Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City

by Mark Hodkinson

  During the 90 minutes of a game of football he is an inspiration, a giant, the ultimate sporting caricature. The life either side of the next football match is a more enigmatic affair. Here Morrison is no icon, for there has been too much madness, too much sadness. Trouble has man-marked him for years. He is a big lad, punches his weight, and has a belly-full of pride. ‘I should walk away, but I can’t sometimes . . .’

  His more recent outbursts have brought him face to face with a psychologist, and various magistrates. Two years ago he was involved in a fight with a nightclub doorman. He threw the doorman through a window and afterwards remembered little of the incident. ‘I just lost it. I realised then that if I carried on like this I could end up killing either myself or someone else,’ he said. In a less serious altercation, he was found guilty of threatening behaviour after a row with a bus driver. He has received counselling for the past 18 months and avoids pubs or clubs where he may find himself goaded into another fight.

  Surprisingly, his voice is soft, sweetened further by a West Country burr. He lived in the remote Scottish village of Kinlochbervie until his family moved to Plymouth where his father, a trawlerman by trade, joined the Royal Marines. When he retired from the marines, he returned to fishing and Morrison, along with his three brothers, worked on the family boat, often sailing into strong gales when other boats were returning to harbour. ‘My dad was used to the bad weather up in the north of Scotland. The other fishermen thought he was a bit mad. I’d have to weigh the catch, grade it and lay it out for sale,’ he says.

  He was barely a teenager, thrust into a world of harsh, rain-soaked graft. On shore, they lived in a high-rise flat in the notorious Plymouth district of Stonehouse. ‘We were surrounded by prostitutes and drug dealers,’ he rues. His father re-married twice, and Morrison rarely saw his natural mother. He is vague about her whereabouts and the last time they met.

  His playing career began at Plymouth Argyle. Although just a decade ago, football was a very different game. ‘I’d be marking the centre-forward and the manager would be screaming at me from the touchline to smack him. It was part and parcel of the game then. You were expected to smash their main striker. Not to break his legs or anything, but to keep him quiet for a bit.’

  A £500,000 move to Blackburn Rovers during the Championship-winning season of 1994–95 foundered after he made just one full appearance. He was bought as a squad player and was in an ever-lengthening queue of defenders. Blackpool and Huddersfield Town made greater use of his combative services until City signed him for £80,000 after a successful loan period. ‘Joe [Royle] said he’s heard all about me, but wanted to see what I was like for himself. I knew it was a big chance for me.’ The captaincy is a fine piece of brinkmanship by Royle. He has lifted Morrison to a new height, dared him not to fall from grace once more.

  Within the game, Morrison is acknowledged as a good professional. He trains hard and long, perhaps with the vigour of a man who knows he must remain focused and too busy to accept the offer of a few pints after training with his team-mates or any number of hangers-on. ‘I’ve been teetotal for a few months now,’ he says, pleased with himself.

  He regularly visits northern Scotland, disappearing for days into the wilderness. ‘I’m happy on my own. I’ll drive to a beach and gladly sit in the car for a couple of hours just staring out. It’s another world up there. I’m learning to play the accordion and I’m always playing Scottish music on the CD in the car. The other lads take the piss a bit, but it’s what I like.’

  He talks about the scrapes he’s been in, fights he’s had. He does not glorify the violence, sequins are not painted on to the scars. He shakes his head sometimes, sighs at the memories. ‘I’ve got to channel my aggression into my football,’ he says.

  He had a slight relapse recently during City’s cup game with Wimbledon when he was sent off for a tussle with their striker, Carl Cort. ‘It was absolute handbags,’ he pleads. ‘I said to the ref, ‘Don’t be so bloody daft,” when he sent me off.’ If it had been any other way – something more foreboding – Morrison would say, for he is remarkably honest.

  He stretches his long legs under the table. He faces a long drive from City’s training ground to his home in Worksop. His wife, Paula, son Arron (five) and daughter Brooke (two) will be waiting for him. Arron will be wearing his goalkeeper’s gloves, ready to face a few shots in the garden. ‘I’m a big softie at home,’ he confides. The raging bull might make him a good footballer; the rage-less bull is the better bloke. He knows it, too.

