by Ian Holloway
So there’s a meeting after the game and I’m fuming inside because I’d said some things that Gerry hadn’t, and for me, it was all about winning, not the formation we played and whether it suited certain players better than others. It wasn’t about Don Howe or Gerry Francis – it was about us beating Man City, and for me, the only consistent thing you should give your manager and – more importantly – your supporters, is your effort. It isn’t about your ability, it’s your goddamned effort – so Roy could do what he liked and because he could do things with a ball nobody else could, no-one said a word to him, but I wasn’t going to accept him not working as hard as the rest of us.When Gerry said well done, Roy pipes up, “Oh it was the tactics, Gerry. They suited us better in the second half.” Alan McDonald, the skipper, sort of said the same thing and I said, “That’s absolute bollocks!” Gerry looked a bit shocked at that, but I was going to say my piece. “The difference is, Roy, you worked your ass off in the second half and ran, chased and put your foot in. In the first half you didn’t put a fucking ounce of effort in because you didn’t agree with the tactics.” Alan McDonald stood up and said, “How dare you say that to Roy Wegerle.”
I said, “Fuck off! You’re the captain so you should have been saying that to him instead of me because he hasn’t worked as hard as you did in the first half, but you’ve got a problem because you are letting him get away with it!”
Roy said, “Sometimes it’s just meant to be, Ollie.”
I said, “Yeah, but isn’t it meant to be that you run back and put a foot in as hard as everybody else? I’d rather go back to Bristol because we didn’t like losing there, we worked our ass off, there wasn’t anyone who was better than anyone else and you know what? I miss those lads. If this is what playing at the highest level is all about, I don’t want it. This is bullshit. If you’re in the same team as me we go out and try to win every game, not just one week and not the next. You’re meant to chase back and put a foot in.”I sat down again and started to get changed. I’d got it off my chest and stood up to them, and in later years I asked Gerry why he hadn’t said that to them, and he said, “Ollie, you don’t understand. It’s the politics of a football club.” Now I’m a manager, I do understand but I still say exactly what I want to my players, over and over again, no matter what the goddamned politics are. If you’re poncing about claiming that if you get the ball, you’ll win your team the game, it’s not good enough and I wouldn’t pick somebody who said that.
Sometimes I stepped in where perhaps Gerry could have, but he hadn’t heard what was being said behind his back in all fairness. It wasn’t about being a creep to the boss – I believed in Gerry and felt everybody else should, too.We’d needed a clear-the-air talk and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but there was a definite upturn in certain individuals’ attitude and just a few games later – having not been beaten since – everything came together in one of the most incredible 90 minutes of football I’d ever taken part in.
There was no prouder moment for me as a player than when we went to Old Trafford on New Year’s Day 1992. What a day that was! It was the first time I’d played against Manchester United and it was live on TV, too. I spent most of the pre-match on the toilet – it was all happening and my hors d’oeuvres had completely gone. I’d been told at the hotel I was in the team and I was so excited and nervous that when Gerry shouted for us all to gather round for his final team talk before the game he said, “Where’s Ollie?”I shouted from the toilet, “Carry on, I’m gonna have to stay in here while you do it.”A few of the lads were laughing, but when I get nervous, my system goes into overdrive. I wasn’t the only one who was feeling it, and Darren Peacock and a few others were suffering, too, but when Gerry called out the United team, there were two or three big names missing, including Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis. Fergie obviously thought that with United being top of the table, he could rest a few players because they were playing QPR, and we took something from that. I hadn’t touched the ball with 15 minutes on the clock yet we were 2-0 up – unbelievable! Simon Barker and Dennis Bailey had scored the goals. It was absolutely amazing, but Bailey was playing without fear and giving Bruce and Pallister all kinds of problems. We went in at the break still two goals to the good and then made it 3-0 in the second half through Bailey again. United pulled a goal back but Bailey completed his hat-trick to make the final score Man United 1, QPR 4. It was a fantastic day for me and a proud day for our club. We ended the 91/92 campaign full of confidence and with a great team spirit. The first game of the 92/93 season was also the first ever Sky Monday Night Football match. The First Division had become the Premiership and we were away to Man City. There were cheerleaders, fireworks and a PA system that was shaking the whole ground. The times they were a changin’, as some American singer once said. One end of Maine Road was just a building site as they rebuilt the Platt Lane, but there was a great atmosphere and you could see that as a player, the Premiership was going to be the only place to be. We went 1-0 down to a David White goal – he always seemed to score against us – but Andy Sinton fired home an equaliser and we left with a 1-1 draw.
