by Ian Holloway
be playing. Pen told everyone, “Don’t worry, I’ll get the goals that will take us up,” and he did score a great goal to win the first leg 1-0 in front of a sell-out Twerton Park.
The second leg was something close to football heaven for our lads. It was like the Alamo in the first half and Nigel Martyn was absolutely incredible that night, saving shots that looked impossible and keeping us in the game up until half-time. Had it not been for him, I reckon we’d have been dead and buried after just 45 minutes. As it was, we were still 1-0 up and after the break, we ran away with it. Our first goal came from a set play and The Judge scored with a header at the near-post, and not long after that, they had a lad sent off and then collapsed. We went 3-0 up in a short space of time before I made it 4-0 with a deft little chip over Jim Stannard – biggest keeper in the world – pick that out you big lummock! All that stood in our way now was Port Vale for a place in Division Three.
Pen scored a screamer to put us ahead in the first game and then they had a shot that was going miles wide – until Robbie Earle threw himself at it and equalised with a diving header to make it 1-1, and he scored what would be the only goal of the return game with just a few seconds remaining at Vale Park. There was one thing from that game that, despite the pain and disappointment we felt, still makes me chuckle today. Just after they scored, I was walking back towards the centre spot and I looked over to Pen as their crowd went bananas, spilling over onto the pitch, and he was laughing and pointing at something. I thought, ‘What’s he found so funny?’ and looked to where he was pointing to see one of those little turquoise disabled cars absolutely bombing down the touchline knocking fans over as he went. Whether the driver was celebrating or trying to keep people off the pitch, I’ll never know, but it was surreal and even though I was pissy as hell, I had to laugh because I’d never seen anything like it. We just about kicked off again and the referee blew for full-time. We were absolutely shattered, but as we slumped down in the dressing room, Gerry gave one of the most poignant speeches I think I’ve ever heard from any manager. He said, “Don’t you be ashamed to cry.” My dad had always told me not to cry and would give me a whack when I did, but now my ‘new dad’ was telling us all it was OK and I looked around and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place because the thought of all that hard work and the 50 games we’d played had all been in vain, was just too much. Gerry went on, “For all those days when you think it’s hard, think about every game, think about how fit you need to be and think about how hard we’re going to work next year and how we’re going to keep this pain in our heart like a burning ember, and make sure we don’t ever experience it again. You can do it, you’re good enough and we lost out on promotion by one goal. Remember that.” You could have heard a pin drop by the time he’d finished, and then he told us how proud he was of us all and that we should be proud of ourselves. It felt like a ray of sunshine slicing through your body.
By the end of our coach journey home, I think it was cemented in our minds. It sounds daft, but we knew we wouldn’t fail next time. Gerry’s words made us focus on what we needed to do. It was inspired stuff and the mark of not only a very clever manager, but a great man, too.
The club took us away shortly after the defeat to Vale and we flew out to Majorca. It was the first time I think they’d ever done anything like that and whenever I bumped into families with twins, I’d stop and talk with them for a while. Kim only had a few months to go by that point and was huge. There were also a lot of rumours that Gerry would be leaving, and as he wasn’t on the trip, we wondered whether he’d still be there come August.
Kenny Hibbitt was sort of in charge, which was rare, because Gerry never let him do too much. I don’t think it went down too well with Kenny’s missus and he’d been reluctant to go because of that, but we were all glad he had because he was a top man with a very dry sense of humour. I’m not sure how I got away on that trip while my wife was heavily pregnant with twins with a one-year-old baby, though I can assure you Kim had an opinion on it! It was a comical few days because everywhere we went people were mistaking Ken for his brother Terry Hibbitt of Newcastle United. Pen and Andy Reece were always winding him up about it and on one particular day we met a bloke who used to play for Crystal Palace and he was chatting to Ken all day around the hotel pool. When this bloke went for a drink, Pen said, “Oh he knows you then?” and Ken said, “Yeah, he does. He won’t get me mixed up with our kid, no chance.” An hour or so later, as we all got up to leave, the Palace player shouted, “Terry! Terry! You’ve forgotten your towel, Ter!” Ken didn’t want to turn round because he knew he’d never hear the last of it – and he didn’t. Ken’s mistaken identity wasn’t the only entertainment on that trip. Pen, Reecey and I spent the entire week engrossed by this bloke’s attempt to windsurf. Each day, he’d get up, fall off and try again. This went on for hours each time and Reecey ended up doing a commentary on it, with me and Pen in stitches. Finally, on the last day, it clicked. He got up, stayed up and then the wind caught his sail and he shot off like a bullet into the side of a glass bottomed boat.
