The Smell of Football

by Mick 'Baz' Rathbone

  We won.

  Great times, great memories – I still have my blue-and-white-halved No. 3 shirt in my wardrobe. It has magic powers, but everything has a shelf life.

  After Sacko left, Don Mackay came in. He was a decent bloke and manager, but he brought in new players, which of course he had to do. Inevitably, though, as he did, the old guard dwindled and gradually died out.

  At the end of the 1986/87 season, I decided, after eight years at the club, it was time to move on. Although we had constantly been reminded by Sacko that if any of us decided to leave we would never get another club, I took my chance, turned down the offer of a new contract and was pleased to have my choice of a number of interested clubs.

  I chose Preston North End in the Third Division, because they were up and coming, famous founder members of the league, full of proud tradition and, most importantly, just eight miles down the road. New experiences were waiting but, as I found out several times in my career, nothing in football was simple.

  This was, of course, the pre-Bosman days, which meant that although my contract was about to expire at Blackburn I couldn’t simply go and sign for another club for free.

  Players were restricted in their freedom to move between clubs and make decent money. People frequently ask me if I feel resentful that I missed out on the big money era. No, not when I used to see Tom Finney at Preston, arguably England’s greatest-ever player, who probably never earned more than a tenner a week. If he wasn’t resentful, then how could I be?

  So it was a date at the tribunal courts for me that summer and some acrimony between the Blackburn and Preston as a tug of war for my services ensued.

  Chapter Six

  REALITY BITES

  It was June 1987 and I was a man in demand. Yes me, Mick Rathbone. The same Mick Rathbone who was once so terrified of playing in the Birmingham first team he chose not to wear shinpads in the faint hope of getting injured. Preston wanted me and Blackburn didn’t want to let me go. It felt good to be in such a position.

  I had agreed to sign for Preston but, unlike in today’s game, it wasn’t as simple as that. The whole deal had to go before an independent Football League tribunal at Lytham St Annes, so the amount of compensation Preston would be required to pay Blackburn for me could be decided.

  It had been a bit of a shock to the hierarchy at Blackburn when I announced I wanted to leave – and it was flattering they were shocked. I think the club felt it was a knee-jerk reaction from me after not being selected for the Full Members Cup final the previous month. Maybe there was an element of truth in that, if I am being honest, but I do believe it was more a feeling the time was right to move on – Lassie would have understood.

  It was also flattering that Rovers had tried so hard to get me to stay at the club, but I had this inbuilt clock telling me it was time to leave. Unfortunately, however, there was some acrimony between the two clubs over the fee involved and, to be fair, I was dreading the tribunal.

  Blackburn had insisted Preston pay £60,000 for my services, arguing I was talented, versatile, a credit to my profession, coming into my best years etc. I nearly didn’t recognise myself. On the other hand, Preston had offered a measly £5,000, arguing I was past my best, and that Blackburn, in paying only £40,000 for me back in 1979, had certainly got their money’s worth.

  I travelled to the tribunal in Preston chairman Keith Leeming’s Jaguar, along with ‘Big John’ McGrath, the Preston manager. Rovers were represented by Don Mackay and Bill Fox. We were all put in the same waiting room. Nobody spoke – it was an absolutely awful state of affairs, especially as I loved Rovers so much.

  First up, I was called in to face the panel. Essentially they wanted to know what I thought I was worth. I wanted the fee to be as low as possible to ease the pressure on me (that’s me, Mr Confidence), so I said about £5,000, citing the service I had given Blackburn and also the fact they had only offered me a one-year extension and I wasn’t exactly being paid a fortune.

  I was sent back out and went to sit in the chairman’s car. I waited and waited – my fate was being decided and I hoped the clubs wouldn’t fall out too much. I didn’t want to leave Rovers under too big a cloud.

  The clock ticked and ticked and ticked. Why the delay? Is that a good sign or a bad sign? Please don’t make me an expensive player.