Another game that sticks in the memory from that season was against Chelsea, who’d brought in Ruud Gullit as the first really big-name foreign import. Gullit was a man-mountain and an incredible talent, and Gerry told me I had to mark him! Let’s just say things didn’t go so well that afternoon and there was a moment during the game when Gullit was in front of me. I knew I had Rufus Brevitt about 10 yards behind me but Gullit just pushes the ball about 15 yards in front of himself and runs past me with a couple of strides. He glided past despite my best efforts but I thought Rufus would catch him because he was quick and would tackle his grandmother, given the chance, but he left him for dead, too, and got in a cross which Chelsea almost scored from, and I say, “Jesus, were you trying then, Ruf?” He shook his head and said, “Bloody hell! How quick was he?” Ruud reminded me of the alien in the movie Predator – same haircut, same build, plus he seemed to be equipped with advanced weaponry. He was brilliant, and the closest I got to him was in the bar after the game. It was an absolute pleasure to be playing with or against the calibre of player he was. I never lost my will to play or sense of justice, though, and appreciative though I was, if something didn’t feel fair, I wasn’t going to just sit there with a sycophantic grin on my face because I’d come to a top-flight club from Ragbag Rovers. On one occasion I learned I’d been dropped and replaced by Ray Wilkins and I didn’t think I deserved to be dropped, so when training came around I decided I was going to have Wilkins – it wasn’t his fault but he was my target to redress my sense of justice. He knew it too, and I have to say that I was given the biggest runaround I’d ever been given by anyone. Ray was laughing during the session and I was four passes behind him every time – he was thinking that far ahead of me. At the end, he was the perfect gentleman – as ever – and he shook my hand and said, “I apologise for being selected ahead of you – thank you for helping me train as well as we did this morning.” Then he added, “By the way, if your mate Penrice can play like he did this morning on a regular basis, he should play for England.” As we walked back to the changing rooms I said, “I don’t ever want to give the ball away,” and Ray said, “Well I don’t look at it that way. I don’t ever want to be caught with the ball – if you’re caught with the ball it means you don’t know your next pass and you’re not thinking the right way.” I took that into my game immediately and it made a hell of a difference. He added, “You have to keep hold of your self-esteem too, because your confidence belongs to you, son.”
Ray was different class and to illustrate the point, when Gerry brought big Devon White to Loftus Road, the Rangers fans were laughing at him because he was gangly and looked awkward, but Ray would say to him, “Come on, son! You’re better than you think! Come on, you can do this!” and the difference it made to Devon was immense, and it proved to me what a class man Ray was, as well as a
top player.
Midway through the 1992/93 season the club began to discuss a new deal with me and I extended my contract by a further two years. Our standard of living improved after I’d agreed a pay rise and the club got me a better car. Things were going well and one game that sticks in my mind was all down to the wit and wisdom of Pen. We were playing Swindon Town in an FA Cup third round tie at Loftus Road, and we beat them 3-0. I had a bit of a good game that night and Pen scored, too, so we were both quite happy on the journey home. I was driving and Pen says, “Oll, I’m starving, pull over.” We stopped outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken and he asked me if I wanted anything – I wasn’t hungry so said ‘no’.
