The Smell of Football Page 6

  “Match off,” I lip-read. “Waterlogged pitch, match off.”

  I will never forget the kindness that stranger did me that night. Thanks mate, there is a God.

  I was totally ashamed of what I had become, but I am only being honest and telling you what it was like. Praying for a game to be postponed was pathetic, especially when I used to be so gutted as a schoolboy player if I turned up for a match and the pitch was frozen that I ended up crying and begging the ref to play the game even on the ice.

  I admit I was a coward – but a mightily relieved coward. It is hard to put into words just how terrified of playing I had become, but I will try. One Friday night, before an away game at Bolton early the following season, we were staying in a hotel in nearby Blackburn. By this time, I had taken to staying awake for as long as I could to make the game seem as far off as possible but, of course, eventually, no matter how you try to fight it, you are overwhelmed by sleep. Then, you know what it’s like when you wake up in the morning all nice and warm and dreamy and, for a second or two, you aren’t quite sure exactly where you are or what day it is. We’ve all had those little magic moments where you initially think it’s a working day, then suddenly realise it’s actually a lovely, leisurely Sunday lie-in and you roll over and happily drop off again. Well, in this case in Blackburn, the exact opposite happened. Match day. Oh God, no. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

  On that particular morning – once I had managed to drag myself out of bed – all the squad went for a walk together before the pre-match meal, and I recall walking up a steep hill with really nice houses on it. To cut a long story short, the road we walked up at the back of the Saxon Hotel is the road I now live on. What a coincidence. Even now, 35 years on, I sometimes look out of my kitchen window and remember me in my Birmingham City tracksuit, walking past absolutely shitting myself.

  How many more examples of my demise do you want? Don’t worry, there are plenty and, to this day, every single one of them is burnt into my memory. Once, we played Arsenal at home and drew 3-3. It was a remarkable match in that Trevor scored a hat-trick for us and ‘Supermac’ Malcolm MacDonald scored one for them. Late in the game, when we were leading 3-2 I think (quite a novelty in those days), Arsenal were on the attack. I will never forget what happened next – the memory of slap when the ball thudded off Supermac’s forehead as he out-jumped me at the far post and equalised with a bullet-header is as clear today as it was then.

  I am not a biomechanist or a neurophysicist but, clearly when your legs are like jelly, it is very hard to jump. Apparently, giraffes can’t jump at all, but they do have long necks so I suppose a giraffe might have got away with it against Supermac. Not me, though, at 5'10" and with a normal neck. The ball was crossed into the box, an all-white ball in those days. I remember watching it floating towards me, spinning tantalisingly, just waiting to be headed. Unfortunately, not by me. I felt Supermac’s arm on my shoulder and his body pressed up against mine as we both prepared to leap. Prepared to leap just about sums up my effort as he climbed above me and powerfully headed the ball home.

  To a man, my fellow defenders rounded on me and, to be fair, I didn’t blame them because it was my fault. My fault they scored, my fault they equalised, my fault we didn’t win. My fault.

  Another time I was playing at left back at St Andrew’s and Trevor was over on the right wing. It was a typical game – Trevor was having a blinder and I was playing like a blind man. He performed a magnificent piece of ball control, beating two men before hitting a majestic crossfield pass perfectly into my path.

  It was brilliant, what a player. I felt like applauding, but thought better of it. I was running, in open field, towards the ball with the opportunity of advancing at speed up the left flank and delivering an accurate cross (well, accurate if you were sat in Row Z). There was no one within 20 yards of me. I focused on the ball rolling relentlessly towards me and became transfixed by it, almost mesmerised by it, hypnotised by it.

  It was a bit like that BBC production of War and Peace which was serialised in the early ’70s. There is one bit where the hero is stood on the edge of the battlefield. He is a Russian nobleman, fighting in the Battle of Borodino against Napoleon, when a cannonball lands about 20 yards away and starts rolling towards him. He is similarly transfixed – mesmerised just like me. He becomes unable to detach himself from this fixation, unable to move, unable to react to it. Eventually it blows up in his face.

  That’s pretty much what happened to me. Obviously, the ball didn’t blow up in my face (unfortunately, our fans might have said), but such was my fixation with it that I was unable to react and thus unable to control it. It rolled past my foot and out for a throw-in.

  There was hell to pay.

  I watched it trickle over the line and heard the fury of the fans. I witnessed their hands being flung up in anger and despair. I stared into the mass of angry spectators, their faces contorted with rage at my latest aberration.

  One thing I will definitely never forget is the fan who kindly took the considerable trouble to run all the way down the aisle – from the very back of the Kop to the edge of the pitch – to abuse me. I can still see that guy clearly today with his long hair, big sideburns, wide jeans, checked shirt and Birmingham City scarves tied around his wrists.

  I am sure it was my old chemistry teacher.

  The one thing, the only thing, I take any pride or comfort in from those days is for all the fear and hostility I never bottled it, never once faked injury or phoned in sick. I always somehow managed to dig deep and drag myself over that white line.

  What a bloody hero.

