• A good way to gauge a celebrity’s opinion of himself is by their reaction to a ‘cold’ call from a journalist. The vainglorious invariably start to whine and demand from where their number was attained. Your manner can remain polite and low-key, but they will become flustered and rude. Manning was immediately friendly, albeit in his gruff, non-committal way. Within seconds he had given me directions to his home. Incidentally, he didn’t really say, ‘What a pillock!’; he said: ‘What a wanker!’
Saturday, 20 March 1999
Colchester United 0 Manchester City 1
A poor performance still earned City maximum points. ‘How often have I said in the past that City have played well and not got what they deserved?’ asked Royle. ‘We haven’t played well today, but I thought we just about shaded it. Half the side never got out of the starting blocks, but we’re going home with three points.’
In an experimental broadcast by Sky TV, Shaun Goater’s 54th-minute goal made football history, becoming the first scored live on pay-per-view television.
Monday, 22 March 1999
Promotion rivals Reading, Wigan Athletic and Preston North End were City’s next three opponents. ‘This is now crunch time. We have raised ourselves for the big games this season, and we need to do the same again,’ said Royle.
Thursday, 25 March 1999
Former Manchester United striker Mark Robins was signed on loan until the end of the season from Greek side Panionios.
FAVOURITE UNCLE STILL A CITY GENT
(The Times, Saturday, 27 March 1999)
Within the portal of every football club – no matter its size – is a community of people, a village where the measure of morality is in its hospitality to strangers. Is there a smile at the reception desk? Has someone offered to make a cup of tea?
Manchester City has long been perceived as a ‘friendly’ club. Cynics argue this is primarily because they are the counterpoint to Manchester’s other famous football club. In stereotypical terms, United is your out-of-town hypermarket, faceless, homogenised and shamelessly avaricious, while City is your friendly corner shop, all how-are-you? and nice-to-see-you, love.
While City have undoubtedly picked up passive support by virtue of not being United, their historical legacy – the people that have inhabited the village – have generally stood for fair play, integrity and a good heart. Their supporters also play a critical role. They are romantic fools, damned for ever for falling in love with the wrong team. They are dreamers, sentimentalists, optimists and fatalists, and we both pity and envy them. All that pain, but such a sense of allegiance and purpose. In the past decade, City’s appeal has been further heightened by a liberal dose of bathos; they are the sport’s unofficial Slapstick FC though, it has to be said, concerted efforts are being made to curtail the metaphorical banana skins.
The first welcome to Maine Road is in a Glaswegian accent, the sandpaper rasp of Mike Corbett, who staffs the reception desk. A former bombardier, Corbett’s greeting is hardly the fawning, Americanised simper beloved of many companies with ideas above their station. He has the efficient, to-the-point manner of the bloke in a fawn coat running your local hardware store. Try, just try, telling him about rawl plugs or even the merits of a course for public-corporate interface personnel. He’ll give you a quizzical smile. ‘What could they teach me?’ he’ll ask, astounded. ‘I say “hello” to people and ask them what they want.’
Most clubs have an avuncular figure felt to epitomise its authentic historical spirit. These are invariably men who have conducted themselves with dignity and selflessness, unpolluted by ego or greed. In other words, they are great club men. At Maine Road the undisputed Uncle City is Roy Clarke, an ex-player who has given more than 50 years service to the cause.
He joined them in May 1947 from Cardiff City and in 11 years played 369 games, scoring 79 goals. He also played 22 times for Wales. After his playing career ended, he helped raise funds for City and managed its famously successful social club for nearly 25 years. Now, aged 73, he takes match sponsors on tours of the ground and is secretary of the club’s former players’ association.
On the cigarette cards of the time, Clarke was pictured all floppy hair and soft brown eyes, his skin without a line or blemish. He was 21 with a 14-year-old’s complexion when he left Wales for the first time and travelled to Manchester in a Harris tweed suit. It was a hot day in early summer, but he had been warned it was 10 degrees colder in the north. His wage was £10 a week plus a £2 bonus for a win and £1 for a draw – ‘ . . . and a good hiding if we were beaten,’ he adds.
