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A Tip From Bobby Moore
by Graham JoyceI was seduced by Jimmy Hill when I was eleven years old. All it took was for him to wave a packet of crisps and a bottle of Vimto and I would wait behind the Main Stand after a match at Highfield Road until he was ready to receive me. He had a lot of other schoolboys like that. Hundreds. Possibly thousands. It's difficult not to resent him for it.
In fact on the particular day he succeeded in binding my heart to the fortunes of Coventry City FC there were hundreds of other boys jostling for Vimto and favours at one of Jimmy Hill's sub-legendary pop 'n' crisps parties. The idea was that all boys under the age of fourteen should wait behind after a game, whereupon they would meet the players, who would readily sign autographs. Pop and crisps were offered to keep the kids quiet immediately after the final whistle, while the players frolicked in the showers and played Hunt The Bar Of Soap or whatever it is that makes professional footballers take forever in the changing room after a game.
After this agonizing delay, we were trooped single file into what I now realize was a social club, behind the bar of which all of the players were presented, pink-jowled and with gleaming wet hair. Attired in suits, they were shockingly thinner and of shorter stature than one had always imagined, and each had a slightly glazed and unfocused look. Every one of them had a fag on. They giggled to each other and scrawled utterly illegible signatures on the pages of pristine autograph books laid before them by boys stunned into silence by the eerie proximity of these seraphim of the kick-and-rush.
It may be necessary to point out (I don't assume everyone to be a statistician of Coventry's days in the lower divisions) that the Sky Blues were in the hunt for promotion from the old Third Division. There slouched Ronnie Rees, the Welsh Wizard, burping into George Hudson's ear; hither teetered Ernie Machin, laughing like a drain at something no one else could understand; thither went John Sillett, hiccuping and repeating the word 'Archie' in a falsetto while leaning heavily on diminutive winger Willie Humphries. Of course I never realized at the time, but these Olympians, these gladiators, these who were only a little lower than angels, were pissed. A modern PR machine would never allow it. Pissed? They were slaughtered. Every manjack amongst them.
How often have you wished you could return as an adult, to right an injustice, to some moment in time when you were a helplessly tongue-tied child? The moment came at the end of the line when magnificent skipper-thug George Curtis finished scratching his cross and my virginal autograph book was snatched up by Jimmy Hill. Now, every other inebriated dimwit Coventry City player had grasped the imperative of having each to sign their name on a fresh page. Not Jimmy Hill, who carelessly, one might say imperiously, laid his signature in a dreadful tangle with the moniker of the aforementioned George Curtis. Useless to a boy, it was.
'Hey! HEY! FANNY HILL! Get a grip will you? Don't you realize this child spent TWO WEEKS' pocket money on that sad little autograph book? Don't you understand how IMPORTANT these things are to a small boy? Now get back here and write your fucking name out PROPERLY!'
I still have the autographs, somewhere. The result looks not unlike two team-mates from Sunday League soccer colliding as they race for the same ball. But the fiendish scheme worked. The pact was accomplished. The slightly satanic-looking Jimmy Hill, complete with trim, Mephistophelean beard, had brandished a contract which we signed if not in blood then in Dandelion & Burdock. Our loyalty had been secured for decades to come.
Moreover, on the way out, my Uncle Harold, waiting for me behind the stands, pointed to an elderly figure in a cloth cap. The man had a small dog on a lead and was talking quietly with the club chairman. 'Chief scout,' said my Uncle Harold, knocking out his rose-wood pipe into the bowl of his hand. 'The one who goes round the schools.'
Chief scout? Round the schools? This was crucial information. I tried, unsuccessfully, to steal another look at the said chief scout, but a nick of bodies interposed and anyway it was time to go. I swiftly reported what I'd learned to my team-mates in the Keresley Newlands primary school team the following Saturday morning, after we'd beaten Holbrooks Junior 10-0. 'He's got a little dog. On a lead.'
