Journeyman

by Ben Smith

  It was during the summer of 1997 that I first realised how decisions out of my control could have a direct effect on my career. At the end of that season, Reading had finished eighteenth and comfortably avoided relegation. This seemed, to me, a respectable position for a club of their size at the time. John Madejski, the club’s owner, did not concur, however, and promptly relieved both Mick Gooding and Jimmy Quinn of their duties on 9 May 1997. I was gutted as I knew they both thought highly of me as a player. But, after the trip to Ayia Napa, I soon got over the disappointment and enjoyed my summer.

  Just before we were due to report back, Terry Bullivant, who had previously managed Barnet, was appointed the new manager. I knew nothing about him and I was pretty sure he knew even less about me.

  After my ill-advised decision to go on the end-of-season ‘holiday’ I made my next big mistake at the start of the 1997/98 season. As I mentioned previously, I was now expected to move to the area so, about two days before pre-season was due to start, I rang Steve Kean and asked him where I would be staying that year. Unsurprisingly I had not been at the top of his list of priorities and he said he had no idea. In those days, I don’t think the club had a network of people who offered lodgings for young players, whereas now a club can put you in touch with families who make sure you are leading the lifestyle befitting a professional athlete.

  I initially travelled to training with Darren Caskey, Trevor Morley and Ray Houghton as they were all based in Essex – although in slightly more luxurious surroundings compared to mine. They used to laugh when we discussed what we had for dinner the previous night and I told them about the large doner kebab and chips I had dismantled.

  Steve Swales, one of the northern-based players, was looking for a lodger at his place. This seemed perfect to me as it meant I did not have to stay with strangers. I could have my own space without someone looking over my shoulder every five minutes and reporting back to the club.

  What I wanted and what was best for me were two completely different things, though. Surprisingly, the club allowed it – probably because the new manager didn’t know anything about me – so Steve and I began our new working/living relationship.

  Swalesy is a brilliant guy. I found his self-deprecating northern humour hilarious and I loved sharing a house with him, although I don’t think he was the best role model for an impressionable eighteen-year-old who had never lived away from home. Our place became a drop-in centre where players who lived a long way away, such as Martin Williams and Martin Booty, would stay overnight if it was either too late or they simply could not be bothered to go home.

  These guys were all regular first-team players and being around them helped me become part of the group. However, the problem was I was living my life like a first-team player without doing any of the work that enabled someone to achieve such status. Most of the players would go into Reading town centre after a Tuesday night game. They always had Wednesday off so what time they got home and where they ended up was pretty irrelevant.

  Now, it was one thing to go a bit wild if you had been playing, but it was quite another to go out after just sitting in the stand watching them. When you add this to the fact that every other weekend, when the first team played away and I wasn’t involved, I was back in Essex on all-day drinking binges with my friends, I was not exactly in peak condition.

  All the good will I had built up under the previous management was irrelevant under the new regime. Terry Bullivant brought Alan Harris, brother of the infamous Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris, as his assistant, plus the recently retired Alan Pardew became reserve-team manager. With me being one of the youngest members of the professional players I was very much at the bottom of the food chain and so I spent much of my time with Pards.

  The job of a reserve-team manager seems a strange one to me. You have an eclectic mix of players and personalities: from the eager to the not-quite-so-eager young professionals like me; from the out-of-favour established first-team players to players coming back from injury; plus the experienced older players whose careers are winding down. All have to be treated and motivated in different ways.

  The reserve-team manager may often not have a clue until about an hour before training who or how many players he will have for his session. One day they could have twelve; the next only four; or halfway through a session, the first-team manager could come over and say he needs to take three of the players. Reserve-team managers have to be really adaptable.

  I liked Pards from the start. He was, much like he is now, very confident, sometimes crossing over to arrogance. His sense of humour was ‘big time’ and by that I mean he would regularly refer to his past success – whether to take the mickey out of someone who had achieved less or to put someone in their place. I have always found this sort of banter really funny, although only when someone can back it up. There is nothing worse than blatantly insecure people who talk loads but cannot deliver on their words (incidentally, they are very common in the world of football). Alan was not one of these people, though; he gave it all the talk but could clearly back up any of his promises both on and off the training pitch. He especially liked shooting competitions as he had an unerringly accurate right side foot that always seemed to find the bottom corner, irrespective of the power behind it.

  I think Pards liked me too. My cheeky, sarcastic personality could rub some people in authority up the wrong way, but he seemed to enjoy it. He had also been a central midfielder and this was good for someone like me – every coach, however knowledgeable, knows their own position better than any other. Pards was continuously giving me pieces of advice.

  I remember one training session when I gave the ball away once, twice, three times in a row (the only time that ever happened in my career!). By that stage, as I am sure you can imagine, I was getting plenty of abuse from my more experienced teammates so Alan pulled me to one side and said:

  If you are playing first-team games you can get away with giving the ball away once. If you do it twice in a row then the crowd will start getting on your back. If you do it three times too often you will soon get dragged off by the manager.