“Go on have some.”
“No, I don’t want anything. Not that, anyway.”
Pen has an annoying habit of not listening to you, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he came out with two boxes, one for him, one for me. “There you go, mate.”
“I told you I didn’t want anything.” “Go on, have it.” So I did. I know I didn’t have to, but he’d talked me into it. A day later and I was crapping through the eye of a needle. I had the military two-step – I couldn’t be more than two steps away from the toilet. I was being sick, too, and I couldn’t go into work. It was that bad that I went to see my local GP and he told me I’d got food poisoning. Cheers, Pen. I called him up and told him and a bit later, he came round to see me. He couldn’t stop laughing at me and I was laid up for two days and had lost a stone. He came into see me before the trip to Middlesbrough and Pen says, “Jesus, Oll – you’ve lost some weight haven’t you? You look like a nose with eyes.” To be fair, he was right! He carried on taking the piss and I said, “I didn’t even want it, you idiot.”
He carries on laughing and says, “How’s your luck, then. You get the dodgy one, I get the good one.”
As it turned out, he played at Middlesbrough and his luck was out this time because he broke his leg, and a few days later, his wife drove him round to see me. He had a full leg cast on and was on crutches, and as soon as he saw me he said, “Oh you don’t have to say it! I took the piss out of you, you don’t have to say it.”
I said, “Well that’s great isn’t it? I’d rather have what I’ve got than what you’ve got. In a week I’ll be fine, you idiot.” Pen sees the funny side of everything and he’s a nightmare, but a great mate, and totally irrepressible. One in a million, in fact.
Ironically, I picked up a bad injury away to Aston Villa that kept me out of the last nine weeks of the season. It was bloody painful too – a knee up the arse from Shaun Teale, their central defender. I had to go in five days a week for treatment on what turned out to be a fractured pelvis. At first the physios thought it was no more than bruising and five weeks in I started running again. I set off and after about three minutes, my leg went completely numb so I had to stop and x-rays showed there was a small crack in my pelvic bone. Gerry didn’t like injured players and was always trying to get me to play. “Come on, it’s only a bloody bruise, what’s the matter with you?”
I said, “Actually Gerry, I think it’s a haematoma...” The minute the words had come out, I regretted it.
“A haema-fucking-toma? What the fuck is that?”
It wasn’t until Gerry’s – and my – third season at Loftus Road that things really began to click. We started with a couple of heavy defeats, 4-1 at Villa and 3-1 at home to Liverpool, but we lost just three of the next 16 league and cup games and by the time we were due to play away at bottom-of-the-table Swindon Town, we had a chance to go second in the Premiership. It was a midweek game and we were doing so well, but we lost 1-0 and it was infuriating. I still felt we didn’t have enough fight in the side and every time we had a chance to put pressure on the leaders, we blew it. We didn’t have the ruthless streak needed to become champions and I wondered if we ever would.
Then came a point in the season when we all started arguing and there was a lot of moaning and whingeing. There were rumours that Darren Peacock was going to be sold for £2m and on one particular day I was on my way to the treatment room when I heard Dave Bardsley say, “Oh, yeah, he’s a real ham and egger.” My old mate, Steve Yates, a fantastic young centre-half, was rumoured to be on his way from Bristol Rovers and as soon as I walked in, it went silent. Dave, Les Ferdinand and Alan McDonald were all sat waiting for treatment and were three of the biggest wind-up merchants at the club. They’d all been at the club a while and maybe one or two of them felt a bit threatened by Yates arriving. We were also possibly bringing Trevor Sinclair in as well, with Andy Sinton set to leave, so it was a bit of an unsettling time for one or two of the lads. I put two and two together and said, “I hope you’re not on about my mate being a ham and egger.” A ham and egger was another way of saying ‘useless’ or ‘rubbish’ – you were either ham and eggs or caviar. Dave said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Steve Yates – I hope you’re not calling him a ham and egger.”
