Where’s Your Caravan?: My Life on Football’s B-Roads. Chris Hargreaves
until the last ten minutes when Doncaster came with a flurry. The referee and one of his linesmen failed to turn up, so Town’s youth coach Arthur Mann ran the line for the last fifteen minutes.’
Brilliant. I can just see Arthur, God rest him, judging any offside decisions or fouls that were made, and can’t help but wonder – if the referee and one linesman didn’t turn up, and Arthur ran the line for the last fifteen minutes, who did it for the first seventy-five?
Another cutting, this time with a picture next to it, shows me heading the ball out of the keeper’s hands and into the net, a sort of ‘before and after’ picture. Hooray for the Grimsby press. I even found the picture of the youth team’s first day’s training for season 89/90. Alan Buckley, the first team manager, is running next to us. I have the biggest Rick Astley bouffant, and all of the lads’ shorts are ridiculously Simon Cowell-like – we look as if we are going to a PE lesson. The shot was taken at Weelsby Woods, a large park in Grimsby, and we really did do some serious running sessions around that place. At all the clubs I have played for, the local park or nearby forest, usually somewhere to be enjoyed and a place to relax, was a place of torture for a player. Pre-season is a time for parks and pain, and Weelsby Woods was no exception.
I was, as you should be at seventeen, super fit, and I was probably a little bit more aggressive and confident than most boys at my age. This definitely helped me when I was around the first team. You need a large slice of luck to break through and get a professional contract; I had that luck, but I also had a burning desire to get a contract. Many good footballers have failed at the first hurdle and have either drifted out of the game or simply given up. I had eyes on only one thing, and that was to play at Blundell Park as a professional footballer.
This wish came true very quickly.
After joining in with a few of the first team’s training sessions I soon got a taste of the action. The difference between training with the first team and the youth team was huge. With the first team, a lot more moaning went on if you gave the ball away, and you would be on the receiving end of quite a few tackles and elbows from seasoned pros. There was certainly no allowance for age. If I was good enough to play, I was good enough to be tackled. The then team captain, Shaun Cunnington, was a prime example. If he had ‘gone through’ you with a bad tackle, he would just shout at you, ‘Get up you fairy!’ – which I did many times, and often I set about trying to kick him back.
You had to be careful though; impressing the manager and hurting one of the first team’s star players were not compatible. I have been in hundreds of sessions where an eager young lad has been invited over from the youth side to train with the first team, only to be sent back almost immediately after a clumsy challenge. A player missing a first team game because of something like that is unacceptable.
The characters in the Grimsby Town side back then were unique. Young lads like Kevin ‘Jobbers’ Jobling, a cheeky, chain smoking left-back, Mark ‘Plug’ Lever, a hilarious centre-half whose legs were totally out of control, but who could defend like a lion, and Paul Reece, a goalkeeper who was simply crazy.
There were plenty of experienced players too, great wingers in Dave Gilbert and Gary Childs, and two tough tackling midfielders in Shaun Cunnington and fellow local lad, John Cockerill. Then we had the strikers, the quiet but explosive Tony Rees, the late, great Keith Alexander, who seemed to defy gravity to keep his balance half the time, and the silent but deadly Neil Woods. Add to that the cool, calm and collected Andy Tillson, a defender with a heart of gold, and Garry Birtles, a striker of legendary status, whose ability on the pitch knew no bounds, and you had one very special group.
Even our experienced goalkeeper, Steve Sherwood (aka Albert Tatlock, named by me in my first week after seeing what a ‘grumpy old man’ he was), had his moments, namely coming in every morning and saying the same bad pun, ‘Gutten more minge.’
The only other thing I ever heard him talk much about was Andy Gray heading the ball out of his hands in the FA Cup final, when he was playing for Watford. Let it go Steve, you dropped it!
Many of us were good friends off the pitch and this really did help the team spirit and morale.
During that first month back in training, the injuries were stacking up for the team, and with an important pre-season cup game against Barnsley coming up, I felt that I might even make the bench. It was the Yorkshire Electricity Cup, a fiercely contested competition between the local league clubs, and I was hoping to have my first taste of first team action. The day before the game we trained, as usual, on a local Astroturf five-a-side pitch. We all used to pile into the minibus, including the manager, Alan Buckley, and his assistant, Arthur Mann, who would drive. We also carried huge full size portable goals in the van, as well as the balls, cones, and bibs. It was an extremely tight fit, but a great laugh all the same. All the windows would steam up, and the lads would scrawl silly things on the windows, such as, ‘Bucko you are gay’, and then quickly rub them out if Alan happened to turn around.
At traffic lights someone would inevitably reach through to the front and slip the gear stick out of first, and as Arthur tried to set off the engine would scream like hell when he pressed down on the pedal. He would proceed to lose his temper and turn around shouting, ‘Arr you flickin bandits!’ in his broad Scottish accent, while car horns were going off around us, and the lights changed back to red. We would be crying with laughter as Arthur fought with that temperamental gear stick, but he always refused to swear, choosing words like ‘flickin’ and ‘feckin’ instead, which obviously made it even funnier. I only heard Arthur actually swear once, and that was when I had said something about a training session. I will mention that incident later.
When we finally arrived at the Astroturf, having being half gassed to death by Mark Lever’s arse – he used to force the windows shut for maximum agony – it was time for war.
The Astroturf pitch we used was tiny, probably no more than forty yards by twenty, and almost every player was involved in the old versus young game. I cannot imagine that any club in the country would do something like this now, but we really looked forward to our weekly battle. You are talking about thirty or more lads, including the manager and his assistant, absolutely kicking the hell out of each other trying to win and not be voted worst player of the morning.
The routine was that once a session was over, we would then return to the ground, put on a huge pot of tea, and pile into the changing room to cast our votes for the worst player. Being on the losing team you ran the risk, if you had had a stinker of a session, of being handed the dreaded yellow jersey, emblazoned with the date, a few obscenities about your performance, your wife, girlfriend, or mum, and your name. This would be worn for the whole of the next week, and it had never been washed.
At the training sessions themselves, Buckley would pretend he was John Robertson, the old Forest legend, and would inevitably score a fair few goals, as, after his career as a prolific goal scorer, he was still sharp and a very good finisher. The older pros, including the fiery Tony Rees and Shaun Cunnington, would be throwing elbows everywhere, while the younger lads would be trying desperately to show their elders how good they were. I even took out the gaffer once with an overzealous tackle – he absolutely bollocked me for it.
Still, that wasn’t as bad as the time I accidentally volleyed a ball straight into the side of his face as we were messing about before one of our Friday morning games. I caught the ball a peach, but to my horror it was heading straight for ‘Bucko’. I tried to shout, but it was too late. Bang. It nearly knocked him out and, hell, was he mad. He turned around to see who was responsible, and immediately looked in my direction. Stood beside me was Kev Jobling, who was doing the old sly finger pointing routine. Kev knew this would make it even funnier, and Buckley even madder, and it worked. He stormed towards me and let me have both barrels for about five minutes. Let’s just say I did plenty of running that day – I also make sure that I tell the lads I coach nowadays never to risk hitting me in the face with a stray football.
After the game, which could last for over an hour, especially if the manager hadn’t yet scored, we used to set up the goals on grass near the Astroturf to do some shooting practice. It was after one such session, before the Barnsley game, that the manager pulled me to one side and said, ‘You’re playing