The Boys From White Hart Lane

by Martin Cloake

  Much of what impressed Parks came from Shreeve. “He was quite a foresighted coach. He’d batter on at us about the need to eat and drink right before people even started dealing with sports science. Peter went up with us from the youth right up to the reserves, then became assistant to Keith and then manager. We never really got on. I always felt he didn’t like me, that he felt I was a little shit, but it wasn’t until much later in my life that I realised what he was doing was for my own benefit. The problem as a kid is you don’t see that. When I look back on it now he was a huge influence.

  “One of the things that was really innovative about him was that we’d come back to training and the balls would be out first day. In those days it was almost unheard of because we’d get about eight weeks off in the summer, so normally in pre-season you were stuck in the woods doing running and that slog for weeks before you even saw a football. But Pete was really good; he wanted the balls out right from the word go, because he knew you can do all the running in the world around tracks but as soon as you start playing football it really kills you. We’d always have a ball, and we’d always go out early as well. That was the best thing about being an apprentice, we’d get all our jobs done and we’d get on the training pitch early, just playing silly games but it would be helping our technique in terms of passing, heading, catching, playing headers and crosses like you did over the park. I was 15 at the time; you signed apprentice at 16 but to all intents and purposes I was an apprentice at 15.

  “Before I went full time we used to train Tuesdays and Thursdays and play at the weekend. The transition from only being there once or twice a week – every time you left you wanted the next day to hurry up – to now being able to go to this club every single day of the week was brilliant. It just felt like a great time with your mates. We had a really good team and a good laugh with each other. We’d be in at eight in the morning, then once the day was done we’d stay at White Hart Lane till six or seven, we’d get the balls and go back up in the old ball court. On the walls was all the targets and we’d play games where you’d get so many points for this, so many for that. We never wanted to go home. We’d always get a shout once the office people had gone and the security people needed to lock up – ‘Get lost you lot!’. Most of us would get on the train and off at our various stops on the way to Liverpool Street; we just had a great laugh from start to finish.”

  It sounds an idyllic existence, and Parks confirms this when he’s asked whether the contract money was a factor. “People like Terry Gibson who were England schoolboys and coveted by clubs around the country were treated slightly differently,” he says. “For me it was just a two-year apprenticeship; first year I was on £16 a week, second £20 a week. They used to send £10 home to my mum for keep money, and she’d give me that back, so I had an extra tenner in me pocket but who cares? We didn’t do nothing except play football. We didn’t need to go down the West End and go shopping. Once you put your football kit on that was you for the rest of the day. The only time you spent money was on your train fare to and from White Hart Lane every day.”

  Parks’s admiration for the professionalism at the club extended to the people skills employed by the management and senior pros. “It was very much a family club. People were welcomed. People like Steve Perryman made sure they knew people’s names. They talk about Sir Alex Ferguson now knowing everything that goes on – Keith Burkinshaw was always at our games; he always knew who you were and would say hello to our parents. That really makes you feel part of a club. That era from ’76 to ’85, I don’t think there’s ever been a better era in a club’s history.”

  Being a Hackney boy, Tony must have felt very at home with the corps of Londoners at the club at the time? “I went in when the apprentices were people like Mark Falco and Garry Brooke, so I got to know them. Then it was the new crop of apprentices – me, Terry Gibson, Terry Cooper, Jimmy Bolton, Ian Crook, Mark Bowen, we had our own little crew. But it was never cliquey. You got to play in games with the older guys, you trained with them, which was a good education. It was always a club that tried to integrate.”

  There was camaraderie, but inevitably much mickey-taking of the non-London contingent by the local lads. “One of my biggest memories of that north/south divide was when Keith Burkinshaw took over the club,” laughs Parks. “He said in no uncertain terms, ‘I don’t like you flash Londoners and you’re going to be doing it the way I want it done.’ And, great man that he is, everyone respected him for that. But you’d have people like Micky Hazard for instance, who’d been at the club for a while and knew London, but still had his Mackem accent, and he’d get loads of stick, and the mick taken out of him for his dress sense – he was a shocking dresser. And Tony Galvin, who came to the game quite late. Walking into the dressing room with real mickey-takers like Paul Miller and Mark Falco and Brooksie must have been quite difficult. And he would bite, without fail, every time in his own inimitable Yorkshire way – every single time they hammered him. But he was a really dry, funny bloke too.”

