The Bromley Boys

by David Roberts

  Our opponents on Saturday were Aveley Town, who were currently near the top of the Athenian League, which was of a slightly lower standard than the Isthmian league.

  If Bromley could beat them, we would be just ten games away from Wembley. I wanted to make sure I watched them throughout their entire cup run, so decided that I would be the best-behaved boy in the whole school.

  •••

  I didn’t rush out of my Latin class when the bell went at 12.30pm on Saturday. I made sure I finished my work first, carefully packed my books away and walked to the bus stop.

  I even thought about doing some revision on the bus back to Bromley, but decided that would be going too far. So I stared out of the window, daydreaming of that afternoon in May when I would watch skipper Roy Pettet get hoisted onto the shoulders of his team-mates, proudly holding the trophy – just as Manchester City’s Tony Book (a former non-league player himself) had done a few months ago.

  When I got home, I made sure I spent time with my parents, impressing upon them my new attitude.

  I then left to meet the coach which would take me to Aveley.

  Aveley was an hour away, so I settled down next to Peter and we immediately started talking about the big match. It had attracted so much interest that the Supporters’ Club had laid on two coaches – something I hadn’t seen before.

  I suspected Peter of having a contact on the committee, because he always had the very latest team news and gossip.

  He gave me the double-dose of good news that Amato had failed his fitness test and Nottage had passed his.

  But then he casually dropped a bombshell – Jan Wawrzewski had been left out of the team because he’d missed training. Apparently the new coach, Alan Basham, had said that fitness was going to have to be improved – he’d noticed players ‘hiding’ during recent games and part of his masterplan was a strict ‘No training, no selection’ policy. This applied to everyone except Pat Brown, who played for the Post Office on Thursday afternoons, which was considered to be the equivalent of a training session.

  Peter always seemed to have connections. If you wanted a ticket, he would somehow get his hands on one. If you needed a lift, he’d arrange it.

  I was planning on bringing up the subject of the job in the tea hut. If anyone could help me get it, Peter could.

  But just when I was about to ask him, I saw a road sign reading ‘Dartford Tunnel 3 miles’ and a feeling of total panic welled up inside me.

  I always hated going through the Dartford Tunnel. In a school science project, I had learnt about how much water pressure there was on the structure of the tunnel and, ever since, was convinced it would cave in whenever I went through it.

  To make matters worse, I could actually see water dripping down the sides of the walls.

  Despite it only taking a couple of minutes to get through, I shut my eyes and felt an enormous sense of relief when we came out the other side.

  By the time my heart rate had got back to something approaching normal, it started to speed up again as I got my first glimpse of the Aveley floodlights. It was an indication the ground was nearby, and the familiar feeling of excitement had set in.

  The coach drove into the official Aveley car park. We got out, paid our shillings at the gate and walked into the ground just as the teams were running out.

  We waited for the toss of the coin so that we would know which goal to stand behind and then took up our places behind Tony Wiseman, the Aveley goalkeeper.

  We weren’t alone there.

  If it was a bit odd seeing the home fans join us at the end their team was defending, it was completely bizarre hearing them talk of a possible giant killing. Even I, with my inflated view of the team, had never really seen Bromley as giants. Maybe Aveley were worse than I thought, but I felt strangely proud.

  The game kicked off, and the home team, playing in all blue, went straight onto the attack. Alan Soper was soon in action, saving from centre-half Wimpory and the inside-left, Berrecloth, who was causing Les Brockman (deputising for the injured Phil Amato) so much trouble, I actually wished Amato was playing instead.

  Inevitably, Aveley took the lead. Berrecloth beat Brockman yet again and crossed for someone to head home. I was sulking too much to care who scored and didn’t bother writing it down in my programme.

  When Aveley almost doubled their lead a few minutes later, I looked over at coach Alan Basham with a ‘Well, I hope you’re happy’ look, which was intended to convey my displeasure at the dropping of Wawrzewski, a misjudgment that was clearly responsible for the current scoreline. If a football team is losing, fans can usually find an excuse.

