by Gary Imlach
Jack the doorman, Sid the groundsman, Dick the kitman, Jean in the office. Nods, jokes, secret passwords; we were in. We knew all the insiders and the insiders seemed to know us, so it followed that we had to be insiders ourselves. And since they were all performing crucial yet invisible work for the greater glory of the club, surely we were too. The impression was reinforced by the route we took to our seats. The main entrance to the players’ lounge was via a corridor that led to the dressing rooms and the tunnel. On the wall opposite there was an unmarked blue door, which opened directly onto the public gangway, just beyond the turnstiles under the main stand.
It was an almost Alice in Wonderland moment, a single step that took us from the making-of documentary into the feature film itself; out of the plush privilege of the inner sanctum straight into the coursing mass of fans funnelling towards the concrete stairs and the light at the top of them. There’d be a moment’s pause for adjustment – turned heads, quizzical looks from the paying public at three slightly self-conscious kids materialising out of the very fabric of Goodison Park – before we were dissolved into the swell.
Around us in the complimentary seats up towards the back of the stand there was a changing cast of characters. In football’s hierarchy of the hanger-on the serious players would be in the directors’ box, or possibly in jail. One of the neighbours I regularly turned to, arms raised, to embrace after a goal, I interviewed a few years later in his weekday role as Merseyside’s Chief Probation Officer.
It’s a trick of memory I know, but I recall the sequence over the PA system that championship season as being the same every week, a liturgy permanently stuck on a single feast day in the calendar: ‘Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday’ by Stevie Wonder; ‘Melting Pot’ by Blue Mink; the team changes; . . . a big hand please for the Toffee Lady; . . . could the owner of the blue Ford Escort . . . Repetition, superstition. Like brides, the teams were never seen before the ceremonial music started. No coming out half dressed to puncture the anticipation and kill the mystery, no warming up half an hour before kick-off, nothing. And really, nothing was the perfect build-up. Time passing, the ground filling, nervous stomachs synchronising themselves with the stadium clock. Build-ups can’t be orchestrated, they build themselves, according to their own rules.
A barely measurable instant before the teams came out below our seats, the news would be signalled across to us by a stirring in the stand opposite. And then the noise would begin. Not a roar as it’s usually described, not the involuntary shout of release that a goal produces either, but a great welling up of hope and anticipation, with an undertone of apprehension, what Don DeLillo calls ‘longing on a large scale’. And within that large-scale longing, thousands of individuals readying themselves to perform the detailed sequence of devotions they know are somehow crucial to the success of the team.
So, the clothes, the scarf, the standing and shouting of exactly the same phrase to the defence every time Everton conceded a corner (I can’t bring myself to divulge it even now). It was a big job for a nine-year-old, all pressure and no power. Failure to adhere precisely to the various rituals in all their nuance could leave me at fault for disaster – a goal against. Doing everything right was no guarantee that the worst wouldn’t happen anyway. The season progressed in a series of stomach lurches and heart leaps. The record actually shows that Everton lost just one home game on their way to the league title, but I remember it as a season shot through with potential danger. Perhaps I made a difference.
After the match – more precisely, after a win – the pendulum swung back from responsibility to ridiculous privilege. In the players’ lounge the scale-model figures we’d been watching from the stand loomed life-sized and star-shaped; damp hair, loosely knotted ties, drinks in hand. We ticked them off like bubblegum-card collectors. Once we’d completed the set, we knew that meant the dressing rooms must be empty. Short of being in there with the players immediately before the match, which was a perk beyond the scope of our imaginations, being in the dressing room afterwards was about as good as it got. As long as Dick hadn’t cleaned up.
Tie-ups, wristbands, mud moulded into the shape of six-pack plastic on the bottoms of boots, stray studs, team-sheets. These were items not available in the club shop, Imlach exclusives, evidence. It wasn’t enough just to get in, we needed something we could carry back with us across the dividing line to the world where the rest of our friends lived.
After a while we knew what to expect from the home dressing room. For one thing, there’d always be a scattering of half-read match programmes, which to me were a puzzling disappointment. Programmes were what we read in the stands to kill the time before kick-off because we had nothing more glamorous to do, like being actual players. The image of the players themselves having a quiet flick through, one eye on the dressing-room clock, wasn’t the kind of inside information I was keen on gathering. The visitors’, though, always held the promise of a really big find. It generally had the look of a hastily abandoned hotel room; the guests, late for the airport, jettisoning stuff they couldn’t be bothered to pack, and too pushed for time to check that they hadn’t forgotten anything. We were the dishonest cleaning staff.
In truth most of the available booty was usually medical: strapping, rolls of bandage that we’d take home for tie-ups. Once, when Leeds United, at the height of their elegant thuggery, began wearing numbered stocking tabs – perhaps they did a leg count after the game to make sure they hadn’t come off the field with anybody else’s – my brother picked up a complete set off the floor of the away dressing room. Their next appearance was during the Wednesday afternoon games period at Formby High – Look, they’ve got Velcro on the back to keep them in place. One down the pecking order, I managed a wristband.
