The Times Companion to 2017

by Ian Brunskill

  Listening to Sir Simon I recalled reading the neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan’s book It’s All in Your Head, about her career dealing with physical illnesses that had no discernible physical origin. She was careful not to suggest that people with such conditions were malingering or exaggerating. But she did speculate that too great an interest in one’s body and health might be linked to psychosomatic illness. Crudely, if you think about it, it happens. If you’re told you’re fragile, then fragile is what you’ll be.

  This took me back to the problem of what has become known as “false memory syndrome” or “recovered memory”. I’m prepared to bet that when the final story is told about the Great VIP Paedophile Panic of 2012 to 2016 we will discover that suggestive hypnotherapy lay at the heart of it. You look for insult, you look for offence, you look for abuse, you look for illness — all things that can and do exist — and you’ll find what you’re seeking. Run away and you run away from yourself.

  The answer is, of course, to be sensible. To realise that Milo is Milo’s problem and that it’s only when you try to ban him that he becomes everyone’s problem. Trigger warnings at the theatre? If you’re Abraham Lincoln maybe. Otherwise, we’re almost certainly healthier for doing without them.

  OUR MAGICAL WEMBLEY MOMENTS

  George Caulkin

  FEBRUARY 25 2017

  MIST HUNG LOW over Wembley, shrouding the arch, glistening like tears. Feet shuffled across the turf, testing its spring, a bark of laughter cracking the silence, but the stadium, by and large, was empty. Three rows of men, separated by age and eras, joined by history, lined up along the far touchline, murmuring together, swapping phone numbers, gazing deep into the stands. Quiet settled and the camera clicked.

  Gareth Southgate was present, squirming at his central place in the photograph — “There are some legends here and I’m not sure I should be at the front,” he said — but prominence is unavoidable for the England manager. Wembley is a home now, but it is also where something melded for him, ambition and achievement, “a sense of belonging”. Around him, other stories, other memories.

  The League Cup was established in 1960–61, but this year marks the 50th anniversary of Wembley staging the final. It was a competition born into antipathy; during its formative moments, The Times thundered against a “useless” tournament but it has grown into its robes. When Manchester United play Southampton tomorrow, nobody will sneer. A universal response: wish we were there.

  Perhaps our judgment had merit when finals were settled over two legs, when the big clubs stayed away, when European football was not offered to the winners and a glut of extra fixtures prompted us to write that “a further spread of mediocrity will be the dose”. Maybe too many games still stifle our development, but mediocrity does not glimmer like this.

  To commemorate a half-century of resilience and growth, of fantasy and fulfilment (and to make our reparations), The Times and EFL invited a player from each winning Wembley side to return to the ground for a unique team picture, wrapped in their colours. Amid the well-worn anecdotes, the surprising admissions, a consensus emerged; nobody would swap it.

  Southgate lifted the cup with Aston Villa in 1996. It was a transformative season for the centre half, who would play every minute of England’s run to the semi-finals of the European Championship finals that summer. Winning brought acceptance. “I always looked at big players and what they had won,” he said. “It was never going to be about what I earned. It was about caps and medals. Ultimately, I felt that was how my career would be judged. I was definitely driven by a desire to win something. I had just got into the England squad, so to be a cup-winner made me feel more deserving of my place. That was an important moment, to get over the line in a big game at Wembley. The following weekend we lost in the FA Cup semi-final and I started my first England match on the middle Wednesday. It was an incredible passage of time.”

  When Southgate retired as a player ten years later, his feelings had shifted. There had been another League Cup with Middlesbrough — held at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium while Wembley was rebuilt — the club’s only leading trophy.

  “I’m a bit more balanced now,” he said. “Sometimes you’ve got to be at certain clubs to win certain things. Lesser players can be at bigger clubs and win more than better players.

  “You recognise that football is about memories. In the end, really, you think about the people you played with and played for. You meet again and pick up the thread. The great occasions in your life are shared with other people and sharing that day with Middlesbrough, a club that had never won before, makes you realise you’re involved in something far bigger. It was more than a football game. That’s meaningful.”

