Budgie - The Autobiography

by John Burridge

  The simmering bad blood between me and Alex Miller boiled over during a game at Airdrie, when we came to blows. It was a foul night, lashing down with rain, and during the warm-up I had been wearing a big, waterproof, protective training top. I headed back into the dressing room to get my kit on, but two or three minutes before kick-off time I was still sitting there with my waterproof top on. Miller came up to me and barked at me: ‘You’ve got to wear the club goalkeeper’s shirt, Budgie.’ It was hammering down with rain and, although he didn’t know it, I was intending to wait till the last minute and put the proper goalkeeper’s shirt over the top of it. But when he came over and started trying to order me around, I couldn’t resist a great chance to have an argument with him, so I told him: ‘No. I’m wearing this instead.’ He started trying to pull the waterproof top off me so I elbowed him in the jaw.

  All of a sudden he squared up to me, so I hit him and knocked him to the floor. The red mist had descended and I was on top of him, knocking hell out of him until the assistant manager Murdo MacLeod jumped on my back and clocked me over the head with a big telephone – not one of the slick little mobiles you get now, this one was like a brick. I was half dazed. Normally I wouldn’t have done it, but he had been holding me against my will, and all my frustration got the better of me. The whole situation really affected the boys, because they could see I wasn’t happy. I was no longer Jolly Budgie all the time, I was Angry Budgie. It had a negative effect on the dressing room, but in my eyes it was Alex Miller’s fault for not seeing me right.

  Another strange incident happened during that match. To some fans and players in Scottish football back then religion was a big deal, and obviously Celtic had a big Catholic following whereas Rangers were known as the protestant club. An Airdrie player came flying into me, caught me with his studs, and shouted: ‘Take that, ya Fenian bastard!’ I didn’t even know what a ‘Fenian’ was; I had never heard of the word and would have needed a dictionary to find out what it meant, so I asked him what he was talking about. When he said it meant I was a Catholic, I told him: ‘I’m not one, but what’s that got to with anything anyway?’ To my amazement, he just said: ‘Oh, okay, sorry then’ and ran back up the pitch. It was totally bizarre, but Scottish football could be like that sometimes.

  After the game, we got back in the dressing room and I’d played quite well, Alex tried to say well done, but I told him to stick it, telling him: ‘I did it for the lads, not for you, Miller.’ There was a real bad atmosphere between us, and it couldn’t go on. At the end of that season Hibs released me.

  I regret that I was unable to build on the success of that first season, and gone on to have a couple more happy years at Hibs, but I always felt there was a jealousy from Alex Miller as well as an inferiority complex. He was wary of me because I was a bit more popular than he was and had the confidence of the players.

  One thing I do owe Alex Miller a debt of gratitude for is that he encouraged me to do my coaching badges. I started by doing my B badge, then A badge, advanced-A, and then full licence, and the Scottish Football Association paid 75 per cent of the costs. He encouraged me to start my B licence in the summer of 1992, and I went to Largs and passed it. Roy Aitken was also there, and we drove each other on, and I met a lot of other good friends there. Even after I left Hibs I would head up to Largs in the summer to continue working through my coaching qualifications. Persevering with the coaching badges got me to where I am now – because if I hadn’t gained those licences and qualifications, I wouldn’t be doing the job that I’m doing at 58 years old. While I knew plenty about football, and understood the game, I learned more from teachers than coaches, because what I didn’t know was to how to portray myself positively and speak confidently in public. I had left school with no qualifications and only knew day-to-day football. They taught me how to get my message over. All kinds of people went to Largs from all over the world. Jose Mourinho did his badges around the same time as me, but no one knew him because in those days he was just an interpreter for Bobby Robson. Everyone knew Budgie, though!

  CHAPTER 20

  GOALIE FOR HIRE

  ‘I would turn up at Newcastle on a Friday not knowing what the weekend held for me or where I’d be going out on loan – it was quite exciting.’

  They say that variety is the spice of life and after I’d moved on from Hibs, things started to get really interesting. I already had a good career under my belt, and most people might just have considered calling it quits. After I’d been freed by Hibernian, I must admit I did think to myself: ‘What the hell am I going to do next at the age of 42?’