  But then Bromley settled down and, with one fatal mistake, were back in the match. The fatal mistake was made by the home goalie, Tony Wiseman. He caught an optimistic John Mears lob and then foolishly dropped the ball at the feet of Alan Stonebridge.

  1–1.

  The relief amongst the Bromley fans was immense. Roy and I shook hands, congratulating each other, as though we were personally responsible for the equaliser. Peter was beaming and even Derek looked cautiously optimistic.

  Cup games are even more nerve-wracking than league games because of their sudden death nature. In the league, there’s always next week, even if you’re 7–0 down. But in the cup, one slip and that can be it for the season.

  So even at 1–1 with ten minutes left, I was far from confident. Aveley were playing well and a giant-killing was still a possibility. But just as thoughts were turning to a replay, Roy Pettet over-hit a long ball and it bounced safely into the arms of their goalie, Wiseman. And then, inexplicably bounced out again. Before he had the chance to realise what was happening, the ball was nestled in the back of the net courtesy of the quick-thinking Alan Stonebridge, and Bromley were through. We shook hands with the Aveley fans and made the journey home, happy and relieved.

  The draw for the second qualifying round would come out on Monday and would be in Tuesday’s paper. I didn’t really care who we got, although another Athenian League team would be good, especially if it was at home.

  Last season, the cup run came to an abrupt halt before it had even started when Bromley were drawn away to Hillingdon Borough from the Southern League and lost 7–0.

  I was hoping for a kinder draw this year.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The draw had been made for the second qualifying round of the FA Cup. Hillingdon Borough, away. For the second season running.

  What made my heart sink most about this was Jimmy Langley.

  He was the Hillingdon player/manager but, a few years ago, he had reached even greater heights. He had been England’s left-back and also had a League Cup winner’s medal from his time at Fulham.

  The previous season, apart from having that big win over Bromley, Hillingdon had missed out on promotion to the Football League by just one place.

  If Bromley were going to beat them in a fortnight’s time, it would be a true act of giant-killing.

  But more immediately concerning was Tuesday’s game against Leytonstone. I had pretty much accepted that I would have to miss it due to my newfound exemplary school behaviour, although there was just a tiny part of me that was still hopeful of making the trip to east London.

  •••

  My superstition seemingly had no bounds. I’d been listening to Pick of the Pops on Sunday afternoon before going back to Johnson’s and my latest theory was that since the record ‘Bad Moon Rising’ had just gone to Number One, it was a sign that Bromley’s good run would now be over.

  It really did feel like a bad moon was on the rise, especially as it was now 6.15pm on Tuesday evening and I was going to have to do my maths and French homework while Peter, Derek and Roy would be watching Bromley without me. Life had never seemed less fair.

  Leytonstone (away) was shaping up as being the game of the season. Both sides were playing really well and only six points separated them.

  By 7.30pm, I had lost all interest in my homework. I went to t
he Common Room and switched on the radio, jumping from station to station in the desperate hope of finding commentary on the game, even though I knew full well I wouldn’t succeed. In all the time I’d been supporting Bromley, they had never been on the radio and weren’t likely to start now.

  By 7.45pm, I couldn’t take it any more. And that was when I had a brilliant idea. I would sneak out to the phone box on the village green and phone the Leytonstone ground. They would be able to tell me the score.

  I climbed out of the window and ran all the way to the phone box. I rang Directory Enquiries and was given the number. Putting the four pennies in the slot, I dialled the Leytonstone ground and soon heard the ringing tone. I pressed Button B and was through.

  ‘Leytonstone FC,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Hello, can you tell me the score please?’ I asked.

  ‘Hang on’, he said. ‘I’ll go and ask someone.’

  After a tense wait, I was given the news I had being fearing. Leytonstone were winning 1–0 and it must have been half-time.

