by Joe Thompson
After four months of training with Rochdale, the club at last offered me a two-year YTS contract. I was only 16, but Keith was keen to play me as much as possible, even at the expense of the second- and third-year players. That probably wouldn’t have happened elsewhere, so it was the perfect place for me to develop. In your first year, you are assigned specific tasks you have to carry out in the first-team dressing room. A typical day began at 8:30am and ended at 4pm. The first job of the morning was scrubbing boots, which I loved, because the smell of the polish was beautiful. I used to love buffing the boots, trying to get them as shiny as possible. A nod of approval from the first-team players told me I was doing a good job. After that, we’d run a bath and put cones and discs in there, making sure that there was no mud left in between the little grooves in the plastic. If we didn’t play well, the jobs became more menial. After one bad defeat, we all had to bring a toothbrush with us to training and scrub the dressing room tiles and get stuck into the grouting, making sure everything was gleaming.
When the clock struck 4pm, I didn’t want to go home. I’d happily have stayed there for a few more hours. I loved being around the first-team dressing room; there is nothing else quite like it. You would hear all sorts of stuff about girls and the banter they’d had with their mates, which you just wouldn’t get away with talking about in a normal office. Every young player has to do an initiation song, which I think is a brilliant way of integrating new players, but it’s a ruthless couple of minutes. The build-up is nerve wracking, and if you’re rubbish you get heckled and various items are thrown at you, but it’s all good fun. I remember I had to stand on a Lucozade box and belt out my song. I can’t remember exactly what I sang, but I think it was something by Shaggy. My voice isn’t the best, but I got a round of applause and I think they respected the fact I put my hand up to be one of the first to do it.
We were only young but we were like a pack of hyenas and weren’t afraid to challenge the first team. We were always cheeky and would push the boundaries to see how much we could get away with. On the training pitch I would often try to nutmeg the older players and then shout ‘megs’ on the occasions I managed to slip the ball through their legs. If there was a tackle to be made, we made it properly. We weren’t going to be intimidated. That is the way it should be. It is a dog-eat-dog game and eventually we wanted to take their places, so we made sure we competed from day one.
I was a youth-team player but would often train with the first team. The club were in League Two and the style was very different to what I was used to. There was more of an emphasis on getting the ball into the channels and then going from there, rather than playing it out from the back. I had to adapt, but I was surprised by how good the players were technically. Paddy McCourt was a brilliant talent who could waltz through teams at will. Grant Holt and Rickie Lambert also stood out. I remember watching Rickie practise free kicks after training had finished. The consistency of his ball striking was incredible. The goalkeeper had set up a wall with four mannequins and knew exactly where he was going to put it, but he kept picking out the top corner. Once he was done with one side he then started finding the opposite one with ease. Playing with them made me a better player. I could stand the ball up at the back post and Lambert would win it every time. If I found Holt with a pass, the ball would stick to his chest, knee or foot.
Lambert was a wonderful role model to have at that time. He was on Liverpool’s books as a kid before they let him go when he was a teenager. Blackpool signed him as an apprentice when he was 16, and he made his debut a year later, but only played a few games in the old Second Division before he was released. He was a free agent for nearly four months and spent time working in a beetroot bottling plant to make ends meet, until Macclesfield Town offered him a contract. Just over a decade later, he was scoring goals in the Premier League with Southampton and playing for England. Despite his obvious talent, if you’d told me he’d become an international when he was at Rochdale, I wouldn’t have believed you. It just goes to show what you can achieve if you work hard and refuse to give up.
It’s easy to dismiss the ability of players outside the Premier League, but there is a lot of quality lower down the leagues. There are so many players who have been released by top clubs before forging a career in the Football League. There is definitely a big difference, technically and physically, between the elite and the bottom end of the Football League, but the gap is minimal between the Championship and League Two. That’s why I think it’s so important for young lads to go out on loan to see what level they are at. I maintain that academies are great for nurturing talent, but playing against grown men, who are fighting to win and pay their mortgages every month, is a much sterner test than a development squad game on an empty training ground.
I was growing up fast and beginning to find my own identity. After leaving United, I felt I’d lost part of mine, but I was starting to develop an individual streak now. That started with getting a pair of boots that fitted my personality and playing style. I wasn’t on a lot of money, just the standard YTS wage of £55 a week, so I asked my mum if she’d buy me the silver Nike Mercurial Vapor boots, which Thierry Henry and the Brazilian Ronaldo used to wear. At United, we only ever wore black boots, so it was exciting to be able to wear something else. If you wear silver boots and play on the wing you instantly become a target, but I didn’t mind that. It puts a bit of pressure on you to deliver. If you wear bright colours and don’t have the courage to get on the ball and make things happen then you probably shouldn’t be wearing them.
After a dark few months, my confidence had returned and it was boosted further by my GCSE results. I managed to come out with an A*, four As, four Bs and a couple of Cs. I’d done that well, my mum didn’t believe me when I ran back to the car and told her. There was another Joseph Thompson in the same year group, who has since gone on to become a doctor, and she asked me if I was sure there hadn’t been a mix-up. Thankfully, the results were all mine. I was on a roll and felt like nothing could get in my way.
