Always Managing: My Autobiography (12 page)

We were on our own in the Youth Cup, though – on the pitch, at least. Off it, I don’t think a group of young players ever had better support. When we got to the semi-final, our opponents, Wolverhampton Wanderers, insisted on playing the game on a Saturday. Mr Greenwood protested, but as it was an away fixture, he had no say. To our amazement, when we arrived to get the coach up to Molineux, there he was, getting on board with us. He chose a youth semi-final over a first-team fixture. Incredible. I’ve never forgotten that. To see our manager on the bus with us, stopping for tea and toast at a little place outside Wolverhampton, and in our dressing room before the game, gave us such a lift. We got a draw, and when we returned for the replay at Upton Park, the whole team turned out in support: Bobby Moore, John Bond, Alan Sealey – every player was up in the stand, and there must have been 20,000 fans, too. I think that is what made West Ham such a special club for a young player. If we had a big game, the senior players came to watch. You were always made to feel part of it, and that is something we have lost in modern football. I don’t think it would be the same at a Premier League club now. I don’t think the first team and youth players would have that same bond. Ron showed a lot of imagination in the way he involved the youth and the first team together. We’d play against them, and with them, if he thought you were showing promise. Now the teenagers are kept apart in academy buildings. They have their own pitches – there is distance. When I was 17, I regarded Bobby Moore, our captain, as a mate. West Ham had a completely different atmosphere.

We beat Wolves, and the final was over two legs against Liverpool. Tommy Smith, who went on to be an Anfield legend and notorious hard man, was their captain. We lost the first leg, away, 3–1. There was a big crowd at Anfield, and it was a real disappointment. The return was on the night of the FA Cup final. I can’t even tell you who won it that year, I was so wrapped up in our game. It was a full house at Upton Park and by half-time we were 2–1 down, losing 5–2 on aggregate. We came out in the second half and terrorised them. We scored four goals, and won 6–5 on aggregate. It’s one of the only times I ever saw Tommy Smith beaten up: Martin Britt bashed him all over the place. Tommy was brave, but at 16 Martin was a man. I was knocking balls into him from one wing, John Sissons was flying down the other – at the end, Ron Greenwood was in tears. You’ve never seen a man so proud. He loved that his forecourt kids had won the Youth Cup. It meant as much to him as the FA Cup. And that has stuck in my mind ever since. When I took over as manager at West Ham, every Saturday morning, if we were at home and the youth team had a game at our training ground, I would call at Chadwell Heath and watch us play, just as Ron did, before driving on to Upton Park. I knew what it meant to us to have him there, and I hope it meant the same to that generation of youth players.

I would like to think it is not a coincidence that West Ham won the FA Youth Cup in season 1998–99 when I was manager. I’m not trying to take credit, the boys went out and did it and we had a great team that year, but I do think it helped spur them on, thinking the whole club was behind them. Frank Lampard and I followed every game that year, all the way up to Oldham Athletic and against
Coventry City in the final, which we won 9–0 on aggregate. That was Joe Cole’s and Michael Carrick’s group. In 1995–96 we got beat 4–1 on aggregate by Liverpool in the final, when Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard played for us, and Liverpool had Jamie Carragher, and Michael Owen killed us coming off the bench.

I played my first senior game for West Ham on 23 August 1965, against Sunderland at Upton Park. We’d lost our first game of the season 3–0 at West Bromwich Albion, and Ron probably thought drastic action was needed. It was a night match under floodlights, Martin Peters scored from my corner and we drew 1–1. I’d had a taste of a big Upton Park crowd in the FA Youth Cup, but this was a step up again. Night matches always felt special there, and it was a great atmosphere. The following Saturday we beat a top Leeds United side, with Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles, all the greats, 2–1. I was on my way.

Football felt very different then. We were all boys from the same area, with the same backgrounds. Nobody thought they were a big star; we all mucked in together and had a laugh. I didn’t feel at all intimidated coming from the youth team. Ron Greenwood had cleverly integrated the groups so there was never awkwardness. When we’d finished training, we’d all go round the Central Café, with our four-bob dinner vouchers, enough for steak and kidney pie, chips, beans, sticky roly-poly pudding with custard, two Coca-Colas and change. Sometimes, we’d hide the Coke bottles under the table, so when Peggy came round to settle up we’d do even better out of it.