'I saw a bloke with a dog, watching the game,' said Keith Randle, our centre-forward who had just scored a double hat-trick. Keith Randle had a long, blond fringe he was perpetually flicking from his eyes.
'Did he have a cloth cap?'
'No. His dog was an Alsatian.'
'Naw. That's not him.'
But the word had been enough. The fact was that I'd managed, inexplicably, to communicate the idea that the Sky Blues' chief scout had somehow indicated to me personally that he might be coming to watch one of our games. Everyone was so taken with the idea that I unreservedly believed it myself.
And we had the team to impress. Our last four results had been 9-1, 11-0, 14-0, 7-1 and today 10-0. Even as team goalkeeper it was possible for me to play without touching the ball for the entire game and still garner great personal kudos from these sweeping victories. I don't know why we used to win by such margins; perhaps our mining-village team was a bit beefier and somewhat George Curtis inspired in a way that intimidated a lot of eleven-year-olds, but these statistics are the facts. At that time the Coventry education authorities ran a primary schools' challenge shield tournament and, after our school retained the trophy for the seventh consecutive year, Keresley was ruled inadmissible for all subsequent years the competition was staged. This appalling injustice would not be tolerated in the Premier League should Manchester United or, ahem, Coventry City prove seven-times champions but, as I say, these are the facts.
We'd already progressed to the quarter-finals of the above competition and were scheduled to face, away from home on a fine evening after classes, a school with the bizarre name of Our Lady Of The Assumption.
'Catholics,' said Keith Randle, flicking his fringe. 'Left-footers.'
I thought for a while about the footballing implications of this, before checking back on the subject.
'I'm not sure,' said Keith. Flick.
We changed in the same shower room as the opposition, eyeing each other furtively. Little lads slapping muscle rub on their chubby thighs in imitation of the pros. The air was charged with Sloane's Liniment and high expectation. They looked a tall, gangly crew, and a lot of them seemed to have excessive overbites, which we thought might have something to do with their Catholicism. Then their captain, a particularly goofy character, came across and asked us to identify our 'skipper'. We pointed to Mick Carpenter, captain by dint of being team hard-case.
'Welcome to Our Lady.' The boy offered a hand that wanted shaking. 'Here's to a good game, and may the best side win.'
Mick Carpenter stared at him with cloudless, unblinking blue eyes. We were all arrested in the act of pulling on shirts and tying bootlaces. For a moment it seemed as if Mick was going to reject the outstretched hand, but finally he offered his own, solemnly shaking hands without saying a word. The boy coloured and went back to his cohort. Mick Carpenter glanced round at the rest of us. I must admit, coming from Keresley, we hated all that sporting shit.
It was an unexpected struggle. By half-time we were leading 2-1, and in the shock of having to do something I was playing out of my skin. I'd read that England goalkeeper Gordon Banks had said that all keepers are crazy, and I tried my best to live up to this. What I lacked in gymnastic skills I tried to make up for by being prepared to fling myself at anyone's feet, whatever the risk, and this I did that evening. I tipped one shot over the bar, palmed another round the post. We weren't used to this.
Shortly into the second half they pulled level, and after that they piled on the pressure. They were set to give us a pasting and suddenly my team, who so confidently traveled around Coventry steamrollering all-corners, looked like frightened little boys. Then, when the opposition conceded a corner, I saw him.
There, on the touchline, chatting with our teacher. He was wearing a cloth cap. He had a small dog on a leash. I passed the word around. The idea that the chief scout for Coventry City was watching gave us extra impetus. Slowly we managed to resist the onslaught and hauled ourselves back into the game. The final whistle blew and we changed round immediately for a bout of extra time.
Back they came at us. Every single body was clustered in our own penalty area and we spent fifteen minutes frantically scrambling, scooping, heading and clearing balls off the line. Shot after shot. Outrageously, the home referee-teacher, anxious to see his boys press the advantage, allowed the game to run on five or six minutes after official time. Our own teacher was protesting from the touchline, to no avail. Then came the opposing captain stepping round every lunging tackle we could offer, until he was through, with only me to beat.