  Finally, Big John and Keith appeared and got in the car. They sat there for what seemed like ages, not talking – you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Finally, Keith took a big drag on his cigar and said, “Never mind, John, you can’t win them all.”

  Big John turned around and fixed me with a stare that could reduce the strongest of men (a group that by now you have probably realised I do not belong to) to shivering wrecks.

  “Fucking hell, son. Fucking hell. Twenty fucking grand you just cost me. That’s the most I have ever paid for a fucking player. You’d better fucking well produce the fucking goods, son.” (Managers tend to swear a lot.)

  What was that about pressure?

  So, Preston it was. Personal terms a formality – you should know that about me by now. I had hit the magical £300 per week.

  It was the summer of 1987 and the first hat-trick of the season had already been claimed by Maggie Thatcher as she was voted in for a third term. English football was still ostracised from any involvement in European Football, while on the home front we were about to be blown away by the storm of the century and the town of Hungerford was soon to achieve notoriety.

  With my signing-on fee, I bought a super-smart Ford Escort RS Turbo in all white. It cost me £8,000 – a fortune but proof I was now a success. I was approaching 29 years of age and was considered a good, consistent player, equally comfortable at left or right back. I was reaching my prime. The only problem was that I was going bald and looked about 50. (Why, oh why, didn’t I pay the two quid extra and get the deluxe perm?)

  Who says you can’t put an old head on young shoulders? Anybody who has gone bald will agree it is not a very enjoyable experience but, funnily enough, the lads at Blackburn took the piss out of me to such an extent I had to take it on the chin and accept it. Today, people say I look better without hair which is the ultimate back-handed compliment. Strangely, I only started to realise I was losing my hair when I saw a clip of myself on TV running back to my own goal. At first I thought it must have been somebody else as I stared at the bald spot but then, to my horror, I recognised the magic No. 3.

  My fitness levels by now were legendary and I considered my body to be indestructible. I had developed an inbuilt confidence on the pitch after eight years of regular football at Rovers. I had plenty left in the tank but not much left in the bank.

  Now I was a Northender (or Nobender as opposition fans used to call us). Another great club steeped in tradition – Finney, Shankly, the Invincibles. What an honour to pull on the lilywhite shirt. At the time, they had a plastic pitch which I used to slide-tackle on. That resulted in two things – I became a hero to the fans but had no skin on my hips and elbows for four years. I used to wake up every Sunday morning and peel the sheets off my plastic burns.

  Sometimes, before a game in winter, they would sprinkle a salt solution onto the surface to prevent it from freezing. This was an astonishing breakthrough for medicine as you could slide-tackle, get a friction burn and have it cleaned all at the same time.

  The most memorable aspect of playing for Preston during that period was the opportunity to play for Big John McGrath – and what an experience it was. Big John was a legend. It would take a whole book to do him justice. When they made Big John, they threw away the mould. He terrified and inspired us in equal measure. You did not fuck with Big John, full stop. He bought players cheaply and sold them on for big money. Think John Wayne, toughen him up a bit, swap the southern drawl for a strong Manchester accent and you have just about got the description of the legendary manager – he inspired us, he scared us, he made us laugh, he made us cry, he made us better players.

 
His methods would seem anachronistic today and he would probably be ridiculed by the modern football intelligentsia, but he had a very good track record, especially in the development of players and getting bargains. He worked on players, improved them and sold them on to bigger clubs for the profits that are the lifeblood of the smaller clubs.

  Big John took over at Deepdale when the club was at death’s door, applying for re-election and playing league games on weekday afternoons in front of a few thousand fans because they had no floodlights.

  I wasn’t there at the time, but word has it he came in and stopped the rot with sheer willpower and determination, taking the place by the scruff of the neck and almost singlehandedly dragging the club back up the league and into a position of respectability. Sam Allardyce, who played for Preston at this time, speaks in glowing terms about Big John’s impact. Sam now has a reputation for employing the most modern and forward-thinking ideas in terms of coaching, scouting and sports science, but I am sure some of his success as a manager has owed more than a little to the Big John effect.

