by Joe Thompson
In front of us was a seemingly impossible assault course of tyres, wooden logs, sandbags and barrels, like something you’d see on a world strongman competition on Channel Five, which we had to complete as fast as possible. There were three lanes, so each of us had to compete against two other team-mates before our individual times were recorded on a leaderboard. It was a test of strength and fitness, but also grit. I said to myself that I simply wouldn’t give up. My mindset is that I’d rather injure myself and be forced to quit than to pull out because I’d given in. If my shoulder popped out and I had to stop then I could live with that, but if I gave up just because it was hard work then that would tell me I was mentally weak. The course became progressively more difficult and the harder it got, the more my muscles screamed at me to stop. After the pain I’d been through during chemotherapy, I just kept telling myself, ‘it could be worse, Joe, it could be worse’. I also had the support of my team-mates cheering from the side and willing me on, which gave me more mental fuel. I posted a respectable time, which put me in the top five on the leaderboard, and I still felt I had plenty in the tank ahead of the afternoon challenges.
At lunch, I was wary of eating too much in case I was sick during the next set of tasks. I’d heard rumours about what we’d be doing and limited myself to a drink and a couple of bread rolls. I soon realised it was a wise move after we were led to the bottom of a large hill and told to carry a team-mate to the top, where the burly blokes were stood shouting and inwardly enjoying watching our struggle. I decided to pace myself like I used to in cross country and found a position nicely in the middle of the pack before picking people off one by one. Once I went past each one, I could see in their faces that they were gone.
In individual pursuits you have to run your own race and forget about what your competitors are doing. I used the same approach for the next challenge, which required us to run two miles up a peak while carrying a log above our heads. I was delighted to finish in third place, but Keith came up to me immediately afterwards and told me I’d slacked off. ‘You could’ve won that, there was more in the tank.’ He was probably right, and if I’d had another 500m to play with I would’ve fancied catching the two lads in front of me, but it was easy for him to say when he was stood at the finish line watching on!
I thought I’d done enough during the day to show my inner steel, but there was still one last stage for us to overcome and I was dreading it. Lake Windermere looked like an ocean as we stared out at the vast expanse of water in front of us. ‘Is there anyone here who can’t swim?’ shouted one of the instructors. I put my hand up slowly in embarrassment, along with a couple of other lads. Swimming, in my opinion, is a skill a father teaches his child when they’re growing up, but mine was never around and so I’d never learned. When I was at Rochdale, I had to use a float and kick my legs during a swimming session, much to the amusement of my team-mates.
Still, there was no chance of me being allowed to sit out the task. I was thrown a life jacket and told to swim out to a water buoy in the distance along with the rest of my team-mates. We then had to swim back to shore and run to the camp. At the start, I thrashed around in the water like a newborn duckling while everyone else started to disappear out of view. I knew how to keep myself afloat but moving forwards proved to be a bit trickier. Eventually I began to move, but it took me over 45 minutes to complete the task, long after the others had finished. The run was without question the hardest of my life. All my clothes were soaking wet and my arms and legs could barely co-ordinate. To make it even more difficult, an instructor was driving behind me in a Range Rover to make sure I kept a steady pace. I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other until I at last made it back.
The test was over, but Keith still wasn’t happy. ‘What would you do if your daughter was drowning at sea?’ he asked me. I was about to reply but he interrupted. ‘You need to learn how to swim, you need to be able to come to her rescue if she’s in trouble.’ He was right and so I promised him that I’d start taking swimming lessons on my days off. As the squad and coaching staff sat down for dinner, the purpose of the camp suddenly dawned on me. Nobody was scrolling through their smartphones or wearing headphones and listening to music. Instead, we were all talking and laughing about the day. We’d had an incredible shared experience, which had pulled us all together. We’d all leant on each other for moral support when we had to dig deep, which would serve us well in the season ahead. I already felt like I was part of the group and kept my fingers crossed that Keith had seen enough in me over the previous week to offer me a contract.
My experience at the camp made me realise more than ever that a player’s brain dictates so much of his career, perhaps more so than the talent in his feet. The squad was made up of 20 or so lads who had all been the best players in their Sunday league and school teams but had at some point or another been blindsided by adversity. They could’ve given up and taken an easier path free of the potential pitfalls of elite sport, but they possessed the self-belief to continue and had made a career for themselves. I thought of some of the talented players I played with at United who had drifted out of the game, and now realised they just didn’t have the mental mettle to make it. For some, being released would’ve dented their confidence beyond repair, while the pressure of going on trial to earn a contract would’ve proven too much for many others.
