Football Crazy

by Terry Ravenscroft

  Higgs threw the ball in. Its trajectory was all wrong, much too high, and the ball landed well short of the jostling players. Donny groaned, opened the window and shouted out. “Higgsy!”

  Higgs looked over to the portakabin. “Boss?”

  “Arch your back more.” Donny demonstrated the required technique, bending backwards from the hips. “To give yourself more leverage.”

  Higgs nodded. “Boss.”

  The ball was booted back to Higgs by one of the players, missing him by several yards, and after collecting it he prepared to throw it into the penalty area once again. The players jockeyed for position. One of them, Darren Briggs, called over to Higgs. “On me head, Higgsy my son, on me head!”

  “How can ye miss a target like that Higgsy!” mocked the player guarding Briggs, Jimmy 'Floyd' Cragg.

  “Bollocks, you Scottish wanka,” retorted the Londoner.

  Higgs drew his arms back, arching his back in the prescribed manner.

  “That's more like it Higgsy my son,” Donny encouraged him.

  Inspired by this, and determined to impress his manager even more, Higgs arched his back even further, but only succeeded in overbalancing and falling flat on his back in the mud, much to the amusement of his team mates.

  At the portakabin window Donny rolled his eyes. It was going to be another long season. Then he remembered his idea. He smiled to himself. No, it wasn’t, it was going to be an excellent season.

  *

  Joe Price, the owner of Price's Pies, a large, stout man in his seventieth year, was seated on the back seat of his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, registration number 1 PIE, on the way to his pie factory. His face told anyone who looked upon it that its owner was contradicted about once every Preston Guild.

  As always Price was dressed in a black jacket, black and grey striped trousers and bowler hat, a form of dress he had worn for business for the last fifty years. From the back, with his traditional short-back-and-sides hair style, he looked like the character 'OddJob' in the James Bond film Goldfinger; a coincidence that was instrumental in giving birth to an authentic piece of Joe Price folklore. At the time of the release of the Bond film a youth, noticing the similarity, and seeing Price alighting from his Rolls one morning, had shouted 'OddJob!' at him from across the street before laughing and running off. Later that morning Price, with his chairman of the local Chamber of Commerce connections, had found out where the youth worked and had gone there and demanded he be sacked. He was, immediately and without ceremony. Making further use of his connections Price then made sure the youth failed to find employment anywhere else in Frogley. A week later Price knocked on the youth's front door. When the youth answered the knock Price shouted 'No Job!' at him, laughed in his face, then went on his way.

  Price's Pies was by far and away the leading employer in Frogley, over three thousand workers passing through its large iron gates every day. It was also the largest manufacturer of pies in the country by a fair margin. They were excellent pies too, prize-winning pies, their recipes unchanged since the very first pie was baked by Joe Price's father Joshua in 1923.

  Price ruled his pie factory by fear. He had found out that this method worked when he took over the running of the factory on the retirement his father in 1958, and had never found reason to change it, even if he'd had the inclination.

  There were no trade unions at Price’s Pies. Price had always paid his workforce ten per cent more than they could get elsewhere locally, and made them work twenty per cent harder for it, so everyone was happy. Price, however, was the happiest. Someone had once tried to get a trades union going in the factory but Price had dealt summarily with this pesky intrusion by giving all non-union workers a twenty per cent rise. Everyone who had joined the union quickly left it to qualify for the rise, and soon after they had all returned to the fold Price dropped everyone's wages back to the previous level.

  Now, seated in the back of the Rolls, Price was feeling particularly pleased with himself. He had just met with his solicitors to tie up a couple of loose ends, and the objective he had been working towards for the past couple of months was now a done deal. In a couple of days he would announce it to the media.

  Suddenly there was a screech of tyres as the Rolls braked hard, throwing Price forward into the back of the driver's seat with a painful bump. A small dog, dyed in the Frogley Town colours, had suddenly shot out into the road, causing the car’s chauffeur, Slaithwaite, to take evasive action. Alarmed, fearful that his employer had sustained an injury, Slaithwaite turned to him.