Pre-season was rather different in those days, too. In Ron Greenwood we had the best, most forward-thinking coach in the
country. We all had great respect for him and our training was always interesting – yet when compared to some of today’s sports science ideas, it was prehistoric. First morning, we got weighed. Then everybody would board a Lacey’s coach, nearly fifty of us – first team, youth team, three to a seat, some standing up in the aisles, Ron Greenwood at the front – and off we’d go, to Epping Forest. There, Ron would lead us on a little walk and then off we’d trot up a hill, running to where Ernie Gregory, the first-team coach, would give us our next directions. We’d have a little jog and then back down Epping New Road, the whole team in single file, lorries flying past us, until we reached the next point in the forest. After about half an hour of this, we would be strung out like washing. Bobby Moore was already steady near the back, Brian Dear last, and on we’d go for another three miles, ending up at a point called Mott Hill. By then, it wasn’t unusual to see Brian riding a milk float, drinking a pint and wearing the milkie’s hat, shouting, ‘Come on, you lot.’ He’d jump off about a hundred yards from the end of the run, and join the rest of us staggering to the finish. Then it was back on the coach and west towards our training ground. If the coach stopped at Grange Farm that meant Ron thought we hadn’t worked hard enough the first time and another run was scheduled. For this one, we’d race across the field and over the little bridge, Bobby and Brian still bringing up the rear, until it was time for the coach to meet us again. One year, John Bond hid in the boot of the coach to get out of it and Peter Brabrook shut it for a joke and scared the life out of him. By the time we finished we had run and run and run in the boiling heat of a summer morning. And then it would be time to get back to Chadwell Heath for the afternoon session.

Next up, lunch. Steak and kidney pie, boiled potatoes; it was amazing we could play at all given the amount of food we ate each day. The kids like me would then go out to play cricket or football, while we waited for the afternoon session to begin. The old pros used to look at us as if we were mad. ‘Give it a few years,’ John ‘Budgie’ Byrne would warn us darkly, ‘you won’t want to be doing that then.’ Our running session over, in the afternoon we would work on ball skills. By then our legs had seized up from the morning exercise, our calves were cramping and like concrete, and we could barely walk, let alone control the ball. And that’s how it used to be. That was the most progressive training in the country.

Those games of cricket were fun, but also dangerous. Real cricket balls, and some real cricketers, too. Jim Standen, our goalkeeper, won the County Championship with Worcestershire in 1964 and topped their bowling averages with 52 wickets; Ron Tindall also played for Surrey; Eddie Presland and Geoff Hurst played for Essex. But most of the boys were useful. Frank Lampard and Roger Cross represented South of England Schools, and Martin Peters was a talented player.

Alan Sealey, who scored both goals for West Ham in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup final in 1965, had his career as good as ended by a game of training-ground cricket. It was press day at the start of the 1965–66 season, our first day back for pre-season training. We’d had our run, had our lunch and were playing a game of cricket before going out to work again in the afternoon. One of the guys hit a high ball, and ‘Sammy’, as we called him, set off after it. We’d been having our team photographs taken and the benches had been left out on the edge of the pitches. We could all
see Sammy heading towards them. We were shouting to warn him, but he probably thought we were just messing about. He only had eyes for the catch and then – bang – straight over the bench. Poor fella, he didn’t just break his leg, he smashed it to pieces. In those days a player could not recover from an injury like that. He came back, limped, couldn’t get rid of it, and played four more games for West Ham before retiring. A terrible shame.

Back then there was no equivalent of modern physiotherapy and medical science. Our physio, Bill Jenkins, was one of the most terrifying men I have ever met. And it wasn’t just to me – the whole team was petrified of Bill. He was a Welshman, one of the first into the Auschwitz concentration camp as a medic, and had clearly seen some terrible sights. Not that this gave him a more enlightened or caring attitude towards humanity. He would torture you by turning the machines up to full, or punch you in the chest. He would regularly have Budgie Byrne in tears or screaming in pain. I can hear him now. ‘You fucking lump of shit, you pile of shit,’ he’d say. He would put all of the sucker pads on you and then run an electric current through to make the muscles tense then relax; and then he’d start to get angrier and angrier and turn them up so high it felt like the inside of your leg was being ripped out. That’s why West Ham had so many injury problems – the last place anyone wanted to go was the physio’s office. Unless you were desperate and had broken your leg in half, you didn’t go near Bill.

