by Paul Lake
‘Has your club got a good insurance policy?’ he’d ask a nervous-looking player receiving treatment from the physio. ‘Cause by the look of that ankle, you’re gonna f***in’ need it …’
Liverpool’s John Barnes – who’d probably never upset a colleague in his life – spent a few weeks at Lilleshall for an Achilles tendon problem. Having had the pleasure of meeting John at the Italia ’90 gathering I already knew that he was a gem of a bloke, and as such was delighted when his cheery face popped round the gym door one morning. Some of the younger lads were totally awestruck by him, but his friendly manner immediately put them at ease.
Lighting up Lilleshall with his vibrant personality for a brief spell was the one and only Vinnie Jones, who arrived from Sheffield United needing a dodgy knee attending to. In the short space of time he was there he left an indelible mark, most notably on one hapless PT instructor who was guilty of being a bit too over-familiar with the players, and who’d often get our backs up with the occasional sarcastic comment. As far as Vinnie was concerned, this Sport Billy possessed far too much swagger and needed bringing back down to earth.
‘That big-time wanker needs a short, sharp f***in’ shock,’ Vinnie announced one day, his eyes blazing. He proceeded to haul this startled bloke out of the campus in true hod-carrying style, before bundling him into his boot and taking him for a bumpy, wheel-spinning, two-mile joyride to the front gates and back. Our PT friend emerged from Vinnie’s boot white-faced and jelly-legged, and went straight to bed.
An unexpected addition to our knackers’ yard was Alan Shearer. The medics treating his knee at Blackburn Rovers were among the best in their field, but he’d decided to swap Ewood Park for Lilleshall temporarily to escape the hurly-burly of a football club and allow himself more time to focus.
Alan didn’t say much during the first couple of days – I think he was wisely sussing us all out – but by the third day he’d lightened up and dropped his guard. His renowned competitive streak soon became apparent, though, never more so than during the arduous 12-mile bike rides that we were regularly dispatched on. During his first group cycle, Alan made the mistake of trying to get the better of us. Being a Lilleshall novice he wasn’t familiar with the route or the terrain but, as strong-minded as ever, set off far too quickly and pedalled away from the pack like billy-o. By mile ten the rest of us had easily caught him up, hurling obscenities as we glided past him before taking the sharp left through Lilleshall golf course that led us all back to base.
Alan, in his haste to outdo us, sped straight past the golf course turn-off. When he started to see signs for Wolverhampton he realised he was completely lost and had to ask for directions from a local yokel.
We were naturally out in force to give him a hero’s welcome when he finally crossed the finish line half an hour later, smiling sheepishly with his arms outstretched in mock celebration. Jibes of ‘here he comes, king of the mountains’ would plague him for weeks, but he took it all in good humour. He was a decent lad, was Alan, and it was nice to have him around the place.
Riding highest in the popularity stakes, though, was Ally McCoist. Anyone assuming that someone as rich, famous and talented as Ally was bound to be a raving egomaniac would have been mistaken. The Rangers striker was a big hit from the minute he arrived at Lilleshall, his warmth and charm as endearing to the lads in the gym as it was to the girls on reception. Coupling a gift of the gab with a sympathetic ear, Ally was great company, and I remember having the occasional heart-to-hearts with him about my trials and tribulations. As with my good friend Niall Quinn, it was impossible not to like the guy.
The great thing about Lilleshall was that we were all treated as equals, despite the presence of many household names. Rehab, it seemed, was the supreme leveller. Marooned in the middle of nowhere, detached from our football clubs and stripped of supporter adulation and press attention, we all had the same goals: the desire to get fit and the determination to salvage our careers. I generally hated being holed up in Shropshire, but it would have been a much gloomier place without the support of Ian, Ally and the rest of the lads to help me get through the hours, days, weeks and months.
Devised by the taskmaster physios from hell, our daily rehab programme was backbreaking. But, gruelling as it was, we adopted the mindset of ‘no pain, no gain’, knuckling down and cracking on with the perpetual cycle of circuit training, swimming relays and cardio-vascular workouts. Some lads weren’t able to cope with these marathon sessions and would get straight on the phone to their clubs, pleading to be brought home.
