achieved absolutely nothing; I swore around seventy times, trapped my finger twice, and left having gained no extra space at all. After playing at ten clubs during my career, I still have boxes marked ‘kitchen’ that have yet to even see a kitchen. Worryingly, there is also a box with ‘children’s pets’ written on it. I dare not even open it!
Then last night, after scrolling down the enormous checklist I had been ‘kindly’ left with, I attempted to sort the loft out. I cut my hand on an old picture and sustained some sort of allergic reaction to the three tonnes of foam insulation up there. And today, why I don’t know, I joined the other crazy lot and went to the dump, or should I say ‘recycle’ centre. It was crammed with people driving in with either just one plank of wood to throw away, or a small tree, large sofa, and four mattresses, all rammed into the back of a Ford Fiesta. How anything gets recycled lord only knows, as whenever you ask one of the lads where to put anything they shout, ‘Shove it on the pile, pal’ – TVs, batteries, duvets, asbestos, cyanide go on ‘throw it on, mate.’
The only thing I have actually achieved over the last week is to regularly hammer the gym, and my body with it. This is something you do when you are out of action and injured; it becomes an absolute obsession to get fit and every day seems like a week. It is as if you can’t function in your normal life until your body is one hundred per cent right, and you are back playing. You also feel like a leper in and around the club. Most managers’ philosophy on injured players is the same, ‘you can’t help me at the moment, so make yourself scarce’. If the team is winning you are even more leper-like, whereas if the team is on a losing streak your every movement and strike of a ball is monitored, until you are back fit and able to help the team.
I’ve had to have a quick look at Sky Sports News, and it’s 0–0 so far.
(Before I go back into my first season of football again, I feel the need to interject and officially apologise for the use of any offensive language. I will only use it when it is very, very necessary.)
1989/90
Looking back to 1989 is not so easy – the old memory is not what it used to be and my pyramid filing system of programmes and no DVD footage (it was all video back then!) doesn’t help matters. However, I have just found an old newspaper cutting with the headline ‘Chris on the mark’, referring to my debut for Grimsby Town juniors after my return from Everton. ‘Hargreaves scored with a good left foot shot.’ Not the best bit of journalism ever, you may think, but it gets better. At the bottom of the piece it says, ‘Town dominated 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
