The Smell of Football

by Mick 'Baz' Rathbone

  The fractured wrist cost me another three months on the sidelines. We were staying at RAF Leuchars on a pre-season trip to St Andrews in Scotland in July. It was a really hot day and the airmen at the base had asked me if they could have a bit of a game against us, so I tried to whip up a team. Most of our lads weren’t keen, though, because their pitch was as hard as concrete and they were concerned about getting injured.

  Eventually, I persuaded about eight or nine of the lads to play as a thank you for the hospitality we had received at the base. Lo and behold, somebody pushed me over on the hard surface and, crack, broken wrist.

  Suddenly, it seemed I was always injured. I was becoming injury prone. I was spending a lot of time in the treatment room. Where were all theses injuries when I really needed them back in the ’70s?

  Physiotherapy in those days was machine-based and necessitated hanging around seven days a week waiting to go and sit under the various machines without any rehabilitation, gradually becoming physically deconditioned and psychologically demotivated.

  The only good thing about that period was that it taught me a valuable lesson for my future career as a physio. I learned to do the job very differently. My players come in early. They work very hard to retain their fitness and motivation. I do not keep them hanging around all day just to sit under a machine that is not likely to have any effect on their injury anyway. Look it up – physiotherapy: treatment by physical means. It’s bad enough being injured without the treatment itself being a nightmare. As long as the players are in bright and early, train very hard – in the pool, in the gym, on the bike, on the track etc – they can go home to their families. Why punish them by keeping them hanging around all day?

  All the hanging around in the treatment room was gradually eroding my love for the game. In all those hours waiting between treatments, I probably should have started planning for the next part of my life – post-football. I was losing my desire to carry on playing. I was certainly losing my match fitness and sharpness.

  Part of the reason for my relatively sudden demise was the fact that several times I tried to return to action when I hadn’t received complete and thorough rehabilitation after a long-term injury. I had ruptured the medial ligament in my right knee in a tackle and had been out of action for nearly four months. Eventually it got better. I joined in my first full training session on the Friday and was promptly selected to play in the first team the next day – despite having done no training of any significance or intensity for months.

  I am not criticising the physio because he was a brilliant bloke, really caring and kind, it was just he had 40 or 50 lads to look after and that machine-based approach was the thinking of the era. However, there is no way that would happen nowadays. Any long-term injured player I look after would have done so much hard training during the rehabilitation period that, when he eventually rejoined the squad, he would actually have been fitter than before he got injured in the first place. In addition, he would have had to train for at least a week with the squad and played maybe 60 minutes in a reserve game and then a full 90 minutes before being considered to be anywhere near ready for the first team. But not back then. After almost four months out, it was one training session and back into the starting line-up.

  My return game was on the Deepdale astroturf. There is an old saying in football that one day your legs will ‘go’. It can happen all of a sudden – you lose that essential speed and power in your legs, usually as a consequence of either injury or age or, in my case, a bit of both. I had always considered the whole idea of your legs going to be nonsense and merely a myth, but sadly on the day in question, it happened to me and I can still vividly recall the exact moment when I realised my career was on the wane.

  I was playing right back. We were losing 1-0 and there were only a few minutes to go when we won a corner. Everybody went up except me. I stayed back to guard against the counter-attack. The ball was crossed into the box and there was an almighty goalmouth scramble before it was cleared – a huge, towering clearance that sailed high over my head, rolling and bouncing along the sideline towards our own corner flag. I turned and gave chase, running as fast as I possibly could. I was aware, though, that I was being pursued and, more worryingly, I was being caught. The foot race was on. I could feel the presence behind me, catching me. I was sprinting as fast as I could but felt like I was running through sand. I could hear his footsteps now as he closed in on me. I kept running but my legs felt like lead. I could hear his breathing now as he inexorably gained on me. Finally, just as he got level with me, I got to the ball and in the nick of time managed to gratefully poke it out of play for a throw in. There was a huge groan from the crowd. To my horror, when I looked up, I realised my panting pursuer was the linesman.

  That might make a somewhat amusing anecdote but the harsh reality is much more profound and the message is clear – rehabilitation after injury must be comprehensive, exhaustive and exhausting.

  In my fourth and final year at Preston, I played very few games due to a serious injury to my left knee that required cartilage surgery. The thing I remember most was trying to leave the hospital as soon as I could after the operation because it was my wife’s birthday. I made it to the hospital reception, but then fainted and fell, disturbing the stitches around the wound. The injury and subsequent surgery had a profound effect on my knee and, even today, it is constantly swollen and gives me quite a lot of discomfort.

  I was released by Preston at the end of that season, even though I hadn’t fully recovered from the injury. I didn’t make a fuss. I could have gone to a couple of Fourth Division clubs, but no, that was it. Seventeen years or so was plenty.

  My four years at Preston were eventful mainly for the toll the Astroturf took on my legs. I gave good service and left a good impression, but not as good as the impression that artificial pitch left on my poor skin.

