Massively Violent & Decidedly Average

by Lee Howey

  • • •

  We travelled to Wimbledon for the next round. All the stories you have heard about Wimbledon from this period are true. They called themselves the Crazy Gang. As we all know, anyone referring to themselves as ‘crazy’ is to be generally avoided. The same goes for other adjectives such as ‘zany’, ‘mad’, ‘bonkers’, ‘nutty’ and similar.

  Despite all this, Wimbledon did not finish regularly in lofty top-flight positions simply by employing violence and the hoofed ball forward. They had good players too and on this occasion they included Hans Segers, John Scales, Laurie Sanchez, Robbie Earl, John Fashanu, Dean Holdsworth and Warren Barton.

  This was during their time at Selhurst Park. By necessity, the visiting team would have to pass the home dressing room there as they walked along the narrow corridor. The Wimbledon door was always purposely left wide open and they would have a ghetto blaster turned up to eleven, thumping out loud, bass-heavy music while they lifted weights and snarled at us as we filed past. It was supposed to be menacing and, for reasons I will never understand, some of their opponents had actually been intimidated by this buffoonery.

  Then again, perhaps they weren’t trying to intimidate us at all. It could be that they had watched a few too many crap films; or they may have been overcompensating for something else. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. We were not the cowering type and our response was a collective rolling of the eyes. When your home is Sunderland, meeting people who fancy themselves as hard cases makes a change from meeting people who really are hard cases.

  During the first half Richard Ord received a cut to the head, which he shrugged off to defend a corner. John Fashanu strolled over and rubbed his hand on Ordy’s wound, then licked his palm before declaring: ‘I love white man’s blood.’ Weirdo.

  This was, to say the least, unusual behaviour on the field of play. Ordy was from the mining village of Murton, where vampirism and human sacrifice are not especially frowned upon. Nevertheless, consuming another chap’s blood was still a surprise on a football pitch in the 1990s. It’s probably the same now. Ordy was more befuddled than anything else. We were all annoyed and, similar to the Geoff Thomas incident, I was sitting on the bench, grinding my teeth and hoping for an opportunity for vengeance. I came on in place of Ordy late in the game, by which time Kevin Ball had beaten me to it – if you can imagine such a thing.

  Kevin was not only fearless, he was one of the toughest players I ever saw and also physically very strong. It wasn’t just mouth and mythology, as with certain other players with the same, but less deserved reputation.

  By 1994 he had been at Sunderland for four years and become club captain as well as an adopted Mackem. Today he is adopted even more, if that’s possible. During away games in London he would often be subjected to derogatory chants of: ‘You dirty northern bastard!’ This was most unfair and somewhat misinformed. He was actually from Hastings in East Sussex, site of the famous battle (appropriately enough) and was therefore more of a southerner than any Londoner.

  The verbal pounding he received from opposition supporters was something that affected him deeply. He only wanted to try his best and was actually a very sensitive man and easily wounded. He once confided to me that he would weep copiously into his pillow at the ‘dirty northern bastard’ jibes. It gnawed at his soul.

  Nah, only kidding. He didn’t give a shit. In fact he loved it.

  Anyway, Fashanu and Kevin jumped together for a header immediately in front of me in the dugout. They collided and both ended up lying on the ground, with Fashanu, who knew martial arts and about pressure points, on top and giving Bally little digs that the officials couldn’t see. The elbow-loving striker would regret this later. About half a second later.

  Kevin Ball got hold of John Fashanu and flipped him over like a mushroom omelette. Fash was now pinned to the pitch, unable to move and clearly frightened as Kevin was now in a position to do what he wanted to him until they were separated. Bally’s stare was enough to achieve this. Now to us, this was a run-of-the-mill incident that we saw every day in training, but the Wimbledon players were startled and abandoned their campaign of ‘intimidation’, for the afternoon at least.

  But we lost the game 2–1 and were out of the FA Cup. Kevin’s little vignette aside, it was a disappointing first trip to Wimbledon for me. My second one three years later would be ten times worse.

