Red Machine

by Simon Hughes

  ‘But the club was a victim of a changing football culture and before they realised it, it was too late.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  IRISH UPSTART, Steve Staunton

  ON A BAD MORNING LIKE THIS, THE ASPHALT CLOUD IS BARELY separated from the nightmare of lumpen grey concrete that is the Northern Echo Arena. Today, the skies are squally above the outskirts of Darlington when Steve Staunton pokes his head around the door of a spartanly decorated pressroom to check if anybody wants to speak to him. There are three: two regional media and me.

  At the time (2010), Staunton, Steve Nicol and Gary Ablett, a trio of full-backs that represented Liverpool the 1980s and into the ’90s, were the only players still in the game as managers, all of them in lower-league football: Nicol in the United States with New England Revolution; Ablett in administration at Stockport County; and Staunton here at the bottom of the old Division Four with Darlington. Sadly, Ablett passed away before this book was published. Nicol, meanwhile, has since resigned from his position.

  On this particular Thursday afternoon, Staunton, who scored seven times during one hundred and forty-eight appearances across two separate spells at Liverpool, wears a permanent frown, which probably comes with the job. He’d arrived at Darlington the previous October and failed to prevent the club’s plummet towards relegation and the Conference, despite improved results since a period when more than 20 playing staff were made redundant shortly before the arrival of former boss Colin Todd.

  When the local pressmen probe, he does not dodge any awkward questions, explaining considerately why he’d decided to release captain and longest-serving player Steve Foster the week before. Staunton has a surly reputation, and I am informed that he is not the kind of person to charm the paint off a dressing-room wall. Yet here he seems to have developed a mutual respect with the writers who are sporting considerably smarter clothes than me after half-jokingly being told to scrub up by Staunton in his first week in charge if they wished to further enjoy his company.

  Now, they share a gallows humour. ‘We should be OK at Bradford on Saturday,’ Staunton says, blowing his reddish cheeks and adjusting the thinning strawberry blond verging on ginger hair that rests across the top of his head. ‘Providing the chairman’s got enough money to pay the bus driver.’

  One of the journalists told me later that Staunton’s presence had really given the club a lift. Hearts and minds may have been secured in the media, but it can’t disguise Darlington’s predicament. With 17 league games to go, they are 13 points off safety; this at a time when the club have been losing a reported £60,000 a week following a decline in attendances in their under-used stadium.

  Of all the people interviewed for this book, Staunton was always going to be the most difficult to arrange. As a manager, time is limited with him and there was no expectation of getting the two to three hours spent with other players. While managing Liverpool, Rafa Benítez once had a list of more than 55 journalists hoping to sit down with him at Melwood. This may be Darlington, but it was a welcome surprise when a 45-minute interview slot was arranged with the club’s press office. Staunton is not Jamie Carragher when it comes to entertaining copy, but as one of only three former players from the ’80s still in management, I am keen to find out why he thinks so many former Reds have elected to go for the pundit’s chair rather than the dugout.

  ‘The one thing Liverpool instilled in me was to make time for others,’ he says before leaving more than 90 generously offered minutes later. ‘Liverpool was a family club, everybody stuck together and that’s why we achieved so much success. It’s also probably why they aren’t winning much now.’

  Born in Drogheda, Staunton grew up a few miles away in Dundalk’s tough western outskirts on the Ard Easmuinn council estate.

  ‘My dad was a Garda Síochána,’ he says, in the thickest of Louth accents. ‘Being a border town, it wasn’t always easy for him – especially in the ’70s when there was a lot going on politically. Dundalk was a place of two extremes: boom or bust. There have always been a lot of breweries in the town. Because it’s the first place that people see when they come from the north, the first thing they always say is, “Bloody hell – the number of pubs.” It’s like Liverpool used to be on the Dock Road where there was a boozer on every street corner. When times are good, the docks have meant a lot of people have made good money, especially with industry and commerce from Blackthorn Shoes who have a big factory there. At the moment, it’s not great with the euro and the pound. There was nothing fancy about my upbringing but nothing too bad either. Everyone looked out for each other.’