  In a futile attempt to avoid public ridicule, I tried to disguise myself with the trendy curly perm beloved of the ’70s footballer. I went into Rackham’s in the city centre and plucked up the courage. There was the standard £8 perm or the deluxe £10 one. I went for the cheap one and, ever since then, when I look in the mirror and lament the loss of my barnet, I always wonder if all that is the result of me trying to save two fucking quid.

  It didn’t work anyway – I was still shit, still lambasted in public, but now I had a shit hairstyle to complete the whole sorry picture.

  When I look back on all those collective nightmares from my Birmingham days, the one that stands out and was probably the worst performance was against Derby County. In fact, it could possibly have been the worst ever performance any Blues player has given in the club’s 136-year history.

  I played right back at Derby County, up against their talented Welsh winger, Leighton James. He roasted me for the full 90 minutes. Mind you, given the mental state I was in, my granny could have roasted me. When the final whistle went, I was devastated, close to tears. Leighton came over to me and said in his Welsh accent, “Don’t worry son, I have roasted better full backs than you will ever fucking be.”

  Thanks for those kind words, mate. We were to meet a few years later in the big East Lancashire derby when he was playing for Burnley and so much had changed for me as a player.

  So, Leighton, I never forgot those kind ‘words of encouragement’. I wonder if he knew, or cared, how much those remarks, delivered in that callous manner, hurt all those years ago. I would love to take him for a pint and just ask him quite simply, “Why? Why say those things?” He would probably say it was “just harmless banter”. Oh yes, that harmless banter again.

  The Birmingham nightmare would soon be over for me, but its conclusion would be the result of a bizarre set of circumstances.

  By March 1979 I had gone completely. I couldn’t kick the ball straight to save my life. I was mentally shattered. If this had been a war, I would have been sent home with shellshock. I played another first-team game. I can’t even remember who it was against. And guess what? I was shit – again.

  The team were struggling. It was ugly. Jim Smith was purple all the time. He called a meeting on the Monday morning and tore a strip out of all of us. That was OK, I was expecting it anyway, and the thing about a bollocking is t
hat after a certain number they lose their impact. However, after his tirade had ceased Joe Gallagher, one of the senior players and an excellent centre half, got up. This wasn’t like Joe; he was one of the senior players we liked the best and one of those strong silent types. What happened next, although I was too stunned to realise at the time, was a series of totally unfair and unjustified personal attacks on the young players in the team. I can still remember it virtually word-perfect as every syllable was delivered like a knockout punch.

  “Mark Dennis, you fucking, fucking big-headed bastard, you arrogant cunt, who do you think you are? Mickey Rath, you think you are fucking great, but you are shit. (That wasn’t entirely true – I thought I was shit too.) And as for you, Kev, if my kid turns out like you, I will fucking well strangle it.”

  Looking back now, he might have been right – although I don’t agree – but the manner in which he said it and to isolate the young players in such a way just seemed so unfair. That was the final straw. For the first time in three years, I felt some anger – at last – after all that time of being a pathetic, passive excuse for a man.

  Jim Smith concluded the meeting by thanking Joe for having the passion and balls to stand up and say what he had (fucking big deal, Joe, well done) and finished off proceedings with the time-honoured rhetoric: “Right, now that’s it, we’ve got a big game Saturday and we need some fucking points, so if any of you fuckers don’t want to play, then I suggest you stay behind after the meeting and fucking well tell me.”

  Of course, it was just rhetoric and was meant more as a warning to get your finger out than an invitation to chat, but fuck it, I had had enough of this shit, this moaning, pressure, constant criticising, this fucking unpleasantness. When the players filed out of the meeting for training, I remained in my seat.

  I just sat there until the room emptied and there was only Jim and me in the room.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  “You know you said anybody who doesn’t want to play for you should stay behind and tell you – well, I don’t want to play anymore.”

  “You fucking what?” He was going purple again.

  “I’ve got a job lined up at Dyno Rod and I can start this week.”

  Even writing this now, some 30-odd years later, it seems shocking yet hilarious in equal measures. How could somebody who was so highly academic he could have pursued a career in medicine, who had captained Birmingham and Warwickshire schools, won numerous cross country races and played for the England youth team, be reduced to this pathetic figure, happy to get a job cleaning other people’s drains for a living? That should give you some idea of the state of mind I had been reduced to.

  Whose fault was it? Trevor who was aloof and intimidated me? The coaches who shouted and constantly bollocked us for every mistake? The players who moaned at us when we didn’t meet their expectations? The fans who crucified us?

  The answer is none of them; it wasn’t any of their faults. This is professional sport and, just as it can be glamorous and uplifting it can also be ugly and cruel and only the mentally-strong can survive. Certainly, being the local lad and subjected to those additional pressures was a big factor for me, and trying to fit into a team of players you had previously worshipped as a boy proved especially difficult – for me, anyway.

  I have thought about what happened many times over the years and I see things so differently now. The players were all OK really, decent guys who just moaned a bit. I was too sensitive. What to them was harmless fun and good-natured banter was perceived by me to be cruel mickey-taking and harsh criticism.

  Interestingly, I met Joe Gallagher a couple of years ago – some 30 years after that ghastly incident. Everton were playing at West Bromwich Albion and I was on the pitch before the game handing some drinks out when I heard a voice shouting, “Mickey, Mickey.”

  I knew it had to be somebody from my distant past because everybody has been calling me ‘Baz’ for so long now. I looked across. Incredibly, it was Joe (he hadn’t changed a bit). He was doing a bit of commentating for the local station at weekends and working for Land Rover during the week. He was so friendly and appeared genuinely pleased to see me. He informed me he had followed my career with interest over the years and used to tell all his mates at Land Rover, proudly, he had been a team-mate of mine. Such a lovely fellow.

  But back to the fearsome Jim Smith – I sat there waiting for the explosion and screaming that was sure to follow. But nothing. He smiled and put his arm around my shoulder.

  “OK,” he said with genuine affection. “I understand what you have been going through – don’t worry, take a few days off, don’t do anything hasty, you are far too good a player. Let me get you on loan for a month or two away from here where you can relax and start enjoying your football again.”

  I will never forget what Jim did for me that day, and as I went from success to success and regained my love for football, he was always in my thoughts.

  A few days later, I signed for Blackburn Rovers on a three-month loan deal and my football career belatedly started.

  That all seems such a long time ago and I know now I am a completely different character – strong and confident – to the point I can hardly identify with that pathetic teenager. I have reflected on that unhappy period of my life and my extreme reactions to it many, many times over the years and still don’t really know what conclusions to draw or who to blame. The hard facts don’t lie – my career (if you can call that collection of disasters a career) never took off at Birmingham. I didn’t have the bottle, right stuff, balls or moral fibre, the courage required to be a success at the club I loved and supported. In mitigation, I was young, over-sensitive, in awe of my team-mates, had just gone through the trauma of losing my father but, even so, other young local players can and do succeed at their home-town clubs, so it can’t just be explained purely in those terms.

  But why not me then? Well, after about 30 years of deliberation . . . I still don’t know. Was it cowardly to say to the ferocious Jim Smith I wouldn’t play again or was it an act of amazing courage? It’s like the old adage of people who commit suicide – cowardly or heroic? I’d prefer to believe what I did took great courage, but I suspect deep down it was the act of a coward.

  Along with all this brutal self-analysis, you start to ask yourself what kind of person you are. What makes you tick? What are your strengths and weaknesses? I was recently asked by the sports psychologist at Everton to fill in a form whereby you analysed yourself and basically described how you saw yourself as a person. You had to tick words you thought applied to your personality and finally write, in no more than 100 words, how you would describe yourself as a person.

  This is what I wrote: I consider myself to be a gentleman. I only treat people as I would want to be treated myself. I am sensitive, kind and generous. I care about people. I never lose my temper. My glass is always half full. Some people would possibly accuse me of being too nice. I have an outgoing personality, even though intrinsically I am basically a bit shy. My motto for life is this: it’s nice to be important but it’s much more important to be nice.

  Was it Freud who once said something about us being the sum total of our life experiences?

  I very much like the person I turned out to be. If I had achieved all the success at Birmingham at the tender age I should have done, then I might now be writing words to the effect that I am a winner, confident, assured, talented, etc. Who knows?

  I don’t think I would have liked that person half as much.

  Chapter Four

  RESCUE

  With my brand new, stack-heeled cowboy boots making me limp, I arrived at New Street Station to start my train journey to Blackburn. My only previous visit to this Lancashire mill town was that solitary overnight stay the previous season en route to yet another personal disaster at Bolton Wanderers; not exactly fond memories then, but what the hell? Anything was better than staying at St Andrew’s. To a Brummie like me who had seldom ventured out of the
great metropolis, it was simply ‘up north’.

  On my way up to Blackburn, I remember reflecting upon the bizarre set of circumstances that had culminated in this journey. I had failed at my hometown club – not through lack of ability but through lack of confidence or, more precisely, lack of moral courage. I felt somewhat bitter about the whole experience. I knew it was ultimately down to my own lack of personal confidence but, at that time, I also felt strongly that the coaches and players were partly responsible too.

  I suppose I should have been grateful for the second chance, but I wasn’t really under any great illusions that things would be different this time – it would only end up being a brief interlude before my destiny was fulfilled and I took my rightful place, sluicing out the toilets of the good people of Birmingham.

  As we travelled north, the scenery started to change. It was an unusual landscape – hilly and full of chimneys – but strangely picturesque. Ironically, the song being repeatedly played on another passenger’s transistor radio was the current No. 1 single, I will Survive, by Gloria Gaynor, and that just about summed up how I felt.

  I was met at the station by John Pickering – caretaker manager of Rovers and a great guy. Sadly, he died in 2001, and is loved and missed by all those who knew him. He dropped me off at a hotel (let’s be honest, bed and breakfast) called The Woodlands. John’s parting words were, “‘Bails’ will come round later.”

  John Bailey did indeed come round later in his red Ford Capri – he was Blackburn’s star player, as he explained to me. We became firm friends and I am eternally grateful to him as he was partly responsible for me meeting my wife.