by Lee Howey
My formative years were for the most part quite normal. But as the poem says, into each life some rain must fall. When I was two-and-a-half, there was a sustained deluge when my precious little brother Steven was born; as far as I know, my only sibling.
Aged seven or so, I would scamper out of the flat to join my cohorts, usually to play football or possibly to attend to one of our other projects, such as smashing things. My brother would indulge in some high-pitched wailing because he had been left out. So our mother would open the window and shriek after me: ‘Take your little brother! Take your little brother!’
Steven’s inveterate career as a monumental pain in the arse began early. He was a spectacular whinger in those days and his related talent for twisting his face almost round to the back of his small, petulant head was unsurpassed. I say ‘in those days’: the child is indeed the father of the man and this is a gift he retains. It is reassuring to note that there are still a few constants in this ever-changing world of ours. He was, in fact, known unaffectionately as the ‘Ginger Whinger’ as he then had this peculiar excrescence of strawberry blond hair, which did at least distract some attention from his permanently wobbling bottom lip.
The whinging was constant. It didn’t matter what was on the agenda; it would be met with a whinge. The accepted rite of passage alluded to earlier, that the youngest and snottiest should play in goal, was not respected by Steven, who would whinge about this duty and demand to be outfield, even though a casual glance could confirm his youth and his snot (indeed, he tended to be festooned in mucus; these candlesticks, along with his alarming hair colour, made him resemble something from the Book of Revelation).
Had to go in goal? Whinge. Lost the game? Whinge. No one would pass to him? Whinge. Punk rock hits the charts? Whinge. United Nations announce that smallpox has been eradicated? Whinge, whinge, whinge. I recall very few events that Steven greeted with warmth and an appreciative smile. It’s enshrined in Magna Carta or something that the youngest goes in goal. This made Steven’s whinging on the matter particularly irksome, as I had served my time uncomplainingly.
He did like his football, but was not the automatic, unquestioning Sunderland supporter that I was. He was a fickle fan. For example, he had a flirtation with Tottenham Hotspur during their Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle era, before moving on to some other club, then another and another that he had no connection with. I think he did eventually want to support Sunderland, but he never had a deep affinity with any team. He possibly attended the occasional match, but I don’t remember it.
His disagreeability was non-stop and he would often make my life hell. Our first school was St Leonard’s Primary in Silksworth where, aged seven, I was told I could have a trial for one of the football teams and was therefore quite giddy with excitement. However, during the lunchtime before the trial I was summoned to see the headmaster, Mr Conroy.
A prefect had informed Mr Conroy that I had been nabbed in the course of acting the goat on the school bus. Goat acting was one of the less socially acceptable crimes of the era and would have been specifically prohibited by an Act of Parliament if Mr Conroy had had his way. The sentence in this instance was to sit outside his office all afternoon, missing the trial in its entirety. I was distraught; more so because while I was not averse to reprehensible behaviour myself, I had no idea what I was supposed to have done on that bus. I rummaged through my mind for some memory of any goats I may have recently acted, but could think of none.
Eventually Mr Conroy called for the prefect, who looked at me and immediately confirmed: ‘That’s not ’im.’ The goat had in fact been acted by my delightful brother, who upon apprehension had told the prefect that his name was Lee in an attempt to evade justice. While this was at least evidence of a sort of low cunning from a boy in his first year at school, we were to later reflect that a more gifted child would have also given the authorities a false surname. You may be familiar with the passage in the Old Testament, when the skulduggery of Cain prevented Abel from getting on the footy team. Well now I knew how Abel felt.
When I was eight we moved to Thorney Close, where I would take Steven for a kick-about with certain unwritten laws evolving because he was so much smaller than me and susceptible to a tantrum if he should lose. We would play across the street with the openings to two narrow, cross-sectioning back lanes (ginnels, snickets, pathways, cuts, depending on where you’re from) on either side of the street which served as goals. I had to chip the ball softly into the air rather than belt it: ‘nee blammers’ being the most important rule. If I miskicked a chip and the ball went low into the corner of the goal, he would cry like a mistreated Scarlett O’Hara. Then, oblivious to my pleading, he would run into the house and inform the relevant powers-that-be, usually resulting in a good roaring in my direction.
