by Ian Holloway
Chapter 3: She’s The One
Something had stayed with me from the time mum went into hospital when I was a kid. As far as I was concerned, she’d just disappeared off the face of the Earth for a week and it’s fair to say I had a slight separation problem and was pretty insecure in many ways. It would manifest itself from time to time, particularly when I moved schools. I grew up with a lad called Mark Shail who lived a few doors down from me and we were close friends during childhood, so when he and his family moved about a mile away, it killed me for a while. We’d been through a lot together including a time when his dad Terry had caught him smoking in the back garden and, following in the great fatherly tradition, he made his son sit in the lounge and smoke a big fat cigar. As Mark turned green, his dad turned to me and said, “And you can stay there and watch this you bloody idiot.” I think he got a taste for them after that because Mark still smokes today!
We kept in touch, though didn’t see each other half as much as we used to, but the good thing was that Mark was going to go to the same secondary school as me and as luck would have it, the house he’d moved to was only a short walk from the new school. I was never that comfortable being in school all day and, being an unbelievably fussy eater, I started going back with Mark and his mum Judy to eat lunch at their house every day. They were like a second family to me and the daily break from school life made things much easier for the five or six years I was at Sir Bernard Lovell.
I was pushing on with my football and was totally dedicated to making it as a player with Gordon Bennett’s bollocking still fresh in my memory. My mates would ask me to go down to the cinema or down to the youth club, but though it was hard at times, I’d tell them I was training later and I couldn’t come out the following day, either, and so on.
I was at an age where even the other lads at Bristol Rovers were starting to have their heads turned by one thing or another, but I remained focused. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in being with my mates, it was just that I didn’t feel I had any second chances at Rovers and if this was my one chance to make it, I was determined to give it everything I had. Things were ticking along nicely in Ian Holloway world until, bang! I was hit by a freight train – or at least that’s how it felt at the time.
I used to walk to school with a lad called Gary Thomas, another kid I’d known all my life, and one particular morning I called at his house and his mum, Vera, told me he’d be ready in a minute and made me a cup of tea while I waited. He finally came down, looking a bit dishevelled, by which time I was totally pissed off with him. I hated being late and as we left the house I said, “Come on you idiot, we’ve got to run for the bus, now.” He was bigger than me, but I used to bully him a bit, I suppose. We just managed to catch the bus before it pulled away and went and sat on the top deck where the only seats left were right at the back. I was like a dog with a bone. “That’s half my dinner money gone now, you great pillock.” I kept moaning at him until we got to school and everyone lethargically started to get up. At the front of the bus, four girls stood up and among them was one that made me stop in mid-sentence, my jaw dropping wide open as she went down the stairs followed by a smaller girl who looked just like her. She hadn’t seen me but I’d seen her and I said to Gary, “Who the hell is that?”
“Eh?” he said, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, but she’d gone by then. “Who do you mean? Which kid?” He probably thought it was a lad from the school team or something because I never showed any interest in anything unconnected with football.
“It was a girl, you plank,” I said, but he hadn’t seen her and she’d disappeared from view merging into a crowd heading towards the gates. He smiled and said, “I told you we should go on the bus more often.”
We made our way off the bus but there was a sea of bodies in various versions of the school uniform so we carried on arguing about him oversleeping instead until we reached class. At break time, Gary found me and said, “I think that girl you’ve been going on about is called Kim Mitchell.” He’d asked around, describing her to a few girls at assembly and the fact that she had what was obviously a smaller sister who looked like a twin had made the search easier. She was in a different House to me and because it was such a huge school, that meant she went to different assemblies from me, which is probably why I couldn’t recall ever seeing her before. I didn’t have a clue what was going on but I knew I had to find her and discover more about her. I searched the school with no luck for several days until Gary told me that a kid that lived down the road from us, Mark Nicholls – better known as ‘Nipples’ – not only knew who Kim was, but where she lived, too. Nipples was a full-time whinger and I didn’t have that much time for him, to be truthful, but I needed information, and quick, so I had to go round his house and pretend to be half-friendly with him. I think he knew as much and enjoyed his position of power, but I was like a lovesick puppy and was prepared to humiliate myself if necessary. I made idle chat for a minute before cutting to the chase. “Gary tells me you know a girl called Kim Mitchell, is that right?”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s in my maths group,” he said flippantly.
