Hammered - I Played Football for West Ham, Man City and Everton… Then the Police Came Calling and My Life Fell Apart. Mark Ward
was apologising for leaving him and their children. Dad and I looked at each other and we started to cry, not wanting to believe the terrible truth that the most important woman in both our lives had left us.
Dad adored Mum but, looking back on their time together, I don’t think she could cope with him anymore. The relationship between my parents was volatile at times, due mainly to Dad’s insane jealousy. It was a terrible disease of his mind and he couldn’t control it. He was never violent towards Mum but he constantly accused her of being disloyal when, in truth, she hardly went anywhere without him. I loved the pair of them dearly.
He was devastated by the break-up and, because of the hurt it caused him, I took Dad’s side. In fact, I never spoke to Mum again for 16 years.
But there was never any doubt that she loved her seven kids. Just six months after moving to Wolverhampton, she decided to return to Liverpool – with another man. Dad went crazy. I remember him screaming all sorts of threats one night after he’d found out she was living back in Liverpool with a new partner. He was making verbal threats to kill Mum’s boyfriend – and he meant it.
Even though I was just 16, Billy 15 and Tony 13, the next day we made a point of warning Mum’s boyfriend – I never did find out his name – to get out of town or else he’d definitely come to some serious harm. When we barged past Mum at her front door, her new partner sat there on the sofa. I just blurted it out: ‘Do yourself the biggest favour, mate. Get out of Liverpool before my father gets you.’
Mum was shouting and screaming but the three of us just walked straight past her and out through the front of the house, hoping we’d done enough to convince her new man to see sense. And thankfully he did. He moved out the next day and Mum followed him to start a new life together in the Wolverhampton area, where she still lives today.
Dad passed away in 1988, aged 52. It was a heart attack that killed him but I’ve always maintained that he really died of a broken heart, because he never got over losing Mum. I don’t blame her at all, though. That’s life, many couples divorce – I’ve been there myself – and if it hadn’t been for certain flaws in their relationship, who knows, they might still have been together today.
I’ll never forget, though, the stark contrast of emotions Dad felt on the day his eldest son signed for his beloved Everton. How, one minute, he was the proudest man in the whole of Liverpool and, just an hour later, he found out he’d lost the only woman he ever loved. Why she chose that day of all days to leave, I’ll never know. Mum told me years later that, with Dad out of the house and on his way to Goodison with me, she had an unexpected opportunity to leave. Feeling as desperate as she did at the time, she said it was a chance she simply had to take.
Her leaving the family home affected us all. My sisters, Susan, Irene and Ann, eventually set up home in Wolverhampton with Mum, while Billy, Tony, Andrew and myself stayed with Dad in Liverpool. From being a very close-knit family, the break-up of our parents also split us right down the middle. It knocked me for six at first.
Dad was a broken man but he cared about my future and gave me one bit of sensible advice: ‘Just concentrate on being a winner and give it your best shot at becoming a footballer,’ he told me. An old saying of his was: ‘Quitters never win and winners never quit.’ How right he was.
It was unbearable, at times, to hear him crying at night after coming home drunk from the pub again. I felt helpless, as most kids do when their parents split up. I think it did affect my football for a while but I was so determined to succeed in the game, I had to think of myself and try and forget about the troubles at home.
ALTHOUGH I was at the bottom of the ladder and knew I had a mountain to climb, I was on my way. The summer of ’79 was to be one of sheer hard work. I was still very small and needed to work on building up my strength in the battle to make the grade.
I was taken to Huyton Leisure Centre by Les Jones, my sister’s boyfriend, who worked out regularly with me and over the next eight weeks I developed muscles that appeared from nowhere. It was hard going but I was determined to give myself every possible chance of making it at Everton.
The club took on 12 new apprentices that year. The most notable, and the two who became the biggest stars for the Toffees in later years, were Gary Stevens and Kevin Richardson. When we all got together, I was as good as, if not better, than them technically. It was just my stature that caused others to doubt whether I’d make it and it was for that reason that I didn’t get through trials for both England and Liverpool Schoolboys.
To be fair, the FA coaches at Lilleshall encouraged me at the end of the trials by saying that I’d bypass a lot of the taller, more powerful lads during the growing process. Tommy Caton, who went on to play for Manchester City, was also at the England trials and, even at 14, he looked like a fully developed adult. The scouts and management of Liverpool Schoolboys saw what I could do when I scored the winner against their team while playing for St Helens Schoolboys.
Gary Stevens was a big, powerful lad, the 200m, 400m and 800m champion of Cumbria. Kevin was also strong and I struck up a good relationship with this likeable Geordie. Although we were all team-mates playing in the ‘A’ and ‘B’ Central League teams, we were also competing with each other for a professional contract in the months ahead.
Mind you, the job of an apprentice footballer in the early 80s gave you no time to rest on your laurels. Not only did we have to train and play matches, but there were a number of menial chores that had to be finished each day – as slaves to the older professionals. It was a tough regime that would either make or break you. There was no youth academy set-up like those which exists at all top clubs today. Apprentices were part of a feudal system in which young players were ritually bullied and verbally abused by senior pros.
The apprentices and young professionals had their own dressing room and each apprentice was allocated a number of first team players to serve on demand. Among the group of players I had to care for was Andy King, the club’s star midfielder. Cockney ‘Kingy’, a fine player and a crowd favourite, took a shine to me and instead of bullying me would want me to tend to his needs.
Everton were not a brilliant side at that time but they had some good players. Bob Latchford scored goals for fun, Dave Thomas was the winger I admired, Asa Hartford was the heartbeat in midfield and Steve McMahon, who I’d played with at Everton in the ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams, was challenging for a starting place in the first XI.
Our duties included cleaning boots, showers, toilets, dressing rooms and anything the pros asked us to do. The senior players commanded respect and the treatment they dished out to the youngsters at their beck and call would not be tolerated today.
At Christmas, each apprentice was stripped naked and a pair of football socks stretched over their eyes to form a blindfold. The entertainment was provided by two apprentices who were ordered to fight blindfolded in front of the senior pros. As the fight was in progress, the pros would smear each youngster in boot polish. When the fight had ended, the blindfolds were removed and then the duo had to further entertain the first-teamers with a Christmas song.
I remember it being a very humiliating experience but this initiation ceremony was part of becoming a footballer and had been for many years. It was regarded as a test of character. Intimidation was all part of the process.
It was all a question of respect and knowing your place. If you disrespected a senior player, the older pros had a way of dealing with you among themselves. At the end of the training session they would capture the cheeky upstart, strip him naked and make him gather up all the balls that had been used in that morning’s training session – and there would be at least 40 to 50 footballs to collect, depending on the severity of sentence. I witnessed one of my fellow apprentices being tied to a tree, with not a stitch on, and having to suffer the pain of having a number of players fire balls at him.
It was a question of respect. I was always mindful to knock on the door of the first team’s dressing room before entering to gather up all