Hammered

by Mark Ward

  What we didn’t know at the time was that he was also well down the road to self-destruction, ruining his career through cocaine. I have no idea how he got into drugs, but it’s not hard to see how it might have happened.

  He was a young lad, thrust into the limelight and suddenly being talked about as a wonderful talent before he’d actually made it. He had a few quid in his pocket, he was in an environment where he would work hard and show a certain amount of dedication and commitment, but hard partying was also on offer. Most of us stuck to booze as our drug of choice.

  But there were other temptations all around Billy – and he leapt at them. It was a bad situation, which got totally out of hand before anyone realised what was happening to him. He was a mess and probably beyond the help of any of his team-mates before we were aware that his drug abuse was destroying him.

  One Monday morning, sometime not long after that party, I arrived at training early as usual to have my cup of tea with Neville Southall, who was already there. Nev was upstairs brewing a cuppa when I walked into the dressing room. What I saw rocked me back on my heels. There was Billy Kenny, sat stark naked in the corner with his feet up on the bench, clearly disorientated and grasping his erection.

  He looked a pathetic sight, as if he was totally lost in every sense. He only uttered one sentence: ‘Wardy, I’m all fucked up.’

  I was too shocked to reply. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I immediately legged it back up the stairs to fetch Nev. Together, we dragged Billy across the dressing room and launched him, head-first, into the cold plunge tub. We stood over him until his hard-on had subsided and he looked as though he was calming down a bit.

  Then we put him under the shower, dried him off and helped him to put his kit on. How he got through the training that morning I’ll never know. It wasn’t long before his drug problems became common knowledge among the staff and his demise at Everton kicked in.

  I met up with Billy again a few years back and was delighted to see that he’d got his life back on track and appeared to have put his personal problems behind him.

  It was a few hours after Billy’s naked dance with the stripper at the party of ’92 that things really got out of hand. I’d had a lot to drink but sometimes things happen that have a sobering effect very quickly and this was one of them.

  During the course of the evening my fellow midfielder John Ebbrell kept on sneaking up to me and slyly punching me before running off. I was dressed as Dennis The Menace. In drinking terms, ‘Ebbo’ was considered a bit of a softie, and I suppose he thought that taking a few playful punches at me was his best chance of winding me up. It must have been getting towards one in the morning when he punched me for the last time – quite hard actually – in the side of the head.

  As Ebbo ran off, my brother Billy said to me: ‘He’s out of order, Mark. Go and sort him out.’ I was quite drunk by that time, having been on it since two o’clock that afternoon, so I’d been knocking back the booze for nearly 11 hours solid. As I turned to go after Ebbo, I crashed into this huge bloke, dressed as a cowboy, who was standing nearby.

  I later found out the John Wayne look-a-like was Dave Watson’s next-door neighbour. He was enormous and his costume was accurate right down to the holster and gun – a replica, obviously, fitted up to work as a water pistol or cap-gun.

  That’s what I assumed, anyway, as I yanked it out of the holster and staggered away looking for Popeye – aka John Ebbrell. There were three different bar areas in The Conty and I assumed he’d be skulking in the corner of one of them.

  But there was no sign of him in the first bar, nor the second. I walked into the third and still no Ebbo. But Neville Southall was propping up the bar and deep in conversation with Barry Horne, who was dressed as The Pope. His costume was the full works.

  ‘You seen Ebbo?’ I asked Barry. ‘No, why?’ he responded. I waved the gun in front of him and Nev and said: ‘Because he’s going to get some of this …’

  We all fell about laughing. Barry must also have assumed it was going to fire only water. ‘Why don’t you shoot The Pope?’ he then suggested in all innocence.

  I can’t quite recall whether he raised his arms slightly or not, but we were in very close proximity, a foot or two apart at most. At that moment I’d forgotten all about Ebbo. I raised the gun, aimed it straight at the centre of The Pope’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  The noise was staggering, unbelievable. And as this bang reverberated around the bar, we were all stunned to see a massive flash of fire shoot from the barrel and Barry, who took a direct hit, was flung backwards.