Relaxed and still full of belief from Gerry’s speech, we started the 89/90 season on fire. We played Brentford on the opening day and beating them 1-0 felt good because I knew after that game that coming home had been the right thing to do. I also knew it was going to be our year. We won our first three games and we’d only lost once in the opening 10, and after a 0-0 draw at Bury, my two girls were born and we named them Chloe and Eve. They arrived two weeks early and I hadn’t learned a thing about the birth of our first child because the moment Kim told me her waters had broken, I went into a blind panic. We made it to hospital at speed and Kim was given an epidural. Chloe arrived first after about seven hours, but as she came out, Eve dropped down inside Kim’s tummy and she was born breach, backside first and was in a bit of trouble for a few minutes. I was rammed against a wall as the doctors tried to help her come out, because she was having difficulty breathing and it was a frightening experience to say the least. We had to wait for the top man to come in and sort it all out and I could hear him sauntering down the corridor, whistling. He walked in eating a sandwich, cool as a cucumber and took about a minute to assess the situation before freeing Eve and bringing her out into the world with a couple of swift moves. It was incredible and thank God there are people like that on hand when you need them. She was blue, and it seemed like an age before she started crying and I felt the relief wash over me. I was given Chloe wrapped up in a nice clean blanket and not long after I was handed Eve. I was sat in the chair, looking at two little miracles and was chuffed as a badger, I suddenly thought, ‘How can I put one of them down?’ It was a simple thought, but it was the first clue that these two little angels/rascals were going to have an incredible impact on our lives, though we could never have guessed quite how huge that impact would be. I went home and was still floating on air, and my mum and brother were waiting and I called up my sister, and it’s fair to say the Holloways were a bit emotional that day.
I took William in to see his new sisters the following day and I was told by one of the nurses that there was a call for me in their office. I went along expecting it to be one of the lads’ wives – Sue Jones, wife of Rovers centre-back Vaughan Jones, was who the caller claimed to be. I thought she was calling to congratulate us both and as I said hello, a woman on the other end said, “I hope your kids die you bastard!” It took me by surprise and it was upsetting,
if I’m truthful and I walked back to Kim feeling a bit shocked. Why bother
doing something like that? It was beyond me, but in hindsight maybe it was a Rovers-City thing – I’ll never know for sure.
A few days later and Kim and the twins came home and after about an hour I said to her, “Is this how they are all the time? Dear me!” They were crying and screaming for food constantly – it was unbelievable! I’d put one down, pick the other one up, then there was William to tend to – the maths just weren’t w
orking out. We upgraded our car to a black Sierra Sapphire and had three baby seats in the back. This was going to be the biggest challenge of our lives, but of course, it was one we’d desperately wanted.
Back at Rovers, Pen proved too valuable for the club to hold on to and he went off to Watford for £500,000. He’d been linked with a number of big clubs and Gerry had told him that if a top six side came in for him, he’d let him go, but when Glasgow Rangers made an offer, he didn’t let him go! He said, “Well they’re not a top six club in England, are they?”
