by Mark Ward
Brian was very animated and gave management his all. He’d argue with everyone during the 90 minutes, especially those in the opposition dug-out. I liked him, though, and it was because he cared and wanted to win so badly that his emotions would often take over. He kicked every ball from the sidelines.
I looked at this wholehearted man from the West Midlands, who clearly felt a great passion for the game, and wondered what sort of manager I’d be given the chance. For after my experience at Birmingham, I was determined to be a manager and I had my own ideas of how best to manage players. That was in the future, though. Being very fit, I’d always been advised to carry on playing for as long as possible before thinking of hanging up my boots.
Unfortunately, our final position of eighth left us eight points and two places below the play-off places. I’d played eight matches for the Terriers but, alas, there was no contract offer on the table from Huddersfield for the upcoming 1996-97 campaign.
At 33, I still felt that I had much to offer but I was starting to think about life without football and it scared me. The game had been my life since leaving school at 16 but I feared that my career was already coming to a premature, quick ending.
I hadn’t been clever with my money over the years. There was no plan for life after football. Now that the end was just around the corner, I became increasingly desperate to find a coaching or management position. When I left Everton for a fresh start at Birmingham, I thought it would be a step in the right direction, the start of a new chapter.
But even success in my first player-coach job counted for nothing. Footballers who had played at the top level were finding it more difficult to find a club to pay them a decent wage and give them a contract to see out their playing days. Having played at the highest level, ageing pros like myself were always going to be regarded by our managers as a threat wherever we ended up playing.
That’s what happened with me and Barry Fry and there have been countless other examples where veteran pros have been allowed to drift out of the game simply because the managers at those clubs don’t want them hanging around the place when their playing days are over. It’s often all about insecurity and self-preservation on the part of those managers already in jobs, rather than building a strong management and coaching team.
What a waste of all that wealth of experience and knowledge accumulated over many years. It’s not really an issue in modern professional football, because most of today’s players – even those in the lower divisions – can live comfortably long after they’ve stopped playing and don’t need to try and stay in the game in a coaching or management capacity. For those who have basked in the riches of the Premier League or the Championship during the past decade or so, they need never work again. They’re made for life – and good luck to them. I don’t begrudge players the money they earn today.
You certainly won’t see any of them going anywhere near the only two business ventures I got involved in. While recovering from injury at Everton, I had another mad moment and bought a small, independent bookmakers next door to the Labour Club in Whiston. Stan Oakes had it for years but he’d sadly died, so I bought it for £10,000 and installed brother Billy as the manager, while Uncle Tommy and The Egg also helped out.
Why on earth I bought a bookies, I’ll never know. Maybe I was bored when the opportunity presented itself? It didn’t make a penny. It was okay for a one-man business but it didn’t turn over enough to pay staff wages and I realised I had to close it as soon as possible. After six months, I met the area manager of Ladbrokes, who had a shop just across the road from mine, and I ended up selling it to them for a small profit.
My next ill-advised business venture was to buy the Watchmaker pub, my late father’s favourite old haunt in Whiston and where he enjoyed his last drink the night before he died in 1988. It had a bad reputation for trouble but whenever it kicked off in there, it was always sorted out between the locals. The police were never called to the Watchmaker while I owned the place.
Jane and I were still struggling to keep our marriage going but my decision to buy the Watchmaker was the last straw for her and we were divorced six months after I took over the pub.
Too often I liked a bet and a drink – not exactly a good idea if you own a bookies and a pub – and I was steadily going off the rails. I’d drink in the pub until the early hours of the morning, especially on the evenings when we showed the major late-night fights on the big screen. There must have been more than 100 people crammed into the pub the night Frank Bruno fought Mike Tyson in Las Vegas in March 1995 and we held regular lock-ins until three or four o’clock in the morning.
Mind you, the best fights took place in the Watchmaker before the boxers had even entered the ring in the States! And most of the time it was women, who couldn’t handle their drink, who caused or even started the violence!
As my drinking got worse, I sank deeper into a depression brought on by the demise of my football career and the effect it was having on my personal life. I’d lost the love of my wife and my other love – football – was quickly slipping through my fingers, too.
But my League playing days weren’t over just yet. In September 1996 I had a call from an agent and went to third division (fourth tier) Wigan Athletic, who had been bought the previous year by ambitious JJB Sports chain owner Dave Whelan. Former Manchester City and Norwich City coach John Deehan was the Latics’ progressive, young manager. He’d been Mike Walker’s assistant at Carrow Road but, despite his previous ties, I got on well with him.
He signed me for a month and I was determined to make an impression to earn myself a contract until the end of the season. Apart from playing matches, it was great to be back in training and just experiencing the everyday existence of being a footballer again.
Wigan won four of their five games while I was with them but I didn’t play for them again after sustaining a nasty hand injury in the 3-2 home win against Torquay United. I went into a challenge with Jon Gittens and he unintentionally trod on my right hand as we fell.