He became aware that tale-telling of this sort was likely to mean a severe lambasting for his elder brother and he began to maximise this vicarious power. On one occasion, because he had created so much parental gyp for me and I knew he had done so deliberately, I mentally snapped and chased him all over the estate with the express purpose of administering him a rigorous wedging. However, as he accelerated along Tay Road, I decided instead to upgrade the retribution and that I would simply kick his fucking head in. If I was going to cop it for supposedly picking on him, I decided that I may as well have my money’s worth. The pursuit lasted for quite a distance until his eventual capture. I had my knees on his arms and was happily and repeatedly whacking him.
Unless he was about to bite me on the bollocks, his escape was impossible.
So he bit me on the bollocks. In later years I would play against some horribly dirty footballers, but would never scream like that again. Having effected his escape, Steven then (understandably in the circumstances) managed to beat me back to the house where his version of events meant that I was given a proper clip myself. Oh, the injustice.
Incidentally, my brother’s name is Steven and not ‘Stephen’ as it says in just about every book that mentions him. They even gave the wrong spelling on Pointless a couple of years ago – and we expect better from them.
Anyway, while Steven was hardly a Sunderland fanatic, as I’ve said, I would attend matches as often as time and money would allow. I still do. The disappointment of watching Sunderland lose limply to Norwich City in the 1985 League Cup final is undiminished; ditto with the awful 1990 Wembley play-off final against Swindon, just three years before I became a Sunderland player myself.
Still, then as now there was the occasional glory day (sadly no trophies since the FA Cup win when I was four). My absolute idol as a kid was Gary Rowell. I just loved him. He was a lethal finisher, scoring over 100 goals for Sunderland including a hat-trick against Arsenal in 1982. But his most famous hat-trick was at St James’ Park in 1979 and I was at the game, five weeks before my tenth birthday. I travelled on the football train with my dad, followed by a police escort up to the ground. I could describe a walk through the town with the natives lining the streets to sportingly applaud their Wearside cousins as they gave a rousing chorus of ‘May the Best Team Win’, but that would be a clunking great lie. It remains my most terrifying experience.
Rowell was particularly adept at penalties. If he was about to take one you could nip out to the toilet. You didn’t need to watch because it was going to be a goal and the keeper was about to dive the wrong way. Unfortunately, a bad injury when he was twenty-two seemed to deprive him of some speed. He was still a fine striker when he came back, but he could have been better still with that extra touch of pace. Other inspirations included Shaun Elliott, Stan Cummins, the late Rob Hindmarch and the incomparable Joe Bolton; a talented left-back often described as ‘uncompromising’. We all know what that means, but there was more to his game than that and he gave everything on the pitch – or 110 per cent as they say in dull society.
• • •
It was just as I was about to enter year three (first-year juniors in old money) that the Howeys tu
nnelled out of Gilley Law and defected to Thorney Close, a council estate a short distance away on the other side of Durham Road. This put Steven and me in a different primary school catchment area. We switched to St Cuthbert’s on Grindon Lane as it was the nearest Catholic school (for we were a family of Rome). This is tough for any child, but I adapted quite well, helped by being friends with Vincent Marriner, who was already at the school (and a good goalie). As expected, football was a terrific icebreaker. I don’t remember much about the early days, so it must have been OK.
St Cuthbert’s has always had a big reputation for football. Apart from a couple of Howeys plus Messrs Dillon, Hazard and Harford, alumni also include Kevin Young, a midfielder for Burnley, Port Vale and Bury. The school continues to lift trophies, and these days that includes the girls.
