I walked the last mile and a half, finishing in the last group and hating my body for not being more sporty and hating Sevenoaks even more than I had ever hated it.
•••
Despite Bromley’s poor recent cup record (the previous season they had lost 0–9 and 0–7 in the two major trophies), the team would be taking part in a total of six different cup competitions during the season.
Most of these were variations on a theme. There was the Kent Senior Cup, the Kent Floodlit Cup, the London Senior Cup, the South Thames Cup, the FA Amateur Cup and the FA Cup.
This list was well down on recent years, when Bromley had also fought unsuccessfully for the Kent Amateur Cup, Bromley Hospital Cup, London Charity Cup, Hastings Charity Cup, Flushing Cup or London Challenge Cup.
Despite these countless opportunities to add to the trophy cabinet, Bromley hadn’t won anything since 1964 when four goals from Postman Pat Brown helped them beat Cray Wanderers in the Bromley Hospital Cup, a competition which seemed to exist purely so Bromley could play a random weaker team – sometimes Cray, sometimes, Beckenham Town – at home.
Embarrassingly, the weaker teams frequently won, despite the odds being heavily stacked in the hosts’ favour. Perhaps this was why the Bromley Hospital Cup had vanished from the fixture list.
The philosophy seemed to be that the more cups you enter, the better your chances of actually winning something.
And now that the FA Cup was out of the way, Bromley were free to concentrate on the Kent Floodlit Cup.
The Kent Floodlit Cup – a Cup that appeared to have been invented by a mad professor. To start with, it seemed a dubious honour to want to win – being the best amateur team in Kent at playing football under floodlights.
But what really got fans of all teams scratching their heads was the experimental nature of the point-scoring system. Ten points were awarded for a win and five for a draw. Each goal was worth an additional point, the flawed theory being that it would encourage high scoring – despite it being obvious to most that it would have the opposite effect, since a 0–0 draw was worth more than a 5-4 defeat.
Bromley were in a group with Gravesend and Northfleet, Bexley United, Erith and Belvedere, Dartford and, bizarrely, Grays Athletic.
Grays’ presence in the competition made no sense, since they were in Essex and therefore nowhere near Kent. They couldn’t have been there to make up the numbers, since our group had one more team in it than the other three groups. Still, they did fit the other essential criteria of playing football and having floodlights.
But the trip to Essex was still several weeks away.
First up for Bromley was an away fixture against the hopelessly out-of-form Gravesend and Northfleet. The exciting thing about this was the name of their ground, which was surely a sign.
It was called Stonebridge Road.
•••
There can be no more depressing place to be than Gravesend and Northfleet’s ground on a cold, wet and dark Wednesday night in October, soaked to the skin by the relentless rain, watching the team you love being torn apart by a much better side and knowing that you’ve got into so much trouble at school that your whole life was about to change completely.
This is how I came to be there …
I was queuing for lunch in the canteen the day before, when I was tapped on the shoulder and heard a sneering voice behind me say ‘Are you a homo?’
I looked round. It was a boy known as ‘Four eyes’. He wore glasses and all boys who wore glasses were known as ‘Four eyes’. He was the boy who had collided with me after Latin class on that Saturday morning.
I was aware that other conversations had stopped and silence had fallen over the canteen.
‘Say that again and I’ll beat you up,’ I said, desperately hoping he wasn’t going to say it again. I had never had a fight in my life and didn’t really want my first one to be in front of dozens of boys against someone who was bigger than me.
‘Are you a homo?’ he repeated, this time a little louder.
‘No,’ I said, hoping that would be the end of the matter.
‘Yes, you are. You’re a homo!’
Although I wasn’t certain, I didn’t think I was a homo. I was also fairly sure I was being insulted. I had to do something.
I didn’t want to hit him in case he hit me back.
So I put him in a ‘Judo’ Al Hayes-style headlock.
He struggled to get out and failed. But he did somehow manage to get me in a headlock at the same time.
We were standing there, in the lunch queue, arms around each other’s necks, bent forward and grunting with effort like a couple of Olympic weightlifters. We were temple to temple and I could feel his greasy hair against my face.
Eventually, momentum forced us to leave the queue and stagger around the room, joined together and bumping into tables like a drunken two-headed hunchback.
After about ten minutes of this and with the other boys bored of chanting ‘fight, fight, fight’, we manoeuvred our way to a bench on the side of the cafeteria and sat down together, headlocks still applied, as if by an unspoken agreement. We were both getting exhausted, taking it in turns to say:
‘Do you submit?’
‘No, do you submit?’
I was determined not to give in and so was Four Eyes. The minutes ticked by, with neither of us willing to concede. The bell went for the end of lunch break, but we didn’t move – although there was a touch more desperation in the ‘Do you submits?’
I then became slowly aware of a silence.
The encouraging shouts had gone. Something had changed.
A cough made me look up. The cougher was our Form Master and the look on his face indicated that I was in really, really big trouble.
Even then, I didn’t release my grip on Four Eyes’ neck. And neither did he let me go.
We had to be physically separated and were then told to wait outside the Form Master’s office.
