Men in White Suits

by Simon Hughes

  ‘As more money was ploughed into the game, players ceased to be players and clubs became international businesses. Image ruled. Clubs have come to regulate the way players act. They are given media training and, because most of them don’t give anything away to the papers, any sign of someone having a bit of personality is seized on and exaggerated. It has led to an unhappy situation, a different type of falseness.’

  This is Scales as he wants to be: smoking and enjoying brunch as morning leisurely breaks into afternoon. He will spend the rest of his day with his two young daughters who are on halfterm. As he eases into a steel seat, stretching out his long and powerful limbs, he insists he’s happier in his forties than he was twenty years ago.

  ‘The trouble with the football dressing room then was that it was defined by the lowest common denominator, which, with all due respect, is the majority of people involved,’ he continues. ‘Anyone who wanted to be different stood out a mile – as in society generally, I suppose. Football is often a reflection of society. But because there is so much money involved and, sadly, a lot of jealousy, society does not want to admit it.’

  Scales is a tall, blond, well-spoken and clean-cut-looking man and, even though he is not, he appears every inch a public school boy. It is hard to imagine how he fitted in, particularly at Wimbledon, proponents of the sabre-rattling welt down the middle, football’s imitation of the 2nd Panzergruppe.

  I suggest to Scales that he possesses the appearance of the intelligent kid at school who ends up mixing with the wrong crowd.

  ‘On the face of it, that’s how it seems,’ he admits. ‘But I had to find a way to fit in, otherwise my career wouldn’t have followed the relatively successful path that it did.’

  Scales talks about the bubble of football and describes a prohibitive environment where he was not alone in acting insincerely. As the only singleton at Wimbledon, in an attempt to impress his teammates, as well as convince them that he wasn’t gay despite the sniggers inside the dressing room, Scales courted a ‘trophy girlfriend’ and took her to the 1988 FA Cup post-final dinner. Scales went further and tried to be ‘one of the lads again’ by heckling the Lord Mayor of London during a speech that celebrated Wimbledon’s remarkable achievement in beating one of the greatest Liverpool teams that has ever been. ‘I sat there shouting, “Boooring … boooring.” It wasn’t in my character to make a fool of myself, but mix footballers with copious amounts of alcohol and the one-upmanship is unbearable.

  ‘In football, everyone plays a role. When I finished my career, it was a relief because every day I’d drive through the gates of the training ground and become a different person. You need to act in a certain way to earn acceptance in a dressing room. I’m not proud to say I did that. You should have the strength of character to say, “This is who I am and you should accept me.” But I was affected by the environment. A big part of that was drinking a lot and going out – being one of the lads. I hid behind bravado. I’d train, go to the pub, stay out late and sweat it off the following morning, then repeat the process. It was an intense routine that takes it out of you.’

  Jason McAteer was an example of this at Liverpool. Despite being perfectly sensible when he wanted to be, he was considered a bit of a clown. At Tottenham Hotspur, Scales later met Ramon Vega, a Swiss defender of Spanish parentage, who was exactly the same.

  ‘Ramon was the butt of all the jokes. He’d love being the centre of attention, playing the fool. Yet he’s one of the brightest guys I know. He now works as an investment banker. There are a lot of people like that in football. It’s often a mechanism to deal with an insecurity or vulnerability.’

  It disappoints Scales that taboos still exist in football and he believes it is holding the game back.

  ‘You can’t show insecurity in football. If you show any vulnerability, you get slaughtered – maybe by your peers, maybe by the press. It’s as simple as that. That’s why no active footballer has come out as gay. Players think they’ve got nothing to gain and all to lose. If you can’t be true to yourself, your performance – no matter your field of work – is not going to be at its maximum. It is to the detriment of the sport we all love.’

  Scales’s career began at Leeds United, a club he joined late at seventeen mainly because his school in Harrogate only had representative teams for rugby union, cricket and athletics. Any volume on Harrogate’s football success, indeed, would make for a short read.