  “Sorry. Sorry Mr Price, sir. Is tha all reet?”

  Price straightened himself up then sat back in his seat. “No bloody thanks to thee, Slaithwaite.” He indicated to the chauffeur to continue the journey with an impatient wave of his arm. “Get me to my pie factory. And then get out of my sight, tha'rt sacked!”

  “But …but it were Fentonbottom, Mr Price,” Slaithwaite protested.

  “What bottom?” said Price.

  “Stanley Sutton's dog, Mr Price. Fentonbottom. It run reet out in front of me, I'd have hit it if I hadn’t braked.”

  Price was unmoved. “Tha knows t' rules, Slaithwaite.”

  “But....”

  “And but me no buts! Joe Price’s chauffeur brakes for nowt only human beings; and then only them as can still work. So get me to my factory, and sharp about it; then get theeself down to t' dole office, if tha’s a mind.”

  *

  Donny put on his track suit, replaced the gold medallion round his neck, then carefully combed his hair in the mirror. He checked a couple of times with the Ron Atkinson photos on the wall to ensure he had it just right, as he always did.

  The door opened and the occupant of the other half of the portakabin, George Fearnley, the club secretary, came in. George had been with the club for more years than he cared to remember, back to the days when they'd had a decent team, and was Frogley Town through and through.

  During his time at Offal Road George had seen eighteen managers come and go, some of them good, some of them not so good, some of them downright bad. As far as the coaching side of a manager's duties was concerned George judged Donny to be the second most ill-equipped that the club had ever had, being only marginally better than Gianfranco Floriano, the Italian they'd once had who couldn't speak a word of English. In their wisdom the Town board of directors had reckoned that Floriano's reputed coaching skills overrode the language barrier, as he would soon learn English. What they didn't reckon with was that within a week of taking up his position the Italian would be rendered blind when a large piece of masonry fell from the crumbling grandstand and hit him on the head, and that following this, and despite neither being able to talk to or see his players, Floriano had insisted on seeing out his two year contract with the aid of an interpreter and a guide dog. As the guide dog appeared to have an almost pathological aversion to footballers and often bit the Town's players, quite often putting them on the injury list, this new arrangement had proved to be less than satisfactory.

  Donny now turned to George, annoyed at the intrusion. “Haven't you ever heard of knocking, George? You might be the club secretary but that doesn't give you the right to just barge in here unannounced. I mean I could have been conducting delicate transfer negotiations for all you know, I could have been buying a new player.”

  “The board have stopped you buying any more players, Donny,” George pointed out.

  “All right then, I could have been selling a player.”

  “Who to, the slaughterhouse?”

  “Oh very funny I'm sure. Proper comedian, aren't you. Well you'll soon be laughing on the other side of your face. Because you're going to see a big improvement in our performances this season. My word are you. And for two very good reasons. One, thanks to my coaching the lads have got much more close ball control than they had last season; a lot more skill on the ball, if you like.”

  At that moment, as if on cue, a football came crashing through the window and ricoche
ted round the walls before coming to rest at Donny's feet. George almost managed to keep his face straight.

  Donny was unabashed. “You can smile, George. The lads will get there. There's many a slip between cup and saucer.”

  “Right,” said George, by now well accustomed to Donny's butchered metaphors. He went on, “And the other reason we're going to see a big improvement this season?”

  Donny smirked. He was going to enjoy this. He was fully aware that George didn't think much of his managerial skills, but this would show him, this would put him in his place. He puffed out his chest and announced, “I am going to take a mistress.”

  George wasn't sure he'd heard right. “A what?”

  “Tell me George, what have Big Ron Atkinson, Malcolm Allison and Tommy Docherty all got in common?”

  “They all got the sack. And you're going to be joining them if....”

  Donny cut him short. “They have all had mistresses. And at the time they had a mistress they all won the FA Cup. They all got a result in the big one.” He got to his feet to enlarge on his idea. “You see George my theory is that me not having a mistress is the one thing that's stopping me from achieving my full potential as a manager. I’m not exactly sure why, but obviously it has something to do with having your testosterone in balance. Well footballers have more testosterone you see.”

  George regarded Donny with amusement. He might be an inept football manager but if he had one saving grace it was that he could always be depended on to give you a laugh. “You're not serious are you, Donny?”

  “Well of course I'm serious; it's the best idea since fried bread.”

  “You are off your trolley, Donny,” said George.

  Donny sniffed. “Yes well what do you know George, you're just an administration man; I mean you haven't got my football brain, have you.”

  *

  Superintendent Screwer didn't mess about. And he certainly didn't mess about with football supporters. The huge bull of a man who was the new chief of the Frogley police force was a man who had been practicing zero tolerance long before that expression had ever been coined, and zero tolerance was what he was going to exact on any football supporters who got on the wrong side of him this coming football season.

  Football supporters were very much on Screwer's mind at the moment, as he studied the large map of Frogley on the wall behind the desk in his office, noting the locations and proximities to each other of the police station, the football stadium, and the hospital - the last of which any football supporters crossing him would be ending up in with a very sore head indeed if they uttered as much as a word out of place, by Christ would they!

  There was a tap on the door and Sergeant Hawks, eighteen months short of retirement and counting, entered. When Screwer had sent for him Hawks had been daydreaming about how very pleasant it all would be in the not too distant future, living on his full police pension in his little retirement cottage in the Lake District, with not a thing to worry about. Not that a Frogley policeman ever did have much to worry about; apart from the odd scuffle on Saturday nights there was little happened in the town that required the services of the long arm of the law; a short arm of the law would have been more than adequate in Frogley.

  Screwer carried on looking intently at the map. Hawks cleared his throat and said, “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “That's why I sent for you, Sergeant Hawks, that's why I sent for you.” Screwer turned to face him. “What arrangements have been made with regard to policing Frogley Town's opening match of the season in three week's time?”

  “Well we'll just do the usual I suppose, sir.”

  Screwer regarded Hawks with impatience. “Come along Sergeant, I'm new here, I don't know what the usual is, do I.”

  “Sorry sir. Constable Balfour usually drops in for half-an-hour.”

  Whenever he had difficulty in believing something Screwer had the habit of affecting surprise by jolting his head back in an exaggerated manner. At Hawks' explanation of Frogley's football policing arrangements it jolted back even farther than it usually did. “Constable Balfour drops in?” he said.

  “Well he lives near the ground, sir,” Hawks explained. “It saves somebody having to make a special trip.”

  Screwer was aghast. “Oh that won't do, Sergeant. That will not do at all. Good God man, how can we hope to stamp out football hooliganism if our entire policing of a match consists of Constable Balfour dropping in!”

  Hawks explained. “With respect sir, there isn't a lot of interest in football in Frogley. No, I think you’ll find that at the Town's matches it's strictly a one man and his dog crowd.”

  “Well this season there'll be lots of men there with dogs, Sergeant. Police dogs. Alsations with big teeth and bad tempers.”

  “And there certainly isn't any football hooliganism,” Hawks continued.

  Screwer fixed Hawks with a beady eye. When would they ever learn? “Where there is football, Sergeant, there is football hooliganism. Having previously been stationed at Leeds I know that for a fact; and I know all about the cancer in our society that football hooliganism has become.”

  “With respect sir, what few supporters the Town still have are nothing like Leeds United supporters.”

  Screwer glared at him. If Hawks had been the office door the paint would have blistered. “Respect?” he screamed. “Respect, Sergeant Hawks? You aren't showing me any fucking respect! If you were you wouldn't be arguing with me, you would be making plans to adequately police Frogley Town's opening game of the season!”

  Hawks bit his lip. Retirement and that cottage in the Lakes suddenly seemed very far away. “Yes sir.”

  Screwer drew in his horns a little. “Football supporters are the same the world over, Sergeant. Animals. Nothing more, nothing less. Take my word for it, just because the fans of Frogley Town have yet to reveal their true colours doesn't mean to say that one day they aren't going to.”

  “No sir.”

  The horns shot back out again as if spring-loaded. “Well just let them! They will not find the Frogley Police Force wanting. Not while my name is Herman Screwer they won't. We'll be ready for them, Sergeant. Ready to whip them into line; ready to break them; ready to smash the brainless bastards into submission!” He suddenly smashed his right fist into his left hand. The splat of the bone of his knuckles colliding with the flesh of his palm made Hawks wince. “Crowd control, that's the name of the game. Do you know who my hero is, Sergeant?”

  Hawks didn't, and didn't want to, he just wanted to leave. “No sir?”

  Screwer offered a clue. “He rode a white horse.”

  Hawks thought for a moment. “Attila the Hun, sir?”

  Screwer smiled in fond recollection. “'The Policeman on the White Horse', Sergeant. 1923 Cup Final at Wembley. One man controlling the uncontrollable; a crazed mob of over two hundred thousand. Now that's what you call crowd control! What are we like for tear gas?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the entire history of football not one player has ever said ‘Your ball’ when the ball has gone out of play.

  The Bone Pulveriser at Price's Pies, the machine on which Stanley Sutton earned his daily bread, was to be found in one of the factory's yards, protected from the elements by a corrugated iron shelter. Until 1990 the machine had been housed within the factory itself, but the need of floor space for a new line in curried mutton and cowheel pies had seen it consigned to its present position, its product not coming under the stringent health regulations that govern the production of food for human consumption.

  It was an impressive-looking piece of engineering by any standard. Operated by a system of hydraulics, and built to Joe Price's specification, it was still going strong over forty years after it had been commissioned. “And it will still be going when I'm pushing up t’ daisies,” Price had once remarked, and he was probably right.

  Machines that performed the same function had been built since, many of them, but none better. Made of cast iron, with copper
pipes carrying the hydraulic fluids and impressive-looking gauges encased in brass, the Bone Pulveriser was cylindrical in shape, twelve feet in diameter and ten feet high. A brass plaque, so highly-polished you could see your face in it, proclaimed it had been built in 1964 by the Barnoldswick engineering firm of Hardcastle and Unwin. In the bowels of this metal monolith were housed a series of three inch wide steel blades that combined together to render animal bones into shotgun pellet-sized granules, which were then bagged and sold on to a firm who made garden fertilizers. If the late Fred Dibnah had ever clapped eyes on it he would have had an orgasm.

  The bones entered the business part of the Bone Pulveriser through an overhead hopper, its opening wide enough to accept the largest animal bone. A man could easily pass through it, and did every week, but only to clean it, after first isolating the electric starter motor and carrying out the full safety procedure. And of course there was no danger of anyone accidentally falling into the Bone Pulveriser and coming to a premature and nasty end as the safety guard was always in position. Indeed, due to the height of the machine, anyone intent on throwing themselves in it would first have to climb up to the opening, and although many of the employees at Price's Pies got a bit depressed from time nobody had as yet done this, probably being of the opinion that although we all eventually end up as fertilizer in one form or another they didn't want to end up as it courtesy of the Price's Pies Bone Pulveriser.

  Encircling the great machine, four feet off the ground and three feet wide, was a wooden platform, necessary for maintenance purposes but also to bring the opening of the hopper within reach of the operator of the machine. Standing on the platform at the moment, three-quarters of the way through the 6-2 shift, was Stanley Sutton, who was currently dipping his hands into a barrel of bones, newly delivered by fork lift truck from the butchery department.