Ring of Fire

by Simon Hughes

  Carragher’s childhood encompassed the whole of the 1980s, a decade where Liverpool’s docks were sent into decline under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. From his bedroom window, Carragher could see the blue cranes of Seaforth’s Freeport, a place where unemployment rates soared. Stepping outside his front door, he could whiff the stench of a considerably sized grain silo further down the coast in Kirkdale. Around the corner on Derby Road was Quadrant Park. ‘The Quad’, as it was affectionately known locally, was an abandoned warehouse and, along with Cream and the Paradox, was home to Liverpool’s rave scene from the late eighties until the mid nineties. Nearby, old dock workers’ pubs like the Chaucer were lively, spilling out on to the streets at night-time. That the Chaucer is now closed and has a tree growing through its collapsed roof might be a metaphor for the difficulties that Bootle has faced. Carragher recognizes it as a tough place but insists his upbringing was no more challenging than that of the majority of other footballers.

  ‘I remember Gary McAllister coming to me with a paper and there was a story about the places with the lowest life expectancies. Bootle was fourth and the place he grew up in Scotland was third! We had a laugh about it and Bootle is tough, yeah. But in every footballer’s autobiography it says they came from a tough area. Bootle is no less tough than areas of Manchester, Newcastle, London or wherever, other working-class cities. People in these areas all face the same problems.’

  During an interview before Carragher had his testimonial for services to Liverpool in 2010, we walked together around Bootle’s streets. His presence attracted attention but not the kind Steven Gerrard might get if he went back to the Bluebell Estate in Huyton. There were no requests for photographs, just interest in the welfare of his family. Everybody called Carragher by his first name, James – as if he were still the young kid that kicked a football against the wall or the one that nipped into his dad’s pub, the Salisbury, for glasses of Coca-Cola. They certainly knew Philly.

  ‘I love Bootle,’ Carragher says. ‘I love the people there; I love the humour. I love getting together with my mates and my dad’s mates from when I was growing up. If I think about the perfect celebration, whether it’s a party or a wedding, I don’t picture it at a fancy do in London. It’s in Bootle on Knowsley Road, with people I know, where I can get pissed, I can get on the karaoke, I can get up and dance, I can do what I want, and no one’s bothered, no one’s watching.’

  Bootle is also one of the safest Labour seats in the country. Carragher is a Labour voter. It is uplifting to hear a footballer talk about political issues. He can understand why few footballers do.

  ‘I’m not going to sit here and say what we should do about immigration, housing or foreign aid. I haven’t got a clue, really,’ he begins. ‘I watch Newsnight now and again, and sometimes I watch Question Time if there’s no Thursday-night footy on the TV. But all I know is, where I came from people had fuck all and they’ve still got nothing. You go down Marsh Lane and it’s hard. My parents split when I was a kid and I know lots of one-parent families and kids that have gone off the rails.

  ‘I’m lucky because I’ve been a footballer and I work for Sky now, going to and from London on the train, wearing a lovely suit on the TV and it looks great. But I don’t think you should ever forget where you come from. My background is working class. I always say to our James, “Son, you don’t know how lucky you are.” He can get new football boots if he wants. Mia can go dancing and, financially, it’s not a problem. It’s a case of whether she’s got the time, whereas some of her friends can only go once a week because their families don’t have the money. I’m reminding my kids about this constantly and I hope it’s getting through, because they’ll grow into better people if it does.

  ‘Politics to me is simple. The Tories are for the people who have got a few quid and Labour is for the people who haven’t. Now I’m in a position where I have a few quid. With the 23 Foundation [Carragher’s charity], we give away food hampers at Christmas because some families can’t afford a dinner in Liverpool. They can’t afford to put clothes on their kids’ backs.

  ‘The attitude I’ve always had is, if there’s a fella not playing well in your football team, you get around and help him for the greater good. What’s the point of sitting in the pub having a bevvie if nobody else can afford to join you? What are you going to do, sit there on your own?’

