The Bromley Boys

by David Roberts

  Unfortunately, after I’d got through my box of free samples, I was left with a taste for their product which made the tea hut an expensive place for me to work.

  •••

  The view from the hut wasn’t quite as impressive as I’d hoped. The good thing was that we had a slightly elevated position. The bad thing was that the position was rubbish, overlooking a corner flag. It was the wrong end, too. Bromley were attacking the other goal, which meant I wasn’t likely to see much action.

  How wrong I was.

  Something had changed with Corinthian Casuals. They still didn’t look like proper footballers, with their chocolate and pink shirts, but they were playing with a confidence I hadn’t seen from them before.

  The action was all taking place in front of me, prompted by our nemesis from earlier in the season, Chris Joy. It was he who set up the opening goal, with a blistering shot that Soper could only parry into the path of their right-winger and we were in the unthinkable position of being 1–0 down to Corinthian Casuals.

  Their second goal followed a few minutes before half-time, just as the water was reaching boiling point and I was preparing to pour it into the pot. The centre-forward beat the offside trap and we were suddenly two down to the worst team in the league.

  Even Peter was at a loss for words. We poured the half-time refreshments in stunned silence.

  As luck would have it, much of the activity in the second half also took place at our end. Eric Nottage hit the bar with a great header and then Alan Bonney punched the ball into the Casuals net, while trying to make it look like he’d headed it. I didn’t know what he was thinking – not only was it cheating, but it was something nobody would ever be able to get away with.

  The scorer of the visitors’ second goal added a third just before the end, leaving just enough time for Postman Pat Brown to get a consolation for Bromley seconds from the final whistle, when he headed home from an Eddie Green corner.

  As the players trooped off, I went around the terraces with my Double Diamond tray, picking up the used cups and saucers.

  Watching the small crowd file out of the ground, I thought back to September, when I had left the Corinthian Casuals away fixture thinking that I was glad there was one team I could look down on.

  I was willing to bet that the handful of Casuals supporters who had witnessed today’s game were now thinking exactly the same thing.

  Dave and I walked back to my house, eager to arrive in plenty of time to see the new Dr Who. Even though it was obvious that Patrick Troughton was irreplaceable, I was interested to see what Jon Pertwee would be like. According to the Radio Times, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart from the previous series would be appearing in the first episode, so there would at least be one familiar face.

  I didn’t want to broach the subject of the afternoon’s football just yet. It was going to be hard to come up with a convincing defence for Bromley’s ineptitude and I needed time to come up with something plausible.

  One theory was that Dave’s presence was responsible. It made sense – we had gone two games unbeaten, he goes to watch the next one and we lose to the bottom team. On the way home, he had accused me of jinxing Arsenal, after seeing their result on a colour TV in the window of Radio Rentals on the High Street. They’d been held at home by Blackpool and had now gone four games without a win since I’d been to Highbury. Dave thought that Bromley’s uselessness had somehow rubbed off on the Gunners thanks to me.

  There was a definite air of tension between us. We later agreed never to watch each other’s teams again.

  However, the tension resurfaced later that night, as we fell out for the only time that season.

  It wasn’t about football, but about women.

  What had started out as a discussion on the relative merits of Una Stubbs and Diana Rigg soon turned heated. He insisted Diana was better looking, but it was obvious to me that Una was much prettier.

  Neither Dave nor I was prepared to give ground. As the anger took hold of me, my voice got higher and I started to screech in defence of Una Stubbs. He was just as loud in his claims of Diana Rigg being more fanciable and the vein on his forehead stuck out as he, too, was overcome by fury.

  I wanted to punch him and I could see that he wanted to punch me. I was shaking with anger – how could he not see Una’s obvious beauty?

  We spent the rest of the evening gazing intently at the TV, jaws set in a determined manner, studiously ignoring each other.

  •••

  By the time we went into WH Smith to spend my record tokens the next day, we were back on speaking terms. I loved going upstairs to the record department with the equivalent of money in my pocket. It almost made up for the hundreds of times I’d been in there unable to afford anything.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have been tempted by Abbey Road, the Beatles’ latest, and Ssssh by Ten Years After, which The Grubby insisted was the greatest album ever made.

  Then there was the matter of ‘Two Little Boys’ by Rolf Harris. Although I’d never have admitted it to anyone, this was a single I really loved. The trouble was, I hated listening to it when other people were around, because I found the ‘leave you dying’ lines incredibly emotional and had difficulty disguising its effect on me. Not only was it a great single, but it was also the last Number One of the sixties and I was convinced it would soon become a collectors’ item.

  The other single I badly wanted was ‘In the Year 2535’ by Zager and Evans, even though Dave had cruelly joked that the song was about the year Bromley would next win a game.

  There were plenty of records I wanted to spend my tokens on. But this was not the time for buying something I wanted. It was time to buy something that would make me look cool at school, despite Dave’s protestations.

  I picked Tighten Up Volume 2 from the rack. It was a reggae collection and I knew a few songs from it – ‘Liquidator’, ‘Longshot Kick De Bucket’ and ‘Elizabethan Reggae’. I didn’t particularly like them, but that wasn’t the point. Next, I found a copy of Motown Chartbusters 3, which had few things I actually liked on it. There was just enough left over to treat myself to the ‘Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town’ single by Kenny Rogers, which I was determined no-one at school would find out about.

