by Ian Holloway
Things were going well for us but something happened that made me wonder about things like guardian angels and whether maybe dad was keeping a watch over his grandson after all. It happened when Kim, alone at home with the baby, was out in the garden and she heard somebody call out her name. She thought it was me – or my dad’s voice – I’ve been told I sound a lot like him. “Kim…Kim…Kim…?” It was so clear that she wondered if somebody had come around the side of the house because they’d been knocking at the front door. She went in the house and opened the front door but there was nobody there. Then she heard William’s muffled screams from upstairs. She ran up to find him underneath his blankets, red faced and in distress. How can you explain anything like that away? Derek Acorah eat your bloody heart out! We took a lot of comfort from that moment and I think mum did, too. Mum forged a tight bond with baby William and I think he helped her through that difficult first year without dad. She’d come up once a week and take him away for the day to give us a breather. She loved taking him out shopping or round to see her friends, and they are like two peas in a pod to this day. So I’d lost one William and gained another. One out, one in, just like the silly old sod had said.
Chapter 8: Ollie and the Chocolate Factory
My first year back at Rovers had been an emotional rollercoaster for me, and sometimes I wonder how I managed to get through it, but football is a wonderful panacea and for me, playing regularly in familiar surroundings was exactly what I needed. I say familiar, but we were now playing at Twerton Park, home of Bath City FC, and it wasn’t quite the same old Rovers anymore.
Gerry Francis had gathered together a great group of lads, many of whom had gone out of league football into non-league, and then come back into the league with Rovers, but I knew virtually all of them and they were good, down-to-earth people. Twerton was a ramshackled old ground and I think visiting teams found the sloping ground and facilities tough to deal with. The visitors’ dressing rooms were horrendous and I don’t think anybody really fancied playing us there. We liked it though, because the pitch was quite narrow and tight, which suited our style of closing teams down, and I quickly learned just how organised Gerry was as a manager. He was very positive and methodical and you knew what day it was just by the training session we were doing. He’d been a winner all his life and he was a winner in everything he did. He had a great eye for a player, too, as proved by the goalie he’d brought in from a Cornish non-league side called St Blazey. A lot of people have claimed to have discovered Nigel Martyn, but if I reveal the true identity of the undercover scout to be Vi Harris, our tea lady from Eastville, it might just about sum up Bristol Rovers FC! Vi had been on holiday in Cornwall and she invited Nigel up after seeing him play in a game while she was down there. Can you imagine Dot the Tea Lady at Arsenal inviting some kid down to a session for Arsène Wenger to run the rule at? No, me neither. Vi told Gerry that she’d asked him to come up for a trial and when he arrived he was absolutely spot-on. Des Bulpin put Nigel through his paces with the reserves and then ran over to Gerry and said, “My God, I think we’ve got one here. Come over and have a look at him.” Twenty minutes later, Nigel was training with the first team and no matter what we tried, we just couldn’t beat him. We already had a fantastic keeper in Nicky Carter, but Gerry signed Nigel on anyway. You wouldn’t think it could happen that a bloke just walks in off the street and is taken on, would you? But that’s exactly how Nigel began his career.
Big Devon White was another lad who’d come back into league football from non-league. Gerry remembered playing against him a few years before when he was looking to bring in a powerful striker and he thought of Big Dev who was then at Shepshed Charterhouse, playing part-time and working as an electrician. In a way, Gerry was building a team of renegades – lost souls, if you like.
Everyone got along well and I’d missed that kind of camaraderie during my time with Wimbledon and it was the kind of atmosphere I needed to be among. Another member of the squad, Andy Reece, was discovered in much the same way as Nigel Martyn, only his was more like a dream come true.