  It was a real gun! There’d been a bullet in the chamber. I’d shot one of my team-mates at point-blank range in the chest. The saving mercy – and thank God for it – was that the bullet was a blank, designed to crumple and ignite on impact rather than explode.

  Still, Barry was knocked back, and he was on fire. His robes were burning and it was only the rapid intervention of one of our mates, Roy Wright, that stopped an even more serious situation unfolding. He chucked a pint over Barry to put out the flames.

  The shock and amazement I felt as we watched Barry’s chest being extinguished is hard to describe. Everyone else who saw what happened was equally stunned. I don’t think anyone even managed to say anything at all about it until the following morning – it was that unreal.

  I got into training early as usual. Needless to say, we were all badly hungover and all the talk among the players was about the shooting of the Pope.

  Barry hadn’t come in. I was starting to get worried when he finally arrived, about 20 minutes late. He had his papal tunic in his hands. He threw it on the floor at my feet, looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘Fucking hell, Wardy, I thought you’d killed me last night. I was only joking when I said you should shoot The Pope!’

  That broke the ice and the lads fell about laughing their nuts off. There was a massive hole in Barry’s costume. That one certainly wasn’t going back to the shop. He then pulled his T-shirt up to reveal a huge bruise on his chest, caused by the impact of the bullet.

  And just as he was displaying his wounds, Ebbo walked into the dressing room, oblivious to what had happened the night before. When he heard that I’d actually been looking for him, he realised he’d had a lucky escape.

  Thinking about it later, I realised that if I’d caught up with John, the whole thing could have ended with dire consequences. Knowing how I was at that time – impulsive, diving into situations without thinking, doing stuff first and putting my brain into action later – I would probably have wrestled him to the ground, held the gun to his ear or temple, and pulled the trigger. I would have expected to give him a fright with an earful of water or a loud ‘BANG!’ from the cap.

  But I might actually have scarred him for life or blinded him.

  Apparently, as I’d dashed away from ‘John Wayne’ after nicking his weapon, he’d shouted after me not to shoot the gun under any circumstances. I hadn’t heard him.

  What would the public have made of that incident if it had ever been reported in the tabloids?

  19. THREATENING BEHAVIOUR

  THE shooting incident involving Barry Horne didn’t make the newspapers and neither did a much more sinister encounter – my run-in with a notorious Liverpool crime figure, which was triggered by a night out at The Conty that had turned ugly earlier on in that same season.

  Everton had been playing away at Queens Park Rangers on Saturday, October 26, 1991 and a few of the players had planned a session to welcome one of the new young lads, Matt Jackson, who had recently joined us from Luton Town, once our coach arrived back in Liverpool that night.

  After a few drinks to kick-off with in the Labour Club and The Watchmaker pub, the players, accompanied by my mate Peter McGuinness, arrived at The Conty quite late. But that wasn’t a problem, because the reliable Franco got us a table, sat us all down – I put my jacket on the back of my chair – and took our orders. I left ‘Waggy’ and the lads waitin
g for the food while I nipped downstairs to the loo.

  When I got back a few minutes later, my team-mates were all tucking into their ribs and chips but I immediately noticed that my chair had gone. A guy sat with his friends on the table next to us had moved it and was sat on it.

  I went over to him and politely tried to explain that he’d mistakenly taken my seat. ‘Excuse me, mate, you’re in my chair,’ is all I said. He just ignored me, so I immediately sensed trouble. I repeated what I’d said and then he stood up and, in the same movement, butted me in the side of the head. As I hadn’t had a drink at the time, I’d half anticipated his aggressive movement, pulled away and as he lunged towards me I grabbed his head.

  I couldn’t believe I’d been head-butted for simply asking for my chair, which still had my jacket, containing my wallet and other personal belongings, hanging from the back of it. It was a set-up – the guy probably knew we were Everton players and just decided to be clever. But, with his head in my hands, I unleashed four or five punches and blood was spilt.