So I poleaxed him.
The boy went down with a groan, I gathered the ball, and gave it the old-fashioned bounce-bounce-boot as if everything was normal. The referee stood inches away, looking deep into my eyes. He was agonizing over his decision, the silver whistle glinting and trembling between his lips.
Albert Camus said that everything he knew about morality in life he'd learned from football. That Camus knew what he was talking about. The referee understood perfectly well he'd shamefully abused his authority and that he'd stepped beyond the bounds of all sporting decency by ignoring the clock. Precisely because of that, he was in no position to award what under any other conditions would have been a clear penalty. He had one last opportunity to vouchsafe a sliver of his tattered integrity. He blew the whistle, not for a penalty, but for full-time. A replay would be necessary.
In the excitement we had forgotten about the chief scout. I quizzed our teacher Mr Ship about him.
'Chief scout? What are you on about, Joycie?'
'The man with the dog.'
'Oh, that was the school caretaker, you thick little pillock.'
Meanwhile Coventry City were closing in on promotion, and the pop and crisps party had infected me with the autograph-hunting virus. It may seem pointless to some to duplicate autographs already collected. But no, the biro scribbles secured that afternoon somehow lacked authenticity; they were too easily come by, no suffering had gone into the collecting. And a true fan, as any regular at Highfield Road knows well, has to suffer.
I'd discovered that if I caught the eleven o'clock bus into Coventry on a Saturday morning when there was no school fixture, I could be first in the turnstile queue outside the Spion Kop. Thus admitted, I could race to position myself at the exact centre behind the goal, in line with the penalty spot. Odd really, when much of the game would be spent gazing at the goalkeeper's back, and with the opposite end almost entirely obscured from view, but it's pointless trying to explain these things. Still, it wasn't enough having arrived at the game four hours before the kick-off. I wasn't entirely satisfied until I'd waited behind at the stadium sometimes up to two hours after the final whistle. Autograph hunting. Which is how I came to be in the toilets with Dietmar Bruck.
I had it on good authority that if you waited for long enough behind the Main Stand after the game, players would emerge. What they didn't tell me was that you had to wait long enough for them to down seven or eight pints, and there was nothing to do while waiting except to lurk. Lurk and mope.
Lurking is a very dull activity. There might be another sad eleven-year-old around, similarly lurking, but the time is not passed in cheerful conversation about the day's result or in the exchange of fascinating football statistics, since this boy is a rival. Footballers tend to dash off autographs on the hoof. They snatch up a book, scribbling in it on the trot, not returning it before having traveled a distance roughly equivalent to the diameter of the centre circle. A boy has to look sharp, offer the book ahead of the moving target in a well timed pass, run off-the-ball, and be ready to trap the return all in a single clean action. Often only one signature is on offer and, when the pressure to get an autograph is on, I've seen boys falter, fumble and even go down in a sorry heap. The big occasion gets to them.
That evening had been just such an occasion, and I'd missed at least half a dozen of the team through poor timing. The evening grew darker, and the other boys began to trickle away, convinced that everyone had gone, when I saw a shadow emerge from a side door. There was just enough light for me to realize it was Dietmar Bruck, City's Danzig-born German half-back (yes, half-back, these were the days when a packet of Woodbines was a shilling, or whatever). Dietmar Bruck skipped across the yard and entered a dank outbuilding for some inscrutable purpose. I followed him.
Once inside I realized the building was simply a urinal. Dietmar Bruck, pissing heartily against the black-painted trough, farted briefly and seemed startled to discover this small shadow at his side, book and pen sullenly offered. An expression of exasperation crossed the German footballer's face.
'Not now, son,? he managed to say after an uncomfortable pause. 'I've got my hands full.'