  I thanked him and ran back to Johnson’s, where I climbed back through the window and sat back down to my homework.

  But concentration was impossible. I managed to hold out for just over ten minutes before I headed for the window again, climbed through and ran back to the phone box. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity for a young woman to finish her conversation and let me have my turn, I finally stepped into the box, which now smelled of Polo Mints, and urgently dialled the number which I had already memorised.

  ‘Hello, can you give me the score please?’, I asked breathlessly as soon as the phone was picked up at the other end.

  The man sounded less friendly this time, but said he’d go and find out. When he got back, he told me that it was still 1–0 to Leytonstone.

  I tried to get a bit more information, asking how Bromley were playing, if they’d had any good scoring opportunities and who were their best players, but he wasn’t being particularly helpful.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you, mate. All I know is it’s 1–0 Leytonstone.’ And with that, he put the phone down.

  The next time I rang, at 8.30pm, he sounded a lot less friendly.

  ‘It’s 2–0 to Leytonstone’ was all he had to say.

  I tried ringing again at 9.10pm, which was around full-time, but nobody picked up.

  It was several days before I discovered that 2–0 was the final score. The unbeaten run was at an end. And I hadn’t even been there to see it happen.

  At least I had Saturday to look forward to and the return fixture with Wycombe Wanderers. We had lost to them heavily in the first game of the season, but this was a different Bromley team.

  I was convinced that the loss to Leytonstone was just a blip and in my imagination, it had been two lucky goals that were responsible for Bromley’s defeat.

  •••

  There was a decent-sized crowd for the Wycombe game – for once, the official figure, which would doubtless be 400, would be accurate.

  I was at the Supporters’ Club hut talking to Roy, who was filling me in on what really happened at Leytonstone. He wasn’t able to answer all my questions in as much detail as I would have liked, because he hadn’t been able to commit the full 90 minutes to memory, nor had he made any notes in the programme he’d got for me.

  But he did tell me what I was hoping to hear – that Bromley deserved to win, the first goal was definitely offside, Stonebridge had been robbed by a biased referee and Bromley’s team was missing five first-choice players.

  There had also been a moment of huge drama when John Mears had fallen over and apparently broken his arm. He’d been carried off on a stretcher and it was thought he’d be out for at least six weeks.

  It turned out that he was only out for about 15 minutes as he returned for the second half, much to the relief of the Bromley faithful.

  Roy’s expert opinion was that Wycombe Wanderers were about to feel the full fury of the Bromley backlash. And as soon as I saw the determination on the clean-shaven face of Jeff Bridge, I sensed he was right.

  Bromley were all business as they went about their warm-up, raining shots in on Alan Soper’s goal. But as I surveyed the pitch from my usual position in the stands, I couldn’t help but notice that there were two glaring absences.

  Pat Brown wasn’t there.

  And neither was the entire Wycombe team.

  As 3 o’clock came and went, I could see the players looking at each other, not quite knowing what to do.

  In a moment of excitement, I considered the possibility of Bromley kicking off without the other team being there. Surely it was their responsibility to get to the ground on time? If that was so, we’d only win 1–0, because after we scored, they wouldn’t be able to kick off.

  But then I remembered reading about such a scenario in the Guardian, my parents’ newspaper of choice. It had a weekly feature called ‘You are the ref’, which illustrated various unlikely football scenarios (frequently involving a burst ball) and asked you to decide what action to take. A typical question was ‘A striker catches the ball in his turban and runs 20 yards into the net. Do you award a goal?’ You decided what action you’d take if you were the referee then turned the page upside down to reveal the answer.

  In the case of the missing opposition, the rules clearly stated that the match would be unable to start because a team constituted a minimum of seven players. It would be called off and either played at a later date or the points would be awarded to Bromley.

  So the best possible scenario would be for seven Wycombe players to arrive and for the game to take place, allowing Bromley to run up a huge score.

