Massively Violent & Decidedly Average

by Lee Howey

  My dad then jogged nonchalantly back to position to carry on the game before anyone else had even noticed. Tough with me though he was, he was not in the habit of punching his offspring. But the incident reinforced that he was not a father whose will was to be lightly ignored. The downside of this for Norman’s own football was that he gathered a reputation, justly as it happens, as someone who could be easily aggravated into earning a red card. His fuse on the football field was not so much short as barely discernible.

  That was how he wanted me to play, but I was never like him in that regard. They could kick me if they pleased. I was nowhere near soft, but I was by then a centre-forward and I extracted justice by inserting the ball into the net, whereas my dad wanted me to thump people. He would ask why I hadn’t smashed a defender who had been overly physical and I would reply: ‘I scored two goals.’ The physical side of my game would develop at professional clubs – as you will see.

  I must reiterate. He did help, but not as much as he had intended. He did everything he thought was beneficial and had an enormous knowledge of football. It’s just that it all instilled in me a fear of failure in my performance, something I still feel today in a separate career in an entirely different industry. Before playing in Sunderland games I would feel physically sick and wouldn’t be able to feel my legs. My first time in the starting XI was at Derby County in 1993. I was wrung out and could barely walk onto the pitch at the old Baseball Ground for a match that we would lose 5–0. I’m considerably better read now and I firmly believe that these anxiety issues go back an awfully long way.

  By the time I was at Sunderland, Norman had mellowed and was more of a mate than he had been previously. Then we could discuss football more rationally. We still can. There isn’t a problem – now. He always meant well and I won’t allow anyone to speak ill of my dad.

  • • •

  Divine intervention may have played a part in St Cuthbert’s success.

  In the late 1970s my Uncle Tom was working as a joiner in Warsaw. He had done an initial six-week stint before two weeks’ leave back in Blighty. Prior to his return to Poland we had a discussion about football boots. He made me stand in the kitchen on a sheet of paper in my stockinged feet and drew around them with a felt tip. He then took the piece of paper back to Poland where he said he could have a first-rate pair of boots knocked up for me by a local shoemaker for a fraction of what they would cost in the UK. The modern reader may be shocked to learn that in those days, we Brits had no compunction about utilising cheap Polish labour, but it did happen.

  In September 1978 Pope John Paul I died after just thirty-three days in the job (bear with me, it’s all connected). Following a three-day interview in the Sistine Chapel, he was replaced by Karol Wojtyła (himself a decent goalkeeper back in the day), who gave himself the papal name of John Paul II, thereby disappointing the waggish element of Thorney Close who had mooted the possibility of a John Paul being succeeded by a George Ringo. John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since 1523. He was Polish and his second official visit as pope outside of Italy was to his native land. He arrived there in the summer of 1979 with the express intention of meeting up with Tom Howey for a few jars. It didn’t take long for the Pope to track him down and when he did, Uncle Tom asked his Holiness to sanctify my new boots. The story went something like that anyway; the boot blessing part is certainly true. I would like to say that following this blessing I went on to score my hundredth goal of the season before 70,000 fans at Wembley Stadium.

  And I did.

  In 1980, St Cuthbert’s was one of four teams to reach the finals of a national six-a-side tournament run by Smith’s Crisps; sport and junk food have always had this symbiotic relationship. The games were played across the Wembley pitch on Saturday 7 June. Mr Stewart’s coaching skills had guided us there and he was justifiably very proud. Such were the financial constraints that we travelled to London by bus. Had we gone by steam train I suspect it would have been the pinnacle of his entire life.

  We were a sort of support act to an England–Scotland schoolboy international (a great game, which featured Paul McStay, Alistair Dick and Paul Rideout, who scored a screamer to complete a hat-trick for England, although Scotland won 5–4). Our semi-final was a 2–0 win over a southern team, with goals from Archie and me. We lost the final 2–1 to a school from Manchester, but I scored in that game too and the goal was my hundredth of the season, from the right boot of the pair blessed by the Pope the previous year. I never wore them again, although I still have them, replete with decaying blades of decades-old Wembley grass.