Memory, like language, is apt to transmute, but imperfect recollection of the event coupled with race-stereotyping has left with me an abiding image, after those words, of myself peering at the fat, pink-grey liverwurst in his large hands as he declined to sign my book. I waited. And waited. Dietmar Bruck seemed to go on pissing for ever. Finally he zipped up, turned and found a brass tap under which he could wash his hands. It didn't work. Still shaking his head he took the book from me and signed his name.
We could now both go home.
The school team continued to do well. We punished Our Lady Of The Assumption in the replay a thumping 5-1, and it felt good. In another game, against timorous Brent Croft Junior, Keith Randle came close to a triple hat-trick in a genocidal 14-0 victory, and even then Mr Ship blew the whistle ten minutes early to stop the other boys from getting too depressed.
Meanwhile the chief scout continued to overlook US; 'There he is!' said Keith Randle during the Brent Croft game, but although the man had a dog, he had no cloth cap. Similarly Mick Carpenter's, 'Is that him?' had us all excited for a moment, but this time although a cloth cap was in sporting place, there was no dog. For the semi-final we drew the appalling Brent Croft again, who had sneaked through the first round on a bye and who had passed through the quarter-finals by default when their opposition had mysteriously failed to turn up. Our place in the final was secure.
Then Mick Carpenter, Keith Randle and a couple of the others discovered smoking and Woodpecker cider. At first I resisted. I recalled dire warnings from Jimmy Greaves and England captain Bobby Moore in the pages of my schoolboy comics. They fronted strip cartoons in which feeble-looking squirts comfortably duffed up six-foot bullies. They were able to do this, according to Jimmy Greaves, because the bullies smoked cigarettes whereas the squirts, surprisingly pugnacious and quicker to the punch, didn't.
'Take a tip from me,' I told my team-mates, quoting Bobby Moore verbatim, 'the best way to stop smoking is never to start.'
We were skulking in the vandalised bandstand at the time. Mick Carpenter was sharing round a packet of communally purchased Woodbines. Mick and the others gave me the exact same look they'd given the sporting captain of Our Lady Of The Assumption. I took the proffered snout and accepted a light from Keith Randle. We all smoked at least one cigarette that evening; some of the team smoked two. Despite this, incredibly, we still won our next match 7-0.
The end of the football season was approaching. Coventry City looked set for promotion to the Second Division, -and the spring weather was unseasonably warm. So warm that Roy Stokes and Mick Carpenter had the bright idea of the team camping out in Roy's back garden the night before our walkover semi-final against Brent Croft. Roy's parents owned two tents and had approved the idea when Roy had cunningly explained that it would build team morale and the evening would be spent talking tactics. Seven out of the eleven managed to get permission from their parents. Meanwhile there would be cigarettes. There would be cider. There was even talk of girls.
Roy Stokes' father insisted we settle by ten o'clock that evening. We bedded down, under blankets safety-pinned together, and waited until the lights went out in the Stokes' household. Then we cracked open the smuggled cider and the Woodbines. Everyone had produced at least one two-pint bottle. Even though Deborah Cook and Jane Spencer from school were supposed to put in an appearance, all talk of girls proved luxurious. We sat up talking in hushed tones, smoked the cigarettes down to their butts and drained the cider bottles dry.
About three in the morning everyone was still wide awake and starting to feel peckish. Roy decided to make a raid on the fridge inside the house. Keith Randle went with him, but all they came back with was a pound-and-a-half of raw pork sausage.
'You can't eat raw sausage!' someone protested.
'Course you can!' Keith Randle severed a - link with his teeth and took a generous bite. He flicked his fringe. 'Lovely stuff.'
Terence Harper clowned around with one of the links, holding it to his groin, reminding me unpleasantly of Dietmar Bruck. But eventually we polished off the links of pork sausage, and I must say it didn't seem to taste too badly. Until about two hours later when we all tasted it again. Every soldier in the troop was as sick as a dog. Roy Stokes was terrified that his folks would find out about the cider and the fags. Vomiting into the hedgerows we hid the empty bottles, and with our football kit at the ready we left the Stokes' household before anyone else was awake.
