Margaret never went again to games, after our first few months in London, but on the sports pages she read all the profiles and interviews with the main characters in cricket, rugby, athletics as well as football. I only ever read about football. Football is my first and only love. I have no room in my brain or time in my life to entertain any other sports.
Going back to the Sunday Times for different spells during the 1970s, I did try to get jobs on the sports pages, but rarely managed it. They were a close-knit body while I was a knockabout feature writer or small-scale editor, having worked on a different part of the paper, with no experience of reporting about football.
I did eventually persuade the sports editor to let me cover the occasional match – and it was a nightmare, far harder than I had imagined. It was like being back in Manchester again, in my first months as a so-called graduate trainee journalist: being sent out to cover a road accident or fire or murder and not knowing how to do it. I would spend ages painfully writing out my reports in longhand behind the telephone box, before finally phoning it through – and getting a bollocking for being late, missing three editions.
Covering football matches in the 1970s, there were of course no computers, laptops, mobile phones, but at least you were under cover in the press box and there was a phone line booked for you.
You hand-wrote your report as the game was going on, hoping that nothing dramatic happened in the last few minutes to make a nonsense of what you had written, for you had to start dictating at the final whistle. The leading papers all had designated phones in the press box, but you had to find them, they did not always work and in smaller grounds there were not enough to go round.
The copy-takers were a long-suffering, cynical, bored bunch who sat in little booths in the bowels of the newspaper building, earphones glued to their head, a keyboard in front of them, bashing out the pearls, or otherwise, being hurled at them from somewhere in a noisy stadium.
‘Is there much more of this?’
This was their most dispiriting reaction. You had probably only just started dictating, thought it was going well, but they clearly thought it was total rubbish. They hated it when you chopped and changed as you dictated your well-chosen words. As you read out your words, as clearly as possible, you had to spell out punctuation – saying New Par, or Cap Letter, or Point, which meant a full stop.
Professional copy-takers no longer exist. A career which had gone on for decades, for a hundred years since football reports began, is now no more.
I never enjoyed doing football reporting, and never got the hang of it. I was always late, struggling to think of something amusing or colourful. I like to think when I have a typewriter in front of me, and can see my words, I can usually write something readable and personal, but when you have to do it in rough handwriting to a deadline, it is hard not to fall into clichés. My match reports rarely sounded like me.
I had to do a lot of away games in the provinces, as the star reporters, like Brian Glanville, got the big glamorous London games. It always took ages to get back as you usually missed the last fast train to London. You wasted an hour messing around with your report, you went to the press bar and drank free whisky and ate meat pies, then probably hung around the car park to get a word with the players as they came out of the players’ tunnel. They almost always did stop for a word, though they had their favourites, the ones they could trust, who would have their home phone numbers as well, often meet them socially. As an outsider, they didn’t know me, but if I did pick up a half-decent quote, I would phone it over from the railway station.
There were no formal press conferences after the game, but at many grounds, the manager would allow the chosen hacks into his office – his actual office, where he worked during the week, where he kept his private dossiers.
He would sit at his desk while we all piled in and stood around in front of him, asking questions, writing down the gems he was kind enough to give us.
I remember once at Upton Park, home of West Ham, when Ron Greenwood, later the England manager, was in charge. We all went into his office after the game. Jimmy Hill, then working for TV, commandeered Greenwood’s own chair, sitting at Greenwood’s desk, forcing him to stand around with the rest of us. Jimmy Hill then took over, telling us precisely what he thought of the game and why West Ham had lost. Greenwood just smiled.
One reason I was trying to do as many football reports as they would allow me was not just for my own interest, as a football fan, but because I had got this idea for a football book – a year in the life of a top football club, from the inside.
I discussed with Brian Glanville, and other experienced reporters, what the chances were of getting into Spurs. They all said hopeless. The chairman was a dull snob and the manager a dour Yorkshireman. The whole ethos and tradition of Spurs was anti-publicity. They were above all that. They didn’t need it.
It is hard to believe it now, but in the 1970s both Arsenal and Spurs had no advertising in their programmes, or in the grounds and least of all on their shirts. They were against anything that smacked of commercial interest. They were a pure football club, nothing else.
Like most football directors of the time, they had inherited their shares, and their directorships, and did not take any salary or payments. They planned to hand on their positions in due course to their sons or sons-in-law. At Spurs and at Arsenal, they were brought up to keep the image of their ancient club unsullied by any nasty modern commercial or merchandising methods.
I was told that the Chelsea board, controlled by the Mears family, was much friendlier, more modern, so I got an appointment with their chairman. I explained my idea and he seemed interested. I then wrote a letter, going over my project. And I never got a reply.
I decided if I was going to do such a book, I might as well try it with Spurs, a club I did follow, did know about, having been watching them play for over ten years. But how could I get in, as an outsider, not a regular football writer whom the players and manager would have come across?
During one of my six-month spells on the paper, I suggested to Harry Evans a feature about Spurs, an inside story of a top First Division club. It would give me a chance to see what they were like, how they would cooperate, then if it went well, I might then go on to suggest the book project. Harry liked the idea.