Pen wanted to go because he wanted to better his career and everyone understood that. He didn’t want to stay because he didn’t feel the club were looking after him financially – at one point he’d threatened to turn up at training with his plumber’s bag and demand the club ripped up his contract and he’d return to plumbing. He’d have done it as well because he was a bloody hot-head when he had a mind to be. Eventually the best thing seemed to be for him to move on. Gerry brought Tony Sealy in on a free as Pen’s replacement, and then four games later, Nigel Martyn went to Crystal Palace for £1m – and in return, we got their keeper Brian Parkin as part of the deal. I called Parky ‘Mr Glum’ because he couldn’t understand how he’d gone from being Palace’s
No 1 and playing all the previous season, to picking up an injury in pre-season, missing the first 10 games and then finding himself at Bristol Rovers – I suppose he had a point! I told him to shut up and get on with it because he was now our first choice goalie, and to be fair to him he bought straight into our collective thinking and was absolutely superb.
So we had a million and a half in the bank and we were still winning games and playing well. Then, going into the New Year, Gerry finds a fella called Carl Saunders. He’d looked through the previous couple of years’ goal charts and he saw Carl had scored 18 goals one season when he played as a striker, but was now playing at Stoke City as a full-back. He sent Kenny out to see him, liked what the report said and signed him as a striker. Carl scored two goals on his debut and a hat-trick in his third game! Not a bad start. We played fairly direct and he fed off Devon White, though he didn’t score another league goal that season. Gerry had us well drilled and we were playing some great stuff. We had David Mehew and Phil Purnell on the wings, Devon and Carl up front. Steve Yates gave us plenty of pace at the back, Geoff Twentyman was dominant in the air and we also had two fantastic full-backs in Ian Alexander, who didn’t understand the meaning of the phrase ‘lost cause’ and would never give anything up, and Vaughan Jones who was a terrific left-back. We had it all, and it was between us and Bristol City, would you believe, for the title.
Chapter 10: None Shall Sleep
Back home, Kim and I were having to get up to feed the girls every hour throughout the night. It was exhausting and the only thing that kept us sane was our family support network which was second to none. My sister would take all three kids on a Friday night and it could never come around quickly enough. Without Sue and her husband Phil, my mum and Kim’s parents, I’m not sure whether we’d have managed to get through that intense period without losing the plot completely. Friday gave us something to look forward to because we knew we had two nights of sleep to recharge our batteries. The girls’ arrival meant that, being a natural worrier, I didn’t have time to worry anymore.
Back at Rovers, we proved what a gutsy bunch of sods we were by going on an incredible run in the spring. There were six games where we trailed 1-0 down in each match, and came back to win 2-1. We won one and drew three of our next four games leaving us with five games to go, and we still had to play three of the teams around us. Bristol City looked home and dry and were well clear of everyone else, and the remaining place was realistically between Rovers and Notts County, managed then by Neil Warnock. City needed one more win to go up and would be our penultimate game of the season. We had been scheduled to play them a few months before, but it had been postponed. They wanted the re-arranged game to be as late in the season as possible because obviously, we weren’t going to make it easy and it wasn’t unthinkable that they could win promotion on our own ground. Gerry told us to ignore that because there were enough matches left for things to change. We had an immense belief and team spirit and were still tapping into the pain of the previous season.
We went to Notts County and lost 3-1, which was a nightmare because they were the only team who could catch us, so it was very much game on again after that, but all the while, City couldn’t buy a win and we’d made up a few points on them. A win over Shrewsbury, thanks to a penalty from muggins, and another poor result for City put us just a point behind going into the derby at Twerton with the knowledge that if we won, we’d be promoted. If we drew, they’d be promoted and if they won, they’d go up as champions. We had to win, and didn’t even consider any other possibilities.The night before the game, I got a call at home at around half eleven. Our phone number was in the directory and it was another crank call, this time from someone threatening to burn my house down. Apparently they knew where I lived and if I tried too hard against City the next day, they’d carry out their threat. I thought, ‘you’re not having me, my friend,’ and wouldn’t put the phone down. They tried to hang up a couple of times and Kim wanted me to hang up, but I told her I wasn’t going to let them beat me. I kept the line open until one in the morning and it didn’t bother me about the sleep loss because I was used to it. I knew it was all bullshit, but I still wasn’t happy about it. The next day I went into work and Gerry was just about to start a speech and I said, “Gerry is it OK if I just tell the lads what happened last night?” They were all fuming about the call and there was no need to do a team-talk because we used it as our motivation, so more fool the idiot that made the call in the first place.