  • • •

  There was still animosity on our training pitch. There always is. Derek Ferguson was still keen to fight anyone, particularly our right-back Dariusz Kubicki, who joined in March on loan from Aston Villa.

  My own circumstances were not radically altered either. I was still a bit-part player, pleased whenever I was in the first team. Having previously been in charge of the reserves, Mick knew that I would never shirk whichever side I was in and that I was a good trainer too. Exactly as at school, I just loved playing football. Mick appreciated this more when he saw the sulky-chops faces of certain others who found themselves in the reserves. Acutely aware that I was not the star of the league, or even the club, and keen to earn another contract when this one ran out, the prudent course for me was to do as I was told.

  Besides, if you don’t train as you should then you aren’t trying properly and won’t get anywhere. Norman had instilled this into me a long time beforehand. Still, I just loved playing football at any level. School, Ipswich as an apprentice, Belgium, Bishop Auckland, Plains Farm Club, eventually the Premier League; my attitude never changed. Why would anyone not love playing the greatest game on earth – and being paid for it? Even if I was ping-ponging between the reserves and the bench and not making anything like as many first-team starts as I had hoped, I was still doing a job that literally millions of people would envy: people like me when I had been arsing about at BT in the recent past.

  But there was still worry, worry, worry. I frequently felt the old anxieties, which meant that I couldn’t feel my legs and was further disquieted by a rather injury-prone period of my career. My knee, which had not been straight for some years now, still caused occasional pain, and Steve Smelt, our physio, would give me anti-inflammatory tablets. I took four a day with the usual recommendation being that this should be carried out for a few weeks. I would do so for almost a decade. The long-term effects are bad, the main problem being that when the pain was masked I became less aware of the damage being done to the knee. Don’t knock pain; it’s there for a reason.

  I don’t blame anyone. This sort of thing was accepted procedure. I remember playing with a broken toe. I was injected with cortisone and told to put my boots back on and get out there. It was the same with twisted ankles; you were strapped up tightly and shoved back onto the pitch. None of this was considered remarkable and it happened to most players at some stage. Again, I never objected. I was still too grateful for being a professional footballer to object.

  Play with a niggle? Too right. Strap me up. Long-term effects? What are those? I want to play for Sunderland.

  In November 2014 I was given a new knee. Much of my back is new too.

  • • •

  In February 1994, we played a goalless draw at Charlton, then jointly managed by Steve Gritt and Alan Curbishley. In the twenty-seventh minute, I went in hard, very hard, on their captain Alan McLeary. Again, I was fully committed to winning the ball and had little regard for anything else. Alan needed eight stitches in his calf and missed Charlton’s next two games. I received a yellow card, but Mr Gritt was furious and passed his outrage to the press. To be fair to Mick Buxton, he defended me equally robustly, with the mandatory ‘not that sort of player’ statement.

  I barely featured in the last third of 1993–94. Phil Gray and Don Goodman were well-established strikers and I now had the emerging Craig Russell to contend with. The season petered harmlessly out. We managed forty-eight points from twenty-nine games under Mick during the rise to twelfth. Although this blaze of mediocrity was of minimal interest to the wider football world, it was a mo
dest and welcome accomplishment on Wearside.

  For the second year running, the final game of the season was in Nottingham. But this time it was a jolly day out at Forest, who had already been promoted. We came back from two goals down (Collymore again) to draw a meaningless, but entertaining game. Don Goodman and Craig Russell scored late on and the poisonous atmosphere at Notts County twelve months earlier was just an unpleasant memory. Pre-match entertainment for the Sunderland fans was sitting in The Aviary pub and watching compatriots jumping fully clothed from the Trent Bridge into the river below. If you can’t be good, be safe; or in this case, neither.

  Thus ended my first full season at Sunderland; a big one for me, but for everyone else connected to the club it was a campaign of virtual nothingness with neither danger nor any real achievement.