Our whip-crackers were well aware of our Groundhog Day existence, though, and would try to relieve the monotony by whatever means they could. Letting us play along with Simon Bates’s Golden Hour on Radio 1 was a regular mid-morning diversion, with a forfeit for the team that hazarded the wildest guess for the featured year.
‘Lakey, you plank, you said ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ was 1977, not 1978.’
‘Chill out, lads, I was out playing football while you lot were sat watching Cheggers Plays Pop …’
The issuing of forfeits was a deadly serious business at Lilleshall. Each day would always finish with a match of sit-down volleyball or a game of boules, with the losing side liable for an immediate penalty that could be anything from 3,000 metres on the rowing machine, 40 pull-ups on the rings or a cycle sprint to the gates and back. This unwelcome addition to our workload was no laughing matter, particularly on Fridays when we were allowed to clock off earlier than usual and head home for the weekend. The pressure, therefore, to aim your boule as close as possible to the jack was intense; the last thing you wanted to do was incur a detention and become public enemy number one.
While the daily grind could be pretty hard-going, the occasional comic interlude often lightened the load. Even something as childish as one of the lads running off with Desmond Douglas’s table tennis bat kept me chuckling for days. I recall the British ping-pong champion – who was a lovely bloke – spending about an hour in the canteen frantically looking for his prized possession while we sniggered at the table like a bunch of naughty schoolboys, debating how we were going to smuggle the bat back into his kitbag without being rumbled.
And then there was the memorable afternoon when an England cricket XI arrived en masse for some fitness work prior to that summer’s test series against the West Indies.
‘F*** me, I didn’t know the Embassy world darts team were in town,’ I said as we watched the hulking figures of Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting et al jogging around the pitch.
‘Oi, Cliff Lazarenko, the canteen’s that way,’ we heckled as the nation’s finest bowlers and batsmen ran past.
‘Piss off, you football jessies,’ came the retort.
‘One hundred and eighty!’ we all shouted in unison.
Another sportsman to become the butt of our juvenile humour was tennis star Chris Bailey, who was recovering from a cruciate ligament injury similar to my own. He and I got chatting one morning. He seemed a really nice fella and, being a keen fan of tennis, I was fascinated to learn about his life on the ATP circuit. In fact, we got on so well that Chris invited me to join him for a game of soft tennis the next day. I accepted with trepidation, thoroughly expecting to be trounced by the former British number one.
With my football mates watching from the sidelines, I gave him a sound thrashing, pumping my fists in victory like my old hero, Roscoe ‘The Bullet’ Tanner. Jeers of ‘call yourself a tennis player, Bailey?’ echoed round the sports hall as Chris looked on, clearly distraught. The lads found this display of emotion hilarious, and duly christened him Fluffy for the rest of his stay. Lilleshall’s macho environment could be quite pitiless sometimes; a place where any chinks in your armour would be mercilessly exposed and exploited.
Also helping to alleviate the boredom were our eagerly awaited Thursday nights out. A chance for us to escape the donkey work and relax with a beer, these ‘socials’ became the high point of our week. We tended to give the on-site sport
s bar a wide berth (it was crammed with local hangers-on who’d swarm round Alan and Ally like bees to a honey pot) opting instead to take a cab to Telford.
Telford was a typical new town, a bit like Runcorn but minus the glitz and glamour. I remember seeing Barnesy’s face fall when we got dropped off in the bland, soulless town centre. Five minutes later he was hot-footing it away from a nearby neon-lit ‘fun’ pub that, within seconds of our arrival, had put ‘World In Motion’ on the jukebox. Being forced to rap ‘you’ve got to hold and give, and do it at the right time’ in public was evidently Barnesy’s idea of hell.
