Where’s Your Caravan?: My Life on Football’s B-Roads. Chris Hargreaves
a ban but he was soon back on the bike.
Off the bike, he was also as brave as a lion and would fight anyone. The problem for Sam was that, when you are pushing things to the limit, something usually has to give.
The bike cost him first. He fell off at over a hundred miles an hour, and with another friend of ours, Garry Soper – Gaz – on the back. As Sam lost control of the bike that sunny afternoon, Gaz flew off into the side of the road and into a bush, and although he was pretty smashed up, he was fairly lucky. Sam on the other hand slid across the tarmac for around a hundred yards, slicing his arms and legs up as he went. Gaz crawled out onto the road after the accident, to find that Sam had managed to walk back to check if he was OK, before collapsing. This was no mean feat, considering the injuries he had. Sam ended up having to have his fingers pinned, he had to have a fair amount of skin grafts, and suffered a pretty horrendous leg injury.
We went to see Sam in hospital afterwards and in his typical fashion he just laughed it off. Six months after that incident, and after a further lads’ night out had escalated into a full-on fight with another group of lads, Sam suffered another serious injury. He had been bundled, pretty aggressively, into the back of a riot van (usually used more to calm things down than anything more serious). I escaped the honour of being thrown into the van that night as the main officer in charge was a local police chief who knew me, and knew the consequences of me being in trouble – thanks again, Doug!
In the scuffle, Sam had his finger bent back, and although he had complained to the officers on duty that night about the pain and the swelling nothing was done. To cut a long story short, and to sum up the madness and sadness of that time, Sam got gangrene in his finger and ended up losing it few days later. This was a man mountain of a lad, who ended up pretty much broken, all in the space of six months. It is not what was meant for Sam, that I am sure of. I know we were all young and full of bravado and confidence, but his accidents exemplified the lifestyle everybody was leading.
Nowadays, if I returned to my old haunts and walked into Willy’s Wine Bar I would probably see the same old faces. I would almost certainly see my old mate, Gaz. Gaz and I were thick as thieves back then. I had a lot of time on my hands and so did he. He was another fit young lad, also on a mission to drink and party hard. When he was about fourteen, on Christmas Day, his mum had walked out on the family, never to return. I think this had a profound effect on him, as ever since then he too seems to have had one finger on the self-destruct button. However, one incident in particular was severe enough to shock even him. His party piece at Willy’s Wine Bar, every New Year’s Eve, was to swan dive from the upper floor window down to his adoring public outside. Yes, you have guessed it, on one New Year’s Eve, the adoring public forgot to catch him. Gaz fell straight onto the pavement. He survived, but it was a very lucky escape, and Gaz has now stopped doing that particular stunt – I think! As a further indication of the kind of events that occurred around then, one of the other lads in our group was involved in a hit and run which nearly killed him (he was hit), and another’s flat nearly burnt down. It was certainly a pretty crazy time.
In those days football clubs did not give advice on or about drugs, nor was there any drug testing. At Grimsby Town, after a home game I had played in, I went to the toilets which were outside the players’ bar, only to see one of the opposition’s players puffing away on a big old reefer. And he went on to play for England many times – if I’d known that then, I would have joined him.
In the two seasons that followed the club’s two promotions, there were plenty of other incidents that indicated that a change of both scene and friends would be advisable for me. You may laugh, but some of the stunts we pulled were absolutely headless.
Late one night, a few of us were on the hunt for food, all the pubs and restaurants had closed (including the infamous Topkapi Kebab House, and the more salubrious Capri Pizzeria). Why it happened I have no idea, but as we stood there looking through a mammoth glass window displaying a huge Easter egg range, the urge to eat chocolate seemed to override any common sense. And so it was, four size nines later, that we were running through the streets laden with about twenty Easter eggs of various sizes. Alarm bells were ringing; soon there would be police everywhere. Riot vans were a regular presence in the market place in Cleethorpes. The thought of us, sat there stuffing our faces with Easter eggs, and then burning the remaining cardboard evidence, does not fill me with pride. You cannot excuse this sort of behaviour, and my feeble offerings to the charity box each time I subsequently visited that shop did not make it any better.
I do have some great stories and memories of those days though, and they usually involve spending time with my then long-suffering girlfriend and now long-suffering wife, Fiona. One early summer morning, after returning from another rave with some friends, we stopped at a forest with streams and a stretch of water called Croxby Pond. We walked through some beautiful and totally deserted woodland, spending a couple of hours paddling through the streams and lying in the early morning sun. If only it hadn’t been private land, and if only we hadn’t decided to commandeer a milk float that morning, it would have been the perfect start to the day!
Holidays with Fiona were definitely a welcome break from football and my group of friends, although without knowing how and why I always seemed to bump into someone who knew me. Even to this day, I could be in a desert and happen upon someone who is connected to a mate, knows me from a club, or, more likely, remembers me playing against their club – playing for so many clubs could be an influencing factor, it’s certainly not the TV exposure I have had. Nevertheless, it makes, and made, it hard to get away from it all. God knows what it’s like for someone famous.
Contract talks over the years have always been stressful and at the end of the 91/92 season talks at Grimsby Town were certainly no exception. When Buckley offered me the measly increase of twenty-five pounds a week, when all the other lads were signing new, much bigger, deals, I said no. I said I would prove to him that I deserved more. I have always been bad with money though, and I should have accepted because, shock, horror, he didn’t cave in there and then.
I knew times had to change. With younger mates playing in the Grimsby Town team now, and doing well, I had to do something, as I was embarrassed not to be playing regularly, and confused as to why I wasn’t.
1992/93
A trip to Tenerife followed at the end of the 91/92 season. Again not much sleep. In fact, I think the most time I spent sleeping was on the plane journey back, only waking when the wheels touched down. While fun, these trips to Tenerife were wearing a bit thin. As I’m sure anyone who has been to the Las Americas ‘strip’ will tell you there are only so many times that you can do the nightly pub crawl with pissed up Brits falling on you constantly, being sick while walking or shouting the much maligned holiday chorus of ‘Ennngaalaand.’
Sitting around the pool with the lads in the day was a great laugh though. The team spirit we had at Grimsby Town in those days was incredible. We were all great friends, and I’m sure that is why we had such success. Characters like Mark Lever, Kevin Jobling and Paul Reece always had us in stitches, and all the older pros were top lads too. Dave Gilbert, Gary Childs, Tony Rees, Andy Tillson and Garry Birtles not only did the business on the pitch, but also had fun off it. We had a fair old mixture of accents as well; Arthur Mann was Scottish, we had John McDermott a Geordie with Tourette’s (or perhaps, just a Geordie!), Paul Agnew, who was Irish, Tommy Watson – a Scouser, Gary Childs, who was a Brummie, and Murray Jones, a Cockney. As a young pro it was a great environment to be in, and I found it hilarious how you just couldn’t understand anyone. The banter between the players was great, and the friendships strong, although the affection was generally shown in abusive ways.
When I first returned to Grimsby Town from Everton, I initially took up an apprenticeship. The first team lads would often come in to see us in the tiny boot room and have a bit of banter. If it was one of the apprentices’ birthdays the normal bumps or chant of ‘Happy Birthday’ was definitely not the order of the day. No, these celebrations were replaced by any number of surprises! Sometimes it would be the boot polish treatment – this would involve a tin of polish, a few brushes and a few uncomfortable minutes as the ‘meat and two veg’ would get the ‘cherry blossom’ finish. Or it could be either the panda or pylon treatment.