by Ben Smith
I cannot remember if he was a brilliant coach but he was an excellent player whenever I watched him play for my dad’s Sunday team, or even when he joined in training with us youngsters. He was a cultured left-footed midfielder and maybe in hindsight this was where I developed my dominant left-sided style.
I am a big believer in the theory put forward by the likes of Matthew Syed, in his superb book Bounce, and Malcolm Gladwell, in his equally impressive Outliers. These authors argue that excellence is nurtured and not something we are born with. I believe being coached by Gary Oates was one of those strokes of luck they refer too. It put me in contact with someone who knew what was required to have any chance of succeeding in the professional game for the first time. This, in my opinion, gave me an advantage over any peer being coached by an enthusiastic but less experienced volunteer.
That Valley Green team was all-conquering. We won our league every season as well as the majority of the cup competitions. At the end of our first season we went into summer five-a-side tournaments and won all eight we entered. We had five or six really talented boys who made us a formidable side in that form of the game.
I enjoy looking back on those days playing for Valley Green. I used to look forward all week to training on a Saturday and games on a Sunday, although there is one tragic episode that will stay with everyone who was involved with the team forever.
We were playing an away game against Stony Stratford in the East Anglia Youth Cup. They were based in Milton Keynes so it was a long trip for us. When we arrived at the venue we went to inspect the pitch.
To get to the grass we had to walk across a couple of others that contained moveable goals. My memory tells me they were full-size goals, but I’m not sure eleven-year-olds could have touched the crossbar. Anyway, some of the lads did what boys tend to do and jumped up to hang from them. Again, my memory tells me there were at least three or four lads who successfully did this.
Their combined weight made the goal unstable and it toppled over, pinning them to the floor. Most of them were unharmed but Jonathan Smith was not so fortunate. The impact of the goal frame had broken his neck and he died almost instantly. My dad, being fully qualified in first aid, was on the scene at once and gave Jonathan mouth-to-mouth. He managed to resuscitate him on more than one occasion but he tragically couldn’t keep him alive.
This may sound strange to some of you but, as a youngster, you do not really understand the enormity of such a tragic accident. Young boys can be pretty resilient. It is only now that I reflect on the impact this must have had on the adults within our club. I know that my dad and Gary especially were hit really hard for a long time as they felt a responsibility to Jonathan. I can only imagine the pain his mum and dad, Peter and Brenda, went through – and no doubt still do to this day.
I remember the funeral being a hugely emotional day. The whole team was inconsolable as the magnitude of what happened became a reality. Jonathan was a huge West Ham fan and they were great with regard to the funeral – former Hammers midfielder Stuart Slater was in attendance.
That devastating incident aside, my days playing for Valley Green were brilliant. The success of our team meant we started to generate a lot of interest from professional clubs. By the age of nine I had been spotted by local professional club Colchester United. I trained with them for a year before then attracting interest from West Ham and Ipswich.
West Ham wanting to sign me was especially exciting as my dad had grown up in the area and been a lifelong fan. Obviously, with him supporting them, I had the dubious privilege of doing the same – I say ‘dubious’ because I seem to remember not having a great deal of choice in the matter!
Initially I trained at both clubs but, after a while, it became clear that I would have to make a decision. As much as we loved West Ham, my dad and I felt that the club had an approach of quantity over quality. At every training session there were twenty or thirty players in each age group. I felt like just another player – nothing special.
Ipswich was different; I felt really wanted and appreciated there. Even at the age of ten that was important. During my time at the club there were some players who went on to become stars in the Premier League. There was Kieron Dyer and defender Matthew Upson, who both trained in my age group, as well as goalkeeper Richard Wright, who was in the year above.
One incident involving Kieron Dyer really sticks in my mind. We were doing some kind of small-sided game and Kieron ran at me with the ball. He twisted me up to the point where I ended up on my backside before he went on to score a goal. The coach was kind enough to stop the session and get Kieron to re-enact the incident in slow motion, including putting me on my arse. It was embarrassing enough once, let alone twice!
After twelve months there I had another decision to make as Arsenal began showing interest in me. Steve Rowley, who is now the chief scout, started regularly attending our games and eventually he invited both Lee Boylan and me to train with them. I enjoyed it straight away, plus it felt a lot more selective – training sessions would often have fewer than ten players involved.
I was in a bit of a quandary. I was perfectly happy at Ipswich but this was the start of the 1990s. Arsenal had just won the First Division championship (now the Premier League) by beating Liverpool on a memorable night at Anfield. At the time they were arguably the biggest and best club in the country and they potentially wanted to sign me!
Signing young players was different in those days. You signed a ‘centre of excellence’ form for a year and the agreement was re-assessed at the end of every season until you got to fourteen, at which point you could sign a two-year contract called a ‘schoolboy’ form. This was the holy grail as it meant you were eligible for free football boots from the club, although slightly tempered by the fact Arsenal handed out very unfashionable Gola-branded boots to their schoolboys. I doubt this is still the case but it didn’t even bother me as Ian Bishop, my favourite West Ham player at the time, wore Gola.