  There was a lively social side to the club, with Paul Miller pulling the strings. “Maxie was a proper London wide boy. He always had to be the smartest dressed man; he always had a new gold chain and a shirt, and he never ever, ever wore jeans – he always wore trousers. He’s always been like that. And then you’d have Micky Hazard in a polo neck jumper, a shirt with a tie done to the top of his chest and his jacket, a pair of trousers that were halfway up his ankles and a pair of pumps. He would get absolutely hammered for that. There was a guy called Joey Simmons who was Garry Brooke’s age, and at the time he was the head apprentice, and he looked after Tommy Heffernan. Tommy liked to have tracksuit bottoms, long socks, long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt all wrapped up in a towel. What Paul Miller would do was get in extra early in the morning, undo the kit, replace the long socks with short socks which he would rinse out, take away his tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirt and give him a short-sleeved shirt – this would be on a freezing cold day in December. By the time Tom comes in to get changed Joe thinks he’s got the best kit, now he hasn’t.

  “I remember being in the treatment room and there was Steve Perryman, Peter Taylor, Terry Naylor and Colin Lee. I was an apprentice on £16 a week. We used to have these massive ice buckets that you’d stick your ankles in if you got injured. So they filled this full of water, put all the crushed ice in and said they’d give me a fiver if I could hold my head under. So I reasoned it out, in a very Tony-like way, that I had £16, an extra fiver would come in handy. I knew it was going to be cold but it would be well worth it. So I sat with my head in this ice bucket for 30 seconds or so. When I pulled my head out, Christ, the pain was unbelievable! I could see these four players and Mike Varney just crying with laughter. I was freezing cold, holding my hand out for this money. But they did pay me so I ended up a fiver better off.

  “It was also a way of connecting with first team players. We weren’t allowed in the first-team dressing room unless we knocked on the door, we weren’t allowed to speak when we were in there tidying kit up unless we were spoken to, and I always felt that was the right way to go. You had to earn the right to get in that dressing room. There was a lot of competition to get in there. But also I was made number two, the back-up keeper, at Tottenham from the age of 16, in and out of first-team squads, so I had the best of both worlds; I could mix with everyone at the club. It was fantastic.”

  While the team spirit was strong, the ambitions of the younger players sometimes led to discord. Parks remembers one such incident. “Steve Perryman and Neil McNab had a fight on the training ground. It was to do with the fact that at the time the first team were absolutely crap, they couldn’t win a game to save their lives. Every Thursday there would be a full-on reserves versus first team match in which the reserves were supposed to set up and play as the opposition would on a Saturday, to give the first team a chance to try things. The reserves were outstanding, packed with players who probably deserved to be in the first team, the likes
of Neil McNab. Week in, week out the reserves beat the first team and it just boiled over one day, I think Steve’s frustrations boiled over, there was a tackle and bit of a fracas. Keith decided it was all right and they could play on, and they just went at it again. That happens up and down the country every day of the training week. Even now. Because of frustration. Steve was so frustrated that the team he was the captain of wasn’t performing, and the reserves were good players but they were cocky and a bit flash and so it was almost a bit disrespectful the way they were dismantling the first team, and that’s how that blew up.”

  New arrivals at the club also needed to have strength of character, and on one of them, Tony has a different take to some of his team-mates. “Steve Archibald was different from the senior pros, a real individual; he would look after himself. He was a good pro, and one of the best centre forwards I ever played with. What a lot of people don’t realise about Steve Archibald is what a good guy he was. At the time he was contracted to wear Nike boots. He went up to the Nike factory to get some boots, came back and he came into our youth-team dressing room. He gave us all a pair of studs, rubbers and training shoes which he’d brought back. He might not have connected with his contemporaries, but the lads in the youth team and the reserves, they loved him. He was someone you could go and talk to and who would give you advice. He always, always had time for the younger players. He was a fantastic bloke and a fantastic player as well.

