Pat Van Den Hauwe
Page 17
One night I was in a club talking to some bird with Rhino and another player when a midget of a bloke came up to me and was aggressively asking who I thought I was talking to. I swear he was only chest high to me, so I looked down at him and told him I was chatting to this lovely lady and to piss off and leave us alone. He then pointed out that the lovely lady was indeed his wife. A fight broke out and the bouncers dragged me and Keith downstairs while the midget laid in to me. We found it hilarious – he would have needed a step-ladder to headbutt me and we just pissed ourselves laughing.
As we got dragged down two flights of stairs, I was so pissed that I did not feel the pain from worst carpet burns I’d ever had. Outside, the bouncer asked if we wanted any more, but as it was apparent I already had a busted nose with blood pouring all over my shirt, I replied, ‘No thanks, I think I have had enough for one night!’
We went back to our team-mate Andy Robert’s house, who was a younger lad who still lived with his parents. The three of us crashed out in his bed and when his poor mother came into his room in the morning to wake him up she nearly had a heart-attack when she saw the state of us.
I was in and out of the side but was selected to play in the play-off decider against Derby. We lost 2–0 at their place and our chairman accused Derby of kicking us off the park, while Mick McCarthy called for the fans to get behind us and make the return leg intimidating for the visitors. He actually wrote a piece in the match programme saying, ‘The Derby fans managed to make it a hostile environment for us up there and I know from experience that they cannot hold a candle to the Millwall crowd in this department.’ He was spot on, as anyone who knows about Millwall and their fan-base will realise that the gaffer did not need to rally the troops, as even on a cold Tuesday night at a youth team game the place was as hostile as you could get.
By half-time, the game was over – we were 5–0 down on aggregate and I had suffered the embarrassment of scoring an own-goal. Our fans had seen enough and the scenes at the end were riotous, not intimidating, as Millwall thugs continually invaded the pitch and a couple of Derby players were attacked by unhappy locals.
Millwall were charged by the Football Association with failing to control our supporters in scenes they described as ‘the worst crowd violence in recent years’. Our chairman was distraught and offered to resign, saying, ‘Naturally, we are very upset by what happened. We had over 300 stewards, 200–400 police, a number of police horses and deliberately kept the lower north tier empty so there could be no possibility of conflict between the fans. We believe we took every possible precaution.’ He could have erected electric fences and had moats around the pitch with crocodiles swimming in them for all the good they’d have done; Millwall fans are a different breed and not even the severest measures would have prevented them rioting that night. They took missing out on promotion to heart and, looking back, I was partly to blame for it.
We regrouped and went on a tour of Ireland for a week but I trained only once, stayed in the hotel, and went on the Guinness big time. At same time, Keith Stevens was still mourning the death of his father and was in a bad way and really upset, so we both comforted each other. I was depressed, as the reality of my life being in such as mess hit home and I remember that sad day like it was yesterday. I had hit a new, all-time low. I was so depressed I told Andy Roberts I’d had enough and was quite simply going to jump into the sea and drown.
Basically, I could take no more – Mandy, booze, drugs, it was all too much for me. I had been 15 years on the circuit and was back to square one living in the spare room of my parents and could not cope any more with the way my life was panning out. It was just too hard to take.
I went and knocked on Mick’s door in a right mess and he was quality. I told him everything, even about the sniffing. He told me to go home and get right and that I had his full support. I told him that I thought that would be worse as I would be back in London on my own and knew I would go on the piss and score Charlie. At least I had the lads in Ireland, so he agreed I could stay with them, but I never trained and just carried on drinking, which probably made him think he was banging his head against a brick wall.
The club physio was quality, a great fella; I also told him everything and he asked me to go to his house at weekends to sort my head out, just to relax and get out of the way. That was stunning of him but, as always, I never took him up on it and carried on with the drink and drugs.
Eventually, he got me to go and see a psychiatrist, who turned out to be a complete fucking idiot. The fella was a proper old fart who was in his sixties and did not look interested in me, which at once got me agitated with him. He said he could recommend some medication that would help me and that I should come into the clinic in the morning for an injection, then back at night for some sedation medication. I looked at this pillock and said, ‘How the fuck can I play on that medication, you stupid bastard? I need to be concentrating on my football and you’re trying to numb my nut.’ I just got up and walked out and the physio asked him to forward the bill to the club before following me after half-heartedly apologising for my outburst. I needed counselling, not a nut job; it was a complete waste of time and the scene was like something out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I needed answers as to why I was off the rails, why did I have to do everything to the extreme? This twat just wanted some silly cow to stick a big needle in my arse every morning and have me wandering round like a zombie all day before returning for some sleeping tablets at night! It was probably the biggest waste of an hour in my entire life.
With no answers, I carried on and got deeper and deeper into the drink and drug culture that was rife in London. I began to knock about with a bloke called Leroy and, one day, four of us were in a pub when about eight big geezers walked in. They took a good look at us and Leroy recognised them as West Ham heads. He went over to them and I was wondering why he was talking to them. A minute or two later, he came back over and said, ‘It’s all sorted, mate … we can finish our drinks and leave, but must do so in five minutes.’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘You fucking what? No cunt is telling me where I can and can’t drink.’
