Budgie - The Autobiography
Page 22
TIM NASH
(Football writer, Wolverhampton Express and Star)
As a young Wolves fan of 12 in the summer of 1983, I attended training sessions at Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletic Club, based at Aldersley Stadium, two miles from Molineux. I was amazed to discover, on looking at a mass football match going on in an adjoining field, Budgie playing outfield. There may have been up to 15-a-side playing, and Budgie was throwing himself around the pitch, albeit in what would have been the closed season!
MARTIN HAWORTH
(Durham City fan)
He spent the entire 90 minutes of each game coaching the back four. You would imagine that for someone who has played at the very highest level that he wouldn’t really be bothered with football at this level, but his enthusiasm really was infectious. He played for Durham in a friendly against Sunderland, and again he was a joy to watch. When Durham were stuck again for a keeper in September, John was unavailable because of his contract with Blyth Spartans, but he arranged for one of the youth team keepers at Leeds United to turn out for Durham, ferrying the lad to and from the lad’s Hull home for the two games we needed him. The man is an absolute diamond, and as mad as a hatter.
PHIL DAVISON
(Enfield fan)
When he played for Enfield, he once travelled down south to catch the team coach back to the north-east for Bishop Auckland v Enfield (FA Trophy) because he said it was good for team morale (it was!). Rumour has it that when Enfield signed him, the chairman wasn’t too sure about having a goalie older than he was so Budgie proved his fitness by diving over the boardroom table three times. He never let in a goal in a league match for Enfield before the lure of Aberdeen became too much for him.
ANDY BIRD
(‘Budgie the Legend’ Facebook page)
I saw Newcastle win away at Brighton 3-0 in 1989/90. It was totally out of the blue as we were totally rubbish at the time, John’s reaction after the game was like we’d won the European Cup and he practically climbed into the away end. Total and utter legend. Respect.
APPENDIX
CAREER STATISTICS
HONOURS
1971
Anglo-Italian Cup winner
12 June: Bologna 1, Blackpool 2 (after extra time)
(Stadio Renato Dall’Ara, Bologna)
1972
Anglo-Italian Cup runner-up
24 June: Roma 3, Blackpool 1
(Stadio Olimpico, Rome)
1977
League Cup winner
12 March: Aston Villa 0, Everton 0 (Wembley)
16 March: Aston Villa 1, Everton 1 (Hillsborough, after extra time)
13 April: Aston Villa 3, Everton 2 (Old Trafford, after extra time)
1978/79
Second Division Champions: Crystal Palace
1982/83
Second Division runners-up: Wolves
1991
Skol League Cup winner
27 October: Hibernian 2, Dunfermline 0 (Hampden)
1996
Inducted into Blackpool Hall of Fame
CAREER STATS
Year
Club
Apperances
1969-1974
Workington
27
1971-1975
Blackpool
134
1975-1978
Aston Villa
65
1978
Southend United (loan)
6
1978-1980
Crystal Palace
88
1980-1982
Queens Park Rangers
39
1982-1984
Wolverhampton Wanderers
74
1984
Derby County (loan)
6
1984-1987
Sheffield United
109
1987-1989
Southampton
62
1989-1991
Newcastle United
67
1991-1993
Hibernian
65
1993
Newcastle United (reserve keeper)
1993
Scarborough
3
1993-1994
Lincoln City
4
1994
Enfield
0
1994
Aberdeen
3
1994
Newcastle United
0
1994
Dunfermline Athletic
0
1994
Dumbarton
3
1994
Falkirk
3
1994-1995
Manchester City
4
1995
Notts County
0
1995
Witton Albion
0
1995
Darlington
3
1995-1996
Grimsby Town
0
1996
Gateshead
0
1996
Northampton Town
0
1996
Queen of the South
6
1996
Purfleet
0
1996
Blyth Spartans
0
1996
Scarborough
0
1997
Blyth Spartans
0
Total appearances (not including friendlies and non-league matches): 771
PLATES
A baby-faced Budgie with Workington Reds in 1967/68. I must have been one of the smallest in the team at that stage!
By 1970, I had broken into the first team, and was mixing it with some hard cases in the old Fourth Division.
My unique training regime started to take shape at Blackpool. © Blackpool Gazette
The pressure was always on with ambitious Aston Villa. © Getty Images
With the rest of the Villa lads and the League Cup in 1977. © Getty Images
Another sunny day in south London – in goal for Crystal Palace in 1979, where I played under my favourite manager and mentor, Terry Venables. © Getty Images
The 1978/79 Second Division Championship was a thriller, but we got our hands on the trophy.
I would take on and beat all-comers when it came to hard training.
An acrobatic save from my QPR days in 1981 – but I hated their plastic pitch.