Kenny Hibbitt was still living in Birmingham and he was walking his dog one morning when he stopped to watch Goodyear Tyres playing a game on a nearby field. One player in particular, Andy Reece, caught his eye and at the end, Ken went over and asked him if he’d like to come to Rovers for a trial. Andy thought he was being wound up by one of his mates, because he was a huge Wolves fan and Ken was one of his heroes. Andy came up, impressed Gerry as well and was signed on, so we had Nigel who had been stacking shelves in a supermarket and Andy who had been working in a tyre factory. Andy was on such a high because for him, it was unbelievable to be there, and that lifted everybody.
I still wasn’t playing anywhere near my best and was out on the right wing. I was lucky the Rovers fans remembered me from my first spell because they were patient with me when in truth I was toiling a bit. Then, at home to Sunderland, Kenny Hibbitt was on the end of a nasty tackle that broke his leg. That inspired us to go on and beat them 4-0, but it also meant I moved into the middle, with Andy Reece alongside me and David Mehew switching from up front to out on the right. We formed quite a solid unit with Phil Purnell on the left and Pen up front. Gerry kept working with us to make us better, too.
I think the main ingredient to the team was that almost every one of us had something to prove. There were no stars, everyone was equal and the spirit we had was fantastic. We trained at Fry’s Chocolate factory out at Keynsham, where the facilities were outstanding – but not owned by us – and typical Bristol Rovers, our dressing room was a portacabin out in the car park. We’d have our lunch with the factory workers – some were City fans, some were Rovers, and we’d occasionally go on factory tours and have skittle nights with them – it was a nice atmosphere.
Our kit man Ray Kendall was superb – he did everything and was Mr Bristol Rovers in my book. He used to say, “I can do a thousand jobs, but not a thousand and one, Ollie.”
He’d pack the kit, take it over to Twerton in a van, make the place ours, then go and serve drinks in the boardroom. He’d take down all the Bath City pictures and put ours up and it must have been like moving house every week for him! He was an absolute ringer too for Darren’s boss out of the old TV series Bewitched – a fantastic character that everyone loved. He did more for that club than anybody I knew and, as an example of how bad things had become financially at Rovers, there was an occasion when we had a game cancelled a few hours before kick-off and Ray was up in the boardroom and the chairman, Mr Dunford Senior, saw him preparing to throw a tray of sandwiches away. He told him, “You can’t throw those away, Ray. You’ll have to take them home and freeze them.” Ray said he wouldn’t, so the chairman took them instead and brought them back a week or so later for the re-arranged date. The sandwiches had just about thawed when the referee decided the game couldn’t go ahead on that day either, and called it off again. Mr Dunford was about to take the sandwiches home to re-freeze again, but before everyone was struck down with salmonella, Ray said, “Sorry Mr Chairman, they’ve got to go in the bin this time.” Mr Dunford once told him that he was being extravagant with his sandwich making, telling him, “Ray, cheese is fine, we don’t need to use tomatoes as well.”
If any of the lads would moan about the kit or suchlike, Ray would come out with these gems and say, “You lot think you’ve got it hard? You should try doing my fecking job for a day.” He probably kept that club together single-handedly, and he was woven into the fabric of Bristol Rovers. People like Ray made me glad to be home again.
Gerry Francis is a fierce competitor, but I didn’t realise quite how bad he was until we travelled to play a friendly in the pre-season of the 1987/88 campaign. Gerry hates losing at anything and I’d put money on him blowing a fuse if he lost paper, scissors, rock. Kenny Hibbitt was still playing, and I didn’t know either of them that well when I re-signed for Rovers. We arrived early for the friendly and Gerry
asked me and Pen to play him in a game of darts. He teamed up with Ken, who said he didn’t really play, but Gerry coerced him into it and I felt a bit sorry for him because he clearly didn’t want to.
Pen and me were OK, but no great shakes, but were winning all the same. Pen started winding Gerry up and I thought, ‘Christ, you don’t want to upset this bloke, Pen.’ Gerry had quite a temper but Pen knew him better than I did and he could get away with things the rest of us couldn’t. The next thing, Gerry starts having a row with Ken. “Come on!” he said. “What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you taking
this seriously?”