  What I didn’t know at the time was that this guy, in his fifties, was one of the most notorious gangsters in Liverpool, a hard-core villain. I’m not going to name him here – I’ll call him The Blackmailer – but let’s just say that he’s been accused of many serious crimes, including armed robberies, and was later to stand trial for the fatal shooting in his own house of another well known Liverpool gangster. He was subsequently acquitted of that one, although – and as he later admitted – the police maintained that he was guilty.

  He was a dangerous man who you didn’t want to cross but here I was punching him in the face. I obviously had no idea who he was at the time or the extent of his connections. But I found out within seconds.

  One of his sidekicks that night was another well-known figure in the city, a former boxer who clearly hadn’t lost his touch. When it all kicked off, he punched me from the side, on my jaw, and knocked me out cold.

  I was dragged into the kitchen of the restaurant and came round a few moments later. All I remember is waking up to see Dave Watson stood above me and then the two of us being ushered towards the exit door by a couple of bouncers.

  All the staff at The Conty knew full well who The Blackmailer was, they knew his associates and they knew it was in no-one’s best interests to continue any kind of physical confrontation on their premises.

  As we left, Waggy spotted my assailant in the car park. I was still unaware who he was at this point and I wanted to know what all the fuss had been about and why I’d been attacked in the first place. As I approached him to ask these questions, I was stopped in my tracks. Standing barely five feet away from us in the car park of The Conty, The Blackmailer suddenly produced a long knife from his inside jacket pocket and said: ‘Do you want some of this?’ I nearly shit myself when I saw the shiny, silver blade.

  Matt Jackson certainly had a very eventful first night out in Liverpool!

  My nemesis had built himself a reputation for violence in our area over many years. He once allegedly settled a dispute with someone who owed him money by chopping off their fingers on a pub bar.

  When we saw the knife, Waggy and I just looked at each other and ran like the wind in opposite directions. It was the start of a six-month ordeal – not just for me, but for Jane and Melissa.

  I got out of my car at Bellefield on the Monday morning and was greeted by big Tommy Griff. Tommy knew the ins and outs of a duck’s arse and everything that went on in the streets of Liverpool. Remember, it was Tommy who told me at the PFA bash in London that I’d soon be signing for Everton while I was a Man City player. ‘Do you know who you were fighting with the other night?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied. Tommy told me the guy’s name and said: ‘He’s not a happy man. In fact, he’s very angry.’

  Tommy gave me a brief history of The Blackmailer and what I could expect to be coming my way.

  Over the next couple of days the word was about to be put out that The Blackmailer wanted £5,000 as compensation for the trouble he claimed I’d caused him at The Conty. He held me responsible for the loss of his gold watch, the ruin of his Armani suit and cuts to his face that required stitches.

  What a load of bollocks! There was no way I was going to pay a penny to him or anybody else. I’d stuck up for myself, just like always, and was never going to give in to demands, threats or intimidation. Footballers, especially full-backs, had tried to bully me on the pitch, but this was completely different. The heat was on.

  I was training with the lads when Colin Harvey, Howard’s assistant, stopped the practice session and told me there was an important phone call that I had to take. He took me from the pitch and into the office to speak to a solicitor who said he was representing the man I’d been fighting with. ‘Mark, can we sort out this unfortunate fracas?’ he asked in a polite, friendly manner.

  He told me that if the money was paid to his client – ‘reimburse’ was the term he actually used – he would do all he could to ensure the incident was kept out of the papers. He added: ‘You don’t want this getting out, do you? … Drunk footballers fighting in a nightclub. You know it’s the sensible thing to do.’

  The phone calls from The Blackmailer’s solicitor to the training ground went on for a while and although I never received any threatening calls at home, I felt I had to tell Jane what was going on. Liverpool is a big city but it holds few secrets and there are often times when it seems more like a village, where gossip travels fast.