Chapter 5
Losing the L plates
THERE’S nothing quite like a good training session to put a spring in the step of an apprentice footballer. Well, that and the sight of an attractive female. The sun was shining as I headed home one afternoon, when I was halted in my tracks by a pretty girl across the road. She was tall, with long dark hair, and dressed pristinely from head to toe. I swung my bag over my shoulder and strutted over to her to say hello.
Lucy Marsh was my first girlfriend, but we lived very different lives. I was a 17-year-old apprentice footballer and she was a 16-year-old student at Bury Grammar School. She lived in a beautiful house, in an area called Milnrow, about 15 minutes away from me, on the other side of Rochdale. After our first date at the local cinema, her mum picked her up in a drop-top Mercedes SLK, while I waited for a taxi. Her dad was a well-respected businessman, who made his money from turning around fish and chip shops and selling them on. At weekends, him and his son, Tom, played golf together.
I was inspired by the life Lucy’s parents had provided for their children through years of hard work. They were the example of the solid family unit I wanted to build for myself when I was older. At the time, the prospect of driving an expensive car or living in a posh house was a distant dream. My YTS contract, which is for youth-team scholars between the ages of 16 and 18, was just £55 a week. Not that it mattered; getting paid to play football seemed like a pretty good deal when most teenagers my age were working part-time jobs in shops and supermarkets. My modest wage also kept me hungry to win a professional contract and, although I didn’t know it at the time, it wouldn’t be long before Rochdale tied me down to senior terms.
Steve Parkin and his assistant, Tony Ford, handed me my professional debut at the end of the 2005/06 season. I’d only just turned 17 but was named on the bench for a Tuesday-night game at home to Carlisle United and came on for the final ten minutes. I played on the right wing and came up against a vet
eran Spanish left-back with long hair called Igor Aranalde. He was vastly experienced, but he had no pace and I fancied my chances of showing him up. Little did I know, his speed was in his head. He did everything with one touch and I couldn’t get near him. I’d learnt my first lesson: brain always triumphs over brawn.
We lost 2-0 that afternoon against a quality Carlisle team, which included players like Karl Hawley and Danny Graham, who would go on to have good careers higher up the divisions. It wasn’t the ideal result, but I was buzzing to have made my first appearance and loved playing in front of a real crowd. My tournament experience at Manchester United, where we often played in front of thousands of fans, prepared me for the booing, emotion and pantomime of matches. At one tournament at PSG’s Parc des Princes stadium, there were over 10,000 supporters watching our games, so I felt at ease playing in front of a couple of thousand people at Spotland.
I wasn’t the only youngster who made his debut that night. Theo Coleman, who I’d played alongside at Manchester United and for Rochdale’s youth team, started the game on the left wing. He’s one of my best mates and also one of the most naturally gifted footballers I’ve ever played with. He was blessed with incredibly fast feet and should’ve gone on to play in the Premier League, but his attitude just wasn’t right. United released him because he didn’t put the effort in, and he left Blackburn Rovers and Burnley for the same reason before ending up at Rochdale. I’m not exaggerating when I say that he was better than Raheem Sterling at the same age.
His demise reminds me a bit of Ravel Morrison’s. Theo needed to play in a team where the other ten players would do his running for him, so he could concentrate on getting on the ball in the final third. I know his unfulfilled promise bothers him now he’s a little older and wiser. I still remember Keith’s words the day he signed him: ‘You’ll either leave here for millions or you’ll go and work night shifts somewhere, so people won’t recognise you.’ He wasn’t too wide of the mark.
I knuckled down and was handed my full debut away to MK Dons in the first month of the following season. They were one of the best sides in the league, with the likes of Keith Andrews, Lloyd Dyer and Izale McLeod in their side. I was buzzing that the manager trusted me to not only start but also play the full 90 minutes against a quality side. There was no chance of me getting carried away, though, because I had another unofficial role – tea boy on the first-team coach. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but I loved being in that environment.
The coach had its own social structure. The front was reserved for the manager and coaching staff, while the back was where the bad lads and jokers would assemble to play cards. As soon as the journey started, numerous copies of the Racing Post would appear and the lads would start picking out their bets for the weekend. After they’d made their selections, they’d read the newspapers and see what journalists and opponents had been saying before the game.
In my early days, I would sit and watch in fascination. I remember on one away trip to Torquay, I was on my feet for about six hours, making teas and coffees. Darrell Clarke, who is now manager of Bristol Rovers, is one of the funniest blokes I’ve ever met, and he decided to stitch me up. We could clearly see their ground getting closer and closer, but Darrell decided to play dumb. ‘We’ve been travelling for hours, where is the ground?!’ he said. ‘It’s there Clarkey, it’s there!’ I shouted and pointed out of the window. The whole coach burst out laughing. They’d successfully reeled in another victim.