  I had spent two or three days agonising over what I should do when the telephone rang, and it was Kevin Keegan, who had been a breath of fresh air as manager of Newcastle after a disastrous reign by Ardiles. ‘Budgie? It’s Kevin Keegan.’ ‘Hi Kev, what’s on your mind? What can I do for you?’ ‘Budgie, I need a player-coach. I want you to train my goalkeepers.’ And that was that. I was back in business!

  Newcastle trained in Durham, where I lived, so I said I would come down and have a chat with him. Kevin and I had a good talk, and he asked if I was intending to play on. The more I thought about it, the more I realised there was no point kidding myself that I would be happy hanging up the gloves – I still had that itch to play. ‘Well, why don’t you work with our goalkeepers here during the week and sit on the bench if we need you?’ Kevin suggested.

  At that time, Newcastle only had Pavel Srnicek and Mike Hooper as senior goalkeepers, with Steve Harper coming through the youth system, so I was third-choice goalkeeper. Kevin gave me a pretty good salary, with Premier League bonuses, so I was earning twice as much money as I had been at Hibernian and I didn’t have to travel – I could walk down and walk back to training every day. It was a bloody good deal, so I didn’t hesitate and signed a three-year contract with Newcastle as player-goalkeeping coach. Arthur Cox was part of Kevin’s backroom team, and although I still wasn’t flavour of the month with him after our incident at Derby, most of the time we were both professional enough to get on with our jobs and not let it become a day-to-day problem.

  I would take the goalkeepers out at 9am and train them until 10.30, and then we would join in with the rest of the team. Kevin’s training most days was kept simple – a warm-up, then straight into the five-a-sides. There was never a lot of technical stuff involved, just high-tempo five-a-sides, which the team thrived on. We had two matches on the go at the same time, so we needed four goalkeepers and that meant that I was in full-time training. I was also playing for the reserves during the week, so nobody could accuse me of taking a cushy little number – it was much harder work than I thought it would be. I would train hard on a Monday, same on a Tuesday, then nine times out of 10 I would be playing for the reserves on a Wednesday. If it was a 7pm kick-off, often I wouldn’t return to Newcastle until one in the morning, then I was up for training on Thursday and training again with the keepers on a Friday. Then on a Friday night I was away with the team, so Sunday was my only day off. The workload was very hard and it was a tough working week. I wasn’t complaining though; it was well worth it. We had an excellent team and a great atmosphere, and I loved working under Kevin – I thought he was fantastic.

  I was enjoying the reserve games, but there’s nothing like first-team football, and I was about get my fix through a series of loan deals. I just took it week by week, and at that stage I had no idea that I would end up more than doubling the number of clubs I had played for.

  I was playing head tennis with Kevin and his assistant Terry McDermott on the training ground one Friday, when Arthur came out and told me a club had been on the phone wanting me to play the next day. First it was Scarborough, then it was Lincoln, and before I knew it I was turning out for a different club every month – that’s where most of my long list of clubs came from. I played for 14 clubs between 1993 and 1997.

  It became common knowledge that I was available to help clubs out at short notice. Friends of Kev
in or Arthur would call up and see if they could get me. Somewhere – in Scotland or in the lower leagues – a first-team keeper would break a thumb or twist an ankle, and a club would be desperate for an experienced goalkeeper at short notice. The deal was simple – I would ask for a couple of thousand pounds and for Janet and me to be put up in a hotel. We used to make a weekend of it. If Newcastle didn’t want me to sit on the bench, then I was free to sign short-term loan deals elsewhere. I would take a month’s loan, and the club would have to pay me for that month. I used to really enjoy the change of scenery, driving down to Scarborough, or going to Aberdeen or Falkirk to play two or three games. But I would always go back to Newcastle.

  I enjoyed my time up at Aberdeen especially. I wasn’t there long, but I still had a good rapport with all the fans up there from my time at Hibs, and I got to play in some big matches against old sparring partners like Hearts and Rangers. Their Dutch keeper, Theo Snelders, was injured and Willie Miller knew what I was capable of from my spell at Easter Road, so didn’t have any hesitation putting me straight in goal for the game against Rangers in front of 40,000 at Ibrox. I liked Aberdeen as a city too, although it did make me think once again what might have been had I chosen to go there earlier in my career instead of signing for Southampton.