The broken bone needed surgery and metal wires inserted into the hand to help it mend. With the ends of the wires protruding from the side of my hand, it meant I’d be out for at least two to three weeks.
The day after undergoing surgery I was called into John Deehan’s office, where he told me that the chairman didn’t want older ex-players and the club’s aim was to build a young, up and coming team. John apologised and thanked me for my efforts. Wigan had picked up 12 out of 15 points in my short spell at Springfield Park – they would go on to win the third division championship that season and make it all the way to the Premier League in the next eight years – and I felt absolutely gutted. I thought I’d done enough to at least secure a contract until the end of the season but things can change very quickly in football.
What now? I had no other club to go to and, even if I could find one, who would take me on with a broken hand? I was really in a mess, physically and mentally. Jane and I were finished – I moved out of the house in Widnes and it was later repossessed – and I was terrified of what the future held for me. I knew then that the break-up of our marriage was down to my bad behaviour. As well as my wife, I knew I’d also hurt Melissa, who was 14 at the time Jane and I split up for good, although my daughter told me later that she also felt relieved because she was fed up with her parents’ constant arguing.
If Jane and I hadn’t divorced then, the fact that I was staring retirement as a player in the face and unable to earn money from the game on a regular basis, was only going to put even more strain on our relationship. I started to drink even more heavily and was shagging different birds left, right and centre. I was really off the rails by now.
My broken hand still had the wires in it when I received a call to play in a game for Dundee, who were top of the Scottish first division at the time. During this very unsettling period on my travels, I’d briefly trained with Motherwell and made one trial appearance for Ayr United without it leading anywhere.
But Dundee seemed the most hopeful option in Scotland. After all, they agreed to pay me a one-off fee of £1,000 to play in their home league game against St Mirren at Dens Park on Saturday, November 2, 1996.
I had a tricky decision to make. Do I cut off the wires with a pair of pliers, or tell them I’m not fit to play? I knew I could get away with saying I’d simply sprained my wrist if I cut the wires close to the skin, and then put a small bandage over the damaged hand. I was so desperate to play, that’s what I decided to do. I cut off the wires and set off on the Thursday to Dundee, intending to train on the Friday and then make my debut for the Dark Blues the next day.
When I first agreed to travel north of the border I didn’t know the first thing about Dundee – who their manager was or the names of any of the players. All I knew was that it was a bloody long way from Liverpool – just less than 300 miles. In fact, when I pulled up in my car outside what I thought was Dundee’s ground, the stadium turned out to be Tannadice Park – the home of their city rivals Dundee United! Well, it’s easily done if you’re a stranger – the two grounds were a stone’s throw apart in virtually the same road!
When I eventually arrived at Dens Park I was greeted by club captain Tommy McQueen – a familiar and friendly face, as he’d played a number of games for West Ham at left-back in the latter part of my second season as a Hammer, in 1986-87. Tommy stuck out his arm and grabbed my broken right hand, gripping it tightly in typically firm Scottish-style. I’d forgotten about the wires until the Dundee skipper screamed out loud and pulled his hand away from mine.
He was sucking the blood off his fingers, where the wires had made him bleed. I immediately apologised to Tommy, explaining I’d broken my hand and that there were wires inside that still needed to be taken out very soon. Although I had a small bandage covering the end of the wire, the end of the metal wire had obviously penetrated the skin on Tommy’s hand. What a welcome to Dundee!
Tommy agreed to help me to conceal the full extent of my injury to the management and players because I didn’t want it to jeopardise my chances of playing the next day.
I trained with the squad on the Friday and the first time I felt any discomfort was when I went into a tackle and knocked my hand. I felt a little soreness at the time but during the night in the hotel in Dundee I couldn’t sleep. The hand became very warm and by breakfast time on the Saturday it was throbbing.
I removed the bandage and examined the hand carefully. The two tiny holes in my hand where each end of the wire had been inserted during surgery had swollen up and looked very red. The actual wires had disappeared into the hand itself!
I knew I was in trouble but I thought that if I could just get this first game out of the way and get back to Liverpool to sort it out, then everything would be fine.
During the game – played in blustery conditions and in front of a crowd of just 2,631 – the pain and heat from the hand became unbearable. I don’t remember doing anything of note in our 1-0 defeat but I shouldn’t have played – full stop. By not telling manager Jim Duffy just how bad my hand was, I’d been unfair to him, the club, my team-mates and the fans, who had every right to expect more from me.
Afterwards, I was summoned to the manager’s office and he gave me my money for playing. As I admitted the full extent of my injury, I told Jim I shouldn’t be getting paid anything. He wasn’t happy that I’d pulled the wool over his eyes but he realised how desperate I’d been to play. He wished me all the best and advised me to get the hand treated as soon as possible.
I drove away from Dundee on that Saturday night in unbelievable pain. For the last half of the 300-mile return journey to Merseyside I drove with my hand dangling out of the driver’s window, to try and cool it down.