  As for the LPs, I was equally determined that everyone at school was going to find out about them.

  ISTHMIAN LEAGUE HOW THEY STAND

  9TH JANUARY 1970

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Going back to school after the holidays was marred by only one thing – The Grubby had decided not to go back to school.

  He’d got a job at Debenhams on Bromley High Street, working in the carpet department. They’d evidently been impressed with him when he’d gone for an interview for a part-time job a few months earlier and had rung him offering him full-time work. I wouldn’t see him until Bromley’s next home game. Bizarrely, they didn’t have any scheduled for over a month.

  It was a novelty for me to enjoy going to school. I made sure my reggae and Motown LPs were tucked prominently under the arm of my sheepskin jacket as I walked through the wooden doors on the first morning back.

  My hair had also been cut shorter. I hadn’t been brave enough to get the full crop, but it was short enough for me to feel the cold chill of winter on my neck and ears.

  To complete the look, I had a pair of monkey boots, which were a bit like Doc Martens but without the steel toecaps.

  I was making a statement. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

  •••

  On my first day back, all the talk was of three of the skinheads who had achieved celebrity status by featuring in a tabloid expose of football hooligans.

  Being highly impressionable, this was enough to set off a fresh bout of hero worshipping which stopped just short of asking them to autograph the photo in the paper.

  More than anything, I wanted to be like them.

  So when one of them started talking to me about the Tighten Up Volume 2 LP I w
as carrying round, I was only too eager to offer to lend it to him.

  He seemed pleased about this and then we talked football for a few minutes. I felt flattered that he was even talking to me. What’s more, other boys were seeing it.

  I handed over the LP, like a worshipper making an offering to a god.

  I never saw Tighten Up Volume 2 again.

  •••

  Bromley’s judgment of a good footballer was far from flawless. Amongst their more forgettable moments was getting rid of Ginger Warman’s brother Phil when he couldn’t make the Bromley first team. Warman Junior went on to play 364 games for Charlton Athletic.

  There was also the case of Peter Cadman, a man who had gone from Bromley Reserves to Carshalton’s first team and become their top scorer. He was now being talked about as a potential amateur international.

  The latest example of Bromley’s unique inability to recognise talent when it was right under their noses came in the form of John Faulkner.

  He’d been a reserve-team fixture, but was kept out of the first team by a succession of unconvincing centre-halves.

  Faulkner then decided on a move to Sutton United, where he quickly became one of their stars and played a big part in an FA Cup run which had culminated in a stunning upset win over Bromley’s conquerors Hillingdon Borough.

  This had earned Sutton a home tie against the Football League champions, Leeds United. Although they lost 6–0, Faulkner made such a good impression that Leeds offered him a contract.

  When I read about him lining up against Burnley in his debut, alongside greats like Giles, Bremner and Lorimer, I wondered how Bromley had once again managed to get it so wrong.

  Bromley had the worst defensive record in the Isthmian league and were about to come up against Wealdstone in the second round of the Amateur Cup. And we were going into the game with Phil Amato at centre-half, instead of someone who was good enough for the best team in the country.

  •••

  The first thing I did when I got to Wealdstone was check out their tea huts. Although I’d never taken much notice of them before, I now started taking a professional interest. What water-boiling equipment did they have? Did they use tea leaves or the recent innovation, tea bags? What snacks did they sell?

  The Wealdstone huts both seemed to be short-staffed. The queues were too big and the service far slower than we provided at Hayes Lane.

  I wasn’t surprised to learn from the programme that the club were looking for more volunteers to work in them.

  I took my tea, which was good although possibly a bit over-stewed, to the terraces by the halfway line. This was where we always stood, waiting for the toss of the coin which would decide which goal Bromley would be attacking. We then went and stood behind it.

  There was a sizeable Bromley contingent, which didn’t surprise me. This was our last chance for glory in a major competition.

  The other main aim for the season would be finishing above Corinthian Casuals, a less lofty ambition than winning the FA Amateur Cup.

  There was a good atmosphere at Wealdstone. The home side were having a good season and relied on a physical approach, much like Leeds United, although Wealdstone obviously weren’t quite as good.

  The pitch was wet and slippery, but the home supporters were saying that it had been that way for weeks. This was one of the good things about non-league football – supporters of both teams mixed freely.

  Bromley had brought a strong team, the same 11 that started against Oxford in the previous round, and they looked full of purpose when they ran out onto the field. It was as if they realised this was their last chance to salvage something out of a season that had gone badly wrong.

  The early signs weren’t good, in that Wealdstone scored twice within the first 15 minutes. The first one was due to the mud. The ball got stuck in it and Bernie Bremer, the hometown favourite, forced the ball home. A few minutes later, he struck again with a lucky shot from the edge of the area.

  The talk immediately turned to Barking. We were swept by a wave of fear that a repeat of the 8–0 loss to them earlier in the season was a real possibility.

