Where's Your Caravan?

by Chris Hargreaves

  Another old teammate of mine, Eddie Hutchinson, had joined the club from Brentford; Jim had signed him on a three year deal. Rumour has it that the club thought they were signing his twin brother, who played for Woking, because Hutch hardly got to play under Jim, and he also took some severe batterings along the way (from the manager, who thought he was useless, and from the lads, who knew he was useless). He was a really good lad though, and just walked around the club all day saying, ‘No game’, as a comment on the poor quality of our banter. His coming to Oxford United had been a close call; he had chosen Oxford United over Swindon, the team he had actually been on the way to signing for, a couple of days earlier. Halfway there, he had had a change of heart, and in true Hutch fashion had decided to text their manager to say it would be a no, instead of doing the decent, but obviously more awkward, task of ringing. The stumbling block here lay in the fact that their manager happened to be Dennis Wise, and receiving a text from a player he was expecting to sign in an hour was never going to go down well. Hutch said he shat himself when the phone rang straight after he’d sent the text and Dennis was saying, ‘A fucking text, you sent me a fucking text to say no? At least have the balls to make a phone call!’ I asked Hutch what he had replied, and he said, ‘Are you mad? I didn’t answer; I just blanked the call and picked up the answer phone message.’

  Hilarious – he looked like a thug, had tattoos all over and could kick a player off a park, but give him confrontation and he turned into the lion in the Wizard of Oz.

  For obvious reasons (my bad mouthing Jim), I didn’t start the campaign, but Jim was good about it. I walked into his office and apologised for what I had said at the end of the previous season. I had known he had been under enormous pressure, and should have taken this into account. I just said that I thought hammering the players all the time didn’t work, and that I realised he had worked with better players in his career, but sometimes you have to work with what you’ve got. I then said that, if he wanted me to train with the kids (as punishment for my attitude the previous season), no problem, but that I would get another club sorted as quickly as possible. To his credit, he said that I could train with the first team and that there was no ill feeling.

  I had my phone with me for most of that pre-season as Fiona was due to give birth at any moment, and every time it rang it was hilarious. We would be in the middle of a running or core session, and I would dash over to answer it and pretend (to make the lads laugh) it was either a manager or an agent.

  ‘Hi Alex, I know you’re after a hard-working midfielder but Manchester is a long way, and I’m not sure your game suits me’, or, ‘Listen, tell fucking Arsène Wenger that unless he pulls his finger out and gives me an extra fifty grand, the deal’s off.’

  Joking aside, as close as I came to leaving that season, I didn’t feel right about going anywhere else, so I decided to stay and try to put right what we had all done wrong the year before. Surprisingly, neither Man United nor Arsenal actually made contact.

  Whatever change of heart had happened, or how it came about, I can’t really remember, but I ended up in the team, and we started the season like a house on fire. We broke records for clean sheets, wins, goals scored – the lot. We took over grounds with our fans, and everyone was talking about us romping away with the league. After beating Cambridge 3–1 (Hargreaves scored from a Brevett cross), their manager Jimmy Quinn said that no one would beat us all season. He thought we would walk away with it. Sat in a quiet Cambridgeshire pub with a few of the lads after the game, we couldn’t help but agree, such was the confidence in the camp, but come on, is it ever that easy?

  It was during this season that Fiona and I had our third child. During the birth, Kettering General had the opportunity to win back points they’d lost ballsing up my rib X-ray back in the 05/06 season … and they failed, dismally. The birth was smooth, and Fiona and the baby were fine, but I so nearly missed it. I wasn’t playing away or training, in fact I had dropped Fiona off, but when we spoke to the midwife she said it would be ‘a while yet’, and that I could go and move the car from the emergency bay. I had parked there as we thought the baby was seriously on its way. As I strolled back in, expecting to see Fiona having a cup of tea, I heard shrieks coming from a room. They sounded like Fiona’s (I had heard them many times before!). I ran down the corridor and into the room to find my wife in full delivery mode shouting, ‘Where the hell have you been?!’ and the midwife screaming, ‘Push, push, it’s coming!’ I wanted to explain that the car park was like terminal four at Heathrow, and that the midwife had stitched me up, but I figured the excuse could wait. At the time, I just said, ‘I’m here, don’t worry … and yes, push!’

