Where’s Your Caravan?: My Life on Football’s B-Roads. Chris Hargreaves
the euphoria at fever pitch after our promotion, and with the next campaign due to start, the feeling in the town was fantastic. I don’t think the lads really thought about it at the time but the togetherness and bond that we had, on and off the pitch, was extremely strong, and with that there usually follows success. We faced Preston North End in the first game of the 90/91 season. A tough game on paper, but for a footballing team such as Grimsby Town was at that time, the prospect of playing on an Astroturf pitch was a real bonus. Don’t get me wrong, if I were playing on those pitches now, I would probably need a hip replacement, such was the poor quality of the hard surfaces, but at the time keeping the ball on the deck was just the ticket for us.
I’m sure older pros at the clubs with Astroturf surfaces were terribly stiff after most games and training sessions.
The thinking behind Astroturf instead of grass was sensible: no water logging, hence no postponed fixtures; no groundsman, hence lower cost; and a smooth playing surface, hence good football. There was also no need to have a separate training ground or to look for places to train on a daily basis as other clubs, like us, had to.
It wasn’t for everybody though. John Beck at Cambridge United was certainly not rushing out to get his pitch relaid. At Cambridge United they really took long ball to a new level, and having a grass pitch helped this style of playing; there was even sand placed in all four corners of the pitch to soften the landing of yet another ball launched up field. To think they nearly got into the top flight!
Back to the game. After a good pre-season I was in the starting line-up on that first day of the 90/91 season. It couldn’t have gone any better for me or for the team, a great performance by us saw us win 3–1; I scored the first goal, a left foot curler round the keeper, after being put through from the halfway line – teams didn’t half play high offside traps then!
We really carried our form and momentum from the previous season; it’s amazing how many times this happens in football. We had a good game plan and good players, and, much as I say it through gritted teeth, a manager who knew how to win games.
Again, we spent most of the season at the top of the league, but once again I was busy playing every reserve game and then being on the bench or playing for the first team as well. At the time I was very frustrated, because I just wanted to play in the first team. The crowds and the pressure surrounding these games gave you such a great buzz, whereas the Pontins League against ‘Scunny’ reserves at Blundell Park on a cold Wednesday night really wound me up. It had a negative effect on me and my performances. Looking back, I should have used those games to show Buckley what I was made of. It was, I think, a classic case of a clash of personalities, with me being a brash, cocky and confident young lad, and him disliking that.
Despite my frustration, I still had a great season. I managed to notch up a few more important goals, including a memorable header against Wigan Athletic at home in a 4–3 win, and a classic strike into the stanchion against Fulham on New Year’s Day – although the circumstances surrounding that particular game and goal really summed up my off the field misdemeanours at the time. You see, I had decided to go out for a few drinks with Fiona and her sister, the night before.
It was sort of accepted back then that going out for a couple of drinks the night before a match was OK, and as it was New Year’s Eve we felt obligated. I have never been a big fan of New Year’s celebrations, and I am even less so now; I can’t think of anything worse than doing the Conga in the street, ‘high fiving’ an absolute muppet, or telling a complete stranger that I love them, just because it’s the start of the New Year. God I’m getting old! But back in 1990, and certainly if you were eighteen years old, going out for a few Pernod and blacks and dancing to Michael Jackson on New Year’s Eve were a must.
We had really been out just to bring in the New Year, and I had wanted to get at least a bit of an early night, so we decided to walk home. On the way back to the apartment my mum and dad owned, a lad shouted some abuse to Fiona’s sister. I took the bait and chased after him. He shot round a wall and did a ‘triple salko’ to lose me, but in the pursuit I bumped my knee on the corner of a wall. I never thought anything of it at the time, but it would later turn out to have caused the classic water on the knee, and would end up sidelining me for several weeks. I cannot believe how stupid and careless I was at the time; I seemed to be on a mission to live up to the reputation I had of being a bit of a lad.
Once back at the apartment and in my room we must have opened the window for a bit of air. Unfortunately, I slipped on the sofa bed, well, more like bounced on the springs like an Olympic trampolinist, and found myself hanging out of the window, with a drop of around a hundred feet staring at me (Croft Baker apartments were the highest point in Cleethorpes!) The fact that my belt buckle miraculously caught on the window catch, and that Fiona quickly wrapped her hands around my ankles, quite possibly saved my life. That night could have ended in disaster so easily. I can just see the lads now, wearing black arm bands around the centre circle before the game and whispering, ‘He wasn’t a bad lad was he?’, with Jobbers saying, ‘Do you think he would have minded if I had his boots?’ and Paul Reece saying, ‘No, he would have wanted it, and I think Fiona will need some serious “comforting” over the next few months.’
As it was, I scored one of the best goals of my Grimsby career that day, wriggling past three defenders in the box and planting a right foot shot into the top corner, a great victory and a great goal. But how different an outcome it might have been was not lost on me. The near disaster affected me so profoundly that I made the decision to go underground for the next few months. The nights out, the fast cars and the fighting had to stop. And for a while, it did.
The season ended with us being promoted again, unfashionable Grimsby Town mixing with the big boys in the First Division. They say it’s a funny old game and ‘they’ are spot on. I mentioned goals scored against Wigan, Fulham and Preston North End that season. Look at them now, two in the Premiership and one not far off, and look at Grimsby, down in the Blue Square Bet Premier.
The team sang on the balcony of the town hall that year, had another open top bus tour of the town, and we were soon to jet off again on another jolly, but my omission from the squad on the last game of that season had hurt me. All my family and friends were there, I had played an important part in the season, and here I was sat looking up at the boys celebrating. Buckley knew it would hurt me and he was right. He was probably trying to take my ego down a notch. Again, looking back, it shouldn’t have bothered me that much, but at the time it did, and that meant trouble – a year later and I would be off for good.
The team had been promoted twice in two seasons, making it an incredible time for both the football club and the area. This unfashionable club with a dodgy name (people often discussed the brainstorming meeting that ended having selected the easily mocked name GRIMsby) was now in a big league, playing big clubs. With this success came a fierce competition for places. Since Alan Buckley had been a striker himself, at Forest and Walsall, it meant a large influx of front men over the next eighteen months. Clive Mendonca, a great lad from the north-east famed for his goal scoring exploits and his zip wire attempt in Marbella (telegraph pole and near electrocution), had arrived. As well as Clive, over the previous couple of seasons the club had signed Tony Daws, Mark Smith and Murray Jones, and along with Neil Woods, Richard O’Kelly, Tony Rees, Keith Alexander, Roger Willis and myself, there was certainly an abundance of striking options for the manager.
Having been left out of the last game of the 90/91 season and seeing the influx of strikers, essentially in competition with me for a place on the pitch, there was a bitter taste in my mouth, which did not leave. Despite my growing sense of dissatisfaction, the second promotion holiday to Marbella went pretty smoothly, well, as smoothly as a holiday can go with seventeen footballers on the prowl!
A week of no sleep, lots of Pro-Plus, an initiation in Lineker’s bar and the obligatory run in with the local constabulary gave the holiday an interesting theme. As we were stumbling back to the hotel one night, Roger ‘Harry’ Willis, one of our centre-forwards, was singled out by a local policeman (I suspect because he was the only black man in the group) who decided a truncheon to the head would do him no harm at all, then chucked Harry into a waiting van. No crime had been committed, maybe it was just Harry’s clothes