CHAPTER TEN
When I was called in to the Form Master’s office, I had a pretty good idea what was in store for me. He had a large cane and, with a grim expression, told me to hold my hand out.
I did.
‘You have to be punished for fighting,’ he informed me.
‘I do?’
He then said that I would receive six strokes of the cane. I held my hand out and watched the cane move towards it in a downward arc.
The pain was intense. A lingering, stinging agony made even worse by repetition.
I bit my lower lip, determined not to cry. I was shaking with fear, but still the punishment continued. It was far, far worse than I ever imagined. At least he didn’t say that it was hurting him a lot more than it was hurting me.
It was my first-ever experience of deliberately inflicted violence. And it wouldn’t be my last for the year either.
From then on, things for me seemed to move quickly. My parents were summoned to the school and in a behind-closed-doors meeting, it was agreed that I would be leaving Sevenoaks. As half-term was about to start, now would be the perfect time for the school and I to part company. Collecting my clothes and belongings from Johnson’s was the last act of my Sevenoaks era. I didn’t have many goodbyes to say and there was no-one I would miss.
I was told I’d be going to a Langley Park Grammar School, news that was music to my ears. It was the school most of my primary-school friends had gone to and they were all football-mad, even though rugby was mostly played there.
I couldn’t wait to start. It would be a new beginning, a fresh start. It was a shame Bromley FC couldn’t have had the same sort of opportunity.
•••
The day I left Sevenoaks was the day John Mears left Bromley. This was a massive shock. There had been a steady stream of dissatisfied players leaving, but none had been regular first teamers. Some, I’d never even heard of. But Mears was different. He had been one of the best all season and was being replaced in the team by Doug Head, who was being rushe
d into the starting line-up for a game I was expecting to miss, but would now be attending.
The final piece of good luck came when Derek said that there was room in his car. In fact, there was plenty of room – no-one else had fancied the trip. Not even Roy.
The Gravesend game had ended in a 5-1 defeat but at least I’d been able to go to a game I had been resigned to missing.
Doug Head, who had the unenviable task of following in the footsteps of John Mears, had put Bromley into the lead and if the game had stopped there, I would have gone home happy. But it didn’t. Gravesend, helped by a couple of penalties and countless chances could still only manage five goals, when they really should have had at least ten.
Chairman Charlie King was showing the first signs of strain at Bromley’s ineptitude. In his programme notes for a later game, he sounded off about the loss at Gravesend, blaming, in no particular order:
• Bobby Lennox’s flu
• A whistle-happy referee
• Gasmask’s problems with double vision
• Eric Nottage’s knee
• Alan Bonney’s Greek trip
• Eddie Green’s wrist
• A bone-hard pitch
• Inferior floodlighting
• Two penalties, one extremely harsh
All things considered, maybe 5-1 wasn’t such a bad result.
Derek and I talked a lot on the way back. I told him about my recent school troubles and hinted that they might have been to blame for my poor Hayesford Park Reserves performances of late. We were doing even worse than Bromley. They had managed a couple of wins, at least.
Talking to Derek definitely helped. He felt that the new school would be perfect – he hadn’t gone there himself, but had friends who’d really liked it. For once, I was looking forward to half-term being over.
I spent the next day revisiting my old haunts. I walked to the park, noticing that, for once, ‘Judo’ Al Hayes wasn’t cleaning his car. But the soapy water on the gravel surrounding the Jag suggested that he’d done it fairly recently.
I went to the shop behind the park and got a Mr Kipling blackberry and apple pie, a Cornish pasty, a bottle of lemonade and a copy of the Bromley and Kentish Times, then sat down to watch my friends kick a ball around in the park and read the latest football news.
The main story stopped me in my tracks. One of my past favourites, Johnny Warman, was returning to Bromley after a short spell with an obscure Athenian League second division side.
Despite being one of the most outstanding players of recent years he did not look remotely like a footballer. No taller than 5’3", he had thinning red hair and, apart from when he was on the pitch, was never seen without a roll-up cigarette between his nicotine-stained fingers. His age seemed to be a closely guarded secret, although he was probably somewhere between his early thirties and forty. His build could only be described as scrawny with a podgy belly.
He was the type of winger that had gone out of favour with the England manager, Alf Ramsey. He liked to go on mazy jinking dribbles, much like Jimmy Johnstone of Celtic and Scotland, before delivering wonderful crosses for the likes of Eric Nottage to coolly slot home. These runs often ended with him leaning on his haunches having a coughing fit.
The only flaw in his game was a petulant streak that led to frequent disciplinary problems. It was a given that in every ten matches he played, he’d be booked a couple of times and sent off once.
He would then serve his suspension (usually a fortnight or so), return to the team and the cycle would start all over again.
My nickname for him was Ginger. This was also everyone else’s nickname for him including, I imagined, his famous brother Phil. Phil Warman played for Charlton Athletic and still lived in the same house as Ginger. I know this because I looked them up in the telephone directory.
Like Pat Brown, Ginger was a postman, but I think he worked in a different district. He played for his Post Office team, which meant he was exempt from training.