  ‘I was the high-jump champion and sprint champion of North Yorkshire,’ he says proudly. ‘I dreamt of emulating Daley Thompson. I would have preferred to be a decathlete rather than a footballer.’

  His path to Leeds began when Rossett School received a letter from the county’s football association asking the head of PE to nominate players for trials.

  ‘At the same time, I was doing maths, physics and graphic design at A level. I flunked my mocks and didn’t know what I was going to do. Fortunately, my dad’s best mate lived next door to Eddie Gray, who was a Leeds legend and had taken over as manager. He leant over the fence one day and asked Eddie to do him a favour by sending down a scout to watch me play for the county.’

  Scales was offered non-contract terms by Leeds.

  ‘I was too old to be given apprentice forms and too young to become a professional. The uncertainty didn’t bother me, though, because I loved sport. Going and playing for Leeds wasn’t a case for me of thinking, “Oh my god, I’m going to play for Leeds.” It was a case of realizing that I was going to be outside every day in the fresh air playing sport. What better thing is there to do?’

  Scales was wise enough to realize that merely being recruited did not mean he was set for life. The wages also reflected that.

  ‘A mate of mine opened a tennis and squash clothes and equipment shop in Leeds city centre and I went into partnership with him. It was called No Sweat. The business eventually made enough to open a couple of other branches and we had three in total. In those early days, I’d train in the morning then go to the shop in the afternoon and work my balls off.’

  Leeds were First Division champions in 1974 and then reached the European Cup final only to lose to Bayern Munich in 1975. The intervening years had been stormy and by the time Scales joined, Leeds had been relegated to the old Second Division.

  ‘The system was different to what it is now, where seventeen year olds are integrated into youth systems. For me, it was straight into the first-team squad with legends like Peter Lorimer and Frank Gray. You trained together, showered together and drank together. Younger boys like Neil Aspin, Scott Sellars and Denis Irwin were there but Leeds continued to struggle. The club was in the doldrums and there didn’t seem to be any way out.’

  Scales did not play a first-team game in the fifteen months he was there and found the integration into a squad of forceful personalities testing.

  ‘It made me wonder whether football was right for me. I considered switching back to athletics. When you aren’t used to being in the environment of a football club and a group of lads who are driven – compared to the laid-back way I was – it’s very hard. Although I was born in Harrogate, I moved at a young age to Norfolk. Then suddenly, when I was ten, my mum and dad split up and I went back to Harrogate with my mum and two sisters. I grew up with three women and wasn’t used to the macho culture that existed in football. I was very shy, almost introverted.’

  Although Scales’s mother remarried, the relationship ended within a year. Scales found living in Harrogate oppressive.

  ‘It was a traumatic period. Tourists to Harrogate see Bettys Tea Rooms, the spas and the general wealth. But there’s also an undercurrent of social problems. I found growing up there suffocating because everyone knows everyone else’s business. It’s not very healthy.’

  None of this prepared him for what he describes as ‘the brutality of a dressing room’.

  ‘I struggled to embrace the banter. The Sheridan brothers, John and Darren, were Manchester lads and had come from a tough inner-city backgr
ound. Everyone thought I was a posh kid because I spoke with a pronounced accent, and they let me know about it. I’d never been subjected to this before, so I couldn’t relate to it. The reality was, my upbringing had been fairly normal. There had been hardships. I’d regularly speak to my dad and tell him that I wasn’t enjoying it. I liked the games but everything else was a bit shit to be honest.’

  Scales was let go by Leeds and considered abandoning a career in football before it had really started.

  ‘The moment they called me into the office to say I was being released hurt terribly because it was a rejection. It wasn’t about my dream of football being shattered. It was that feeling of not being good enough and having to make decisions about my future before I expected to. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do.’

  A chance meeting on a ferry to Denmark between two of his former Leeds coaches and Bobby Gould, the manager of Bristol Rovers, led to an unexpected opportunity.