  While the whole of Bootle is undoubtedly Labour, the Marsh Lane area of the Liverpool suburb is also undoubtedly Everton. Liverpool is not a city where supporters of its football clubs are found bunched in particular districts. Marsh Lane is the only one and at the Brunswick Youth Club, known affectionately by locals as the Brunny, most of the kids wear Everton shirts. Carragher used to be one of them.

  ‘We were all Evertonians, my dad especially,’ he grins. ‘You go into the pubs around Marsh Lane and you see pennants on the wall. The Everton games are always advertised and for the fellas who can’t make it to Goodison Park the pubs have the games on TV. There is a sense of community.

  ‘My brothers were mad Evertonians and my dad would take us to all the home games and a few of the aways. My dad was known in the area as a big Evertonian. He ran on to the pitch at Wembley in the 1977 League Cup final to have a go at Gordon Lee, Everton’s manager. Then, in 1984, he was pictured on TV kissing Graeme Sharp when Everton beat Watford in the FA Cup final. If somebody told him then that I’d play for Liverpool and he’d become a Liverpudlian, he’d never have believed them. But Bootle is the type of place where blood is thicker than water. He’s a mad Red now. He drives all the Evertonians crazy.’

  Because Carragher had grown up as an Evertonian, the Merseyside derby was more important to him than any other fixture.

  ‘I was very intense. I thought about games days before. I was like that as a kid. You build yourself up all week into a frenzy. Ahead of the derby, you’d read the papers and see fans on the street. You’d get wound up. You desperately wanted to beat them. I mean, playing at Goodison – fuckin’ hell. It was my favourite place to play an away game and win.

  ‘I’m not blowing mine or Stevie’s trumpet but the two of us were so up for those Everton games, their players couldn’t match our will and aggression. So our record was very good. Before Stevie and I were in the team, Liverpool used to get bullied by Everton. That certainly stopped. We bullied them. Everton were a very good team. We usually finished third or fourth and they were fifth or sixth. But they struggled to beat us. I think David Moyes did it twice in the league [actually three times] in the whole of his time there [eleven years]. It became a mental thing for them. It got to the stage where they didn’t believe they could beat us. They’d beat United, Chelsea, City and Arsenal. But against Liverpool they fell apart.’

  Carragher believes both genetics and nurture offered him the platform to become a footballer.

  ‘I achieved what I did because I was up for a fight, I had that drive,’ he explains. ‘Very few players have got it. I was born that way. I was the best player in Liverpool’s youth team but I also had the most determination. My family don’t stand back. My dad’s got a short temper and I’ve got one. Paul, my younger brother, is probably the worst. Then there’s our John who works on the [oil] rigs. We’re all lively.

  ‘I think my desire comes from my parents. I’m a mix of my mum and my dad. When my mum was pregnant, she was told that I might have spina bifida. They knew there was something wrong with me but she wasn’t quite sure until I was born. I spent the first six weeks of my life in Alder Hey Hospital. My mum must have been pretty determined.

  ‘In football, winning was always more important than performance. Don’t get me wrong, if you play badly every week the chances of losing go up and you’ll get dropped. But I grew up as a five-year-old kid seeing my dad hit a referee with a corner flag through anger about a decision he felt was wrong. George Cain was the official and he ended up refereeing in the Football League. My dad got banned for that. My family would do anything to win, ev
en things that others might find unacceptable. You find a way.’

  Carragher’s childhood memories are filled with weekend mornings spent at Chaffers, Brook Vale and Buckley Hill – amateur league pitches in Sefton – kicking in the goal at half-time or practising penalties with other kids. In the distance, he could hear Philly shouting at his team, whether they were winning or losing.

  ‘I love this story and it probably sums up Sunday football in Bootle. Like me, my dad is an obsessive and as manager of Merton Villa he went to watch a rival team called the Cabin, who were run by two brothers. One of them played and the other one ran it from the sidelines. The one playing was completely taken out by an opponent, so the manager goes to a sub, “Get changed.” The sub thinks he’s getting a game. “No, get the fucking lot off – I’m going on.” He was going on to take care of the fella. And he did!’