A few days after returning home to Rochdale, Keith called me with the news I’d been desperate to hear. He’d been impressed with my efforts the previous week and offered me a six-month contract on £600 a week. It still wasn’t a lot, but the club also operated a sequence-based bonus scheme, which would top up my salary if we were successful. A three-game winning run would be worth £450, £150 per win, meaning I’d stand to make over £1,000 a week. I reported back to the boss, Chantelle, and she told me to go for it even though it meant I’d have to spend several days a week living in Carlisle, away from her and Lula. To save on the cost of renting a property, the club moved me into a house right next to their stadium with five other players; Michael Raynes, a French kid called Kevin Osei, Charlie Wyke, Jason Kennedy and Luke Joyce.
It was a great place to live. When I arrived with my suitcase, I felt like I was moving into student accommodation with a load of my mates. I had the top floor to myself and we all shared a kitchen and living area and decided we’d do a weekly shop like one big football family. Three of us had kids, so we were mature enough to respect our own individual routines and make it work. A few of us were also from the north-west, so we decided we’d take it in turns to drive back home on our days off and drop each other off on the way to save on petrol.
We were a mature bunch of lads who were keen to live disciplined lives and make a real go of the season ahead. But when you’ve got six blokes living under the same roof there are always going to be times when you act like big kids and there were certainly plenty of those, especially in the first few weeks. There were nerf gun fights and practical jokes aplenty, and I often felt like I had to sleep with one eye open in case someone had targeted me for revenge over a previous prank or just fancied a spontaneous joke at my expense. After an uncertain summer, I was ready to kick-start my career and prove I could still become the player I once promised to be.
Chapter 12
The tide
IT was like a scene from a horror film. A mass of water ripped through roads and fields like a tsunami, claiming everything in its path. A murky brown river carrying cars, freezers and memories swam through the city without remorse. Locals climbed in dinghies to escape, while others clung to their homes like lovers caught in a storm.
It was December 2015 and Storm Desmond had descended over Carlisle and deposited a month’s worth of rainfall over the city in just 24 hours. The deluge had left Brunton Park, which is close to the Rivers Petteril, Eden and Caldew, drowning under eight feet of water. The crossbars at both ends of the pitch looked like they were fighting to stay afloat as the rain continued to fall. Thousands o
f people had been forced to evacuate their homes, while an even greater number were told they would be without power for days.
Spirits had been high on the team coach after a 5-0 victory over Welling United in the second round of the FA Cup, where Charlie Wyke had bagged himself a hat-trick in a morale-boosting win. But on the journey home news filtered through of the devastation that awaited us upon our return to Carlisle. Incredibly, some of our supporters who had made the trip had done so despite knowing their homes would be partially underwater when they returned. This was far more important than 22 blokes kicking a ball around a pitch, and we decided there and then to help the local community by distributing food, water and blankets to those who had been worst affected.
The call to arms was led by our captain, Danny Grainger, who issued a rallying cry against Mother Nature as we watched the news on the coach televisions on the way home and sat open-mouthed as wave after wave of chaos rolled by. ‘We need to help these people,’ he said. ‘I don’t care how much or whatever it takes, but we have to help these people to get their bottom floors emptied. The people of this town have been there for us through our ups and downs and we must be there for them now.’
Danny was Mr Carlisle. He was a Cumbrian lad who was embedded in the local community and could feel the pain of the people more than others. He’d witnessed the impact of the floods when they’d hit the city in January 2005. Back then, two months of rainfall fell in one night, in what was described as a ‘one in 200-year event’ by experts. Flood defences were breached, leading to the deaths of three people and damage to 2,000 homes. The football club was devastated, but local residents had felt let down by the staff and players for failing to help with the clean-up job in the local area.
We couldn’t let that happen again and decided we would get to work on Tuesday, to allow a couple of days for the water to subside and give the boys who lived in the area the chance to sort out their own homes. Our first-choice keeper, Mark Gillespie, hadn’t travelled with us due to a virus and stayed behind to recover in one of the houses owned by the club. He was enjoying an afternoon nap but woke up to find water climbing up the stairs. He had to be rescued out of an upstairs window and rowed to safety. Our other keeper, Dan Hanford, had been due to move into a new house with his girlfriend, Suzi, but it was now underwater, while his white BMW was also wrecked. The back window had been smashed in and the force of Desmond had blown a green wheelie bin on top of his car. A suitcase full of his clothes had even been swept away by the current. Fortunately for me my wheels were on dry land back at our M6 pick-up point near Manchester, but our lads’ pad hadn’t escaped the damage and we were told we’d have to live in hotels for the foreseeable future, possibly until the end of the season. The possessions that were left at the house had been destroyed.
The club identified four homes that looked to have been worst hit by the weather. Led by Danny and Keith, 15 of us split into groups, so we pulled on wellies, rubber gloves and industrial cleaning masks and got to work. Me, Charlie, Luke Joyce, Raynesy and Jason Kennedy helped to salvage possessions from the property of 73-year-old Bill Douthwaite, a lifelong Carlisle fan who told us he’d been rescued from his home in a floating fridge freezer a few days earlier. We also visited his neighbour, Angela Watson, who hilariously told us she’d saved her season ticket from the rising water but realised later on she’d forgotten to pick up her husband’s wallet and medication.