  Imagine if I had popped to get the paper and Mars Bar that I so nearly did!

  Two incidents that happened off the pitch that season, when taken together, sort of reflected how it ended up panning out for us on the pitch. The first was a real treat. As we were doing so well in the league, Jim Rosenthal, an Oxford United fan and TV presenting royalty, sorted tickets for us to watch Joe Calzaghe fight. He was fighting Mikkel Kessler, a brute of a man, at the Manchester Evening News Arena; it would be a full house, and we would be front row with Phil Taylor, Lennox Lewis and whoever else was there to see Calzaghe at work. It turned out to be a brilliant fight, going all the way to the death, and ending with victory for the relentless Calzaghe. The night out afterwards was truly epic – it involved too much drink, too many people and a gimp in a corner. It was great of Jim to have sorted it out for us, and it really felt like the season would be a constant high.

  The second incident was much less glamorous, and definitely, looking back, much funnier, but all the same at the time it was a nightmare, reflecting the end part of our season. We (those of us doing the car school) had agreed to nip out for a quiet drink after a Friday night game at the Kassam to celebrate the birth of my third child, Harriet. I don’t really like pre-arranged nights out anyway, and after what happened during the game that evening, I should have known it would be a long one. I can’t remember who we were playing, but I do remember us winning, and that their midfielder was really getting on my nerves. I wouldn’t say my tackle on him towards the end of the game was late, but it did come with a St Bernard and an SOS flare (really late, and obviously so!). He stopped annoying me (or, in fact, any of us) but I was in the changing room before the ref could get his whistle towards his mouth.

  We all congregated in a bar in Northampton afterwards, and the usual suspects were ‘on it’ straightaway. Burg treated every night out as his last, and before long he had swan dived into a huge hawthorn bush, receiving marks ranging from a seven point nine to a ten, while Digga and Rob Duffy were having some banter with a taxi driver. Motty had also jumped in a taxi as it was way past his bedtime, and he would have had to break into another twenty to stay out any later, so he was off home. I quickly jumped into the passenger seat to say bye to Motty, and to tell the driver to keep an eye on his miles per gallon because Motty would be interested to know how the taxi was round town (well, I’d take any chance for a dig at his thrifty ways!). I then hopped back out to continue the evening with the rest of the lads.

  After telling Digga and Duffy off (they sound like children’s entertainers!) for pretending to be a train, and messing about with a taxi driver’s bubble (the light they stick on the top of their cabs to advertise), we all walked over to the casino. I had had enough by now though, both of drinking and of the lads’ antics, and had decided to head off home. Just as I was leaving, I saw the two taxi drivers from earlier and a policeman approaching. I didn’t really think anything of it, as the lads hadn’t caused any damage. I thought that rather than getting involved in an hour of pointless finger pointing I would leave and get a cab around the corner. I had a young baby at home and a wife who was expecting her husband back, so I just headed off.

  You know sometimes when you get the feeling you are being followed? Well, this was one of those occasions. I had broken into a bit of
a jog because it was cold. I thought I could hear footsteps behind me, but I had consumed a few beers so I didn’t think too much of it. But, incredibly, as I jogged through an alleyway and onto the main road where the taxi rank was, I was literally rugby-tackled to the floor. Within minutes, a squad car had pulled up and I was being arrested and dragged into it as if I had robbed a bank. I had parked my car near Northampton’s ground that night, as that was where we would always meet in the morning, and as I was bundled around, I felt my key drop to the floor.

