Hammered

by Mark Ward

  * * * *

  Kirkham had its own prison football team that played matches against normal sides in a proper league, although, for obvious reasons, all games were played at ‘home’. They had done very well that season and, with two games left, were in with a good chance of winning the division.

  A Scouse lad named Nicky Ayres, the team captain, was constantly mithering me to play in the penultimate game. I would love to have played but I just wasn’t feeling well enough. I managed to hide out of his way on the day of the match and I felt a bit bad when I heard they had got beaten 1-0.

  A week later, they had the final match of the season against the team placed second in the league – a winner-takes-all clash for the title. The Kirkham side was full of Scousers – everyone bar goalkeeper Lee Bonney, from Bolton, and a defender Billy Moonie, a Glaswegian, came from Liverpool. The Mancs weren’t allowed to play – it didn’t matter how good they were!

  On May 12, 2007, I was sat on my bed in the cell watching Football Focus on BBC1. The following day was a massive one for my old team West Ham United, who badly needed a result against Manchester United at Old Trafford to be certain of retaining their Premier League status.

  I was looking back at the last two years of my life. It was two years to the day since my arrest. I was also remembering Dad, who would have been 71 that day.

  The TV programme ran a big feature on West Ham’s chances of survival, including interviews from Upton Park with the likes of Alvin Martin, Frank McAvennie and Tony Cottee. It was good to see my old team-mates again. They all looked a little bit older than how I’d remembered them but I couldn’t help feeling envious.

  They were filmed while taking part in the annual Boys of ’86 corporate football tournament – one I’d played in with them numerous times prior to my arrest. I always enjoyed going back to Upton Park and kicking a ball around on the pitch that held so many happy memories.

  The irony that day was that I’d agreed to play for the prison football team in the last game of the season. Whoever won this match would be crowned league champions. Never mind the enormity of the final game of the season at Old Trafford, with a reported £30m on the line for the Hammers, this was the big one!

  I knew after playing that game that something was very wrong with me. I couldn’t anticipate anything and my balance was terrible, but somehow I got through the 90 minutes and we won the match – thanks to a goal by a lad named Russell – to seal the title. The other lads celebrated as if they’d won the World Cup final – it meant so much to them.

  For the record, this was our line-up on the big day:

  The refereeing by the screw was very strong. There were a lot of hard lads in the team. Nicky Ayres (aka Jan Molby) was a ferocious tackler. He couldn’t pass water but he got stuck in and didn’t need an invitation to intimidate the opposition. I didn’t enjoy the game one bit. The symptoms I was getting after my spell in hospital were now worrying me.

  At least West Ham fans had nothing to concern themselves about that summer. Having suffered relegation with the Hammers in 1989, I was made up for the supporters after Carlos Tevez scored the only goal of the game to keep them in the top flight, at the expense of Sheffield United. I knew what it must have meant to them and I was delighted to see how my old team did it when I watched Match of the Day later than night.

  I’d been working in the prison as a billet cleaner, mopping up in the corridors and shower area, but was told I could go outside of the prison to do my community pay-back charity work. If you had no risk factor against your name, you were allowed to work in the charity shops in the local areas around Preston and Blackpool.

  I was posted to the Barnardo’s shop in Kirkham town centre, just a short walk from the prison. I was taken down for an interview and started work there on Monday, July 9.

  I hated every minute of it.

  I’m all for putting something back into the community but to be sitting around among old women in a shop all day wasn’t for me, and I resented the experience. Give me a fence to paint or a hole to dig any day of the week.

  It must have shown on my face because, after a month of working in the shop, an old lady called Pam said: ‘Mark, you don’t like it here, do you?’

  I admitted to her that I hated it. She asked if I would be interested in working at her local church, looking after the grounds. I’m not at all religious but I replied: ‘When do you want me to start?’

  Pam had a word with Father Giles Allen and I began my charity work at St John the Evangelist C of E Church in Clifton, on Monday, August 6. It was a great job. I’d walk three miles to the church every morning, and then three miles back in the afternoon.

  I had full use of the church hall to make myself a cup of tea and lunch in what was a beautiful, isolated spot. I enjoyed caring for the grounds and, within a few weeks, had them in pristine condition. I was so proud when I eventually got on top of the long grass and had the graveyard looking perfect. Father Allen showed me some letters from church-goers who expressed their pleasure at how well the grounds were looking.

  The screws would often come down to the church to check up on me but I told them that I wouldn’t jeopardise my home leaves by not being there. I also had a visit from a local newspaper photographer who had been sent to get snaps of me going about my chores, but I spotted him approaching from the adjacent fields and told him where to go.

  It was tough work in the winter, walking six miles in the snow, but I look back on that job as a fantastic experience. I was left on my own, in a position of trust and felt a real sense of achievement.

  Having a charity job meant that I was moved to the green billets. The cells there had their own en-suite toilet and shower, which made life so much easier and more comfortable.

