Red Machine

by Simon Hughes

  ‘Destiny brought me to Spain,’ he concludes, shaking my hand as we stand outside in the early-evening shade. ‘Destiny has been kind to me. I’ve never had a real plan. I remember when I signed for Liverpool I thought that was my life – going back home, the north-west. Circumstances changed. I went to London; out to Spain. Every time I made plans, everything changed. Twenty-three years later, I sit here thinking I might be out of work tomorrow.

  ‘I try hard, but I’m also fortunate.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MACKEM, David Hodgson

  DAVID HODGSON ADMITS THAT ANY IMPRESSION HE MADE DURING his two years at Anfield has probably been forgotten by the supporters who watched him play.

  ‘They never really sang my name while I was there,’ he says, with a heavy blow of the cheeks that suggests he wishes it had been different. ‘I craved acceptance, but it never really happened for me. I won the treble at Liverpool, but people that know me still ask what contribution I made. My answer is always the same: “I helped build team spirit.”’

  It is for this kind of reason that Hodgson was popular inside the dressing-room. Like Michael Robinson, who arrived a year after him, on the pitch he struggled with the responsibility of being back-up to Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish. Off it, though – and unlike Robinson – Hodgson fitted right in.

  During other interviews in the making of this book, different players said that Hodgson was a well-appreciated member of the Liverpool squad. He was still invited on the club’s end-of-season trip to Marbella in successive summers after leaving for Sunderland in 1984.

  His humour was well received. Before Liverpool played Roma in the European Cup final in the same year, Hodgson soothed tension inside the tunnel as the players waited to enter the Olympic Stadium.

  ‘I was substitute, of course, and I could see how much everyone was really pumped up,’ he recalls. ‘So I broke into song. It was the Chris Rea number, “I Don’t Know What It Is But I Love It”. I was in charge of the music box and had been listening to it that day.

  ‘All the Roma boys were there: Falcão, Conti, Cerezo, looking all serious. So I led: “I don’t know what it is but I love it …”

  ‘Craig Johnston followed with the next line and then all of the Liverpool joined in.

  ‘It was spontaneous. The Roma boys seemed unnerved by it. We could hear the fans outside whistling – Rome was an intimidating place to be that night. But that was us. We were telling them: “We’re not scared and we really don’t give a shit where we are or what you can throw at us, because we’re going to win this game.”’

  Hodgson, who is now in his early 50s, speaks with a well-defined north-east accent similar to Bob Paisley’s. Gone is the moustache sported by him and so many other Liverpool players from the ’80s. He is smartly dressed (pinstripe shirt, jeans and loafers), courteous and polite, taking you into his confidence by using your name repeatedly and leaning forward intently to listen to any response as if he were an old friend. But you also know that he is tougher than that.

  He is persuasive – a charmer – traits that have developed in the years after retirement: first as a manager with Darlington, then as a football agent and now as a senior scout with a funding group that signs players primarily from the South American market before selling them on at a profit.

  Based in the countryside near Barnard Castle, Hodgson picks me up right on time outside Darlington train station on an early May afternoon in his Mercedes C class. In the next three months driving will be replaced by flying as he travels to Mexico – ‘I’ll miss the wife’s birthday’ – Colombia and Uruguay on separate trips across the Atlantic.

  He enjoys the work. He has chosen it. He decided to depart the agency business after a saga involving one of his clients, Dan Gosling, who left Everton in 2010 for Newcastle, much to the chagrin of the controlling powers at Goodison Park. He is candid on the issue as he drives to a wine bar in Darlington’s town centre.

  ‘Dan’s move to Newcastle portrayed me in a bad light,’ he says, steering his car with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging out of the window. ‘Because of that, I made the decision to walk away. Although I still represent Dan, I had to get away from the day-to-day garbage of the agency world. It’s gutter-level work, it really is. The vast majority of people who move in those circles belong at that level. Being an agent is no longer an image that I want to be associated with.’