  My rift with this gangster became fairly common knowledge – even the Liverpool players knew about it because they also visited The Conty regularly on nights out. And nothing went on in the city without Howard Kendall knowing about it, so he pulled me in one day and asked what it was all about. His advice was to stay out of the city for my own good. He seemed annoyed with me for getting myself tangled up with such a known crime figure but when I told him the truth about what happened at The Conty that night, he was more sympathetic and told me to be careful and stay out of the city centre.

  Dave Watson and I used to travel in to Bellefield together. Over the next six months I had numerous phone calls and a couple of visits from associates of The Blackmailer. One such meeting happened after training, when this big guy turned up unexpectedly in a large motor.

  I got in the front while Waggy sat in the back with Dave Ash, the janitor at the training ground, who volunteered to come with us. Dave was a very hard man, a part-time bouncer and friend to all of us. Howard would sometimes take him on our trips abroad to look after the players. We drove the short distance to Croxteth Park and it was a scene straight out of a mafia movie. I didn’t know where we were going when we left Bellefield but I felt a bit safer knowing Ash was with me and Waggy.

  The Blackmailer’s driver-cum-messenger never uttered a word until we reached Crocky Park, with its little nature reserve, and he’d switched the engine off. He turned to me and said: ‘I’ll ask you this once and once only. Are you going to pay the money, as he asks?’

  I said: ‘No.’

  He didn’t say any more before re-starting the engine and driving us back to the training ground in stony silence. I don’t know who the man sent to collect me from the training ground was to this day, but he made me feel very uncomfortable.

  The pressure on me became terribly intense and I was worried for my family. My good friend, Peter McGuinness, also became unwittingly caught up in the dispute. He’d been at The Conty on the night all this trouble began and saw what happened, although he didn’t get involved.

  About a week later, Peter had gone to the Hillcrest Hotel after watching an Everton home game and was suddenly confronted by a menacing figure. The Blackmailer had recognised Peter from The Conty and followed him into the toilets. The Blackmailer didn’t inflict any physical harm on Peter but he left my mate feeling more than a little bit shaken.

  ‘I want to buy you a drink and talk about this,’ said The Blackmailer, before pouring Peter a glass of champagne.
Once he had reassured The Blackmailer that he’d had played no part in the fracas at The Conty, Peter got out of there as fast as he could and then phoned me to tell me about his ordeal.

  I felt awful for my family and Peter. The whole ugly saga came to a head after about six months – back at the same Hillcrest Hotel where Peter had come frighteningly face to face with The Blackmailer.

  The hotel was just around the corner from my house in Cronton and one Sunday I was having lunch in there with Jane, brother Billy and his wife Julie. Just as I was tucking into roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, I noticed a man walking straight towards our table with a serious snarl on his face. I stood up but he told me to sit back down.

  I realised it was The Blackmailer, who had obviously come looking for me. He went on to say that he couldn’t sort anything out because my ‘tart’ was there, and so he promised to ‘sort it tomorrow.’

  He left the table and proceeded to the bar, where a giant of a man – his minder – was waiting. Jane and Julie were both petrified. We sat at our table for a good hour but, worryingly, The Blackmailer had still not left and remained alongside his henchman at the bar. To my amazement, Billy shrugged his shoulders and said to me: ‘Mark, you have fucked him. I’ll do the big fella if there is any trouble.’

  We left the two girls at the table and walked up to the bar to pay the bill. As I was about to produce my credit card, The Blackmailer stormed over to me, shouting threats that he needed things sorting out. Billy stopped him in his tracks by pushing his hand in his face and retaliating with his own verbal tirade. The minder was told to back off by The Blackmailer, who said he wanted to talk to us over a drink.

  But he was told where to go in no uncertain terms.

  To this day, I’ve never seen The Blackmailer since that meeting in the Hillcrest Hotel. I believe if I hadn’t had the support and backing of certain men such as Tommy Griff, Gerrard Starkey, Dave Ash and Mark Quinn, the brother of Mickey Quinn, and my brother Billy, things could have been much, much worse for me.