  * * * *

  My home visits each month were great but I think Nicola was finding it hard to understand why I fancied going out for a few pints and socialising with friends on my days out of the prison. After being banged up for three years, of course I wanted to socialise as soon as I got the opportunity – it certainly beat sitting at home on the sofa holding hands. It was the start of a decline in our relationship, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I was also forever falling out with Melissa and, looking back, I think I was a bit misunderstood by the women I loved most.

  Further hospital tests failed to reveal what was causing me to lose my balance, which was at the root of my upsetting behaviour.

  My first Christmas at home with the family in three years felt fantastic in one sense but I still wasn’t feeling right in myself. Nicola and I had Christmas dinner at my brother Billy’s house but I was finding it hard to hold my drink. On one occasion I went out for a few drinks with my mate Peter McGuinness. We’d only drunk four pints, which would normally be no problem to me, but the beer affected my balance and I fell over and cut my head.

  What Nicola didn’t know, and it’s so difficult to explain properly to other people who can see no outward physical signs of a problem, is that I had spells of feeling dizzy and light-headed. I wasn’t feeling well all the time – 24/7 – and so when I was coming out and having a few drinks, the alcohol wasn’t agreeing with me. Little did I know at the time but the booze was only making my condition worse.

  I obviously enjoyed relaxing with a pint of ale but the beer just made me feel worse, which in turn sparked anger in me, and this undoubtedly had a damaging effect on my relationships with the people closest to me.

  I felt frustrated that as well as falling out with Nicola and Melissa, my general fitness levels were also suffering. I’ve always prided myself on my fitness, so it hurt that I didn’t feel well enough to do the things that I’d always taken for granted. I remember breaking down over it with Nicola one night.

  It wasn’t until early in 2009, when a friend looked up my symptoms on a medical internet website and he handed me the print outs, that I immediately recognised some of them as part of my condition. I also read that patients who suffer these symptoms often have
difficulty maintaining personal relationships.

  * * * *

  It wasn’t all bad news, though. I reached another major turning point in prison life when I was told that I’d be able to work on a paid labour scheme for the final year of my sentence. So from May 12, 2008, I could go and find myself a job.

  It was going to be difficult, but I met an old mate of mine, Paul Downes, for a coffee during one of my home visits in April. Paul owned Caber Developments, based in Liverpool, and told me that he would give me a start. I earned the minimum weekly wage, although my salary was paid directly into the prison’s bank account and held there pending my eventual release. In the meantime, I was given a very basic allowance of £60 to cover my 80-mile round trip petrol costs and expenses.

  It was only labouring on a site but I was so grateful. At the time, though, things were starting to get tight as the credit crunch took hold and the building industry was among the worst affected. One or two of the lads had to be laid off as work slowed down but Caber kindly kept me on right up until my release date from Kirkham.

  The first job with them was based at the Walton Liverpool building, a Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), but I didn’t have any transport to get there from Kirkham.

  I was in regular touch with Tony Gale and I mentioned to him that I was able to go out and work for wages, but had no way of getting to the job. He said he’d speak to the lads from the Boys of ’86, and they very generously sent our Billy a few quid so that he could buy me a little Peugeot car to get me to and from Liverpool each day. I’ve since traded it in for an old Vauxhall Corsa – a red one at that! – but it gets me around and that’s the main thing.

  If it hadn’t been for Paul Downes and the West Ham lads, I would never have got the opportunity to work outside prison.

  Back at the church, I said my goodbyes to everyone and thanked Father Allen for giving me the opportunity.

  * * * *

  There were times during 2008 when I found it very hard to sit down at Kirkham and continue writing this book, even though my editor/publisher Tony McDonald was very impressed and enthusiastic about the hand-written chapters I’d sent him in the post.

  The fact that Nicola and I were not getting on was having a big effect on my mentality. With my physical condition and balance also getting no better, I was often left feeling upset and very frustrated.

  I loved working with the lads at the CAB, though. We were building the place from scratch and I relished the physical work, carrying the bricks and making the mortar. It put my balance to the test at times – my colleagues mentioned that they sometimes thought I was pissed as they watched me struggle to walk in a straight line – but I was learning quickly and the other lads were all good to me.

  The site manager Danny Judge, his brother Jeff, Terry Tosney, Bobby Mac and Paul Downes’ son Michael were very entertaining and became good mates. We would play cards – Nomination Trumps – during our breaks and Danny and Terry couldn’t understand my competitive nature. I hated to lose and they would wind me up every day, but it was all good banter. I even formed a ‘100 Club’ – if you reached 100 points you made it in. Unfortunately, Danny never joined this exclusive elite – he was rubbish at cards!

  There was an extraordinary moment at work which coincided with the sequence of three derby matches involving Everton and Liverpool in the space of a couple of weeks at the end of January and start of February ’09. We were refurbishing a big, old Victorian house in Bootle – ironically, a charity-funded £1m rehab place for drug addicts – when Terry Tosney and Jeff Judge were chipping away at the front of the building. Terry went too far into the wall with the breaker tool and when he looked inside the cavity, he was amazed to discover an old newspaper that would create a lot of interest.

  I was loading stuff into the skip when the two lads who had found the paper shouted out: ‘Come here, Mark, look at this.’ I was always a bit dubious of Terry and Jeff, a couple of Liverpudlians who were always playing practical jokes on me, so I thought nothing of it at first.

