It seemed to work, for the events of the following match changed my young life for ever.
‘Watson gets the ball, beats his man and crosses, up jumps Chris Hargreaves and scores. 1–0.’
‘Gary Childs runs down the wing and loops up a cross, up jumps Chris Hargreaves to score again, 2–0.’
The final whistle goes, the game is won and I am in the team bath having, on my debut, scored both goals. Ninety minutes earlier, I had been doing kick-ups on my own in the centre circle before the game. No warm-ups back then!
I had been excited in the changing room before the game, mixing with these experienced footballers. In the post-match bath, I was now one of them, and was now excited about the prospect of going out that night. That is where the problems lay, the going out!
In many changing rooms around the country the atmosphere after a win is incredible. It can also be pretty interesting after a loss, but there is always an enormous sense of relief for everyone when the game is over, the music is blasting away, the banter is flying, and, inevitably, the talk is of the Saturday night’s activities. It was the same on my debut and it is the same now, although for the old boys like me, now it’s a case of a few glasses of wine and a night in with the family!
That night, I ended up in a packed Pier 39 (Cleethorpes’ Premier Nightclub, no less. You know – sticky carpets and sticky drinks) with most of the young lads in the team and with the group of mates I knocked around with. We had done the dreaded ‘footballer’s’ walk past the queue, and gone straight in. At the time, I thought the attention I got in there was really great. I was already a well-known local lad, but this game had made it ridiculous. Drinks all round, and plenty of them, was the order of the day. I was being handed drink after drink, and was lapping it up.
On reflection, I really wish I had kept a low profile that night, had maybe stayed in and had the odd celebratory beer with my girlfriend and family, then settled down to watch Match of the Day. It may seem a bit dramatic to say that, but that night out set a precedent for me. Everything became so full on and done to such a massive extent. Going out would mean getting totally wrecked, drinking everything under the sun, and being Jack the lad at all times. Even on that first night, I ended up drinking far too much whisky and other popular (but bizarre) drinks such as Pernod and black. I woke up the next morning with a new found local stardom for my footballing exploits, but also with something off the pitch that I felt I needed to live up to for way too long, a reputation. And a headache.
It was an incredible time for me at that point. I had just turned seventeen, I was in and around the first team, and was quickly signed on a professional contract. After making a few substitute appearances in the first month of the season my first full league debut was next. It was a night game at home against Gillingham, and I performed part of my previous ritual – the polished boots, the same picture drawn on the dartboard, and hopefully the same result. And it was. I leathered a low strike into the bottom corner, the game was won, and I was on cloud nine. I was still playing every reserve game and training in the afternoon, but it didn’t matter. Back then I could play all day and still want more. I still want more now, but the difference is that if I stay out and train all afternoon, or play three games a week, I am also in desperate need of some ice, a dog basket, and an Ibuprofen sandwich.
I wanted to play every game and although I felt ready, Alan Buckley wanted me to learn my trade first, most notably by playing in the Pontins Reserve League. I was burning to get involved in those early years, and I soon became very frustrated that I wasn’t starting every Saturday afternoon. I was a bubbly character, maybe too bubbly and cocky for the manager. It would be a big statement to say that Buckley totally destroyed my confidence; he didn’t, but he definitely took the spark away from me that could and should have propelled me onto a much bigger stage. I don’t think it helped my cause that I was full of it, or that soon after signing my contract I had bought an Audi GT sports car (the same as Ash drives on Ashes to Ashes, which always makes me laugh now).
Late for training one day, I parked my GT in the chairman’s spot. It was a genuine mistake, I was going to be late and I hadn’t realised, but as we left for training, and when the lads spotted it and had pointed it out to the manager, I knew I was in trouble. Buckley lost it, he really lost it. I have seen many players close to tears after one of his infamous bollockings – including me. He would go from his natural shade of pink to an absolute vivid beetroot red within a few acidic sentences. I think I ran to the training ground that day, as I wasn’t allowed to get in the team van!
Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and done my job; while I was never offensive, I loved to have a laugh and a joke. I think old Bucko stifled the hell out of me, and it certainly damaged my confidence later on in my time at the club. Incredible that it should have happened, but I get so angry now thinking about it now. On one occasion I happened to be speaking to one of the directors whom I really got on with, in the changing room. He mentioned that one day, if I kept playing well, I could have a go in his Porsche. I said, ‘Thanks Gord, I’ll hold you to that.’
He smiled, and that was that. One of the lads had laughed when he had heard this, and Buckley strode over shouting to the lads, ‘What did he say?’
Dave ‘Didi’ Gilbert told him, as he was closest, and with that, once again, Buckley totally lost the plot, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Why don’t you show some respect? How dare you say that?! He is a director, and you are a young player who should be seen and not heard!’
He went on for about three minutes, ranting away at the top of his voice.
It was embarrassing for Gordon, who had made a genuine offer, but who now felt that it was an issue, and embarrassing for me, because it looked as if I had disrespected the man in front of everyone, but I hadn’t, and wouldn’t. It was simply that we had always got on really well. The incident was a typical one for Buckley, summing up his attitude rather clearly. He seemed to have short man’s syndrome of the highest order, and was very close to being a megalomaniac. Other than that he was quite a decent fella!
For now, though, I was riding the crest of a wave of success, and with injuries mounting for the first team regulars, and with our first round game in the FA Cup against York fast approaching, I was to be given another start. It was a big game for both clubs, with it being a sort of derby, and of great importance financially. It was the first time I had felt nervous before a game, the ground was packed, and the atmosphere was fantastic. It was my FA Cup debut, and I was going to be playing up front with Garry Birtles, a Nottingham Forest legend who earlier in his career had been transferred to Man United for a million pounds – a vast amount of money in the mid-eighties!
It was a fierce start to the game with tackles flying, biting and pinching at corners, etc. I was being pummelled by York’s rabid centre-halves (this being back in the day, when centre-halves could go through the back of your legs ten minutes after the ball had gone, and the referee would wave ‘play on’ saying ‘Fair challenge.’ In the twenty-seventh minute, the ball popped out to the edge of the box and I caught it sweetly, drilling the ball into the bottom left corner. The Grimsby Town fans behind the goal were hysterical with happiness, and it was game on.
Ten minutes later, and one of the now snarling central defenders blindly turned a ball back to his goalkeeper – this being back in the day when you could kick a ball back to your goalkeeper, he could hold it in his arms until he felt like letting it go, and the referee would be saying, ‘Another minute and let it go, old chap.’
As strikers we were taught by Bucko to wait for any back passes, looking as if you were uninterested, gambling on a mistake. This lad had not given the ball quite enough, and as it bounced back toward the stranded keeper I ran in and joyfully volleyed it over his head, into the vacant net.
We ended up winning the game 2–1 and, after celebrating with the lads in the changing room, I gave my first ever radio interview. I still have a recor
ding of it today. It was horrendous; I think my voice must have just broken. I also say ‘I’m ecstatic’ seven times, I mention my mum and dad five times, and I also say the second goal was a ‘peach’ twice.
The rest of the year was spent on a huge high, we were at the top of the league for most of it, and ended up being promoted in my first full season. Although I spent most of the season on the bench, I scored another important goal away at Stockport, a game that meant that we were almost guaranteed promotion, and I finished the campaign celebrating on an open top bus tour, and then on the balcony of the town hall, with the rest of the team.
We all then jumped on a plane for ‘trip’ to Cala d’Or in Spain, celebrating our promotion. It was my first ‘lads’ holiday away, and also my eighteenth birthday. As we drank in a bar one afternoon, Archie Gemmill, a great left-back in his day, and the assistant manager of Nottingham Forest, was telling me not to sign a new deal because ‘Cloughie’ (Brian Clough) was a big fan. Not a bad start to my career, you would think. However, the fact that I had a champagne bottle in my hand, and was three sheets to the wind as he said this, sums up my lifestyle in 1990. That I also signed a contract when I returned, and behaved like an eighties pop star off the pitch, tells you all you need to know about the mistakes that I made. I had it all, and probably blew it all, within a few very short seasons.