  Like many Irish teenagers, Staunton supported Celtic from afar and admired full-back Danny McGrain.

  ‘I always wanted to play in an FA Cup final. That was what I dreamed of. Most kids did. I wasn’t different to anyone else. It’s all I wanted to do. I was good in school, although my mother kept telling me I was lazy. I didn’t have to work very hard to get good results. I could play football all day long and forget about revising but still pass exams. I was lucky like that. She always went mad, saying if I put my mind to it, I could really achieve something in life. I’d rather play rugby, Gaelic football or go running than go to school. If there was a sporting event and it got me out of classes, I’d go for it.’

  Staunton later thought about joining the army and considered enrolling on a sports scholarship in America. But a career in football was what he desired most.

  ‘I was six when I played my first game at Under-10s,’ he continues. ‘The leagues in Dundalk didn’t go down too low, so I ended up playing in a higher age group with my brother and the bigger boys. We played football every single day on a green in the middle of Ard Easmuinn. Most of the time, there was 20, 30 or 40 lads playing in a big game. I was always the youngest and the smallest. It taught me to be streetwise, because if you wanted to have a kick of the ball, you had to do things properly and not be afraid to throw your head in.’

  Gaelic football toughened him up as well.

  ‘I loved the Gaelic, and I believe it helped me a lot when I signed for Liverpool. You learnt to keep on the move all the time and create space for yourself – like the Liverpool way. Otherwise you were going to get a wallop. When I signed for Dundalk in the youth team, they tried to stop me playing, but I carried on. We got to the last 16 of the FAI Youth Cup, and there was a final with my Gaelic team on the same day. They both said I couldn’t play the other. So I turned up at the soccer, because that was earlier on in the day. We were 5– or 6–1 up. So I asked the manager to take me off. There was 15–20 minutes to go, but he told me I was staying on. In the end, I walked off and my dad took me to the final of the Gaelic. They were losing. I came on at half-time and we ended up winning.’

  Despite walking out on Dundalk, Staunton’s reputation as a hard-running left-winger was spreading quickly, and at 15 he was offered a trial by Manchester City.

  ‘The youth system at City was a lot better than at Liverpool,’ he insists. ‘It was more organised. They had a well-run academy, and in the late ’90s it produced some fantastic players. David White, Andy Hinchcliffe and the Brightwell brothers [Ian and David] were all there. They were a bit unlucky in their careers, because City later struggled off the field with finances. They were the right players at the wrong club. Unfortunately for me, City felt I wasn’t good enough and sent me home. They also felt I was a year too old for them. I was devastated and went back in tears. My dad told me that it didn’t matter because I was going to finish my education first. He wasn’t keen on me leaving school early. He told me to be patient and see what happened when I finished my exams. That put me in my place.’

  An appearance at the FAI Youth Cup final with Dundalk a year later was followed by an approach by Liverpool. This was the summer of 1986.

  ‘I’d played in the Milk Cup before, and all the scouts were there. I know now having been in the game for so long that if a young lad has something about him, it spreads like wildfire. Liverpool came in and ther
e were five or six other clubs ringing my house as well. My idea was to have a go at all the other teams and get fit to the highest standard possible before having a go at Liverpool. I wanted to be bang at it. They were my team in England. In the end, I was convinced to go straight to Liverpool and trust my ability to do well.

  ‘I was at Melwood every day and training with the reserve team. Tom Saunders was overseeing everything and had picked me up from the airport. I was there for eight days, and we’d played a couple of games where I’d done OK. I knew I was due to go home and before the final trial match, which was a pre-season friendly at Stafford Rangers, Tom came up to me and said, “We all like the look of you. But I’ll see how you do tonight then make my mind up after the game.” My face dropped and my shoulders seized up. Jesus, talk about a life-changing moment and all my dreams to be decided in one match. But that was the psychology of Liverpool. They wanted to see whether I would bottle it. After the game, Tom came up and said, “Well done, son.”’