He was adamant that we had to leave, so we drank up and left. We went somewhere else and he told me that, but for the fact they respected him, we would have been done there and then. It scared me a little as I was never one for picking and choosing my watering holes and never really thought that I could be badly dealt with just for playing for another team. Of course, we had the odd row at Birmingham with Villa fans, in Merseyside with Liverpool fans and in London with Arsenal and Chelsea fans when I was at Spurs. This, however, was a level above that and Leroy put me straight that with West Ham and Millwall there were no limits and, despite being a player, not a gang member, I could be seriously beaten up just for drinking in the wrong boozer.
I played a game here and there but did not feature in Mick’s plans, so over the Christmas period I went on a huge bender. One day, I was with some of the Millwall lads and we stumbled across a bar full of Arsenal players. I had the customary bird in tow and noticed George Best having a drink and was in awe of him as he was my boyhood hero. I took a deep breath and walked over and asked him would it be possible for me to buy him a drink. He was very polite but told me he had a drink already and thanked me for the offer. I noticed that he had a big, fresh cut over his eye with blood running down his face so had obviously been in a scrape of some sort. I got talking to the Arsenal guys and saw George leave about five minutes later, so I finished my beer and went looking for my bird who’d disappeared. I went up the stairs and saw Besty in the street outside getting into the taxi with two birds … and one of them was mine! I thought, fuck me, he’s done me … but thought that if I was going to be done by anyone, then I may as well be done by the Best!
I met an old friend on the Ferrier estate called Tracey Brown and stayed with her for a while and it was from her house that I made the call to the club and asked to speak to the manager. Within a
minute, I was put though to his office and he knew what was coming. I no longer wanted to mess McCarthy about; I was taking the piss and respected him too much to carry on, so said, ‘Mick, I don’t want to play any more. I have come to the end of my time here. I can’t cope, I’m still on and off the coke and I’m out all night on the piss. Can you please get the club to pay me off? I don’t want to be a footballer any more.’
He knew that I was serious and accepted it. I was not doing the club, myself or my team-mates any favours. Enough was enough. He agreed to sort it and I was paid off with £25,000. The whole conversation took less than five minutes.
I was driving around in a big Merc which was my own, not the one the club had given me – that had long gone back. However, I hadn’t paid a button of the hire purchase agreement for months. A couple of days after leaving Millwall, some bailiffs found out where I lived and pulled in front of me, forcing me to stop, got out of the car and just said, ‘Hello, mate … sorry about this, but we need the car back.’ They must have thought I was going to kick off as two big geezers got out, but the car was immaterial to me. I simply threw them the keys and joked I’d use the Underground from now on, thanked them very much and walked home to my mum’s.
They looked at me in shock and were obviously expecting a lot more grief from me. What was the point? A car is a car; it was no big deal not having one in London as I just went out and about on the Tube from then on, which probably prevented me crashing the car while pissed up. Looking back, I used to drive in some horrendous states; I am ashamed of it now, I could have easily killed myself driving or, more worryingly, someone else, maybe some kids crossing the road. Losing the car at that time was a godsend.
I began seeing a girl in central London called Meredith; she was from Australia and very beautiful, but worked strange hours and wore skimpy clothes, if you get my drift! She was a very well connected and very exciting lady. I stayed with her for a couple of months in the middle of London and visited all the top clubs and was, as usual, playing at being a rock star, but without having the wages to sustain it.
Somehow, I still owned my house and I used to use it now and again to crash out in if we were visiting that part of town. One day, I was with my old friend Tommy Hayes from The Watt Tyler, a truly great fella, who sadly died years later of a heart-attack. He was a legend of a bloke.
While we were crashed out in my house, the phone rang. I was amazed it was still connected as I had not paid the bill for months and was even more amazed when I answered it and heard the friendly tones of Howard Kendall. He told me that he knew I’d had problems at Millwall but asked if I’d like to start afresh and join him at Notts County? I told Howard I was finished, but he told me to get on a train and that he’d help sort me out. It was a sad conversation – I loved the man, but knew my time was up and, after a minute, we wished each other all the best and I thanked him for the call and carried on doing what I was doing. That was the day I knew that my career in English football was over, for if Mr Kendall could not talk me into sorting myself out, nobody could.
Thanks to my Australian girlfriend, I was now involved with some serious members of the London underworld and was doing way too much coke and booze every single day and night. I could go anywhere and do what I wanted thanks to the people I was knocking about with, but it was a world I knew I had to get out of and Meredith knew it, too, so she asked me if I wanted to go and live in Spain with her. Maybe if she had said Brazil or somewhere like that, I’d have gone. As I saw it, Spain would be like being in England with a bit more sun. In a nutshell, I couldn’t be arsed packing a bag, so we split up and I had the maddest couple of months of my life as I blew £15,000 doing everything I should not have been doing all over London.