  I would turn up at Newcastle on a Friday not knowing what the weekend held for me or where I’d be going out on loan – it was quite exciting. But never in my wildest dreams did I think Newcastle would let me go on loan to another Premier League team. Then one day I saw Arthur coming towards me, ready to send me on my travels again.

  ‘What have you got for me this time, Arthur?’ I asked. ‘Manchester City want you to sit on the bench,’ he told me. ‘Andy Dibble’s broken a finger.’

  Francis Lee, the ex-England international, was the City chairman of the time – like Kevin, he was a big horse-racing man and was very friendly with him. That’s how he’d got wind of the fact I might be free to play for them. I went to Kevin and pointed out to him: ‘This is Manchester City; they’re in the Premier League…the same league as us.’ But he just said: ‘No problem Budgie, get your arse down there.’

  I was quite happy to go to Man City on loan, but from September to April I was just sitting on the bench, making up the numbers. Tony Coton was in goal and I was there as the back-up man. The way the arrangement worked, I would go down to Manchester on a Thursday night, train with City, then stay in the Copthorne Hotel. I enjoyed going to City’s old Maine Road ground and putting on my strip. I think I drove them all nuts with my enthusiasm though – I couldn’t keep still in the dressing room, and I got a telling-off one week for diving about in the tunnel. I had all that natural energy pent up, and no proper way of releasing it. I pity whoever had to sit next to me on the bench as I fidgeted my way through 90 minutes.

  City were in big relegation trouble during that 1994/95 season and we started to fear we might go down as we were sucked into the bottom four. Meanwhile Newcastle were flying and were going for a European place, but they too started dropping points at an alarming rate towards the business end of the season. It was a bizarre feeling, being torn between the two clubs, and I wanted them both to do as well as possible. I was only at Newcastle 75 per cent of the time, but would still train like a donkey and put in every effort I could when I was on the Newcastle training ground. I was working just as hard when I went down to City and that was no mean feat for a goalie of 43. The arrangement was working well, but then in April, an awkward situation arose when Newcastle were due to play City at Maine Road. Newcastle needed every point to nail down a European place and they had come down from being 19 points clear of their nearest challengers to five. I had a strange feeling about potentially stopping Newcastle winning points, even if it was highly unlikely I’d be playing, so I thought it was only right to go and see Kevin the Monday morning before the game.

  ‘You know that we play City this week?’ I said to Kevin. ‘Yeah…’ ‘I’ll be on the bench.’ ‘Yeah…’ ‘Funny things happen in football, Kevin, what if I have to play?’ ‘Budgie,’ he said, ‘it’s a one-in-a-hundred chance that you’ll come on and play.’ I replied: ‘If you want, I’ll ask them to put a young boy on the bench because it would be terrible if I had to play.’ But Kevin said: ‘It’s not a problem with me, Budgie.’

  I trained all week with Newcastle and I went back to see him again on the Thursday and asked if he was sure he was okay with me playing. I think I was getting on his nerves, because he said ‘Budgie, it’s you that’s got the fuckin’ problem with it, not me.’

  I got to Maine Road at 1pm, and when the Newcastle team bus arrived at 1.30 I went out to greet them. I had a bit of banter as I ushered them into Maine Road, like I owned the place, and they were all asking if I was playing and saying they hoped I got on. I went to the away dressing room and it was all very strange – sitting having a cup of tea with the lads I had trained with all week, but who I’d be playing against, even if it was just to sit on the bench. I went back to the Manchester City dressing room and got myself ready. I was sitting next to Tony Coton and I said to him: ‘You can come off in any other game, but don’t come off here! I mean it!’ He just started laughing and joking, thinking the same as me – that there was no chance of it actually happening.

  But as I sat watching the game, which was evenly balanced at 0-0, Tony started shouting over to the bench about 10 minutes before half-time. Tony was a bit of a character and enjoyed a piss-take, so I assumed he was either pulling my leg or just wanted water or something. But then he hollered over: ‘Budgie – get warmed up, my knee’s gone!’ No way, I thought, he’s taking the piss. But then at the end of the first half he collapsed to the ground and was taken off on a stretcher. I looked at his knee and it was swollen up like a football. It was a really nasty one.