These were our trophies. Partly, I suppose, we grabbed them simply because we could. There was certainly something of the fetish object in many of the finds. What on earth could you usefully do with one of Alan Ball’s studs? And, anyway, how would you prove it was his if the International Souvenir and Dressing Room Swag Commission ever called you in to demand authentication? In fact, all I had to go on was its proximity to his peg in the dressing room and a quick look round the boot room to see if anyone else wore aluminium instead of nylon.
It didn’t matter. I kept it in my pocket for luck, and later transplanted it to my own left boot, well-Vaselined and with all the torque I could muster on the stud spanner to keep it from coming loose. It was noticeably taller than its nylon companions, and I could feel it through the sole on firmer pitches, spurring me on.
The quality of the available souvenirs increased with our shoe size. Steve was handed down a pair of Colin Harvey’s Gola boots, with kangaroo-skin panels on the uppers. I grew into Alan Ball’s Hummel. But whatever suppleness they may originally have possessed had evaporated while they’d hung in our garage, and I took a certain pride in rejecting them too.
Sometime after he became first-team coach my father landed the only kit-endorsement deal of his whole career. Stylo paid him a nominal amount to wear their tracksuits and boots. I don’t know what brought the deal about, but I’d like to think his speed had something to do with it. Everton had a club doctor and physiotherapist, but in the early ’70s it was still the job of the first-team coach to run onto the pitch, spongebag in hand, to tend to injured players. My father did it faster than any coach or trainer I have ever seen. His speed was almost comical, disproportionate – nothing short of a car crash could justify the urgency with which he launched himself from the dugout and raced across the field, spilling water as he went, to administer analgesic spray to an ankle knock. I used to watch with a mixture of pride and slight embarrassment. In a game that was already exhibiting major signs of cynicism, it was such a brazen display of commitment and enthusiasm that it seemed out of place, a bit of old black-and-white film spliced into the Everton highlights on Match of the Day.
Anyway, the truth was that – jaded as we’d become by the pedigree of our hand-me-
downs – we didn’t want our father’s Stylo Matchmakers. After the brief side-tying sensation of their launch on the feet of George Best, they’d become irredeemably naff. Adidas, Puma, Gola perhaps, if they had some star provenance: these were the brands that brought you some status on the back field or in the school team. My older brother, keeper of the family memorabilia, still has the Stylo Matchmakers in their original box.
The biggest souvenir of the lot we didn’t need to go foraging for, it came to us. In my memory we were playing Cuppies on the back field when we were interrupted. Proper matches always took a bit of organisation – knocking on doors to scrape the numbers together, debating whether the sides were really even, arguing over whose ball to use. But Cuppies was easy. Half a dozen of us, or however many there were on a given day, kicking into one goal. It was every man for himself, with each successive scorer going through until the last player left in each round was eliminated. In this way the field was eventually whittled down to two for the final. No need for even numbers to start with, no haggling over who got picked for which side, it was a handy format that could accommodate just about anyone who turned up.
This was a 1970 World Cup edition – Jairzinho, Alan Ball, Francis Lee and Gerd Müller engaged in a perpetual goalmouth scramble – so it must have been late summer, pre- rather than post-season. Not that the game as played on the back field recognised such distinctions. There might have been the odd marathon cricket match in the long school holidays, but for practical purposes our football season had begun when we were old enough to join in and wouldn’t pause until puberty. Endless games in a fixture list that stretched further than the ten-year-old eye could see. But this one was interrupted. My mother was calling us in, much too early for tea.
My father’s Volkswagen Beetle was parked on the road in front of the house instead of on the drive. He wasn’t stopping, something about one of the other coaches having overrun his allotted time leaving us with just a few minutes. Still, he had it with him, tall, antiquely ornate and extremely shiny on the passenger seat: the Football League Championship trophy, which that season belonged to the Everton of West, Wright, Hurst, Labone, Brown, Ball, Harvey, Kendall, Husband, Royle and Morrisey, and for the next quarter of an hour to us.
What could we do with it? A lap of honour up and down the road past the neighbours’ front gardens was out of the question – we might drop it. There was really only one option, a team photo. That’s what you did with trophies. But there wasn’t time to run round to any friends’ houses and recruit a full squad. So there were nine of us – seven who’d been battling it out for that afternoon’s Jules Rimet trophy, the goalkeeper, and the boy from next door who, strictly speaking, shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t that he was a Liverpool fan – two or three of the lads in the picture were – more that he didn’t really like football, didn’t like us much, and wasn’t part of the group that played on the back field. Still, he lived next door, saw his chance and made a late run.
Nine isn’t the perfect number for a team picture, especially when three of the nine are equally determined to hold the trophy. The other six were no doubt pretty keen themselves, but having already stumbled into the photo opportunity of their lives to date they weren’t going to push their luck. As the oldest by a couple of years, Steve had the strongest claim – as well as the actual strength to enforce it. Mike and I had the presence of our parents to ensure fair play and equality of access.
