The Smell of Football Page 3

  In a strange way, that extremely painful ordeal stood me in good stead for the future and taught me a valuable lesson for when I became a physio myself. That was to ensure all the players under my care, whether the most famous international or the humblest junior, were treated identically in terms of respect and consideration, and were treated in the most professional way possible by the best people available, notwithstanding their value to the club. Most importantly, I can categorically state, in all the years I was a physio at a professional club, I never urged any player to take a steroid injection, and I certainly didn’t friction-massage the players until they were passing out with pain. (I’ve always been far too lazy for that.)

  And so that magical first season slipped away in a blur, but a blur of pure joy. Unfortunately, virtually all the second-year apprentices were released and I remember looking at their tear-stained faces as they emerged from the coach’s office one by one with the realisation they would never fulfil their dreams of becoming professional footballers. So near yet, at the same time, so far. It might sound cruel and heartless, but I don’t even remember feeling too sorry for those lads – when you are young and insensitive it doesn’t really register too much. It was nearly 20 years later – when I would be that man, breaking the same bad news to a different generation – that I was at last able to understand the pain of the occasion.

  But now, to more important things – holidays. I had just spent ten months getting paid for playing for the Blues; now I was going to be paid for going on holiday for two months. Surely it couldn’t get any better than this? Sadly, it couldn’t.

  Chapter Two

  INNOCENCE LOST

  Pre-season training – just three simple words, but words to strike fear into even the most hardened pro. That six-week period dreaded by all when the players are dragged, pushed, kicked and tortured back into shape. In the 1970s, the close season was much longer than in today’s football and I remember we seldom reported back before mid-July. Add to that the fact the season used to finish a week or so earlier back then, and you ended up with a good couple of months off.

  Over the years, the close season has been gradually eroded down to about six weeks (even less if some players have been involved in international football). The fitness coaches, sports scientists and nutritionists are arguing, and winning the case, for a shorter break based entirely on physiological grounds (maybe they are right), citing the dangers of de-conditioning if the players are given too much time off. The result, these days, is that most players go off for the summer break armed with sets of exercises and drills to perform to maintain their fitness. Then, before they know it, they are brought back to the club after an ever-decreasing break from the mental pressures which so sap the modern player.

  From my point of view, I always felt it was important to have as long a break as possible to recharge the psychological batteries. Forget the body-fat tests, the blood tests and the bleep tests; give the players extra time off and you will probably get much more from them. Drag them back too soon and they won’t be as fresh and eager to start anew.

  When you’ve played 50 or 60 games in a season, trained every day and been under huge pressure to perform day in and day out, trust me, by the end of the season you never want to see another ball as long as you live. But then, as June slips by, you slowly feel that old hunger returning, all the aches and pains have gone, you find yourself going for a couple of runs, or a game of tennis, maybe a kick-around on the beach, and slowly but surely the freshness, hunger and enthusiasm start to return. Eventually, you can’t wait to play football again.

  Back in the ’70s, though, players certainly did relax and take a breather. There were two things synonymous with the first day of pre-season – it was always the hottest day of the year and everybody gathered around the scales for the annual pre-season weigh-in. Quite frankly, some of the players were fat when they came back. Not slightly overweight or slightly above their ideal playing weight – no, they were fat. Some had gained so much weight that they looked completely different from when we last saw them back in May and everybody, from coaches to groundstaff, congregated around the scales to witness the ritual humiliation of these porkers. Nowadays, all any player would expect to gain would be a couple of pounds maximum.

  When all the laughing had died down and the new training gear had been issued, it was time to commence pre-season training and that meant just one thing – cross country. All Blues players, including apprentices, had to walk the short distance from our training ground to Elmdon Park, the big adjacent country park. On the walk, the young players were told by a cartel of the most senior players that any young player showing up a senior player on the run, i.e. going past them in the race, “will get their fucking bollocks chopped off!” So, a bizarre sight gradually unfolded over the three-mile race. All the fatties were comfortably holding their own mid-pack, running surprisingly well for their new-found girths, and amazingly keeping up with the younger, lighter and fitter apprentices.

  If the manner of the pre-season training came as a surprise to me (a lad who had won numerous school cross countries and athletics medals), then what came next would be an almighty shock. I had been selected, as the most promising apprentice, to accompany the senior squad on their pre-season tour of Holland and Belgium in August 1976. Fuck me, what an awful thought – me, all alone with them.

  I should point out it did disturb me greatly that this was my reaction to what was a great honour and privilege, but that was the truth of it – a combination of the vicious piss-taking, the aloofness of the coaches and players, and my complete inability to perform even the simplest motor function in the presence of Trevor Francis reduced me to a trembling wreck. I know it was a million miles from any kind of normal reaction but that was just how I felt. This wasn’t the way it should have been.

  There were two stand-out incidents from that trip which would have long-term ramifications. The first happened after the opening friendly match, back at the hotel in the room of a player called Tony Want. As the debutant, I was invited to Tony’s room for a nice friendly game of cards. Well, a game of cards, but with a drinking game thrown in.