  One in the eye for Professor Richard Dawkins there then. Thirty-three years after we played at Wembley, Sunderland were bottom of the Premier League with one point from their first eight games, when Pope Francis was photographed in St Peter’s Square holding an SAFC home shirt. Two days later Sunderland beat Newcastle and went on to avoid relegation, as well as reach the League Cup final. If that, along with the tale of my old boots, doesn’t dispense with atheism, then I don’t know what will.

  • • •

  I left primary school on a high. In my last year at St Cuthbert’s we won everything, and I scored 109 times. I then trotted off to comprehensive school, the all-boys St Aidan’s RC Secondary. My first year of 1980–81 was spent at a place called Havelock, three miles from the rest of the school. For some reason, everyone had a much worse time at Havelock than at the main section. Mine was the last year to be educated there, which was excellent news for the lads in the year below. Should you find my description of the place to be somehow lacking, pop on a DVD of The Shawshank Redemption and you’ll get the broad idea. If you’re still not sure, then nip down to the library and borrow a copy of Lord of the Flies. If that doesn’t do the trick, just punch yourself.

  Havelock was dirty and brutal. There was just something about that place, the building and the atmosphere, that was worse than the main part of the school in Ashbrooke. It was so manky that I thought it should have been napalmed, but as the years passed I decided that that would have been too agreeable a fate. Violence was institutional. St Aidan’s was then run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers and their accompanying loving tenderness.

  They weren’t all bad, but one of them, whose name my memory has refused to store, was a total sadist. He had two main hobbies: scripture recital and corporal punishment. There are passages in two of the gospels that say ‘Suffer little children’. This bloke had clearly misinterpreted them. I recall Brother O’Twatt, or whatever his name was, dragging one David Leonard by the hair over several desks as a light-hearted prelude to kicking his head in. The same bloke would jump from a chair when administering a leather strap in order to gain more purchase, because obviously you just can’t hit an eleven-year-old child hard enough. He left soon after his assault on David Leonard, possibly transferred before he could be prosecuted. This was sad in a way, as he would never be able to take a class of kids with Steven in it. There was another teacher called Weston, a nasty piece of work who never quite grasped the distinction between discipline and recreational bullying. It isn’t simply a case of ‘They couldn’t do that now’ – they really weren’t supposed to do it then either.

  As ever, a respite from life’s unpleasantries came from football. I had no difficulty in making the school team. St Aidan’s has always won a good portion of trophies and is proud of its achievements in sport. The fact that it was an all-boys school and therefore had double the number of players from which to choose is something they tend not to refer to. But our year did have a very good side. We had a choice between two great goalies in Vincent Marriner and Eddie Harrison (who might have made it had he been slightly taller, although he did go on to play in an England firemen’s XI). Outfielders included Archie, Gavin Ledwith, David Simpson, Damian Adamson, James Duncan and Mickey Robinson, who eventually played for Darlington.

  The team coach was Damian’s dad, a gifted maths teacher called Tony Adamson who once sent Damian off for overuse o
f the mouth. In contradistinction to certain colleagues of his, the expression ‘laid-back’ does not provide a sufficiently accurate description of Mr Adamson, who would smoke fags in the classroom while he was teaching.

  On colder days he would referee our matches from the interior of his car, parking his light blue hatchback at the side of the pitch. Assuming he could still see the game through a fug of cigarette smoke, he would toot his horn to signify a free kick and use the indicators to denote which team had received it. And he was still a better referee than Andre Marriner. Mr Adamson’s officiation of matches from behind the wheel of a stationary 1975 Austin Princess did not strike anyone at the time as peculiar or even worthy of comment. I have to say now that despite all the goals and the trophies we won, this is one of my greatest memories of school football.

