Always Managing: My Autobiography (9 page)

Even so, you’d have thought that someone, somewhere, would have snapped Bobby up and given him a second chance. They only had to see him play to know the way he read and understood the game. And he was Sir Alf Ramsey’s captain. That should have meant something, surely? I won’t have it that Bob couldn’t have become a good manager. His football brain was on a different level when he played, so surely that would have converted to management, over time. To this day I will never know why he could not get a break. I still believe that, with the right support, he could have been the greatest manager in West Ham’s history. But we’ll never know. I still hear that Bobby was a failed manager, but I tell people that he
never got a chance to show otherwise. The year I had with him, even at Oxford City, you could see he knew so much about the game. The results were not always the best, but he always talked sense about football. Everybody that played with him respected his opinion. Having kicked around in non-league football and lower league football, why was he never given a chance to work with players who had an ounce of his incredible ability? Surely, we should have given this man a go at a bigger club? But no one did.

I can remember Alvin Martin asking me about Southend when he had the chance to manage there and, knowing what happened to Bobby, I was a little more cautious with my advice. The first job as a manager is so important. If the club is just drifting and you end up getting the sack it can be the end of you. You must make sure that you’ve got a chance. Bobby didn’t have that at Southend, but after he left nobody thought he could coach, and it was downhill all the way.

I can picture him now, eating fish and chips at the back of the stand at Grimsby Town. I was up there with West Ham and I spotted him out of the corner of my eye. Freezing cold, midweek game, he was doing the summary for Capital Radio for a hundred quid. Big hat on to keep him warm. ‘All right, Bob?’ I asked. ‘All right, H, yeah,’ he said. I came away, thinking to myself, ‘What are we doing? This is Bobby Moore.’ It couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world.

I spoke about it with the directors, but there were never any positions for him at West Ham. No one wanted to give him a job. And then he died. That same week Terry Brown, the chairman, started talking about naming a stand after him. I’ll admit, I went
spare. ‘When he was alive, you didn’t even give him a ticket, now you want to name a fucking stand after him?’ I said. ‘He should have been sitting next to you every game. He should have been the figurehead of this fucking club. He would have been the best ambassador any club could ever have.’

I had a few arguments with Terry, but that must rank as one of the biggest. We had murders and fell out, big time, that day. But I meant every word. The greatest footballer this country has ever produced and he ends up sitting at the back of a stand in Grimsby doing radio commentaries? I’m sure Sir Trevor is a great ambassador for West Ham – but he ain’t Bobby Moore. And if West Ham couldn’t find any use for him, what about the Football Association? How this country didn’t make the most of a man like that, I will never know. He could have been fantastic for England and for English football. Germany put Franz Beckenbauer centre stage, France did the same with Michel Platini, so much so that he ended up President of UEFA. Meanwhile, Bobby Moore holds the same rank of honour in this country as Des Lynam. How didn’t he get a knighthood? Why didn’t he get a knighthood? How did we end up with Sir Dave Richards and Sir Bert Millichip but not Sir Bobby Moore?

We think of scandals in football as a player diving, or high transfer fees, but this, for me, is what scandal really means. The way football treated Bobby changed my attitude, professionally, because seeing him struggle confirmed to me that nobody in this game really gives a monkey’s about you once you’ve served your purpose. Do your best, don’t do people a bad turn, but make sure you look after yourself first because, when it comes down to it,
nobody cares. Earn as much as you can and don’t feel guilty about that, either. Nobody looked out for Bobby – and if they won’t look out for him, they certainly won’t look out for me or any of the other ex-players. I can name hundreds of footballers now – great players who gave everything – who have to go begging to the Professional Footballers’ Association because they need a hip replacement. Some clubs are different. At Everton they are very good at organising dinners and fundraising events for ex-players to be supported medically, but I think that is because Bill Kenwright, their chairman, is a proper Evertonian and runs the club the right way. Dave Whelan at Wigan Athletic is another who seems to have his club’s interest at heart, having played the game. Yet if you look at some of the new owners, what do they know of their club’s history? They couldn’t tell you who played thirty years ago, let alone want to look after them.

When I was manager of West Ham, Ron Greenwood turned up for one of the games, and visited me in my little office. He was talking about walking down Green Street through the crowd, and I asked him why he hadn’t driven here. He said he had. ‘Then where have you parked?’ I asked. ‘Up past the station,’ said Ron. They couldn’t get him a car park ticket, apparently. No room. Ron Greenwood, the greatest manager West Ham ever had, the man that cemented the principles that are at the heart of the club – stuck down a side street past Upton Park station because they couldn’t make room for him in the car park. I despaired.

The last time I saw Bobby was the year he died, 1993. He stayed at the Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth and we went down to see the racehorses working at David Elsworth’s yard. I went to pick him
up and when he came out I could have cried. He always had big, tree-trunk legs, but there was nothing of him, he was wasting away; his backside was almost hanging out of his trousers. It killed me. I had to pull myself together. We went out for the day, we went down the stables, had lunch, went to a little fish restaurant, and he never said a word about how ill he was. I knew the problem, we all did, but he never complained, never moaned, never said, why me? So I’ll say it instead: why him, for God’s sake? And to the people who left him to wither away when his playing career ended, just: why?

West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers, I’ve managed quite a few clubs around the capital – but the team I grew up supporting was Arsenal. That was my dad’s team, Harry Senior. We were an East End family, so I don’t quite know where it came from, but he absolutely loved Arsenal, and so did his brother, Jim. Dad was always over at Highbury, standing behind the goal in the North Bank, and after he stopped playing on Saturdays, he would take me. I would represent East London Schools in the morning, he’d come to watch and then we’d both go off to Arsenal.

