Catch A Falling Star (20 page)

A number of factors are to blame for my first divorce. When I was playing at City we had a good lifestyle, a decent standard of living. Margaret didn’t work and I was the sole breadwinner. When my wages went down and eventually stopped altogether our standard of living dropped. We had to move to a smaller house.

More than that though I think we simply fell out of love. We weren’t different people or anything, we just drifted apart. There was nobody else involved on my side or hers, it was just one of those things. It had run its course and by 1978 it was all over and we divorced.

Of course there were some good times in those early days. The kids were growing up happy and healthy. I used to play golf with Lee Dixon’s dad and my son Mark used to play football with Lee in the fields in Wilmslow during the summer holidays. I’m sure I recall Mark being a better player than Lee! Speaking sincerely for a moment, I was really pleased for Lee that he went all the way. He was a super player for Arsenal and
England
and it’s just a shame he never pulled on that blue City shirt.

I think my ex-wife has probably done a good job with the kids. I don’t see them though. What I do know is that they’re all healthy and they’re all doing well and as long as they are then that’s fine by me. I’ve not seen any of the first three for fifteen years though and it does hurt. That’s all I really want to say about it.

I hooked up with my next partner, Susan, very soon after the first divorce. She made all the running and perhaps things moved too quickly. One Friday I went out to Yesterdays nightclub in
Alderley
Edge and I was talking to this girl but left on my own. She left her number on a card on my car windscreen and wanted me to phone her – she wanted me to ask her out, so I obliged.

Susan was ten years younger than me, which didn’t seem a problem at the time but in the end I think it was our undoing. So from “do you want to come out for a drink?” things moved very quickly. In fact we were married about six months later! We had a baby girl called Claire and I ended up babysitting for much of the time because Susan was younger than me and she still had energy to burn. She wanted to feel alive again so I had to do the lion’s share and the strain of it all took its toll on our relationship.

When Claire was just three years old, Susan and I decided to split up. She moved to live up in Bury and I was down in
Handforth
. Every weekend we’d have Claire at the house and my mum and I would play with her but each time we had to drive her back the kid was dreadfully unhappy. She’d scream and go mad in the back of the car and wet herself. This poor little girl was in real suffering each time we drove her back and my mum and I knew that the situation couldn’t continue.

I had to make the hardest decision of my life when I had to give up Claire. I cut off all ties, I couldn’t tell a three-year-old girl “Daddy couldn’t have her anymore” but her mother was with someone in Bury, so it seemed a stable enough
environment
 for her. Nevertheless the first few months when Claire wasn’t with me at the weekend left my mother and
I
numb and heartbroken.

Slowly but surely everything I had was drifting away. I had been through a number of jobs and a number of relationships and both had had a detrimental affect on my life and my health since hanging up my boots.

There were a few positives however. When I first left football I was still quite fit. I was invited for a game of badminton and I really liked it, so much so that I joined a local club. At first I was getting absolutely hammered but the only way to improve was to play against the better players. Twelve months later I‘d become the number one player at the club. From there I became one of the best players in
Stockport
. I became Stockport Mixed Doubles Champion two years in succession and after that I started to represent
Cheshire
which was a great achievement for me. That was a rare high. Gradually I became too old to compete with these much younger players so I started banging golf balls about which is very relaxing for an old boy like me!

At about this time I saw an advert for a vacancy at a sports shop in Urmston. I applied for the manager’s job and got it, I think the owners thought it would be good to have an ex-pro associated with the shop. I really enjoyed it there and I stayed for a number of years – that was quite a stable part of my life. Sadly, the owners sold up and the shop closed down a few years later.

So I went back on the dole again and this time I realised I was in real trouble and I didn’t know what on earth to do. I was so desperate to have a job – any job – and earn a wage that I got a milk round. I was soon fed up with getting up at a ridiculous hour and the fact that if anyone stole milk from my round then I had to pay for it! It was always freezing cold and miserable and I felt thoroughly lonely trudging down dimly-lit streets in a poorly paid job. I did this for almost six weeks, getting up at four in the morning and delivering milk. It didn’t last long but I lasted as long as I could.

Then I got myself a job in a supermarket working nights.
Four nights on and three off from eight at night until eight in the morning.
Stacking beans in a supermarket on the night shift, which I hated but it was a job so I had to do it. In a way that job also affected my second marriage. 

From there I moved to Royal and Sun Alliance selling life insurance and investments which was probably my first honourable job since leaving the world of football, other than my sports shop in Urmston. Those two jobs (and as you can tell I’ve had a few over the years) gave me the most pleasure.

Soon, I was back at my mums for the second time. After two divorces I’ve got to say that my self esteem was at
it’s
lowest ever ebb.
So far.

*

I have had three very bad illnesses in my life. The first was when I sneezed and slipped two discs in my back. I also trapped a nerve and as you can imagine I was in horrendous pain. For eight long months I had to sleep on a board in my mother’s bedroom. Now believe me that’s one hell of a long time! When you are out of action for that long you start to believe that you’ll never get up again. So I started going to hospital on a regular basis with a slipped disc and a trapped nerve.