  This may seem like simple advice but it really stuck in my mind and became something I would often reflect back on throughout my career on those rare occasions I did give the ball away!

  At that time I probably was not mature enough to take on board all the advice offered. At a young age it can feel like people are constantly criticising you when, in fact, those offering good advice normally think a lot of you and want you to progress. As my standing at the club deteriorated during the year, I soon realised what happens when you are no longer seen as a viable first-team prospect…

  Nothing.

  The silence is deafening, and people could not care less if you play well or not.

  Initially, even though my lifestyle was disgusting for a young athlete, I made some sort of positive impression on the management. I came on for a fifteen-minute appearance against a full-strength Chelsea team in pre-season. During my cameo I produced a lovely piece of skill and hit the crossbar, which was greeted with a nod of approval by none other than Gianfranco Zola and made my day. Then, straight after, I nearly gave a goal away when Gus Poyet nicked the ball off me.

  As the season progressed I was regularly appearing for the reserves and generally bounced around with the naivety and confidence you tend to have at that age. I remember scoring for the reserves against Rushden & Diamonds, only to get a bollocking from Pards after the game for not doing my defensive duties – a common theme throughout my career. I followed this up with a couple more positive performances and suddenly I was more involved in the first team.

  Every Friday the match day squad – the sixteen wanted for the following day – trained with the first-team management. Up until early September I found myself left with those not selected, doing a mixture of technical and fitness work with Pards and looking longingly over to the big boys. On 12 September 1997, however, my name was called out to go join the firs
t team. I was as surprised as anyone after the stern dressing-down I had received just a couple of weeks earlier. Pards had told me, with expletives, that I was nowhere near the first team.

  We played Oxford United the following day and I was a substitute. It always felt like I was on the bench simply as a reward for the respectable performances I had put in over the last few reserve games more than because I had any actual chance of getting on the pitch.

  This was another period where, again, I wish I’d had an experienced football person around to advise me. Rather than being thankful that I was in and around a Division One first team at the age of eighteen, I felt frustrated it was only a seemingly token involvement. Obviously, in hindsight, Terry Bullivant was going to take a lot more persuading than a couple of above-average performances in the reserve league, especially considering my ability to throw in some very erratic displays. I managed to keep my place in the first-team squad for another game before returning to the shadows.

  I do not think it did my career prospects at Reading any good when I accidentally broke the once club record signing’s leg in training either.

  I was meandering along at Reading, going nowhere very quickly, and I became one of those players you get at every club: someone in love with being a professional footballer. I enjoyed the fact I went into training at 10.30 a.m. and was either back home by 1 p.m. or wandering aimlessly around town. It never dawned on me to stay behind and work on my technique or go down to the gym and improve my physical strength and fitness. It was not ‘cool’ to do that and I was not strong enough to go against the grain. I did not want to put the work in required to enhance my current lifestyle or even continue it.

  I like to think of myself as being relatively intelligent but, the more I look back, the more I realise people at the club were trying to tell me I had a real opportunity to carve out a successful career. Kevin Dillon was always supportive and really believed in me, and he was not the only one. I remember on one occasion, Phil Parkinson – a stalwart of the club and a very combative midfielder – invited me to do some extra running after training. It was not really my cup of tea but I accepted his invitation. In between the work-out we chatted about how football was changing and Phil kept stressing to me that players of the new era, players like me, could go on to become millionaires from football. I took what he said with a pinch of salt; instead of taking his advice on board, it just passed me by. At that time Phil was not the sort of person I admired – he didn’t go out partying all the time and was a very limited player, although he made the most of the ability he had. Nowadays, players of his ilk are exactly the type for whom I have the most respect. Any player can waste his ability, but very few go on to overachieve.

  I was more interested in going out and enjoying myself with the likes of Swalesy, Michael Meaker, Darren Caskey and the rest of my more dubious role models. They, or the legendary former Reading player Robin Friday (who was the local equivalent of George Best), were who I wanted to be like. I’m not criticising them, though – they had, after all, earned the right to enjoy the fruits of their labour. I had not. I’d done nothing in the game but I behaved like a fully fledged first-team player. If I had idolised someone like Phil Parkinson who knows how things could have turned out?

  Being a stalwart in the reserves during the 1997/98 season, I often had conversations with Alan Pardew regarding my progress. He was a lot more forthright than most and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was wasting my ability. I remember, on one occasion, I was having a great day in training and modestly decided to compare myself to Dennis Bergkamp. To my surprise, Pards agreed with me – although he did qualify the statement by saying I was normally more like the old comedian Denis Norden. This slightly took the wind out of my sails.