We did most of our after-hours revelling in Cascades, a dingy nightclub tucked away in a shopping precinct. With plenty of game girls and dark corners this venue was perfect for a bit of ducking and diving, but, being a hopeless chat-up merchant, I’d often slope off to the indie room to take in some tunes instead. The Farm’s ‘Altogether Now’ was played every single week, and will for ever remind me of my swanky nights in Telford central.
The doner kebab van did a roaring trade at 3 a.m. when our crew spilled out of Cascades, often with a couple of local lovelies in tow. The taxi ride home would usually involve me sitting in the front passenger seat making polite conversation with a disinterested driver while the UK’s finest footballers and Telford’s top totty got down to some back-seat smooching. The female gymnasts would often join in the partying when we returned to barracks, the combination of testosterone-fuelled footballers and young, nubile sportswomen leading to a flurry of Thursday-night bed-hopping and a glut of Friday-morning groin strains.
Stinking of stale alcohol and suffering from hellish hangovers, we’d all stumble into the gym a few hours later. Fully wised up to the previous night’s antics, the physios would lay on extra-hard sessions as punishment. Nauseous players would dash outside to throw up after being made to perform 200 sit-ups. Other unfortunates would be forced to do 15-minute shuttle runs, leaving them dizzy, dehydrated and fit for nothing. God knows what our club paymasters would have said had they seen us in that state but, thankfully, news of any transgressions never seemed to travel very far.
As a matter of fact I had very little contact with anyone at Manchester City during my spells at Lilleshall. I sensed an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ vibe going on, and matters weren’t helped by the fact that incoming phone calls were banned (mobiles were still the size of house bricks and were yet to become all the rage).
There was one important call that I was allowed to accept, however. On the eve of Bonfire Night in 1990, I was summoned to reception to be told that Howard Kendall was on the line, wanting to speak to me as a matter of urgency.
‘Hello, Lakey,’ he said quietly. ‘I wanted to talk to you myself before you read it in the papers. I left Maine Road today, y’see …’
I listened in shocked silence as he told me that he’d decided to return to Everton to replace the recently sacked Colin Harvey. He explained how difficult the decision had been, but that the lure of his former club had been impossible to resist. He also reassured me that his Maine Road successor, my team-mate Peter Reid, shared his desire to get me back playing in a blue shirt.
‘Good luck, Paul. Just keep working hard, son, and I’m sure it’ll come right for you,’ was how he ended the conversation.
I placed the receiver back in its cradle, sank into a nearby settee and tried to get my head around this bombshell. Howard Kendall was the manager who’d revitalised our team, who’d installed me as captain, and who’d outlined great plans for my future. And now, after less than a year in charge, he was moving on. There was no ill-feeling on my part; I respected him far too much for that. My sentiments weren’t shared by City fans, however, many of whom never quite forgave Howard for jumping ship when the future was looking so bright.
Occasionally, Lilleshall would host conferences for the FA bigwigs, which would sometimes attract a few well-known football managers. Seeing these fellas walking around the place used to hurt like crazy. They might have been talking about you if it hadn’t been for this stupid f***in’ injury, I remember thinking as I spied Bobby Robson and Terry Venables in deep conversation.
Graham Taylor stopped by the rehab gym one morning. I was going hell-for-leather on the rowing machine when he wandered across.
‘Keep up the good work, Paul,’ he said, placing a fatherly arm round my shoulder. ‘We need you fit, son.’ Hearing this, John Barnes sidled over.
‘You won’t find anyone who grafts harder than him, Gaffer,’ said John, nodding in my direction.
Mr Taylor meant well, of course – and it came as some comfort to know that I hadn’t fallen off the England radar – but his remarks only served to rekindle my feelings of frustration.
That evening I whiled away a couple of hours in the launderette block, sitting in my boxers with my feet against the machine and my back against the stone wall as I watched my smalls tumble around. I picked up a battered newspaper that someone had left behind and idly leafed through the sports pages. LIVERPOOL EYE DERBY DUO. SIR JACK TO TARGET KING KENNY. BLUES AIMING FOR HATTERS VICTORY.
