Red Machine

by Simon Hughes

  ‘Me dad was from Freetown in Sierra Leone and moved here at the end of the war as a seaman,’ he continues. ‘Me mam’s roots were in Ghana, but she was born and brought up in the south end of Liverpool. Her mum was a daughter of the Ethel Austin family. She ended up with a black guy, and once they had children she was excommunicated. Mixed relationships just weren’t accepted then, so she ended up in Toxteth.’

  Less than 12 months after his birth, the Gayle family were forced out of Toxteth and across town to Norris Green.

  ‘We were informed by the council that we were being shifted so the house could be refurbished. Six weeks later, one of me mam’s friends called us up and said that they’d pulled the house down. They were containerising the port. For years, she tried to get us a transfer back to the south end, but it never happened. She was up at the housing office on Storrington Avenue every other week. We never got an honest answer from the council.’

  His brothers Abdul and Alan were back in Toxteth within a year, living with a grandparent, but together with his sister Janice, Gayle, as the youngest sibling, stayed in Norris Green until he signed terms with Liverpool as a 19 year old. ‘Noggzy, as it is now commonly known, was then in effect a self-governing estate where problems were sorted out internally. Outsiders and authority were distrusted. Families of ethnicity were scarce.

  ‘I went to St Theresa’s School and I suffered a lot through racism,’ he explains. ‘I was the only black kid and I became a target. I was constantly coming home with my clothes ripped and with grazes all over my body. I was fighting most nights of the week. I didn’t pass my 11-plus.

  ‘All me mates in Norris Green were white – great mates and still lads I socialise with now … Peter McNamara, Carl Howard, Keith Foster, Tony Kinnear, Jimmy Wilson, Phil Cannon [who now works for Blackburn Rovers as a youth-development officer]. But I had to establish myself first. There was a time when I was bullied and I let the bullies know that I was prepared to take a good hiding and try to give it back so it didn’t happen again. By the time I got into my mid-teens, it stopped because I had a reputation. I had no fear at all. I didn’t care about school; I cared about looking after myself.’

  After physical force prompted little response, Gayle’s father used football as a tool to motivate his son in education.

  ‘Me dad would batter me if I got into trouble,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it would be with his fist, other times it would be with whatever implement was close by, maybe a shoe. But the beatings didn’t do much to change my behaviour. I’d still hang around with the same crowd and get into the same trouble. But he knew that I couldn’t live without football. When he kept me inside the house and stopped me playing, it killed me, especially in the summer months when I could see kids making their way to Ellergreen School field for a 20-a-side game. Me dad wasn’t the kind of person who you could go to and reason with. You couldn’t get around him by doing jobs around the house. He was old-school.’

  Gayle’s father worked at the Ford car plant in Halewood, while his mother was an auxiliary nurse at a children’s mental-health hospital. All he wanted, though, was to become a footballer and play for Liverpool.

  ‘Me mam once bought me a Liverpool kit for Christmas, the one with the old round collar and big white badge,’ Gayle recalls. ‘I had it on every single day for about six months. Roger Hunt was my hero, and I tried to replicate his goals out on the street. Every single night when I went to bed I’d dream about playing for Liverpool. It seemed like a distant dream and maybe unrealistic because there was hardly any black players in this country during the late ’60s, early ’70s – in sport generally. Soon John Conteh came along at the same time as Muhammad Ali. Then there was Pelé and Eusébio. Clyde Best played for West Ham as well.’

  When Gayle wasn’t playing football, he was in a gang. The sink estates of Norris Green are notorious today for their association with the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, who in 2007 was gunned down on his way home from football practice after being caught in the crossfire of a feud between dark-hooded scallies trying to work their way up the local criminal food chain.

  ‘I was an original member of the Strand Gang,’ Gayle says regretfully. ‘The press makes out that they’re a recent phenomenon, but I can tell you there has been rivalry between Norris Green [the Strand Gang] and the Crocky lads [the Croxteth Crew] for generations. Admittedly, at first it was just fist fighting and there was some kind of respect, but now guns are involved. These lads have limited social skills and sort their problems out by pulling a knife or a machine gun.