City’s manager at the time was Sam Cowan and Clarke had eagerly anticipated his first pre-match team-talk. ‘I imagined it would be quite tactical and I would learn a lot from it. He came in five minutes before the kick-off, bounced a ball a few times on the dressing-room floor, and said, “Get bloody stuck in today,” and then he left.’ Cowan, like many other managers, had precious time for the views of players. ‘He would pin up the team-sheet and sneak off again before anyone could stop him and ask why they weren’t in the side,’ says Clarke.
Players were hardly the precious commodities of the modern game. When Clarke contracted a skin disease he was dispatched to Manchester Skin Hospital to spend time on a public ward. ‘It was an old Victorian hospital, they used to call it Scratcher’s Castle. At night, I could tell every bed by its own particular scratch,’ he says.
For a short while he ran a sports shop in Manchester, but answered the call from City to run their new social club when it was launched in 1966. ‘The sports shop did OK, but I was too soft, which has always been my trouble,’ he says. The social club flourished and became an integral part of the touring circuit for pop groups and cabaret acts. Clarke lived above the club, before leaving for a house supplied by City in Salford. ‘They’ve always been good to me, though I’m not one to ask for much,’ he says.
During his playing career he never earned more than £20 per week and he concedes to ‘a little bit of jealousy’ when he hears of modern salaries. ‘I don’t associate with them, so it’s not too bad. I don’t know any of the current City team.’
It is hard to reconcile the slight but athletic man of whom one football reporter wrote ‘a player built for speed’ with the white-haired elderly gentleman sitting in the small conservatory of a home supplied at someone else’s benevolence. These tin-bath, hob-nail footballers who played in front of thousands to great acclaim but paltry earnings should each own their own castle. Especially when, like Clarke, they served their club when personal glory had long expired.
Clarke was mugged a few years ago close to Maine Road and he blames the incident for a failing memory. ‘I can remember things that happened years ago, but yesterday not so well. It gets me down.’ He embarks on another story but forgets the name of the protagonist, scratching the air for inspiration. It doesn’t come. He sighs, shakes his head.
Finally, there is the obvious question about the current City side – the worst (according to league position) to wear the blue shirts. ‘I still find it hard to criticise City,’ he says. ‘You know, I still can’t eat before a game, I get that nervous. This is a hard one to answer. How can I say it? I think they go about the job too gingerly. In my opinion, he who is first, always wins.’
Saturday, 27 March 1999
Reading 1 Manchester City 3
A bumper crowd of 20,055 for City’s first visit to the Madejski Stadium delayed the kick-off for 30 minutes.
Two superb goals from free kicks by Terry Cooke were complemented by Shaun Goater’s eighteenth goal of the season. Reading’s goal was scored by Keith Scott in the 92nd minute.
Monday, 29 March 1999
City announced a kit sponsorship deal with French sportswear company Le Coq Sportif. The contract was thought to be worth £1 million over the next three seasons.
Andy Morrison was fined £400 by an FA disciplinary hearing. ‘Some referees have found it difficult to cope with the pressure when they handle a City game
,’ said Joe Royle. ‘I think the FA are sympathetic to our case, and I was pleased that Andy’s punishment was not harsher.’
Tuesday, 30 March 1999
Bernard Halford, club secretary, revealed that 7,500 season tickets had been sold for the forthcoming season. ‘I expect the ground to be more that 50 per cent full of season-ticket holders for next season’s campaign,’ he said.
Nine
Seize the Day
Thursday, 1 April 1999
Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, said he wanted Terry Cooke to return to Old Trafford after completing his loan period. ‘Terry is a United player and we want him to stay a United player,’ he said. ‘He’s got a terrific future in front of him. There have been one or two enquiries for him, but we have turned them down.’
CITY DIARIST HOPES TO WRITE A HAPPY ENDING
(The Times, Saturday, 3 April 1999)
Hot news. Rodney Marsh has been on the phone. A Paraguayan player – pretty handy, apparently – is looking for a club. There’s a civil war in his home country. Cover his board and lodgings, and he’ll cover every blade of grass for you. Yvonne Donachie has scribbled down the details. She passes the note to her husband. Willie Donachie smiles. We’ll see.