  Tony had the pack of cards and on the table there was a bottle of vodka, a bottle of whisky and a bottle of Coca-Cola. The game went like this: Tony dealt one card at a time to the eight or so players sat around the table. The first player to receive an ace had to name the drink (not too difficult given the paucity of choice), the second ace poured the drink – hey, steady with the coke, don’t drown it. You can just imagine it, can’t you? Third ace sipped the drink and finally the last person to receive an ace from the deck had to drink the whole fucking lot down in one go. “Oh no, Mickey Rath again, third time on the trot. What are the odds of that?”

  Up until then, I had never drunk more than a single pint of Ansells Bitter; now I had just drunk more than a pint of spirits. Suffice to say, by the time the penny had dropped, so had the contents of my stomach, and I finally passed out and spent the next three days in bed.

  During that era, the post-match refuelling was very different, but nobody seemed to mind when the players had a few drinks. In fact, you could get pissed and drive home and nobody seemed to mind about that either. The upshot of my rather harsh initiation ceremony was that, to this day, I still can’t stand the smell of whisky.

  The other life-affecting experience was a good deal more sinister. When I finally emerged from my alcoholic coma, I had to train, of course, and for the first time it was just me alone with all the senior players and senior coaching staff, and I was really, really nervous. One bad pass with these twats and you would get it. I just about got through the first session without making myself look too bad – mainly because my many bad passes were not put down to me being a shit player, but more to the fact I had been at death’s door after the whisky incident.

  I thought I had got away with it until the boss, Willie Bell, decided we would have a game of tunnel ball to finish. You know the game – two tea
ms compete against each other, first man runs out from the back of the line ball in hand, around the cone, before volleying it to the next man who passes it back through the team’s legs, and then the next man goes until everybody has done it. Simple game, easy skill, difficult to mess up.

  But then it was announced the losing team would have to do 50 press-ups so, all of a sudden, there was a bit of pressure on and I felt the familiar feeling of muscle turning to jelly. Even worse, I was the last man – the key role.

  What happened next was the absolute confirmation of all my worst fears and a marvellous example of the power of catastrophic thinking. We were winning by miles when the ball was tunnelled back to me. As last man and with a huge lead, I just had the simple task of picking up the ball and racing out and around the cone before completing a simple volley back to our team leader, saluting victory and going back to bed because I still felt ill from the drink.

  The only problem, though, was my colossal fear of ballsing up the whole task, so I took my time, concentrating fully on the admittedly simple job in hand. Yes! The ball was through the tunnel and safely in my sweaty hands. I ran out to the cone on unsteady legs but still got there OK. Phew, so far so good, I believed I could do this – I could make it. Just one simple little volley and I would have survived the day. But, oh my God, no, it couldn’t be. Oh please God no. To my absolute horror, I realised that the man who I had to volley the ball to a mere six feet away and thus win the race, save my team from the press-ups and be greeted as the hero and saviour, was none other than my arch-nemesis, my very own bête noir – Trevor Francis. And he was yelling at me in that West Country accent to hurry up because the other team were catching up. Fuck, what a dire situation.

  The rest is now enshrined in football folklore.

  Due to the pressure of having to pass to ‘TF’, my leg suddenly ceased to function and I was unable even to make the slightest gesture of kicking the ball.

  Everybody was screaming at me to just kick the fucking thing. Finally, by recruiting the muscles of my hip (a trick that is used by lower limb amputees, for fuck’s sake), I made some vain attempt to propel the bloody ball to Trev, but it just bounced on the grass in front of me. The game was lost, to the fury of my team-mates and great amusement of everybody else.

  Sadly, that incident would have great significance regarding the future of my career.

  I will never know how on earth I got through that bloody week – drinking a full bottle of scotch, the tunnel ball debacle and the general difficulties I had establishing myself as a player or just a functioning human being among those former heroes of mine.

  Even such simple things as meal times were an ordeal. Basically, everybody waited with bated breath for my next faux-pas. We had just finished our main course and I remember somebody took the piss out of the way I chewed. Well, the laughter had only just died down from that latest “harmless bit of banter” when the sweet trolley arrived and halted next to me. My turn to order first. All went quiet, everybody in the room straining their ears to catch the latest hilarious uttering from the village idiot, and I didn’t disappoint – I never did. I looked at the variety of delightful desserts and fixed my desires on the brown blancmange-like substance. I cleared my throat to order as people leaned forward to enjoy the latest offering from Birmingham’s new idiot-savant.

  “I would like some of that brown trifle please.” Well, the whole room erupted into hysterics which seemed to go on for ages. How was I to know it was mousse? I had never even heard of fucking mousse. We used to have bananas and custard where I came from. But that’s how it was back then and it was slowly but surely destroying me.

  Two days later, I returned to the Blues’ training ground and back into the bosom of Ken and those great five-a-sides and cleaning boots and cheese sandwiches, pool comps in the afternoon, and happiness and confidence. Away from the senior players and my nemesis Trev. The only problem, though, was it wasn’t the same; it could never be the same again. The age of innocence was over. This was the new order. Now I had one foot in the youth team camp, where I was the star player, and the other foot in the first-team squad desperately trying to get the ball to within ten feet of Trevor.