  Carragher wriggles with laughter when he thinks back to the day his dad offered to give a referee, who lived in Bootle, a lift by car to a cup final being held in Kirby, several miles away. When Merton Villa lost, Philly decided to leave him behind.

  Carragher was known around Bootle as the best young player and his talent was so obvious that he was regularly selected three years above his own age group for district sides. Playing as a centre-forward for Bootle boys’, he scored more than fifty goals in one season, an achievement that led to him being asked to train with Liverpool, where he signed forms.

  This was an era where the best young players in the country spent time at the Football Association’s centre of excellence at Lilleshall in Shropshire. At home he still has the match programme of a game between England and Italy schoolboys, where he scored past Gianluigi Buffon, who would become one of the greatest goalkeepers of his generation. Yet Carragher emphasizes that anyone who thinks his ascension to the top was a smooth path is wrong. He chose Liverpool over Everton because Liverpool’s youth system was producing more players than Everton’s at the time and his father recognized it before making a cold decision. At Liverpool, the standard was simply higher.

  ‘My first years at Liverpool were very difficult,’ he says. ‘I think people thought, “This kid’s coming back from Lilleshall, what’s he about?” I wasn’t physically ready to train every day and play competitive matches against older lads. At Lilleshall, you only played against lads your own age. At Liverpool, it was a free-for-all. You could be with the reserves or players younger than yourself. I wasn’t prepared for the change in routine. My football ability kept me at Liverpool. If they had judged me on my physicality, I might have been let go.’

  The structure at Liverpool followed the same pattern as that at many other clubs: the first team came first, followed by the reserves, then the A and B sides. The A side was open age: the best eighteen-year-old players plus reserves and occasionally a first-teamer working his way back to fitness. The B side included those aged eighteen and under.

  ‘Anyone who was on a YTS contract and doing really well was in the A team. I was in the B team for the whole of my first year apart from one game against Everton where I was taken off at half-time after struggling playing right-midfield. I’d never played there before. Tony Grant played in the middle of the park for Everton and ran the show. He later played for Everton’s first team. We got beaten 2–0 and I couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game. I wasn’t ready for it. It was tough. I had doubts.’

  To put it in context, David Thompson – who later played fifty-six times for Liverpool – was in the reserves aged sixteen, a level Carragher did not reach until he was nearly eighteen.

  ‘It’s not like today, where sports science can help a club predict how a player will grow. I don’t think anyone was fighting my corner, saying, “Carra – he’ll be OK in twelve months’ time.” I had to get on with it. It was down to myself to prove to them I could do it. I was playing out of my skin with the B team. But people looked at the B team as kids’ football.’

  Liverpool’s youth structure was well established by the time Carragher joined and run by a group of men who’d long worked together, which meant there was a clear direction at the club running from top to bottom. Liverpool’s B side was managed by Dave Shannon, Hughie McAuley was in charge of the A side and Steve Heighway was the overseer of the entire system. Heighway, recruited by Liverpool when Bill Shankly was manager in 1970, had won almost every trophy there was to win as a player, and many academy graduates credit him with playing a key role in their development. Heighway was educated to a university standard and an intelligent person.

  ‘To be honest, most of the lads won’t say a bad thing about any youth coach, because the ones you’re interviewing are the ones that made it!’ Carragher says sharply. ‘But there’s no doubt Steve had an authority about him. He was stern. You were a bit scared but in a good way – it wasn’t as if you were petrified with fear. He would tell you if you weren’t producing. When you describe someone in football as a schoolteacher, you automatically think negatively about the person. But with Steve, he was convincing and you didn’t want to upset him. He trained with us and always looked the part. He could still do whatever he was asking of us.’

  Heighway was most critical of Carragher and David Thompson.

  ‘If we were getting beaten, it was always our fault even when it wasn’t. We were strong characters, so we could take it. But I think he was thinking, You two are the best players, so sort it out. He’d tell us sometimes that he was only doing it for our own good. The others weren’t good enough, so there wasn’t any point in having a go at them because they weren’t going to improve.’

  Carragher believes it was guidance rather than coaching that helped Liverpool’s young players the most.