  But there was also another scenario to consider. What if the entire Wycombe team turned up but Bromley only had 11 players, including the substitute? Surely they would need someone else. Someone who had their boots and shin pads.

  I was ready.

  My thoughts were rudely interrupted by Charlie King coughing loudly on the tannoy to get our attention. Was he going to ask if anyone would be able to fill in for Pat Brown? No, he wasn’t. He was announcing that Wycombe had been stuck in traffic and had only just arrived. The match would now kick off at 3.10.

  Minutes later, I felt a huge sense of disappointment when I saw Pat Brown, still in his postman’s uniform, scurry past the stand and disappear through the tunnel towards the changing rooms. I later learned that he had also been held up in a traffic jam, but had got away with it thanks to the late arrival of our opponents. I wasn’t sure I believed his story, though. Every time I’d seen him out and about, he was on his Post Office bike.

  When the 12 missing players finally took the field, the match was able to get under way. Having missed the previous game, I was even more excited than usual to see Bromley in action. The training regime that had been established by coach Alan Basham had clearly made a difference to the players’ fitness. There seemed to be a lot more running, although much of it appeared to be aimless, as if they were trying to show the coach how fit they were and therefore not risk getting dropped for being unfit.

  Wycombe played the game at a more leisurely pace, content to let the ball do the work. The closest they came to scoring in the first half was when Bromley’s centre-half Alan Bonney kicked the ball out of Soper’s hands into the path of a Wycombe forward, who was so surprised he fluffed his shot.

  I would have been really happy with a 0–0 draw. Wycombe were third in the table and had an England amateur player in winger Len Worley, who had been happy to sign my autograph book after the 5-0 defeat on the opening day of the season.

  He had been a constant threat that day. But now, he was being so well marked by Les Brockman that he hadn’t had a look-in. I felt a surge of pride, thinking of how our reserve left-back had completely defused the threat of an international who was known as ‘the Stanley Matthews of amateur football’.

  The surge promptly vanished when Worley left Brockman trailing in his wake and coolly slid the ball past Sope
r from an inch-perfect cross for the winning goal ten minutes from time. It was Bromley’s second loss in a row.

  As I collected the empty cups and saucers, I glanced up and noticed the moon rising. A few months previously, the moon had symbolised hope and optimism as man took his first steps on it. Now, it had become a harbinger of doom.

  •••

  Peter and I were having a post-match cup of tea, when he asked me if I still liked to play football. It was the continuation of a conversation we’d started on the coach back from Aveley, when I confided in him how frustrating it was not to find a team to play for, since the school team I had started at Sevenoaks managed to attract just three boys to the first and only practice.

  He told me that the Bromley supporters had a team in the Orpington and Bromley District Sunday Football League and their first game of the season was tomorrow. How would I like to play?

  This was about as near as I had ever got to true happiness. Although I shrugged and said something like ‘Yeah, OK’, I felt as though I had won the big £100,000 pools jackpot.

  When teams were being picked at primary school, I had always been the last one chosen. Even after the kids with glasses, the asthmatics and the ones even fatter than me. Now, here I was, a first-choice player in a team which was sort of representing Bromley FC.

  Our team was called Hayesford Park Reserves. As Peter explained, we weren’t actually the reserve team for Hayesford Park, but calling ourselves that had somehow made it easier for him to enter us in the league.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to play in goal because Derek was the established goalie, so I told Peter that my preferred position was centre-forward. That was the most glamorous place to play – centre-forwards were always making headlines and being transferred for huge amounts of money. Allan Clarke had recently gone from Leicester to Leeds for an unbelievable £165,000. Other great centre-forwards included Derek Dougan, Peter Osgood and Alan Stonebridge. These were the born goalscorers and I wanted to be like them. The trouble was that surely everyone would want the number nine shirt. Did I really stand a chance? Especially since I was about as far away from being a born goalscorer as it was possible to be.