  So the football career rather fizzled out. After that torturous start at Birmingham, I had persevered well and ended up being relatively successful, a regular at Rovers and North End for more than a decade. On reflection, I should have, and would have spent my whole career in the top division if I’d had more confidence. But, let’s be honest, that’s like saying I would have spent my career playing at the highest level if I’d had more ability.

  Confidence can be somewhat elusive and short-lived but, at the same time, vital, innate and essential. You can’t just give somebody confidence; it has to be nurtured and encouraged. You can’t be something you are not. In some respects, you either possess it or you don’t. With it, everything is possible; without it, nothing is possible.

  But this was no time for regrets. Off with the old and on with the new. The world was my oyster. What direction would fate take me? It was time to sit back and weigh up those job offers all the hangers-on had promised me when I was a player and seemingly worth knowing. No problem, I’d take my time, take my pick and consider all my options.

  How wrong I would be.

  I sat back during the summer of 1991, awaiting the executive offers. I couldn’t understand it. I kept checking the phone to see if there was a fault on the line. What had gone wrong? I was very bright, seemingly popular, a good personality, famous (keep dreaming), always seemed to get on well with others. Where were these offers? Come and get me – £25,000 per annum and a car would suffice.

  Except the phone didn’t ring. Why would it? In reality, I had never actually done a proper day’s work in my life. I had no real qualifications and, most importantly, I wasn’t Baz any more, charging down the wing with the fans chanting my name; in fact, I was nobody. It was one hell of a shock, let me assure you. I was in a real tight spot.

  I soon realised I was ignoring a couple of harsh facts of life – as soon as you take off that shirt for the last time, you are instantly Joe Public. Once you are no longer a player, you are nothing. Being a footballer is, in itself, not a qualification. If you are a doctor, lawyer, plumber or electrician, you are these things for life but
, once the last ball is kicked, a lower-league footballer is unemployed and seemingly perceived by some to be unemployable.

  I kept thinking back to my schooldays. I was very lucky I was born with a high level of intelligence. That is not me being big-headed; it’s just a fact. I had determined early on in life to go to university and gain a high academic qualification. I knew that would mean a great deal to my dad who was also a very intelligent man but, having been born on a farm and left school at 14, never had the opportunity to achieve anything. I had wanted to be a doctor but, of course, also had the chance to be a footballer, which I wanted even more. My father and headmaster implored me to do my A-levels and go to university and medical school – but that was easier said than done when the club you’d supported all your life was banging on your door.

  Sitting here now as someone who spent eight years as head of the medical department at one of the biggest football clubs in England, I have no real regrets about my decision. But I’ll tell you this, during that long, unemployed summer of 1991, I was beginning to think my dad and headmaster had been right and I might just live to regret my decision as I faced unemployment, obscurity and financial hardship.

  Apart from the obvious difficulties, I felt a definite loss of self-esteem. I had loved the kudos of being a professional footballer – who wouldn’t? When my wife and I met people back in those days, maybe on holiday, the conversation would always come around to what I did for a living and, when they found out I was a professional footballer, you could see their faces light up with a mixture of respect, admiration and envy. Every bloke at some time has kicked a football and millions of people love football, but only the crème de la crème can call themselves professionals.

  In my kit, I was Baz – autographs, interviews, a somebody. But now stripped of my magic No. 3 powers, I was plain old Mick Rathbone – a nobody.

  I had no qualifications. My usual working day had run from 10am until noon. I had lived all my adult life in a cosseted world of free travel, free food and free equipment. Everything had been arranged for me, I’d had no responsibilities.

  After sitting by the phone for the duration of June and July, I realised I was in a mess. I had two young girls to look after so I had to find a way of making some money. My wife had not worked since our eldest daughter was born three years earlier. It made me feel proud that I’d provided for them, and enabled her to stay at home and concentrate on being a great mum without having to drop the kids off at a childminder and somehow do a full-time job as well. I feared she would have to return to her job at the bank and I would feel like shit. A loser again.

  Then I had a brainwave. A friend owned a clothing shop in Blackburn. He used to flog the end-of-season items that hadn’t even sold in the sales really cheaply. He said I could try to sell some if I wanted. I thought if I took some of this gear to football clubs I might be able to shift some of it and make a bit of cash. Actually, it went really well and I was soon making as much money as I had when I played for Preston, but I found it hard psychologically.

  What a comedown. The great Baz reduced to trying to make a living by selling cheap tat out of the boot of his car. But it paid the bills so I just had to swallow my pride. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.

  It was a tough period in my life and I was just keeping my head above water through July and August when something happened that transformed my life beyond my wildest dreams. That break. That opportunity. Fate.

  The Professional Footballers Association had instituted a four-year part-time course at Salford University to encourage ex-professional footballers to qualify as chartered physiotherapists. The thinking was that if you could combine a chartered physiotherapist with an ex-player, it would raise the standard of medical attention throughout the leagues. After some early teething problems, it began in September 1991.

  The plan was to get 12 ‘guinea pigs’ to start the inaugural course. Naturally, such an august organisation as The Chartered Society of Physiotherapists demanded high standards and the course would be identical in content to the one undertaken by full-time undergraduates.