I will have to stop writing for now. It is St George’s Day today, the weather outside is scorching hot, and at the local golf club bar I find myself in, the natives, who are dressed in flags, as dragons, and as knights, are enjoying the weather and the beer. My name has cropped up, they are talking ‘footy’, and I am therefore making an extremely quick getaway. I am playing tomorrow in the last game of the season against Eastbourne. They will be fighting for their lives, being in relegation spot, and I will no doubt need a third lung, having not played for a month, and with a predicted pitch side temperature approaching ninety degrees. Back to the hotel, and back to an M&S dinner it is for me. It is not inconceivable that I will make the play-off games, but I feel shocking at the moment. You tend to feel invincible as a player when you are fit and raring to go but at the moment, for the first time in a long, long, while, I feel the exact opposite. The ice bath is being prepared, and the Ibuprofen smoothie is ready.
Back in the room now and I will have to add a little to explain the degree of my present-day stresses. As I left training I received a text from my wife, ‘Don’t spend any money. We are over the overdraft, I have fifty pounds left for the week, so you better have a look at the finances.’ So, as well as being under pressure to get fit and play a game tomorrow in preparation for the play-offs, I have had to do a bit of phoning around. Out went the iPhone insurance, the Sky package was downgraded to a bare minimum, the silly bank accounts with fancy cards were cancelled, and my emergency tin on top of the cupboard at home was declared open. At the moment I suppose I am wallowing in a massive amount of self pity but I am just a bit tired and pissed off that I am away from home, trying to do a job, when I knew my body is failing me and my career is coming to an end. I suppose I am worried about the future for the first time.
I’m not playing a violin here, because we still have a lovely house in Northamptonshire which was rented out when we moved to Torquay, and I still have a half decent pension (that I hope goes up in value at some point), but the money blown over the years on niceties, such as clothes, parties, meals out, holidays and nice cars, and the ill-advised ‘keeping up with the Jones’s mentality’ we have had at times, mean that our financial situation is tight. My fault, I know.
The myth that all footballers are loaded is definitely just that, a myth, for lower league footballers anyway. I am driving a leased car and living in rented accommodation, and I am hoping something crops up in the summer work wise. My wife is stressed out because money is tight, and I am always away. So, when people say to me, ‘You must be loaded’, it does make me smile, although sometimes a little bitterly. Despite this, I know I am very lucky to have done a job that I have loved, and I have three great children and a lovely wife. While it would have been nice to have made enough money not to have to worry about future work, I am sure that being ‘retired’ in your late thirties is not healthy. So, as it stands, I have thirteen pounds to get me back home tomorrow night, and will have to sell a few things on eBay this weekend. Life is never dull.
1990/91
With the euphoria at fever pitch after our promotion, and with the next campaign due to start, the feeling in the town was fantastic. I don’t think the lads really thought about it at the time but the togetherness and bond that we had, on and off the pitch, was extremely strong, and with that there usually follows success. We faced Preston North End in the first game of the 90/91 season. A tough game on paper, but for a footballing team such as Grimsby Town was at that time, the prospect of playing on an Astroturf pitch was a real bonus. Don’t get me wrong, if I were playing on those pitches now, I would probably need a hip replacement, such was the poor quality of the hard surfaces, but at the time keeping the ball on the deck was just the ticket for us.
I’m sure older pros at the clubs with Astroturf surfaces were terribly stiff after most games and training sessions.
The thinking behind Astroturf instead of grass was sensible: no water logging, hence no postponed fixtures; no groundsman, hence lower cost; and a smooth playing surface, hence good football. There was also no need to have a separate training ground or to look for places to train on a daily basis as other clubs, like us, had to.