  Staunton was offered a modest contract.

  ‘But it seemed generous to me. I’d done odd jobs here and there back home, but I’d never really earned a wage. I didn’t give a shit what money Liverpool were offering me because I’d have paid them to play. Going to Liverpool was solely about football. But the money was more than I’d ever imagined.’

  His two-year deal with Liverpool coincided with the return of Phil Thompson as reserve-team manager.

  ‘We had a few names for Tommo, because he wasn’t universally loved by everyone. He got a lot of stick for the size of his nose – but that was only behind his back. Nobody would dare say anything to his face. He was a tough man and it was a tough school. Ronnie Moran was probably the toughest, though. One day, he gave me a lift home because I didn’t drive and he opened up a bit. To me, he always seemed like a man of limited emotion. But this time, he said, “The minute I stop having a go at you is the day you’re finished.” It made me think and, with time, I understood where he was coming from. You’re not going to waste your time and energy on somebody who has given up the ghost, are you?’

  Despite still being a teenager in a new city, a new country and with no friends, Staunton was given limited help by the club as he tried to settle in.

  ‘I was lucky that I had an aunt who lived in Aigburth, so I stayed with her for a while. Otherwise, I’d have had to find somewhere by myself. It was the first test by the club – to see whether you had the mental capability to sort things out yourself, because it was always going to be the same on the pitch. It was different at other clubs, where they’d put you in digs straight away and mollycoddle you like they do these days. It doesn’t help in the long term, because there are footballers in the modern game who finish then don’t know how to brew a cup of tea, they’ve had so much help. If you were very lucky, you’d be given the number of Mrs Prince, a woman who had some flats in Utting Avenue, then it would be up to you to sort out living arrangements. Ronnie Whelan and Alan Hansen had lived with her in the late ’70s. I wasn’t that fortunate.’

  Staunton befriended two other Irish lads at Melwood, Ken DeMange and Brian Mooney.

  ‘Like Ronnie [Whelan], they’d both signed from Home Farm in Dublin. We’d play a lot of snooker together in the pubs around Anfield after training. But it wasn’t like they were the only people I spent time with. It is true when people say that everybody was treated the same at Liverpool. It didn’t matter whether you cost a bag of pork scratchings or millions of pounds, everybody was equal. If your feet ever came off the ground, you were brought back down straight away.’

  The transition to full-time training was difficult.

  ‘It was a massive change – the intensity and pace we used to play at every day was frightening. I reckon we worked harder than any other team on the training ground. After four or five months, my body was close to packing in. Physically, I wasn’t able to cope. I’d never done weights in my life or run for so long, so everything took its toll.

  ‘Before, I’d been a left-sided midfielder or central midfielder, but now I was playing left-back for the reserves in a really good team. The Pontins League was very strong, and we used to win it every season. If Liverpool were playing away on a Saturday afternoon, the reserves would play the same opposition at home. There were only 13 players in a match-day squad, and Kenny would often take an extra man, just in case of injury or illness. Everybody else would play in the reserves. It meant everybody was playing regular football all the time and us young lads in the reserves were learning off the senior pros. We were playing with first-class players against first-class opposition. That experience was invaluable, and I can’t understand why they don’t do it that way now. The standard of the reserve league now is shite.

  ‘The reserves and the first team played exactly the same. We trained the same way too, and that made matches seem easy. Because we’d worked our socks off, we were so fit – a lot fitter than other teams. The intensity of training was higher than in matches. So the games seemed easy.’

  Staunton soon earned a nickname at Melwood – a tag that has stuck with him ever since.

  ‘John Bennison had been at Liverpool with Shankly and was well respected. He was in the same mould as Ronnie Moran – very tough, especially on the young lads he wanted to test mentally. I could hear somebody shouting the name “Stan” during games, and I didn’t have a clue who was being shouted at. One day, Beno came up to me and said, “Laddie, why do you keep ignoring me?” I was like, “What?”

