by Ben Smith
Stuart Whitehead, one of my new teammates, owned two houses in Telford next door to each other. He lived in one and was kind enough to allow us to rent the other one while we found somewhere to buy.
My initial thoughts when joining Shrewsbury were confirmed during pre-season training – the environment was very relaxed. I often thought Graham Turner would have been even more gutted about missing out on promotion the previous season if he had seen how unprofessional the environment was here compared to Hereford.
Shrewsbury had some really good players such as Ryan Lowe, Sam Aiston and Darren Moss, among others who went on to better things, but the team as a whole was not playing anywhere near its potential.
What also caught my eye when I got there was the abundance of good central midfielders already at the club. These included former Birmingham City captain Martin O’Connor, Dave Edwards and Jamie Tolley. I was starting to wonder where I was going to fit into the team.
I was still recuperating from my shoulder injury so, for the first few weeks, my participation in training was restricted to non-contact activity.
My first involvement came in a comfortable Shropshire Senior Cup win against Bridgnorth Town. Considering I had not played for five months, I did well. This was quickly followed by a short pre-season trip to Torquay. As soon as we got there we had a night out and I got heavily inebriated.
I have always struggled to train after a night on the booze and this was no exception: I was a shambles. A young Joe Hart, the current England goalkeeper, asked me after that session why I didn’t like training. I had to explain to him that, although it may not have looked like it, I actually love it.
We had a game against Truro the next day and I had to ask the manager if I could miss it as I still felt terrible from the night out two days before. We had two games in two days so I played in the second one and got on the scoresheet.
That turn of events probably did not show me in my best light, although the atmosphere was so relaxed at the club I don’t think anyone really cared.
The Torquay hiccup aside, pre-season went really well personally. I played in the last game of the tour away at Exeter and got a run-out in all the other important games, culminating in a home friendly against Bradford City. I was confident I had done enough to gain a starting berth in the first proper game of the season.
We started our return to the Football League at home against Lincoln City and I was in the team as an attacking midfielder. We narrowly lost the game 1–0, which was no disgrace as Lincoln had been in and around the play-offs for the last couple of years. I missed a great chance midway through the first half, though, when a recovering defender did just enough to put me off. As the game wore on, my performance deteriorated and I was replaced halfway through the second half.
Not exactly the debut I had dreamt of the night before.
I kept my place for the next game away to Macclesfield which we lost 2–1. Personally the game went a lot better and I scored my first goal for the club with a scruffy shot from the edge of the box, plus I also hit the bar with a long-range effort. Even though we lost, I was really happy with my performance. It is always a relief when you go to a new club, get a goal and prove to your new supporters that you are a good player.
Unfortunately our results did not improve and we lost our third game in a row away at Cambridge United. Not only that, but we were totally outplayed from start to finish. When I tell you Cambridge eventually got relegated after finishing bottom of the League, it probably highlights the challenge we had ahead of ourselves.
Rumours started that the manager was under pressure already. It was strange because individually we had some good players. This was backed up by what they went on to do in their careers. However, in my opinion, there was no discipline at the club. We had a lot of strong characters who needed controlling but I did not think Jimmy was the man to do that. He was a nice enough guy but still wanted to be a player and didn’t seem keen to upset anyone.
Being the strange game that football is, we found ourselves under real pressure after just three games. Our next one was at home to Northampton Town and we were trying to reverse an unwanted record of zero points from three games.
We started the game nervously, me as much as anyone, but we went on to win 2–0. This was more down to the fact Northampton were reduced to nine men rather than any great performance from us. The game was in the balance until I got the second goal in the last ten minutes. I was in the thick of the action and got ‘assaulted’ in one of their sending-offs. If my opponent’s tackle had been any higher it could have resulted in a very crude castration!
This revival did not last long as we fell to defeat in the League Cup away to Tranmere Rovers and then lost 2–0 at Oxford United, but we recovered to get a good win at home to Cheltenham and followed that up with three consecutive draws (away against Bristol Rovers and Boston and at home to Bury).
As the team found a level of consistency, so did I. Considering I had been out injured for five months before joining Shrewsbury, I was generally happy with the way I was performing.
Our renaissance came to a crashing halt when we got beaten 2–1 at home by Yeovil. After Luke Rodgers put us ahead with a great strike, we got dismantled by a brilliant opposition who just left us chasing shadows. They even had the luxury of us missing not one but two penalties.
This further confirmed how poor the rash decision I had made three years earlier to leave Yeovil was. I could have been a part of that team as opposed to running around getting nowhere near any of them.
We got a fully deserved bollocking after the game and one of the main points to come out of it was we did not pressure them enough in midfield. With that in mind, we faced AFC Bournemouth at home in the LDV Trophy (as it was then called). In one of the early exchanges, I sensed an opportunity to nick the ball from an opponent. As I slid to win the ball, my right arm got stuck behind me and straight away I was in agony.
I knew what had happened – I had dislocated my shoulder for the third time.