I was just starting senior school when Arsenal wanted to sign me, so I was eleven years old. Ipswich did their best to persuade me to stay once they became aware of the interest. Tony Dable was the youth development officer at Ipswich back then and a nice man. He gave my dad and I the normal advice about Arsenal being a big club and how tough it would be to be a success there. Bearing in mind the future success of the Ipswich lads I mentioned earlier, maybe he was right. I definitely felt equal to those players at that time, but his advice fell on deaf ears and we came to the decision that I had to take this opportunity.
So that potent Valley Green squad stayed together until we all went our own separate ways to embark on the next part of our careers. I joined Arsenal while Lee Boylan, who was our star striker, went to West Ham. Gary’s son Ryan joined Ipswich and a couple of other lads played regularly for lower-league professional clubs.
I trained initially at Arsenal’s regional training centre in Grays, Essex. It was a small indoor ball court at Grays Athletic FC and, as I mentioned previously, it was a really select group. The sessions always involved players from my own age group (the under-12s) and the year above. This was the first time I came up against players I knew were better than me. One player, Lee Hodges, was especially brilliant.
Lee was one of the older players but he was head and shoulders above everyone. He reminded me of Gazza as he had such quick feet and was brilliant at dribbling with the ball. He finally left Arsenal and went to West Ham but never fully broke into the first team and eventually played in the lower divisions for the likes of Bristol Rovers and Scunthorpe United. I think his career was curtailed prematurely by a persistent knee injury, but Lee is the first example of many players you will read about in this book who, for whatever reason, did not go on to realise their full potential.
Joining Arsenal put me in contact with the next big influence on my career. My coach at Arsenal was a guy called Andy McDermid. He was superb – everything a player could want from a youth football coach. He was enthusiastic, en
ergetic, outgoing and, most importantly, knowledgeable. Without a doubt he was one key person who helped mould the football philosophy I hold to this day.
As I recall those training sessions, I remember we did not do anything groundbreaking. Often we would only have six or eight players and we would just play knockout competitions in pairs with Andy in goal. But, whatever we were doing, there would always be a theme to the session and he would drop in pieces of advice and information. As there were so few players you got loads of contact time with the ball. The philosophy of small-sided 4v4 games that everyone preaches now is what we were doing twenty years ago.
I specifically remember learning what a third man run was and how to do it. We practised it for weeks on end until everyone got it. For the uninitiated, a third man run is when two players combine to then play a pass through to a third man making a late forward run, hence the name.
As much as I enjoyed Andy’s sessions, I also really liked him as a person. He was always teasing us and telling us about his own football career. Apparently he played in goal for England under-16s and he even brought an England cap to training once. I was never convinced it was his though as he was about 5 ft 7 and not a particularly good goalkeeper, but he was adamant. Whether it was true or not didn’t really matter as it inspired us to try to show him what good players we were.
After a couple of years at the Grays training centre I progressed to training at Arsenal’s old Highbury Stadium. The club used to have an indoor training facility under the old Clock End called the JVC Centre and I would go there a couple of times a week. I cannot remember who the coach was but I remember continuing to enjoy the training. Among the other players was one Frank Lampard.
At that time Frank was a decent player, but not someone who really stood out – and definitely not someone you’d have predicted to go on to have the wonderful career he had with Chelsea. However, even at that age he had a great attitude towards training. I think Arsenal knew that his loyalties were always with West Ham but they had a go at taking him on anyway.
So, at the ripe old age of fourteen I played solely for Arsenal and everything was going well. I always felt like one of the stronger players in my age group. By the time I came into my last year at secondary school I had been with the club for five years. I had been one of only a couple of players who had signed those precious schoolboy forms two years previously, so I was relatively confident I would be offered an apprenticeship. In those days an apprenticeship was through the YTS scheme and would last two years.
However, the one fly in the ointment was the strength of the players in the age group below. My team only had about seven regular players and, in hindsight, that was because the year below was so strong. There were about twenty players in the younger age group with some really talented boys. We would regularly play against them in school holidays and, more often than not, lose.
Arsenal eventually made a decision just after Christmas to offer me a contract. Leading up to that time I also received interest from Leyton Orient and Cambridge United. You may think that there was not a choice to be made there but I do often look back and wonder whether I made the right one. Yes, at Arsenal I would get the opportunity to train with world-class players and coaches and use top-level facilities but, realistically, would I ever get anywhere near the first team?
However, if I were to join Leyton Orient or Cambridge, I could quite realistically be in and around a first team within a year. If that happened, and I impressed when given the opportunity, then it may not have been long until another big club showed an interest in me.