I always got on with the older players and loved hearing the stories they had to tell, but I was petrified of a scouser called John Doolan. He’s a coach at Everton now and we still talk every now and then, but when I was 17 the sound of him shouting at me in his thick accent when I gave the ball away or didn’t pass to him shook me to my boots. I wasn’t scared of facing him on the pitch, but if I saw him walking down the corridor he’d give me a jab and say, ‘Good morning, how are you?’ The other lads had their own ways of keeping me in check. I was still on boot cleaning duties and if I’d played well in training they’d throw their boots at me to scrub with a little more venom.
Someone else who enjoyed doing that was Keith Hill, who replaced Steve Parkin in February 2007, with the club mired in the relegation zone. He was initially given the job on a temporary basis but guided us to a ninth-place finish to win a permanent deal. It was a remarkable achievement. His bullish style was the same as it was with the youth team, and it got the best out of that group of players. It was an experienced squad, with lads who had children, mortgages and little businesses on the side. They weren’t little boys, they were grown men with very real responsibilities and their maturity was a big reason we were able to get out of trouble and escape relegation.
Keith had made the bold move to place his faith in youth and promoted several lads to the first team. His approach with me remained the same. If he saw me getting excited about anything he’d be there like a shot to put me down. I once read a quote from Will Smith that said you need to fan someone’s flame to get the best out of them, but Keith has never fanned mine. He’s probably the only manager who can compliment you one minute and then retract it almost immediately. He would often say to me, ‘You played really well today, but you lost the ball here and should’ve passed it there. In fact, you only played ok.’ Sometimes I would think to myself, ‘Do you ever praise me?’ He would never change his approach with me, which is fine, because I knew he just wanted to get the best out of me.
Outside of the game, we didn’t speak that much. When I was diagnosed with cancer he danced around it and spoke about everything else apart from that. I suppose that was his way of trying to keep my spirits up by avoiding talking about my illness. I’ve got massive admiration for him and he’s taught me a lot about character and the importance of having strong values. It’s relentless and tough under him, because he doesn’t miss a trick. If you think you can hide or not make a run, he will see it. He gives you the freedom to make decisions but he also demands a lot from you. Once you’ve played under Keith, you realise it won’t ever be tougher under anyone else. His favourite motto is, ‘one singer, one song’. Basically, do it his way or find somewhere else to play.
At that point, I didn’t have an agent. A few of my older team-mates had pointed me in the direction of some reputable people, but I didn’t feel I’d clicked with any of them. That changed when I met Gary Lloyd. He was a small guy with ginger hair and walked round with his chest puffed out at all times, exuding confidence. He reminded me of Ari Gold, the talent agent played by Jeremy Piven in the TV show The Entourage. We were the complete opposite in appearance and personality, but we connected from the minute we sat down at a hotel not far from the ground. At the time he had a very small stable of players on his books, including Glenn Murray and Gordon Greer. I preferred quality over quantity and felt if I was with someone with fewer clients I’d get a bit more of his time. He also told me he’d be able to get me free pairs of Nike boots, which I knew would save me a few hundred quid a year.
Lloydy lived in Manchester and seemed to know everyone in the city. He was good friends with Ryan Giggs and went to United games with him when they were kids. His background was in accountancy, so I knew that he knew his stuff from a financial point of view. Players often ask friends to represent them, who don’t have any business experience, which is a dangerous avenue to go down. When it came to striking a deal, Gary was like a Jack Russell. I remember being sat in his car once while he was negotiating a new deal for one of his players with the chief executive of a club. He had the phone on loudspeaker and suddenly started hustling and haggling like nobody I’d ever met before. I liked that side of him; he would always do his absolute best for his clients.
We shook hands but never signed a contract. We had a gentlemen’s agreement that if either of us ever felt that it was time for us to go our separate ways, we would do so with no hard feelings. Agents get a bad reputation because there are crooks within the game who are desperate to make a fa
st buck, but having a good one is so important. The last thing you want when you’re negotiating a contract is an agent who is so far wide of the mark with his numbers that he antagonises your current club or jeopardises a move elsewhere. In the event I left Rochdale, I needed someone acting on my behalf who knew what they were talking about when it came to transfers. As a player, you just want to concentrate on your football and leave the numbers to an expert.
Lloydy and I agreed that he would receive a fixed percentage of my weekly wage as well as a cut of any other deal he struck for me. For example, if I agreed a new contract and received a signing-on fee, he would get a slice. His financial expertise was useful outside of football as well. When I bought my first house I ran everything by him. He knew how much I was likely to earn over the following couple of years and advised me on the size of mortgage I could afford to take on. He was always very honest with the advice he gave me and I appreciated that. Some agents will tell players to do things that benefit them rather than their clients, but he made sure there was no chance of me frittering away my cash.
My market value was given a boost when I was nominated for the League Two Apprentice of the Year award at the end of the season, which is given to a young player who has excelled on the pitch, but also in their studies. I’d just turned 18 and was in my final year at college, where I was studying for a BTEC sport diploma, which was all about anatomy, physiology and fitness. I attended a local college twice a week, but initially failed my first year after taking my eye off the ball. It wasn’t like me, I’d always done well at school, and I had to knuckle down and get a distinction in my second year to ensure I passed the course.