Ken said, “Shut up! I didn’t want to play in the first place!” They continued arguing and Pen was loving it, chuckling away to himself. I thought, ‘My God, what is this bloke all about?’ I was on the end of a bollocking from Gerry once as well – you tended to only upset him once if you could manage it – you wouldn’t want to do it twice. I’d been having a beast of a game away to Torquay and during the team-talk I started to say, “Come on, let’s…” Gerry turned to me.
“Shut your fucking mouth. I’m speaking. Shut the fuck up.” He carried on talking to the team and I muttered something under my breath and he turned back to me. “Right, get fucking off and shut your mouth or I’ll put you through that fucking wall you little (C U Next Tuesday!)” It shocked me I think, because I felt he’d meant what he said. As the lads went out Gerry waited until there was just me and him in the dressing room and said, “Look, I didn’t mean anything nasty by that, but there’s got be just one voice. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I tucked it away in my top pocket because I agreed with what he said. It was all part of learning and Gerry epitomised winning, for me. I’d run through a brick wall for someone who wanted to win, because that’s the way I felt and I’d finally met somebody who I felt was just like me, only he’d played for England, too. He’d lost a few years from his career because of a back injury so he still had the drive to succeed and it was bloody infectious, trust me. I’d always wanted this for Rovers – somebody who believed and cared as much as he did and he made us all feel valued as well. Looking back, he was a bit like my old man. He’d have a bark up every now and then, but I had a total respect for him. Then I lost my dad and I suppose it was Gerry that I was now trying to please instead and I think that really helped my career. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was just the start of a long association with him, nor did I realise what an influence he would have over my playing and managerial career. He did things in training that couldn’t help but inspire you to learn and do better. He’d been retired for a couple of years but we couldn’t get the ball off him or Ken in training, and it was like that for about two-and-a-half years – they were, in fact, better than the players we were up against every Saturday. Their legs might have been slower but their brains were still razor sharp and with them both having played in my position, it helped me again.
Gerry had a knack of changing players’ positions to great effect, more so than any other manager I’d ever worked with. Ian Alexander was a winger and he put him at full-back and with Pen playing in midfield, he said to him, “Your talents are better suited up front, son.” It was funny in a way because Pen had played up front as a kid and I’d been a centre midfielder back then, but we’d ended up playing out of position for the majority of our careers up to that point. Gerry looked at our strengths and weaknesses and decided to move us around to what in fact were our natural positions, and it takes a top drawer manager to do that in my opinion.
We only had a small squad with no resources as such, so he had to work hard with the players he had and to a man, he made us all better players. We knew that if we made a mistake during one game, we’d half a chance of putting that right the following week. The Rovers I’d left three years earlier had actually been a bigger club because we had an A team, a reserve side that you had to play well to get into, but all that was gone and the focus seemed to be on penny-pinching and cut-backs rather than investing in the team. I noticed a huge difference, but it actually had resulted in making it a closer-knit club – more human – because we were up against it and all in it together. The club was actually being run as though it was in administration, so it was good practice for me considering what was ahead for me in future years. We had an attitude of ‘we might not have much, but what we have got we’re going to make the best of.’ It was a very special feeling, hard to describe in fact, but we all had points to prove and a drive to do better – and none more than Gerry who’d come to Rovers from Exeter City, where things hadn’t gone too well for him. It was Gerry’s last chance saloon and we all bought into his enthusiasm and belief. I worked on my fitness and got my head together again after dad’s death, and I used the grief and anger I had still in me to positive effect. I still felt cheated that dad wasn’t around but I did feel he was with me every time I played. We finished the season with a winning mentality, having won nine of the 13 games prior to our final match at Brighton. We lost that 2-1, but Gerry was really good at putting things into perspective and he always had a pile of stats to back up what he was saying. He said, “All we need to do is turn six or eight of the defeats we’ve had this year into draws and we have a great chance of going up, but you’ve all got to listen to me, because where the hell were you lot heading when you did what you thought was right? Make sure you listen and we’ll do OK.” He held a group of people in the palm of his hand. We were hungry, determined and all had points to prove. He made us believe we could do it. I was back to my best and relishing my football again. We finished eighth in the 1987/88 season, which wasn’t bad considering we were all still knitting together, but I think we all knew we were on the verge of something good. Pen had finished top scorer with 24 goals in all competitions, endorsing Gerry’s decision to play him up front and we thought we had a really good chance of going up the next season.
