Harry Redknapp - The Biography. Les Roopanarine
whatever glasses were on the table and talk about the game. We spent so much time in there that we renamed it the QE2! But those are the times that football strategy and [methods of] analysis are formed. When John Bond was playing with Malcolm Allison and Malcolm Musgrove and all those guys at West Ham, they went round to a local coffee shop near Upton Park and did something similar. That sort of thing forms the basis of how the game moves forward, and we had lots of those discussions because we lived so close to each other.’
On one such occasion, their efforts to move the game forward almost came to an abrupt halt. With Redknapp at the wheel, the trio were locked in conversation as they drove along the winding country lanes from Christchurch to Bournemouth’s West Parley training ground. All seemed well until a tractor appeared in the road ahead. ‘We were chatting away when suddenly Harry decides he’s fed up of driving behind this tractor,’ recounts Gabriel. ‘It wasn’t going too fast, so he decided to overtake.’ To the horror of his two team-mates, Redknapp swung out directly into the path of an oncoming car. ‘Look out!’ cried Howe. Too late; Redknapp was committed. ‘I couldn’t even speak,’ says Gabriel, ‘I was petrified. It was certain death – we were goners.’ As the pair braced themselves, the shrill screech of torn metal reverberated around them. ‘It was James Bond stuff, unbelievable,’ says Gabriel. Somehow, Redknapp – his steering evidently no less accurate than his crossing – charted a route between the two vehicles before bringing the car to an abrupt standstill. For interminable moments, a stunned silence prevailed. ‘I thought we were dead,’ Gabriel finally stammered. Redknapp had more pressing issues on his mind. ‘Geez,’ he muttered with exasperation, ‘I’ve scratched my car.’
It was not the only occasion on which Redknapp left Gabriel with his heart in his mouth. One day they were returning to the south coast from London, where Redknapp had started a business. ‘It was a shop – just ordinary clothes, stuff like that, and it wasn’t going too well’ recalls Gabriel. ‘It was my car, but Harry loved to get behind the wheel so I said “You can drive, Harry.” We were driving along a cliff-side in Bournemouth and Harry says: “You know what, Jim, I just feel like turning this car over.” And he went to do it! I said “No, no, keep it on the road, it’s my car!” I’m sure he was just joking, but he got my attention, I can tell you. He can be so funny, Harry. You’re never short of a laugh with him.’
For the first few months of Redknapp’s Bournemouth career there was just as much to smile about on the pitch. Despite MacDougall’s departure nine games into the season – his swansong came with a 4-0 mauling of Port Vale in which Redknapp scored his first goal for the club – defeats were rare. Looking every inch potential champions, Bond’s side began the new year with a victory over Watford that hauled them to the league summit. Promotion to Division Two for the first time in history was becoming a genuine possibility. ‘It was just like playing at West Ham, but on the south coast,’ says Howe. ‘John had a similar philosophy to Ron Greenwood, with a tremendous amount of ball work in training and very interesting, enjoyable sessions.’ Howe believes that Bond’s tutelage, allied with a lengthy Upton Park apprenticeship, furnished the framework around which both he and Redknapp subsequently built their respective coaching careers. ‘The experience of working with Ron and then with John Bond really helped us to form our own opinions,’ says Howe. ‘Beyond that, your own style is brought out by your own personality. I think that’s what Harry has added since: he’s added his own personality to the information that he received from two very good coaches.’
More immediately, the most important addition to Redknapp’s reservoir of football knowledge was a salutary lesson about the importance of maintaining momentum. Having claimed pole position in the title race, Bond’s side managed just five more wins all season. A modest haul of seventeen points from the last forty saw Bournemouth stagger across the finish line a disappointing seventh. The club’s abrupt change of fortune was exacerbated by speculation linking Bond with a move to Norwich City. Conjecture finally became reality in November 1973, when Bond, no longer able to resist the allure of First Division football, took over at Carrow Road following the departure of Ron Saunders. To Redknapp, who had only ever known the rock-solid stability of Upton Park – Greenwood, under whom he played for almost a decade, was only the fourth manager in West Ham’s history – such upheaval was alien.
