The Smell of Football
THE SMELL OF FOOTBALL
Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone
Published by Vision Sports Publishing in 2011
Vision Sports Publishing
19-23 High Street
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey
KT1 1LL
www.visionsp.co.uk
Epub ISBN: 978-1907637-45-2
Book ISBN: 978-1907637-14-8
© Mick Rathbone
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent 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 purchaser.
Editor: Jim Drewett
Copy editing: John Murray and Alex Morton
Cover design: Doug Cheeseman
Cover photography: 3Objective
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD by Phil Neville
PROLOGUE
Part One PLAYER (1975-91)
Chapter One INNOCENCE
Chapter Two INNOCENCE LOST
Chapter Three FEAR
Chapter Four RESCUE
Chapter Five THE GOLDEN YEARS
Chapter Six REALITY BITES
Part Two MANAGER (1992-95)
Chapter Seven HISTORY BECKONS
Chapter Eight MY PLACE IN HISTORY
Chapter Nine THE FINAL RECKONING
Chapter Ten AFTERMATH
Part Three PHYSIO (1995-2010)
Chapter Eleven THE ROAD TO GLORY
Chapter Twelve DESTINY CALLS
Chapter Thirteen BACK TO THE TOP
Chapter Fourteen LIFE AT THE TOP
EPILOGUE
Postscript FINAL THOUGHTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank everybody who contributed in any way to the publication of this book – every player I played with or against and every manager who had the dubious honour of managing me. To all the coaches who encouraged me and equally all the coaches who did not encourage me, ironically it is that second group of people who are most responsible for this book. To all the fans who paid to watch me and all the fans who paid to boo me you are equally respected.
Some people have had a profound effect on my career: David Moyes, Howard Kendall, Jim Smith, John McGrath, Bob Saxton – how lucky I am to count such people amongst my mentors.
Thanks to all those players who were brave enough to let me loose on their valuable bodies and all the brilliant physios and doctors I have worked with. To everyone. In 35 years in the game I only met three guys I never liked, which tells you all the need to know about this marvellous brotherood that is football.
Thanks to Jim Drewett and Toby Trotman at Vision Sports Publishing who believed in the book and worked so hard in its formation. My gut instincts on our first meeting in Starbucks in Trafalgar Square have proven to be right.
Thank you to all the people who wrote such nice things about me at the end of the book – that was a truly humbling experience. And thank you Phil for writing the foreword. That somebody of your standing in the game would go to such trouble really means the world to me.
Finally, and in an uncharacteristic moment of self-indulgence, I would like to pay tribute to my family: Julie, Charlotte, Lucy and Oliver, without whose support and encouragement this book would still be a collection of folded up paper in the bedside cabinet.
Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone, July 2011
The publishers would also like to thank John Murray and Justyn Barnes for their editing work and Doug Cheeseman for his brilliant cover design. Also Andrew Cowie and all at Colorsport for their meticulous picture research, Andy Betteridge and Dave Fletcher at the Halifax Courier for helping us to track down the fantastic photograph of Baz in the dressing room at the Shay and Paul Downes at 3Objectives for photographing the Deep Heat tube. Thanks to Giles Ivey for his idea of putting the thoughts of Baz’s former colleagues and friends at the back of the book, and to Darren Griffiths at Everton FC and Ken Beamish at Blackburn Rovers FC for all their help.
FOREWORD
by Phil Neville
When I signed for Everton in 2005, Baz was the first person at the club I met. I arrived at the training ground and the manager wasn’t there, so I went for my medical and it must have been the quickest in the history of football. Baz looked at my medical records, lay me down and did a few stretches and then he just said, “You’ve had one injury in 11 years and you never miss a game. I think you’ll be OK won’t you!”
So that was that. I signed, of course, but the rest of the players weren’t in the next day so he said I should come in for some light training. He said, “We’ll just do about 20-30 minutes, you won’t even get a sweat on.” So I turn up the next day expecting an easy workout, and I’m not joking me and Baz ended up doing the toughest session I’d ever done in 15 years at United!
Apart from being just about the fittest man at the club, he had this incredible enthusiasm and energy for the job. When a player was coming back from injury and needed to get fit again, Baz would be out there on the training pitch doing it with them – the running, the weights, the bleep tests. And because he had been a player himself and had had most of the injuries himself, he understood the psychological side of injuries.
I think that side of things was his real strength. He understood what a massive part the mind plays in recovering from injuries. He’d just be so positive. I remember one week I was playing for England and I pulled my hamstring in the warm-up. I pulled out of the game but stayed and watched. When I switched on my phone later there was a message from Baz which just said: “Phil Neville does not get hamstring injuries. You’ll be fit in two days!”
