I’m Not Really Here

by Paul Lake

  Billy sank to his knees, holding his face for what seemed like an eternity as he tried to stem a nosebleed. He eventually regained his composure and the game restarted. However, as the resulting throw-in took place, I felt a presence at my left shoulder; someone literally breathing down my neck. I turned round to see Billy grinning menacingly at me, baring a set of bloodstained teeth.

  ‘Well done, kid,’ he growled, ‘I like it rough.’

  Damn right he did. Before the match was through my nemesis sought his revenge in every way possible, ripping my shorts, kneeing me in the groin, embedding his studs in my shin, thigh and temples and, for good measure, sinking his teeth hard into my shoulder, causing rivulets of blood to trickle down my arm. After the game – which we won 4–1 – Billy jogged over to shake my hand.

  ‘Tougher than you look, aren’t you?’ he said, eyeing the enormous red stain seeping through my shirt. ‘Oh, and sorry ’bout the little nibble, son.’

  Apart from the odd bloodsucking footballer, my career was on an upward trajectory. Off the field things were looking good, too, as I’d started going out with a girl called Janine. We’d met in the Little B pub in Sale (a popular footballer’s haunt at the time) and had hit it off immediately. So with a nice girlfriend, a few quid in the bank and a great future ahead of me, life was great. In fact, life was bloody fantastic.

  I woke up dazed, confused and spread-eagled on a bed in the first aid room. As I opened my eyes, a trio of women gradually came into focus – Mum, Janine and City’s receptionist Libby – all with tears streaming down their faces. The first thought that entered my head was who’s died?, and it was only when Mum wailed ‘Thank God, we thought we’d lost you, love,’ that I realised that the person they were crying over was me. And then, like some corny line in Casualty, I murmured, ‘Where am I, Mum? What happened?’

  What had happened was that, on Saturday 11 March 1989, I’d nearly popped my clogs in front of 20,000 people. It was during the first half of our game against Leicester City that I’d gone up to head away a corner, clashed heads with Paul Ramsey and hit the deck like a sack of spuds. Not only did the sheer impact knock me unconscious, but it also caused me to swallow my tongue. What followed next was five minutes of life-or-death drama, played out on the pitch in front of a hushed Maine Road crowd and captured in its entirety by the television cameras.

  The TV footage (which I watched through my fingers a few days later) showed me lying there lifelessly for a few seconds before suddenly going into a violent spasm, my body squirming, my legs twitching, and my lips turning blue due to the lack of oxygen. A panicking Steve Redmond gestured madly to the physio Roy Bailey, yelling, ‘Oh, f***ing hell … Roy, get here quick …’ as I continued to convulse on the ground. It was all too sickening to watch for the other players, most of whom turned away looking decidedly green at the gills.

  Roy sprinted onto the pitch with his medical bag and, assisted by the Leicester City physio, tried to clear my airway. You could have heard a pin drop, apparently; even big Helen stopped ringing her bell. Meanwhile, as crucial seconds ticked by, the club doctor, Norman Luft, frantically pushed his way to the pitch from his seat in the directors’ box. Dr Luft arrived just in time to give Roy some vital guidance, helping him to hook out my lolling tongue with a pair of bandage scissors. I remained unconscious the whole time.

  Mum and Dad were watching the events unfold from the Main Stand that day, and I can only imagine what must have been going through their minds. I found out after that Mum instantly knew that something was seriously wrong, and she remembers screaming at the top of her voice for someone to come to my aid, and quick. Desperate to reach me, she managed to fight her way down to the advertising hoardings before being shepherded to the first aid room by a steward. My dad was frozen with shock and remained rooted to his seat, and it was only when I was stretchered off the pitch, to a backdrop of thunderous applause from the City fans, that he went to find his wife and son.

  Many supporters have since told me that the atmosphere in the stadium was really eerie once I’d exited the pitch. No one knew whether I was out for the count or in the clear – dead or alive, even – and as a result many fans were too distracted to give much attention to the outcome of the game (the final score was 4–2 to City, incidentally, with Trevor Morley scoring his first hat-trick for the club).