It did not occur to me yet that I was all that good at football. My first break into the St Cuthbert’s team only came about because, in a recurring theme of my life up to that point, someone had to go in goal. I just wanted to play and was willing to take any position on the field. My instinct in goal was to flick the ball with my foot up into my hands, rather than just catch it. The young teacher, Ray Stewart, asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, but soon realised that I was not really a goalie and allowed me to play outfield. Within a year I was playing for the first, second and third teams. I would play a game for one team, change strip and then play a game for another.
And I still played footy when I got home.
Mr Stewart was the main football teacher, although he was also obsessed with trains (or should that be locomotives? Or railways? That lot are easily offended, so I apologise if I have used the wrong terminology). He was gradually replacing the fourth-year juniors (year six, these days) teacher, Jimmie McAuliffe, as the main football bod. The teachers were quite strict but Mr McAuliffe was fine with me – when I wasn’t in his class. Approaching his sixties by then, he once took me aside for some or other misdemeanour and informed me, with nothing like uncertainty: ‘You had better stick in at your lessons because I’ll tell you now: I’ve seen some players come through this school – and you will never make a footballer.’
This was a serious, humiliating, proverbial kick in the nuts, exacerbated by the ensuing laughter in the classroom. I was not a model pupil and he wanted to make a point. But what a way to do it. Aside from the fact that he turned out to be wrong, this was a hell of a thing to say to a child. Neither did it have any connection to whichever piece of arsing about he had caught me doing.
Perhaps he did me an inadvertent favour. The school had a game a couple of days later and I scored in it, so I thought ‘bollocks to him’ and continued with the rest of my life. Years later when I did make it in football I was tempted to contact him and stick the ancient incident right up his nose. But he was an old bloke by then and I thought: ‘What would that achieve?’ I’m glad I resisted the temptation as it would have been utterly childish and besides, he must have known. He died aged eighty-four in 2006.
I played on the right wing at St Cuthbert’s because (and this may surprise a few who only remember me as a professional) I was extremely quick. Whether by nature or nurture, this was a primary school team that was almost freakishly skilful. Other players included Jonathan Common (known to this day as Archie for reasons that remain obscure), Paul Redman, Jonathan Whelan, Lee McNally, David Simpson and the aforementioned Vincent Marriner.
Between them they would be given trials and apprenticeships at a number of Football League clubs. There is a variety of explanations as to why none of them made it professionally, although absent among these reasons was a lack of talent. Paul Redman, for example, was academically gifted and always had more possibilities than just football. He is now head of media at FIFA Films in Zurich (their media arm; he had nothing to do with that bloody awful United Passions film with Tim Roth perplexingly cast as Sepp Blatter).
Until this time there was no more to my football than the sheer joy of playing it. However, if you are a member of a side that wins virtually every game and one of the best players in it, a certain realisation will come. I was rattling in many, many goals and was not even a main striker. It got to the point where Mr Stewart would ban us from shooting inside the penalty area, just to make a game of it against some of the weaker opposition. Goals from within the box were simply disallowed in those games. I was pretty confident too. The only issue at that stage was whether or not I was the best player at St Cuthbert’s. Archie Common and I had a scuffle or two over the issue because it’s a highly important matter at that age. Archie was a completely different type of player to me and one of the most naturally gifted teammates I ever had. As I would eventually play alongside Chris Waddle, this is not something I say lightly.
• • •
A year or so after it had dawned on me that I was a pretty good player, my dad had an epiphany in this regard too.
Anyone who loves football will tell you that a game will draw you in. Any game. You can be driving past a playing field that is staging a match between two flabby pub teams; the outcome of the match is not going to affect your future happiness and yet, if one team is awarded a corner or free kick, you are compelled to keep watching to see if it leads to a goal. It’s that addictive.