  ‘“Your name’s Stan, isn’t it?”

  ‘“I’m Steve … Stephen in fact.’” Nobody bloody even called me Steve at the time. Beno was looking at me confused. Then he told me that he’d played at Chester City in the ’40s or ’50s with a bloke called Stan Staunton. After that conversation, he started calling me Steve, but the rest of the lads stuck with Stan. There was a lot of bullshit about the nickname Stan coming from Laurel and Hardy, because people perceived me as a figure of fun. But it wasn’t. It came from Beno.’

  At the end of the 1986–87 season, Staunton was sent on loan to Bradford City, a club still recovering from the Valley Parade Stadium fire.

  ‘It gave me the experience of realising that lower down the leagues you’re playing for people’s livelihoods. Jobs were at stake. Since, I’ve seen people go mad in dressing-rooms, but at least you can walk away always knowing there’s a next week to put things right. At that level, a run of defeats can mean loss in match-day revenue and eventually can mean redundancies. That was the grim reality.

  ‘Terry Dolan was the manager at Bradford, and he was experienced. But he was good with youngsters as well. I was there for two months and came up against some good players. Paul Birch, god rest his soul, with Aston Villa was one of my toughest opponents. He was small and tricky, and with me being 6 ft and slow to turn, I struggled against him. He’d never fucking stand still – a little jack-in-the-box. I always found it difficult against the little ones. Even until this day, having played in two World Cups, I will always say that the little ones gave me more problems than the more technical ones. Later, I remember playing against Russell Beardsmore [a winger with Manchester United who later moved to Bournemouth]. That fella gave me more problems than Roberto fucking Baggio. Gary Crosby at Forest was another one at the back end of the ’80s, as was Gazza. Gazza was a year older than me when I was at Bradford, but he was small and podgy. What a player he was. He was playing central midfield but got about the pitch and was a problem for every defender that day. He’d try everything to put you off your game – tickling, pinching, groping, and that when he was barely 20 years old.’

  Staunton returned to Melwood over-confident and believing he was ready for first-team action.

  ‘Within two or three days of being back, I couldn’t pass a ball five yards. The staff battered me because I’d gotten too cocky. I thought I was ready to play first-team football and I was dead wrong. After a week of harsh words, they started building my confidence up again. I learnt a very big l
esson – a great lesson – at such a young age. Never get ahead of yourself.’

  Twelve months later, Staunton travelled with the first team for the first time for a 0–0 draw against Norwich City at Carrow Road. The following summer, he was part of the squad that went to Norway for a pre-season tour.

  ‘We drunk an awful fucking lot,’ he says, grinning for the first time. ‘It was a big learning curve for me, because I’d barely touched a drop since moving to Liverpool. I was that desperate to prove myself. Then I got to the first team and all they did was drink. It was an eye opener for me. We’d travel, train, play, drink, travel, train, play then drink again. It was constant. People say that the United boys were big drinkers in the ’80s, but we drank just as much. The difference was that we had better players who could deal with it, and we achieved much more success so nobody cared about it. It’s only when you stop winning that it becomes an issue. If supporters saw us out on the piss, they’d come over and congratulate us for doing so well. But if the United boys were spotted, they’d get criticised for not focusing when the team wasn’t doing so well. Most Tuesdays after training we’d be out, and sometimes we’d bump into the United boys. We got praised; the United lads got bollocked. It was like that in the ’90s as well. United had just as many players that were out on the town as Liverpool – all young lads. But the United lads had some more experienced pros in the dressing-room who could advise the younger boys when to stop.’

  Back to the tour. There were funny moments.

  ‘We were in a fast-food joint somewhere in Oslo and some people spotted us standing there ordering our food. Aldo was getting more attention than everyone else and we couldn’t figure out why. Then one guy went running out the door shouting, “Look, I’ve got Ian Rush’s autograph.”’