  Bremer seemed determined to get his hat-trick and this is probably what saved Bromley from total annihilation. He was on a single-minded mission and refused to pass or even communicate in any way with his teammates, instead preferring to ignore everyone else and shoot every time he got the ball.

  At the other end, our end, Bromley were finally starting to threaten. Phil Amato’s cross was met by Eric Nottage for about the millionth goal of his career. For once, it didn’t feel like a consolation goal, but one that had got us back in the game.

  Bremer then hit the bar as a reminder that his personal crusade wasn’t yet over, but it was Bromley who scored next. A great cross by David Wise was met on the volley by Eddie Green and the scores were level at 2–2.

  This was cup football at its most exciting. The game couldn’t have been closer with Bromley and Bernie Bremer taking it in turns to attack.

  Just before half-time, the travelling supporters’ hearts sank as someone who wasn’t Bremer put Wealdstone back in the lead from a corner.

  As the players trooped off for their oranges, we weren’t too dispirited. Only 3–2 down and still in with a chance of a win or even a replay at Hayes Lane. The pitch had, by now, turned into a quagmire which nullified the more skilful Wealdstone midfield.

  The second half was undoubtedly Bromley’s best 45 minutes of the season. Despite playing uphill, they mounted attack after attack.

  Wise and Pettet had shots blocked on the line. Eddie Green’s drive missed the target by a matter of inches.

  Meanwhile, Alan Soper was in inspired form. The Wealdstone fans barely believed me when I told them he’d been in bed with flu the day before. But it was true. Peter had told me on the way to the ground.

  Somehow, the score hadn’t change since half-time. Then, in the last minute, Eddie Green scurried down the touchline and put in a curling cross towards Eric Nottage, the master converter of such chances and easily our top scorer. Nottage rose at the far post, just needing the slightest touch to level the scores.

  But the ball somehow evaded his forehead. It went out for a Wealdstone throw and Mr RF Wood (Brighton) blew his whistle for full-time.

  We had lost … but in the most glorious fashion possible. For the first time in a long time, we had been every bit as good as our opponents. This, of course, was no comfort whatsoever. If anything, it made it worse.

  I looked over at Roy. His thick lens magnified his eyes and the beginnings of a tear were clearly visible.

  I think we all knew how he felt.

  •••

  I was seriously wondering just how much bad news it was possible for me to take. The Wealdstone result really hurt. We could easily have won. We should have won.

  The next day, I was looking through the other results when I saw the news I had feared. Corinthian Casuals had won their league match against Maidstone 4–2, giving them a three-game winning streak. This meant that Bromley were now just one point clear and in serious danger of finishing last for the first time in their history.

  What were they going to do to make sure this didn’t happen?

  In Charlie King’s absence (he had just left for his round the world cruise) the committee had sprung into action, perhaps sensing an opportunity to make some changes.

  Acting Chairman Bill Woodward announced that for the foreseeable future, committee meetings and training nights would be held on Tuesdays, so that more up-to-date news on injuries and availability could be obtained.

  Bromley had also signed a new centre-half, John Miles from Maidstone United. The fact that he had been playing for the team with the third-worst defensive record in the league didn’t fill me with confidence, but at least he was really tall, which had been Gasmask’s main asset.

  The bad football news continued the next day, when Hayesford Park Reserves lost 6–0 at home to Farnborough Youth – a team that had
only won twice all season.

  The result, and my performance in particular, had a galvanising effect on me. I had noticed that I tended to fade spectacularly after about half an hour, spending the rest of matches as more of a spectator than a player. I decided to take my lead from Alan Basham and increase my fitness. This would include walking more and cycling to Bromley games instead of getting the bus. The only reason I hadn’t done this before was because I’d had nowhere to keep my bike safe; but now I’d be able to bring it into the tea hut.

  But before I could start getting fit, there was the trip to Erith and our last chance to salvage something from the season.

  •••

  The coach to Erith and Belvedere for the Kent Senior Cup tie was full.

  It was while I was talking to Roy about Bromley’s chances that everything slowly came together in my mind – the Arsenal trip, the school celebrity skinheads, Charlie King’s exhortations for supporters to get behind the team.

  Suddenly, I knew what I had to do.

  The huge losses to Oxford City and Hillingdon Borough had been notable for the sheer volume of noise produced by the home supporters. They created an intimidating atmosphere for the visitors and I suddenly realised that I would be able to influence the outcome of this afternoon’s match. On my previous trip to Erith and Belvedere for the Kent Floodlit Cup fixture, the home support had been virtually non-existent – polite clapping had greeted the goals. All of them.

  It would be easy to make Bromley feel as though they were playing at home.

  All it needed was a leader for the Bromley supporters – one who could lead the chants and show the team that they had plenty of support. It was a role I felt I was destined to fill.

  Once inside the ground, we stood in small cliques on the terraces behind the goal Bromley would be attacking in the first half.

  I stared fiercely at the opposition fans who were scattered behind the goal at the other end. From a distance, I felt confident that my fake sheepskin would look like the real thing. They would think I was a genuine skinhead. Now was the time to show them that Bromley were a force to be reckoned with.