  The League Cup provided that meaning, just as it did for Luton Town in 1988. Regarded by many as its finest final, the underdogs took the lead against Arsenal, then conceded two goals before Andy Dibble repelled Nigel Winterburn’s penalty, Gus Caesar famously dallied in defence, Danny Wilson equalised and Brian Stein sealed a 3–2 victory in the 90th minute.

  “Arsenal were massive favourites and nobody gave us a chance, but we believed,” Mick Harford, the former Luton striker, said. “We were a very good cup team. We wanted something to show for it and, to be part of a Luton team winning their first major honour, a small-town club, was huge, magnificent.”

  Yet jubilation is democratic. Manchester United claimed their first League Cup in 1992, Brian McClair scoring the only goal against Nottingham Forest. Twelve months later, they would win the title for the first time in 26 aching years. There had been other staging posts, other trophies, but as plain old Alex Ferguson surveyed his dressing room, something stirred.

  “We had won the FA Cup after a replay a couple of years before, we had won the European Cup Winners’ Cup and it was continuing a run,” McClair said. “That was the manager’s emphasis — it was really important. We put more silverware on the table at a time when we had a chance of finally winning the league and, although Leeds United pipped us, winning breeds winning. We could feel it coming.

  “It was a huge event, a massive thing. It lifted things; win, keep winning. The manager would always say ‘you must celebrate wins’ and we did. We had a good night and a good journey back on the train to Manchester the next day, with families and friends. That was always a cracking trip — when you had won.”

  United can feel too monolithic for intimacy — the money, the worldwide reach — but strip it back and every club is a collection of pulses, fellowship, hope. McClair is chipped from granite, but he feels it. “It’s so special to be here,” he said. “You look around and go, ‘Yeah … we were part of that history.’ Wembley, as a kid, was a dream: England v Scotland, finals. I think about it now: Manchester United, League Cup winners. Goalscorer: McClair.”

  Garry Birtles scored twice in his final and, even now, it irks him. This was the Forest side of 1979, the year that Brian Clough’s miracle men won the first of their European Cups. “I had two goals disallowed, which I’m not at all bitter about, as you can tell,” he said. “Not many people have scored a hat-trick at Wembley.”

  Birtles was fortunate that he could focus on the ball, let alone kick it. He said: “We got to our hotel the night before and the gaffer said, ‘Right, drop your cases off and get back down here.’ There was a room set aside, a buffet stacked up, loads of food on the table. ‘Whatever you want to drink, lads.’ There was cider, lager, wine. There might have been champagne but I preferred a pint or a glass of wine. Still do.

  “Cloughie and Peter Taylor started relating stories about when they started off in management at Hartlepool United. We had a lot to drink. Archie Gemmill stood up at one point to leave the room and the gaffer said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ ‘Up for a bath, gaffer, like always before a game.’ ‘Sit down, you go when the rest of us go.’ When we eventually went upstairs, I tripped and ended up on all fours.

  “We went 1–0 down to Southampton the next day. We were probably hungover.
We got a rollicking in the dressing-room at half-time. There had been heavy snow and the pitch was awful, a mud bath, but we won it. Then I dropped my medal. It was bouncing along the floor in the royal box. An absolute nightmare. Coming from non-League, it was just unbelievable, unreal. In 1976 I was laying floors. In 1979 I was playing at Wembley.”

  Luton preferred to celebrate afterwards. “We went to the Savoy in London,” Harford said, still imposing, stringing out a slow Wearside drawl. What happened? “We got very drunk, as you could probably imagine.”

  Some revelry is more harmful; when Arsenal beat Sheffield Wednesday in 1993, Tony Adams hoisted Steve Morrow on to his shoulders; Morrow slipped, broke his arm and was rushed to hospital. Paul Merson tried and failed to suppress a giggle. “Stevie went flying,” he said. “That’s what I remember most. I felt for him. He didn’t play all that often and to get the winning goal and for that to happen …”

  Merson had plundered an equaliser and then teed up Morrow. “One of those games when everything went right,” he said. “I even crossed with my left foot for Stevie’s goal. I probably kicked the ball with my left foot ten times in my career.

