clinching the title, so it was nothing too crazy … honest! I seriously had to pinch myself to make sure this was all real – for years, I’d been playing in a struggling team with no hope of winning anything. Now I was a few games away from clinching the treble. I was in dreamland, and it was a feeling I never wanted to end!

  By the weekend we had recovered, had plenty of rest and knew if we beat Norwich then the League Championship was almost ours. We breezed it and hammered them 3–0. Our strikers drew blanks but, as usual, others weighed in with the goals and the usual suspects, Mountfield and Steven,
were joined on the score sheet by Paul Bracewell.

  At times like this, there is a danger that nerves can get to you, but we were so confident in our own and each other’s ability that we knew if we did things that came naturally to us then we would win, it really was as simple as that. Howard, Colin Harvey and Mick Heaton were superb and kept us in line, never letting us get carried away but, at the same time, installing a will to win and inner strength into us that made us confident without being blasé. Those three men were fantastic at their jobs.

  We went to Sheffield Wednesday a week later and, although it was not one of our better performances, we ground out a 1–0 win. It was another clean sheet for Neville but how he kept one that day only he will know. People mention the save at Spurs, but that day he pulled off a couple that I was close to and, I kid you not, they were out of this world. One save – I think it was from Varadi – was unbelievable and, as he walked past me shaking his head, he muttered, ‘I fucking give up!’ Neville must have been a forward’s worst nightmare. Like Varadi that day, they often did everything right, but were still unable to beat our big man between the sticks.

  From being neck and neck with Spurs just a few weeks earlier, we were now 11 points clear and clinched the league two days after the win at Sheffield on a bank holiday Monday against QPR. Unlike our last meeting, there was no way this lot were going to spoil my day. Before the game, Howard gave us all the usual script: ‘Go out and do your jobs and the game will be won …’ adding, ‘… and we will be champions!’ Every single one of us went down that tunnel knowing we would not let him down; we never did and I was happy to sling a cross over with my left foot late on that Sharpy headed in to seal a 2–0 victory and to get Goodison rocking.

  It was a bit of a let-down that some prick in a suit at the FA had decided that we could not get the trophy that day, although we were eventually presented with it two days later after beating West Ham 3–0. We had played three games in five days, used just 12 players, scored 6 and conceded 0 and not moaned once about being tired or needing squad rotation … and I loved every minute of it!

  The following week, our unbeaten run came to an end with a defeat at Forest. After the game, we saw the scenes at Bradford on TV where 56 spectators died and more than 200 were injured as a fire ripped through the Main Stand at Valley Parade during a game with Lincoln City. I had never seen anything like it, it was horrific, and I’m just glad that the tragedy was seen by many as a wake-up call for English clubs to improve the state of their grounds. That disaster could have happened at any ground in the country, including our own. On the same day at Birmingham, my ex-team-mates clinched promotion but a young boy was killed when a wall collapsed on him during a disturbance outside St Andrew’s. Losing our unbeaten run meant nothing on such a tragic day for football.

  With one cup in the Goodison cabinet, we still had another two to go for, so off we went to Rotterdam to face Rapid Vienna. Things were moving so fast for me I never had time to think about how important these games were. We landed in Holland, had a look around the ground, did a few stretches and slept. There was no need to train as such, as we were super fit with the amount of games we were playing.

  The worry about the Vienna game was that everyone knew they were no Bayern Munich. Of course, they were a good side, they had made it to the final, but we knew we were better than them. It took a few words from the gaffer and coaches, not so much to tell us about being too cocky, but more of a warning that we had come so far, so don’t fuck it up now!

  The night went totally to plan and we were cruising with a couple of minutes to go and, despite them getting a late goal to pull it back to 2–1, we went up the other end, Sheeds made it 3–1 and Everton’s first European trophy was bagged. Going up the steps to get my medal was like a fairytale … I could not get my nut round it!

  In just eight months I had left a struggling side and was now on the verge of winning the treble. Although we sadly missed out on that, it was the most amazing time of my life. It was so good that even in my darkest hours the memories kept me in good spirits. I am so proud to have been a member of that team and played my part in making it such a fantastic season for Everton Football Club.

  As a child, when you are kicking a ball about with your mates in the street or in the school playground you dream of playing in front of thousands of people and the pinnacle of that dream is holding a cup above your head as those thousands of people chant your name.

  That season, my dream came true.

  6

  ENGLAND EXPECTS …

  With playing in such a successful side as Everton, winning cups and getting rave reviews from quite a few so-called ‘experts’, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I was approached to play for my country. But even by my own unpredictable standards, it did shock me when it was a Welsh shirt I pulled on for my international début!