I spent a few weeks with Frank Herrmann, my friend the photographer, watching Spurs training, mainly at Cheshunt, which was their training ground at the time, in rural Herts. I had never been there before and was astounded by how much space they had, so many pitches, a proper restaurant, gym, a little stadium where the young players performed. Locals around Cheshunt were allowed to come into the training ground with their dogs for morning walks, stand around and watch training going on.
I did a couple of features, which got a good show in the paper. I did not appear to have upset the club, at least there were no objections, so I discussed the book idea with my agent, Richard Simon, and with Tony Godwin at Weidenfeld. They were all for it – though neither had any personal interest in football.
I went to see the Spurs chairman Sidney Wale. I said I would like to spend a whole year following the club in order to write a book. I gave the impression that Bill Nicholson, the manager, had no objections. Which was an exaggeration, if not quite a grave downright lie. Then I went to see Bill and said that the chairman had no objections, which by then was true, more or less.
I presented myself at the Spurs training ground on 15 July 1971, for the first day of pre-season training. It always starts in what is still the middle of summer, when normal fans have not yet begun to think about the season.
I hung around, watching from the sidelines, on that first day. Then next day I got there early and went straight into the dressing room. Uninvited. The players were getting changed to go for a cross-country run, which they all hated doing. To my surprise, Bill Nicholson threw me a top, an official Spurs training top. I put it on. After the run, I got in the shower with the rest of t
he players. And that is how I continued. I insinuated myself into their working lives. I was only thirty-six at the time, about the same age as one or two of the senior players, and reasonably fit, as I was playing Sunday morning football.
After a few weeks, I had managed to talk to all the members of the first-team pool and explained who I was and my project. I said they would be allowed to read any quotes or bits about themselves before publication, and so would Bill and the chairman.
I then got carried away and I said I would split all proceeds with the first-team pool, plus Bill and Eddie Baily, his assistant manager. So the players and coaches would all gain from the book, if it did well.
When I told Richard my agent that all proceeds were going to be halved, with one half being split between nineteen people, he had hysterics. I had not discussed it with him, so he moaned about the paperwork, said the accounts department would go mad. It was then agreed that cheques would not go out to each of the nineteen if they were only small sums, but would be added up later.
I then signed a publishing contract with Tony at Weidenfeld for the book, which Richard had negotiated. I think once again it was for a £3,000 advance, with a third down on signing, a third on the finished manuscript being accepted and a third on publication, which is still roughly the norm in publishing today. But I had no contract with the club, no contract with the board, with the manager or with any of the players. It was all done verbally. All I did was follow up with a personal letter to each, so they knew what we had agreed.
Not one of them had an agent, accountant or lawyer. No such animals had yet entered the world of football. The nearest to it was that if a club got into a big event, like the Cup final, the captain or one of the senior players, or a friend of one of the team, would create a Cup final pool in which all the bits and pieces of extra earnings, from newspaper interviews, corny photographs, appearances at supermarkets, product endorsements, would be divvied up and shared among the first-team pool. It rarely amounted to more than £100 or so each. During the season, about the only perk they got was selling their spare tickets, especially to big games, to the touts, for cash in brown envelopes, which of course they were not supposed to do.
In 1971–72, the normal First Division player was on £200 a week, even the big stars. Spurs had several England internationals, such as Martin Peters, who had been a World Cup star, plus Martin Chivers and Alan Mullery, and also a well-known, well-loved Scottish player, Alan Gilzean, and the famous Irish goalkeeper, Pat Jennings.
The average earnings for an average First Division player at the time was little more than double what a good carpenter or plumber was earning, or a minor office manager. They lived in £20,0000 semi-detached mock Tudor houses on new estates and drove modest Vauxhall or Ford cars. Only the top stars had a Jaguar.
I went to all their homes, met their wives, and got invited to their parties, but the biggest excitement for me was getting into the dressing room, before and after games. During the games, I sat on the bench with the coaches.
When they played abroad, and they were in the Uefa Cup that year, it was assumed by the foreign club I was a proper, authorised member of the Spurs party, not just a hanger-on. In some foreign papers, in photos of the Spurs stars trying out the pitch the day before, I am described as one of the Tottenham players. Oh bliss.
I knew at the time I had wangled the most amazing access, and of course boasted about it to my friends. One of the players in my Sunday morning football team, my neighbour Dr John Carrier, a lecturer at LSE, suggested I do some proper surveys, getting every player to answer not just questions about football, but about their social and domestic life, wives, cars, houses, politics, holidays, superstitions, hopes and ambitions. He said it was so unusual to be able to do any personal research on a group of top sporting people, so I must make the most of it.
I did all the surveys face to face, asking all the personal questions when I was with them alone, as opposed to asking them to write down answers. Which of course rarely works. Some people never answer all the questions, or just muck around, giving very brief or silly answers. Doing them face to face, I could also do follow-up questions when anything unusual emerged.