  ‘The first time I got into trouble, it was for something I didn’t do. A pack of us had gone up to Formby [an affluent town in between Liverpool and Southport] with the sole intention of getting into trouble. We ended up in Freshfield, and one of the lads robbed a ball from a garden. We went and had a game on a bowling green. Playing on grass like that was like Wembley.

  ‘You couldn’t get away with it round our way because all the bowling greens had cocky watchmen looking over them. One of the lads decided to break into the park keepers’ hut and a few of the others started breaking windows. Next thing, two police vans slammed up beside us and fifteen to twenty of us got locked up. They lined us all up in a long corridor and the first lad denied responsibility. The policeman pulled out a leather glove and started slapping him really hard. Eventually, the lad admitted smashing two of the windows, thinking that would be the end of it. The police started the same process with me until I was forced into admitting that I’d smashed one, even though on this occasion I was only guilty of playing footy on the bowling green. If it was a choice between mischief and footy, I’d always choose footy.

  ‘It took six months to go to court and in the end I was found guilty of criminal damage. I was 14 and me dad went mad. He told me that I was staying in the house till I was 16. I thought he’d relent after two or three months, but every night I’d have to be home from school by quarter past four, otherwise he’d wanna know why. Sometimes if he was working on shifts, there was a bit of leeway with me mam. Eventually by the January of the year I was going to turn 16, he started to loosen his grip on me.’

  Soon, Gayle’s mother died.

  ‘It wrecked me head,’ he continues. ‘I went to live with me brother in Toxteth, and I got into all kinds of trouble. I was robbing cars, breaking into factories, stealing from shops. The police were knocking round all the time, and my brother couldn’t handle me. So they sent me back with me dad. I’d lost my mother, and there was nobody to talk to. I was devastated, but me dad wasn’t the approachable kind and all the kids on the street weren’t the kind of lads you could talk to about deep feelings. The only person I could speak to was my cousin Barry. He took me out for an hour around Norris Green at about two o’clock one morning. He tried to help me understand about life and death. To some extent it was comforting, but the next day I knew I’d be back to normal, acting unruly.’

  Gayle began travelling regularly to Liverpool away matches and started to immerse himself in all the culture that went with it.

  ‘I was a hooligan,’ he admits. ‘It was the culture. When teams came to Anfield, there was us always waiting for them and it was the same when we went away. It was accepted. Skinheads and hooliganism was part and parcel of football. I gave out a fair share of digs and I took one or two as well.’

  The worst beating he received was at Highbury.

  ‘As we got older and more experienced, we learnt not to get on the football specials [a bus that took supporters directly to the stadium]. Instead, we’d travel on the service trains and get there early. It was a game of cat and mouse. They’d be catching us by surprise and riot, then we’d do the same when the Cockneys came up to Liverpool.

  ‘Whenever we went to London, we’d get the midnight special from Lime Street. It was like a milk float – it’d stop bloody everywhere … Stafford, Birmingham, Nottingham, Northampton, Oxford … then we’d get into Euston by half-six in the morning. This one day, all the Arsenal boys cam
e into Euston unaware that we were already there, and we rounded up behind them and gave them a kicking despite the efforts of the British Transport Police. When we got to the game, we all managed to get into the Clock End where all the home supporters used to be. Alan Ball scored two and we were well beaten, so I thought about getting off home. When I turned round, I saw this boy that I’d just given a kicking to back at Euston. All of a sudden, I was on my own. I didn’t have a clue where the rest of the lads had gone, and I was surrounded by loads of Arsenal. Most of my mates had spewed it, and I must have fell asleep, so to speak. This boy went, “Do you remember me?” I did. Then, within a split-second, they were all on me. The only thing I could do was curl up in a ball and hope for the best. That was the thing to do if you were caught – curl up in a ball. I was praying that none of these lads had any knives on them. I was waiting for that sharp prod in my body. But all I could feel was kicks.