It wasn’t for everybody though. John Beck at Cambridge United was certainly not rushing out to get his pitch relaid. At Cambridge United they really took long ball to a new level, and having a grass pitch helped this style of playing; there was even sand placed in all four corners of the pitch to soften the landing of yet another ball launched up field. To think they nearly got into the top flight!
Back to the game. After a good pre-season I was in the starting line-up on that first day of the 90/91 season. It couldn’t have gone any better for me or for the team, a great performance by us saw us win 3–1; I scored the first goal, a left foot curler round the keeper, after being put through from the halfway line – teams didn’t half play high offside traps then!
We really carried our form and momentum from the previous season; it’s amazing how many times this happens in football. We had a good game plan and good players, and, much as I say it through gritted teeth, a manager who knew how to win games.
Again, we spent most of the season at the top of the league, but once again I was busy playing every reserve game and then being on the bench or playing for the first team as well. At the time I was very frustrated, because I just wanted to play in the first team. The crowds and the pressure surrounding these games gave you such a great buzz, whereas the Pontins League against ‘Scunny’ reserves at Blundell Park on a cold Wednesday night really wound me up. It had a negative effect on me and my performances. Looking back, I should have used those games to show Buckley what I was made of. It was, I think, a classic case of a clash of personalities, with me being a brash, cocky and confident young lad, and him disliking that.
Despite my frustration, I still had a great season. I managed to notch up a few more important goals, including a memorable header against Wigan Athletic at home in a 4–3 win, and a classic strike into the stanchion against Fulham on New Year’s Day – although the circumstances surrounding that particular game and goal really summed up my off the field misdemeanours at the time. You see, I had decided to go out for a few drinks with Fiona and her sister, the night before.
It was sort of accepted back then that going out for a couple of drinks the night before a match was OK, and as it was New Year’s Eve we felt obligated. I have never been a big fan of New Year’s celebrations, and I am even less so now; I can’t think of anything worse than doing the Conga in the street, ‘high fiving’ an absolute muppet, or telling a complete stranger that I love them, just because it’s the start
of the New Year. God I’m getting old! But back in 1990, and certainly if you were eighteen years old, going out for a few Pernod and blacks and dancing to Michael Jackson on New Year’s Eve were a must.
We had really been out just to bring in the New Year, and I had wanted to get at least a bit of an early night, so we decided to walk home. On the way back to the apartment my mum and dad owned, a lad shouted some abuse to Fiona’s sister. I took the bait and chased after him. He shot round a wall and did a ‘triple salko’ to lose me, but in the pursuit I bumped my knee on the corner of a wall. I never thought anything of it at the time, but it would later turn out to have caused the classic water on the knee, and would end up sidelining me for several weeks. I cannot believe how stupid and careless I was at the time; I seemed to be on a mission to live up to the reputation I had of being a bit of a lad.
Once back at the apartment and in my room we must have opened the window for a bit of air. Unfortunately, I slipped on the sofa bed, well, more like bounced on the springs like an Olympic trampolinist, and found myself hanging out of the window, with a drop of around a hundred feet staring at me (Croft Baker apartments were the highest point in Cleethorpes!) The fact that my belt buckle miraculously caught on the window catch, and that Fiona quickly wrapped her hands around my ankles, quite possibly saved my life. That night could have ended in disaster so easily. I can just see the lads now, wearing black arm bands around the centre circle before the game and whispering, ‘He wasn’t a bad lad was he?’, with Jobbers saying, ‘Do you think he would have minded if I had his boots?’ and Paul Reece saying, ‘No, he would have wanted it, and I think Fiona will need some serious “comforting” over the next few months.’
As it was, I scored one of the best goals of my Grimsby career that day, wriggling past three defenders in the box and planting a right foot shot into the top corner, a great victory and a great goal. But how different an outcome it might have been was not lost on me. The near disaster affected me so profoundly that I made the decision to go underground for the next few months. The nights out, the fast cars and the fighting had to stop. And for a while, it did.
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