I felt good in myself and was still only 25. Kim and I were very settled in Bristol, I had my little boy and I was ready to push on and show the world
what Ian Holloway was all about. It was upwards and onwards from here on in. Or was it...?
Chapter 9: Rise of the Gas Heads
We made a solid start to the 1988/89 season and were there or thereabouts for most of the season. William was coming up to his first birthday in March ‘89 and then we had the news that would change our lives forever. We’d always wanted any kids we had to grow up close together and not too far apart age-wise, so when Kim discovered she was pregnant again, we were obviously ecstatic, but the first scan showed we wouldn’t be expanding our little family from three to four – it was going from three to five. I’d been watching the scan on the monitor and thought there was a little blob of gel on the screen and the nurse said, “Oh, you know what that means don’t you?”
Kim said, “Yeah…”
I said I didn’t and the nurse said, “That’s two heads you can see, there. Identical twins.” She got a doctor in to try and find a separate sack, but there clearly wasn’t one, meaning they would be identical. It was pretty amazing and I was absolutely made up. All of a sudden the family I’d wanted was going to be here inside two years. “Great!” I said, “There’ll be no arguing.” But Kim grasped the gravity of the situation a lot quicker than I’d done and she realised how hard it was going to be. I was floating on air and it wasn’t long before we were out looking at double buggies and kitting out their room. If I ever saw anyone with twins I’d go up and ask them what it was like. I couldn’t wait for their birth and it was like all my dreams were finally coming true.
The football was great too, and Rovers were powering towards the play-offs and we’d beaten City away thanks to a fantastic goal from Pen in front of more than 23,000 at Ashton Gate. Winning at City is always a fantastic day for a Gas Head – the name Rovers fans are known by because of the two big gas tanks that used to sit behind Eastville. Our fans called their lot ‘the Shitheads’, because the river that ran close to
Ashton Gate didn’t always smell the best, or more likely our fans are that unimaginative that they just tagged the most insulting nickname together. Pen was on fire and banging in the goals for fun, and with five games left we had a real chance of going up – but we chose a shocking time to hit a patch of bad form and we failed to win any of them, including two games against teams just above us in Fulham and Port Vale. We finished sixth, meaning we would play Fulham in the play-offs. We’d already beaten them 2-0 away and drawn 0-0 at Twerton so we weren’t afraid of them at all.
The first leg was at home, but the date of the game caused a big problem for Geoff Twentyman who was scheduled to be best man at his brother’s wedding the day before the first leg. Geoff had asked Gerry at the start of the season if he was OK with the date and he said it was no problem. He didn’t say that it wouldn’t be OK if we got into the play-offs so when he told Gerry he’d have to miss training the day before our match with Fulham, he was understandably upset when Gerry told him, “You miss training because of that and you won’t be playing in my team.”
Geoff said. “I am going because you gave me permission,” and a right ruck followed, which was badly-timed to say the least. Geoff did miss training and I feel he was right because it was only a training session. Gerry was a stickler for preparation, though, and training was his time and his chance to get things right, so where perhaps other managers might have seen it as not the end of the world, Gerry saw it as being as important as the game itself in many ways. I think we could have gone through the set-plays he particularly wanted the day before, but that didn’t happen. We were all pretty brassed off about the situation but I was good mates with the lad who would be taking Geoff’s place – a man we called ‘The Judge’ because he’d sat on the bench so many times that season – Billy Clark. He called himself ‘Splinters’ but he was obviously happy to