  ‘I was fortunate that all this happened in the ground, because the police came. When they got hold of me, though, all they did was fling me outside the ground and leave me to fend for myself. All I knew was that I needed to get back to Euston quick. Because if I got caught on the street when it was dark, that was it.

  ‘I don’t know how I did it, but I got back to the station. It was a lucky escape. It went with the territory, and you knew that sometime you were going to get a kicking. You always tried to make sure the odds were stacked in your favour, but if it came you had to accept it.’

  When the Liverpool hooligans fought, they did it with an eye on fashion. Gayle was a young casual who wore the right clothes and listened to the right music.

  ‘We used to wear Oxford bags and tank tops. Budgie jackets were also popular. They were like bomber jackets with two different colours. Later it went into the adidas Samba trainers. Personally, I had patchwork jeans. Liverpool fans and Evertonians both used to love it when the Cockneys came up to Liverpool because they’d turn up at the match in leather jackets. They’d end up getting twatted and they’d have the jackets robbed off them. It was a frenzy when you knew a match against Arsenal or particularly Chelsea was coming up because you knew they weren’t as streetwise as us.

  ‘People would be down Lime Street early to check that none of the Cockneys came in early. There’d be someone there keeping lookout when the first train came in from London on a Saturday morning. If anyone was on that train, well … news travels fast in Liverpool, doesn’t it?

  ‘It was like a territorial game. Later, amongst hooligans from other clubs, it became properly arranged, with heads calling people up on mobiles, but originally in Liverpool it was instinctive. The only arrangement was to meet all the lads in the American Bar [over the road from Lime Street Station], and one person would be on watch. Even if a train came in from Birmingham we’d be suspicious, because sometimes the Cockneys would try to deceive us by travelling to the Midlands first and hoping they wouldn’t bump into us. But the head [of the group] always stood out.’

  Gayle’s wayward behaviour continued, and he ended up in a detention centre for young offenders at Wellington House in Stoke-on-Trent.

  ‘I was there for four months,’ he reflects. ‘It was the best thing that ever happened to me, because it straightened me out. It was a short, sharp shock. One of the lads had stolen some chequebooks, and we went into town kiting it. We went into one shop, and it turned out these plain-clothed police had been following us. They grabbed us, so I assaulted one of them by thumping him around the head. It was one of a catalogue of minor offences that I’d committed. But when those doors at Wellington House slammed shut, I realised things had to change.’

  After doing time, Gayle found solace in the south end of Liverpool – a place he’d yearned to return to since he was in nappies.

  ‘I worked as an apprentice plasterer at first, but it was a sham,’ he laughs. ‘Then I started playing football regularly again. It was for my brother’s team, and he ran it from a nightclub in town called The TimePiece on Fleet Street. Eventually, I joined a pub side called The Bedford, and from there the manager Eric Dunlop got me a trial at Liverpool because I was scoring so many goals. Eric was a fantastic fella. He knew John Bennison [one of the original Bootroom] at Liverpool.

  ‘There still wasn’t many black players about. There was a lad called Lawrence Iro and another one, Stevie Cole, who were known around the city and they’d had trials at Liverpool as well. Stevie got murdered a few years ago in Fazakerley when some lads bounced into a pub. Stevie never made it at Liverpool and fell out with football. He went the way that I didn’t want to go.’

  Gayle remembers his first trial at Melwood vividly.

  ‘It was on a Tuesday night in August. It was really nerve-wracking. To be going into an institution like that and somewhere where I’d been on the outside of the walls for so many years, trying to get Kevin Keegan and Bill Shankly’s autographs, and now I was finally in there. The trial game went really well for me – I was excellent and I knew it.

  ‘I got the ball on the halfway line, beat three or four players and hit a shot on the run that’s come back off the crossbar. Before it’s bounced, I’ve hit it again and it has gone straight in. I’ve turned and as I’m walking back for the kick-off I can see Ronnie Moran, Joe Fagan, Reuben Bennett and the gaffer Bob Paisley all talking and smiling. A few minutes later, I went over on my ankle and I was clearly in pain, but I carried on. There was a perception, probably at every football club, that black players went missing when they got kicked, but at that moment I think they could see that I had the potential to be different to that perception.’