  Another great memory is of setting a record that I believe still stands. When I was fifteen, we played the nearby Southmoor School. We won 10–2 and I scored all ten of our goals, five in each half, and even made the back page of the Sunderland Echo on the strength of it. I was marked that day by Philip Coxall, who was centre-half for England schoolboys. He got so pissed off at 8–0 that he went up front and scored their two. Scoring ten is an unusual occurrence at any level of football, and in case you were wondering, I can tell you that the tenth felt as good as the first. I loved scoring goals.

  My dad wasn’t there.

  • • •

  For our second year at St Aidan’s, 1981–82, we were moved from Stalag Havelock to the more salubrious setting of Ashbrooke, where we continued to play football at every given opportunity. As soon as our lunches had gone south, we would charge into the yard and immediately divide into pairs, with all five or six pairs attacking the same goalkeeper (usually Vincent Marriner), but with each twosome for themselves. Now in our teens, we began to take an interest in fashion and made such assiduous efforts to be individuals that we all looked exactly the same. Fans of Madness one and all, we wore Fred Perry T-shirts, Farah trousers, white socks and black brogues with steel segs. It soon became apparent that black brogues with steel segs were not conducive to playing football in a concrete yard.

  Like millions of dads, mine was on the dole for much of that decade, so my own brogues were the best that my mother’s Providence cheque could purchase from a particular shop where such currency was accepted. Not a first-division pair. However, they were still as perilous as any other brogues when playing football. Brogues must have been the biggest cause of football injuries in the 1980s (although I suppose we should be grateful that we were not five years older, because playing football in platform shoes must have been positively lethal). An informal ban was therefore agreed among ourselves; trainers only for football. The universal trainer of choice was Dunlop Green Flash – so we were still all dressed identically. From then on, yard football was played alongside an extensive line of gleaming brogues that had been dutifully removed in the interests of our general wellbeing. It was an eminently sensible piece of schoolboy self-governance. These days they would contact the Health & Safety Executive.

  As well as representing the school, I played for a Sunday team called Blackthorn for a couple of years. In the first year, the team was run by a gentleman called Ray Lindstedt. In the second year, the team was run by a gentleman called Norman Howey.

  Those of you who have been paying attention will have guessed that I was not wholeheartedly pleased with the appointment of the latter. He was his usual exacting self; more so because I was the best player on the team.

  I was responsible for taking free kicks, throw-ins, corners, penalties and was the main goal scorer. Because he did not go so far as to expect me to head in goals from my own corners, Norman thought that his demands upon me were wholly reasonable, but he was shovelling on even more pressure than usual. I have a glaring memory of eliciting his fury by missing a penalty; over the bar during a 1–0 defeat. This was not, to put it mildly, a pleasant afternoon. We didn’t have a car then, but were given a lift home by one of the other dads. The silence in that car was an ominous prelude to the sonic bollocking I was about to receive in the house. It was tough love.

  For obvious reasons, the following season I went off to play for another Sunday team called Moorside, where I was up front with Clive Mendonca, who would haunt his home town club with a hat-trick in the extraordinary 1998 play-off final between Charlton and Sunderland. Another teammate was Gary Coatsworth, who later joined Barnsley, Darlington and Leicester City.

  In 1998 the BBC broadcast a famous fly-on-the-wall documentary about Sunderland AFC called Premier Passions, which I featured in. It is probably best remembered for the ranting of the manager, Peter Reid, when things were going badly as we fought in vain to keep the club in the Premier League. There were often similar scenes in our house in Tintagel Close.

  Peter Reid was a professional doing a high-pressure job in a multi-million-pound industry. Blackthorn was a kids’ Sunday team. But Norman did not make that distinction because he took all football extremely seriously. However, like Mr Reid, he would also give effusive praise if he thought it was merited. I say yet again – he always did what he thought was best and, despite my misgivings, both of his sons would become professional footballers. So who was right?