Bond nevertheless left Bournemouth in good shape. Flying high in fourth place, four points off the league leaders Bristol Rovers, the club looked poised for another promotion push. But Bournemouth’s apparent good health was an illusion. ‘Money wasn’t available and the chairman [Harold Walker] wanted to get out, I think, so John took the opportunity to go to Norwich,’ recalls Trevor Hartley, who was subsequently promoted from reserve-team coach to manager. ‘It was a difficult time at the club and John had ambitions of managing in the First Division. I think he thought “If I turn down Norwich then I may not get anything else”.’
Bond’s departure spelt trouble for Bournemouth in more ways than one. Supporters who once crowed with delight as Bond poached players from his former clubs now watched in dismay as Fred Davies, John Benson and Mel Machin, all key defensive personnel, departed for Carrow Road. They were later followed by Phil Boyer, MacDougall’s former strike partner and a future England international. ‘We had players who wanted to go and play in the top division, which was understandable,’ says Hartley. ‘But it was hard, because I was the youngest manager in the Football League – I took that [record] from Graham Taylor, who was at Lincoln at that stage – and the chairman wanted to cut back financially.’
Redknapp too was on Bond’s hit list. He had started the season well, scoring against Bristol Rovers, Aldershot and Tranmere. With Bond gone and Bournemouth reluctant to spend, a return to the top flight would have been both timely and welcome. But the move was thwarted by a knee injury that would ultimately bring the curtain down on Redknapp’s domestic playing career. Once courted by some of the biggest clubs in the country, Redknapp would never again play Division One football. He was twenty-six. What prevented him from fulfilling the promise he had shown as a youth player? ‘That’s a good question,’ says Howe. ‘At that time there were some pretty dangerous left full-backs around, and they left their scars on him. I think that may have had something to do with it. I’m not saying that he was necessarily injured, but he got tackled fairly heavily. If you played left-back and you were up against a right winger who was very effective, in any sort of fifty-fifty situation you’d make sure that they landed up on the track. In an era when yellow cards weren’t shown around as much as they are now, I think Harry may have been a victim of some of that. When he was at Bournemouth he missed a lot of playing time with a sore knee.’
The rudimentary medical support of the day did little to allay Redknapp’s injury problems. ‘The trouble then was that you didn’t have to have fully-qualified physiotherapists,’ says Hartley. ‘I think a lot of the injuries that people had in those days, including Harry’s, could have been cured. It took the FA one hundred years to get qualified physiotherapists in football clubs. All we had was the sponge and the water bucket.’
Injuries aside, there is a school of thought which says that the lucky breaks that have peppered Redknapp’s managerial career were more elusive in his playing days. One subscriber is Jimmy Gabriel. ‘I don’t know why Harry never made it big time with West Ham or with another big club,’ says Gabriel, ‘because he certainly had the skills. Sometimes you need a break, and I’m not sure he got too many breaks. I think he played for the England youth team, but I don’t know for sure because Harry never boasted about anything like that.’
Wilf McGuinness, the manager of that all-conquering team of England tyros, was equally puzzled by the fading of Redknapp’s star. ‘It surprised me in some ways,’ says McGuinness, ‘because if you win something as good as the Little World Cup, you expect those players to come on – and some did. John Sissons also did well for a time, but then he faded a bit and ended up at Sheffield Wednesday. Some players just need that break. I would have thought Harry could have played at a higher level than he did at the end, as he had done for most of his career.’
Injury and opportunity may have conspired against Redknapp’s top-flight ambitions, but the early weeks of Hartley’s Dean Court tenure at least promised hope of a tilt at the Second Division. Festive fixtures against Wrexham, Cambridge, Huddersfield