  I explained to the officer at the time that it was my only key, but he was pure Juliet Bravo, straight down the middle, with only black and white as his viewpoints on any possible misdemeanour, so my key was left on the floor, and I was sat in the back of the car with my hands wedged behind my back. I knew most of the officers in Northampton through the football, and got on well with them, but this guy must have been new because he seriously thought he was on the set of Police, Camera, Action. Here I was in the back of a car, with him on the radio blurting out, ‘Suspect detained. I have an ETA of four minutes, over.’

  When I arrived at the station it was comical – who should be sat in the foyer waiting to be spoken to but Andy Burgess. It turns out that he had been accused by the taxi driver of trying to steal his ‘signage’. I still had no idea why I had been arrested; I walked up to the counter and the guy said, ‘Hello Chris, how’s it going?’

  I replied, ‘Well, not very well by the looks of it. Why the hell am I in here?’, to which he said, ‘I’m not totally sure, mate, but you are going to be in for the night, and I think you will be needing a solicitor in the morning. You couldn’t just empty your pockets, mate, could you? Oh and you might want to ring your missus at some point, as it’s normal procedure for an officer to visit the house in these cases. Anyway, how’s the old footy going? I thought you were great at the Cobblers.’

  After being shown to our luxurious rooms and given our complimentary cup of tea, here we both were, in adjacent cells. I had been sent off in the game, I had lost my car key, I was spending the night in the cells on my wetting-the-baby’s-head night, and my wife had threatened to drive into the station to get me out. Meanwhile, I had Burg next door acting like an excited school kid, singing his theme tune to life, ‘Deal with it in the morning, deal with it in the morning’, and also chanting, ‘There’s only one pickle face, one pickle faaaaaccee.’

  This was a reference to Harriet, whom we had nicknamed ‘Pickle’. When a lady came in to give me another cup of tea, I even asked her if I could move cells!

  After a cold night in a piss-smelling box I was extremely angry, particularly as still no one had told me why I had been detained. At about ten o’clock, an officer came in and led me into an interview room. I sat patiently until the door opened and a middle-aged lady came in, explaining that she would be my defence. She said, ‘Mr Hargreaves, if you accept the theft of the fifty pounds, you can leave today and we can then arrange a court date.’

  I was aghast (a strong word I know, but it was accurate for my mood at the time) and replied, ‘Woah there Miss Marple, now hold on a minute! First, you haven’t even asked me what went on – I have no idea what you are talking about, and second, aren’t you being just the slightest bit presumptuous here? – what fifty quid?’

  The tape was recording, and two other officers were present at the time. One officer spoke, ‘Chris, the taxi driver said you used threatening language against him, then leaned over and took fifty pounds out of his top pocket shouting, “If you say anything, I’ll get you”.’

  Hell! I had turned into Nick Cotton overnight. At least I now knew why I had been arrested and detained, and it definitely explained the raised eyebrows at the detention desk when I emptied my pockets and the coincidental sum of fifty-two pounds and thirty-five pence was declared.

  I absolutely lost it, I was so angry that this jumped-up little weasel, who was probably driving around with bald tyres and no insurance, had the cheek to say I had stolen some money, and I was fuming that they had taken his word on it. I said, ‘Listen, if that little fucking pipsqueak wants fifty quid that desperately, I’ll set up a direct debit for him each month. What firm does he work for? Because he is now in big fucking trouble? I am disgusted that he would lie to get money, and I’m even more disgusted that you lot have believed him, and then kept me locked up with a load of reprobates all night.’ (The reprobates comment might have been referring to Burg next door.)

  One officer, who knew straightaway that there had been a major mistake, told me to calm down, and that we needed to talk a bit more, but I was on fire, ‘Calm down? I am fuming – you lot have made me lose my car key, you have ripped my suit (a Vivienne Westwood), I had to ring my wife to say there may be a squad car coming round at three in the morning, and all this while that little weasel is driving his pissing rust bucket around under your noses, charging people a fortune for taking them the long way home and then accusing people of theft. Why don’t you check my bank notes and the statement in my pocket, because I drew that extra fifty quid out about 2am, and why don’t you ring the other lads who were in the taxi. I want you to get that little shit in, and charge him with being a lying deceitful little shithead, and I hope you get to him first, because otherwise I will batter the lying little prick.’