“She’s not bad is she? Where…” I didn’t get chance to finish. Nipples, who was oblivious to the nickname we’d given him, wasn’t about to waste this opportunity to make me squirm even more than I already was.
“You don’t like girls!” he laughed.
“Shut up. Listen, I really like her a lot,” and as those words left my mouth, guess who was coming up my road? I couldn’t believe it. “There she is!”
“That’s not her,” Nipples said, then, “Oh hang on, it is.” With that he got on his bike and rode towards her as I began to shrink on the spot. He stopped in front of her with a lame back wheel skid and, obviously being as tactful as possible pointed back towards me and blurted out, “He fancies you!” My stomach began doing somersaults. I couldn’t take any more so I just turned and walked to my house a few doors down without saying a word. I went and hid in my room, snatching a sly glance through the net curtains. Kim was talking with Nipples for about five minutes. She had her smaller sister – a proper Mini Me – and her friend Rose with her, and when they finally left my mind was made up. This was the girl for me. I was totally smitten and managed to pluck up enough courage to ask Gary to ask her out on my behalf, but after he’d told her, she showed no interest whatsoever.
I found out as much as I could about her and about a month later, it was the school sports day and despite it being a huge field packed with kids taking part or just watching, I found out where she was and went and stood right behind her. Had I been slapped with a restraining order, I couldn’t have complained because I couldn’t have made it more bloody obvious. She was lying on the grass, resting on her elbows, watching the events and then she turned round and saw me stood behind – from the legs up. I was in shorts because I was due to take part in a race and my thighs were probably my best feature because I’d been working on them for years! She turned back around again, but it was the closest I’d been to her and I felt encouraged for some reason. I was 15, she was 14 and I was totally in love. I found out where she lived and plucked up enough courage to finally ask her out myself. I went along with Gary for moral support and got about two yards from her garden gate when her dad came out the front door so I backed off and waited till he left.
I then made Gary go and knock on her door and Kim answered. He got her to come outside for a moment and after a brief chat, she told him she would go out with me, but only if I’d ask her myself. He asked her to walk to where I was waiting and as they approached Gary subtly said, “You’ve got to ask her to her face.” He walked off and left us alone and I finally asked her out – and she said yes. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow in school, then.” She went back in and that was that. I was chuffed as a badger and ran off punching the air, before realising I hadn’t arranged where we should meet and what time! So, via a network of friends,
I got a message to her to meet me by the coffee machine in the main corridor, which she did, but as soon as she saw me she went back into her classroom and I mistook that for not liking me after all. I found her and asked what was wrong. “I really like you,” she said, “but I’m just really shy.”
I could relate to that, so we arranged to meet with a few others around, including her sister who never stopped chatting. I should have fixed her up with Pen! A week later I went round to Kim’s house, but the whole experience was horrific – absolutely horrific! I came from a council estate and she lived in a very smart private house and everything was totally alien to the world I knew. Her mum had given birth to Kim when she was just 19 whereas my mum was 31 when I was born and initially I thought her mum was her sister! Walking into that house was like going into a different world. They had bespoke furniture, really modern stuff, and nothing like the old fashioned gear we had at our house. The wallpaper, carpets – everything was completely different. I sat down in the lounge and it seemed most of the Mitchell family was there and I was feeling understandably quite nervous – but there was much worse to follow and I still can’t believe what happened next. All Creatures Great and Small was on TV, with James Herriot, the vet. Everyone was quiet and engrossed in the story while I was thinking that if I’d been at my house, it was more likely that Benny Hill would have been on with my dad going, “Phwoar! Look at her knockers! Cor blimey! I’d give her a portion given half the chance!” Mum would just tell him to shut up and if any intimate scenes ever came on during any programme, she’d go and make a cup of tea. I didn’t have much education on the birds and the bees front so when old James Herriot soaped up his arm I wondered what was coming next and then, on my life, wham! Right up the cow’s arse! I started to get a bit hot under the collar, squirming with embarrassment. My mum would have been brewing up by that point and Christ knows what dad would have said – though I could imagine – when all of a sudden Kim’s sister pipes up, “Mum, do cows have a clitoris?”