  It was a zillion times better than a job at BT.

  The club and the fans were desperate for someone to arrive who could transform one of England’s biggest and finest clubs from its comatose condition into one that would, ideally, force its way into the new and much hyped Premier League.

  They would only have to wait another eleven months.

  CHAPTER 7

  PUNCH-UPS, MY GOAL OF THE CENTURY AND KLINSMANN

  Two weeks after the Forest game, the squad was in the USA for an official-unofficial trip. To explain, we would usually go to Marbella and drink ourselves into oblivion in the name of ‘bonding’. But the club told us that a game had been arranged in Florida and that our hosts would be paying. Bob Murray was never one to pass up such an inducement, so off we went. This was exciting for me, as I had never been to the country before.

  We landed in Orlando and were ushered aboard a bus to make the four-hour journey to Naples, a small city on the south-west coast of Florida overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The driver was instructed to stop at a five and dime (it didn’t take us long to use the local patois) so we could load up with a few cans. This was not the greatest idea for two reasons: we were already suitably refreshed from the flight and there was no toilet on the bus. There was audible sloshing by the time we arrived in Naples.

  Naples is one of the wealthiest cities in the USA and our hotel was an extremely high standard of dwelling, even posher than Thorney Close. My room was a super king-size. Including the bathroom it had more square footage than my entire house. I had it to myself too, although I’m not sure why. It was either a sort of wedding present because I was soon to be married, or it was because no one wanted to room with me as I had acquired a certain hedonistic reputation.

  Andy Melville and Phil Gray weren’t in the main section of the hotel. They were in a detached apartment where they took it upon themselves to be hosts to the rest of the squad. So we filled their bath with ice to keep the remaining cans from the bus journey cool and the party continued from there. As we had a game the following day, this was perhaps not the brightest idea either (very rarely did we have the brightest idea), although it was supposed to be a holiday too.

  Our opposition the next evening was a Florida West Coast Select XI. Our hosts could not have been more accommodating and we were greeted by the son of the extremely wealthy president of the club who was footing the bill. The son was a nice enough fellow, but he seemed quite keen on himself and could hardly have been more American in appearance: tall, blond and with gleaming chompers. He would also be playing. The lads immediately decided that he was a figure of fun and encouraged me to do my level best to ‘Fucking kick him, Lee. Go on. Kick him! Fucking whack him!’ This wasn’t terribly professional or nice. Nor was it within approved acceptance of hospitality. But we were still semi-bladdered. I started the game at centre-back because Melville pretended to be injured. Injured as a newt, was my theory.

  The eighty-degree heat, humidity and booze made for an exceptionally sweaty evening. This was the most dehydrated I had been since Puke-gate in Belgium, although at least this time I was not the only one to disgrace himself. Under the circumstances, with me shambling around in an ungainly fashion, tongue lolloping from the side of my mouth, it was not surprising that Goldenballs in the Florida midfield was being made to look like the pinnacle of athleticism. The lads had only urged me to foul him for a lark, but it was beginning to look like the most viable option.

  By approximately the seventieth minute, I was completely knackered and he was about to prance past me again, when I presented him with a Claudio Gentile-style clattering. For the first time in the game, he had a hair out of place. The club president, having paid for our little excursion, seemed to think that my actions were somewhat undiplomatic and Anglo-American relations, as propounded at the time by John Major and Bill Clinton, were ever so slightly undermined. Not that my teammates seemed in any way perturbed; or if they were, they convincingly disguised their feelings by pissing themselves laughing while covering their own part in the incident with innocent cries of ‘What are you doing, Lee?’ and ‘How could you?’ all the while visibly sniggering when they were facing the other way. Bastards. Anyway, we won 4–0.

  Afterwards we went to some complex for a pool party; something I had only ever encountered in films. My excitement was tempered somewhat when we were told that we wouldn’t be allowed in the pool. I don’t know why. Surely a pool party where use of the pool is prohibited is just a party. Still, there was a barbecue and we could have a few drinks. Just what the doctor ordered, if the doctor wanted to be struck off.