  I think I had got my point across, maybe too severely with the last statement, especially as it was on record, but, after telling the solicitor she would no longer be needed – she actually apologised on the way out and said that she had seen some men broken when wrongly accused of worse offences – the officer said he would ring the other lads in the taxi, Motty being one of them, to get their side of events. He also said that he would then look into the taxi driver’s behaviour. I went from being on the verge of being charged for robbery, to the far lesser offence of disturbing the peace, to a probable caution, to being invited back in by the officer who said that sometimes mistakes were made, and that in hindsight maybe I shouldn’t have run away from the scene of a possible crime. I laughed and I said that there was no crime, I wasn’t running, I was jogging, and that if I had had my trainers on, I would have been running, then they would have never caught up with me. Still – it was irrelevant, because I hadn’t even been trying to get away.

  I learned a few lessons from that experience: not to wet the baby’s head was one, another was to get the bus rather than a taxi home at the end of the night, but the main two lessons were to always have a spare set of keys for a car – it was sat outside TGI Friday’s for two weeks while the key was ordered from Renault (bloody French!) – and to always wear trainers on a night out.

  The funny thing was, that a week or so later, when we were invited in to see the same officer, he said that when he phoned Motty for a witness statement, old, loyal, reliable Motty panicked like hell when he answered the phone, and when asked the question, ‘What happened in the car, Mr Willmott?’ he replied, ‘Well officer, I can’t be sure of anything; my vision was impaired a little bit. But I’m pretty sure Greavsie wouldn’t have robbed the guy, and I definitely didn’t.’

  Jesus, where are your mates when you need them? Talk about looking after number one!

  The season seemed to turn on its head after one result – a loss away to Gravesend & Northfleet (now called Ebbsfleet United), an awful team with an awful ground. We were top of the league by a few points, but Dagenham & Redbridge were also winning relentlessly, and as we stuttered, they just carried on winning. That loss at Gravesend was our first in about twenty-two games, but for Jim it wasn’t good enough. He seemed to turn back into the Jim of the previous season, one who thought that all the lads were crap and that change was needed. Jim had signed a couple of new strikers, but they weren’t the answer by a long shot. Before long, the ship had been steadied, but it was clear we would be in the play-offs. Missing out on automatic promotion was a real killer, the fans were gutted, we were gutted, and Jim was on the warpath.

  I have mostly spent today Christmas shopping! Alt
hough the financial situation is still weak, I am ploughing on and buying gifts for the family. Cam and Issy wanted kayaks, but having had surf boards last year they are coming round to my argument (only made because I don’t have the money for kayaks) that I don’t really fancy diving in (from the kayak I would have to also buy for myself to monitor the children) to save either of my clan, while the temperature is sub-zero. I took them surfing just after Christmas last year, and after suffering from mild hypothermia, it took us all a week to thaw out. Having reminded them how unpleasant that was, the older two have ‘settled’ for a long board and digital camera respectively. My wife tells me she doesn’t want anything, but were I to be so stupid as to actually buy her nothing, she would be doing a sponsored silence for a week, bless her.

  As far as Harriet is concerned, she just wants anything to do with Peppa Pig, the sixth member of our family. We have all grown to love that little pig, seeing so much of her at 6.30am every day, so it’s only right that Hattie gets a Peppa house, rucksack, mug, jigsaw and lamp. And what do I want? Well, I’m not playing football this Boxing Day (huge self-pity burst coming on again) so I don’t have to give the normal, and wooden, footballer’s answer of ‘three points’, so in true Hargreaves tradition, I will be happy with my annual Chocolate Orange and industrial size Toblerone. I am more than happy to receive just these items on Christmas morning, and I am even happier to see the children’s excited faces when I open the ‘surprise’ packages – after all how could I possibly know what the long triangular-shaped box or the small wrapped cube could be?