by Lee Howey
I was determined to get to every ball possible and, in common with everyone else there, was not especially scrupulous as to how I would achieve this. (Danny never made it as a footballer, but he did become the Clothes Show Model of the Year for 1990.) The North would tend to gain the upper hand during the sporadic mass brawls and I have to confess that I loved it; the real physicality of it. More importantly, I played well and the coaching staff were impressed. They included the youth team coach Peter Trevivean, assistant manager Charlie Woods (a former Ipswich and Newcastle player) and the club’s reserve team coach and physio, Brian Owen.
Bobby Ferguson was Ipswich Town’s manager. He sat me down and said: ‘I like what I’m seeing, son. I want you to sign for us.’ Younger readers may not realise what a big deal Ipswich were in 1984. They were never a massive club, but were certainly at that time a big team.
Bobby Robson had left the club two years earlier to become manager of England. They had peaked, but remained a well established top-flight club and they still had the remnants of that great 1981 UEFA Cup winning side. These were the days when the UEFA Cup was worth winning, and lifting that trophy meant you were one of the best teams in Europe. That same season, they perhaps should have been champions of England but were ultimately squeezed out by Aston Villa (in the last season of two points for a win). George Burley, Russell Osman, Terry Butcher, Paul Cooper, Steve McCall, Ian Atkins, Mich d’Avray and Eric Gates were all still around when I arrived. Recent departees included John Wark, Frans Thijssen, Arnold Mühren, Paul Mariner and Alan Brazil.
When I was offered that contract I was so happy I almost cried. I went home, returned to East Anglia with my parents shortly afterwards and signed the forms.
You can imagine what this did for my schoolwork. At the time we had the old O Levels, which were similar to GCSEs, but difficult. I was put in for eleven O Levels and passed English language, maths and economics: the only subjects that I personally did not need to revise for (I have always been interested in economics and how the world works).
So I attained three O Levels, or to put it another way, almost ten. To explain, I got seven D grades (plus a U in biology, from which I gleaned some inverted pride, as I didn’t like the teacher). They would have been Cs or better and therefore passes had I been sufficiently interested – but I wasn’t. Never the most diligent student in the first place, with a year remaining at school I was told that I was going to be an apprentice at a First Division football club and the result was that my already negligible interest waned further. The standard of my homework became ever flimsier and exams were simply not as important to me as footy.
Fortunately, the long-term consequences of this were not as disastrous as they have been for many others who wrongly thought: ‘I’m sorted.’
Like most people, I do not curl up of an evening with A Brief History of Time. But being distracted by impending professional football as a teenager does not make me a thicky. The notion that all footballers are stupid is in itself just that – stupid. The idea that anyone with a facility for kicking a ball must by definition be unintelligent, has as much credence as claiming that every person who is left-handed, or 5ft 7in., or good at shorthand is unintelligent too. The division of footballers into categories such as ‘very intelligent’, ‘quite intelligent’ and so on, all the way down to ‘would rather have the dog on my quiz team’, is identical to that of the rest of society.
My situation was typical. I was too obsessed with the game to take my studies seriously. I was then thrown into an all-male environment with a lot of other working-class lads who were all determined to become footballers. How educated did anyone expect us to become? This applies even more so today when Premier League players can become millionaires before they reach twenty. What would you be doing in their situation? Enrolling in a philosophy degree at the Open University, or whooping it up?
The public’s low estimation of footballers’ intellect has been compounded in recent years by the absurd ranting of Joey Barton in his badly worded, badly spelled, badly punctuated and badly thought-out Tweets, attempting to pass himself off as an intellectual because he can cut and paste quotes from Nietzsche. Like a dog that thinks it’s human, Joey actually believes himself intelligent, and was not even disabused of this notion after making a complete tit of himself on Question Time.
But please, please do not confuse ‘uneducated’ with ‘unintelligent’. I can assure you that I and many other players have read a book or two since leaving school.
• • •
On Monday 15 July 1985, two days after Live Aid, I was packed off to start a new life at Ipswich Town FC.
I travelled by train with Neil Emmerson from Gateshead and, happily, a friend of mine from St Aidan’s called Martin Young, who was a goalkeeper (years later I saw him while he was working as an undercover policeman, attempting to infiltrate a gang of football hooligans in Sunderland city centre. I didn’t realise he was in disguise and almost inadvertently ruined the operation by greeting him warmly, slapping him on the back and calling him audibly by his first name in the middle of a bustling John Street. It can’t have been much of a disguise).
When I arrived I met Danny Olson from Whitley Bay and another gentleman of my acquaintance from the North East known as Toast, who was a year ahead of me and would play for the first team a few times. His real name was Chris O’Donnell; a perfectly serviceable name if you ask me, so I have no idea why he was called Toast. A few familiar faces in a new environment will usually help, even if they do have silly names.
Apprentices a year or two ahead of me and on the verge of the first team included Craig Forrest from British Columbia, who would play over 300 games in goal for the club and fifty-six times for Canada. There was also Michael Cole, who made it at Ipswich and Fulham. I shall return shortly to some of the other star apprentices, although not for the best of reasons.