  ‘Bobby wanted to sign Dave Mehew, who’d been with me at Leeds, straight away. Dave’s nickname was Boris because he had bright-red hair like Boris Becker. Bobby asked about the other players Leeds were getting rid of and my name cropped up. I’d only played as a winger and a centre-forward before joining Leeds but in the last few months before being released I’d moved to full-back, excelling there. Bobby was interested but in my first pre-season trial Tony Cottee, who was one of the best young strikers around, tore me a new hole. West Ham were battering us and it was embarrassing, so Bobby dragged me off at half-time. I could tell he wasn’t sure about me but thankfully he offered me another chance and a few months later I signed a professional contract. The club put me in digs with Larry Lloyd’s mum – he was a Liverpool defender in the Bill Shankly era. It was chaos. Larry’s got a huge family in Bristol. There were always people around.’

  As a goalkeeper-clattering centre-forward, Gould played for nine clubs across the Football League, from Arsenal to Hereford United. When Dave Bassett left Wimbledon to replace Graham Taylor as Watford’s manager in the summer of 1987, Gould was appointed as his replacement and took Scales with him for a modest fee of £70,000. In turn, Scales left Nick Tanner behind, his teammate at Rovers and a player he describes as ‘all right, not bad, not brilliant’. Only thirteen months separated the pair in age, yet Scales would take five years longer than Tanner to reach Liverpool and by then Tanner was close to retirement. ‘I wasn’t the player in 1989 that I was in 1994,’ Scales insists. ‘Then again, I’m not really sure what sort of a player Nick was in ’89, because he used up so much energy charging about.’

  In signing for Wimbledon, Scales was stepping into a unique ecosystem of a club that had only been in the Football League for ten years, a place where Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest theory was applied to football.

  ‘I had a really torrid time being alone in London as a twenty year old from Yorkshire. It felt like being at Leeds all over again. You had people like Wally Downes, the first-team coach, waiting to cut you down at any opportunity. But there was something in me that helped me get through it. My mum is a really steely character. She’s very much a person who gets on with things and makes the best of what she’s got. I stuck at it and wouldn’t give up. Wimbledon may have been the best thing for my career, because it brought me out of my shell, made me streetwise and developed me as a player. Most importantly, it made me realize what was needed to flourish within football.’

  Scales was intimidated by the substantial personalities within Wimbledon’s dressing room. Scales was six months older than Dennis Wise and Andy Thorn but felt years behind in terms of social development. ‘They were sharp, quick and ruthless – a totally different breed to me.’

  Scales speaks about the merciless way he was initially singled out.

  ‘In one of my first pre-season games, I remember the ball being pushed towards me at full-back and rolling under my right foot and out for a throw-in. Wally screamed at me from the touchline. Afterwards, I could hear him in the showers, “Fucking Scalesy, why have we signed that sack of shit. Seventy grand for that? He’s fucking useless.” I was one of several new players that Bobby had brought in with him. There was also Eric Young, Terry Phelan and Clive Goodyear. “What’s Gouldy done? These new faces aren’t up to much,” Wally continued. He was shouting and knew I could hear. I just sat there on the bench, my head in my hands. I should have stepped in and confronted him. It was something I’d only learn with time.’

  It was only when Thorn left for Newcastle and Scales was moved into the centre of Wimbledon’s defence that he was able to deal properly with his issues of self-worth.

  ‘I found a real confidence on the football pitch. We played Newcastle away in 1989 and I had a great game. I remember feeling instantly comfortable. I’d found my position in the team. Suddenly, I started adapting to life in London and the culture that existed within the Crazy Gang. Previously, I felt like an outsider peering in. It took me five and a half years to get to this point when you include the time spent at Leeds and Bristol Rovers. If I was playing now, I’d have no chance. This is an era where we demand that the players have all the answers at the age of eighteen and nineteen. It’s fucking ridiculous to be honest. A lot of it is down to money. Because players are rewarded too quickly, we expect them to be instantly brilliant. Most of them have no experience of life, so it’s an impossible ask.’

  Scales recognizes that nobody was perfect at Wimbledon. It was the imperfections, in fact, that drove the team further than anyone on the outside expected.