  It is quickly established that Hodgson isn’t afraid to abandon something if it compromises his principles. He has straightforward morals, which he reveals are the result of learning from the mistakes of a rebellious childhood.

  ‘I grew up on the wrong side of the street,’ he continues, as we sit down to lunch 20 minutes later. ‘I had a good family – my dad ran a social club in Gateshead and we lived in a bungalow – but it wasn’t the greatest area.

  ‘The rules of our household were simple: as long as I was home at 11 at night before my father closed the door, I was OK. But it meant that I was never at home. I missed school regularly. One year my report showed that from something like 190 academic days, I was absent for 100. My behaviour was unquestionably bad. Until the moment Middlesbrough signed me as a teenager, I brushed with the law on many, many occasions.’

  Hodgson did ‘all of the stupid things’.

  ‘I shot people five or six times with air rifles from two metres away; I pinched cars; I even stabbed my sister once when a prank went wrong. I was an idiot.’

  Hodgson found succour playing football for the Redheugh Boys, a club based close to the southern banks of the River Tyne. Soon, he was asked to go on trial to Ipswich Town, who offered him a two-year apprenticeship.

  ‘They wanted me to go to school in Suffolk, but I was unhappy about it. They put me up in a hotel, but because I didn’t want to go, I decided to blow the hotel’s lighting system up by setting fire to all of the fuse boxes. It didn’t go down too well at the club or at home when they were told about it. But it was my route out of there.’

  While many youngsters progressed from the esteemed Wallsend Boys’ Club to the north of the river and into Newcastle United, Redheugh acted as a feeder team to Middlesbrough. There was, however, only one place where Hodgson dreamed of playing.

  ‘I supported Sunderland,’ he grins. ‘Some people may say it’s a bit strange – a lad from Gateshead being a Mackem. But I followed my dad who was a Mackem too. Gateshead is divided like that. I remember going to the derby once at St James’ Park and standing in the Gallowgate End. One of the lads from school spotted me and started giving me stick. I got kicked everywhere and I desperately tried to escape. I ended up bunking over the fence at the front and running out of the ground via the players’ tunnel. It was worth it, though, just to see Colin Todd play. Toddy was my hero.’

  Hodgson would stretch the boundaries to get tickets for big games at Roker Park.

  ‘The year Sunderland won the FA Cup [1973] we played Man City in the quarter-finals. The game was a Tuesday night and you could only get the tickets on one particular morning a week before the match. So I bunked school to queue up. The school found out. They told my father and he agreed that they should confiscate my tickets. The school sports day was coming up and they said that if I ran the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m 1500m and competed in the high-jump event, they would review my performance and, subject to how I did, they may or may not return my ticket. I won every one, apart from the 800m where I finished second. They gave me the ticket back.’

  Hodgson’s performances with Redheugh continued to gather interest and, despite another offer from Bolton Wanderers, he ended up at Middlesbrough.

  ‘I was put up in digs in ’Boro and still got into mischief,’ he recalls. ‘One Saturday afternoon, I played for the ’Boro in a youth-team match and we lost. When we got back into the changing-room, I found out that Sunderland had won that day. I was jumping about. “Get in; get in.” Before I knew it, the coach grabbed me by the ear. “You little bastard … don’t you ever, ever, ever show any si
gns to Sunderland Football Club while you’re a Middlesbrough player.”’

  There were other incidents.

  ‘One day, me and the other apprentices trashed the house we lived in by spraying liquid gumption all over the place, causing mayhem,’ he continues. ‘Harold Shepherdson [Alf Ramsey’s assistant during the 1966 World Cup] found out about this and called a meeting with all the players. He was holding a pair of boots in his hand and started giving a speech about the importance of discipline. He went on and on. Eventually, he turned to me and said, “Are these your boots?” Then he threw them right on my forehead. “Get out of here and don’t come back.”’

  Wondering how to explain to his parents that he’d been banished from another club, Hodgson returned to his digs to pick up his belongings.