  “We won the FA Cup a couple of months later but I was useless in that final. Shocking. I have better memories of this one. I am a big believer in the competition; it blows my mind when managers don’t play their strongest teams. Everybody would want to be here. When I was growing up, I used to play a game called ‘Wembley’ in the park with my mates. To stand here, to walk here … I get a shiver down the spine.

  “I grew up watching players walk to the royal box and to have made that same journey is something that is difficult to get my head around. It was something I always dreamt of.

  “You score a century at Lord’s or a try at Twickenham: that’s the ultimate in those sports. Scoring a goal at Wembley? It has got to be every footballer’s ultimate. I’ve always thought of this as a massive competition.”

  It was a little different, in every sense, when Mark Lazarus achieved a similar feat with Queens Park Rangers in 1967. The match was held at Wembley for the first time, a single tie, played in front of nearly 98,000 people and QPR, then of the third tier, were confronted by West Bromwich Albion. “Being at Wembley gave it more status, but I think our game really set the tournament alight,” Lazarus said.

  It was a surreal beginning. “The atmosphere before the match was astonishing. Four fans from Westbourne Park had made a coffin with ‘WBA’ written on it, put it on their shoulders and started walking towards Wembley. By the time they got to Wembley Way, there was a parade of about 4,000 people following it. It was funny to see that. A great day, lovely sunshine, all the family here, a packed house.

  “We were 2–0 down at half-time but won 3–2; the whole thing was just a fairytale. We won the third-division title that year and were a good side but I think us being there made it bigger.”

  Lazarus is 78 now. “The memories are still with me,” he said. “We’ve lost a few players from that team and that worries you a bit. It goes so quickly. But I remember scoring and jumping over a little fence that separated the running track from the crowd and going over and shaking hands. I reckon I could still do that.”

  Birmingham City were another team of improbables. In 2011 they were flailing to stay in the Premier League, a challenge that would elude them, but they went down swinging, beating Arsenal in the final.

  “It was in the latter stages of my career and it was unexpected,” Lee Bowyer said. “On paper, we should never have won that match but we had a togetherness. We wanted it more.

  “Alex McLeish [the manager] instilled that. It was like Braveheart before matches; his team-talks were unreal, broad Scottish, inspirational. I swear to you, we would walk on to the pitch thinking, ‘Well, we’re not going to lose this.’ It had been so long since Birmingham had won anything. It was a hard season, but managers like David O’Leary and Graeme Souness always told me, ‘It’s not what you earn from the game, it’s what you’ve got to show for it’ and that stuck in my head.”

  For Kenny Sansom, football was not like that. The game was more functional, more practical. “Whenever I went out on to a pitch, I wanted to do my job,” he said. “That was all I thought about before kick-off: I do my job. It’s about a team, but it has to be about individuals first; if I did my job, I could help Tony Adams do his. He could help Steve Bould. I didn’t really think about winning trophies that much.”

  It would change when the full back captained Arsenal to a 2–1 victory over Liverpool in 1987. Something broke. “I cried my eyes out when I was walking off the pitch,” Sansom said. “Yeah, I was very emotional. Walking up the stairs to get the trophy, I was terrified. It was nerve-racking. Somebody had given me a hat. And then you turn to your fans and they just go berserk. You think about them, you think about your family.

  “A few days later I got a lovely letter saying, ‘Well done, Ken. Our first trophy for eight years. Brilliant.’ I was chuffed with that. Then I got a few more: ‘Why did you wear that hat?’ And then another one, ‘Why do you have that stupid moustache?’ But you take it in good humour. It was just great, lovely to be captain. The next year we lost to Luton, a massive, massive disappointment. But, in the end, that is what makes football so appealing.”

  Sansom’s life has been complex, scarred by alcohol, but he looked healthy that day. Poignancy simmered. Matt Elliott, there to represent Leicester City, spoke of the “outstanding individual highlight of my career”. Pat Jennings described himself as “one of the lucky ones”. Denis Smith, a winner with Stoke City in 1972, recalled a “sea of red and white. Tears come into your eyes straight away. It’s very emotional.”