One day in the dressing room at half-time, cups started flying. Bill Nicholson was furious with Martin Chivers for missing an open goal. I knew from private conversations with him that he was convinced Chivers was not working enough – in fact he felt all the England stars tried harder for England than they did with Spurs.
The flying cup was not in fact aimed at Chivers. It was just one that Bill had thrown to the floor in anger, but it skidded across the dressing room towards the naked Chivers. The other players were cowering, not wishing to be in the firing line. I retreated into a corner, trying to look invisible.
I immediately thought of a similar situation a few years earlier when I had been in the studio at Abbey Road during the Sergeant Pepper sessions. I had insinuated myself into actually sitting with them, while they worked, whereas normal visitors, such as wives and friends, sat up in the gallery with George Martin and the technicians. I knew how privileged I was, but sometimes I worried that one day, if there was a row between John and Paul, which was never far away by that time, they might turn on me, as a stranger, an interloper, and say Out, You, Gerr’out.
I remember thinking that day in the dressing with Spurs, as I had done with the Beatles, that if I do get chucked out from the inner sanctum, if my face does not fit any more for whatever reason, and I never get to finish the book, then I will still have had this unique experience. I will have seen from the inside, at first hand, my heroes at work.
Fortunately for me, I did not come a cropper. But I had a mild panic when The Glory Game was published and got serialised by two papers at the same time. The Sunday Times, surprisingly, still ran pieces from the book, despite having had a feature on Spurs the year before, and so did the People. They focused on the more sensational stuff, such as the bad language and various players drinking Bacardi all the way home after a game.
This upset some of the club’s directors, believing it brought the club into disrepute. I got a legal letter from Goodman Derrick, the firm of Lord Goodman, one of the most feared lawyers of the day.
I was very worried, and so was the publisher. Lord Goodman might well get the book withdrawn while corrections were made. I managed to dig out copies of the finished typescript and discovered some pencil marks on the copy I had sent the chairman. As promised, I had let him see it in advance. I doubt if he had read it word for word, probably just the bits about himself, but I had proof that it had been submitted it to him as chairman and that he had raised no objections. I never heard from the lawyer again.
The Glory Game is still in print, all these decades later, in the UK and the USA. It was also published in Norway and Denmark. In some ways it is dreadfully out of date, with the players wearing flares, living in such humble houses, having no agents, but the surveys have proved endlessly fascinating. I have had countless requests from university students all over the world doing social studies degrees or sports science degrees who want to use my surveys in their theses. They always hope to be able to compare them with modern teams. No chance.
I went on to do many other football books, three on football history, a football novel, and for a while I did a sequence of ghosted football biographies.
I am trying not to jump too far ahead in this exciting narrative of my life, but on the subject of football, I find it hard not to think about a more recent book I did about a top player, and compare it with the lives of top players during the time of The Glory Game in 1971–72.
Over forty years later, in 2006, I read one day that Wayne Rooney’s life story had been bought for £5 million, five books, to cover the rest of his playing life. Yet he was at the time only nineteen. I did a mocking piece in my New Statesman football column, which I have been writing since 1996, saying it was mad. Mozart or Shakespeare, nobody was publishing their memoirs when they were nineteen, the foo
tball world has gone potty.
On the Monday I got a call from HarperCollins saying I was on their shortlist to ghost Wayne’s book – would I like to meet him? Brilliant idea, I immediately said, long overdue, should have been done ages ago.
I turned up at the HarperCollins boardroom where there was a row of suits, all impressive, with impressive titles – manager, accountant, lawyer, publicity and even a woman in a suit who turned out to be his brand manager, whatever that meant. There was also a hunk at the door, also in a suit, an ex-cop who was his personal bodyguard.
Wayne eventually arrived in his hoodie and trackie bottoms. He was endlessly polite and courteous. I explained how I would do the book, how I would want honesty, no lying, but I promised he could read it before anyone else, so if he felt something was going to hurt his mum or his aunty, he could change it. I asked if he had any memorabilia – and had to explain what that was.
I spent eight months interviewing him, going up to his lovely house, meeting the lovely Coleen. He was hard to do, in that I had to drag everything out of him. He was not stupid, just too young, not reflective, not at that stage in his life. It was mad, doing the biog of someone his age. And the book bombed. It was angled to a World Cup, and Wayne was injured and England were useless, as usual. All together I think it sold about 40,000 copies – whereas my Gazza biog has sold 400,000. But Gazza had had a lifetime of experience, not all of it wonderful, had retired from playing and was willing to tell everything.
I never heard Wayne swear, not in my presence. He did not call me Sir, but that was his attitude. I think as a child his mother would have given him a slap if he had ever been rude to an older person. Both he and Coleen come from strong, traditional Catholic families.
When I did the Beatles book, I asked all their mothers if they had any school reports or certificates. Only Ringo’s mother could find a school report. With Gazza, Mrs Gazza thought she had a swimming certificate Paul had won aged eight. I said that would be gold dust. I pushed her into the loft but she never found it.
A Life in the Day Page 14