39 Days of Gazza - When Paul Gascoigne arrived to manage Kettering Town, people lined the streets to greet him. Just 39 days later, Gazza was gone and the club was on it's knees…. Steve Pitts
him at the 1990 World Cup finals. Moore’s striker partner, Neil Midgley, a lifelong Tottenham supporter, answered his phone to find Paul Davis telling him he had Paul Gascoigne wanting to speak to him. Midgley was so excited he jumped out of his chair to stand almost to attention as he spoke to the legend. ‘I felt like I should be saluting,’ he recalls. ‘Gascoigne was a big, big hero of mine. I kept telling myself, “It’s Paul Gascoigne, I’m going to be playing for Gazza. I’m going to do my best to make sure I’m a part of this.”’
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Although the majority of fans were thrilled at the prospect of Gascoigne coming to Kettering, club director Dave Dunham remained one of a sizeable minority who had to be convinced. ‘It had been put through Imraan that Gascoigne’s problems had been well documented but that he was reformed and recovered and was able to take the job on,’ he recalled. ‘But it was fairly obvious to me from the outset that he hadn’t and he wasn’t able to do it. Everyone was aware of Gascoigne’s history. Unless he was a completely reformed character, I just wondered how it was going to be possible.’
However much those behind Gascoigne hoped he had his alcoholism under control, he had been seen drinking wine, cider, brandy and sherry at the club and around the town even before he had moved into the manager’s office. The newspapers had found out about Gascoigne’s session in The Beeswing, and landlord Jim Wykes’s phone lines were red hot with calls from journalists asking what he had been drinking and whether he had behaved himself. To protect his idol, Wykes told them he had only had soda water and not the cider and large glass of white wine that Gascoigne had drunk.
Wykes said Gascoigne did not appear affected by the alcohol on leaving the pub. But it seemed he had caused offence in the club’s boardroom a short while later by spitting a mouthful of wine out onto the carpet, apparently without a second thought. At a club which prided itself on its hospitality, the reaction was one of silent horror. ‘This was Paul Gascoigne and people had stars in their eyes,’ said Dave Dunham. ‘But what do you do? Nobody said anything and it was just cleared up.’
Mallinger – who, until the time he stood down as chairman, was a stickler for standards and insisted that visitors to his boardroom wore a jacket and tie – was mortified. Not least for his wife, Barbara, who had to mop up the spillage, while Gascoigne stood nearby causing further offence in what was typically a rather genteel environment with language peppered with expletives.
With the deal yet to be completed, Gascoigne went off to conduct more interviews to promote his DVD and look for other ways to make money, always suspicious that some people were trying to exploit him.
Meanwhile, Ladak busied himself with the club he was about to take charge of. He went along to Compton Park, the Northampton home of the United Counties League side Cogenhoe United, to watch what was basically a youth team lose 2–1 in the Northamptonshire Football Association’s Hillier Cup.
He was regularly in touch with those at the club and a few alarm bells had already sounded with Wilson over the way that Ladak would seek him out for a chat about the team. He felt uncomfortable discussing selections, substitutions and tactics with somebody he barely knew. And it was an issue that would be central to Gascoigne’s list of complaints less than two months later.
Somebody else not at ease was Wilson’s second in command, Alan Biley. The striker had enjoyed a lengthy playing career with the likes of Everton, Portsmouth, Derby County and Cambridge United before coaching in America, Holland and Greece. He had then settled into the non-League game and joined his former Derby teammate Wilson as assistant manager in February 2004, shortly after Wilson’s appointment.
Biley had seen Ladak watching training and initiating discussions, and approached Wilson to explain his doubts. ‘I’m not sure I want to be here,’ he confided to the manager.
Wilson left it to Biley to make his own decision, and on the eve of the FA Cup third-qualifying-round trip to St Albans on 8 October he informed Wilson that he was leaving. The game was important to Kettering because victory would leave them one round away from the first round proper and the possibility of a lucrative tie against a League club. As they travelled to Hertfordshire, Wilson told the players that Biley was unwell, only giving them the true story after the goalless draw.
Three days later, Kettering, their results improving by the week, thumped St Albans 4–0 in the replay at Rockingham Road in front of a Tuesday evening crowd of more than 1,200 fans. The following Saturday’s 4–0 league defeat of Leigh RMI saw an almost identical attendance. The Gazza effect was becoming evident. Prior to his first appearance at the club, the Poppies had played four home league games and had averaged 912, with a highest gate of 966. By the time they took on Gravesend & Northfleet on 22 October, the final game before Gascoigne’s appointment after a month of relentless speculation, the attendance had climbed to 1,647.
Like many of the fans awaiting the arrival of the living legend, Ladak may well have looked at his boyhood hero through rose-tinted glasses. But he was only one of many people willing Gascoigne to seize this opportunity. Despite the well-documented problems he may have had since his days as England’s talisman, there was still plenty of goodwill and affection for him.
One of those prepared to throw his hat into the ring with Gascoigne was Paul Davis, who had been involved in professional football for his entire adult life, having signed as an apprentice for Arsenal at the age of 16. He went on to become a key member of the dominant Gunners side of the late 1980s and early 1990s, picking up medals as a First Division, FA Cup, League Cup and European Cup Winners Cup winner. Although, unlike Gascoigne, this quietly spoken Londoner did not play for the full England team, he was capped at Under-21 level on his way to 447 appearances for Arsenal, scoring 37 goals in his 17 years at Highbury.
After his playing career had ended with a brief spell at Brentford, Davis went into coaching with the football love of his life, Arsenal, and became a qualified FA coach. Like Ladak, Davis was hopeful that Gascoigne could make a success of the Kettering Town job, and agreed to join him as assistant manager. He, too, bought into Gascoigne’s vision. ‘He is still the passionate, enthusiastic guy he was when I first played against him when he was 17,’ Davis stressed. ‘He has enormous qualities that he can pass on to younger players.’
Of course, Davis was aware of the problems that had haunted Gascoigne over the previous decade, but thought the new venture could keep him focused on football. ‘We only look at the positive side of Paul,’ he pointed out.
Davis also hoped that assuming managerial responsibility for a squad of footballers who would obviously look up to him would help bring out the best in Gascoigne. In purely footballing terms, he was a genius who had played under some of the best managers in the business. He could draw on the experience gained from working for the likes of Terry Venables (QPR, Tottenham, Barcelona, England), Walter Smith (Glasgow Rangers, Everton, Scotland) and Bobby Robson (Ipswich, Newcastle, Porto, Barcelona, England). If he could combine that with his outstanding football instincts, while maintaining sobriety and interest, Davis felt he had a chance of taking the first steps on what Gascoigne was hopeful would be a long career in football management. But, as always, matters unrelated to his footballing ability would decide whether that would be possible.
Venables, Smith and Robson were among the many big names to send Gascoigne messages of support. Like so many others, they must have had their fingers crossed. They knew that, if all went well, it could help him to begin to deal with the mental-health issues that had caused him so much suffering.
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As the pro-Gazza graffiti began appearing on the walls in the town centre, so one of the questions asked at the time was how many other footballers could have generated such excitement in a town like Kettering? Sure, the club could claim the likes of Tommy Lawton, Derek Dougan and Ron Atkinson among its former managers, but it had never made it into the League and was hardly a hotbed of football fever.
‘You have to ask yourself who else would get the town that excited,’ Mallinger wondered. ‘I can’t think of anybody. He’s just one of his own, unique. And if he turned up sober now and did it all again he’d get the same reaction.’
Even