Green-faced we arrived at the school desperately early for the ten o'clock kick-off.
'It'll wear off,' promised Keith Randle.
'Don't let anyone find out,' fretted Roy Stokes.
'I'll personally chin anyone who throws up in front of Ship.' warned Mick Carpenter.
The school caretaker unlocked the changing room for us and we got outside and on to the pitch before Ship arrived. Supposedly there to warm up clustered in the goalmouth, shivering and hugging ourselves. Keith Randle took a stab at a practice ball and promptly vomited over the penalty spot. At last the rest of the team arrived and Ship flagged us over for a pre-match pep talk.
He eyed us strangely. Ship had never seen us so subdued. 'I can see you're nervous, lads, but don't let it get to you. This is just one game like all the others. Now get out there and take no prisoners.'
It was a shambles. We had four good players. All the campers were wincing at every tackle, failing to chase, unable to strike the ball with force. Mr. Ship, refereeing, shook his head in exasperation. It was a good thing Brent Croft were so utterly useless. Most of the ineffectual play took place around the centre circle. Then the inevitable happened just before half-time. A long ball came our way out of the pathetic ruck. A Brent Croft forward came chasing after it. Mick Carpenter stepped up to wallop the ball back again, but something stopped him in his tracks. He froze, standing stock-still as their forward nipped by him and slapped the ball past me into the back of the net.
They went wild. They were delirious; punching the air and foaming at the mouth. I bent to pick the ball out of the net. I knew what had happened: Mick Carpenter had shat himself in mid-stride. He was already shuffling off to the changing rooms with as much dignity as he could muster. Ship called after him, but getting no answer, he simply restarted the game.
'What the hell is the matter with you all?' Ship wanted to know at half-time. We were so terrified of him finding out about the booze and fags no one dared hint that we were a team of invalids. 'And where have you been?' he demanded of Mick Carpenter when he came trotting back in dripping wet shorts rinsed out under a tap.
Mick looked up at him with those cloudless blue eyes. 'Toilet.'
The second half was hardly any better. A shot from a Brent Croft winger hit me slap in the belly and I instantly puked up, over their inside-right as it happened; Keith Randle spent most of the time languishing near the corner flag; Roy Stokes headed the ball and had to steady himself against the goal post for a moment or two; and Mick Carpenter trotted off to the changing rooms on two further occasions. Only two individual goals from little Jack Manning. whose mother had refused him permission to join the camping group, gifted us passage to the final round.
It was as I staggered off the pitch behind the others that a little dog snapped at my ankles, causing me to vomit freely again, narrowly missing a pair of highly polished, brown adult shoes. I glanced from the dog to its leash to its owner. I knew that dog. I knew that cloth cap. The chief scout regarded me steadily, with eyes that were stormy black holes.
Mr. Ship ranted in the dressing room, about how we'd have to do better in the final and how he was particularly disappointed with our performance. 'I don't know whether to tell you this, lads. But I went to particular trouble to get someone to come and watch you today. Particular trouble.'
We all looked at the floor, or at our muddy bootlaces. We went on to win the shield, a narrow 2-0 victory over Limbrick Wood, and Coventry City won promotion to the Second Division, so I suppose everything worked out. What can I say? That if the chief scout had seen me play better I would have gone on to become a professional footballer? In which case I would by now be running a pub, perhaps somewhere near Rugby.
All I know is that some small light faded after that season, even if I continued to be a devotee of the beautiful game. I stopped collecting autographs from men in urinals, and I quickly saw through Jimmy Hill's pop and crisps parties, even if, some thirty years later, I retain an abject and tiresome need to follow the mixed fortunes of the Sky Blues.
On balance, I believe it might have been better to have taken a tip from Bobby Moore.