  Every morning, depending on the numbers of players fit and available to train with the first team, I was just a short shout from Willie Bell away from being pulled in with the seniors to make up the numbers and cruelly taken away from my mates and the good life with Ken. To my undying embarrassment, I had designed a strategy to overcome this problem. As soon as the senior players trooped out on to the training pitch and just as Willie, having counted the numbers and realised they were in need of a make-weight from the apprentices, started to seek me out, I would blast a ball over the perimeter hedge into the farmer’s field next door, so I was forced to go and retrieve it. Thus I disappeared from the manager’s view and avoided being recruited into ‘the killing fields’ of the professional squad.

  Over the last 35 years, I have made it my business to ask dozens of other players and former players what they were like for them and if, in similar circumstances, they reacted the same as me. And guess what? Many admitted to similar problems and similar feelings. Let’s face it, many people are sensitive and don’t thrive on being shouted at and bollocked every time a pass goes astray.

  At that time, I was greatly troubled by my mindset. Of course, I had mouthed all the usual words about being “desperate to get my chance” but, to be brutally honest, I didn’t want a chance. Certainly not at that stage, at just 17 years of age; I just wanted to stay with my mates in the youth team and enjoy my football. Don’t forget, I had stood on those terraces on a Saturday when the team were struggling and the abuse was raining down on them. Notwithstanding the fact that among that baying crowd would be all my own family and friends – I couldn’t subject my mom to that.

  From a purely footballing point of view, things were going really well. It was autumn and I was a regular in the reserves – quite a feat with such a big squad at such a big club. I had been made to play left back because I could use both feet equally well. This was to become my biggest regret professionally as I was to spend the next 20 years at full back. I didn’t think that position was ideal for nervous types like me, with its close proximity to the touchline and the boo boys. But, to be fair, I was playing extremely well in the reserves and enjoying the games on all those famous grounds – just don’t put me in the first team yet.

  A few months later, I played for the reserves down in London – at Crystal Palace, I think. It was definitely somewhere in London because we went to the Hendon Hall Hotel for our pre-match meal. We had huge fillet steaks at about noon, three hours before kick-off – the real highlight of the whole day. Coming from a working-class family during that era, you just did not have food like that at home – no way. The steaks were delicious and washed down with pints of full-fat milk; we were led to believe it gave you strength for the game.

  Over the next couple of decades, though, once the nutritionists had appeared and got their teeth into the menus (no pun intended), and managed somehow to convince everybody if you didn’t eat the right kind of food you couldn’t play football properly (which was odd really because, during that period on that diet, English clubs were dominating European football), everything changed. A magic food was invented with magic powers – pasta. That was it. Pasta was the word and pasta was the future. It could transform you from a non-league player to a full international with just a couple of helpings. Not potatoes, not rice, not bread, even though they are virtually the same foods – no, pasta ruled, pasta was the word.

  Having said that, I recently read they have discovered a new food called steak. Yes, steak is back – it contains creatine, you see. Move over pasta, steak is back in town.

  And the moral of the story? There isn’t one.

  Clearly, the steak didn’t have an adverse effect on me as I was having another good game in that reserve match in London and enjoying it. I loved the reserve games with my fellow
apprentices. I loved having the ball. I was confident on the ball. Everything was going really well until I committed the ultimate footballer’s crime – a crime so heinous to be deemed unforgivable. I gave a bad backpass. Yes, just that. I underhit the ball, that was all. The grass was quite thick on the flanks and it slowed the ball down quicker than I had anticipated. I knew it was a bad pass because they nearly scored. I was determined not to do it again. Next time I would put a little bit more weight on the pass and avoid making the same mistake twice. OK?

  No, not OK. Not in a million years OK. The coach went mad at me at half time. Up close and personal, in my face, calling me a fucker and a cunt. I was totally shocked and, to be honest, scared. Nobody had talked to me like that before. Not the schoolteachers with their Corinthian attitudes, not the Birmingham or Warwickshire schools team managers, certainly not our beloved father figure Ken Oliver. I went out for the second half terrified of making a mistake, not wanting the ball and praying for the end of the game. And why? Because I underhit a backpass on the thick grass.

  How could that man in such a position of trust and responsibility working with young and impressionable teenagers in his wildest dreams imagine anybody could ever respond favourably to that kind of abuse? Sadly, though, this guy wasn’t unique. There were other coaches like him, and many of the players too, and the saddest thing of all is it is still going on to this day.

  What’s that saying? Give a small man some power and he will show you just how small he is. In all the games I played, I never bollocked or shouted any kind of derogatory stuff at any player (well, maybe the ref a couple of times) and, odd though it might seem to some, I am very proud of that. At the end of the day we were all supposed to be in the same team, weren’t we?

  Looking back I must have been an extremely talented player because – despite my severe neurological condition which manifested itself around TF, the disastrous performances when I trained with the senior players and the latest realisation that if anybody shouted at me at half time I would completely crack up – at the tender age of 17 I was called into the first-team squad for a mid-week League Cup game at Second Division side Blackpool.