I was thinking ‘Baz, you’re mad,’ but he had realised that as my game is not based on speed and I had no history of problems in that area it was most likely to be a fatigue injury and, sure enough, after a couple of days rest I played against Middlesbrough the following Saturday with no problems.
He just had this incredible energy and enthusiasm for the job which made an impact on me straight away. And I soon learnt that although he was the physio, or head of medicine which I think was his correct title, in fact he was so much more than that. He was David Moyes’s first lieutenant, really, almost like an assistant manager.
On match days he really came alive. He’d be in the dressing room cracking jokes and telling funny stories about his time at Birmingham and Blackburn. He knew which players to leave alone and which players to put his arm round. We knew from his stories that he’d not reached the level of football that perhaps he should have, but you could see on a matchday his eyes would light up and he was revelling in being in the Premier League environment and taking on the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool every week. He was like a kid, it was as if he was saying to himself that he was going to enjoy every minute.
And because of this great attitude and his humour, not to mention being a great physio, the players leaned very heavily on him. I think that because he felt that the environment he’d experienced when he started in football had not been great, he made that special effort to be positive and encouraging all the time to create the kind of environment that maybe he didn’t have as a player.
He joked about his time at Birmingham when he had confidence issues, ab
out the fear he had when he had to cross balls to Trevor Francis, and how on the bus to games he’d be praying there would be an earthquake so the match would have to be called off. It was very funny, but there was also a message to us that we were very lucky to have made it to the top level and that we should enjoy every second. That made him a great guy to have around the place and a key reason why we had such a good team spirit.
But, perhaps because of his insecurities, I’m not sure that Baz realised his standing at the club and how everyone felt about him. I used to joke that he was running the club. He could never take a day off, I mean even in the summer, and it was almost as if he came to work every day feeling that he had to prove himself all over again, like it was a trial.
I used to say to him: “Baz, relax, take a break.” But I think that perhaps even though he was head of medicine at one of the biggest football clubs in the world and was loved and respected by everybody, he still had a daily battle to fully believe in himself. But he did belong there and he was there because he was good, no brilliant, at what he did. And we all miss him . . .
I’m sure you will enjoy Baz’s book because it’s a great read, and anybody who loves the game will get a real insight into football and one of its true great characters.
Phil Neville, Everton FC, July 2011
PROLOGUE
The condemned man sits quietly in the small Spartan room. Bare walls and uncarpeted floors making it feel appropriately cold and austere.
The only sound is the relentless, remorseless ticking of the clock – tirelessly and inexorably counting down to his date with destiny.
How has it come to this?
What decisions, random choices and quirks of fate have culminated in him sitting in this sparse room, watching these final precious seconds slip away?
Is he scared? Yes, of course he is. Who wouldn’t be scared in the face of such a horrific situation?
Try to black out the terror, try to be philosophical, try to accept your fate with dignity.
Still the clock ticks – time and tide wait for no man. Then the footsteps approaching. Nearly time now.
He gets to his feet under his own efforts – too proud, even now, to ask for help.
The footsteps get closer and then stop outside the door.
A simple light knock and the door opens.
There in the doorway stands the man in black – the man who has come for him.
The man in black approaches him and asks him to turn around with a politeness that is at complete odds with the gravity of the situation.
Now the fear, now the realisation it is about to happen.
There is no escape now.
He is asked to lift his feet – first the left one and then the right one – and show the soles of his shoes to the man in black.
“OK, that’s fine, son, your studs are fine. Remember, no jewellery to be worn, no bad language and no arguing with the officials.”
He blows his whistle and off they go.
PART ONE
PLAYER
(1975-91)
Chapter One
INNOCENCE
Some things stay with you for life. Events so momentous that time can neither diminish nor distort them.
They remain burnt into the psyche, available for precise instant recall, no matter where, no matter when. So vivid are these memories that 35 years can melt away in a split-second. One such experience is indelibly etched into my memory and survives as an instant focal point to summarise a particularly significant period of my life in a brief moment.
This earth-shattering event happened on my first day as a professional footballer. I will say it again – my first day as a professional footballer. July 31, 1975.
Can you imagine what it felt like to sign for the club you supported? Think about it for a while. People talk, superficially, about “dreams coming true”, a convenient and well-used phrase but seldom with any substance. But not in this case. I had truly stepped off the terrace and into the dressing room at Birmingham City.
I was, as the Americans would say, “living the dream”. Look, the facts don’t lie. Virtually every kid on the planet has played football, but only the best of the best of the very best can ever be good enough to earn a living from it.