  Thankfully, I came round just before half-time. This was good news for two reasons. Firstly, I hadn’t kicked the bucket; and secondly, had I not made such a swift recovery, the game might well have been abandoned at the interval with City heading for an important win. (This was corroborated when I bumped into that day’s referee, Ron Bridges, at the City of Manchester Stadium a few years ago. He told me that both captains had agreed not to bring their teams out until they knew for sure that I’d regained consciousness.)

  I vaguely remember lying in the emergency ambulance and seeing Dad hovering above me, ordering me not to speak or move my head and telling me that I was being taken to hospital for tests and brain scans. Luckily the results came back clear, and by the next morning I was sitting up in bed in pretty good spirits (or ‘joking with the nurses’, as they say in the papers). The only after-effect of the previous day’s shenanigans was a banging headache. I couldn’t recall anything of the incident – a blessing, I suppose – and listened open-mouthed as Mum and Dad gave me a blow-by-blow account of the whole frightening episode.

  I was swamped with cards and flowers from friends, fans and well-wishers, and remember feeling incredibly touched by the hundreds of heartfelt messages. The following Monday I also received a visit from a noisy entourage of team-mates. Among them was Trevor Morley, who handed me a gigantic card in a shiny silver envelope.

  ‘I’m glad you’re on the mend,’ Trev had scrawled inside, ‘and thanks for overshadowing my first City hat-trick, you selfish bastard.’

  In the aftermath of my tongue-swallowing, Mum was deluged with media requests for interviews. She readily obliged, revealing to a procession of reporters how relieved she felt that her son was still alive and kicking, and how grateful she was to Norman Luft and Roy Bailey for getting me out of danger. She also seized upon the opportunity to urge football clubs to improve club doctors’ access to the field of play by installing them in the dugout rather than high up in the directors’ box, thus avoiding a repeat of Dr Luft’s worryingly long delay in reaching the pitch.

  It seems that Mum’s mini-crusade helped sway opinion, as shortly afterwards the FA tightened their guidelines, decreeing it mandatory for all club doctors to be at pitch-side. I wasn’t the only tongue-swallowing casualty in football – something similar had happened to Bryan Robson earlier that season – but I think it was my particular case, followed by Mrs Lake’s one-woman media campaign that spurred them into action.

  I will, of course, remain eternally grateful to the medical team for saving my life that day, because that’s what they did when all’s said and done.

  ‘The boy didn’t have much time left …’ admitted Dr Luft to the media shortly afterwards, acknowledging the severity of the situation. I know the incident traumatised Roy in particular – he broke down in tears during the post-match press conference – but he can take comfort in the knowledge that, thanks to his cool head and prompt actions that day, I’m still here to tell the tale.

  Life’s fragility was highlighted for me again when, a few weeks later, the dreadful events at Hillsborough unfolded. I was resting at home that day – a groin strain had put me out of contention for City’s game at Blackburn on 15 April 1989 – and I vividly remember the feeling of deep shock as the news filtered through from Sheffield.

  On the 20th anniversary of the disaster, I sat down with my eldest son, Zac, to watch a special BBC documentary about that fateful day. As moving as it was harrowing, the film was a sober reminder of how the beautiful game can seem trivial in the face of such appalling human tragedy. And how a near-death experience like mine can fade into insignificance when compared with the hor
ror of 96 lives lost.

  24-hour Party People

  LIKE MOST FOOTBALLERS, I enjoyed relaxing with a few drinks after a game. I was never what you’d call a party animal, though, so no weekend benders or dentist-chair games for me; a few bevvies in my local rounded off with a trip to a nearby nightclub was about as wild as it got.

  Whenever we had a Saturday match, most of us would do the right thing and steer clear of alcohol from Wednesday onwards. Being more of a weekend drinker, I never found it a problem. This wasn’t the case for one or two of my colleagues, though, who’d find it really hard to stay off the booze and would occasionally risk a couple of midweek pints. It was something that you could get away with if you pulled your tripe out at Platt Lane the next morning, and put in a good performance the following match day. But if there were ever any tell-tale signs of lethargy during a keep-ball session, or if your form dipped over the weekend, questions would be asked about those sneaky beers in the Crown that a mate of the gaffer’s had just happened to witness.

