Where’s Your Caravan?: My Life on Football’s B-Roads. Chris Hargreaves
me laugh now).
Late for training one day, I parked my GT in the chairman’s spot. It was a genuine mistake, I was going to be late and I hadn’t realised, but as we left for training, and when the lads spotted it and had pointed it out to the manager, I knew I was in trouble. Buckley lost it, he really lost it. I have seen many players close to tears after one of his infamous bollockings – including me. He would go from his natural shade of pink to an absolute vivid beetroot red within a few acidic sentences. I think I ran to the training ground that day, as I wasn’t allowed to get in the team van!
Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and done my job; while I was never offensive, I loved to have a laugh and a joke. I think old Bucko stifled the hell out of me, and it certainly damaged my confidence later on in my time at the club. Incredible that it should have happened, but I get so angry now thinking about it now. On one occasion I happened to be speaking to one of the directors whom I really got on with, in the changing room. He mentioned that one day, if I kept playing well, I could have a go in his Porsche. I said, ‘Thanks Gord, I’ll hold you to that.’
He smiled, and that was that. One of the lads had laughed when he had heard this, and Buckley strode over shouting to the lads, ‘What did he say?’
Dave ‘Didi’ Gilbert told him, as he was closest, and with that, once again, Buckley totally lost the plot, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Why don’t you show some respect? How dare you say that?! He is a director, and you are a young player who should be seen and not heard!’
He went on for about three minutes, ranting away at the top of his voice.
It was embarrassing for Gordon, who had made a genuine offer, but who now felt that it was an issue, and embarrassing for me, because it looked as if I had disrespected the man in front of everyone, but I hadn’t, and wouldn’t. It was simply that we had always got on really well. The incident was a typical one for Buckley, summing up his attitude rather clearly. He seemed to have short man’s syndrome of the highest order, and was very close to being a megalomaniac. Other than that he was quite a decent fella!
For now, though, I was riding the crest of a wave of success, and with injuries mounting for the first team regulars, and with our first round game in the FA Cup against York fast approaching, I was to be given another start. It was a big game for both clubs, with it being a sort of derby, and of great importance financially. It was the first time I had felt nervous before a game, the ground was packed, and the atmosphere was fantastic. It was my FA Cup debut, and I was going to be playing up front with Garry Birtles, a Nottingham Forest legend who earlier in his career had been transferred to Man United for a million pounds – a vast amount of money in the mid-eighties!
It was a fierce start to the game with tackles flying, biting and pinching at corners, etc. I was being pummelled by York’s rabid centre-halves (this being back in the day, when centre-halves could go through the back of your legs ten minutes after the ball had gone, and the referee would wave ‘play on’ saying ‘Fair challenge.’ In the twenty-seventh minute, the ball popped out to the edge of the box and I caught it sweetly, drilling the ball into the bottom left corner. The Grimsby Town fans behind the goal were hysterical with happiness, and it was game on.
Ten minutes later, and one of the now snarling central defenders blindly turned a ball back to his goalkeeper – this being back in the day when you could kick a ball back to your goalkeeper, he could hold it in his arms until he felt like letting it go, and the referee would be saying, ‘Another minute and let it go, old chap.’
As strikers we were taught by Bucko to wait for any back passes, looking as if you were uninterested, gambling on a mistake. This lad had not given the ball quite enough, and as it bounced back toward the stranded keeper I ran in and joyfully volleyed it over his head, into the vacant net.
We ended up winning the game 2–1 and, after celebrating with the lads in the changing room, I gave my first ever radio interview. I still have a recording of it today. It was horrendous; I think my voice must have just broken. I also say ‘I’m ecstatic’ seven times, I mention my mum and dad five times, and I also say the second goal was a ‘peach’ twice.
The rest of the year was spent on a huge high, we were at the top of the league for most of it, and ended up being promoted in my first full season. Although I spent most of the season on the bench, I scored another important goal away at Stockport, a game that meant that we were almost guaranteed promotion, and I finished the campaign celebrating on an open top bus tour, and then on the balcony of the town hall, with the rest of the team.
We all then jumped on a plane for ‘trip’ to Cala d’Or in Spain, celebrating our promotion. It was my first ‘lads’ holiday away, and also my eighteenth birthday. As we drank in a bar one afternoon, Archie Gemmill, a great left-back in his day, and the assistant manager of Nottingham Forest, was telling me not to sign a new deal because ‘Cloughie’ (Brian Clough) was a big fan. Not a bad start to my career, you would think. However, the fact that I had a champagne bottle in my hand, and was three sheets to the wind as he said this, sums up my lifestyle in 1990. That I also signed a contract when I returned, and behaved like an eighties pop star off the pitch, tells you all you need to know about the mistakes that I made. I had it all, and probably blew it all, within a few very short seasons.
I will have to stop writing for now. It is St George’s Day today, the weather outside is scorching hot, and at the local golf club bar I find myself in, the natives, who are dressed in flags, as dragons, and as knights, are enjoying the weather and the beer. My name has cropped up, they are talking ‘footy’, and I am therefore making an extremely quick getaway. I am playing tomorrow in the last game of the season against Eastbourne. They will be fighting for their lives, being in relegation spot, and I will no doubt need a third lung, having not played for a month, and with a predicted pitch side temperature approaching ninety degrees. Back to the hotel, and back to an M&S dinner it is for me. It is not inconceivable that I will make the play-off games, but I feel shocking at the moment. You tend to feel invincible as a player when you are fit and raring to go but at the moment, for the first time in a long, long, while, I feel the exact opposite. The ice bath is being prepared, and the Ibuprofen smoothie is ready.
Back in the room now and I will have to add a little to explain the degree of my present-day stresses. As I left training I received a text from my wife, ‘Don’t spend any money. We are over the overdraft, I have fifty pounds left for the week, so you better have a look at the finances.’ So, as well as being under pressure to get fit and play a game tomorrow in preparation for the play-offs, I have had to do a bit of phoning around. Out went the iPhone insurance, the Sky package was downgraded to a bare minimum, the silly bank accounts with fancy cards were cancelled, and my emergency tin on top of the cupboard at home was declared open. At the moment I suppose I am wallowing in a massive amount of self pity but I am just a bit tired and pissed off that I am away from home, trying to do a job, when I knew my body is failing me and my career is coming to an end. I suppose I am worried about the future for the first time.
I’m not playing a violin here, because we still have a lovely house in Northamptonshire which was rented out when we moved to Torquay, and I still have a half decent pension (that I hope goes up in value at some point), but the money blown over the years on niceties, such as clothes, parties, meals out, holidays and nice cars, and the ill-advised ‘keeping up with the Jones’s mentality’ we have had at times, mean that our financial situation is tight. My fault, I know.
The myth that all footballers are loaded is definitely just that, a myth, for lower league footballers anyway. I am driving a leased car and living in rented accommodation, and I am hoping something crops up in the summer work wise. My wife is stressed out because money is tight, and I am always away. So, when people say to me, ‘You must be loaded’, it does make me smile, although sometimes a little bitterly. Despite this, I know I am very lucky to have done a job that I have loved, and I have three great children and a lovely wife. While it would have been nice to have made enough money not to have to worry about future work, I am sure that being ‘retired’ in your late thirties is not healthy. So, as it stands, I have thirteen pounds to get me back home tomorrow night, and will have to sell a few things on eBay this weekend. Life is never dull.