“At Wimbledon we’d go out on a Monday morning and play American football. The whole club, 50 people on a pitch trying to play keep-ball. I remember me, Terry Gibson and Alan Cork standing on the side saying, ‘Look at these lunatics.’ Bobby Gould got the squad out one morning to do some boxing. There was a young lad called Paul Miller funny enough, he was known as Windy. Gould said, ‘Put these gloves on, Windy’ – someone he knew wasn’t really going to hit him back. So he beat fuck out of Paul. Next week he picked Gibbo – big mistake, because Tel is tiny but an absolute fireball; he beat the fuck out of Gould. Everyone was cheering.”
Garry then renewed temporary acquaintances with Perryman at Brentford, where his former skipper had been made boss, but injuries had taken their toll and Brooke’s gradual drift towards retirement began in earnest. “I wasn’t enjoying my football because my knee was so bad. It was arthritis and an op would have been no good. If you look at my left knee now it’s twice the size of my right one. I had about six months at Brentford, did about a month with Reading and that was it really as far as league football goes. I played for Worthing, then St Albans, where John Mitchell was managing – they were very good to me, they paid for an operation.
“But non-league is basically where everyone gets their anger and frustration out of their systems. The clubs I was involved in, apart from the ones run by ex-pros, there was nothing constructive. There would be too much ranting and raving from people on the sideline, some bloke whose missus has moaned at him the night before. So that was it for me, apart from when I played exhibition games and the ex-Spurs games.”
Garry never fancied a move into management. “I got offered a few amateur ones but to be honest, even at that level, if you haven’t got any money, you ain’t going nowhere. Sad, but true.” Instead he combines training youngsters with work for the Press Association. “I coach in schools every day, working with Steve Grenfell [ex-Spurs reserve and former community officer]. I also work for the PA compiling statistics. I’ll be at Orient one game, then Tottenham, then Chelsea, so it’s all round the London area. It’s good because I meet people I haven’t seen for 20 years.
“Coaching is great but it’s different now to when I started in 1993. It’s harder because there are more kids from different backgounds so there are language issues, and kids get very short lessons. Warm-ups and warm-downs cut down the actual time playing. The standard is poor because they don’t play enough. When I was a kid, on a bad day I’d have got four hours of football in; kids now are lucky if they get four hours a week. It’s obvious, the more touches you get the better you are going to be. Nowadays kids . . . well, it doesn’t bode well for the future. There have to be centres of excellence where they can do their academic work and still play.
“I live in Woodford [Essex] now. I can’t see me moving. I’ve got a 19-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son who plays football with Mark [Falco]’s boy in a team Mark manages. Mark got sent off from the ground the other day, he’s murder. We don’t get together enough with all the boys, to be honest; I miss it big time. I make an idiot of myself at the big dos: I’m too far gone because I’ve been having a drink with Mickey Stockwell beforehand,” Garry laughs. “I don’t have much to do with the club in any case. And I don’t miss games, but it’s the banter and people I miss.”
It’s the slightly melancholic refrain common to most ex-players when they reflect on the loss of the dressing room camaraderie. But Garry Brooke wouldn’t be Garry Brooke if he left a conversation on a sad note. “Oi, one more story” he says, winding his window down as he drives off. “Did you hear about when we went to Eintracht Frankfurt and I crocked a World Cup winner? The day before, me and Ossie had a play fight, I squeezed him so hard I broke his rib. He played for about 10 to 15 minutes and couldn’t breathe. We needed to score to go through, Hod did and thank fuck for that, we got through. The story put out was that it was a training ground bump with Micky Hazard but it weren’t. It was me. Keith was looking at me on the bench going, ‘You little bastard, you.’ He could have killed me.”
It’s a comforting and entirely appropriate thought that Brooksie, this likeable and friendly man who has experienced genuine heartache yet still emerged smiling, could hurt someone because he hugged them too hard.
6
TONY GALVIN
“WHAT A BUNCH OF WALLIES”
Tucked away at the end of a quiet road just behind St Albans town centre is a stark box of a building which is home to a government agency. Inside it’s all grey office furniture, strip lights and box files, a workspace that positively embraces the concept of ordinary.