  What would Newcastle United fans, without a domestic trophy since 1955, give to weep like that, just once, to have something tangible for those hard yards of support? As Southgate said, for all the cold, grey controversies about priorities and weakened teams, “when it comes to League Cup final day, everybody is watching and saying, ‘Bloody hell, I wish I was playing.’ Winning trophies is special.”

  It is frequent for some and for others a novelty but, for big clubs and small, these are occasions to reflect, to consider what and who we are, the nature of support, to commune with those close to us and reconnect. To flood Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square. To dream. For players, winning is a craving; to do it at Wembley, with the world bearing witness, represents affirmation, a reward for sacrifice and dedication. This weekend, nothing compares.

  The League Cup: an apology. You are anything but useless. You are beautiful and beguiling, even when you gleam for ever out of reach.

  “I am sat here looking around at the superstars of our game,” Wilson, victorious with Luton and Sheffield Wednesday, says. “It does feel special.” He glances across at Harford. “We managed to break into that little circle; maybe only for a small while, but we did it. We should feel proud of what we did.”

  SPINAL COLUMN: I KEEP SEEING THE GHOST OF MELANIE PAST

  Melanie Reid

  FEBRUARY 25 2017

  THERE ARE TIMES when I’m on my own, in a potentially tricky situation, when I see the ghost of Melanie Past. It’s usually an occasion, as last week, when I have been bold and ventured out on my own. When, inching my way across rough tarmac in my wheelchair, praying no one offers, pityingly, to help me, out of the corner of my eye I see her. She’s hurrying, as usual — two minutes ago, she threw her car in a space; in another three, she’s got her appointment, and her big long legs are striding out, floating over kerbs and potholes. In fact, she’s multitasking, on the phone, making decisions. She dominates the clock. She makes the hours.

  She doesn’t notice me as she passes. I may be invisible. I wish I was. I watch her go and then, jaw tight with determination, put my head back down and forge on. As if on an obstacle course, I scan for the position of the drains and the height of the kerbs, plotting my path.

  This is my habitat now, low, close to the road. I see the jagged edges of tarmac patches, ho
w the grit is first worn into and then washed out from the potholes by car tyres, like a mortar and pestle. My world in a grain of sand. My heaven in a wild flower. I smile mirthlessly.

  When next I look up, she’s long gone, my phantom. I can see the entrance door closing. Was it her? It’s going to take me another five minutes to get there. Remember the childhood poem about Ozymandias, king of kings? At moments like this, the words return like an earworm, mocking me. “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone … Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

  Does it ever get any easier, that knowledge of what we once were? Us awkward squad, us colossal wrecks, limping and inching and creeping behind the hubris of our past. I’m not sure “easier” is a word I’ll ever use again. But in a way, that’s why I keep taking on challenges, because it represents some kind of symbolic progress towards where I would like to be once again.

  For that reason I insist on going to hospital appointments on my own now, despite the scariness, the gamble of finding a parking space, the rough access, the heightened anxiety. The margins of safety, when you’re a tetraplegic on your own, are tiny. Partly, for sure, I do it because I get so weary of having a minder. Anyone. Dave. Friends. I am tired of wasting other people’s time; I crave my own company, the luxury of spontaneous decisions, the ability to linger, explore, be fleetingly independent. The brief conceit of owning time again.

  But deep down, I guess it’s because I still chase the phantom. Melanie Past is ever ahead, tempting me; and I may be the wreck of her, but I’m still trying to follow her. Andrew Marr, in his recent TV programme on stroke rehabilitation, made me feel better, because he’s doing it, too. His slow flare of delight at tiny new movements — the new flex in his left ankle, the flicker in his left forefinger. The tough, unself-pitying message that says, keep going, keep questing, hope is not dead. Keep staggering across the desert towards what might be an oasis. But might well be a mirage. Do it anyway. My left hand, defying expectations, makes the same infinitesimal improvements as his. Where once it could grip and lift only a piece of paper, now it can just about do the same with a newspaper. I don’t believe in God, but by God I do believe in neuroplasticity.