You can tell from the photo that the solution took a certain amount of choreographing. For my older brother to occupy his rightful captain’s position – front row, centre – his two younger siblings would have needed to reach awkwardly across him from either side to register the all-important contact. The compromise relegates him to the back row, allowing us to kneel either side claiming a scrolled handle each, while Steve asserts his seniority by reaching forward to get both hands on the shoulder of the trophy. The object of all the jockeying for proximity stands between us like a portly, silver stork on one leg, unownable.
By the time of the official Everton FC 1970–71 squad photo a few weeks later, the trophy will be reunited with its heavy, plaque-covered wooden base, able to stand unaided in a row of its own at the front; behind it, the Everton players, unlogoed, immaculate. The team picture is the first order of pre-season business, a moment’s pause to acknowledge the achievement of last season, before the onslaught of sprints and shuttles and twelve-minute runs designed to sweat them into shape for the new one.
On the front lawn, hastily assembled, our rolling season perpetually at its midway point, we are doing the best we can at short notice. Of the nine of us only one is in full kit. Mike is wearing the Subbuteo-simple Everton away strip of the early ’70s: yellow shirt, blue shorts, yellow socks – four dabs of enamel paint. Three of us on the front row have opted for the one-knee-on-the-ground pose, a couple of decades out of date but at least a stab at professionalism. The effect is spoiled by the other two who are kneeling like choirboys. All of us except one are looking intently at the camera, solemnly pretending that we belong in the picture, or at least that we might grow up to belong in it; that the arrival of the League Championship trophy in Glenmarsh Way was an event that – while not underestimating the strength of the opposition or the challenge ahead of us – we hoped would become a regular occurrence in future seasons. Seasons that would feature us contributing on the field instead of from the complimentary seats.
The one who gives the game away is Puddin’. His real name was Stephen Armstrong and he lived about ten doors down from us towards the main road. Puddin’ was so hopeless at football that you’d never willingly pick him for your side, but at the same time he was such an amiable character that no one would ever deny him a game. He usually went in goal. With the rest of us straining for nonchalance, Puddin’ has no pretensions to maintain. He knows he’s never going to qualify for a repeat of this moment, so why waste it by joining in the po-faced dry run? Instead, he ignores the camera, staring down over my right shoulder at the trophy with a slightly slack-jawed smile. The look on his face is a kind of disbelieving wonder.
Behind us, between the blue floral curtains in the living-room window, you can see a pair of the Lladró figurines Dad used to bring home from foreign tours to make up for the fact that my mother never got to go anywhere. If it wasn’t for the reflection of the trees in the garden across the road, you’d be able to see his medal on the wall. The front door has been left open, giving a view down the hall and through the kitchen window towards the back field. In a few moments the League Championship trophy will be in the passenger seat of my father’s car heading back to Goodison, and we’ll be climbing over the garden fence to resume our dress rehearsal for glory.
As well as being personally liable for Everton’s results, our other main responsibility as the sons of our father was to be exceptional players ourselves. At school the expectation that we’d stand out came neatly packaged with a complete lack of credit when we did: Well, you’re bound to be good, because of your dad. We were good, although of course good was scarcely good enough given our pedigree. Perhaps we expected it too. Football – interest in it, access to it, ability at it – seemed to be a right that came with the surname. It might have been different if one of us had broken ranks and been useless, or grown up hating the game and hiding when the teams were picked. As it was, football was the family business and we each had every intention of eventually following our father into the firm.
He exerted no pressure on us, but when the time came there was a gently delivered professional opinion. My older brother was the first to get it. He went into the printing trade. Mike, four years younger, was a speedy, determined left-back. Not as fast as my father – none of us was, even well into our teens and his forties – but quick and hard and skilful. Everton signed him as an apprentice at sixteen. There was no favouritism: by then my father had been gone from the club for a couple of years. Everton had a surplus of left-backs and Mike could see the line of successi
on at his position stretching into the distance. But he did well and was made captain of the youth team. It was my father who called the club, close to Mike’s eighteenth birthday, to hear that they wouldn’t be signing him on as a full professional.
I can remember him walking back in from the hall and I can see Mike wriggling away from him around the far side of the dining-room table, refusing to be consoled, because being consoled meant it was true. My father had probably seen this reaction before from other boys Mike’s age, boys who’d gambled on making the grade to the exclusion of making plans for anything else. But he’d never been in the same position himself. His apprenticeship had been as a joiner not a footballer. In the early ’50s forging a successful career in the game had been no less of a lottery, but it hadn’t yet become a pools win. It certainly wasn’t something into which you put your hopes exclusively.
Of course, one club’s reject is another club’s canny signing, and Mike went on to have a short career with Leeds, Peterborough and Tranmere. He had the guts to retire at the age of twenty-three. He wasn’t transfer-listed, or crippled by injury, he simply decided that if he wasn’t going to play at the highest level, or couldn’t see it happening in the near future, then he’d rather not play at all.