  Then I saw Terry holding a copy of the Sunday Mirror from September 19, 1993 and there, under the headline ‘It’s Bruise Grobbelaar’ – a reference to the famous altercation between the Liverpool keeper and Steve McManaman – was the match report of Everton’s 2-0 victory in which Tony Cottee and I scored for the Blues.

  My initial suspicion was that Terry had deliberately planted it there, as yet another wind-up and to see my reaction. There was also speculation from the other lads that I’d put it there myself to try and impress them. But, astonishingly, it was a genuine find. The building had evidently had a lot of work done on it over the years and someone just happened to shove that old paper down the wall cavity while working there some 15 years ago.

  * * * *

  When I started outside paid employment I was put on the NSC (Next Step Centre) at Kirkham, a new building that reminded me of a typical Travelodge. There were 40 prisoners on the billet, the cells were bigger, with an en-suite shower and toilet, and a fridge and television in the cell.

  A big kitchen was available where prisoners would cook their own food, and there was also a communal area with a plasma TV that had Sky Sports News. I thought it couldn’t get much better than this … until I remembered that I was sharing the facilities with a potent mixture of drug-dealers, murderers and robbers.

  I’m sure there are plenty of people out there complaining that prisoners are afforded such luxuries. Well, all I’ll say to that is, you don’t get those privileges if you aren’t a compliant and rehabilitated prisoner who is deemed fit to return to normal society.

  Kirkham was a good prison. If you behaved yourself, then there were plenty of privileges available to you. Working out in the gym, home leaves and town visits. But if you stepped out of line then you were just shipped back to closed conditions.

  I was never going back to closed conditions, but so many others I knew did. In my time there, I never saw any violence or bullying. What little trouble there was remained out of sight of the screws, because the prison staff always hold the trump card of being able to send problem prisoners back to closed conditions and therefore a stricter regime.

  If you do your time correctly, you are rewarded with privileges, charity work and paid employment. I took everything that came my way. I never asked for any favours and served my time, week by week, month by month, year by year.

  * * * *

  My home leaves were eventually to take their toll on Nicola. We fell out in the autumn of 2008. I so wanted her to be waiting for me on my release in May 2009 but we had drifted apart. I tried hard to keep in touch but she had made her decision and that was that.

  37. JORDAN’S TITS

  IT WAS Sunday 10 May, 2009. I couldn’t sleep. The anticipation of being set free the next morning was keeping me wide awake. I’d spent four years in prison, which amounts to 208 weeks or 1,460 days. I’ll always remember a smart arse prisoner telling me how two years equates to 35,000 hours behind bars. Well, the last few passed painfully slowly.

  The next morning, I stood with six other inmates patiently awaiting my release from HMP Kirkham. Our Billy was waiting outside with my publisher Tony McDonald. Nick Harris, the journalist from The Independent, had driven all the way down from Edinburgh to interview me for a follow up to the feature he’d written in the paper four years previously.

  Even though I’d been going outside the prison on a regular basis thanks to my home leave, this was the day I officially became a free man again.

  I soon realised that I’d be thrown into the spotlight on my release from prison and the publication of my book in two weeks’ time. But I was prepared to accept all the criticism coming my way and hold my head up high. I’d made a terrible mistake and did my time as best I could. I didn’t sing like a canary and grass on anyone. I kept my mouth shut, so I had no fears about being accepted back in Liverpool.

  Physically, I was as fit as I’d been since my playing days and I couldn’t wait to be part of my fami
ly and friends once again.

  The six other inmates were all let out before me, just after 9.00am, and when it finally came to my turn to pass through the little black door, a screw turned to me and asked if I was okay to walk out with the press outside. I told him I wasn’t bothered – I couldn’t wait to get out of there and wasn’t going to wait a minute longer than necessary.

  It was a gorgeous, bright, sunny day and Billy greeted me with a brotherly hug. It was a great feeling to be back on the outside as Mark Ward and not prisoner NM6982 which had been my label for four long years. I left the prison with just a black bin liner filled with a few clothes and masses of paperwork that I’d accumulated over my stretch.

  Billy drove me to Kirkby in Liverpool, where I had to see my Probation Officer. I was with her for just half an hour, during which time she laid down the law of the terms of my release on licence. The strict conditions of my release were: one, to reside at a suitable address; two, to report to my Probation Officer every week for the following 16 weeks; and three, not to travel abroad without permission.

  If I broke any of these conditions it was possible for her to immediately recall me back to prison. It wasn’t going to be a problem for me to see her once a week. I’d never given the prison authorities the opportunity to add more days to my sentence while I was on the inside and now I was out, I wasn’t going to give my Probation Officer any excuse to stick me back in jail.

  Prisons are full of people who have breached their licence conditions. The conditions are very strict – I am on licence for four years, which is effectively a sentence served within the community. Step out of line just once and I’ll find myself back inside. I now see my Probation Officer once a month which is no problem for me. I was really excited about entering a new phase in my life. I felt a sense of satisfaction that I’d come through my time in prison and it had changed me for the better.