“We were all bollocksed when we went to sing Ossie’s Dream on Blue Peter. You ain’t going to go on Blue Peter and sing if you’re sober are you? Let’s be fair. The whole day was a shambles. The producer, Biddy Baxter, moved me and Micky to the sidelines saying, ‘You look like you’ve been at a funeral.’”
The larks reached a high – or perhaps a low – with the unlikely antics of goalkeeper Milija Aleksic. His public persona was one of a popular but unassuming individual seemingly happy to get on with his job and stay in the background. The Aleksic Brooke knew was different. “He was crazy. On the face of it he was quiet, but with the boys he was completely different. Really, really funny, he was always doing something stupid with John ‘Blakey’ Lacey – we called him Blakey because he looked like the bloke on On the Buses.
“Milija pulled this unbelievable stunt a few days before the League Cup final. We were at Cheshunt and we ran the bath for the players and filled it with bubble bath; you couldn’t see the water there were so many bubbles. Milija was in it, I went to get in and he said hurriedly, ‘No no, Garry, don’t get in.’ He’d only gone and done a great big fucking shit in it and left it floating around! But because of all the foam you couldn’t see it. So we quickly got out and had a shower while the boys came in. We’re acting innocent, ‘La di da’ and that. They’ve got in, and after a while they’ve started to go, ‘Aagh, no, help, fucking hell!’ in horror, running out in terror as this huge turd floated towards them.”
Through such pranks, the bond between the players strengthened. But by Garry’s frank admission there were differences. “We said some real harsh things about one another in meetings. A couple of times, people would take things personally, people would not get on. Paul Price and Garth Crooks didn’t, for example. But as long as you got on on the pitch, that was what really mattered. There’s bound to be disagreements. There used to be a fight every couple of weeks, but it is inevitable with 20-odd fellas together. It wasn’t a bed of roses, but we had such a team spirit that that could be overcome. Grudges would very rarely be borne. Paul and Garth will probably be all right together now.
“Some people didn’t like Archie; Steve was so opinionated it was unbelievable, but that was key to how good he was as a player. He had so much self-belief. Graham [Roberts] was a very good player, but he’s had his problems with the club since. Things have been said and he and certain people don’t get on. He doesn’t get invited to dos now, which is sad. He’s criticised a few people which I think is perhaps wrong. But what a player. Him and Paul Miller would probably get sent off every week now. Stevie would struggle as well, because he was hard as nails. We had four or five who could all put their foot in. We used to have days in training when Mark, Paul and Graham would be kicking lumps out of each other. But we had a ridiculous amount of quality.”
As a component of that embarrassment of talent, Brooke became established in the squad. He only realised how good it was, however, when he left White Hart Lane. “It hit me when I went to Norwich. Dave Stringer was the reserve team manager; he said, ‘You’re getting frustrated, aren’t you? You’ve come to Norwich, you’re playing with good players, and you’re getting into good positions, but they aren’t Hoddle and Ardiles, they can’t play balls like they can. You’ve got to change your game to suit.’ I had never thought of it like that before, but all that great service goes out of the window. You don’t realise it until later.”
Perhaps Garry had been spoilt. By the age of 21 he had two FA Cup winners’ medals, coming on as substitute in both finals and nearly scoring in the 1982 replay. From that game emerges a story that reveals much about Garry’s modest character. “I don’t know if the rest of the boys know this but at the end of the game I offered Ricky my medal, because he had played in every game and had only missed out because of the Falklands, but he wouldn’t accept it. I said to Rick, ‘This is yours. I haven’t done nothing and hardly played any games in the cup run.’ I did it in the changing room right after the game but he said no. But that’s him: he’s a lovely, lovely man.”
Had Brooke known then what was in store for him, he might have been less willing to make such a generous gesture. His stumbling path towards the 1982 final provided a foreboding of what was to come. “I was lucky to make it, really; in September 1981 I did my cartilage. I was out for a month, went back to training but I split the scar open. They put in butterfly stitches as they couldn’t do a normal re-stitch on the scar tissue. So I’m sitting at home later on, and I’m really in pain, thinking, ‘This can’t be right.’
“The club doctor [the late Brian Curtin] came round, opened it all up and said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look too good, does it?’ Dr Curtin said, ‘Take these antibiotics for the next 24 hours – they should work. If they don’t, well, it’s one of those things.’ ‘I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, if septicaemia sets in there’s not a lot we can do about it.’ He was so matter of fact about it. He was basically saying, ‘Your football career could be over; you could be dead!’ I thought, ‘Oh right, lovely, cheers!’
“Being injured is a nightmare. I didn’t play for four months. I couldn’t get full bend back in my knee. And the physio Mike Varney, he did his job well but he didn’t half enjoy hurting people,” Garry laughs. “I’d got about 90 per cent bend back and was training, but couldn’t flex it properly. So one day I’m laying on the bench with my foot up and Mike is gently working on my knee. All of a sudden Mike put his whole weight through the knee and crunched it down, as that gets rid of all the internal stuff that’s left behind. Oh, the pain. If I had had a gun I would have shot him. But that was the best thing he could have done.”
Varney’s cruel-to-be-kind work ensured Brooke returned. But just months after celebrating at Wembley, Garry’s world was turned upside down. He doesn’t dodge any question on the subject of his car crash: he talks with honesty and clarity about what it meant to him, and 25 years later, his recall is almost photographic. “To be truthful the day I had my accident was the day my Tottenham career finished. I made 101 appearances and 84 of them were before the crash. It was weird, that whole year. The season after we won in 1982 I was involved in every game, either playing or sub. After the crash, that was me finished. It was February the 13th, a freezing cold Sunday night. I can remember everything like it was yesterday.
“It was a strange set of events. It happened around the wedding of Lee, a big Spurs fan and the brother of my girlfriend Tracey who became my first wife. He wanted to get married on the Saturday and asked me to be his best man as he couldn’t choose between his best mates. The trouble was I couldn’t say, ‘Keith, can I have the day off to be best man at my future brother-in-law’s wedding?’ So they changed it to the Sunday.
“We went to the reception afterwards which was near Enfield Lock. Tracey’s sister Lisa was there, her boyfriend Kevin came late, about half ten, so he didn’t really have a drink, just a couple, and was driving us back. I wasn’t even going to get in the car, but plans changed and we all got in. I was in the back in the middle. We were going along Mollison Avenue and we hit black ice. That was it. The car knocked four lamp-posts down on one side and went down a ditch. As we were going down, I could see a stream at the bottom and I thought, ‘Here we go, this isn’t going to be too great.’ I wasn’t hurt then. But as we hit the ditch we went into the ground like a dart and I got thrown all around the car.
“It’s funny now but the pain was there [points to groin]. Kevin was driving and Tracey, Lisa and her mate Kay all got out. I’d actually crawled out but the pain was just above me bollocks. I said to Kay, ‘Do me a favour, undo me trousers’ and she’s gone, ‘Oh, shut up Garry!’ Funny now but I was in agony. Tracey had 11 stitches and Lisa had headaches for ages but I was the only one who was really hurt, because of where I was sitting. I had no support and was just thrown around all over the place like I was in a pinball machine.
“Maybe it was the adrenalin keeping me conscious but by the time I got to hospital I was in a bad wa
y. Mark Falco came to the hospital that night. He saw me getting the last rites. Micky [Hazard] and his wife Yvonne came. The terrible thing was one of the ambulance people didn’t know the couple he was talking to were my mum and dad and said, ‘He’s got no chance; he won’t last till the morning. He’ll be dead.’
“When I woke up the next day I had nine tubes coming in and out of me. I didn’t feel that bad. I had a ventilator in my throat so I couldn’t talk but I was smiling. But then on the Tuesday I came out of shock and I was in absolute fucking agony. They gave me an epidural with morphine that didn’t work. Nothing worked. I was in that much pain that if they’d offered to kill me I would have taken it. That was way above any other pain I’ve had.
“I had nine ribs broken on my left side, but there were 12 actual fractures. Some of them had broken into my lung. I went to Chase Side Hospital but the club flew down some specialist from Manchester who wanted to operate. The surgeon at Enfield wanted to let me heal naturally. That was his job and his choice, if you open someone up there can be all sorts of complications. I realise now he made the right decision.