  ‘Bobby Murdoch had just retired after a long career with Celtic and Middlesbrough. He was the youth-team coach and liked me. Luckily, he had heard what’d happened back at the training ground and phoned up. Although Shepherdson was above him in the food chain, he said, “Look, we’ve got this Youth Cup game coming up against Everton. I want you to play. Make sure it’s the game of your life.”’

  It was an epiphany for Hodgson, and he performed well in the match. He eventually made his full first-team debut under Jack Charlton but only started making a genuine impression under John Neal, later to be Chelsea boss.

  ‘He [Neal] had this wonderful ability to extract something from you. He made me feel like I wanted not just to do it for him but for myself as well. I would later see at Liverpool that players like Kenny and Souey would do it for themselves because they’re winners and didn’t need extra motivation. Me, I was different – I was motivated by what I saw. I needed inspiration from others.’

  Despite being the youngest player in the first-team squad, Hodgson felt at ease in an adult dressing-room. ‘I would say that I was cocky. I knew how to look after myself, and especially at Liverpool, where the atmosphere was ferocious, my experiences early in life helped me survive.’

  He also believes that the hard work he put in as an apprentice helped the senior pros accept him.

  ‘I took my apprenticeship very seriously, and if a senior pro asked me to do something for him, I’d make sure it was done to the best of my ability. The PFA have a lot to answer for. Over the years, they have stopped youngsters doing the kind of things that used to be a rite of passage, like cleaning boots. I was the best apprentice, and I was probably the nastiest too, because I made sure that all of the other young lads did the same. It meant that when I went into the pro environment, they respected me, because as an apprentice I took care of them. People like Terry Cooper – an England international – Jim Platt [the Northern Irish goalkeeper], even Souey – I took care of them all. When I got the call to the first team, none of them thought, “Ah, he’s not done this for me”, so they didn’t make life difficult. There needs to be a rank and file within a dressing-room. Unfortunately, the PC brigade doesn’t allow that in the modern game.’

  Hodgson combined well with Mark Proctor – a fellow Geordie – and Billy Ashcroft, the auburn-haired centre-forward from Garston in the southern end of Liverpool.

  ‘Billy wasn’t the most gifted player, but we complemented each other well. One season he scored 18 goals and I set up 16 of them. We went to Magaluf for a piss-up, and Billy pulled me to one side. I was still in my late teens and he was really experienced. He said, “Without you, I wouldn’t have scored so many.”’

  Hodgson admits that he too, wasn’t a natural goalscorer.

  ‘I could make a goal where others couldn’t,’ he analyses. ‘I had pace and could go past people for fun and deliver exactly what was required to get the goal – I was like that all the way through my career.’

  The statistics prove this. He scored just 29 times in 120 games for ’Boro, but it was enough for others to see potential. First, Ipswich came calling again, with Bobby Robson offering Alan Brazil in part-exchange. Then there was Liverpool. Hodgson believes the Reds wanted him as a long-term replacement for Kenny Dalglish.

  ‘OK, we were quite different as players. He was cleverer than me, but I was faster than him. They saw me as a creator of goals rather than a scorer. Liverpool liked to press high up the pitch – both forwards had to work hard, and I was a hard worker. I think Bob appreciated that the reason he was signing me was not for my goals. After training one day, where I’d missed a hat-full of one-on-ones, he pulled me to one side and said, “When you’re in front of goal, think of it as a pass rather than a shot and believe me you will score goals for fun.” I’d always rather let someone else take the responsibility of shooting than myself. I didn’t have that killer instinct – the composure – that, say, Rushy had. He was a simple footballer: one touch, two touch, goal.’

  Hodgson says Rush came alive on match-days.

  ‘For the rest of the week, he was the worst trainer in the world …’ he laughs, ‘… the worst I’ve witnessed in my life. His work rate in matches was phenomenal, but I think he saved his energy during the week. He once got carried off at Melwood for hypothermia because he was standing still so much – he never moved an inch.’

  Hodgson recalls the day Liverpool offered £450,000 for his services.