  McGrath was the undisputed, unchallenged, Commonwealth, European and world champion of one thing – the bollocking. Nobody bollocked you like Big John. When he bollocked you, you stayed bollocked. His bollockings were spontaneous, unrehearsed, non-selective and, above all, meant. These bollockings were dished out during marathon team meetings which were held with terrifying regularity in the home dressing room at Deepdale.

  So regularly, in fact, that there was even a meeting on my very first day at the club. As I quickly found out, a meeting could only mean one thing – some poor bastard was going to get a fucking rocket from the big man. Everybody sat in the dressing room in total silence, nervously waiting for the door to open. That first time I noticed all the other players were sitting on a towel. Two hours later, when I emerged from the meeting with a numb arse from sitting on the hard wooden bench, I knew why and wouldn’t be making the same mistake again. There would be many more such meetings, but each time I made sure I got a nice thick towel to sit on.

  Those meetings were the stuff of legend. Big John would talk for over an hour. Each meeting would carry a slightly different theme. He would bollock, praise, criticise, amuse, inform and entertain. He would never stumble over a word, never repeat himself and never lose his thread. He was a truly amazing orator. In a bygone era, he could have stood on a soapbox on Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park and stopped every car (or horse) in London. I assume he had no formal qualifications, simply because he had been a professional footballer himself and left school at an early age (he was a legend at Newcastle back in the ’60s), which made his speeches all the more remarkable. I had certainly never heard anything like it.

  When a meeting was called, an element of fear quickly spread through the ranks. Somebody was getting it. We sat on our towels. The door opened slowly and first Les Chapman came in. Les was our player-coach – a good player, a great bloke and very, very funny.

  Les would pull funny faces to try and defuse the situation and ease the tension. Then the big man would enter. Each meeting, without exception, would start the same way and follow the same pattern. Big John had a habit of not finishing his sentences.

  “Les, just get the err.”

  That meant Les had to go into the shower area and turn off the noisy fan.

  He would then continue: “Gentlemen, there are one or two things I am not too, eh hum . . .” (that was the precursor to the unleashing of the fury).

  All hell would break loose as he singled out the poor defenceless victim. He would round on his prey and the mother of all bollockings would commence. You just closed your eyes and prayed he wasn’t coming for you.

  Sometimes it was difficult to see precisely who was getting it if his victim was at the other end of the dressing room, but I am ashamed to say nobody really cared who it was, just as long as it wasn’t them.

  Of course, there was much more to the meeting than the initial bollocking and, when that was dispensed, he would settle nicely into the theme of the day and we would be richly entertained.

  Each meeting had a different theme and after the well-rehearsed opening – “Les, get the err . . . gentlemen, there are one or two things I am not too . . .” – and then the ubiquitous savaging of the unlucky individual, he preached the gospel according to John, usually with the same tragic ending.

  Once he strolled in and (after the bloodletting) announced: “Gentlemen, this team is like a huge fruit salad. Mooney (Brian Mooney, our star player), you are the strawberry because you are the most tasty and expensive. Tony (Tony Ellis, our top scorer), you are the slice of kiwifruit on the top because you finish things off. Big Sam and Alex (Sam Allardyce and Alex Jones, both big, strong centre halves), you are the slices of orange because you add a bit of bite when necessary.”

  The meeting went on in this vein, comparing all the players to types of fruit, when his eyes finally fell on Warren Joyce and me, both good ‘bread and butter’ type players. “You two are bananas – nobody is ever going to pay anything for you, but something’s got to hold the whole fucking thing together.” Then he would laugh and laugh and we would all join in. What a treat.

  “Right,” he finished off. “I have had so much fruit I have given myself diarrhoea. I’m going for a shit!” Off he went, leaving us amused and entertained, but more importantly inspired and motivated. How many of today’s managers could do that?