  ‘Dave, Hughie and Steve wanted us to be streetwise, to make decisions for ourselves. If we made a mistake, it was OK so long as we learned from it and didn’t do it again. It’s not a criticism of Liverpool’s academy, but at every academy now a lot of the players seem the same.’

  Carragher grits his teeth, clenching his fist, his speech becoming a lot quicker.

  ‘I don’t see many who have what I had or Thommo had. You’d always notice us whether we were playing well or not. We’d be loud, we’d be aggressive, arguing with each other, arguing with the referee. I’ll be watching a youth game and all they want to do is pass the ball nicely.’

  When Carragher was a teenager, Everton’s best player was a midfielder called Peter Holcroft.

  ‘He didn’t have a career in football but back then he had a lovely left foot; he could run a game. You’d be thinking in the dressing room, “I’ve got to do him here.” Maybe that sounds bad but I knew in my own mind that he was going to get it as soon as he received the ball for the first time. At that level you had to hit someone with an axe to be sent off. So he was getting it.’

  There is a theme about those who became professional footballers and those who didn’t.

  ‘Look at Steven Gerrard, look at [Wayne] Rooney, look at me; Michael Owen was a nasty little bastard as a kid, let me tell you. He had a clean-cut image but when you look at some of the tackles he put in, especially early on in his career, he had no fear. Remember the one he did on [Peter] Schmeichel when he was eighteen or nineteen? That’s why I like Jordan Rossiter at Liverpool now. No fear. He keeps it nice and simple; he’s alive, he’s on his toes, ready to fly into a tackle. You can see it; you can smell it. He’s got something about him. [Rossiter has since been sold to Glasgow Rangers] There are plenty at academy level who are neat and tidy and nice to watch. But where is the personality and character? I get infuriated thinking about it.’

  Beating West Ham United in the 1996 FA Youth Cup final helped propel Carragher and Michael Owen into Liverpool’s first-team reckoning, an environment where the mood was not as professional as it could have been. In the 1990s, Liverpool’s team became known as the Spice Boys and many of the club’s players appeared as much on the front pages of newspapers as they did on the back. Liverpool’s players were talented but they often fel
l short of meeting expectations at key moments, leading to the impression that they were not as focused as they should have been.

  In the early part of the decade, Graeme Souness was sacked largely because of poor results but behind that was the fact that Liverpool’s players refused to buy into his strict new rules, which limited drinking and changed eating habits, searching for healthier alternatives to steak and chips. His replacement Roy Evans looked to the past for answers, trusting players to bond socially and form a connection that would help contribute towards a positive camaraderie on the pitch. This happened at precisely the moment football was accelerating in the opposite direction, becoming an industry where extreme discipline and fitness were sacrosanct.

  Carragher admits that first-team habits were confusing. Steve Heighway’s discipline was unbending. It was not so intense with Roy Evans.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how the first-team players act, you look up to them because they’re the stars,’ he says. ‘I was training with John Barnes and Ian Rush – competing with them.’

  This was a time where a footballer’s day was not scheduled like it is now. Like workers in other industries, an hour’s lunch presented an opportunity to break free from Melwood, and the Liverpool players would walk over to the Sefton public house, a few roads away in West Derby, and during pre-season it was not uncommon for some to enjoy a relaxing pint or a roast dinner.

  It was only when Gérard Houllier came in as manager that attitudes began to change. At the beginning of his reign, Carragher was censured for his antics with a stripagram at a Christmas party when photographs made the papers. On other occasions, he was caught out drinking with his mates from Bootle.

  ‘I think I was always going to work well with Houllier because, although I liked a night out with my mates, he didn’t have to make me train better. I’d always trained well and he loved me from day one because of that. Maybe it wasn’t the case with other players. There’s no doubt, though, that Houllier came at the right time. He was all over me. I was a bit-part player under Roy Evans but as soon as Houllier arrived I was in. He was talking to me all of the time and one of the first things he did was sort out a new contract for me with Rick Parry. He’d only been there a month. I think he loved my aggression and intensity compared to the others. He probably thought, He’s someone I can work with and improve.’