  ‘I was at the opening day up at ’Boro, signing autographs, when Jim Platt, who was one of the club’s senior players, said, “Hodgy, you’re going to Liverpool.” I just laughed, then within a minute the public address system came on asking me to go to the manager’s office. Everybody was there – the manager, the assistant and the secretary, who stood up and said, “We’ve accepted a generous offer from Liverpool for you. We need you to accept it otherwise the club could go bust.”’

  Hodgson wasn’t desperate to leave Ayresome Park, even though Liverpool were prepared to make him the club’s highest-paid player on £450 a week.

  ‘En route to Merseyside, I stopped at Knotty Ash and sat on the bridge that runs over Queens Drive. I thought to myself, “Am I doing the right thing here?” I nearly got in the car and drove back to Teeside. I was comfortable there and didn’t want for anything. I’m the type of person that if I’m happy, I don’t look for something else – I’ve always been that way. To make the kind of decision that took me to Liverpool was quite unlike me.

  ‘Even after I had been at the club for a few months, I had my doubts. It’s only when you get there you realise the calibre of player you’re playing with. Rushy had gone through the same thing as me when he first went to Liverpool from Chester. The difference between me and him, aside from the fact that I was a player that already had 100 league games under my belt when I signed, was that I tended to dwell on things. Rushy didn’t. That’s why he survived.’

  Hodgson met up with the rest of the squad in Marbella, where they were preparing for the 1982–83 campaign with a pre-season tournament that included fixtures against Real Betis and Malaga. He was greeted by an unhappy camp. On arrival a few days earlier, Bob Paisley and his coaching staff were informed that the Reds would have to play on two consecutive evenings, rather than enjoying a day’s rest in between, as agreed previously in a contract with the tournament’s organisers.

  ‘This seems to be a complete shambles and we are not having anything to do with it,’ Paisley seethed, after then discovering that the number of beds at Liverpool’s allocated hotel was disproportionate to the number of players in his squad. Paisley was also unhappy with the training facilities. Although his side managed to complete a comfortable 2–0 victory over Betis (with a debut strike from Hodgson and the other from Dalglish) before drawing 1–1 with Malaga (Alan Kennedy) in a match that finished at 1.15 a.m., the whole experience was labelled ‘disappointing’ by Peter Robinson, Liverpool’s general secretary.

  ‘We’ve been going abroad pre-season for 17 years and we’ve only had trouble twice – both times in Spain,’ he said. ‘Clearly we shall have to look at any future invitations very carefully before we accept them.’

  ‘It was a daft experience,’ Hodg
son remembers. ‘When I took a penalty in the shoot-out and missed [after the draw with Malaga], I turned around and all the lads were running towards me to jump on me and celebrate. We just wanted to go home. The place was a complete shithole.’

  The tour did have its lighter moments.

  ‘The first person to greet me at the hotel when I arrived was Phil Thompson. He took me down to the port and we hit the ale big time straight away. All the other lads were waiting for us. The next morning I had a stinking hangover. I was thinking, “Is this really Liverpool – the biggest club in Europe?” It was bizarre. Liverpool were champions and this was pre-season with the big kick-off just a few weeks away. Everyone was plastered.’

  He was woken the next morning by Ronnie Moran.

  ‘I knew about Ronnie, but I’d never met him. He said, “At last – we’ve got you.” Liverpool must have wanted me for some time. Then off we went and trained all morning – sweating off all the alcohol we’d consumed the evening before. It was a rude awakening for me. There were no passengers in training.’

  Hodgson found the play hard, drink hard attitude difficult to get used to.

  ‘One of my biggest strengths was my fitness,’ he explains. ‘I was 22 when I signed for Liverpool, and even though I was a lad from the north-east that enjoyed a night out as much as the next person, I wasn’t a big drinker. The reason behind that was because I felt I’d been given a second chance with football and I didn’t want anything to get in the way of being successful. When I went out on the piss, I wasn’t the kind of lad that was able to wake up the next morning the way I always did and train to the levels that I knew I could. I needed to be 100 per cent fit to be right on my game. Otherwise, I wasn’t as effective.’