  Everton had played Manchester United on the Saturday and I was called in by the gaffer who told me that the Belgium manager Guy Thiess had been at the match. He’d wanted to have a look at me and have a chat to see if I was interested in being selected for my country of birth. It was a no-brainer – of course I was. Most of the lads were away during international breaks and, although I did not mind playing head tennis and five-a-side with the kids, I was a bit pissed off at having no drinking partners to go out with.

  Remember, at that time Southall and Ratcliffe were Welsh regulars; Gary Stevens, Trevor Steven, Reidy and Paul Bracewell had all made the England squad; Andy Gray and Sharpy were with Scotland; even Sheeds had landed himself in the Irish squad, leaving myself, Bails, Derek Mountfield, Inchy (who was mostly on the treatment table) and the super-subs Kev Richardson and Alan Harper as the only senior players turning up at Bellfield during the week.

  About an hour later, Guy called and immediately I was not impressed. He harped on about the style of play he liked his teams to play and told me I would have to adapt if I was to make the grade as I had so much to learn. I thought he was on the blower to try and persuade me to join his side – which, by the way, were not really up there with the Brazils and Italys of world football – not to give me a lecture about how shit I was! Things got worse when he kept telling me about how Enzo Scifo pulled all the strings on the pitch, and when I remarked that I had never heard of him, I swear I thought he had fainted because the line went silent.

  Eventually, he offered me a chance to play for the Under-21s as an over-age player to see if I could ‘adapt’ to this world-beating system he had bored the arse off me with for the last 20 minutes. I told him I would consider his offer and put the phone down.

  Despite thinking the bloke was a bit of a clown, I still was realistic enough to know that I’d have to consider his crap offer if I was to fulfil all footballers’ dreams of playing in a major tournament like the World Cup finals. Howard asked me how things had gone and he could sense that I was not too thrilled by Guy’s plans for me, and he told me to wait a day or two as a couple of other managers wanted a chat with me and that England had been on to him asking if I’d make contact.

  Now, I had a British passport as I had been in England since the age of five, and my mother was born in London, so obviously I thought that I could play for England. I was excited about what Howard had told me, so I got the number and my call was answered by England – Mike England, manager of Wales! I’d been expecting to be put through to Bobby Robson, manager of England!

  I hit it off with Mike at once – he was fantastic. He told me that Big Nev and Rats had told him I was doing a great job for Everton and that Ian Rush had also put a word in for me and that if I was interested then I could meet up with the squad for the next game with the view of getting my international career off the ground. I was highly impressed with the way he went about selling the job to me and found him to be a very honest and genuine bloke. Everything I found out about him since has confirmed this initial impression, and I still think the same way about him to this day.

  My mind was made up
and I decided that it was a far better bet to play for Wales than to play for Belgium. Now, if I am 100 per cent honest, I will admit this was not purely a football decision, as I was informed by a journalist that if I opted to play for my country of birth then I may have had to do nine months’ national service in the Belgian Army!

  Wales were a decent side but were lacking strength in depth; as well as the Everton duo they had Rushy, who, at the time, was world class, Mark Hughes was making a name for himself and the likes of Joey Jones and Mickey Thomas were seasoned campaigners, even though they were probably on the wrong side of their careers. I thought Wales were probably just a few players away from being a really good side who could match Europe’s élite. If I could help, I was bang up for it as it seemed a far better bet than playing for Guy Thiess and his amazing formation led by Mr Scifo. It was also hard to forget that there was a chance I’d be square bashing, polishing boots and belt buckles as well as shooting bullets out of World War II rifles at tin cans all week.

  The following day, just as my mind was made up and I was about to tell Mr England my decision, I got a call from Bobby Robson asking me if I’d consider joining up with the England lads for a get-together with a view to playing in a forthcoming friendly.

  My head was battered, I was in absolute pieces and was glad that Howard, as always, was there to offer his expert advice. Basically, he told me to take my time and again weigh up all the options. He had been a quality player – part of Everton’s legendry midfield who, along with Colin Harvey and the late great Alan Ball, were etched in Goodison folklore as ‘The Holy Trinity’. However, he had missed out on an international career having played at all levels for England apart from the full squad, which to this day many people find hard to believe given the talent he had.

  Quite simply, he told me to see who may get a game before me, so I looked at what England had and it was a scary line-up of players who I’d have to shift if I was to get a cap or two. Alan Kennedy was a great left-back but had won just a couple of caps given that Kenny Sansom was first choice. I asked myself if I could get in before those two, let alone a handful of others who, like myself, were on the fringes of being called up. Howard then told me that he had recommended me to both Mr England and Mr Robson as a centre-half, which I truly appreciated as it showed the kind of faith he had in my ability.