So it was when Norman was strolling along Grindon Lane one summer’s day, running a substantial risk of treading in dog shit because he was using his peripheral vision to watch a kids’ game on an adjacent pitch. One lad controlled the ball beautifully from a high pass, beat several defenders and then stroked it into the bottom corner with the much coveted ‘good touch for a big man’. Norman thought: ‘Bloody hell. He can play.’
It was only after some additional squinting that he realised he was watching his eldest son. This was when football became significantly more serious in the Howey household. From that moment on, my father would do what he considered to be the best he possibly could to help me to become a footballer. He would later do the same for Steven. However, such were my dad’s methods that the amount of help he ultimately provided is a matter of some conjecture.
A theory called the 10,000 Hour Rule has emerged in recent years stating that in any sphere of human activity, but especially sport, 10,000 hours of practice will produce expertise. You may feel that the premise is sheer flapdoodle, as there is usually at least one person in your class at school who is so uncoordinated that they would require something closer to a million hours just to have an outside chance of touching their own nose, let alone playing professional sport. Nevertheless, there is no doubting the value of work ethic, practice and dedication, and Norman’s ideas were very much along those lines; constant hard work and football, football, football.
He had read biographies of the likes of Bobby Charlton and Brian Clough, which would outline their sheer devotion to the game when they were growing up in the ’40s and ’50s, spending hour upon hour kicking a ball against a wall with either foot. It clearly hadn’t done either of them any harm and so my dad saw that as the way forward. Therefore all my spare time was used at his behest to practise, practise, practise.
I maintain that a twelve-year-old can only kick a ball against a wall for so long before the benefits, as well as the brain, become nullified. My friends had other things in their lives that they invited me to become involved with, such as playing space invaders, chasing girls, watching The Young Ones and other invaluable enterprises. But I declined to join them as I had to plod on with practice to avert a strenuous shouting at and/or bedroom banishment when I returned home. This rendered me as something of an outsider among my peers; someone out of the clique. Similar reprisals would occur if Norman thought I had in any way shirked during a match, the theme being that I had let him down and what was I thinking of – that sort of approach. He was extremely vociferous on the touchline, and not just with me. He would also holler at the referee and other spectators. If another parent said anything untoward about me, he would limber up for a fight.
My mates thought he
was great. They loved his enthusiasm. If I had performed well then he was pleasant to be with, but my mates weren’t in our house an hour after a game when I was being energetically berated if I had played indifferently. The pressure at times was intense. I didn’t necessarily have to score or be man of the match, but Norman demanded maximum effort, and my being a mere child with the attendant physical difficulties of growing was never going to be any reason to fail to try my hardest.
I did not therefore always have the greatest fun playing football as a schoolboy under this regime – and I use the word advisedly. But there was a pay-off that came years later. No matter how aggressive, scathing or downright unreasonable a coach was being towards me, at any level I played at, it was water off the wildfowl of your choice. At youth level, other lads would pack in and go home, but not me. Sticks and stones and the occasional two-footed lunge may break your bones; name-calling, however, had long ceased to have any effect. At least I eventually got to have insults screamed at me by professional coaches, and Norman’s role in this is not to be underestimated. He had correctly identified something that Jimmie McAuliffe hadn’t. It was difficult growing up in these circumstances, but it was not without its rewards.
He wasn’t so tough on my brother. He would play with Steven more himself, practising shots and crosses with another kid and his dad, which looked far more like fun to me, whereas I was expected to do my stuff alone. Perhaps his experiences with me had encouraged him to adopt a slightly different approach.
Norman was a big strong bloke and it would be some years before I showed anything like rebellion. When I was eleven, I watched him play in a Sunday league game. He’d had a tussle with an opponent, so he waited until everyone’s attention was diverted by another incident that the referee was dealing with, upon which he seized his opportunity to punch his unfortunate adversary clean out. The poor chap then rolled silently down an adjacent bank. Had the man ended the incident in a water trough it would have been very much along the lines of a fight featuring Clint Eastwood or John Wayne.