  “Garth wasn’t your typical footballer. He was quite intellectual, spoke really nicely and said big words – we used to take the piss out of him. He took it in good fun. I still see him, and when I see him on Match of the Day he hasn’t changed. He was another decent bloke who would take time and interest in young players, because he’d come up through the youth team system at Stoke City, and he knew the problems. Garth went from being a home-grown talent at Stoke to a superstar at Tottenham, because of the ability he had on the pitch.”

  The strong team spirit also meant lengthy sessions in the pub talking football on a Saturday night. “As a young player growing up, we all sat on the edge of that. You wanted to be part of it,” says Parks. “Steve Perryman was like the orchestra leader, he would just talk football, football, football. If we played a game away and got back to White Hart Lane we’d go into the White Hart pub, now Rudolphs – we’d all go in. If we were travelling back and got dropped off at Cheshunt we’d go to a pub local to there and by the time we got in there for a beer supporters who had gone to the game were there. It was never a question of they couldn’t speak to us or we were too big to speak to them. It’s a bit different nowadays – players are massive celebrities surrounded by people who want to keep you away from them. We liked mixing with the supporters, although in fairness they would leave us alone most of the time – we were almost like regulars so it’d just be a quick ‘All right lads’ and we’d get on with it. There’d be some banter if it had been a bad game and some pats on the back if it had been good but everyone just got on with their evening. The thing about London then was . . . well, Glenn Hoddle was the superstar, but he could still walk down the street relatively unscathed. There was still that anonymity – a different era.”

  So, was it a particularly boozy culture? “That old adage of ‘Win or lose we’re on the booze and if we draw we’ll have some more’ was rife throughout the game. We weren’t any different to that,” replies Parks. “But I can honestly say, and I liked a drink, that I never went out on a Friday night. That was drilled into me by people like Steve Perryman – enjoy yourself, but when it’s time to work you work. There was a respect for the professionalism of the game, and for your manager. When they said work, you worked. It has become more of a business these days, and the lads probably drink less, and there’s been a good influence from the foreign players and coaches on how to look after your body. The game’s moved on in terms of preparation. But then I was watching a game the other day from the ’80s – Bryan Robson got a tackle in on the edge of his own box, the ball went forward and by the time it got into the other box he was there. Bryan would’ve been a typical top pro – he played hard and worked hard and he had the fitness levels.

  “We hear a lot from foreign players and coaches about ‘English players drink too much’, and yet most of the foreign players I’ve known smoke cigarettes. Ossie Ardiles was a packet-a-day man. I find that hard to weigh up. But I don’t think smoking affected Ossie as a footballer, the same as I don’t think liking a drink affected Steve Perryman. So sometimes the criticism is unfair.

  “I remember Sebastian Coe, when he was a world champion athlete, became friends with Garth Crooks. Coe had said to him that he didn’t think footballers were very fit, they didn’t work hard enough. Garth invited him in for training. We did a 15 minute warm-up, and went straight into an eight-a-side game. Within five minutes of that game starting, Coe was blown away. He couldn’t cope. It’s a different fitness, and footballers are extremely fit for what they do. Short sharp bursts, different pace, changing direction.”

  So much for the drinking. What about those other traditional off-field pursuits of cars, fashion and girls? The last subject Parks, like most of his team-mates, is not prepared to discuss. But he does provide an insight into a different era with his comments on the rest.

  “There wasn’t much stuff about cars or how big your house was. You knew when you pulled into a car park that Glenn Hoddle and Steve Perryman would have the best car, and in them days there was lots of club cars and sponsored cars. I went to Reading recently to do some work, and every car is the latest Merc, latest Porsche, everyone has to outdo everyone else. For us it wasn’t really like that. There were a lot of sponsored cars, Fords like the guy on the street was driving.

