Where’s Your Caravan?: My Life on Football’s B-Roads. Chris Hargreaves
was like a sketch from Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. Somehow the trailer had sheared off and was now independent of its master. It gathered momentum with the weight of the bike on board and veered off and started cartwheeling towards a garden. To my even greater horror in said garden there was a man tending to his prized perennials, and a woman directing him from the front door. I jumped out of the car and was screaming, ‘Move, there’s a trailer coming.’
Looking back, it was a bizarre warning, but having never witnessed a runaway trailer before, I had no idea what to say. Anyway at the last minute this poor bloke looked up and literally dived full-length to avert certain mutilation. The trailer and its contents totally obliterated the fence (new), most of the garden (just planted), and came to rest just in front of the bay window. It would probably constitute decent art nowadays, but for this couple it was a narrowly avoided death, and a garden replanted with metal.
I was, at this point, beating the World and Olympic village green sprinting record to get to the man, trailer, bike and garden, while Fiona was busy having a coronary in the car. The scene on arrival was one of devastation. Man down, bike and trailer wedged in a bush, wife shaking uncontrollably. I then uttered the immortal words …
‘Alright?’
They say that you sometimes find superhuman strength in emergency situations, I certainly did. It was like a scene from World’s Strongest Man. Somehow I managed to drag the wreckage out of the garden while constantly saying how sorry I was to the man who had just dived like an international goalkeeper. After a quick dash to the shops to get some apologetic flowers and wine for the couple in question, and then some major grovelling (phone details for compensation etc.), I left the scene of the disaster. On later inspection of the trailer I discovered that the connector had been welded more times than a car on Scrap Heap Challenge. I phoned my dad to explain why I had been so long, about the wrecked garden, the cartwheeling trailer, the man who had survived with his life, and the superhuman trailer pull. I was about to get to the fact that the trailer was a death trap and that I could have really hurt someone, when my dad butted in. The matter of crucial importance?
‘How’s the bike?!’
So, I returned to Oxford to watch the lads win against Cambridge yesterday – I have been having a blinder up in the stands, my passing has been superb, I haven’t given a ball away, and I feel great. The saying ‘it’s easy up there’, mostly referring to people who having never played the game, watch the game from above and hammer those on the pitch, is used very often, but it is true, it does look easy from high up in a stand. Believe me, it is very different at pitch level, particularly as space seems to be at a premium. It’s probably why the top players make it look easy, because they do what you can see up in that stand.
Injury wise, my knee is much better, but with the hammering that I have been putting my body through to get fit for the imminent playoff games, I now have a groin that feels as if it is about to tear right open. It is actually difficult to even kick the ball, which is a major problem in my line of work, and crushingly frustrating. I am thoroughly pissed off that I may miss next week’s play-off games, and am, at present, sat in a golf club (I don’t play golf but it is quiet and has free Wi-Fi) drinking coffee and randomly swearing out loud. As well as the mild to major OCD, I’m beginning to think I also have Tourette’s; on top of the swearing, I must punch the car steering wheel about thirty times a day, and that is not even when in bad traffic. It’s all due to football related annoyance, of course.
Back to my pre-game ritual. It was 15th July 1989, the morning of my first senior game of football, in a match against Barnsley. My boots were polished and ready at the end of my bed; I had drawn a picture on my dartboard scoreboard of me scoring a goal (me as a matchstick beating a matchstick goalkeeper complete with matchstick fans!). I then went for a pre-match walk (something I still do now) and then did one of the most bizarre pre-match routines ever seen. I went to the bakery I often visited and bought a gingerbread man. It was initially to eat (odd choice, I accept), but as I passed St Peter’s Church, the scene of many a family wedding, funeral, and christening, I walked into the grounds and carried out a strange act. I made a sacrifice to the ‘big man’ by biting off the gingerbread man’s head and ‘leaving’ it to the ‘gods’. Madly bizarre, I accept, but it also came with a massive chunk of humour attached – it was my ‘offering’ to hopefully give me a bit of luck.
It seemed to work, for the events of the following match changed my young life for ever.
‘Watson gets the ball, beats his man and crosses, up jumps Chris Hargreaves and scores. 1–0.’
‘Gary Childs runs down the wing and loops up a cross, up jumps Chris Hargreaves to score again, 2–0.’
The final whistle goes, the game is won and I am in the team bath having, on my debut, scored both goals. Ninety minutes earlier, I had been doing kick-ups on my own in the centre circle before the game. No warm-ups back then!
I had been excited in the changing room before the game, mixing with these experienced footballers. In the post-match bath, I was now one of them, and was now excited about the prospect of going out that night. That is where the problems lay, the going out!
In many changing rooms around the country the atmosphere after a win is incredible. It can also be pretty interesting after a loss, but there is always an enormous sense of relief for everyone when the game is over, the music is blasting away, the banter is flying, and, inevitably, the talk is of the Saturday night’s activities. It was the same on my debut and it is the same now, although for the old boys like me, now it’s a case of a few glasses of wine and a night in with the family!
That night, I ended up in a packed Pier 39 (Cleethorpes’ Premier Nightclub, no less. You know – sticky carpets and sticky drinks) with most of the young lads in the team and with the group of mates I knocked around with. We had done the dreaded ‘footballer’s’ walk past the queue, and gone straight in. At the time, I thought the attention I got in there was really great. I was already a well-known local lad, but this game had made it ridiculous. Drinks all round, and plenty of them, was the order of the day. I was being handed drink after drink, and was lapping it up.
On reflection, I really wish I had kept a low profile that night, had maybe stayed in and had the odd celebratory beer with my girlfriend and family, then settled down to watch Match of the Day. It may seem a bit dramatic to say that, but that night out set a precedent for me. Everything became so full on and done to such a massive extent. Going out would mean getting totally wrecked, drinking everything under the sun, and being Jack the lad at all times. Even on that first night, I ended up drinking far too much whisky and other popular (but bizarre) drinks such as Pernod and black. I woke up the next morning with a new found local stardom for my footballing exploits, but also with something off the pitch that I felt I needed to live up to for way too long, a reputation. And a headache.
It was an incredible time for me at that point. I had just turned seventeen, I was in and around the first team, and was quickly signed on a professional contract. After making a few substitute appearances in the first month of the season my first full league debut was next. It was a night game at home against Gillingham, and I performed part of my previous ritual – the polished boots, the same picture drawn on the dartboard, and hopefully the same result. And it was. I leathered a low strike into the bottom corner, the game was won, and I was on cloud nine. I was still playing every reserve game and training in the afternoon, but it didn’t matter. Back then I could play all day and still want more. I still want more now, but the difference is that if I stay out and train all afternoon, or play three games a week, I am also in desperate need of some ice, a dog basket, and an Ibuprofen sandwich.
I wanted to play every game and although I felt ready, Alan Buckley wanted me to learn my trade first, most notably by playing in the Pontins Reserve League. I was burning to get involved in those early years, and I soon became very frustrated that I wasn’t starting every Saturday afternoon. I was a bubbly character, maybe too bubbly and cocky for the manager. It would be a big statement to say that Buckley totally destroyed my confidence; he didn’t, but he definitely took the spark away from me that could and should have propelled me onto a much bigger stage. I don’t think it helped my cause that I was full of it, or that soon after signing