The clock on the wall confirmed that City’s match against Luton Town at Maine Road was already in full swing. And there was I, sitting on my tod doing my washing, more than 100 miles from Moss Side. Unable to see the floodlights. Unable to hear the roar of the Kippax. Unable to run onto the pitch. Unable to kick a football. It just seemed so wrong, so unfair.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I somehow found myself walking aimlessly up and down the long Lilleshall driveway, muttering to myself as frightened rabbits fled into the dark woods. I counted them as they scampered past, seriously wondering how cathartic it would be to boot a bunny high over the fence.
These irrational thoughts scared me. My injury was clearly starting to mess with my head. It suddenly dawned on me that I was fast becoming a different person, a far cry from that carefree, happy-go-lucky lad from Denton.
I’d perked up slightly by the spring of 1991, as I seemed to be making decent headway. I was undertaking simple jogs and cone exercises, and my progression to the next level was looking ever more likely. The Lilleshall physios, however, having never dealt with a player who’d undergone my pioneering operation, were reluctant to give me the go-ahead to move forward until I’d been assessed by a surgeon. So back up north I traipsed, returning with the good news that I’d been given the nod to push on with pitch exercises and light ball work.
I was brimming with excitement the next day, my boots draped over my shoulder as I skipped past the gym and headed towards the practice pitch. After months of humdrum confinement, it was wonderful finally to have the chance to feel the morning sun on my back, breathe in the spring air and step onto the spongy turf.
My knee felt pretty good as I warmed up with a light jog around the perimeter. For the next 20 minutes I did some simple side-to-side work, followed by a session of short-distance passing. Then the time came for some more directional and rotational work. The combination of running sideways while passing a ball to a partner 15 yards away shouldn’t have been a problem. It was, though, a bridge too far. As I controlled the moving ball, my knee joint rocked back, a stabbing pain shot through my leg and my whole body crumpled. The physios ran onto the pitch, scraped me up and carried me to the gym.
As I limped in, the whirr of the exercise machines stopped and the entire room fell silent, the lads watching anxiously as senior physio Grant Downey bandaged up my knee. I was then put back on crutches before hobbling over to my crappy little room where I lay face-down on the bed for the remainder of the afternoon, sobbing into my pillow, pummelling the mattress, gutted beyond belief at this latest setback. This wasn’t supposed to happen, I wailed to myself. Something was seriously, desperately wrong.
Another night of fitful sleep followed, and I awoke the next morning in a very sorry state, all puffy-eyed and still wearing the same clothes as the day before. I picked up the phone and rang down to reception.
‘Could someone come and
help me down the stairs in half an hour or so, please?’ I asked, feeling like some decrepit old-age pensioner.
I spent the next few months back and forth between Manchester and Shropshire for more medical assessments and more exhaustive rehab. My knee, however, felt way below par and deep down I knew that something wasn’t right. It seemed obvious to me that my cruciate ligament was still damaged in some way, yet my advisers continued to assure me that it remained intact and that I could therefore crack on.
I carried on as directed, albeit tentatively, and in June 1991 was given the go-ahead to rejoin the fold at Manchester City. Returning to Maine Road felt really weird, not least because Peter Reid – who’d always been affectionately known as Fred, after Fred Flintstone – was now officially ‘Gaffer’. On the first day of pre-season training he called me into his Maine Road den, reaffirming his excitement at the prospect of my return, and assuring me that he wouldn’t be laying down any unfeasible deadlines. I could take my time, he said, adding that he was more than willing to wait until I was ready. Reidy had suffered a debilitating knee injury himself and understood better than most what I’d been through.
A few minutes later I was out on the training pitch, taking part in an 11 v 11 practice match. The game was only about 15 minutes old when Gary Megson ran down the channel and squared a ball into the box. As I blocked the cross, my heel followed through into the turf and my knee suddenly locked. I felt something tear deep inside the joint. The pain was sickeningly familiar.
‘I don’t f***in’ believe it,’ I screamed, writhing on the ground in agony. ‘It’s gone again.’