The familiarity or otherwise of the current Manchester City team-sheet is commensurate with their league position. Allsopp, Mason, Wiekens, Crooks, et al, are little known outside the fanaticism that drives the club. The men in the wings, however, those on the non-playing side of the white line, are much more familiar: Joe Royle, Asa Hartford, Paul Power, Dennis Tueart, Tony Book, Willie Donachie – recognisable names, recognisably City. And on the phone, another old boy, Rodney Marsh, pushing his Paraguayan.
Royle and Donachie are the two former City players entrusted to inspire the club’s renaissance. It is a double act that has already toured Oldham Athletic and Everton to varying success. Royle is your original Uncle Joe, knockabout, instinctive, pragmatic, a touch of the burlesque, and with enough one-liners to service a sitcom or two. Donachie is Cousin Willie, thoughtful, shrewd, speaks when he’s spoken to.
Surprisingly, Royle, who celebrates his 50th birthday this week, is only three years the elder. From up in the stands, this burly silhouette skirting the edge of the pitch can appear older than his years. He has been slowed down by arthritis and the recent hip-replacement operation. Close up, when the day’s work is done and a win secured, he is smiling and laughing, 16 again, fresh as you like. Donachie, meanwhile, looks good from any angle. Thin, full head of hair, he still has the incandescence of a professional sportsman. He feels his current fitness level would be enough for him to play the odd game for City reserves. He is being modest.
Royle and Donachie are contrary personalities, but they share a cultural background from which much of British football is still forged. Donachie was brought up in the Gorbals district of Glasgow, one of five children living in a house without a bath where several families shared the same outside toilet. Royle lived in inner-city Liverpool, forced to sleep on a camp-bed in his parent’s bedroom because of a shortage of space. Football was their ticket to somewhere better.
Time has not lent enchantment to Donachie’s view of his home city of the ’50s and early ’60s. ‘The shipyards were closing down and it was a hard place to grow up in. There were gangs on the streets and it was a very aggressive environment. If you showed any interest in your school work you were seen as a swot,’ he says. His mother died when he was 12 and he did not get on particularly well with his lorry-driver father. ‘He was a hard Glasgow man who would never show his feelings or emotions. He didn’t really give me much encouragement, except to say I was crap! He gave me one good piece of advice though; he told me to try and find a club in England.’
He signed for Manchester City in December 1968, just months after they had won the League Championship. He made his first-team début two years later and went on to play more than 400 games for the club in a ten-year period. ‘I found everyone at City so friendly. I loved it straight away. The club was staffed by unbelievably strong men. They kept you down to earth. They shouted at you sometimes, but you always knew it was because they loved you and wanted the best for you.’
He finished his playing career at Oldham Athletic and became their coach until he moved with Royle to Everton in 1994. After three seasons at Goodison Park, he left for Sheffield United and finally returned to Maine Road last year. ‘I thought the club was being badly run when we first arrived. We had a squad of 54 players, which meant straight away, you’ve got 43 players who are not in the team. We needed about 10 coaches just keeping them all busy. There wasn’t enough hunger about the place.’
Quietly, but ruthlessly, Royle and Donachie rationalised the club’s playing staff but during this unsettled period just before Christmas, the team’s league form was infuriatingly inconsistent. The supporters were restless, anxiety turning to panic. Donachie, for the first time in his long career in football, left the shadows and broke his silence. It was worth the wait. ‘Our supporters are beginning to wallow in City’s misfortune,’ he wrote in his regular column in the Manchester Evening News. It got stronger: ‘There is a growing tide of negativity around this club. It is creeping into every area – the media, the board, supporters, and even the players.’
The broadside was heartfelt and powerful. It was also the truth. City supporters are famously loyal and considered the aristocracy of football support, but this has bred a certain conceit, an imperiousness where moaning and tetchiness is now part of their mindset. Donachie had confronted the sacred cow of City’s phenomenal support and although some were offended by his remarks, many realised that their anti-support was worsening their plight.