So since leaving football thirteen years earlier I had now been through two failed
marriages,
had three grown-up children and a three-year-old daughter move away and my life was a complete mess to put it mildly. As a result of my illness and my non-existent family, I was turning into a hermit. I wouldn’t go out because I was feeling really low and I suppose the next tragedy in my life was inevitable. I hadn’t worked for twelve months because of the time I had to spend on my back in
traction,
I’d also lost my insurance job.

As if that wasn’t enough I was also going through my second divorce, had given up my youngest daughter and long since lost my previous standard of living. I had nothing. I felt as though I was under my mum’s feet. I was completely at rock bottom. I was as low as anyone could be. My sole comforts were my mum and my medals. But medals can’t buy you food and although I have been sorely tempted over the years to cash them in, I haven’t as yet...

I know players who have gone down this route and I can sympathise with them because although you don’t want to part with your treasured possessions, the temptation to use them to get you out of a mess is great – even if it means breaking your own heart.

I even phoned up Christie’s once for a valuation but then I changed my mind. I’m glad I did because sometimes when I feel low I look at them and think of the marvellous times I had.

My mum collected lots of clippings about my career and I’ve still kept them but my medals mean even more to me these days because of what I’ve been through. I had them valued recently and apparently they’re worth £7,000 but they’re worth far more than that in terms of my memories. I can still look at them and take great satisfaction from my achievements at City.

Years of dedication went into winning those medals. I’ve already lost one of them, the European Cup Winners’ Cup medal, which is somewhere in the
Mediterranean
off
Menorca
even now! That was truly heartbreaking. My son Mark was wearing it as a medallion and he went swimming in the sea and it was lost forever.

So, although I haven’t cashed in my medals, I had to sell the family home in
Cheadle
. So after nineteen years of married life and a career in professional football, I wound up sharing a flat with my mum with just £2,800 to live on.

What I attempted next seemed to be the only way out for me. I felt so helpless at that stage of my life, so low that I not only contemplated but actually attempted suicide.

To my mind I was in the winter of my life. Nobody apart from my mum wanted anything to do with me – I felt worthless sitting there in a chair in my mum’s flat. To make matters worse I could see that my left thigh was nearly half the size of my right one. I felt sorry for myself and couldn’t stop crying.

Now some people say that suicide is a coward’s way out and now, having come through it, I am ashamed of what I put my mother through. But at the time it all seemed so logical. It wasn’t a spur of the moment
decision,
it had been building for years, probably ever since I’d left football. I went to the kitchen, opened a new box of
paracetamols
and ate every one of them.

It makes me physically sick to admit it now but that is what I did. Don’t forget at the time I had a metal corset on for my slipped disc and I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t want to live anymore. I felt I had nothing to live for, nothing to offer anyone.

Fortunately God was on my side because my mum woke up early that morning, saw all the empty pill bottles and, realising what I’d done, phoned the doctor. The next thing I can remember was waking up in Stockport Infirmary and they’d pumped it all out of me. I was in there for days and they only let me out when I had spoken with the psychiatrist. Having satisfied him that I would not attempt it again, I was eventually released.

Thanks God for sparing my life.

Then again I probably don’t deserve to be alive, simply for what I had tried to do. The thing is, I can understand how people can get in this state but it is still not the thing to do. You hurt the people closest to you. You hurt your family and the mental scars never leave you.

*

When I was on my back for those eight long months in my mum’s flat she bought me a cassette of Frank Sinatra because she knew I liked him. I was into people like Frank, Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole and Andy Williams, that’s my kind of music – some think it’s just
smoochy
, easy listening stuff but it has hidden depths. For instance there was one track on that tape that you would have thought I’d written, I played it so much. In fact it’s a wonder I didn’t wear the tape out.

We can all relate to different records and we all remember what we were doing when our favourite tune is played. The first few lines of this one went: “Now I’m down and now I’m out and so are many others.” Then the next verse starts: “Girl just left and Friday I got fired.” I suppose I could relate to sad tunes. I was getting more and more depressed, I was infirm – I couldn’t go out anywhere, I couldn’t see anyone. No one came to see me.

Eventually, one Friday afternoon, I came out of traction and I felt that surely now the worst was over. So the next morning I was having a shave, getting ready to face the world at last when I felt a sharp pain in my left leg. When I looked down my pyjamas were tight around the leg and extremely painful to touch.

I phoned the doctor and he came around straight away. Seconds after he arrived he called for an ambulance. They took me down to
Stepping
Hill
Hospital
where it turned out I had Deep Vein Thrombosis. The doctor said another twenty minutes and I would have been history because it would have been odds on that my veins would have burst. Am I lucky or what?

Then I had a bad batch of antibiotics one Christmas time and they rushed me into Stepping Hill again this time with colitis, an inflammation of the colon – which in itself is not a big deal, but the antibiotics made me so dehydrated that my lips were cracking up, I was on a drip on Christmas Eve and spent Christmas Day in hospital.