Hammered - I Played Football for West Ham, Man City and Everton… Then the Police Came Calling and My Life Fell Apart. Mark Ward
My first cup final was in 1969 – Whiston Willis Juniors v Bleak Hill at the neutral St Lukes venue. It’s a game that will always remain with me – not for the fact that we won and I scored the equaliser in our 2-1 victory, but because it earned me a pound note. Alan Moss – a lad I still know well – had watched me play from an early age and, before kick-off, he promised to give me a quid if I managed to score.
It seemed like a fortune and when the final whistle blew, as everybody ran on to the pitch and started hugging all the players, I was too busy looking around for ‘Mossy’. He sneaked up behind me, picked me up and placed my first football-related payment in my little hand. My best mate Colin scored the winner to cap a great day.
Alan Moss always had faith that I’d go on to become a pro. Whenever we meet up now, we still talk about the day he paid me a pound for my goal and made the smallest kid on the park feel 10ft tall.
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My father had his own way of toughening up his eldest son. He would take me with him to visit his brother – my Uncle Joey – two or three times a month. Joey and Aunt Ivy also lived in Huyton but I think Dad took me along more as ‘insurance’. When he left me there to go out drinking with Uncle Joey, he knew he’d have to pick me up at his brother’s place later on and take me back home, which meant he couldn’t stay out all night.
He’d leave me to play with my cousin Kevin Ward, who became the elder brother I never had. Of all my countless cousins, he was the closest to me, even though he was four years older. Kevin had a fearsome reputation around Huyton. No sooner had our fathers sloped off to The Quiet Man or the Eagle and Child for a pint or six then Kevin was lining me up for a fight with one of the local kids – even though these hand-picked opponents were usually older and bigger than me. If they were getting the better of me, as they often did at first, Kevin would come to my aid by giving my rival a slap before sending him on his way.
This went on for years. At first I’d try and hide from Dad when I knew he was planning to visit Uncle Joey’s. He’d always find me, though, and while he never said as much, I’m sure he told Kevin to harden me up a bit. It worked, because I’d gained in confidence when I returned to my hometown of Whiston. I never backed down to any of the local kids and was always in trouble for fighting.
Mr Boardman, the disciplinarian headmaster at Whiston Willis Juniors, had enough of my ongoing battles with a lad called David Maskell, the youngest of six brothers in a family of boxers. One day the Head organised a boxing match between David and myself in the school hall, in front of all the other kids. David knew how to box but I’d never even pulled on a pair of boxing gloves before. I knew I could beat David in a straightforward street fight but the boxing ring was a different matter.
My fears that our bout was going to be one-way traffic proved correct – he boxed my head off. I managed to butt him in the nose and there was blood all over his face but it was so one-sided. When the Head raised David Maskell’s hand to signal his victory at the end of the fight, he barked: ‘I hope this is the end of your fighting.’
Who was he trying to kid? I was so absolutely gutted to have lost to David in the ring that I waited for him after school to exact my revenge – in the street. I just couldn’t let him think that he was better than me at anything. I was never a bully but having this inner drive and sheer will to win became a key part of my make-up from an early age.
My class-mates would ply me with Mars bars, sweets, apples and cans of Coke, just so I’d pick them in my team at play-time. I quickly realised that being good at football made me popular with other kids – including the girls. This continued when I left the Juniors and moved on to Whiston Higher Side Comprehensive school.
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Life in the Ward household was chaotic at times. Being the eldest lad, it was my job to ensure the younger ones behaved themselves properly when our parents were not around. Our Billy and Irene argued like cat and dog, constantly at each other’s throats over anything and everything.
One day Billy and I were playing darts in our bedroom. The dartboard was hanging from the back of the door but there was a constant distraction in the form of Irene, who was the cheekiest and naughtiest sister you could imagine. She kept running in front of the dartboard to put us off until Billy told her: ‘I’ll throw this dart at you if you don’t go away.’ But Irene being what she was, continued to wind him up all the more.
Before I could say anything, Billy let fly with the dart – and it entered Irene’s head. She had a mass of curly hair and to my horror, the red dart was sticking out of the top of her head. I panicked, knowing I’d get a good hiding if Dad found out. I rushed over to Irene to try and extract the dart but she already had her claws out and was chasing Billy around the bedroom like a raging bull.
As she was about to pounce on my brother, I pulled the dart from her head and got in between them. It was only then that the tears and screams started – not because of the pain caused by the dart, but the fact that she couldn’t get her revenge on Billy!
My brothers and sisters get together occasionally and we reminisce about how violent we were towards each other as kids. Although we’d argue and fight with each other, if any outsiders ever tried to harm any of us, we’d stick together like glue.
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I was probably about six years old when Dad called me in off the street and told me to run to the bookies for him. If ever he told you to do something, you daren’t refuse or even make him wait.
The nearest betting shop to our house was about half a mile away. Kicking a football in the street had obviously improved my fitness and speed, but running as fast as I could to the betting shop to place Dad’s bet definitely enhanced my aerobic capacity. Many a time I’d been in the middle of a game in the street and be summoned by Dad to go to the bookies as fast as I could because he had a runner at Haydock Park or some other racecourse. Sometimes I’d only have 10 minutes to get there before the ‘off’ and then hope that I wouldn’t have to wait long for a punter to agree to my urgent request to put the bet on.
Regulars in the bookies got to know me as Billy Ward’s lad, so it was never a problem sneaking inside the door. As soon as the bet was placed and I had the receipt slip in my hand, I’d run like the wind to get back and resume playing football in the street. Looking back, I think I ran faster than Dad’s bloody horses – he never gave me a winning ticket to take back to the shop! On the rare occasions that he did back a winner, I think he must have collected his own winnings and then headed straight off to the pub.
The positive from my regular sprints to the bookies was the fact that, from a young age, I learned to run very fast over a fair distance. The downside was that my early introduction to the betting shop and horseracing probably led to my own gambling habit in later years.
I admit, I did develop a big gambling problem in adult life – I’d say after I joined West Ham in 1985. It’s well documented that gambling was, and still is, a footballer’s disease and I’d agree with that because it goes with the territory. Then again, maybe I would still have gambled even if I hadn’t been asked to place Dad’s bets at the bookies.
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Junior football clubs started to develop around the area where we lived and I was soon signed up to play for a Sunday side called Whiston Cross – later re-named Whiston Juniors – who had, and still have, a big stronghold on all the best young players in the area. Steven Gerrard is their most famous graduate but I also came through the Whiston Juniors system, along with a dozen or so others who went on to make the professional grade, including Karl Connolly (Queens Park Rangers), Ryan McDowell (Manchester City) and John Murphy (Blackpool).
We all owe so much to the managers who looked after the Whiston teams. In my time, without pioneers like Steve Hughes and Brian Lee giving up their spare time to run the clubs, a lot of us wouldn’t have developed into the players we became.
I made more friends from other parts of Whiston and the surrounding areas because football brought us together. Even though we didn’t attend the same schools, we’d hang out together. One of my best mates – and he still is – was a goalkeeper