He would come in on Sunday to treat any injuries from the match the previous day, but unless the patient brought him a bottle of Liebfraumilch or half a dozen lagers he’d tell you to fuck off. Bobby Moore, captain of England, would come in needing help,
and be told to fuck off over the off licence or just fuck off home. We would end up paying Paddy O’Leary, our little Irish groundsman and the poorest ha’porth you’ve ever seen, to come back with Bill’s beers, and only then could you climb on to the treatment table. The problem was, Bill then got quite intoxicated – and when he was in that state it made him even worse. Bill died quite early on in my West Ham career, but his son Rob carried on some of the traditions. Rob was much kinder than his dad, and very laid back – but he still liked the odd beer to get him going on a Sunday.

He was our mate, though, Rob. If you went to see him on Monday, he’d come round taking orders for breakfast. ‘What do you want, Harry?’ ‘I’ll have an egg and bacon sandwich, please, Rob; white bread.’ Then he would phone down to the other groundsman at the Chadwell Heath training ground. ‘Hello, Bert, is the manager there? Oh, gone out training, has he? When? Just now? Right you are. No, no message. It’s not important, I’ll speak to him later.’ And then, having got the all clear that there was no way Ron Greenwood would be paying us a surprise visit, he’d send out to Doug’s Café for sandwiches and tea. Players these days wouldn’t believe how it was back then. Charlie Mitten, up at Newcastle United, used to love greyhound racing, and the players often couldn’t get on the treatment table because one of his dogs was getting a rub down instead. When I went to Bournemouth as a player, one of the staff was Arthur Cunliffe, a pre-war England international who had a fine career as a winger with Blackburn Rovers and Aston Villa. Arthur was a nice old boy with a pipe, who originally used to help the groundsman out, preparing the pitch. Suddenly, he was our physio. He’d never been on a course, had
no formal training, but our manager, John Bond, liked him. I tore a thigh muscle in pre-season training and limped off. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Arthur. I told him about the tear. He felt my leg. ‘Don’t worry, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘You can go back on now.’ Like an idiot I did, kicked a ball and then the muscle tore properly. I was in agony. I hobbled off and went to Arthur’s office where he had one of the new ultrasound machines. I had four days of treatment but it got no better. Each morning Arthur would spend an hour or more, rubbing this transducer probe on my thigh area. Nothing ever happened. No improvement, no real sensation. I wasn’t sure Arthur knew how to work it. After about a week of this I began studying the machine more closely. ‘Arthur,’ I said, ‘we had one of these at West Ham. Isn’t there supposed to be a little green light that comes on?’ He hadn’t plugged it in. He’d never plugged it in. He had been treating the entire first team with this since the start of pre-season and not once had it been switched on. No wonder we couldn’t get fit.

Back to West Ham, and after training, we’d do what any group of workmates did. We’d go to the pub. We started off in the East End, where we all came from but, after a little while, as people moved out, so did the haunts. The Retreat in Chigwell was a favourite. Football teams were boys’ clubs back then. There were not so many nationalities, language barriers and divisions. The West Ham players socialised together all the time, and every team was the same. Bobby Moore even bought a little chauffeur’s hat because he worked out the police never pulled over chauffeur-driven cars. If he was driving when he’d had a few, he would sit us in the back, put on his hat and off we’d go.

It was around then that I met Sandra. The Two Puddings pub in Stratford used to have a dance upstairs on Sunday nights. All the teenagers from the East End went there, and I would go with my mate Colin Mackleworth. There were two girls there that we asked to dance, Susan and Sandra. Colin got Susan; I got Sandra. Colin was better looking than me and I think Sandra thought she’d pulled the bad draw. She was hoping Colin would ask her to dance. I loved Sandra to bits from day one. I’ve been married forty-six years, and I always say she was my best signing. Jamie tells me I won the lottery the day I met her – and I did; I’ve never felt anything less than very, very lucky.

When people hear that Frank Lampard and I ended up marrying sisters, they always think the girls must have gone out hunting for footballers, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was pure coincidence. Pat and Sandra had no interest in football – nobody in their family really liked the game – and neither of them had a clue who we were. We didn’t even meet through each other. A few weeks after I started going out with Sandra, Frank came into Chadwell Heath one morning and said, ‘I took a girl home last night, and you’re seeing her sister.’ He had met Pat by chance at the Ship in Stepney. What are the odds of that?