Twerton was rocking and as we waited in the tunnel to go out, I could see that the City skipper Rob Newman was petrified. Twerton could be an intimidating atmosphere and was live on local TV and we set about City like men possessed because this was our last chance. They couldn’t handle Devon White and the first chance he got, he scored. The ball went out to Dave Mehew, whom we called either ‘Cringer’ or ‘Battle Cat’, both characters from the Masters of the Universe cartoon. Vaughan Jones, Andy Reece and I would leather him and start giving him digs before the game saying, “Are you with us tonight, son? We need Battle Cat tonight.” So Mehew goes to cross the ball, but scuffs it to their full-back. He showed Battle Cat determination by winning it back and crossed it in again. The ball went under City defender, Andy Llewellyn’s foot and rolled on to Devon who scrambled it into the net. At half-time, Gerry, very calmly said, “Lads, we’re the better team. All you’ve got to do is keep your head. Make sure you keep doing the same thing.” We went out for the second half and I lost the ball and City almost equalised and would have, but for a fantastic save from Parky. He got up straight away, hoofed it down the field and within a few seconds Devon and Carl Saunders linked up well and Devon made it 2-0. Job half done. Then came the maddest bit of football I’d ever experienced, and it seemed time stood still for a few minutes, for me in particular. City were still in it, but we broke again and Phil Purnell fired in a shot that was palmed off the line by a defender. Dave Mehew knocked the rebound in, but the ref had already blown for a penalty. Their keeper Keith Welsh needed treatment before I could take it but for some reason, having scored two penalties in my previous two games, I felt as cocky as hell. I knew this would be the final nail in their coffin and I’d practiced taking penalties against Parky the day before, and he’d advised me to change the side I normally put it if we got a penalty. While all this was going on, the City fans were losing it big time, and Joe Jordan walked from the dug-out down to the City fans’ enclosure before things got too far out of hand and I reckon he probably stopped a riot that day. They were ripping parts of the enclosure up and throwing it onto the pitch and trying to get at the Rovers fans. I walked over to place the ball on the spot, flicking the ball up with my feet as I appr
oached to show the City fans they weren’t going to get to me, stepped back and tucked it into the bottom corner for 3-0. I hardly celebrated at all and just jogged back to the middle, very businesslike and the whistle went a few moments later. We’d done it and the place went wild. I ended up on the balcony and I wore a hat I’d been given by the parents of a young boy who’d been killed outside his school by a car a few months before. He’d gone to run around some people who were between him and his mate on the pavement and as he stepped on to the road he was struck and killed. It was awful, but his mum and dad sent me his Rovers hat. I’d taken it with me in my kit bag ever since. I’d been away and failed, but after 18 months back at Rovers I’d become someone’s favourite player again, so that hat meant a hell of a lot to me, and I thought of that kid as I celebrated and when I came to speak on the mic, I told the Rovers fans about him and felt that he was with us everywhere we went. I was a bit emotional but it was a special moment and what better occasion than when we’d just been promoted against our biggest rivals? Notts County lost their game in hand the next night so City were promoted too, without kicking a ball.
We still had to win our last game at Blackpool, who’d already been relegated, and beat them 3-0 to be crowned champions on what would have been my dad’s birthday – May 5. City won their last game 4-1 but we’d done it and went back to Bristol to celebrate in a local pub, Rovers-style. The next day I bought the paper which contained the best advert I’d ever seen. It showed the league table with a big red ring marked around us and City and underneath it said ‘Looks like a Dry Blackthorn day.’ Fantastic. We had all that and a Leyland DAF Cup final at Wembley to come against Tranmere.