  Saturday, 6 March 1999

  Manchester City 0 Northampton Town 0

  City missed numerous chances and were held to a draw by relegation candidates Northampton. They played for an hour with 10 men after Kevin Horlock was sent off for two bookable offences in a 90-second spell.

  Monday, 8 March 1999

  City learned that March contained a ‘blue moon’, following on from another just two months earlier. A blue moon is the name given to the second full moon to appear within the same calendar month. This was perceived as a good omen, and soon proved the case.

  Tuesday, 9 March 1999

  Burnley 0 Manchester City 6

  A 15-minute hat-trick from Shaun Goater, together with goals from Kevin Horlock, Andy Morrison and substitute Danny Allsopp steered City to a memorable victory at Turf Moor.

  ‘We’ve been on top in other games just as much, but we scored the goals tonight,’ said Joe Royle, adding a conciliatory word for Burnley’s manager, Stan Ternent: ‘I’m sad it’s a mate like Stan who was on the receiving end, but we needed goals and that will do us a world of good.’

  Wednesday, 10 March 1999

  A league table of the FA Carling Premiership published in the Bath Evening Chronicle showed City at the top, four points clear of Chelsea. Mysteriously, there was no sight of Manchester United who were, at the time, league leaders, four points clear of Chelsea.

  MADDOCKS’S KINGDOM A SHRINE OF INFORMATION

  (The Times, Saturday, 13 March 1999)

  The laughing statistician stands in the doorway, a City tracksuit zipped up to the top. The car next to him, the caravan on the drive, the windows of the house, they all – like him – sing their love of Manchester City with stickers, pennants and mini-kits hanging like oversized jewellery. ‘You found us all right, then?’ asks John Maddocks. Missing him would be an achievement since no other house on the estate sings the blues quite so triumphantly.

  Maddocks is City’s archivist. He has every home match programme since 1945, team line-ups (and we’re talking first-team, reserves, youths and trial games) for the past 55 years and at least one press cutting for every game City have played since 1965. His house, on the outskirts of Manchester, is a shrine to the club. Two shelves of City videos are by the television, autographed footballs sit on top of the piano. Upstairs, in a spare bedroom, is the epicentre of Maddocks’s kingdom. The room is swathed in books, programmes, files, scrapbooks, posters, photographs – all dedicated to City.

  Centre stage in his blue-lined room is a computer, and within seconds John is in situ. ‘Watch this,’ he says. He stabs at the keyboard and information about the blues flashes on to the screen. All of it vital, of course. Uwe Rösler, for example, began his career at Traktor Starkenberg, while Andy Thackeray, a member of the FA Youth Cup-winning side of 1986, might not have made the first team, but he represented Huddersfield Boys on several occasions.

  Career details of every player associated with City are logged and updated at the end of each season to include appearances and goals. ‘I do most of the updating through the summer,’ he says. So, while neighbours sunbathe in their back gardens, and the streets are alive with children on long sunny evenings, John prefers to close his curtains, pore over his statistics and input them into his computer. ‘Too right,’ he says, and chuckles.

  In recent years, a new term has been invented for the likes of John, but he valiantly protests his innocence. ‘I’m not an anorak,’ he pleads. �
�It is not an obsession, it is a hobby.’ He has no need to worry. Anoraks are lonely, timorous souls, fussy and pedantic, while John is happily married to fellow City fan, Joyce; he’s unfeasibly jolly, with a hearty chuckle borne from knowing he has more match programmes than you. Infinitely more. He also has an extensive collection of country and western records and mementoes from foreign holidays – ornaments of the leaning tower of Pisa, a gondola from Venice – could this man be any less of an anorak?

  He first watched City in the 1945–46 season but is gravely embarrassed that he cannot recall his first game, which might explain why he has spent most of his life chronicling the rest. ‘I was enthralled straight away, wrapped up in the whole thing,’ he says. He worked as an English teacher in Stockport until he was forced to take early retirement five years ago. He suffered a heart attack and had six by-passes fitted. ‘They took the veins from down here,’ he says, lifting up his trouser leg to reveal a scar almost as long as the zip on his tracksuit top.