  Not being allowed to take a dip became more frustrating the less thirsty we became. The point was reached where Reason was vanquished by Budweiser and we said: ‘Fuck it. We’re going in.’ Martin Smith, Micky Gray, Phil Gray, a few others and I stripped down to our undies and did some bombing, ducking, pushing, shouting and everything that was banned on those signs you used to see in the swimming baths with the exceptions of ‘smoking’ and ‘petting’. Before long, we were escorted from the pool and the disapproval was obvious, even to a load of infantile drunks like us.

  It was disconcerting to be ‘carded’ when trying to enter a nightclub there and we had to carry our passports to prove our age. Fortunately, we had a sort of tour guide who escorted us around the local fleshpots. He would whisper something to the bouncers, who would then allow us in. I think our guide was from the Russian mafia, but he seemed a pleasant sort of lad.

  • • •

  I had now been at the club for well over a year and felt more than ever that I belonged. That said, I still kept a certain distance from the other players. We rubbed along very well, but I still didn’t invite any of them to my wedding, stag night, or even the night do. The only other footballer at these events was Steven.

  This was only partly because the wedding had been planned eighteen months beforehand. Most people don’t socialise with their colleagues except at Christmas, when they’re forced to. My colleagues were my friends, but not my best friends. It’s the same now. I keep in touch with a few old players, namely Kevin Ball, Andy Melville and Richard Ord, as well as Steve Howard, Richard Hope and Dave Savage from my time at Northampton Town. I catch up with the others on the occasional golf day, but that’s all, really.

  • • •

  If the post-season Florida trip was not the ambassadorial success that the club elders had hoped for, then the pre-season tour of Norway was a bad idea from the start. It was probably when things began to deteriorate again for the club and for Mick Buxton in particular. Everyone who went on that tour hated it.

  I don’t know who had the idea for the trip, or who organised it. I suspect it was someone who didn’t have to be on it. It evidently wasn’t anyone who owned an atlas. Norway is a thousand miles long and journeys to games were made by coach. Some journeys took twelve hours, which led to an outbreak of a condition known as ‘numb-arse syndrome’. Accommodation was basic and located in the most desolate places imaginable. The travel, plus a lack of entertainment, led to extremely long bouts of boredom. A drink curfew was imposed too, just to ensure that everyone was quite massively pissed off. Still, it pr
obably didn’t cost much.

  Remarkably, some supporters followed the team around the country for all five matches. They included, of course, the legendary Davey Dowell. It takes more than proximity to the Arctic Circle to curtail people like that. For one game, these supporters stayed at a guest house in a place near Trondheim called Hell. So there you have it: Sunderland fans will literally go to Hell to support their team.

  Yet they almost certainly had a better time than the players. It was a wretched experience. The lack of quality opposition made it even less worthwhile. The final game was a 9–0 win over a side called Surnadal. What was the point of that? Never was a squad of players more pleased to return home from a pre-season tour.

  But now for the good news. I wasn’t there.

  I stayed behind and trained with the reserves, run by Ian Ross. We played a few fixtures around the North East in pleasant summer weather, and I returned to fitness far quicker that I would have done chugging through the Norwegian countryside for half a day at a time on the back of a bus. You don’t need to gallivant around the world to get match fit. When we all returned to the Charlie Hurley Centre for testing, I was as fit as anyone after non-gruelling journeys to Consett AFC, Crook Town or wherever it was that we went. No one was pining for the fjords.

  I had been married in June. The reception was at the rather swish Ramside Hall in Durham, but the evening function was held in the Grindon Mill, an estate pub near my house (the pub has since been converted into a gym). It was around this time that football was being described as ‘the new rock and roll’, something that rather passed me by. This was the same day that Ray Houghton’s goal for Ireland beat Italy in New Jersey during the 1994 World Cup. I spent most of the evening watching it.