I couldn’t believe how positive the local people were given what had just happened. I remember being stood in the kitchen of another home, with water up to my knees. I could see pictures from family photo albums floating from room to room. I tried to salvage a few but they were soaked beyond repair. You can replace household items but photographs carry sentimental value. Memories had literally been washed away. It was heartbreaking and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for everyone that had been affected. One woman who lived there had been through the same process ten years earlier and it had changed her outlook on life. ‘We’ve come through it once and we’ll come through it again,’ she said with a shrug of her shoulders. I admired her resilience and wondered if I could’ve been quite so philosophical if my home had been flooded twice in a decade.
In the end, we realised there were more people that desperately needed our help. That day, we managed to empty 15 properties. It was an awful experience but a valuable one as well. I’ll always find money for nice clothes and justify purchasing the latest trainers, but I’ve never been materialistic and it hammered home to me how disposable your possessions really are. In the end, it’s only the people you’re close to that really matter. Some of the locals had lost thousands of pounds worth of valuables, sofas, TVs, microwaves and various other goods, but they hadn’t lost their loved ones and for that they were thankful.
The following day something remarkable happened as the water subsided and the sun emerged from behind the clouds. The residents we’d helped, plus many more supporters, queued up outside Brunton Park eager to help with the clear-up operation at the stadium. Some of them had no insurance and had literally lost everything, but to them the club was a symbol of the local community and they wouldn’t allow it to rot. They tried to minimise the damage by rooting through the offices and dressing rooms, but there was nothing they could do about the pitch, though two goldfish were apparently rescued and reunited with their owners. The surface had always been a carpet and a dream to play on, but now it was in a state of disrepair and it looked like it would be months before we’d set foot on it again.
However, the city was alive with community spirit and a few hours later 22 wagons, emblazoned with the name of the local haulier, Eddie Stobart, on the side, pulled up outside the stadium with a special delivery. Each wagon was packed with rolls of new turf. Carlisle’s head groundsman at the time, Dave Mitchell, is known as one of the best in the business and he immediately started digging up the sodden turf and rolling and kneading out the new stuff like a master baker working with fresh warm dough. It was a moving day that warmed my heart. A city had come together as one to help each other in their hour of need.
On 23 January, nearly two months after Desmond had devastated Carlisle, we made an emotional return to Brunton Park to face York City. During that period we’d played our home games 90 miles away on borrowed pitches at Preston, Blackpool and Blackburn, and our fans had followed us in vast numbers. It was good to be home at last and give them something in return for their commitment to the cause. Ironically, the visitors had also been hit hard by storm damage and so local journalists decided to christen the game ‘The Flood Derby’. The stadium was packed as fans came in their hordes to say thank you to the club for their help before Christmas. In the modern game, so many clubs are disconnected from their fanbase, because they treat them like nothing more than customers, so it was incredible to see the special bond that had formed between supporters and the team. They sang their hearts out that day, and even though we were held to a 1-1 draw, the afternoon was a victory for everyone involved. It was humbling to be part of it.
The tide had turned and not just for Carlisle. After my experiences at Cassius Camps, I’d taken Keith’s advice on board and used my spare time during the week wisely by spending several afternoons a week learning how to swim at a nearby leisure centre. I didn’t hire an instructor; instead, I started by learning basic strokes with a float and then once I had enough confidence, began swimming lengths of the pool. Granted, I’d learned about 20 years later than I should have done, but I was happy to have done so at last and felt confident I could now look after Lula if, as Keith pointed out, she was to ever find herself in any sort of danger in the water.
Still, I was far more comfortable on grass. I made my debut in a 4-4 draw against Cambridge United in our second league game of the season. It was one of the most emotionally draining games I’ve ever experienced, as momentum swung back and forth like a pendulum. The following week I scored my first goal since returning from cancer on a Tuesday night trip to Plymouth. We lo
st 4-1, and it was a terrible team performance, but I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It had been over 12 months since I’d last hit the back of the net and until that moment I didn’t truly feel like I was back. I didn’t start every week, but I featured regularly up until Christmas when my six-month deal was due to expire. I felt I’d won Keith’s trust and was confident I’d be offered another contract until the end of the season, but I very nearly undid all my good work shortly before the floods hit in December.
It was a Friday afternoon and me and the rest of the boys in the house were relaxing after training, ahead of our game the following day. But we also had another important event in the football calendar to prepare for, the annual Christmas party. The squad had decided to go to Edinburgh for a good knees-up after the Crawley game to celebrate a positive first half of the season, which had left us well placed to mount a push for the play-offs. We stopped off at the shops after training to buy a few beers and put them in the fridge to chill. All of our going out gear was ironed and hung up on a big rail ready in the back room so we could put it in our suitcases and have a couple of beers on the train up to Edinburgh.