  CHAPTER 2

  IPSWICH

  Some very good schoolboy footballers of my age were based in and around Sunderland. Those who remember the town at that time (it became a city in 1992) may recall the names of – with apologies to anyone I may have missed out – Philip Coxall, Archie Common, David Pringle, Paul Redman, Gary Breeds (another England youth player), Neil Foster, Ian Dipper, Mickey Robinson, Grant Brown and Clive Mendonca, with Richard Ord a few miles down the A19 in Murton.

  Although they were all tipped to become professionals, only Brown (Leicester and Lincoln City), Mendonca (Charlton Athletic, Rotherham and Grimsby), Ord (Sunderland) and I would properly make it. Some of the others became apprentices and Mickey Robinson did play once in the Football League for Darlington. Ian Dipper is now a respected kids’ coach. But the overall story of that bag of players is quite typical. The moral is that the chances of making a living from the game are minimal. Despite this, there will never be a shortage of lads who assume that they will rise to the top because they are a cut above on the football pitch as teenagers. Oh, life.

  When I was fourteen, I trained with the younger players at Sunderland, who then included Gary Owers and Gordon Armstrong. The manager of the time was Alan Durban, but we were coached by George Herd, a former Sunderland inside-forward who also played for Scotland. He was a great man (still is, now in his eighties), a wonderful coach with infectious enthusiasm and a tremendous player. He was then nudging fifty years of age, but was doing stuff with a ball that we could only watch with slack-jawed admiration.

  However – allow me to indulge in a cliché here – a dream come true was not to be. I was not physically prepossessing at that stage; on the lanky side and with the added disadvantage of still developing bodily. I was also, relative to other players, not quite as quick as I had been. George took me to one side and informed me that they had just signed a lad who lived in Newcastle. I don’t recall the name of the fellow in question, but he was ginormous, about 6ft 7in. He was in the Andy Carroll mould without being anywhere near as good (think of the Honey Monster, only slightly better at set-pieces), but he was deemed good enough for me to be offloaded. They could only offer terms to seven kids and it seemed that I was the eighth. The gist of it was: ‘We’ve got our centre-forward and it isn’t you. Off you pop then, there’s a good chap.’ Devastated is the mot juste.

  Several weeks later I received a call from Newcastle United, asking if I wanted to try my luck there. At the behest of the youth coach Colin Suggett (the same bloke who scored for Sunderland against Newcastle ten days before I was born), I had deigned to train with them a few times during the summer.

  Jack Charlton was the manager, but more memorable was the presence of a young Paul Gascoign
e who was two years older than me.

  Only six years later, the World Cup would make him globally famous and recognised as arguably the most naturally gifted footballer on the planet. At Benwell in 1984 he was far better known as a pain in the arse. He was a dumpy little right-back and the professionals at the club couldn’t stand him. He had a bit of skill but didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary (other than being visibly off his onion), yet that wouldn’t prevent him from throwing buckets of ice into the communal bath. At least he thought it was funny.

  My time at Newcastle came to nothing, although I did play one game. I insisted on wearing a T-shirt beneath the strip (difficult to remember now, but I believe they play in black and white stripes or whatever). I never usually wore a T-shirt, but wearing a Newcastle strip directly against your skin results in burns, cutaneous disease, hives, leprosy, cryptosporidiosis and nob-rot. It’s a well-known medical fact. Still, I played well in that game and was soon afterwards telephoned by John Carruthers, who was scouting for Ipswich Town. I was about to be given my first big break in football.

  During the Easter holidays, John would run a minibus to Suffolk, packed with youngsters from Scotland and the north of England. Just turned fifteen, I was off to participate in three trial matches, plus another one in the gym. These were North v South affairs and were not exactly played in the Corinthian spirit. My word, it was vicious. My dad would have loved it. I was marked by a lad called Danny Mayhew, a nice fellow as it turned out. He would also be given a contract, but only after I had smashed him all over the pitch during the trials.