  Two nights later, Gayle was invited back for another trial where he scored four goals. Within a week, he was offered amateur terms.

  ‘It was a short-term contract over three months,’ he explains. ‘Kenny Dalglish signed at roughly the same time. Sammy Lee had played in the same Sunday league as me and quickly became my best mate. He had two lovely, lovely parents. Every Saturday before a game with the reserves, I’d go to his house on Brownlow Hill and his mum would offer us a “pre-match”, meaning steak and mushrooms with a bit of brown sauce. She was the nicest, most welcoming person I’d ever met. Sammy is exactly the same – you’ll never hear anybody say a bad word about Sammy.

  ‘I worked hard in the three months and didn’t want to give the club an easy excuse to let me go. It got to the November time and we were sitting in the lounge at Anfield after training and Phil Thompson goes, “What’s happening with you – are you signing ’ere or what?” I told him that I was still on the amateur contract. “Go in and confront the gaffer,” he told me. I was thinking that there was no way I could do that. “Tell the gaffer that you think you’ve done well in the reserves and deserve a full-time contract,” he continued. “And before you leave, tell him that there are other clubs sniffing around.”

  ‘I was like, “There’s no way I can do that. What happens if he calls my bluff?”

  ‘“Do it,” Tommo said.

  ‘I had to wait a week to pluck up the courage to carry it out. We were at Melwood and I went up to the gaffer before we got on the bus back to Anfield. “Yeah, course. Have your lunch and come and see me.” It was almost as if he’d been waiting. I thought Tommo might have said something. I goes in and gives him the spiel that Tommo told me, but stalling on the bit about other clubs being interested. Bob told me that he was pleased with my progress and felt I could eventually make a contribution to the first team if I continued to work hard.

  ‘Bob said they were going to give me a year’s full-time contract but to remember that the really hard work starts now. He asked me how I felt about it and I said that I was proud for my family because I knew they’d be delighted. “Anything else?” Bob asked. “Well, you know that I told you I was 18 … well, I’m actually 19 …” Bob started laughing, then asked me again whether there was anything else. So I told him that other clubs had asked about me. I didn’t even need to say it. There was a wry smile on Bob’s face. “Yep … we’ll see
you in the morning.” I hadn’t been so nervous since I was standing in front of the judge and he sentenced me to four months.’

  The people at Liverpool were unaware of Gayle’s previous misdemeanours off the field. As a product of a tough neighbourhood where fighting and sticking up for yourself was as natural as breathing or sex, he had to react differently now. For the first time in an aimless life of unemployment, petty crime, street thuggery and prison, Gayle had found his vocation.

  ‘If they knew about me being in jail, I don’t think I’d have been taken on,’ he insists. ‘The club knew that there was an edge to me even within that short period of time because I had to deal with racism from some people inside the club. I wasn’t having it, and there were a lot of things that I wasn’t prepared to accept. Anybody who crossed me like that would be confronted. I didn’t care how big, old or how high-profile they were, because if you let people get an advantage over you in any workplace it’s only going to affect your own progression in the long run. So I kicked off when I had to.’

  In signing a professional contract with Liverpool, Gayle knew that with black players progressing at other teams across the country, there was an added pressure on him to either confirm or contradict perceptions by either succeeding or failing at what was becoming the most pressured club in England.

  But Gayle was also entering a sporting dressing-room with a culture of mockery. Many players believed it accounted for Liverpool’s success. Even new signings arriving with fees and reputations to match were swiftly repressed. Players like Graeme Souness and Ian Rush were not immune from that process.

  In the name of comradeship, a perverse equality was strived for. Through ritual ribbing, newcomers were subconsciously asked the same questions: Are you one of the boys? Can you mix? The theory goes that if a player could deal appropriately with the relentless levels of banter from teammates, he could set foot inside Anfield on a Saturday and perform in front of a crowd, no problem.