Was it a coincidence that two of our best players were both postmen? Yes, I think it probably was. Although if all the current problems were being put down to lack of fitness, I thought that having a job which entailed lots of walking had to help.
By the time I’d digested all the Bromley news, as well as my pie and pasty, I was ready to play football.
I decided to play on the right wing and pretend to be Bromley’s new signing.
•••
Just about the first thing the real Ginger Warman did on his return was to score a magnificent goal against high-flying Hitchin to level the score at 1–1.
The game, like the previous home fixture in the Isthmian League, had started late because the visitors hadn’t got to the ground on time. Hitchin’s excuse was that they were held up by the fog and consequently kick-off was moved to 3.20pm.
At 3.55pm, Hitchin took the lead when Phil Amato wandered upfield, forgetting his marking duties and a man called Giggle headed home.
Half an hour later, Ginger Warman was on the spot to tap the rebound from a stunning Stonebridge shot, which had hit the post, into the empty net. Unfortunately, he took a wild swing and missed the ball completely. But as the defenders were still wondering how he’d managed to not score, Ginger recovered his composure and slammed it home at the second attempt.
And 1–1 was how it looked like finishing until a couple of late, late goals gave Hitchin a flattering 3–1 win and condemned the late-fading Bromley team to extra training and me to another night of misery.
The improved fitness promised by Alan Basham hadn’t yet materialised.
•••
The first day at my new school was much like my last day at my last school, in that I loved every minute.
Everything about Langley Park was better. The buildings were much more modern, as though they actually belonged in the 20th century. The boys seemed far more normal to me. Some, I recognised from primary school.
And there was no Latin. Just French, which was taught in the language laboratory – a place that utilised headphones and tape recorders. It sounded incredibly exciting.
I was also thrilled by the tuck shop, which sold all my favourite sweets and crisps, including Acid Drop Spangles, which had a kind of tangy bitter-lemon favour and hadn’t been available anywhere in Sevenoaks.
The boys were much friendlier here, with several saying hello and one or two even asking me about my previous school.
There was a group of four or five skinheads who didn’t look so welcoming. They were hanging around in a corner of the playground and all wore Arsenal scarves around their wrists. A couple of them were huge, like full-grown men. Other boys were keeping their distance.
It was difficult to look intimidating while wearing a maroon blazer, but they managed it effortlessly. I noticed them talking to a boy I’d known since I was five. His name was Morrie and I immediately realised he could be my ticket into the hardest clique in the entire school.
He’d already said hello to me when we first saw each other and seemed quite friendly. I remembered a few photos I’d taken when we were at primary school, when Morrie was much fatter. In the pictures, he was lifting up his shirt to reveal a large belly. His hair had been a basic short back and sides, nothing like the severe crop he now sported.
I thought that if I showed these pictures to his skinhead friends, they’d immediately accept me. What I failed to take into account with this plan was what Morrie’s reaction might be.
Energised by my idea, I picked one of the many kickabouts happening in the playground and asked if I could join in. They not only let me, but also said I could play in goal. Fitting in seemed far easier than I had ever imagined.
I even passed The Grubby, who was in the year above me, on my way to the canteen for lunch. He was the only other person I’d seen who wore the black, white and gold Bromley enamel badge in the lapel of his maroon blazer.
Our eyes met and we solemnly nodded at each other.
•••
I’d been looking forward to the Kent Floodlit Cup fixture at home to Bexley with a feeling of excited anticipation that was way out of proportion to the actual event.
I carefully packed my autograph book, even though both teams had signed it the previous season.
But one man was playing tonight who didn’t play in that fixture. And now I was determined to land the prized signature of the Bexley United substitute.
It was Dave Clark, formerly of Bromley.
I arrived at the Hayes Lane ground early and looked around, to see if I could see the other four of the Dave Clark Five, but soon realised I didn’t know what they looked like.
For once, I had more interest in watching the opposing team run out than Bromley.
I didn’t have to wait long.
The visitors ran out purposefully but were wearing tracksuit tops, preventing me from identifying the player with the number 12 on his back.
From a distance, none of them looked like the Dave Clark Five front man. I didn’t know for certain that I had been the victim of a cruel practical joke until after the coin toss, when the players stripped down to their red shirts and one of them trotted off to the bench.
It was definitely not the same Dave Clark.
Making the best of a bad job, I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for his autograph anyway. He was happy to sign.
It hadn’t been the first time I’d been fooled into thinking a footballer and pop star with the same name were the same person. I’d long been convinced that Neil Young of Manchester City was also Neil Young of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It wasn’t until I saw a photo of the footballing Neil Young in Shoot! magazine that I realised his hair was considerably shorter than the singing Neil Young and that he was a different person altogether.
It explained certain inconsistencies – how a Canadian hippie came to be playing for the FA Cup holders for instance – and I felt embarrassed for ever thinking they were one and the same.
ISTHMIAN LEAGUE HOW THEY STAND
17TH OCTOBER 1969
The Bromley Boys Page 8