The incident in question happened early in the morning of that very first day. Standing at the edge of the training ground, I became aware of a presence next to me. I don’t know whether I had actually half-looked across or it was a psychic moment, but I just knew it was him – the man from my bedroom wall.
To people who didn’t frequent St Andrew’s during that period, it is so difficult to convey the demi-god-like status this man enjoyed. He was Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard all rolled into one. His cult status was probably even greater than those players because, while they were superstars in teams of superstars, Trevor Francis was a superstar in a team of relatively ordinary British First Division players.
Every morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw Trevor staring down from my bedroom wall. Trevor scoring, Trevor shooting, Trevor gliding, Trevor flowing, Trevor magnificent in the blue-and-white penguin kit Birmingham City wore during that period (there were also a few pictures of Linda Lovelace, Deep Purple, Charlie’s Angels and those two blokes from Easy Rider riding Harley Davidsons).
It had become a lifetime quest just to get the autograph of my hero, let alone play in the same team as him. How many times had my brother and I waited, to no avail, outside the players’ entrance at St Andrew’s after matches? And now? Well, I could actually have reached out and touched him. Talk about surreal. It is almost impossible to put into words what that experience was like to someone such as me – the fan from the Tilton Road End.
In some ways, what happened next would play a major part in the formation of the rest of my life. Sometimes small, seemingly unimportant events set in train a course of actions that ultimately shape and affect one’s life. Incidents in some way trivial, yet with long-term ramifications. Now, as I sit back and reflect upon my life and the key points which shaped and altered it, this one, of all, is the most profound, although it wasn’t until much later that I was truly aware of the significance of what was about to happen.
I was standing next to my hero and it seemed a conversation must ensue. It was a truly incredible and momentous experience. I was, however, becoming aware of a series of unpleasant physiological responses, presumably a result of being in the vicinity of this legend. I had butterflies in my stomach – well, more like a flock of seagulls picking at my insides. Nausea overwhelmed me. I felt that sudden release of sweat on my forehead and then, in quick succession, my armpits and finally the palms of my hands.
It was quite a warm day, but not hot enough to provoke such a severe reaction, and my mouth became much drier than it would be in two hours’ time after we had completed the first cross country.
My heart was racing. My body was telling me to move away and seek respite from the emotion of the occasion, but my legs had become heavy and resistant to movement. Looking back now I suppose I was having some kind of panic attack – in fact, I may indeed have invented the panic attack as there was really no such thing in those days. I think the simplest thing is to refer to it as a Trevor attack!
It’s quite easy to explain. Let’s be honest, I have spent enough time reliving it over the past 35 years. I had elevated, in my mind, this man to such a level of adulation that now, as he stood next to me in flesh and blood, his metamorphosis from bedroom wall-occupying icon to potential team-mate who I might conceivably become friends with or, even more unbelievably, play in the same team as, was simply too much for my adolescent mind to handle, hence the alarming reaction. Or to put it more simply and in layman’s terms – he was God and I was an insignificant, incapable of being in his company, hence the collywobbles.
This uncomfortable impasse lasted for minutes (probably seconds). Fucking hell, if he speaks to me, I think I might possibly drop dead with shock, let alone engage him in small talk.
Sadly, that would not be my last Trevor attack. We were team-mates for four years, though I doubt if he even noticed. Every day when he did speak to me, even if it was just a brief “good morning”, I would clam up and end up stuttering and stammering some unintelligible reply. And as for actually passing the ball to the guy, forget it, not a chance. I would look up, see it was him and, as if by magic, my leg would lose all its sensory input and he would curse me as the ball evaded his touch. I don’t know what he really thought of me. Presumably that I must have been retarded mentally and physically. Of course, I was neither (I don’t think); I just couldn’t take him down from the bedroom wall.
We went our different ways – eventually. He became the first million-pound player and I slowly but surely drifted down the leagues. I am not blaming Trevor for that, of course, but in many ways he was unknowingly responsible, in small part, because our mismatched relationship highlighted the difficulties I encountered when trying to ‘make it’ at my local club.
The struggle to make it at your ‘home’ team, when all your family, friends and old schoolteachers are watching you, kicking every ball for you, praying you will play well – or, more pointedly, some of them praying you will not play well – can be a crushing experience.
An interesting footnote to the Trevor Francis experience happened about 20 years later when I next spoke to him.
I was the physiotherapist at Preston North End and we were about to play Arsenal in a live televised FA Cup tie at Deepdale on a Friday night. I had, on many occasions, told stories about my inability to pass or kick the ball to Trevor, taking advantage of my gift of accurately impersonating his distinctive Devonian accent when he would bollock me as my passes evaded him. My best friend, Brian Hickson (the Preston kit man), had enjoyed them many times over the years.