Donachie has returned to the shadows and left the media to Royle once more. He continues with his weekly column – now back to less controversial fare – only because Dennis Tueart, a City director, persuaded him that he needed a higher profile. Donachie, when he is away from the training pitch, studies the science of sports coaching so that City, for example, have a US-trained fitness specialist and a sports psychologist on call.
Ultimately, and by whatever means, his aim is to instil into the current team the devotion and flair of the successful City side both he and Royle played in during the 1970s. When they lost a recent home game, club captain Andy Morrison stormed off the pitch, hoisted a huge four-wheeled stretcher over his head and hurled it down the tunnel. Donachie was heartened to see defeat cause so much hurt, for glory invariably follows passion.
Saturday, 3 April 1999
Manchester City 1 Wigan Athletic 0
An even contest was settled after a mistake by Wigan goalkeeper Roy Carroll. He went to gather a hopeful punt from Jamie Pollock, but realised his momentum would carry him outside the penalty area. He released the ball and Terry Cooke scored from a tight angle.
The win moved City up into fourth place, their highest League position since the start of the season.
Monday, 5 April 1999
Preston North End 1 Manchester City 1
The noon kick-off caught City cold when they fell behind to a Steve Basham header after just 52 seconds.
Spurred on by the 20,857 crowd – Preston’s biggest for 26 years – City created and missed several chances before Michael Brown equalised. ‘We need to win our last six games and see where it takes us,’ said Joe Royle, ‘I have never said never. We can still finish in the top two, that is our aim.’
Friday, 9 April 1999
Five first-team regulars were just one booking away from suspension – Kevin Horlock, Michael Brown, Shaun Goater, Jamie Pollock and Gerard Wiekens. During the season City had already collected 78 yellow cards (13 for Morrison alone) and had had nine players sent off.
CITY STILL LEFT WITH NOWHERE TO HIDE
(The Times, Saturday, 10 April 1999)
The paint has faded down the years, but still visible on many walls in and around Manchester is the legend: ‘5–1’. It refers to City’s triumphant victory agai
nst Manchester United on Saturday, 23 September 1989. The newspaper headlines seem outlandish now, make-believe even: ‘City Leave Sad United Behind’, ‘Fans Turn On Fergie’ and ‘United, This Was Simply A Disgrace!’ The most striking photograph from the match shows David Oldfield tapping home City’s fourth. Behind him, Gary Pallister, the ex-United defender, is on his hands and knees: tired, exasperated, crushed.
A decade later, and City still wear blue and United are in red. Otherwise, the two clubs have been completely reinvented. In crude terms, United are success, money, glamour and a 1–1 draw with Juventus in the semi-final of the European Champions League, while City are failure, debt, calamity, and a 2–1 home defeat to Mansfield Town in the Auto Windscreens Shield.
Sensibly, staff at Maine Road seldom mention Manchester’s other team these days. Their hearts might skip a beat when they recall ‘the 5–1’ – as it has become known – but they know it is old news. Both literally and metaphorically, they accept that United are now in a different league. Besides, they are busy rebuilding the club and have recognised the futility of concentrating their minds and energy on anyone but themselves.
Due to their divergent league status, the two clubs no longer play each other on a regular basis at first-team or reserves level. On Tuesday, however, City finally came within touching distance of their old rivals. They met in the Manchester Senior Cup, a competition designed to give match practice to the reserves of various north-west clubs. These ties are invariably watched by a handful of supporters, but since this was the closest to a bona fide Manchester derby for several years, 3,457 fans decided to stir the memory of derbies past.
The match, staged at Ewen Fields, the home of UniBond Premier League-side Hyde United was all-ticket. Hearsay had it that City might play their first team in an attempt to bloody the nose of their haughty neighbours, while there were fears that the game would become an excuse to detonate hostility among supporters. Mounted police were in attendance and scores of stewards but, thankfully, the atmosphere was akin to a testimonial game. City made the dignified decision of fielding their usual reserves team and David May was the only United player with any real first-team pedigree.
Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City Page 16