  Once, after the team had gained an incredible result in the FA Cup at Middlesbrough, he called a meeting the following Friday prior to the next league game at Swansea. Same format, Les in first, pulling faces, then Big John.

  “Les, the err” followed by, “There are one or two things, eh hum . . .” before imparting that day’s nugget of wisdom.

  “Gentlemen, what you did last Saturday was the equivalent of going on a date with Miss World, wining and dining her at a Michelin restaurant, taking her back to your five-star hotel and spending the night making love to her. Now tomorrow you are going on a date with the ugliest old scrubber in the world but, gentlemen, she still wants fucking!”

  And with that he just turned and walked out. I couldn’t imagine Arsene Wenger using that one.

  Big John’s pet hate was the players over-eating on the day of a game and, legend has it, he once dropped a player for eating too much toast during the pre-match meal. This anti-gorging policy presented a problem to the big match-day scoffers like me, driven on by my nerves to eat huge amounts of comfort food. I just made sure I sat well away from Big John and ate two pieces of toast at the same time.

  After one bad performance in London, he called a meeting. He was clearly in a very bad mood.

  “Gentlemen,” his voice full of menace, “stand up if you had a pre-match meal on Saturday.”

  Well, of course, everybody stood up. He eyed us up and down, his demeanour full of threat.

  “Right, remain standing if you also had a cooked breakfast.”

  Everybody quickly sat down except our naive centre half Alex Jones. He just hadn’t seen what was coming and remained standing – alone, isolated and vulnerable.

  Big John unleashed his fury on the poor lad. “Jonesy, Jonesy, you fucking greedy, greedy bastard. The fucking waiter covered more distance than you last Saturday.”

  One great thing about Big John, though, was that for all his ferocity, he showed some remarkable human touches, which explains why the lads loved him so much. He never, ever fined players. His rationale was it would be impacting upon the player’s family and their lifestyle and it wasn’t fair that they should suffer.

  “I am not taking the bread out of their mouths for something they haven’t done,” he would explain.

  But if somebody did step out of line (and trust me, very few people did), he would make you stay behind after training and clean out the toilets. A really interesting and radical approach to discipline.

  Once, however, we did get into a little bit of disciplinary hot water with the FA as a result of the lad
s constantly backchatting the referees. A meeting was called, usual format (Les, fan, eh hum, gentlemen).

  “Right, listen you’ve got to stop all this fucking foul language to the referees. The board are fucking fed up with it and it’s got to fucking well stop. I won’t fucking well tolerate anybody calling them wankers or arseholes or twats any more.”

  “What shall we call them then?” asked Sam Allardyce, prompting a few sniggers from the lads.

  “It’s simple,” he said. “Call them bananas.”

  Big Sam again. “Bananas? Bananas? Why bananas?”

  “Because when they start out they are a bit green but basically straight, but they soon become yellow and fucking bent!”

  You couldn’t make it up.

  Sadly, that great man died in 1998. He was a giant and a great loss to the game. Thanks Big John. Thanks for the memories I can still recall, word perfectly, more than 20 years later.

  I enjoyed my time at Preston and I think I gave the club great service – I am sure the fans would say that. However, after a couple of years, things started to go wrong with my previously super-human body. Whether because of my age or, more likely, the unforgiving astroturf pitch, for the first time in my career I started to be hit by injuries – a ruptured medial (inside) ligament in my right knee, surgery on my left knee, a fractured cheekbone and a broken wrist.

  I can still feel and hear the crack in my right cheekbone as a Bolton player caught me. I went to head the ball but, unfortunately, the opposing player went for it with his foot and kicked me full force in the face. There was lots of blood and I tried to get up and carry on (because I am such a hero), but the physio dragged me back to the ground and put me on the stretcher. It was a nasty injury which required surgery and, even now, two decades later, the right side of my face is still numb.