“Yeah, but Darren’s done really well and Sinners...”
“You are, aren’t you, Dave?” Les Ferdinand had begun chuckling by this point because he always found me and Pen quite amusing, but I hadn’t finished yet. “How can you be so judgmental? Were you born and bred a Premiership player or did you signed on from Blackpool? By the way, if Yates is a ham and egger at £750,000, what does that make me? Double ham and eggs?”
Macca piped up and started to say something along the lines of I was taking things too seriously, and I said to him, “the trouble with you lot is you’re too judgmental. Yatesy hasn’t even signed yet but he’s a damned good defender and if I was you Macca, I’d be worried because what if Gerry doesn’t sell Peacock? Yatesy is a brilliant centre-half so you might be out of a job. Bit worried are you?”
Macca said, “Why don’t you get your international caps on the table, then Oll?”
Macca had played for Northern Ireland fairly regularly and Les Ferdinand was just breaking into the England team. I said, “Hang on, how many international games have you actually won? It’s alright getting a load of caps but if you lose every time you play, what’s the point?”
I had the raving hump by that time and we were due out for training. They were trying to hush me up as we lined up in a circle outside, but I wasn’t having any of it. “Les has got a real cap Macca, but you ain’t.” Les was chuckling away to himself by this point so I turned it around on myself and said, “Anyway, I could have qualified for the Faroe Islands, but they told me they weren’t interested, but even they’ve won more internationals than your lot, Macca.”
I carried on for a bit, telling them to let the “ham and egger,” have a go when it was my turn. I christened myself ‘double ham and eggs’ after that. I spoke up when I thought I needed to and I stood up for others when I felt it necessary – I was just doing what dad had told me to do all those years ago and I hoped he’d be proud of the man I’d become. I don’t want this to come across as though I don’t like Alan McDonald, because I did. Macca was a great bloke and you couldn’t help but like the fella, it’s just sometimes I didn’t agree with some of the things he said or did. He was actually one of the best centre-halves I had the pleasure of playing with and he could pass it like a midfielder, it’s just that we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but the secret of that is to not take things personally. He’d been at QPR a long time and sometimes, as I’d find out when I later became a manager, that can become a problem. I think my biggest mistake was trying to make QPR into Bristol Rovers, which I could never have done. It was a totally different set-up, different players and different fans, but I didn’t perhaps realise that until later on.
I was 31 by this point and I was thinking about what I would do after I finished playing. Working under Gerry had made me think about coaching because I believed in his methods that much. He actually taught players how to improve their game, no matter how many international caps they had, and he’d made teams from vir
tually nothing. I’d been keeping notes for years about training and different sessions I’d been involved with, so the seed was firmly planted in my mind. But I felt as fit as a butcher’s dog and knew I had maybe three or four good years left in me. We finished fifth in the Premiership in 93/94 and were the top London club, which Gerry had a bit of a crow about. But I still wasn’t happy because I felt we could have finished higher – at least third, but we just hadn’t collectively turned up in one or two games, and Swindon, who barely managed to get double figures in points that season, beat us home and away, which sort of illustrates the point, doesn’t it?
Chapter 13: Ray of Light
The girls’ schooling was getting desperate by the time the season had ended and we couldn’t continue the way we were. The twins were coming up to four and had to go in a taxi to their school in Reading every day and it was getting harder and harder for them, so we decided to move back to Bristol so they could attend an excellent deaf school in the city. There, they would have times in the day when they did BSL, then they’d do sign-supported English, then English, and we wanted them to have a grasp of all three languages to assist their development. Hattie would be able to go there too, in another year or so, hence it was a move that made complete sense. I was prepared to drive from Bristol to London five days a week because driving had never bothered me and the reason I’d be making the journey was well worth it. Plus we’d be back near our families and it’d be good for the kids to see their grandparents and aunts, uncles and cousins on a regular basis.