  “For me it was more of a fashion thing, and certainly Maxie would make sure it was. You were always conscious that you didn’t want to go in wearing something dodgy or you’d have the piss ripped out of you. Mind you, you could just leave that to Micky Hazard – he would take the pressure off you any day. Stand next to Micky and you’d look a million dollars,” says Tony, laughing. “Brooksie was a one when it came to fashion. Quiet, but he must’ve spent most of his wages on clothes, every month. He had a wardrobe full of suits, he was always smart. He’d go for a two-piece suit with matching shirt and tie, nice shoes; when he was casual in jeans he was always very smart, top-of-the-range stuff at the time like Kappa. There was a shop along Tottenham High Road called Mean Man, and that was his shop. There’d be Brooksie, me, Mark Falco, and we’d always be in there. At the time I wasn’t on the money they were so I could afford maybe a T-shirt once a month. They’d be, ‘I’ll have that, that, that and that.’

  “Brooksie was really into David Bowie – knew everything. He had everything Bowie had ever done. He was quite a fashionable lad. Him and Mark Falco were best mates, no doubt, but they were the biggest piss-takers of each other as well. If Garry brought something Mark would take the piss, Garry would do the same to Mark. It was almost a bit of a competition to see who could get the best gear. And where Brooksie liked David Bowie, Mark liked Bryan Ferry. There always competition, and Mark always won over him because he loved his cars and motorbikes – his dad and brother ran a garage, and he was a real petrolhead. Brooksie wasn’t. So you’d always see Brooksie in Mark’s passenger seat – his nickname was Buddha and you’d always say, ‘There goes Buddha in the passenger seat.’ They were huge pals, but there was a huge undercurrent of rivalry.”

  The point is ventured that Falco was a player never fully appreciated by Spurs fans. Parks nods. “Mark was a big tough bastard; he used to smash us about on the ball courts. He wasn’t aggressive off the field; he could look after himself, but he wasn’t aggressive. But put him on a football pitch and if it needed to be done he’d do it. He was a natural goalscorer. He was never the quickest and not the easiest on the eye in terms of being a Tottenham player from the supporters’ point of view, but he scored goals at whatever level: prolific. I thought he was awesome at Tottenham an
d never really got the genuine respect that he deserved.”

  Not only was Parks loving his days at Spurs, he was moving through the ranks very quickly. “Miljia Aleksic, Barry Daines and Mark Kendall were the three senior goalkeepers at the club when I signed professional, and I’d had a battle of my own in the youth team with a guy called Paul Allies, who was older than me,” he remembers. “He started the under-18s season, so the battle for me was getting him out of that place. Eventually Peter Shreeve told me I was playing – it was Watford in the FA Youth Cup – and I stayed in the team. The next day Paul went in to see Keith Burkinshaw and said he wasn’t happy. Keith said, ‘You can leave. I think he’s a better goalie than you.’ And I never forget to this day that his dad said to Keith Burkinshaw, ‘You’re making a big mistake; he’ll come back to haunt you.’ Keith just said, ‘I’ve no problem with that.’ Keith always gave me lots of confidence, always had belief in me as a goalie.”

  Injuries to the keepers ahead of him meant Parks was in the squad for the first FA Cup final in May 1981 – “Just to be around an FA Cup final squad in the build-up was amazing for a 16-year-old,” he says – but watched from the stands as Spurs lifted the trophy in the replay. Then, in August 1981, Parks returned to the club to the news that Ray Clemence had signed. “When I first walked in and I saw Ray Clemence there, league title winner, European Cup winner, England keeper, I thought, ‘Fucking hell’ – I suppose I was a little bit in awe of him. There was more to come, as Parks was informed he was now Clemence’s understudy. “I didn’t know the other keepers had left, I thought I’d be fifth in line. So to be told I was the number two was like, ‘Bloody hell’ . . .”