  Pards regularly questioned my attitude and asked me how much I really ‘wanted it’. I always assured him I was desperate to become a success. I thought at the time I was telling the truth, but I obviously wasn’t and he knew it. That dawned on me over time.

  He always told me about a player he knew called Peter Garland. He said Garland was exceptionally talented but wasted his ability by being overweight and lazy. Pards warned me I would end up like him, straddling the lower leagues rather than showcasing my talents at a higher level. Unfortunately, I managed to prove him right.

  As my first full season as a professional player progressed, the gap between the first team and myself was getting bigger. No longer was I having the friendly chats with the senior professionals or receiving the bollockings from management.

  I was training more with the youth team now and was constantly overlooked when Bullivant was calling players over to make up numbers for the first team. Even at my tender age I could read the script: my days were numbered. I had managed to fuck up a great opportunity, and it was only ten years later, as I struggled to make a living in the lower leagues, that it dawned on me what an opportunity it had been.

  By the start of March 1998 I was only honouring my contract and counting down the days to go. There had been no conversation between the management and myself regarding the future, but from the way I was being treated it was clear where my future lay – and it was nowhere near Elm Park.

  In those days, before the transfer window was introduced, the last Thursday in March was the final chance for players to move clubs before the end of the season. Pards pulled me to one side earlier in the month and informed me that Yeovil Town, who played in the then Conference Premier, wanted to sign me. He told me he had played at the club at the start of his career and said it was a good opportunity to reignite a fledgling career that was already stagnating before I’d hit the age of twenty.

  I had no idea about Yeovil geographically, let alone the football club, but I agreed I had nothing to lose from going down to the club to have a look around and chat with the manager Colin Lippiatt. My advisor – by which I mean my dad – and I made the long journey to Somerset a few days before the transfer deadline.

  When I got there I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the ground: it was a proper football stadium. I had also carried out some due diligence and discovered that Yeovil were well-known FA Cup ‘giant-killers’, who commanded attendances of 1,500-plus. Of course, it was no 27,000 like I’d faced at Manchester City less than a year earlier, but it felt like a big step up from playing in front of a handful of people for Reading reserves.

  When I met the manager he told me all the right things and what he thought about me as a player. It turned out he lived in Bracknell, which is near Reading, so regularly took in our reserve games and had seen me play on quite a few occasions. As always, the reassurance a manager had seen me play live and could specifically talk about my game, rather than give some generic bullshit, appealed to me as I think my style of play is an acquired taste. I have always had definite strengths and weaknesses that are not everybody’s cup of tea.

  After a period of deliberation in the Reading branch of TGI Friday’s, my dad and I agreed that it was time I started to play regular first-team football. Yeovil offered me £250 a week and a £50 win bonus, both after tax, to sign on a non-contract basis until the end of the season. As I was on a League contract at Reading I was entitled to get paid until 30 June, whereas Yeovil, a semi-professional club, only paid their players until the last game of the season. On this occasion, however, Yeovil agreed to honour that part of my contract and paid me through the off-season too.

  At the time I did not realise what a risky move this was. When you sign as a non-contract player there is no job security and the club can let you go whenever they want. When I told Alan Pardew about the deal he was especially angry and said that he had only allowed the transfer to go through on the understanding I was given a two-year deal – although he was not bothered enough to take it any further!

  I was oblivious to the gamble I was taking and pretty happy with myself really. I had effectively dropped three divisions but managed to negotiate myself a pay rise. Moreover, Yeovil only trained once a week so
I was getting paid more money for less work.

  • • •

  27 DECEMBER 2012

  Another anticlimatic Christmas has been and gone. I have decided Christmas Day is what Sundays would be like without football – very boring. I thought I would enjoy my first Christmas being a ‘normal person’ but it did not really turn out that way. I’m still playing for non-League side Thurrock FC and my football mindset did not allow me to kick back and relax, but the Boxing Day game eventually got rained off anyway so my restraint was wasted.

  I did manage to somehow negotiate a full term at school, however, although I’m not too sure how. Even more surprising is the fact I’ve been offered an extension to my contract. I did not want to stay initially as I found myself doing too much of what I knew very little about – as illustrated by the fact that I recently found myself teaching a business studies class to Year 7s and 8s while the school caretaker was taking a football lesson!

  The school’s headmaster is a really good guy and had a frank discussion with me about the situation. He asked me whether I would stay if my timetable were based around both business studies and football – which was what I’d been led to believe was going to happen in the first place.

  I agreed and my contract has been extended until the end of the school year. I received my new timetable just as we broke up for Christmas. It’s not quite as I expected but I have come to realise that what you are told in the education industry and what actually happens are often two different things (a bit like football). I now have football all day on Fridays, so I’m at least moving in the right direction.

  I was still seriously considering moving on, though. I even contemplated starting up my own business or just doing something completely different, but it’s funny how hard it is to take your own advice. If one of my friends came to me and said they’re struggling with a new career, I would tell them: