by Anon, Anon
This is a well-known piece of gamesmanship: if you can’t head the ball but know that if your opponent does your team will be in trouble, you head the back of your opponent’s head. One of two things happens: either you do enough to put him off and your opponent misdirects his header under the pressure, or you, him or both hit the deck holding your heads, in which case the game will be stopped for a head injury. All perfectly within the laws of cheating, and something that you’ll probably need to do some time in your career at a crucial moment in a game, but you never, ever practise it. It’s like diving. The amount of people who ask me if we practise diving … I mean, I ask you. If you feel a clip on your heel or a tug of the shirt, especially in the box, you fall over. How hard can it be?
But here was this centre-half actually practising heading the back of somebody’s head for the next half-hour. I don’t think that manager has a job right now; it’s no surprise to me.
COULD I BE AN AGENT?
One way you can still earn a huge amount of money from football, after your playing days are numbered, is by becoming an agent, but it certainly isn’t as easy as most players who move into it like to think. There’s a lot of hard work involved, and a lot of baby-sitting. I know because I demand all that from my agent. And the competition is fierce: four big companies that dominate the industry, about 20 independent agents that each represent between 10 and 25 players (not all Premier League), and beneath them somewhere between 300 and 500 small fry. Some of these are doing a decent job, some are clueless and most are shysters. It is not uncommon for agents to receive bullets in the post after poaching players – not from fans but from other agents and their heavies.
I phoned an agent friend of mine, who is always good for a bit of information, as well as being a solid sounding board.
“What could you do for a player?” he asked.
“Well, I know what figures to ask for,” I replied.
“Look,” he said. “I’m not telling you not to become an agent but I know you – you haven’t got the patience to build up an agency on your own. You’d be much better working in reverse as a director of football and doing deals that way round. You already know your budget and what you have to work with, and you work out a bonus with the club based on the money you have saved them in transfer fees and wages at the end of every year. That’s much easier. Have you still got the offer of director of football?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Take it, then. It’s guaranteed wages and you could still play. It’s a great opportunity.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s not going to make me rich, is it?”
There was silence on the line for a few seconds before the agent broke it. “Well, what about this, then? You become a front of sorts for an agent and bring him players and take a commission on each one who signs with him. Better yet, take a commission on all future deals for that player. Agents need footballers and footballers don’t want to sign with ex-players, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Think about it,” he said. “Why would you choose to be represented by somebody who needed his own agent throughout his entire career? It’s ridiculous.”
I laughed. “I never thought of it like that.”
Typical agent that he is, he had seen that I was cracking and gone for the jugular.
“And don’t forget all the tricks of the trade,” he said. “Depending on what type of player you’re trying to sign, you need to be aware of what floats their boat. I’ve had a lot of success taking players to fancy restaurants and bars that they’ve never been in before and booking the table in their name. That makes them feel very important.”
We have done our first deal together and, to be honest, I think this method has legs.
THERE’S ALWAYS GOLF
If none of this works out, I guess I’ll be spending more time on the golf course. I used to despise the game, but I came to enjoy it after realising that you don’t have to play it seriously: golf is all about who you are playing with, not the score you end up with. I remember playing with the captain of one of my old teams, who used to cheat terribly. If his ball went into the rough, he’d discreetly kick it out. I hated that. Now if my ball lands in the rough I just tell everyone I’m moving it to the fairway. You think I’m paying thousands of pounds for membership to stand in long grass and hack at a little white ball? No chance. I want to take my shots from where the pros take theirs.
Thankfully, where I live golf is a big deal and there are lots of nice courses. The waiting lists are all a year or more, but I solved that problem by giving a course manager and his son two season tickets for a club that I used to play for.
I’d be lying if I said I was welcomed with opened arms, though. On my first outing, a group of gentlemen who had been playing there for a hundred years complained that I wasn’t wearing a collar in the clubhouse. This club didn’t let women in until about 10 years ago, which tells you all you need to know about the men who play here, so I decided I wasn’t going to take any shit from them. When a young Polish gentleman came to tell me that I would have to leave, I refused. We had a long debate about tradition, which I think I was able to demonstrate meant fuck-all in this instance, and he went to find his manager.
The manager came in and immediately thanked me again for the season tickets. He asked me if I knew the gentlemen who had complained about me, and explained that they were all from the club I used to play for – wealthy local businessmen who had at some point held board positions there. I went over and shook all their hands, and a couple of them tried to make out that they had not complained, because they wanted autographs for their children. I signed, because that’s what you do. From that moment on, wearing a collar in the clubhouse became optional.
I’d find it harder to fit in with the golfing culture elsewhere, however. My friend who used to play for one of the Old Firm once had a truly bizarre experience in South Africa. I’ll let him tell the story.
“We were out there on a tour. I didn’t want to go but I’d never been before, and I didn’t have any choice anyway. A couple of the lads threatened to boycott it and were told that the fine would be two weeks’ wages. They were furious but everyone turned up at the airport.
“By the time we got to South Africa we were exhausted and no good to train, so the manager said to take the day off and we’d start training proper the following day. The hotel was decent and you don’t have to wander too far in South Africa before a member of staff tries to steer you towards a restaurant that their mate owns, or a club. On this occasion it was a golf course.
“We took a minibus down and went to the clubhouse to hire the equipment that we needed. We managed to get everyone into a slot and decided to play two lots of four-ball; each man put a grand in, so the pot was decent. We got a few buggies sorted out and went to pay for everything, at which point the woman behind the clubhouse bar said, ‘Don’t you want a jamhead? I notice none of you have ordered one.’
“I had no idea what she was talking about, but being Scottish and thinking that whatever it was would cost me money, I said no. But she was really insistent: ‘Are you sure? Everybody has a jamhead.’
“I thought it must be a different type of club that they have out here because of the rough surrounding the course, but I couldn’t think what it might be like – maybe a kind of rescue club. We didn’t need any of that because if I lost a ball I wouldn’t be spending any time trying to find it. So I told her we’d be fine because it was so hot we’d probably only do a few holes anyway. ‘That’s probably all you’ll manage without a jamhead,’ she said.
“We drove around to the first hole and got out of our buggies. The first hole had a magnificent-looking tree line with a beautifully kept fairway. It really made you want to play golf. But the flies and mosquitos were unbelievable – they were so bad that you found yourself spitting them out of your mouth every now and again. They were everywhere. I hit a quick shot and got back into the buggy, where the net curtains
that were hanging down over the sides now made sense. We got to the third hole and caught up with a group in front of us; they offered to let us play through and we accepted. As we drove up the fairway, we could see one of their party looking for his ball and we jumped out of our buggies to help.
“The undergrowth in the trees was thick but there were hardly any flies, which I only thought was strange because it was so apparent that they had stopped buzzing around us. Just then there was a voice behind us: ‘Sir, we ought to take a new ball because we’re holding up the play.’ I turned around to see a black fella standing there, surrounded by flies that had clearly been attracted to him by the huge smearing of jam on top of his shaven head. It was one of those things that instinctively forces a double take. So that was a jamhead!
“And as we drove around the course we saw jamheads everywhere, and they were all black men. I spoke to the guy looking for his ball; he was a white man from South Africa and didn’t see any problem with a black man following him around with a load of jam on his head. ‘He’s just like a caddie,’ said the man, ‘except he keeps the flies away as well. They get well tipped at the end of the round.’ Right. That makes it OK, then.”
My own experiences of playing golf in foreign climes have rarely turned out any better. During what has become an infamous tour of America – a tour that has been referred to as “the best stag do I’ve ever been on” by a member of that squad that I still speak to – we took an afternoon off from the lash to play golf. The course was around the corner from our hotel but it was so hot that the four of us who were stupid enough to play in 100-degree heat took a cab all of 700 yards to the clubhouse entrance.
The course itself was a good one, like a links course almost surrounded by sea and swamp. I’m not a fan of America as a rule but this place was beautiful and the people were very friendly. About 10 holes into the round (and 10 beers, supplied by an all-too-frequent golf buggy that seemed to serve nothing but ice-cold Budweiser), I finally found some form. On the back nine I hit a rare but still glorious second shot with a 7 iron that flew straight down the middle of the fairway, before taking a favourable bounce to the left and running on to the green and past the flag. Although I then lost sight of it, I still felt smug.
We drove our buggies towards the green, and only then did I realise that the hole was elevated by a few feet, with the back half sloping towards a lake that lapped the edge of the green. I jumped out of the buggy, expecting the worst, and was relieved to see that the efforts of my previous shot hadn’t been in vain. There was my ball with about an inch of grass between it and the water. I was determined to salvage my good shot and rescue a par; I even had delusions of chipping in for an unexpected birdie. To do that, though, I’d have to improvise, so I took my shoes and socks off and addressed the ball with my pitching wedge. I was only a few inches into the water but there’s nothing worse than wet shoes and socks, plus I now had the perfect angle to chip back up the drop-away and towards the pin, for what would surely be the most impressive display of matchplay golf seen in these parts in recent memory.
I took a couple of practice swings and repositioned my feet several times before drawing the club back. This was going to be a historic moment, but just as the club reached the apex of the swing my moment in golfing folklore was halted by a startled team-mate looking past me and screaming, “What the fuck is that?”
I turned my head just in time to see two eyes and a long leathery nose rising out of the water. I absolutely shat myself, leapt on to the green and ran up the hill. I looked back just in time to see an alligator lower itself back into the water and, with a swipe of its tail, swim back out into the middle of the lake, where it sat peering back at us. I used to have a picture of it on my phone, but after a disastrous game I first smashed my mobile, and then threw it off a cliff.
Still, my place in sporting history was secured, even if it wasn’t for the reason that I expected as I lined up that chip shot. Every now and again I get messages from a couple of the players who were there with me; one of them never tires of sending me pictures of the crocodile from Peter Pan. The tosser.
Could I spend the rest of my life like this, with or without the crocodiles? No way. Many of the things that people wait a lifetime to do more of, I have already been doing for 10 years. But I am not looking to take it easy; I am looking for a cause. Also, as I may have pointed out already, I can’t afford to play golf all day.
PART THREE
THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM
The human cost of the beautiful game
WHERE WILL IT ALL END?
Years ago, heart monitors were the bleeding edge of scientific innovation as far as football was concerned. The beautiful game was, and maybe still is, far behind many American sports when it comes to using statistical analysis to improve individual performance, although the gap has narrowed considerably thanks to the surplus cash that most Premier League clubs can use to buy the latest technology.
Even though I no longer have the inclination to rigorously test the latest technological aids that our sports scientist lays his hands on, I get the hump when my younger team-mates show the same blasé attitude, as this area of football is important to most players and can make a huge difference to both their ability and their attitude. I am a player of advancing years and have decided that I can’t – or won’t – be helped any more, but that doesn’t mean I have no interest in sports technology.
In fact, I have become far more interested in this aspect of the game as I’ve got older. And that is because a growing amount of technology is finding its way into the game from all quarters, whether it was initially developed for the military or to help the physically challenged. Providing I don’t have to be the guinea pig, I am prepared to be dazzled.
Last season I went to St George’s Park in Burton, home to the FA’s new 350-acre National Football Centre. On the day I went, the country had just experienced torrential downpours and there was flooding on the railways, all of which meant I turned up three hours late and missed Sepp Blatter, who had been shown around that morning. That was probably a good thing for both of us, however. I detest that man and have vowed that if we are introduced to one another, I will turn my back on him. I had always dreamed that it would be at Wembley in a big game, but our schedules never seemed to match. That has always been a major regret.
As you drive down a snaking road, past a few of the pitches and what I’m told will be a landing strip for light planes, an impressive building appears in the distance. The entrance to the facility is pretty imposing, with a wall of shirts either side of an awkwardly placed reception desk that backs on to a staircase. That’s the first moment that you think that perhaps the FA held a competition to design the place and it was won by a chap who had cobbled something together in his lunch hour.
I am there to test some of the “state of the art” equipment, and God knows there’s enough of it. Clearly no expense has been spared, but that’s the problem: it appears as if people had been running around thinking, “We can have anything we like,” rather than, “Do we actually need all this?” That said, some of the kit is fantastic. A big problem for physios is devising effective rehab programmes for players who are struggling to “load-bear”: for example, somebody recovering from a cruiciate ligament operation can’t run too hard or lift too many heavy weights to build the muscle up, for fear that he will damage it again. Some clever spark has thought about that and given us the “anti-gravity treadmill” – a running platform that inflates around your lower body to reduce your weight by up to 80 per cent. This means you can still get a workout while keeping your rehabilitation as functional and specific as possible: it is perfect for those of us with injuries such as rolled ankles and, of course, cruiciates.
The centre even has access to software that can predict injuries before they develop, and slow-motion cameras to see how you distribute weight and determine which parts of your body are susceptible to injury. One injury that it is hoped this technology can reall
y benefit is Achilles’ heel damage.
After watching everybody else test the equipment I make my way to the pool area, where another version of the anti-gravity treadmill exists in the form of a small pool, the floor of which can be lowered and spun exactly like a treadmill, with underwater cameras to check on a player’s running motion. It lends itself very well to hours of fun pretending to be Michael Jackson rising up out of the floor. There is a larger version at the other end, with a hot tub encircled by a cold plunge pool for hot and cold “contrast bathing”.
I’ve soon had enough and go to find our sports scientist, who’s in the gym.
“Some place, isn’t it, mate?” I say.
“You think so?” he replies.
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask
“It’s shocking, mate. Nothing flows, you have to walk across corridors, there’s frosted glass everywhere, which means you can’t see through to keep an eye on the players. How are the physios supposed to check on the players from the treatment room when the gym is down the other end of the corridor? How can they make sure you’re doing the work right? Look at the weights room – do you want to look over the indoor pitch while you’re injured? It’s demoralising.”
“I didn’t think of it like that,” I tell him.
“Do you know who has designed this?” he asks
He has me hook, line and sinker. “No,” I say. “A big name, was it?”
“An architect” he replies.