It’s quiet. Most of the staff are on their way home into a bitterly cold night; someone’s fixing one of the lifts in the foyer; the security guard is doing the crossword; there’s the slightly deflated air that always goes with being in the office after hours.
Not so long ago, when footballers weren’t millionaires after they’d played just a handful of games, even the best players had to find a proper job after they hung up their boots, hence the visit to this most unassuming of destinations. The stairwell door opens and the man described by at least three of his team-mates as the only irreplaceable player of the early ’80s Spurs side walks through.
Tony Galvin has filled out a little, he’s a bit thinner on top, but he still looks you in the eye with the same firm stare familiar from the official mugshots. He wears his shirt untucked, dark trousers, soft brown boots – an ordinary bloke in the office. He extends a hand, then leads the way up the stairs. We chat about changes to the agency’s work and what’s happening to employment training in the UK, he makes tea and we settle down to talk about the days when he ran the wing for Tottenham Hotspur.
It’s days before the 2008 Carling Cup final and Galvin – still a fan – has extra reason for wanting a Spurs win. A few weeks before he had been among those present at a dinner to celebrate the induction of Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa into the club’s Hall of Fame. “When I go back to these dinners I still feel a connection, and when you see how passionate the fans are you think, ‘My God, please let them just win something then we can all move on with our lives.’ Win something, then stop talking about the past and move on.” Galvin, as he will tend to do during our conversation, warms to his theme and moves up a gear – just as he used to when piling up the wing in his playing days.
“To be quite honest it annoys me. I like going to things and meeting supporters, and you want your players to have their place in history, but what Tottenham need is some new heroes. In 1991 it was looking quite promising and that all went pear-shaped, and now you think, ‘Let them win something and we can be consigned to history – which is where we belong.’”
It is pointed out that the ’81 team’s standing with the fans is a result not just of what they achieved on the pitch, but also of the fact that they are the last team the fans really identified with. Galvin looks slightly disappointed, as if a chance to relieve the burden of the history he helped make has slipped away. Does this mean he feels the pressure of being one of that great team? “No, not pressure. I just don’t like it, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. It was OK in the ’90s, but once you get to 2008 and you’re still seeing the same old shots . . . Tottenham supporters have got a bit of a thing about looking back. Mind you, even I would say you’d never beat the Double-winning team. You’ll never see a better player, a better centre forward, than Jimmy Greaves. Not ever. And I don’t think you’ll ever see a better footballer than George Best.”
It’s refreshing to sit and talk with Tony Galvin. He’s outside the media circus that has become so much a part of modern football; he doesn’t have to watch his words to keep anyone happy, or generate controversy to retain attention. He knows what he’s talking about because he’s been there and done it, but he also knows how to keep it all in perspective. There’s no big talk, but no false modesty.
“I’ve always had massive respect for Tottenham supporters,” he says. “You want them to get succes
s because they deserve it. The club I can’t stand is Chelsea; I hate them. Give Arsenal their due, they’ve always had the support and they play football. But Chelsea, when you look at their support, they really make me laugh because they have genuinely just come out of the woodwork in the last ten years. They are a disgrace. If they have five years with no success, they’ll be back down to 15 to 20,000.”
Clearly, Galvin’s got no time for anything that smacks of what he later describes as a ‘Billy Big Bollocks’ attitude. In fact, his stripped-down style seems to contrast with the knowing swagger of the London crew at the heart of the team he joined in 1978. “Yes,” he grins, “there were people like Paul Miller and Garry Brooke who were right mickey-takers, they took the mickey out of the clothes you wore, thicko student from up north, you know, uncool . . . But I did get to know the reserve lads when I joined, Paul and Garry, Mark Falco, Micky Stead was always a decent bloke. The two I’ve kept in touch with are Mark Falco and Garry Brooke. I don’t see them all the time but we’ve kept in touch. I get on well with Paul Miller but I don’t see him often.” Galvin grins. “I don’t mix in the high circles he does – and he’s a great big name dropper, telling you who he’s seen and where’s he’s been – so you have to tell him to shut up.”