Being transported to a smaller town at the age of sixteen, almost 300 miles from home and away from familiar surroundings for the first time, is never easy; certainly not to begin with. This is before considering the regime I lived under at Ipswich. On my first day I arrived at Portman Road in the morning, was introduced to all the relevant people and, along with all the other newbies, was assigned my digs. The club didn’t own a hostel or any other accommodation; they just asked people in the area if they would be willing to take in a young footballer. This may sound distinctly dodgy in the present era, but that was how it worked – rather like the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts.
I was lucky. I was taken in by a lovely couple called Roy and Steph. Roy was a director at Ransomes, the turf care equipment company and club sponsor (in 2013 they developed the first triplex mini flail mower, straight up). The club paid for my £40 per week accommodation which included breakfast, evening meals and as much lawnmower oil as I could drink.
We had to arrange our own lunches and, being teenagers, we ate exactly the same meal every day for two years. After training we would file into the club cafe in the Portman Stand called the Centre Spot, where I would guzzle two slices of toast, a tin of beans with cheese on top and brown sauce, washed down with blackcurrant and soda water. Food of the gods – although I wouldn’t like to say in which mythology.
Football’s performance nutritionists of today would have a coronary thinking about this meal, let alone eating it every day for two years. However, its lack of dietetic advantages had to be considered against the fact that it only cost a quid – and I was on £25 per week in my first year, although this later soared to £27.50. There was no chance of any money arriving from home. My dad was still unemployed so the Red Cross was more likely to oblige. I therefore had to be somewhat elastic with my income. Still, I rather enjoyed my lunches in that cafe and, if you are ever in Suffolk and should wish to whisk that special someone off for two slices of toast, a tin of beans with cheese on top and brown sauce, washed down with blackcurrant and soda water, I know just the place.
Cancel that. My research has just reveale
d that they converted the Centre Spot into Ipswich’s hall of fame in 2013. Philistines. They paved paradise…
The combined joy of football and haute cuisine aside, it was still the case that I was a far-from-home youngster in an alien environment, not well remunerated and with a physically demanding job that was overseen by disciplinarians. The question is later asked of anyone in such circumstances: Were such difficulties insuperable and did you miss home life and your affectionate family? In my case the answer is a complex one that I can only attempt to explain to the reader; an answer to be gamely attempted and hopefully accomplished in the next paragraph.
No.
I loved being away from home and from Norman in particular. Harsh, but true. For me, being in Ipswich wasn’t only about the football. Dad wasn’t just strict about my development as a player; he was also a stickler about what time I should be home and a raft of other issues. Again, he did me a favour in the longer term because it made me strict with myself about fitness, sleep and not socialising too much. But the fact that I now had the freedom to do things, even things I had absolutely no intention of doing, felt wonderful.
I didn’t often socialise as a teenager in Sunderland. Occasionally I would put on my little leather tie and frequent a local dump-oteque called Genevieve’s in Monkwearmouth (finally demolished in 2012 and replaced by another eyesore called Tesco), but that was about it.
Ipswich had less than half the population of Sunderland. Life was quieter there. But we still made the occasional sortie into the local fleshpots. One early expedition I was invited to came when I had been there for about three weeks. It was at the instigation of the first team, including Paul Cooper and Terry Butcher. Still only sixteen, but with no difficulty in being served because of my height, we descended upon the impossibly upmarket Butt’s wine bar.
All I had ever drunk during my limited boozing career back home was Lorimer’s Best Scotch, the cheapest draught beer in the pubs. This was not available in Suffolk, but I wasn’t about to abandon the pretence that I was actually quite grown up, so I let someone buy me a lager; which I didn’t like. I therefore graduated to wine, namely the infamous sweet plonk Liebfraumilch, which means ‘beloved lady’s milk’ in German.
It wasn’t beloved by me and rumours of how it could open the sluices at both ends of a man did not endear it any further. It was manky. As the only step down the wine list would probably have been Castrol GTX, I moved on to Southern Comfort and lemonade. This seemed OK, but by this stage I was becoming wary; not because of the alcohol intake, but because I had now spent about three quid and was thinking of the affordability for the rest of the week of my two slices of toast, tin of beans with cheese on top and brown sauce, washed down with blackcurrant and soda water.
We then trooped round to the First Floor Club in Tacket Street, one of Ipswich’s two nightclubs (sadly the First Floor Club was mainly patronised by white people, the other club by black). We were given a concession pass for free admission any time we wanted, which was handy for someone on twenty-five quid a week. They didn’t bother asking us for tiresome, irrelevant details, such as our dates of birth.
• • •
Most days began with a 25-minute walk from my digs to report for training by 9 a.m., along Norwich Road, past the Broomhill outdoor swimming pool (yes, Ipswich had a lido). Training was at Portman Road because there was no training ground as such. There was a pitch behind one of the stands, not far from the River Orwell (from which the writer Eric Blair took his pen name of George Orwell, fact fans).