We even travelled to the odd away game. I remember just before my twelfth birthday, going up to Sheffield to see Arsenal play in an FA Cup fifth-round replay. Sheffield United had drawn 2–2 at Highbury that weekend, and we were back at Bramall Lane the following Wednesday. It took about six hours on the train and when we got there Dad and Uncle Jimmy disappeared into a pub and I was left standing outside with a packet of crisps. The match was rotten, too. Jack Kelsey, our Welsh international goalkeeper,
broke his arm and Dennis Evans, the left-back, had to go in goal – there were no substitutes in those days. Just before the match a thick fog came down and we couldn’t see a thing. Bramall Lane was a cricket ground, a huge expanse of land with stands on only three sides, which made it worse. How they played in those conditions I’ll never know. We didn’t have a clue what was going on, except for the odd cheer from the home crowd, and Arsenal lost 3–0. After that, we had to wait for the first train at seven the next morning, and it was another six hours back to London. I got through the door and grassed the old man up. ‘How was it?’ my mum asked. ‘Well, it was a long wait standing outside the pub, Mum,’ I said. ‘You what? You left him outside a pub?’ Wallop – have that.

Football was a different world back then. The other day I was watching film of the 1957 FA Cup final, Manchester United versus Aston Villa. I would have been ten at the time it was played. Peter McParland, the Villa centre-forward, absolutely nailed Ray Wood, who was in goal for Manchester United, knocked him unconscious and broke his jaw. It was so horrendous, so wrong, that it was almost funny. Wood lay on the floor, unconscious, and the trainer ran on and all he seemed to be worried about was getting his keeper’s jumper off so Jackie Blanchflower could go in goal. He pulled and pulled at this thing, a big polo neck and tight, and Wood was just lolling about like a rag doll. He could have had brain damage for all they knew, could have had a broken neck, but they finally got the top off and had him propped, sitting upright. The whole process must have taken about five minutes, and then they picked him up, a dead weight and just slung him on the stretcher. And through it all, the commentator was saying it was a fair challenge and there could be no blame on McParland, and the crowd were booing
because they thought Wood had gone soft. It was incredible. About twenty-five minutes later, he came back out of the tunnel, a smelling salts sniffer up his nose, and he could barely stand up. He played outside-right and didn’t touch the ball for ages because he was walking around in a daze. Finally, he had a shot and nearly hit the corner flag. ‘Ah, Wood, clearly not as good on the wing as he is in goal,’ said the commentator. Half-time came, he went off again, and clearly couldn’t come back. United went 2–0 behind, scored with seven minutes to go and, suddenly, Wood returned, only this time in goal so United could play eleven against eleven and try for an equaliser. And he still didn’t know what planet he was on.

That’s how the game was in those days. I remember Lawrie Leslie, a big Scotsman who was the West Ham goalkeeper in the early sixties. He broke an arm against Arsenal in the first half, so they tied it up around his neck and he went out and played 60 minutes on the wing. Hard as nails the players were back then.

And I saw them all from my spot on the left side of the North Bank at Highbury. There was a big raised manhole cover and we’d get there about two hours before kick-off so I could claim my place on it and lean on the barrier. I saw the Busby Babes from there, and Tom Finney, who was my dad’s favourite. The old man loved Finney. He reckoned he was the best ever, even better than Stanley Matthews. He thought Matthews was good on the wing, but Finney could play anywhere: through the middle, outside-left, outside-right, he could score goals, do the lot. The crowds weren’t segregated in those days, either, so whenever Arsenal played Preston North End there would always be a few away fans in our end, and Dad would get chatting to them about Finney, offer them a cup of tea from his flask; it was a different atmosphere way back.

There was respect, between the fans, and between the fans and the players. It’s one of the reasons it makes me sick when you hear people now singing songs about tragedies like the Munich air disaster. I used to watch those boys – Duncan Edwards and the rest of the Manchester United team from that time – I know how fantastic they were. To hear vile songs about them, it makes me ill. Sir Bobby Charlton told me once that when he went to United he thought he was a good player. He’d be working in a factory every day before training, but he still fancied his chances. And he told me that he saw Duncan Edwards and thought, ‘No, Bob, you’re wrong – you can’t play.’ That’s how good Edwards was.

I saw the Busby Babes’ last game in this country: 1 February 1958, they won 5–4 against Arsenal. Everyone played: Edwards, Eddie Colman, Dennis Viollet, Tommy Taylor, David Pegg. Busby sent out another young winger that day, Kenny Morgans, and I remember a kid getting Duncan Edwards’ autograph as he came off the pitch. I thought he was so lucky. And then five days later the crash happened. The whole country was in mourning. Everybody was glued to the radio morning, noon and night. What’s happening? How’s Duncan? I was ten years old and I remember I kept a scrapbook because Duncan was my hero and we were all willing him to come through. Every day I’d cut the latest reports out and it all seemed to be good news. Duncan looked like he was going to pull through. There was even a photograph where he was almost sitting up in bed smiling. When my parents died a few years ago, I cleared out their house and I found that old scrapbook. It brought back a lot of memories. I used to say my prayers for him every night and when he died, well, I was just devastated. We all were. So I don’t understand how football has degenerated
these days, with those chants about Hillsborough and Munich or gas chambers. They were Manchester United boys, but the whole country was pulling for them. Fans would have felt the same about any group of players. You went to a match and you’d stand and talk football with the away fans, and no one would be shouting abuse or fighting and arguing. Everyone had a rattle and they just went to enjoy the game. If that sounds a rose-tinted or nostalgic memory, I’m sorry, but it’s true. Then, for me and my dad, it was a cheese roll at a little café up the road, the 106 bus and then the 277 back to Poplar.