The familiar hospital scenario unfolded as I waited for the doctors to tend to those in a more critical condition. Unlike previous times, I actually had to go to theatre and be put under general anaesthetic so they could put the shoulder back into place. I stayed in hospital overnight.
Bournemouth were being coached by Richard O’Kelly at that time and he visited me before I left the hospital. Little things like that are why I, and many others, hold him in such high esteem.
I was really disappointed with myself once the physical pain diminished. I had only one person to blame for this happening again. When you dislocate your shoulder all the ligaments that hold the joint in place are stretched and therefore leave the joint unstable. You can rehabilitate the injury but never really tighten up those ligaments without surgery, which I’d had in March to make my shoulder stable. However, due to me leaving Hereford and not joining Shrewsbury until June, I hadn’t had a rehabilitation plan in place as I was no longer Hereford’s responsibility and Shrewsbury just wanted to get me playing. Being honest, I hadn’t really fancied spending my summer break at Lilleshall doing rehabilitation either – a terribly unprofessional approach, I know. I was clinically fine after the first operation but I didn’t do anywhere near enough work to strengthen the area. It was just a matter of time before the inevitable happened against Bournemouth.
After a brief period of wallowing in self-pity, I had to take the positives from the situation. It was an upper-body injury so, even though I would need surgery again, I could still spend a lot of the convalescence period working on my fitness and getting myself into good shape.
After a relatively good start to my Shrewsbury career I was consigned to the shadows as, once injured, you are of no use to the manager. Some do it consciously, some do it subconsciously, but you are pretty much ignored and forgotten about until you can contribute on the pitch again. A long-term injury is bad at the best of times, but even worse when you are trying to establish yourself at
a new club.
The team continued to struggle on the pitch. One incident before a game stuck in my mind and, for me, summed up Jimmy’s time as manager at the club.
We were playing Grimsby at home in a midweek League game and I had taken up my customary position in the physio’s room. The phone in the room rang and the gaffer answered it with: ‘Hello, Chinese takeaway, how can I help you?’
I was gobsmacked and sat in the corner cringing.
This was the manager of a club who was hanging onto his job for dear life. Psychologists may say this was his way of dealing with a high-pressure situation but I just found myself feeling embarrassed for him.
As fate would have it, he was relieved of his duties after the visit of Grimsby since we were rooted to the bottom of the League after fourteen games.
It is always disappointing and unsettling when the man who brings you to a club leaves but I was not overly bothered this time.
The chairman and board must have realised that a firm hand and more discipline were required. As a result they employed Gary Peters, a former player who had appeared for Aldershot, Fulham and Wimbledon, among others. He had also managed Preston North End and, at one stage, took a young David Beckham on loan.
I am going to be honest and say GP and I never really saw eye to eye. Having a lot of success with Wimbledon, where he had earned two promotions in the 1980s, had obviously had a big influence on the moulding of his footballing philosophy as he was an advocate of the very direct style of play favoured by the Dons and others. I hated, and still do hate, this style of play with a passion, though. The whole game plan is based on getting the ball forward and into the opposition’s box as quickly as possible, irrespective of the quality of the forward ball/pass/hoof. I will admit this sort of prehistoric, high-tempo approach can have a positive short-term effect as it is quite easy to implement. However, after the initial surprise factor of five or six games, the opposition soon work out how predictable this approach is. They then drop deeper as a team, so there is no space behind to put the ball, and just wait for us to give them the ball again and again and again – which we did.
I also consider it lazy coaching – it is a lot tougher to work with a group of players, improve them tactically and technically, and be brave enough to let them make mistakes. In the long term, this will benefit the individuals and team as a whole; however, I am pragmatic enough to know that time is a commodity very rarely afforded to football managers.
Put GP’s style of football to one side though and he was not all bad. He instantly put in place some changes that actually bettered the club, such as improving the changing facilities, getting a groundsman to work on the training pitch, putting up a head tennis court, and – when the training pitches were not up to scratch – finding us alternative venues like the National Sports Centre at Lilleshall. He also started providing regular food before and after training.
These changes may not seem much but they made a big difference when put together, especially the improvement of the playing surface. When you are training on a crap surface, more often than not, you just want to get off it as it becomes frustrating and counterproductive. There is nothing worse than mistakes continuously happening through no fault of your own. I could easily shank a ball off the pitch without any help from an adverse playing surface, thank you very much! When on a good pitch though, the players suddenly wanted to stay out after training and work on their game.
Most new managers bring in their own assistant and GP was no different. Mick Wadsworth joined us, having previously worked in the Premier League for Southampton and alongside the likes of Sir Bobby Robson, Alan Shearer and Nolberto Solano at Newcastle. I know this because Mick told me approximately eight times a day, every day. I quite liked him, though – he said what he thought and had a very dry sense of humour.