Did Galvin get taken on one of the dinners Miller said he always treated a new player to? Galvin raises an eyebrow. “He said that, did he? I don’t remember that.” You can imagine the dressing room banter.
Galvin was a northerner, but he certainly wasn’t thick. One of the many facts that 1980s schoolkids managed to retain at the expense of unimportant stuff like famous dates from history or what was the main export of Denmark was, ‘Tony Galvin has a degree in Russian.’ It was Russian Studies, to be accurate, and when Galvin joined Spurs he was in the middle of teacher training at college in Nottingham, which made him a little older than the other lads. “I only played in reserve games initially and did a bit of training when I could,” he remembers, “but I was at college most of the time. When I turned up, yes, it did feel like very much a London-based club.
“I had been playing for a club called Goole Town in the Northern Premier League. We had a game in Buxton in the Peak District. It’s a lovely place, but this night it was really wild, a horrible, horrible night – typical Buxton weather really, the roads got blocked up, it hailed, and I’d been told someone was coming to watch me but I didn’t have a clue who. And I thought on this night, being like it was, they probably wouldn’t turn up. But Bill Nicholson was there. He just decided on the strength of that one game to sign me, and it had been an absolute mudheap; not the sort of game to show what you can do. But Bill had seen it, gone in and done the business, and buggered off and made the recommendation to Keith Burkinshaw that they should sign me.
“It was a £5,000 fee to Goole Town, with another £5,000 once I’d played some first team games. I was offered something like £50 a week. It might sound like a pittance, but I was 21 and a student, so it was useful to get the money. At Goole I was getting about £10 a week. To get that offer was great.
“Before that I’d done the usual stuff. I’d had a trial at Huddersfield and played in a youth team game at Leeds. I hated it. I didn’t like the lads, thought they were a bit flash and arrogant, you know what apprentices are like. I went for two days and in the middle of the second day I just buggered off home. I didn’t feel part of it. I was still at school and I thought I’d stay on and do my exams. I didn’t want it, so I just played at school. Then I went to university and played a bit, got noticed and played for England under-18s, then I got a chance to play non-league and earn a bit of money. I enjoyed football, and I knew I was good enough to earn money at non-league level, but I never really envisaged being a professional footballer, it just never crossed my mind. My brother was a footballer, he was at Leeds as a kid, then he played at Hull for seven years. But I was never really obsessed with it. My dad played local amateur football and we played a lot as kids, but for me it was something I felt I just didn’t want enough. And maybe that’s what my mum and dad thought.
“After Bill had recommended me, Keith had me in his office for a chat and asked if I wanted to sign. It was very much like I imagine Bill Nick would’ve been, ‘There’s your offer, take it or leave it.’ You didn’t even think of asking for another £10 a week. And he said, ‘I think the best idea is for you to finish your course, because it might not work out.’ Which is very Keith, he could see the common sense in not giving everything up.
“I’d be at college all week doing my teacher-training qualification, then on a Saturday morning I’d be on a train from Nottingham to London at nine o’clock. I’d go to somebody’s house, have a bit of lunch, then play the game. If I had a bit of time off I’d come down and do some training, stay with somebody down here, but it was all a bit weird. I was mixing with the reserves and youth team players, so I didn’t really feel part of it at all . . . a bit of a stranger.
“I finished my teacher training that summer and two months later I was doing full-time training, which I’d never done before in my life. The first couple of weeks full time, it was awful, your body getting used to training all the time, you feel absolutely shattered. I was in digs in Enfield, and Gerry Armstrong used to give me a lift to training. I didn’t like the digs either. It was horrible; that pre-season was hard. I felt a complete outsider.”
Arrangements off the pitch didn’t help, either. “Living in digs in Enfield really didn’t suit me. I was 21 and I wasn’t a kid; I’d been at university for four years, so living in digs with a family was ridiculous. I had the girlfriend coming down, it was difficult all the way round. And they want to keep an eye on you, but I didn’t need anyone to keep an eye on me, I’d been living away from home for four years. Peter Shreeve was my manager at the time, the reserves manager, and I might have mentioned it to him a few times but you never got the sense the club were trying hard. You had to get off your backside and do it yourself. I managed to get a room in a flat in Ware, so that made things a bit better because you had a little bit more freedom.”
In fact, Galvin almost didn’t join Spurs at all. Despite his early ambivalence about making a career in football, he knew he was being watched by scouts from several clubs. “I was thinking clubs in that area – Scunthorpe, Lincoln, Grimsby, Hull,” he remembers. Then, on the day he was due to sign for Tottenham, he got an urgent phone call at his college hall of residence in Nottingham. “It was Nottingham Forest, a bloke called Ronnie Fenton who worked with Brian Clough, making this phone call. They wanted me not to go, they’d got wind of it somehow. So I had to make a decision on the day – was I going to put Spurs off and go and see what Forest had to say? But I just made the decision: ‘No I’m not, I’m going to go to Tottenham.’ That was when Forest were just coming good, and it would’ve been quite interesting because Clough’s teams always had two wide players. I hadn’t signed anything at that stage at Tottenham, I’d just agreed to go down. I suppose it was because I knew they’d been and seen me so I felt a bit of a commitment, but to be fair when I was younger Tottenham always had a bit of glamour about them and I had always liked them. I wasn’t fanatical or anything, but I liked them. Something in the back of my mind said, ‘You’ve got to go to Tottenham.’ It didn’t bother me where they were at the time – you knew they’d come back – it was just because it was Tottenham. There was a bit of an aura about them as a club, which is a bit unfair on Forest because they went on to do allright, they were magnificent in those days.” Galvin reflects for a moment, then laughs. “But then again, one row with Brian Clough and you’re out the door.”
So in 1978, Tony Galvin joined Tottenham Hotspur, just as the club’s aura was boosted further by the sensational signing of Ardiles and Villa. “I was up north in July when it happened,” remembers Galvin, “It came as a surprise to me as much as anyone. There was a massive circus around it and I sneaked in unknown through the back door.” And there was to be no dream start for Galvin. “I played one gam
e for the first team that first season: Man City and we lost 3-0. It was an absolute nightmare, we didn’t play well at all. The team were struggling, the first season up. We were mid-table. We’d win one, lose one – that’s typical Tottenham, isn’t it? So Keith decided to put some of the younger players in. Stuart Bevan played. Man City that day, their line-up was like a Who’s Who? – Colin Bell, Paul Power, that Polish international they had [Kazimierz Deyna], Peter Barnes, who had a blinder. So after that it was back in the reserves.”
In those days, the reserve league gave players a good grounding, and Galvin soon felt the benefit. “We had a very, very strong reserve team then. Terry Naylor played a lot of games, we had Chris Jones and Ian Moores coming out of the first team. It was very competitive, the old-fashioned Football Combination. Used to get some good crowds as well. There was me and Paul Miller and Mark Falco: we were young and because you’re successful you think your chance is going to come. The first team weren’t pulling up any trees and Peter Shreeve would always say, ‘If you play well your chance will come.’ So I was with that young group, but I was a few years older and I hadn’t come up through the youth system.
“I played a couple of first team games towards the end of the 1978/79 season and I just had that feeling. When I made my debut it seemed I shouldn’t be there, but when I came back in about a season later I felt ready, I felt comfortable, I had time on the ball. I’d just got up to speed with training full time: your speed and touch improves, and Spurs with Peter in particular used to do a lot of work in training with the ball, a massive amount of ball work.”
It’s obvious the players, particularly the younger, hungry group in the reserves, respected Peter Shreeve enormously. Galvin is no exception. “He was an absolute nightmare sometimes because he used to demand high standards,” he says. “He’d make you do something again and again and again until he saw some improvement. He’d make you all go into the ball court [the recently demolished indoor pitch at White Hart Lane] and he’d say you need to get in there and work on your technique – shooting, passing, control. And it worked. Probably two afternoons a week you’d be on the ball court and it was pure technique. It used to finish with a 20 or 30 minute game for a bit of fun, but it was technique which Peter put great store by. It was a bit laborious but it was what your continental-type players had been doing for years. That’s what Tottenham’s all about: good technique, skill levels.”
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