  For many years he collected data on City with Bill Miles, a retired civil servant and father of a former City director. Not everyone at the club shared their devotion to chronicling the past. The club joiner, given his own room at Maine Road to use as a workshop, would light his fire every morning using old programmes. ‘He eventually burnt the lot. Many of them were pre-war,’ rues John.

  Peter Swales was similarly dismissive. ‘I got a call from the club saying that Swales had asked someone to clear out a load of files and put them in a skip. I got there as quickly as I could. There was all sorts in there, including handwritten ledgers of board meetings. They tell you things like how much a player really cost, right down to the last penny,’ says John. After the death of Bill Miles, Maddocks was made the club’s semi-official historian, contributing regular pieces to the programme and dealing with queries about the club’s history.

  He is one of a small band of City supporters who travel home and away to watch the reserves play. ‘I enjoy the standard of football and it’s nice to see the young lads progress from the junior teams through to the senior sides. The atmosphere isn’t all that exciting, but I can’t stand there leaping about anyway because I have to keep an eye on my stop-watch because I write the match reports for the programme,’ he says.

  While, like all City supporters, he is distraught to find the club at its lowest ever league status, it is not without some small compensation. In a month’s time, for example, City will visit Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium. Already, Maddocks’s mind is whirring. ‘Now, City haven’t played Gillingham before on their home ground, although this isn’t strictly true. We were there once in the FA Cup but that was before 1913 when they were known as New Brompton . . .’ John, since he is so well-informed, will be aware that Kappa, the club’s kit suppliers, do a nice line in anoraks after all.

  • I interviewed Maddocks before travelling to City’s training complex to see Andy Morrison. While I was waiting for Morrison, Maddocks walked into the canteen and queued up with the coaches and players, some of them first-teamers, but most of them youngsters from the various Academy teams. True to form, Maddocks had a clipboard clenched to his chest and quietly waited his turn while the young lads peered into the various vats of food, breaking off for a laugh and a joke with the kitchen staff.

  I was struck once more by the wonderfully broad church of a football club. In just one room, there were people of various ages, colour, size, and each motivated by a different aspect of the game, but all of them wearing the same City badge.

  Saturday, 13 March 1999

  Manchester City 1 Oldham Athletic 2

  A missed penalty by Gareth Taylor capped a miserable afternoon when wasted chances and defensive mistakes cost City dearly. Paul Reid’s first-half goal for Oldham was followed by a penalty by skipper, Lee Duxbury. In a frantic finish, Gareth Taylor pulled one back but it was too late to preserve City’s 12-match unbeaten run.

  The game was interrupted briefly when a male streaker raced on to the pitch.

  Sunday, 14 March 1999

  Italian sportswear company Kappa said it wanted to sever its links with City, two years into a three-year deal. It was reportedly disappointed with the club’s league status and announced that the pair’s ‘commercial objectives had grown apart’.

  Tuesday, 16 March 1999

  Manchester City 2 Notts County 1

  First-half goals from Michael Brown and man-of-the-match Terry Cooke were enough to beat a much improved County who twice hit the woodwork.

  Friday, 19 March 1999

  Andy Morrison was told he would be called before an FA disciplinary commission after receiving his eleventh yellow card of the season against Notts County. The booking, his fourth in six games, brought a warning from Joe Royle: ‘I’ve spoken to Andy and told him that these bookings for dissent have got to stop. There really is no need to talk back to referees.’

  CITY REMAIN A GIFT TO COMEDY

  (The Times, Saturday, 20 March 1999)

  A lady in shell-suit bottoms answers the door, presumably his cleaner. ‘He’s in there,’ she says, pointing to a room across from the hall. I hear him before I see him. ‘Look what he’s done now. What a pillock!’ Bernard Manning is shouting at the television, and cackling that famous Woodbine cackle. He empties another swear word from the packet, and suddenly he’s in front of me, except I don’t see him at first.