I thought, ‘What’s she on about? What’s that?’
Her mum didn’t bat an eyelid. Had I misheard her? Had she asked if cows liked liquorice?
“Well, that’s a very interesting question,” her mum said. “Terry, what do
you think?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Why not ask your teacher tomorrow?”
Eventually, it was time for me to leave, thank God, and I made my way home to what I considered to be a more normal home environment. You can probably see this coming, but as soon as I got home, I had to ask so I said, “Mum, what’s a clitoris?” Yes, I really was that naïve.
“Ask your dad,” she said putting the kettle on, which should have given me a clue! I did ask dad and he said, “I dunno, ask your mum, I’m still trying to find one!” and burst out laughing. I decided to leave it until I saw my mates at school and, of course, they took great delight in informing me what it was and where you could find it. I never did find out if a cow’s got one or not!
So Kim and I were up and running, even though it had taken 11 weeks to finally go out on a date with her. It was typical of the way I am that I wouldn’t have given up, even though there’d been lots of times when I’d thought she didn’t like me, and persistence finally paid off. My life changed completely from the moment I saw her on that bus trip, one that I should have never really
been on in the first place and had Gary not been late that day, who knows what might have happened? It felt weird, but it really was love at first sight – at least on my part.
Things changed in my daily routine too, and while I’d been discouraged to go out with my mates in the evening, dad did let me out with my girlfriend, though I had to be back in by 8.30pm at the latest so it didn’t interfere with my football. He told me not to lose my focus and Gordon Bennett even met Kim, telling her that he hoped she understood I had a chance of being a footballer. I had career choices to make and that meant missing school discos and parties and suchlike, but I had to beg my dad to let me go to one particular youth club because Kim went there and he relented – so long as I was in by the normal time. In fact, he gave me a half hour extension because it closed at nine, though it was only once a week.
My mates were chuffed that I was finally going out with them in the evening, but I had to convince them to leave 10 minutes before the club closed for one reason or another. I’d casually walk round the corner and sprint as fast as I could the half-mile to our house, otherwise I would never have made it back in time and that would have been the end of the matter. Dad never took his eye off the ball and wanted me to remain disciplined at all times and at Christmas time, his mates would stop by and dad used to go straight to the shelf he kept his spirits on. “Go on, have a drink,” he’d say when anyone called in over the festive period, and on Christmas Day he’d pour us all a little glass of whisky and then look at me and say, “You don’t want one, do you.” I left a question mark off that last quote because he wasn’t actually asking me, he was telling me. If I did get one it would be watered down so much with lemonade it would be a joke, but I understood that he didn’t want me to get a taste for alcohol because he didn’t want that to stop me moving forward.
He eased off a little as I got towards my later teens, but he was still strict
on sleep and what I did in my social life. He needn’t have worried because
I was totally focused on making the grade and my discipline was about to
be rewarded.
“Come on goody two shoes,” my mates would bait me when I turned down their offers of going to this place and that, and my work ethics during my apprenticeship had some of the other lads calling me a creep. It didn’t bother me because I knew why I was doing what I was doing. I put my heart and soul into everything I did, whether that was cleaning boots or sweeping the dressing rooms. I had no desire to act cool just to impress my mates and if I didn’t fit in with some of them it was by choice. It was hard at times, but I did it.