Back in Liverpool, I went straight to hospital, where a male nurse examined the injury. By this time the redness had travelled up the arm, beyond my elbow and was spreading to my shoulder. He rushed me to a doctor and I was quickly admitted to a ward, where they treated me for blood poisoning.
I ended up staying in there for a week. The infection was so severe that I lost all the skin off my right hand and had surgery to remove the wires – but I was very lucky. I was told that if the infection had gone past my shoulder, the whole of my body could have been poisoned. And if that had happened, they would probably have had to amputate my arm. I’ve heard of giving your right arm to play professional football, but this was going too far!
I lay in hospital feeling deflated, angry and at war with myself. How had it come to this desperate state of affairs? I didn’t know the answer but it was only going to get worse from now on.
26. FOREIGN FIELDS
WHEN your career is ebbing away and it’s almost time to hang up your boots, there is a panic that sets in. Well, it did with me. I wanted to play for as long as I could and it didn’t really matter where. After my painfully short-lived experience in Dundee I was desperately seeking another club when a Chinese agent somehow got in touch and told me that a club named Eastern, in Hong Kong, were willing to pay my flight and put me up in an apartment with a three-month playing contract.
I didn’t know what to expect and had a meeting with the agent at Heathrow airport before signing the contract a couple of hours before our long flight. My mate Mick Tobyn had agreed to come with me for two weeks and I was looking forward to visiting Hong Kong. My father had spent two years stationed there in the army, based in Kowloon, and when I was a kid he’d tell me all about this fantastic place and urge me to go there some day.
Mick and I were both quite drunk when the flight landed in Hong Kong and I had to quickly try and sober myself up for the welcoming party. As we passed through customs there was a mass of photographers and a tiny Chinese man shouting out: ‘Ma-War, Ma-War, Ma-War! Who is Ma-Wa?’
Mick stood there, all 18 stone of him, and said that he was Mark Ward. The little Chinese fella stood amazed and shouted back, ‘You not Ma Wa – you too fat!’ We both burst out laughing as I shook our small ‘minder’s’ hand before being rushed into a taxi.
The scale of the reception had caught me by surprise but, despite the amount of drinks Mick and I had consumed on the flight over, we managed to stay in control and lucid. Hong Kong amazed me with its high-rise buildings, masses of people and exotic food smells.
The tiny Chinese ‘minder’ employed by the club took an instant and unjust dislike to Mick, saying, ‘Why he here with you? He not play football!’ Mick was becoming very angry and warned what he would do to the ‘Tiddly’ if he spoke to him so rudely again!
I didn’t have much time to rest. Training was scheduled for the next day at the local racecourse – after the horses had completed their morning run. I was introduced to two other new players, a lad from Holland and a centre-half from South Africa. Our team coach wore a Liverpool kit and organised the squad into two teams for a small-sided practice game.
It was a great setting but the playing surface was terrible and the Chinese coach had only one point to repeatedly put across to his players. Speaking in broken English, every other minute he’d shout: ‘We not Wimbledon, we pass ball like Liverpool.’
Mick watched the training session and I could see him laughing his head off. We both agreed that this trip was not about the football, but the chance to enjoy Hong Kong, the food, the booze and the sights.
There was a game the very next day and I wasn’t looking forward to it at all. The rain was torrential and when I saw the size of our goalkeeper, that was it for me. He was 5ft 6in and looked like a little kid between the sticks.
After our warm-up, we were all gathered in the middle of the pitch, where the coach spoke to the team in Chinese before explaining in English that the owner of the club was going to address the players before kick-off.
At that moment a very old Chinese man was led onto the field with two enormous minders either side of him carrying umbrellas and keeping the rain off the frail-looking owner. He spoke only in Chinese and after his little speech the playe
rs all clapped him off the pitch. I found out that he’d told the team that if we won the game, there was a bonus of 2,000 Hong Kong dollars for each player.
‘Good,’ I thought, but then as I lined up to face the tough-looking opposition it dawned on me that we had one of Ken Dodd’s Diddymen in goal. The match was a farce – we lost 1-0 after the Diddyman had been chipped from 30 yards – and I was soon asking myself what I was doing there.
That night Mick and I went to The Gene, the notorious bar where Paul Gascoigne made front-page news back in Britain by sitting in the ‘dentist’s chair’ and having copious amounts of alcohol poured down his throat during England’s build-up to Euro ’96. When we were there the bar was full of girls – I’ve never seen so many in one bar – who were obviously attracted to the place due to the free drinks for women. At £6 for a pint of Guinness, who could blame Mick and I for getting the local talent to collect a few freebies for us, too!
Yes, of course I tried the infamous dentist’s chair for size and after knocking back tequila and untold other spirits, we were certainly the worse for wear by the time we left there.
The next day Mick and I were told that we were to be moved to another hotel, in Kowloon. I asked about the apartment the football club had promised me but didn’t get any response. Already they were moving the goalposts.
A Scots lad that played for Eastern’s second team told me that the football clubs in Hong Kong were owned by triads and clubs would change hands regularly as part of the island’s gambling culture.