  ‘Hello, son.’ I follow the sound. ‘I’m here,’ he says. And boy is he here, behind the door, which is the last place you’d expect to find Bernard Manning. He is reclined in a luxurious leather chair wearing nothing but a white vest, white underpants and black ankle socks, his hair neatly combed and parted. He looks like a schoolboy waiting to see the district nurse. ‘Right, lad, you want to talk about City do you? We’re jinxed, we can’t get anything right. If Dolly Parton had triplets, Joe Royle would be the one on the bottle.’ Boom-boom.

  By his side is life’s essentials – several television remote controls, a copy of The Sun, a cup of tea and a tube of insulin. He was mugged a few years ago outside his nightclub and has been diabetic ever since. ‘They were tooled up and everything,’ he sighs. The house is crammed with trinkets and pictures. It looks like the final resting place for all the unsold items from a gigantic car boot sale. The mantelpiece, which runs along the length of the room, contains scores of framed photographs. ‘That’s my life story along there,’ he says. ‘Have a look if you want.’

  Clearly his state of undress leaves him unabashed. As we begin to talk, he lightens the load even further, slipping out his top set of teeth every time he takes a sip of tea. ‘I’m blue all the way through, me. Blue on stage, blue with my football team. It’s always been City for me. I never dreamed of going to Old Trafford.’

  He was first taken to Maine Road by his father, John Manning, in the 1930s. ‘I’d do all my chores in the morning, black-leading the grate and things like that, and my dad would take me in the afternoon. There was always a good atmosphere at City,’ he says. Whenever a joke comes to mind, his eyes dance. ‘There were five kids in our family and we all slept together. The other four used to wet the bed. I learned to swim before I learned to walk.’ Boom-boom, again.

  While he has not been coy with his wealth (there’s a stretch limousine outside his house), he has never been tempted to invest in City, though his son, another Bernard, is chairman of non-league Radcliffe Borough. ‘I’m too much involved in show business. Give me a microphone and a spotlight and I can give non-stop entertainment for a couple of hours. It’s my forte. I wouldn’t know where to start buying and selling players, though. If I did spend any of my money on football, I’d buy Old Trafford to build houses on it.’

  He is proud of his friendship with footballers. ‘That’s me and Mike Summerbee there, and me and Georgie Best,’ he says, pointing to photographs. ‘Bestie went to launch a ship in Newcastle, but he wouldn’t let go of the bottle.’ I ask about his relationship with black players. His alleged racial intolerance must make them
wary. ‘I have a go at everybody when I’m on stage. A joke’s a joke, nothing more. They go on about me being racist, but so is every comedian, they just single me out. I get on well with Alex Williams [City’s black former goalkeeper] and I like Shaun Goater, he’s a good player. He knows what he’s doing.’

  He is a whole-hearted supporter of the new regime at City, though he claims also to have been a friend of previous chairmen, Peter Swales and Francis Lee. ‘I’ve always got on with the people down at City. David Bernstein is a thorough gentleman and he knows his football. Joe Royle knows the game inside out. They’re slowly getting it right.’

  Inevitably, City are included in his stage act. The eyes dance, time for another joke of an uncertifiable age. ‘Snow White’s house got burned down. She went inside and heard a voice from under the floorboards saying, “City will win the cup, City will win the league.” Snow White said, “Thank God – Dopey’s OK!”’

  After the interview, Manning faces a long drive to Peterborough where he is due to appear on stage. ‘I’m 68 years old and I’m working harder than ever,’ he says, proudly. He plans to live out the remainder of his days in ‘Shalom’ – the name he has given his detached house in north Manchester – among his photographs and prints of the Hay Wain. ‘Aye, they’ll be carrying me out of the front door here,’ he says. And what of his ashes, will they be scattered over his beloved Maine Road? ‘Ashes? There’ll be six tons of lard left when they’ve done with me. They should pile me up by the goal post, I might be a help to the goalkeeper!’

  Manning announces that he’s ‘got to take a pee’ and slowly levers himself out of the chair. He shuffles from the room, black socks padding across thick carpet. Close up, close enough to see the white of his eyes and the off-white of his vest, Manning is surprisingly guileless company, your kindly, trusting grandad. On stage, of course, he is crude and cruel, bombastic and barbaric. All are welcome at Manchester City – the insanely loyal, the insanely optimistic and, even, the insanely undressed.