Mick regularly told me how much he admired the technical ability of Solano and other South American players. This, along with the other players we discussed, led me to believe Mick was not a huge fan of the way we played. But, being the manager’s assistant, he had to tow the party line. I don’t think their combination worked particularly well, though. Normally if the manager is a miserable git then you have a very enthusiastic and upbeat assistant to play ‘good cop’ to the boss’s ‘bad cop’. A perfect example of this was Graham Turner and Richard O’Kelly at Hereford; I will leave it to you to work out who was the miserable git of the pair. Unfortunately at Shrewsbury, GP was a miserable git and so was Mick. After a bad defeat and a bollocking from the manager, we then got a look of disgust from the assistant too.
I had very little to do with the new manager initially. I dislocated my shoulder three weeks before GP joined and so, after my surgery, I spent all my time with the physio. I watched all the home games and heard some of the stories from the lads but was not really fazed by what was going on. I was intelligent enough to realise I was probably not going to be his cup of tea as a player, but I knew I had the rest of this season and the next one on my contract so just spent my time concentrating on getting fully fit and not relapsing.
Rachel, the Shrewsbury physio, made me her project and was determined to ensure my shoulder would not dislocate again. I spent the next five months working with either her or the physios at Lilleshall and also used the time to do loads of fitness, which helped drop some weight and improve my body fat percentage.
I also bought my first house. Emma and I moved from our rented accommodation in Telford to a lovely little two-bedroom house in Shrewsbury, just outside the town centre. One of the main motivations for me moving clubs was to buy my own house so it was great when this actually came to fruition – although it was tricky doing the decorating with one arm.
By February 2005 I was ready to join in with the first-team squad again. Since I had been out for so long I was eased back into training gradually. As is always the case, the first week or two with the lads was a struggle. I was miles off the pace and my timing was all over the place. My touch is my biggest asset but, for a while, the ball was bouncing off me like it would a brick wall.
By the start of April my comeback was going OK, aside from a setback in March when I got a small tear in my hamstring (this can often happen after a long time injured). As a team, however, we were still struggling, and the manager made a decision that seemed very brave at the time.
Our main goalkeeper was Scott Howie – a decent enough lower-league keeper who was, like the majority of keepers at that level, a very good shot-stopper. Our reserve keeper, however, was a seventeen-year-old called Joe Hart. It was obvious from training that Joe was going to be a brilliant keeper and I can honestly say I am not surprised in the slightest that he has gone on to have the success he has had. However, it still seemed very risky to put such an inexperienced keeper into a vital game…
The risk paid off. We were playing Oxford United at home and went on to win 3–0. For that decision I must give GP a lot of credit.
Now, if you are an Arsenal fan then the next couple of paragraphs may make you feel sick.
Joe kept his place in the team and, as they say, the rest is history. But a few games into his career I saw a familiar face in the crowd: Steve Rowley – the man who initially signed me for Arsenal and was now their chief scout – was at a Shrewsbury game.
It did not take a genius to work out who he was watching. The game was not sold out (as was the norm), so I wandered over and sat with him. Steve obviously asked my opinion on Joe and I gave him a glowing reference. Steve said Arsenal had earmarked him as one of the best three young keepers in Europe. I could not stress any clearer how good Joe was and how much potential, in my opinion, he had.
I told Joe about this and kept Steve updated when Chris Woods, the Everton goalkeeping coach at the time, came and worked with him at our training ground. When it became evident that Joe would be joining Manchester City, it turned out it was because apparently the powers that be at Arsenal decided Joe was not agile enough.
Whoops!
&nb
sp; I was now regularly playing in the reserves as the season moved to its climax. Bearing in mind I had another year on my contract, I was not particularly fussed about missing out on so much playing time because I was more concerned about being fit and raring to go for my second season. However, I managed to force my way into the first-team squad and make a couple of cameo appearances during the last two games of the season away to Swansea City and at home to already promoted Scunthorpe United.
The Swansea game especially sticks in my mind for two reasons.
Firstly Mick Wadsworth was in charge of the team as GP was away on scouting duty. This was Swansea’s last ever game at its Vetch Field ground and, with about twenty minutes to go, Mick told me I was going on. I wasn’t ready, though, as I didn’t have my shin pads on. He gave me a right earful and told me how unprofessional it was not to be ready. To be fair, he had a point, and from that day onwards, whenever I was on the bench, I would always be ready to go on at a moment’s notice, wearing full kit.
During my brief spell on the pitch that day I also became another one of Swansea striker Lee Trundle’s victims. During that season he was show-boater extraordinaire and regularly embarrassed many League Two players. It was strange as, during the early part of my career, I had played against Trundle many times in the Conference and thought he was pretty ineffective. Then suddenly he turned into a top player at our level and above by adding productivity and goals to the flashes of skill he used to show. Anyway, just after coming on, I sensed an opportunity to do what many League Two players had wanted to do all season: give him a friendly but fair dig. He was wide on our right, facing the crowd with the ball. I went flying in, but he impudently flicked it through my legs and ran round the other side to take the ball (and the cheers from the fans).