Kim was a steadying influence for me through my teenage years and without her I suppose I could have drifted off the path. I had her, my close mates and my family and it didn’t bother me that I was ostracised by the other apprentices – that was up to them.
I got injured an awful lot between the ages of 16 and 17 and I missed a load of games because of my attitude to training and the way I threw myself into it. I was doing things my body simply wasn’t ready for yet and during the first year of my apprenticeship I played just 11 games. I was up against it and I knew I had to pull out all the stops in my second year if I was to earn a professional contract on my eighteenth birthday.
At the start of the second year, Gordon Bennett said to me, “Whatever you do, don’t worry, they like you. You’re only small but you’ve not physically developed yet so keep on the way you are.”
I played in an FA Youth Cup match at Swansea and I asked Gordon whether I should ask the club about the likelihood of being kept on prior to the game, but he advised me not to ask just yet. So I played, we won 3-1 and I scored probably my greatest goal ever, cutting in from the right and curling the ball over the keeper and into the top corner. The next day, Gordon came around to our house and said, “I suggest you ask the question on Monday morning young man after a goal like that.”
I was just about to turn 18 and I’d been waiting for him to say those words, so I did ask the club what the future held and fortunately I was offered a contract. My dad played it down, of course, saying, “You haven’t made it yet, you know? Wait till you’ve played 100 games, son. This is just the first rung of the ladder.” But though he always kept my feet on the ground, I found out in later years that he was quite the opposite when it came to talking about my progress with other people. I got a letter in 2007 from a bloke who used to be dad’s boss at a dye-cast factory. He told me dad had helped him through a very difficult period when he had a lot of problems with the unions over job cuts. Dad told the union rep, “Lo
ok, it’s not the gaffer’s fault and I don’t agree with all this. We’re shirking our jobs and we’ve got to help him out,” and he returned to work, not because he was some kind of scab or had his own agendas, but because he made his own mind up and stood up for what he thought was right. This bloke told me dad used to speak about me with great pride and added that, knowing Bill Holloway as well as he did, that he probably never told me. “Let me assure you, Ian” he wrote, “your dad was immensely proud of you.”
Dad didn’t praise me because he thought it would affect the way I was, to the point he was almost paranoid about saying anything at all, but I knew he had nothing but my welfare in his heart.
With my first Rovers contract signed, it seemed I was finally on my way, and Kim was making her way, too, training to be a hairdresser. Things took another turn for the better when Terry Cooper took over as manager of Rovers and he included me as a sub against a team from abroad. He threw me on in the second half, too, and I fed a ball through that led to a penalty being awarded. Cooper shouted that he wanted me to take it, so I did, putting us 6-1 ahead. I knew that Cooper liked my style of play and I was now on the fringes of the first team. It would be a traumatic season for Rovers, with the South Grandstand burning down, forcing us to play six home games at Ashton Gate. Imagine the irony if I’d made my home League debut at City’s ground, considering the offer they’d made me almost a decade before. Things were also moving in my life and, aged 18, I was named as sub for Rovers’ penultimate game of that 1980/81 campaign, away to Wrexham. I replaced Mark Hughes towards the end of a 3-1 defeat and though we were relegated to the Third Division that year, I went into the summer on a massive personal high.
Chapter 4: Holloway (o.g.)
I had a bit more money and had been courting Kim for three years and it was around about that time she asked me for an engagement ring. That hit me like a bolt from the blue, but at that point, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling regarding our relationship. The situation at Rovers had me feeling a bit like jack-the-lad, so I told her a ring wasn’t on the cards because I wasn’t sure whether I loved her or not. Bang! A hell of a statement to say and part of me couldn’t believe it was my voice even saying the words. I felt pressured, but of course, I didn’t realise that I felt that way because I actually loved her so much, and whoever came up with the phrase, ‘love is blind’, knew what they were on about. I was walking around with my eyes wide shut and wasn’t mature enough to realise what I had in Kim. Over-confident and being a bit egotistical, I asked for a bit of time and space to think things over and Kim took it really badly.
