Marvellous: Neil Baldwin - My Story. Neil Baldwin

Marvellous: Neil Baldwin - My Story - Neil Baldwin


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to do wonderful things after leaving Keele. I’m pleased that I helped to set them on their way.

      In 1967 I decided to start the Neil Baldwin Football Club, which is still running to this day. I said to some students, ‘Would you like to be in my football team?’ and everybody thought it was a great idea. The first fixture we had was against a local cement firm. I knew someone who worked there. Then I just started ringing round for fixtures. I just rang up and said, ‘This is the Neil Baldwin Football Club. I’ve got a football team. I’m keen to play you.’ That’s how it’s done. Some of our other early games were against Lincoln Theological College and St John’s College, Nottingham. We just turned up to play on the Keele pitches. No one ever said we couldn’t.

      I have kept a record of every game we have ever played. We have played 314 games, won 240, drawn 26 and lost 48.

      I have a lot of connections with Cambridge University. I take the team down to Cambridge quite often to play fixtures against various colleges. We are always given a warm welcome.

      MALCOLM

      Neil Baldwin Football Club (or NBFC) comprises students of varying levels of footballing ability and is a completely separate team from the university football club. Neil appointed himself as manager, player-manager, coach, kit man and general organiser. I’m not sure that an audit of the playing record would match Neil’s official statistics, but nobody is worried about that.

      He has appointed a board of directors. I am still on the board, although in over forty years we are still to hold our first meeting.

      NEIL

      Gary Lineker is the president at the time of writing this. It used to be Kevin Keegan. Gary thinks it is a great honour. We have forty patrons, including former Stoke City manager Lou Macari, Asa Hartford, Joe Corrigan, Gordon Banks, Robbie Fowler, Chic Bates and Peter Shilton. Now it also includes the actor Toby Jones and the rest of the cast of Marvellous; Peter, the writer; Julian, the director; Katie, the producer; and Patrick, from the production company Tiger Aspect. Until I gave up playing, I had won Player of the Season over forty times.

      MALCOLM

      During the 1960s Neil was also a regular outside the Victoria Ground, then Stoke City’s ground, and its adjacent training ground, near the middle of Stoke, sometimes teaching his young second cousin, Dan Johnson, the ropes.

      In 1967, a young red-haired Irish winger called Terry Conroy came over the water to play for Stoke City. Terry was destined to become an iconic player in Stoke City’s history, scoring the first goal at Wembley in 1972 to help secure the League Cup, the only major trophy that Stoke City have ever won. He was a one-club player who has retained his association with the club to this day, being a club ambassador. He has been friends with Neil since his earliest days at Stoke.

      Terry went into digs in a terraced house adjacent to the Stoke City ground with another young player called Micky Bloor, just two doors away from George Jackson, another young player. Neil was soon part of their social scene.

      George remembers:

      Neil would knock on the door and say, ‘Can we have a kick-around?’ I would sometimes reply, ‘I’m having my tea.’ But Neil would say, ‘Go on’ and often as not persuaded me to go out and have a kick-around outside. I’ve known him ever since then as a friend.

      Terry recalls:

      I met Neil during my first week outside the Victoria Ground. He was a big supporter. Fans can become a nuisance but Neil was different. He was funny, but needed looking after. It made me considerate towards him. He was often at the ground. He came into our lodgings and Kate Cope, our landlady, used to feed him.

      The football social club across the road had a TV, so we would go in there most evenings. Alf and Ivy Coxon, the landlords, looked after everybody. They put on sandwiches and were very friendly. Some of the other players such as John Mahoney would be there. Everyone knew Neil as ‘one of the family’. The people in there took to him and were very protective of him.

      We had games of cards and darts but when Neil played darts he would hit everything but the dartboard. There was another lad called Ken Green who used to go in there. He was of limited intelligence, but nobody ever mocked him. We set up darts competitions between Neil and Ken and everybody joined a fan club for one or the other of them. We had to change the rules by abolishing the doubles and make it up to a hundred and not five hundred, otherwise the game would never have finished. We even had rosettes with the slogan ‘Baldwin for Ever’. Neil would check on everybody’s rosette and try and get them to support him, but Ken also had his own supporters’ club. There was a big build-up to the darts matches.

      George Jackson recalls:

      Ken Green worked in the railways. Neil and Ken always had a rivalry, so we organised a darts competition and on one occasion they both dressed up as professional boxers with boxing shorts and gloves. Throwing the darts wearing boxing gloves was hilarious, with people shouting for one or the other, but we turned it into an occasion to raise money for charity. Neil has always been willing to do anything to raise money for good causes.

      Terry says:

      We would also create little scenarios to keep us entertained. At that time there was a lot of trouble at football matches and we would re-enact little scenes where Neil would be the Stoke supporter, George Jackson and Terry Lees would pretend to be opposition supporters and bump into him and soon Neil would be on the floor. Neil would then say, ‘Let’s do it the other way round.’ But, whichever way round it was done, Neil never won. Of course, it was all in good spirits.

      George:

      Sometimes we would go round to Terry’s at number 4 and say, ‘What should we do?’ We’d agree to re-enact something. Me and Neil would be the Stoke players. For example, we’d pretend that Stoke had won five–nil, that Neil had scored a hat-trick and that hooligans were causing trouble. Terry and Micky would pretend to be one of the hooligans. Terry would say, ‘You two play for Stoke, we’ll get you.’ The plan was that we get duffed up. Sometimes we would swap round so that Neil was the hooligan, but he always still ended up on the bottom.

      On one occasion the entertainment was more formal. Here’s Terry again:

      For Christmas 1970 we decided to do a pantomime. On Sundays the club closed at 2 p.m. and we would rehearse after that. We decided to do Cinderella about six weeks before Christmas. We would be constantly rewriting the script.

      We realised that we had to find parts for Neil and Ken Green. We decided that Neil would be Prince Barmcake. I was an Ugly Sister. John Mahoney was Buttons. I’ve still got the script at home.

      NEIL

      I was Prince Charming. Terry was the Barmcake.

      MALCOLM

      Terry continues:

      Neil came out from backstage with only one line to say. He always wagged his finger in the air which itself reduced the audience to hysterics. His line was, ‘I suppose you know why I am here.’ But Neil always said ‘suspose’ instead of ‘suppose’. We tried to teach him to say ‘suppose’ instead of ‘suspose’ but without success. He would come to the rehearsal, put his finger up again and say, ‘I suspose you know why I am here.’ We tried for three weeks to get it right, but on the final Sunday we decided that it was funnier to leave it in. The club was packed. It was a success beyond our wildest dreams and hilariously funny. Everybody agreed that Neil was the star of the show.

      George also recalls the pantomime: ‘Neil was in it as Prince Charming. It filled the club, his line was, “I suppose you know why I am here.” But he couldn’t say “suppose”. It brought the house down.’

      George also recalls how Neil harboured his own hopes of becoming a footballer:

      One time Neil said he wanted a trial, so we decided to organise a trial. We took him on the far side of the training ground to have a warm-up. Neil was shattered even after the warm-up, so we never got as far as the trial.

      On one occasion Neil announced to our astonishment


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