  Our food intake was less of an issue. In my day, football clubs didn’t have a platoon of nutritionists and sports scientists to dish out dietary advice (being told by the physio to avoid curry and chips on a Friday night was as scientific as it got) and we were generally at liberty to eat what we liked. What’s more, the absence of a canteen at Maine Road meant that the City players would usually grab their post-training lunch from one of the fast-food joints dotted around Moss Side and Rusholme. Jason Beckford and I would regularly queue up for Jamaican patties from Alvino’s on Great Western Street which, delicious though they were, would have sent any dietician running for their calorie counter.

  Since the club didn’t have the facilities to allow us to dine together, our pre-match meal would be whatever we decided to knock up for ourselves at home. In fact, we only ever ate en masse when we stayed overnight at a hotel before an away game, and even then we’d have a pretty free rein on the menu, tucking into huge mixed grills and gulping down mugs of builder’s tea. English football clubs hadn’t yet cottoned on to continental-style health regimes and, as far as they were concerned, food was merely fuel. At City, anyway, the rationale seemed to be the more meat protein you could shovel down, the better. I remember, prior to a match at Ipswich, struggling my way through a leathery steak and finding myself still gnawing on a lump of gristle at half-time.

  I’d always make amends for my midweek abstinence every Saturday and Sunday night, though. After a home game I’d honour my post-match commitments of socialising with opponents in the players’ lounge and chatting to sponsors in the executive suites, but would do my utmost to be out of the club by 6.30 p.m. so that I could be in the Fletchers Arms in Denton within the hour. There I’d meet up with Kevin the plasterer, Carl the painter, John the policeman, Jason the footballer and my brother Mike and his pals. After wetting our whistles with bottles of Sol we’d hail a taxi to one of the region’s many nightclubs, where I’d occasionally bump into some of my City team-mates.

  I suppose I had a split personality when it came to clubbing. Some Saturday nights would find me donning a smart suit and tie and schmoozing down to suburban ‘nitespots’ with names like Quaffers, Smokies and Yesterdays. In stark contrast, the following week would see me pulling on my baggy Joe Bloggs jeans and smiley-face T-shirt, and sauntering into Manchester city centre to hang out at rave joints like the Venue or the Haçienda.

  Of the more mainstream, out-of-town nightclubs, the best of the bunch was definitely Fridays in Didsbury. It got my vote because it offered its punters the option of three differently themed dance rooms, each with its own specific play list. This musical apartheid meant that you could shoulder-shimmy to Orange Juice on the middle indie dance floor, thus avoiding Public Enemy in the R&B/hip-hop room to your left and Sister Sledge in the disco/chart room to your right.

  Cheesy though it was, I had some great times at Fridays. I can still picture Jason commandeering the dance floor with his MC Hammer routine, and John making us fall about with his spookily accurate Rick Astley take-offs. One of my favourite Fridays’ moments, however, involved Andy ‘The Cat’ Dibble, City’s larger-than-life goalkeeper.

  One summer night in 1990, Jason, Andy and I had decided to treat our respective girlfriends to a ‘Dine ’n’ Disco’, a deal which got you a three-course meal and entry into the club for less than £20. It had been only a few weeks since Andy’s infamous howler at the City Ground – featured in most Football Bloopers DVDs – that saw Nottingham Forest’s Gary Crosby mischievously heading the ball out of our goalie’s hands to score one of the cheekiest goals in sporting history.

  After ordering our food from the waitress, the lads and I strode up to the bar to get the drinks in. A couple of City fans were supping their pints when we got there and, after a friendly chat, one of them offered to buy us a round, which we gratefully accepted. He duly handed Jason and me our bottles of Stella but, just as he was about to give Andy his, paused for a moment, balanced the bottle on the palm of his hand and nudged it with his forehead à la Gary Crosby.