“I was in intensive care for eight days and on the ward for about four or five. All the boys came and saw me, Keith came with Shreevesie, Blakey brought me a great big pile of porn mags, right in front of my soon-to-be-wife – cheers John. Chrissie came in and said they’d heard about it on the radio. He said his wife Shirl had burst into tears, crying her eyes out. It’s strange details like that I remember. I had thousands of cards. I sent them to a charity appeal but I should have really answered them all. Stevie came on his own. He said he could never have forgiven himself if I’d died and he hadn’t come to see me. I think he had to do that alone.”
It had been touch and go but Brooke survived and the prognosis was that he would still be able to play competitive football. The long and painful road to recovery, however, had only just started. “I couldn’t do anything but lie at home for two months. Once I could get up the club sent me to Marbella where one of the directors had an apartment. The club were brilliant. They paid for all the taxis, for my mum and dad to get up to hospital. They were different class. Everybody was, to be honest, everything that could be done was done.
“I went back pre-season, went training on my own. Ally Dick was there and as I was walking across the car park Ally said, ‘You look well’, because I’d lost a lot of weight. This was around June; it was the first time I’d done anything for four months. Mike said to go round the track and just do as much as I could.
“So I came out of the tunnel, and I ran round the edge of the pitch. I got towards the Paxton goal and collapsed, I couldn’t move, couldn’t get any air inside me. Colin was there on his tractor and he jumped off and came running over and said, ‘Bloody hell, I thought you were dead!’ I couldn’t breathe, and meanwhile his tractor’s going all over the place!
“I could only run a little bit. That day made a massive difference to me mentally. I thought, ‘I can’t run 120 yards, how the fuck am I supposed to play football?’ Every day we used to train by running round the perimeter track for 12 minutes and do at least eight laps. I was never great at running, if I could do eight and a half I was pleased – but for months I couldn’t get past six. It did my head in. I hate cross-country running but was going out running on my own at night to try and get as fit as possible, but I just couldn’t get past that barrier. My game was all about pace, but my recovery rate after one 60-yard sprint was poor, it was like I was smoking 60 fags. It was just never ever the same.
“You never lose your ability; Martin Chivers plays for the Spurs vets at 61 and you should see his touch now. But if you ain’t fit you’ve got no chance.”
Garry managed to work his way back into first-team contention the next season, but during a game away at Watford, the one which featured Glenn Hoddle’s famous pivot and chipped goal, Brooke realised that as far as he and Tottenham were concerned, the game was up. “I hit a wall and couldn’t move. I had to come off. The club sent me to Edinburgh University to see a specialist to test my lung capacity. Mine was at something like 82 per cent. The fella said most people only use 80 per cent of their lung capacity. At the time Seb Coe was the best runner in the world. The doc said, ‘If you can get Coe to believe, at the stage when he thinks his lungs are going to explode, that he still has more lung capacity, he could knock a minute off the world mile record. Mentally, people can’t do it, our brains close down. Your problem is that you are at 80 per cent now, so in reality you’re working at only 60 per cent.’
“That was why, after 60, 70 minutes, I was gone. The club was good, the boys were great and Keith, bless him, would still involve me. Shreevsie made sure I got a UEFA Cup winners’ medal in 1984 as well, even though I didn’t play. They got the old groundsman-maintenance man Mickey Stockwell to present it on the pitch. It was a nice way of doing it. But what used to be so enjoyable became hard work. The people you know and have grown up with like Micky Hazard and Mark, they’ve made the step up, and I felt like it was passing me by.
“I wasn’t depressed as such, I’ve never been that sort. But I knew in myself I wasn’t going to play regularly again. The club never said as much, but I’m 99 per cent sure they knew as well. Keith said there had been a few offers for me and asked me what I thought. That meant they knew I was on the way out.
“When Shreevesie took over they offered me another year, but the end was near. I had a massive row with [John] Prattie when he was assistant manager, in a reserve game. I looked at the team sheet and I was sub. I lost it. I said, ‘I ain’t fucking being sub; you can stick it up your arse.’ I was fuming then. At the time I was on a week-to-week contract and I refused to sign a deal. I ended up staying for a year, but mentally – well, I went off the rails a bit, I was coming into training just doing what I wanted.”