On the flip side, I was also conscious of the fact that if it did not go well at one of the smaller clubs then where do you go from there? I would’ve had to rebuild my fledgling career in non-League football. Even if it didn’t work out at Arsenal, I was at least pretty confident I would get another opportunity lower down the League. Every coach knows a person has to be of a certain standard to have been at a club like Arsenal for the amount of time I had been there so they would, as a minimum, give me an opportunity to impress.
So, after about five seconds’ thought I put my fears aside and accepted Arsenal’s offer of an apprenticeship. I do not think you would have found many sixteen-year-old boys who would have passed up such an opportunity, and the kudos I received at school was enough justification (let alone all the other positives).
Signing the contract was my first of many career mistakes, however. I instantly decided that signing guaranteed me superstardom and riches beyond my wildest dreams and, as a result, there was no need to concentrate on my GCSEs, in my opinion. I just downed tools at school.
I still took all my exams and picked up some decent results (five A–Cs and five Ds) but I could and should have achieved so much more.
Not that this bothered me in the slightest at the time. In a display of arrogance I did not even go and pick up my results, confident in the misguided idea that I would never need them. I was busy preparing for the next chapter of my life and conquering the world of professional football. It did not quite go according to plan…
• • •
29 OCTOBER 2012
I have somehow managed to make it to half-term at the school. Teaching is so much harder than I imagined. That extra £1,000 in my last pay packet was a tax rebate, by the way – just another illustration of how far I have fallen financially.
Currently I am teaching ICT, maths, philosophy, citizenship, science and a little bit of football. It seems ironic to me that the one area in which I am an expert is the one in which I do the least.
I pretty much resigned last week. The headmaster asked me to a meeting and said he wanted to retain me after my one-term contract expired. He asked me how things were going and, as he’d caught me in between my worst couple of days, I told him exactly how I felt: ‘I’m teaching lots of stuff I know nothing about.’
He seemed to sympathise with me but I was warming to the theme, going on to say I did not think teaching was for me and that I wanted to resign as soon as possible.
As I have no other job lined up, was that a brave or stupid thing to say? Over the past month I had applied for five jobs and not been asked to even one interview! It seems, worryingly, that I am over-qualified for most of the positions I have been pursuing.
However, I’ve decided being unemployed is better than my current reality – I simply do not look forward to going into work. I know in my previous job I was lucky enough to get paid to indulge in my passion, but I also loved going in for training. There were plenty of times when things were not going well personally or professionally but as soon as I got onto the training pitch all those problems dissipated and I felt free. Working at the school is so different, probably because I am absolutely winging it. I’m frustrated that the school has got me in this position. How can they put someone who has never taught before, or had any formal training, in charge of a classroom? I used to think I was a resilient and focused person but now all I think about is quitting.
Having written that, I do think in the back of my mind I could actually become a good teacher within a year or two. The real question is: do I want to go through all this shit to get to that point?
I recently had one of my lessons observed by a senior member of staff who graded me on criteria set by teaching governing body Ofsted. You can be marked as either ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. I also looked for ‘crap’ but apparently that is not one of the options.
Anyway, I surprised myself by earning an overall ‘requires improvement’ grade with some elements of ‘good’ thrown in. The person who graded me said she was really impressed, considering I only had three weeks’ experience. I do like building relationships with the pupils too, which helps, although sometimes I probably blur the line between friend and teacher by engaging in some of the classroom banter.
A couple of days after that meeting with the headmaster I told him I would at least see out my contract and re-assess the situat
ion nearer Christmas. I am sure I can do this now and, more importantly, be good at it. I just need to keep reminding myself to be patient.
Meanwhile, like an ageing journeyman heavyweight boxer, I have been lured out of football retirement for a few extra quid.
I was convinced, after being deemed surplus of requirements by AFC Sudbury, that I was hanging up my boots for good, so I made no attempt to find another club and was instead looking at coaching and scouting options. However, the reality is you have to work much harder doing either of those things to earn less than you would through playing, even if it is at a low standard in front of one man and his dog.
A couple of weeks into my ‘retirement’, Mark Stimson, the manager of Ryman Premier League side Thurrock FC, rang me and asked if I would come and play for him. He offered me £200 per week after tax plus £25 an appearance and £25 a win. Considering they were bottom of the League with one win all season I was not banking on the win bonus too much!
I was not in a position to turn down that sort of money from a manager I really respected. I’d spent a month on loan at Kettering Town with Mark in the 2011/12 season – the club itself was a shambles but I took to him straight away. He’s a brilliant coach who simplifies the game and paints pictures for his players in training sessions. We also share similar footballing philosophies, which is important when you become a stubborn senior player and are less likely to submit to managers who can be, especially at this level, less qualified than yourself.
Only two weeks into the arrangement, however, and I’m already struggling to motivate myself – so let’s see how long it lasts. I need to regain my full love for the game; there is still opportunity to earn good money playing in the lower leagues but I have got to want to do it. Money has never been my main motivation to play football, but it is at the moment – and it’s not enough.