  ‘Eh, does this ring a bell, Andy?’ he grinned, as Jase and I collapsed in hysterics at the sheer audacity of it all. The Cat didn’t see the funny side of this cheeky Phoenix from the Flames re-enactment, however, and loudly told the fan that he was bang out of order, or words to that effect. Hearing raised voices, a posse of brawny bouncers suddenly appeared out of nowhere, yanked the three of us by our collars and bundled us out of the front door. Andy’s attempts at an explanation fell on deaf ears, and we all had to skulk off to a nearby pub to wait for the girls as they polished off their double portions of chicken-in-a-basket.

  ‘Cheeky bastards, those fans,’ said Andy as we got another round of drinks in. ‘Don’t think I’ll ever live that Crosby thing down, will I?’

  Fridays would always be packed to the rafters with pretty girls, but copping off with someone was never the be all and end all for me. Sad as it sounds, I loved a good dance more than anything else, and often couldn’t be bothered with the whole chatting up rigmarole. In my younger days I was a bit awkward with the ladies – I improved with age – unlike my more confident mates who would hold court on a shiny leather sofa with a lurid cocktail in their hand and a giggly girl on their lap.

  Knowing full well that it added to their magnetism, some of the City lads would openly flaunt their footballer status. It was something that I never felt comfortable with, though. I was not one to give it the big ‘I am’ and I only ever owned up to being a City player if a third party happened to mention the fact. Inevitably, though, you’d get female groupies latching on to you just for the supposed prestige of copping off with a footballer. I remember getting it together with one such girl, a very well-to-do City fan from Wilmslow. She was stunning, with hair down to her waist and legs up to her armpits, and I couldn’t believe my luck when she made a play for me one night. The relationship was short-lived, however; I had to give her the old heave-ho when she uttered the immortal line ‘we must do brunch, Paul, darling; I’ll fax you.’ Somehow I don’t think a Cheshire yuppie would have gone down a storm in Denton. Besides, I didn’t have a fax machine.

  Then there were the jealous boyfriends to contend with. You’d only need to glance at a girl in a bar (or vice versa) for some Rottweiler of a fiancé to skulk out of the shadows and start giving you daggers. Quite literally, as it happened, as I once had a knife pulled out on me in the Puss in Boots pub in Stockport because some half-wit United fan mistakenly thought I was hitting on his girlfriend.

  Have-a-go headbangers came with the territory when you were a semi-famous footballer. I remember celebrating my 24th birthday in a club in Sale and being violently attacked by a bouncer who, from out of nowhere, grabbed me by the throat and accused me of swearing at one of the bar staff. Total bullshit, of course, but he’d obviously identified me as some kind of big-time Charlie who needed roughing up and turfing out. The next day, nursing a badly bruised neck and barely able to speak, I received a call
from a deeply apologetic nightclub boss who informed me that he’d sacked the bouncer in question and wanted to offer me free entry and drinks on the house when I next visited. As if I was going to show my face in there again.

  The following Monday, however, as I was getting changed after training, a team-mate gave me the glad tidings that there was a slightly peeved bouncer waiting for me in the car park. I didn’t fancy the idea of my teeth being rammed down my black ’n’ blue throat, so I spent most of the afternoon barricaded in one of the admin offices. I only dared to venture out once Colin the Barbarian had got bored and finally driven away in his Ford Transit, thankfully never to be seen again.

  It wasn’t the only occasion I’d had a run-in with bouncers – they’re not always the easiest people to warm to, let’s face it – and many Saturday nights out were almost ruined because of their crap attitude. Many of my friends were black – including Jason and his brother, Darren, who’d also played for Manchester City – and they’d often have huge problems getting into certain clubs. Unlike the white lads among us who, oddly enough, would rarely encounter such trouble.

  ‘Not tonight, lads,’ became an all too familiar spiel as admission would be denied for such phony reasons as having the wrong haircut or wearing the wrong shoes.

  ‘Mate, I’m a painter and decorator with a wife and four kids,’ protested my pal Carl when one of these bully boys took exception to his shaven head, implying that he was some hardened Moss Side gangster. They would relent once they realised a few of us were footballers – that’s how shallow they were – and would reluctantly usher us through.