A case of delayed reaction to the trauma of the accident? “It could have been, but my time was up. We’d signed John Chiedozie and Paul Allen, people who play in my position, so the writing was on the wall. I said to Pete, ‘It ain’t gonna be: we all know I’m not going to get any fitter’, and that was that. So I left. It was just so frustrating.”
For all his fitness problems, Brooke was coveted by several clubs. A proposed move to Southampton didn’t materialise after they failed to agree terms and there were similar wage disagreements with then Oxford United owner Robert Maxwell, whom Garry met at the newspaper baron’s HQ to discuss a move to the Manor Ground. “I went in to his office. It was the big chair/little chair set up, like something out of a Bond film. He’s sitting there looming over me. He says, ‘Yes? What are you looking for?’ I said what I was after and he straight away went, ‘Goodbye’. I said, ‘What?’, he said, ‘Goodbye!’ And that was it. I came out and his son and Jim Smith asked me what happened and I said, ‘That’s it – he just said ‘Goodbye’.”
Brooke eventually moved to Norwich. He played reasonably well for the Canaries but it was a difficult period. With his new partner Jackie living in Essex, Garry had a long commute to Norfolk and found the culture at Carrow Road hard to reconcile with the freedom he enjoyed at Spurs. “My friend Trevor Putney was there and he said I was my own worst enemy. Ken Brown was manager and Mel Machin was his assistant. You weren’t allowed to say anything. You didn’t have an opinion. At Tottenham, you could have your say; there you couldn’t. And being the sort of person I was, I wasn’t having that.
“Disagreements arose over anything. My biggest one was when we played Millwall. They beat us 4-2 with John Fashanu terrifying our defence. I scored but didn’t play well. Right at the end, I flicked the ball past Bill Roffey, a real big lump. He slid in, knocked the ball out and I jumped over him. After the game Mel ripped into Tony Spearing, the youngest lad in our team. I said, ‘For fuck’s sack Mel, leave him alone. We’ve had a non-existent midfield out there, our two forwards didn’t fancy it, Fash has terrorised us at the back and you haven’t had one go at any of our experienced players. All you’ve done is pick on the e
asy one.’ He said to me, ‘Well you’re nothing but a fucking cheat. Right at the end of the game you should have had Bill Roffey.’ I looked at him and said, ‘You’re a fucking idiot. As if that would have made a difference to the result.’ He called me a cheat again. He was waiting for a hip replacement, so I said, ‘Well you’re just a plastic-hipped old c**t.’ And guess what, that was about the last time I played.
“He was very good coach, give him his due. But you weren’t allowed to say nothing and I couldn’t cope with that.”
Brooke found matters much more to his liking in Holland when he moved to FC Groningen for two seasons. “They were dedicated, even the part-timers, and while the pace was slower their technique was superb. My first game was against Feyenoord who we hadn’t beat for 25 years and we won 1-0. We came in on the Monday afterwards and one of the coaches said to me, ‘Garry, you work too hard, we don’t want to see you in our half.’ Happy days! I got in their PFA team of the season. We had Frans Thijssen playing for us, a great player. It was a good time, it wasn’t so physical and with none of that defending lark, I felt like a pig in shit. To be honest, if I had my way, I’d still be out there now. But Jackie was pregnant and back in England. I had four or five offers from other bigger clubs over there, but she just wanted to be back at home.”
So instead Brooke embarked on a peripatetic tour of various clubs. He spent two years at Wimbledon. “Steve Perryman says I’m the most ‘un-Wimbledon’ player that’s ever been born. I hated it to be honest. I went there for all the wrong reasons, mainly because it was in London but it was a disaster. My knee was getting worse too, a legacy of my cartilage going septic. So it was a crap two years of football, it was awful. I was going to training thinking, ‘What is the point of this?’ My problem was that I’d come from Spurs and wherever you go after that, you’re fucked, you’ve got no chance.
The Boys From White Hart Lane Page 12