We had to put out all the kits, clean the boots for the next day’s training, then carry out a variety of menial tasks that were overseen by Trevor Kirton, who was the kit manager, stadium manager, club driver, chief bottle washer and whatever else had been lobbed in his general direction. Time permitting, we would have a go on the weights because we had to be on the pitch for 10 a.m.
The first six weeks of pre-season training were a shock to the system. It wasn’t football training, it was circuit training. We rarely saw a ball. I was a fit young fellow and I still found it to be hell. My blisters were severely affected by blisters. What felt like infinite running was only interspersed with rigorous exercise and accompanied by what is known in the armed forces as ‘beasting’, although the SAS themselves would have been in no condition to go about the place storming embassies after a morning like that.
These sessions were horrible from their beginning, but they would end with ‘five-four-three-two-one’. This entailed running on a 400m track at the police headquarters. We would be split into two groups; the first group would set off doing five laps and if any one of these laps took more than ninety seconds, a thorough hammering would ensue. My group would meanwhile be performing press-ups, sit-ups, squat thrusts and so on. When the first group came back and rested, we had to run five laps under the same rules, then the first group would do four laps before another swap with us, then three, two, one. The last lap had to be done in under a minute. There were variants of this, but a severe bollocking was a permanent feature.
It was home from home for me. But not for certain others who were miserable with the constant berating as well as homesickness – and packed it in. I don’t know if apprentices still undergo a regimen of this nature. The Geneva Convention may have put paid to it. But if you want to be a footballer…
• • •
Once that few weeks of pure barbarism had elapsed, we finally had a few practice matches. The first team had a friendly coming up, so the youth team was bibbed up and given a game against them. I was marked by Terry Butcher himself, the Ipswich and England captain (assuming Bryan Robson was injured, which he usually was). Our full-back launched a high diagonal ball with Terry and me beneath it. I was being nurtured as a physical centre-forward, but I overdid it by several degrees when I walloped our leader in the mush with the back of my arm as we jumped.
He was lying on the ground, his anger developing further by the laughter that greeted the sight of the club’s most senior professional being flattened by a sixteen-year-old trainee, who was now receiving encouraging, high-spirited shouts of ‘Give him it, son!’ and other ill-founded advice. Norman would have exploded with pride had he been there.
Butch rose silently and ominously to his feet, without relenting from the glare he was giving me. I swallowed hard. Those of you familiar with the opening scene in A Clockwork Orange will understand what that glare was like. The physical ‘dual’ became notably more one-sided after that. For the remainder of that game he kicked me so, so hard at every opportunity, leaving me with no illusions as to who was boss. His retribution was carried out before the full glare of the coaching staff, so I wondered nervously what he had in store for me when the game was over and they weren’t looking.
As it turned out, nothing. It was simply not an issue, because if ever there was a man who relished the tougher side of football, then it was Terry Butcher. However, the consequences for me of the misguided ploat I had administered to him would be protracted, deep – and positive. He appreciated (if that’s the right word) my physicality and remembered it when he became manager of Sunderland in 1993. He gave me the opportunity to join the club I loved most from complete obscurity. I hesitate to advocate to the apprentices of today the delivery of an elbow into the kisser of the England captain as a prudent career move, but it didn’t do me any harm in the long term. The harm to my shins in the short term would prove to be worth it.
For that was my job. I was what is often described as a ‘traditional English centre-forward’, meaning that I would never allow a defender to take me lightly, even if I could not undo him with sublime skill. This meant clattering people. Preferably legally, but let’s not be naive. It was and is sometimes done illegally too.
This might mean doing something that the referee couldn’t see, or ever so slightly delaying a tackle so he couldn’t be sure that it was deliberately late. I might be ready for the opposition to kick off the match, upon which they would invariably pa
ss the ball to a full-back who would then release the ball down the line. I would go across the full-back with studs up, but I wouldn’t kick him; he would kick me on the sole of my boot, meaning that the top of his foot would zestfully meet my studs. Painful – for him. Then as now, referees grant unofficial immunity to fouls in the very early stages of a game and it allowed me to make an immediate impact; a statement of intent. The philosophy was not unique to me. As the New Testament suggests, I did unto others as they would have done unto me.
But my game was not exclusively about mangling opponents. I was developing as a player and scoring a fair few goals; still gangly but developing and often playing against lads who were years older than me, which mattered greatly at the age I was. It was obviously a different level of football compared to playing for the school and town, scoring literally hundreds of goals with Clive Mendonca, almost the only striker I had encountered who was as good as me. Occasionally I would be struck by the old anxieties, but would disregard them in favour of just doing my best, giving it a whirl and learning all that I could about the professional game, which at Ipswich Town was a considerable amount.
• • •
Our last match before Christmas in my first year was away to Southend United on 21 December. We weren’t allowed to play at Roots Hall, but we changed there and were minibussed to and from the pitch we did use. After the game, which we lost 2–0, Neil Emmerson, Martin Young and I were milling around outside Roots Hall. We were about to make our way back to the North East for Christmas and working out the walking route to the railway station when we heard a shout from behind.
‘What are you waiting for, lads?’ We turned round.