  The PFA were having trouble recruiting the dozen candidates because, without being unkind, not many professional footballers possessed the seven or eight GCSEs required (that was back in the day when GCSEs were hard to get unlike today where it seems everybody has at least ten – even the people who can’t tie up their own shoelaces). As a result of the lack of candidates with the required qualifications, I was contacted by the PFA and invited on to the course. I politely declined their kind offer because I had no intention of going back to school at the age of 32 and, besides, my fashion empire was about to take off – watch out Hugo Boss, here comes Hugo Baz.

  Then an incredible stroke of luck – again. It was Bank Holiday weekend at the end of August 1991, and my brother Martin and his family came up from Birmingham to visit for the weekend. I told him about the course and how I wasn’t interested. To my amazement, he begged me – yes, begged me – to do it. I had never seen him like that before. He kept on and on and wouldn’t stop until I promised him I would at least go over to Salford University for an interview and find out more about it. Martin is a dustman and said he wanted more for his younger brother. Of course, there is nothing at all wrong with being a dustman; it’s a good, honest job and certainly better than walking the streets (notwithstanding the fact I nearly ended up working for Dyno Rod all those years ago). He just felt I could do more than selling gear out of the boot of my car (not that kind of gear . . .).

  So Martin, thank you for when I travelled five-star around the world with Everton; thank you for when I worked with the likes of Wayne Rooney; thank you for when I jogged along Bondi Beach with Tim Cahill and crossed balls for Tim Howard at Soldier Field in Chicago; and thank you for when Lee Carsley scored the winning goal in the Merseyside derby and the roof came off Goodison. Thank you, Martin, you changed my life.

  What if he hadn’t come up that weekend?

  What if Julie hadn’t gone out that night?

  What if Jim Smith hadn’t sent me out on loan?

  I sailed through the interview, dug out my 1970s pencil case with the ‘Ban the Bomb’ insignia on it and started university that September. For two days a week I sold my gear to the football clubs to pay the bills, and the rest of the time I was at Salford. I was about to embark upon the most momentous period of my life.

  And so the years rolled on and on. It was the early ’90s now. Techno music was deafening everybody, civil war looming in Yugoslavia, the economy teetering on the brink of recession (again), Ralph Lauren shirts and, most significantly, the start of the Premier League loomed. The 1991/92 season would be unique in that it would be the first period in my life when I hadn’t been involved in professional football since I was a teenager.

  It’s amazing how your attitudes shift. When you are inside football, you just don’t realise how fortunate you are. There is no better place to be, trust me on that one. The only problem is that you just don’t appreciate how good it is until you are on the outside looking in. Football totally insulates you from the harsh realities of life and forms a protective screen around you and your family. Let’s face it, if you sign a three-year contract, then you know no matter how you perform you are guaranteed that money. You know you will receive generous remuneration for the duration of that contract – yes, even during the summer when you are sat on your arse at home.

  I was 32 years of age when I got my first taste of the real world (that’s what I call insulation). I had to get up in the morning and go out and sell some clothes. If I didn’t sell any clothes, I wouldn’t be able to buy anything because I wouldn’t have any money – simple enough, but it took some adapting to. One thing I quickly realised was that I had to try and get back in football ASAP.

  During my career I have met a number of players who have come into football late, after doing a ‘proper job’ for a couple of years. They all seem to share a greater love for the game, nurtured as they grafte
d on the factory floors for a living wage. These lads never seem to moan about pre-season training, long coach trips, injuries, a bit of pressure. No, they have tasted the real world. They know this is paradise. Maybe all of us could have benefited from a taste of the real world to put things into perspective and help us realise just how lucky we really were. But now, belatedly, I was getting my taste of reality and I did not like it.

  For a lot of the players today, everything comes too easily and I doubt if it is really, truly appreciated. It certainly wasn’t by me. Perhaps sending some of these young players to work for a living for a couple of months during the off-season would focus their attention better than even the very best sports psychologists are able to do.

  I have tried to learn from all of my experiences in life and I think I have been able to learn something from every facet of my football life but, believe me, that period – 1991/92 – was the steepest learning curve of all.

  Looking back on my playing career, it was such a rollercoaster ride, the ultimate switchback. From the horrors of St Andrew’s to the camaraderie at Blackburn to the injuries at Preston and, finally, the realisation that, for all those highs and lows, I had emerged with no money, no qualifications, and a potentially bleak future.

  Why? Why did things turn out the way they did? Was it just fate or more likely the life choices of a young, oversensitive and somewhat immature man?

  I can honestly say that every single day something happens – an incident, a thought or a random word – that instantly propels me back to the unhappy period all those years ago at Birmingham. Paradoxically, for all the flashbacks, deep thinking and soul-searching, I still don’t really have any firm conclusions as to the reason why things went in the direction they did.

  Sometimes I just think I was a coward, a quitter who didn’t have the moral courage to go out and play in front of a big crowd. It’s a pretty simple conclusion to draw. No need for in-depth soul searching or deep Freudian character analysis – I just didn’t have the balls. End of debate.