decent money, they would have done the same – they may well have finished their game of Dungeons and Dragons first (the Warhammer of the day), but I’m sure they too would have gone. No doubt those same lads are now lawyers, accountants, and architects, who go snowboarding three times a year, and have corporate boxes at Man United – but let’s not dwell on that.
It would be a bit naïve to think that staying on to do my A-levels was a possibility after Grimsby Town’s offer, it wasn’t, but I do hugely regret abandoning all forms of further education. It is always hard to get back into education, especially after a long break. Several years later, and shortly after I had signed for Hull City, I did try to complete an A-level in psychology. I lasted a few months, but the course being on a Tuesday night didn’t really help, and when the tutor announced he was stepping down because he was suffering from a particularly bad case of paranoid schizophrenia, I went off the idea.
After a short spell on a YTS, in fact very short, at three months, it was time for business. I was soon signed on professional forms by Grimsby Town’s manager Alan Buckley, and his assistant Arthur Mann, and, at seventeen years of age, I was soon reporting for my first pre-season training for the 89/90 season. I was incredibly excited to be at the club, and couldn’t wait for the season to start.
At the moment, as I prepare to dig deep and remember my first season in professional football, I am sat ‘home alone’ in Devon. My wife and children are ‘up north’ – although everywhere is up north compared to Devon – they are visiting both sets of grandparents on the east coast. The time is 2.50pm and I am digging through dusty old programmes to try to jog my memory concerning dates and games played. You may wonder why 2.50pm is particularly relevant. Well, I am sat at home and am not in a changing room putting my shin pads on, listening to a few last minute instructions (which is always a tough ask, as, at the best of times, it sounds like a nightclub in most changing rooms), and waiting for the bell to sound.
The fact is I am a bit crocked at the moment, slight tears to both my groin and my knee cartilage mean that I am out of action for a few weeks at least. This, and the fact that the lads are playing in Manchester, means that it is a weekend off for yours truly.
Everything had been going so well since I arrived back at my former club Oxford United, apart from my first game back that is, a dramatic last minute loss while leading, at fellow title chasers, Luton Town.
In his wisdom that night, the referee, and his good friend the much maligned fourth official, added on seven minutes of injury time. Yes, you heard right, SEVEN minutes. I think he added time for both teams’ warm-ups before the game, never mind the injuries sustained during it. As you can imagine, with the ten thousand home fans seeing the number seven raised aloft on the minutes board for the first time in living memory, they started cheering, and inevitably, in the seventh minute of said injury time, one of our lads lost his man at a corner, and they equalised. Straightaway I asked the referee how long there was to go – after twenty two years in this game I sort of have a sixth sense for doom – to which he replied with surprising cheer, ‘I’m adding another minute on for “their” celebrations’, to which I replied, with as much sarcasm as was possible for a slightly tired and disgruntled thirty eight year old, ‘Why don’t you add another minute on for good luck, you know you want to and I tell you what, why don’t you come up for their next corner and head the bloody thing in yourself?’
I escaped the booking, but I didn’t escape the second ‘extra’ minute, or the corner that he gave in the last seconds of the last minute of the added time.
Directly from the corner, with what proved to be the last kick of the game, our keeper Ryan Clarke misjudged the flight of the ball, and we watched on as it sailed into the top corner of the net. The place erupted and I watched in disbelief as their players celebrated as if they had won the World Cup and Champions League, all in one go. I half expected the ref to take his shirt off and start crowd surfing, and I could have sworn I saw him smiling at one point. It was my first game back as captain, and to say I felt robbed is the understatement of the year. At the final whistle, and without the benefit of a sword to fall on, I grabbed the ball and kicked it high into the back row. I lost it in the changing room afterwards, kicking anything that moved, and having a go at some of the lads, no doubt making a great first impression in my first game back at the club.
To make matters worse I had travelled in with Ryan Clarke that night. All ‘Clarky’ kept saying during that return journey was, ‘Fuck me, Chris, how did I let that corner go in?’
I couldn’t have agreed more, but Ryan is a really nice lad so I just kept quiet and offered my support (obviously while thinking to myself, ‘Fuck me, Clarky, how DID you let that corner go in?’).
To prolong the agony, or to give that crushing defeat a bit of humour, whichever way you want to look at it, the following day the local newspaper reporter, Jon Murray, approached me half laughing and said, ‘Should I put the claim into the club or give it to you direct?’
He continued, as I was none the wiser, ‘That ball you volleyed into the crowd the other night rebounded off the roof of the stand, and smashed into my laptop.’
Come on now, what are the chances of that? You can imagine the write up I got the next day.
The following few games went well, with three consecutive wins, but it was in the final ten minutes of that last win that my season changed. I stretched for a ball and felt something go in my groin. I tried to play the next few games, having injections to help me do so, but it was no good, I was going, or should I say limping, through the motions. I did return for another top of the table clash against Stevenage, a sort of title decider, but I tore my cartilage with only twenty seconds of the game gone. It was a bad neck-high challenge by our number five (me), but I wanted my opposing midfielder to know I was there. He got the message, but after forty-five minutes so did I, I couldn’t play on with cartilage damage for much longer, and I ended up hobbling off early in the second half.
I now have three weeks to get ready for what will probably be my sixth end of season play-offs in the last seven seasons, my seventh in all, and another very short summer. Our lead at the top of the table has vanished, and it is now more play-off uncertainty. My body seems to be rebelling against any form of recovery, but I really hope that the miscellany of treatments I am having work. A combination of ice, rehab, and not driving for three hours a day should help.
So, I am sat down beginning to type away; it is now 3.20pm, and I haven’t even turned on Sky Sports News to check the results; it is just too stressful. Who would be a fan eh? I will have a look at around 4.45 though – or more likely 4.52pm when the referee will have definitely blown his whistle! I will also check the results of the other nine teams that I have played for at the same time, as I do every week.
I find that to be able to write, especially for a long article, or in this case a book, the house has to be tidy (‘that’s the OCD,’ I hear you say) and it has to be quiet, both of which are a rarity with three children around. I have been writing a daily blog for the local paper for the past couple of years, but having my three-year-old daughter on my knee, trying to help the other two with homework (Cameron’s is testing for me at the best of times, never mind for him), and rushing to free up the laptop for my wife, just adds to the madness.
I do miss my children (and wife, of course!) when I’m away, or in this case when they are, and this week has been no exception. Had we all been together it would have been the normal pilgrimage to the beach with surfboards and a picnic, as the sun has been beating down in Devon this week. The first day or so without the gang was bearable, a few hours of decorating (I got paint everywhere), mending a broken ornament (I glued my fingers together), and attempting some gardening (using a lawnmower that has lost a wheel is plain stupid) kept me busy, but after that it was all downhill. I started to do jobs that just immediately put me in a bad mood, but that us blokes all around