I was happy to be fed to the Wolves in 1982. Here I am posing with Kenny Hibbitt. © Getty Images
Shouting instructions to my defenders (as usual!) in goal for Wolves in 1983.
1985 saw a move to Southampton and then it was on to Sheffield United – but only after a bizarre escape through Arthur Cox’s window! © Getty Images
At Newcastle in 1990. I loved the club, but Ossie Ardiles kicked me out.
Playing for Hibernian at the age of 40 was one of the best periods of my career, and I helped deliver the Skol League Cup to Easter Road in 1991. © Getty Images; The Scotsman
I never missed a chance to say thank you to the supporters. Here I am saluting the Aberdeen fans in 1995. © Getty Images
My new life in the Middle East. Having a laugh with my protégé Ali Al-Habsi in Oman and, dressed as sharp as ever, here I am in the TV studio alongside Joe Morrison on Ten Sports. ©VK Shafeer and Ten Sports
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When a club has just sold the country’s No.1 goalkeeper and replaced him with a veteran in his 40th year, fans can be forgiven for being a little sceptical about the new man’s ability to fill the gloves. I was one of those hasty doubters in 1991, when my team Hibernian transferred Andy Goram to Rangers for £1 million and picked up John Burridge on a free transfer. I knew who Budgie was – I’d seen his animated face grinning out at me from Topps bubble gum cards throughout the seventies and eighties – but I was unaware what a larger than life cha
racter he was until I saw him prancing about his goalmouth like the oldest gazelle in town. It’s safe to say Budgie was an instant hero.
The day Budgie puffed out his chest and bounced into Easter Road, Hibs had just emerged from the darkest season in a proud 116-year history. The previous summer, the owner of Edinburgh arch-rivals Hearts, Wallace Mercer, had launched a hostile takeover that would have shut the club down and ripped a famous old institution out of the community. After a bitter battle, the predator was vanquished, and Hibs were saved.
Against that backdrop season 1991/92 arrived with optimism still in short supply. However, within his 90 debut minutes, ‘Budgie’ had lifted the gloom and shown the fans what an incredible goalkeeper they now had at their club.
The charismatic lunatic between the goalposts was a born entertainer, and would always catch the eye with his bizarre blend of gymnastics and unbridled enthusiasm. He insisted on taking time out at the end of each game – win, lose or draw – to run to the fans to applaud their contribution, and that common touch earned him respect and admiration.
He would fully cement his place in the club’s folklore by helping to lead Hibs to a fairytale League Cup success at Hampden in 1991 – barely 15 months since they had nearly been wiped off the face of the planet. The scenes that unfolded in the Scottish capital that October night as the trophy was paraded along Princes Street will never be forgotten. Not that Budgie stayed up for the party though – ‘Mr Dedication’ took his well-deserved bow then headed for bed after a job well done.
To this day, Budgie is widely regarded in the green half of Edinburgh as a ‘legend’ – a hackneyed phrase within football perhaps, but in Budgie’s case no one can deny him that status.
His stay at Hibs was, of course, just one small slice of an amazing record-breaking 771-match career, spread across five decades as a player and a coach, and fans and players of the many other clubs he served will have their own memories to treasure. My own happy recollections of Budgie led me to track him down to his adopted Gulf homeland of Oman, where he works in the desert sun. He served the Oman national team as goalkeeping coach for a decade and is still going strong as a television pundit in Dubai. Budgie’s antics and escapades have long popped up in the pages of teammates’ autobiographies. At last, he shares with us his own roller-coaster story which truly reflects his personality.
They say you have to be mad to be a goalie. I think Budgie might have invented that phrase.
Colin Leslie
Co-author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to all those who made this book possible, particularly the Burridge family, Scott Stevenson, David Hardie at the Edinburgh Evening News, the library staff at The Scotsman, Tim Nash at the Express and Star in Wolverhampton, Steve Canavan and Alison Bott at the Blackpool Gazette, John Wright and Sandra Kirkbride at the Workington Times and Star, Mel Eves, Dave Harrison, Joe Morrison, the Oman Football Association, Mike and Lillian Cooke, Andy Gray, Stevie Burns, Ashley Hammond, Allie Collins, Michelle Signore and John Blake.
Copyright
Published by John Blake Publishing Ltd,
3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road,
London W14 9PB, England
www.johnblakepublishing.co.uk
www.facebook.com/johnblakepub
www.twitter.com/johnblakepub
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those may be liable in law accordingly.
ePub ISBN 978 1 84358 464 3
Mobi ISBN 978 1 84358 491 9
PDF ISBN 978 1 84358 515 2
First published in hardback in 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84358-289-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by www.envydesign.co.uk
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
© Text copyright John Burridge and Colin Leslie 2011
Papers used by John Blake Publishing are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Every attempt has been made to contact the relevant copyright-holders, but some were unobtainable. We would be grateful if the appropriate people could contact us.