I was so mixed up I made a decision that could have had very serious repercussions on mine and other people’s lives. By chance, I had bumped into the bully from my school days, Tony Merriman. Nothing had changed and he was in my face once again. I now realised he was jealous of me; even though I was on the slide, I had been pretty much as successful as you could get with Everton and Spurs, and he let me know that he was still not impressed with me. I replied in exactly the same way as I had done years before – I told him I didn’t want any trouble, and walked away.
This time, however, instead of sitting in my bedroom, as I had done when I was a teenager, wondering how I could get him off my back and out of my face, I made a call to an individual who was very well connected with the people I was hanging about with. Within minutes, I had received a call back from a person unknown to me who asked me for information on Merriman and informed me that the problem would be sorted out for good. I knew exactly what that meant and I took a step back and called the whole thing off.
I am glad I did as, later on in my life, I realised what these people were capable of and, although I hated Merriman more than any individual on earth, including Ozzie Ardiles and Patsy Smith, I did not hate him enough to want to read about him being found in a black bag on the banks of the Thames.
My old friend Nick Trainer sussed out what I was up to and he saved my life. He had to get me away from London and, one day, called me and asked if I fancied a little trip out to South Africa. I asked him if he was mad, as I thought the place was nuts. I was unaware of what it was like out there, apart from all the bad things I had seen on the news. He said he’d come with me and suss it out, that there was an offer on the table and that it was one worth taking a look at.
I had to decide which path to take – have a look at what South Africa had to offer, or to stay put. I spoke to my parents who were shocked at the measures I was prepared to take to get away from London, as they had no idea how low I was or what I was into. I went and had a bath and my mother came in and asked me to tell her everything, which I did. It was very emotional and she was crying but, eventually, agreed that I needed to get away if I was to have any chance of sorting myself out.
The following day, I phoned Nick and told him I would go for a week and see what it was like. Fifteen years later, I’m still there, so perhaps I’m in a good position to say that you shouldn’t always judge a country by what you see on the news!
16
LIFE’S A BEACH
Ihated the idea of going to South Africa. I thought that in days I would be kidnapped and killed, such was my ignorance of the place. Nick, however, managed to convince me that it was an opportunity worth having a look at, so off we went!
We had a nightmare flight out there; in a nutshell, it was horrendous and took us about 18 hours via Amsterdam and Johannesburg. We landed in Cape Town and, despite Nick trying to convince me to stay sober, I hammered the bar during the flights and was not in the best of states by the time we got our bags and made it through Customs. I was expecting a day in the hotel to recover, but we were picked up at the airport by a club official and driven straight to the training ground of the mighty Hellenic FC. So much for a fresh start. I was as rough as I had ever been and the bloke greeting us at the ground must have been hoping that it was Nick who they were signing. Sadly for the club and myself, it wasn’t.
We were introduced to the manager, a bloke called Budgie Berne, a very well respected ex-pro from England. I had never heard of him, although within an hour I knew the ins and outs of his arsehole. Mr Byrne took great delight in telling anyone who would stay awake about how he was nicknamed ‘Budgie’ due to his incessant chatter on and off the pitch. He was not wrong about that. He went on to tell me about how he was one of the most skilful players of his generation but failed to win the honours that his rich talent deserved. His claim to fame was that he was the first Fourth Division player to be capped by England Under-23s – impressive indeed.
I will give the bloke credit – he must have been a half-decent player as his son David, who was also at the meeting, took over when ‘Budgie’ was getting his breath back. He told us that his dad made his full international début at Wembley in the 1950s and that he was the first Palace player to be capped by England
since 1923. Had I been sober, I may have been slightly impressed; as it was, I was neither.
The meeting was like being in a room with Ant and Dec; once one shut up, the other would take over. Budgie went on to tell me that in March 1962 he signed for West Ham United for a fee of £65,000 which, at the time, was a British transfer record. Once again, I’ll give the man credit where it is due, as West Ham were no mugs around that time, having the likes of Moore, Hurst and Peters in their side.
He carried on … and on … and on, telling us about how he helped the Hammers beat Preston North End in the 1964 FA Cup Final, and how he also went on to win 11 England caps, scoring 8 goals for his country, including a hat-trick against a Portugal side containing Eusébio. However, although he was included in Alf Ramsey’s original 26-man squad for the 1966 World Cup finals, he was not one of the final 22 players selected and his international days were over. Thank fuck for that, as by now I had not been to bed for over 24 hours and was in danger of nodding off in front of his very eyes.
Byrne had been in South Africa since the late 1960s and played for and managed Durban City, whom he guided to League and Cup triumphs, and he told us that it was a fantastic place to live and that he would never return to England such was his fondness of the place.
I had only been there a few hours and thought, ‘What a load of bollocks,’ but Budgie was right and eventually what he told me that day all turned out to be spot on and, although we never really saw eye to eye during the time I played under him, I was saddened to hear of his untimely passing in Cape Town in 1999, aged just 60.
Having got the ‘Budgie’ Byrne episode of This Is Your Life out of the way, the club owner, a Greek gentleman called George something or other, set about selling the club to me. He told me that the likes of Alan Ball, Gordon Banks and even Bobby Moore had played for Hellenic and that they were a great club who could attract all the top players who were coming towards the end of their careers in England.