  I was the natural replacement, so it was an unavoidable situation – I had to play against the team who employed me and paid my salary. I was also about to become the oldest player ever to play in the Premier League at the tender age of 43 years, 4 months and 26 days. The scale of what was going on hit me at half-time. It was still 0-0 and Brian Horton, the City manager, said: ‘C’mon Budgie, keep them out.’ That was all I needed to hear. My competitive spirit kicked in.

  As I’ve explained, me and Arthur Cox had a history – he had never forgotten the time I’d climbed out of the window at Derby, and when I came to Newcastle he always reminded me of how much of a traitor I’d been and how I’d let him down. Incidents like that always come back to you in football. I was standing there waiting to be introduced to the crowd at Maine Road – I was nearly 44 years old but I was buzzing so much I felt like I was 24 that day. There was a big crowd of around 30,000, so when the stadium announcer said ‘Burridge on for Coton’, I ran on, and Arthur Cox was shouting behind me: ‘Hey you! Burridge! Cost us the game and we’re sacking you!’

  Well that fired me up. As I ran on, I shouted back to him: ‘Fuck off, I’m winning!’ Kevin was standing there next to Arthur, and I could see the anger in his face. He was shifting from foot to foot and I could see he looked very uncomfortable with the situation. He knew questions would be asked if I had a good game and cost Newcastle any points. But I was determined not to let one in – I owed it to Manchester City. I remember running on to the pitch and getting an unbelievable reception from the Newcastle supporters. I’d been a popular player and they knew I’d had a raw deal with Ossie, and they still held me high in their affections. I was getting great support from them and the same from the Manchester City fans, so the whole stadium was cheering for me – with the exception of Arthur, who was still hopping mad on the sidelines, and Kevin, who was cursing the freakish 100-1 shot that had just come in. I didn’t know whether to clap the Manchester City fans or clap the Newcastle fans so I just clapped them both.

  The game restarted and I remember in the first five minutes Ruel Fox broke away, one-on-one with me. He was very quick, but I had the experience of playing against him every day i
n training and I knew what he was going to do – he would feint to go left, and take it on the right side. So I went down, worked out what he was going to do and took it clean off his feet. The Man City fans went daft, rising to cheer me. Later in the game, David Ginola cut inside and shaped to shoot, but again I knew what he was going to do – he’d come in from the left side and was going to try and bend it right-footed into my top-left-hand corner, so I anticipated it and caught it. It was a spectacular save and again the City fans went wild. Then Shearer headed one and I kept it out. I made three or four unbelievable saves, and the game finished 0-0. All the Newcastle lads came up to me and said: ‘Absolutely brilliant, Budgie.’ They were really good sportsmen.

  But Newcastle had dropped another two points against a team near the bottom of the table. Thanks to me, their European place was in jeopardy and I was worrying already what was going to be said. After all, one of Newcastle’s own coaches had just cost the team two points. I’d been invited up to the press room to speak to journalists, who I knew would be desperate to speak to me as I was headline news on two counts – the oldest man to have played in the Premier League and the man who’d just stiffed his employers!

  Kevin Keegan comes across brilliantly to the press with his relaxed manner – apart from that one time when he lost it live on Sky over Alex Ferguson’s mind games – but he’s one of the worst losers you’ve ever seen in your life. I only have good things to say about Kevin, but that’s just the way he is – he hates losing. I know he hadn’t lost that game, but he still had egg on his face for letting me play and I was expecting a rollicking from him. I had gone upstairs to the press room and when I stuck my head round the door Kevin was doing his media conference in front of about 50 press men. I thought ‘I don’t fancy this, I’m off’ and was about to beat a hasty retreat down the stairs, when Kevin spotted me and said: ‘Budgie, Budgie, come here.’ He sat me down next to him in front of all the journalists and I was shitting myself. But instead of giving me it with both barrels, Kevin started talking me up, saying he knew exactly how I’d perform having watched me every day in training working my backside off. He was saying all these wonderful things about me and using all his charm to handle an awkward situation. But I knew Kevin inside out, I saw him every day in the coaches’ room. In front of the press and public he would be very careful with what he said, he was always politically correct, but in the coaches’ room he would talk in industrial language and not hold back.