Where’s Your Caravan?: My Life on Football’s B-Roads. Chris Hargreaves
was absolutely buzzing. Arthur came up to me and simply said, ‘Just show them all, son.’
He was a real gent, was Arthur, and he was a great friend to his manager. He was also very, very loyal to Alan Buckley, almost too loyal in a way, as I wish he had stuck up for me a bit more against Buckley, rather than automatically siding with him.
I told all the other youth team lads that I was going to be making my debut, and, understandably, they were all a little bit disappointed that it wasn’t them. In the late eighties, you had to be ready to play at seventeen or eighteen, or you would be discarded, so this was understandable. Despite this, they were very supportive. There was a real closeness between this group of lads, a mixture of local boys and players who had been spotted at other clubs around the country, all trying to make it as professional footballers, but all friends as well. This unity created a really strong team spirit. We even lived close together – some of the apprentices actually had digs in my street.
Mark Clarke, Scott Liversidge, and ‘Twebby’ Trevor Edwards were really nice lads, and good players. I think it was hard for them, understandably so, seeing me get a contract and go to play in the first team. I had been on their side looking in, now I was on the other side, on the verge of a professional career. Everybody was striving for the same goal, to play in the first team, and with that came a rivalry, but a friendly one. The stark reality was that, apart from me, not one lad made it through from that set of players, which shows how ruthless professional football can be.
More often than not, the first team at Grimsby Town would all gather together in the morning into the tiny but warm kitchen. The oven already had our sausages sizzling away in it for our lunch, and the Baby Burco tea urn was always on at full pelt, for the endless supply of tea required by the older players and management. Don’t forget that back then, the ritual of tea at training and before, during, and after a game was a must. This was also still the time when you could have a nip of whisky before a game, and warm-ups involved no more than a few kick-ups.
If we weren’t in the kitchen we would be in the boot room, which was next to the home team dressing room. Here we would sort the boots out or, more likely, chat – the weekend, who pulled, or who had a fight were usually the top topics of conversation. Looking back, it’s refreshing to know how innocent the lads were then. Modern technology and communication hadn’t kicked off, so there was no Facebook, MSN, text, email, or, in fact, mobile phones. All communication was with your mouth, in person, whether it be chatting up girls, or talking to each other. The same goes for leisure time, we would sit around and chat about football, girls, or cars. We didn’t have the money for golf, and the PSP, Game Boy, Wii, PlayStation, Xbox, and laptop generation was not upon us, and for that I’m really thankful. This thought still makes me smile now, on the journeys to and from matches. I sit next to some of the young boys who seem to be conducting relationships through their laptops, spending hours on Facebook or ‘Rent-a-mate’ as I like to call it. I fear the days of ‘Get your coat – you’ve pulled’ are officially gone – not that I would want to, or have ever, used that immortal line.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that you have to move with the times. My wife could be having five affairs on Facebook for the amount of time she spends on it, and my children have got the entire contents of PC World in their rooms, but I really would not miss any of it, as I didn’t grow up with it. I wasn’t even one of those lads who would spend hours in an arcade, bending down into ridiculous positions and shouting, ‘Nudge mate, two down, yeah, it’s two down.’
I simply wasn’t interested, I would rather kick a ball about, or do stunts on an old BMX, which, incidentally, for all you old school BMX fans out there, was a Raleigh Ultra Burner with black ‘skyways’ and ‘mushroom’ grips. I later went on to have a lovely Diamond Back, but enough of that.
My family had moved home a few years previously, going from the flat above the shop to a house further into Cleethorpes. The bonuses of this for me were a great park nearby for football, a garden for kick-ups, a beach on the doorstep, and a new leisure centre being built nearby – it was here that I would stroll to the roller disco on the hunt for girls. I thought I was Don Johnson on the set of Miami Vice, all dressed in white, hair slicked back, with a brooding scowl – what a prat I must have looked.
The day I was told by Buckley that I would be playing, I ran all the way home (about two miles) after training. I stopped to say hello to my dad at his workshop, and to break the news, and then sped off home to prepare. I popped round to see Fiona, my girlfriend, and, incredibly, considering my subsequent reputation and unreliability, my future wife. In fact, I think I ran everywhere that day; I was so excited that I would be pulling on the black and white striped ‘Town’ shirt and playing in the first team. I even went to the park and leathered about fifty shots in the goal.
On the morning of the game I carried out a bit of a ritual that really showed my age.
As I write this, I am late for our game against Cambridge tonight, so must go. I fought the traffic for six hours yesterday to go to the gym in Oxford for rehab and to then return home, and am now setting off again to support the lads. My wife is ‘up north’ with the children, so I am borrowing my mate’s Renault Clio to bomb about in. I am like a cross between Jeremy Clarkson, Mr Bean, and Victor Meldrew as I drive. I swear, sweat, and swerve my way up and down the motorway, ranting at the speed limits, the traffic jams, and the other drivers. The one highlight of yesterday’s trip was seeing a van with some writing scrawled into the dirt on the back doors. Instead of the usual statement about his, or someone else’s wife, it simply said ‘GET OUT OF THE FUCKING MIDDLE LANE’. You can’t beat that British sense of humour. My licence points are racking up like a Tesco till receipt with all that driving, my knee is still sore, my back is like glass, and my groin is shredded, otherwise I feel pretty damn good.
So, some days have passed since I was last able to continue with this book. In that time I have been given a few days off to ‘heal’, so I shot up to Cleethorpes with my family for my mum’s birthday (an important one. but one that is not allowed to be revealed!). It was great to get back home and coincidentally, while we were back there, Torquay United played Grimsby Town, both clubs that have played an important part in my life. Torquay United won and survived the drop, but it looks like Grimsby Town will go down. A sad day for Grimsby Town fans, but that is football for you. They had been a decent Championship side for a few years and now find themselves in the Conference. How long it will take them to get out of that league, only time will tell.
While in Grimsby and Cleethorpes I took in a few interesting sights, most notably a trip around the heritage museum including a tour of an old fishing trawler (hell, was it hard work for those guys), and a visit to Martin Hargreaves Motorcycles (hard work for that man too!). It is like a big, bike jigsaw in there, how he gets sixty bikes back into a workshop that only holds fifty is beyond me and most of his customers. Whenever I go to see my dad at work, and whatever I am up to at the time, he always manages to rope me into a bike pick up or drop off. It’s similar to being given a job by the Sicilian mafia, you just can’t say no. I truly believe that if David Beckham rolled up at Martin Hargreaves Motorcycles, ‘Mart’ would have him popping over to ‘Dave’s Spares’ for a new battery and spark plug for a Yamaha 125. This time, I had to pick up a big Honda CBR in Grimsby. I had a nice clean shirt on as it was my mum’s birthday and we were due for coffee and cake. An hour later, after some hazy directions and a wobbly bike on board, I returned, covered in oil, to the reply, ‘Where have you been son, I need a couple more parts.’
Suffice to say that when I eventually returned home I was black with grease, the cakes had been eaten, and all that was left was a slice of humble pie!
Still it could have been worse, a few years ago now, again during a routine visit, I was asked to pick up a bike. This time I was using my dad’s car and trailer combo, with me wheeling the bike up onto the trailer and then gently pulling it back to base. The location of the pick up was very close to that of the village where my wife’s parents lived, so Fiona and I thought that we would kill the bird and throw the stones, or whatever the saying is, and visit her parents.
I picked the bike up, which was, predictably, huge, and we detoured off towards the village. The journey was fine but as we entered the village I checked