  ‘What Wimbledon did really well was pick up players with a point to prove. Most of them were from lower leagues and had suffered rejections at some point earlier in their career. These were players that had developed personalities but still had a bit of insecurity, which meant they were not in their comfort zone at any time. It meant they had to push themselves in order to flourish. This led to a mutual respect, I guess. We were in it together and needed each other for our own purpose. Maybe at other clubs there was exceptional talent and arrogance in individuals, resulting in the collective suffering. Wimbledon was all about a strong group. If one wasn’t doing it, everything came tumbling down, and if you couldn’t hack the abuse that followed, you were out.’

  Wimbledon were owned and run by Lebanese businessman Sam Hammam.

  ‘People saw Wimbledon as a chaotic club but really it was run with a lot of consideration. Sam and the chairman, a lovely old bloke called Stanley Reed, appreciated what needed to happen in order for it not just to survive but progress as well. They appointed the right managers: Dave Bassett, Bobby Gould then Joe Kinnear. When they got one of the appointments wrong – as they did with Peter Withe – they were ruthless in getting rid.’

  Hammam would accompany the players on nights out and spotted that Withe was struggling within a few weeks of his arrival early in 1991.

  ‘Sam was the ringmaster. We went to Tenerife on a bonding session and Sam was the last one standing at 6 a.m., still singing on the karaoke. Withey was overwhelmed by the culture of Wimbledon. He probably underestimated how wild it was. We were playing five-a-side on the beach one morning, sweating all the alcohol off, and one of the players clattered into him, splitting his eye open. He was walking round afterwards with an expression on his face that said, “This place is unique.” He didn’t last very long. We partied hard, trained hard and knew when to turn it on and turn it off.’

  On the pitch, Wimbledon were led by Vinnie Jones and John Fashanu. When a visiting team lined up in the tunnel at Wimbledon’s Plough Lane ground, the pair would infamously walk up and down the line, sizing each opponent up while making derogatory comments. When other teams tried similar tricks, the reaction was severe.

  ‘We went to Spurs, who cut the power in the dressing room and stopped the ghetto blaster from firing out the music that got us all really pumped up. The sockets were all taped up and the people at Spurs seemed quite happy with themselves. Rather than moan about it, Vinnie legged it round to the nearest corner
shop and bought a packet of batteries. We placed the ghetto blaster against the door and put it on full volume just to piss Spurs off. It resulted in a fight in the tunnel. We ended up winning the game.’

  Scales believes that although their backgrounds and life experiences were different to his, both Jones and Fashanu were also acting out roles in order to succeed within the framework of the dressing room. Jones, for example, was from a reasonably wealthy corner of Hertfordshire even though he managed to peddle the character of a classic London east-end tough man.

  ‘Vinnie’s sort of got a split personality,’ Scales says. ‘He can be the nicest, most engaging and brilliant company you could wish for when you’re one on one. If you wanted someone to have your back on the pitch, it would be him. On the flip side, when he’s in a different type of group, and with people he wants to impress – and I’d include Fash in that group – he plays the rogue or the thug. If he had too much to drink, he’d be a nightmare. He had an aggressive streak and that could be intimidating. One minute he’d be charming then suddenly he’d be flying off the handle. Occasionally, it was scary.’

  Before the 1988 Cup final, Scales met a reporter from The Sun in the Dog and Fox pub, over the road from where we are now.

  ‘He wanted to know how I fitted into it all at Wimbledon. He switched the tape off and we shared a beer. He asked me about Vinnie – what he was really like. “Vinnie’s a nutter, a lunatic, isn’t he?” I fell straight into the trap and agreed, thinking it was off the record. The following morning, Gouldy called me up, warning me that I better not show for training because Vinnie was patrolling the car park waiting for me with a baseball bat. The reporter had fucked me over. I managed to avoid Vinnie for two whole days until he calmed down. Even then he managed to grab me by the throat. All I could do was apologize. I rarely spoke to the papers after that experience. Certainly never The Sun.’

  Scales understands why players are so reluctant to show any personality in the papers now.