Journeyman (20 page)

I’ve had some really sad personal news, as well: my friend Alan Bailey passed away this weekend from cancer. I’m devastated and quite angry. Alan had been complaining for some time about problems with his breathing but his hospital continued to misdiagnose him. I keep thinking that if they’d got to the cancer earlier they may have been able to treat it. Instead, it has beaten him in four months.

He taught me when I was a student and was instrumental in getting me my job at the school. Obviously that didn’t quite turn out as hoped, but it was through no fault of his. Alan was a great man who only wanted the best for his pupils.

Often I hear people saying nice things about someone when they pass away and think: ‘You’re only saying that because they’ve died. In reality, they weren’t that nice a person.’ On this occasion, however, I know every tribute is totally sincere as he was a wonderful man.

When I first did voluntary work at the school I used to come home to Emma and say teaching was easy. I thought that because Alan made it look easy. When I started teaching by myself though, I soon realised that wasn’t the case. He was especially skilled at dealing with the more awkward characters; I’ve tried to use some of his techniques myself but with limited success.

Although I’m not continuing my secondary school teaching career, Alan has inspired me to become the best football coach I can be. His influence will play a big part in any future success I may achieve.

Alan – thanks for your help and support. Without it, I would never have made it through the year. I will miss you greatly and hopefully I will see you on the other side one day.

A
FTER THE EUPHORIA
of the previous season, I was excited. This was going to be the highest level I had played at as a key member of a squad.

I was also aware that we were in big trouble. Last season, GT and John Trewick had come up with the strategy of supplementing a reliable core of permanent players with talented loanees. Some of those lads were clearly too talented for our level but needed to gain experience playing ‘proper games’, where points and livelihoods were at stake, rather than the tamer stuff they were accustomed to in the reserves and youth teams.

The problem was retaining the loanees. They would go back to their parent club to compete for a place in the first team or get loaned out to (or bought by) a higher-ranking club that Hereford had absolutely no chance of competing with financially.

When the fact we also lost some permanent players the club would’ve liked to have kept was factored in, we had a much weakened squad for our
assault on League One. Goalkeeper Wayne Brown departed when the club offered him a small pay rise after his great season. He was, to put it mildly, very disappointed and there was not much chance of him re-signing after that. Trevor Benjamin, who played brilliantly in the first-half of last season before he got an eye injury, was also released alongside John McCombe, who had been solid in defence.

I was suddenly the top goalscorer left from the promotion season squad with a less than impressive six goals to my name.

In hindsight, the management should have pushed the boat out and signed some experienced players. They instead persevered with the same strategy, but the temporary players coming in had nowhere near the same kind of impact.

What that showed was that, while the plan to get us into League One was genius, it was all in vain if there was not an effective strategy for making sure we stayed there.

Pre-season began well and I scored twice in a comprehensive victory against local team Ledbury Town. We then drew 2–2 against a strong Birmingham City team at their training ground. After that it was an unmitigated personal disaster as I began scratching around for form. John Trewick noticed it straight away and thought I was trying too hard. He was probably right as I ended up getting frustrated with myself and, in turn, became less effective. I toiled through but was still not happy with my performances as we reached the week before our first competitive game. There was one friendly left (away to Wrexham); I was not due to play but asked to anyway.

We lost 2–1 but I felt a little bit better about myself afterwards. Incidentally, our goal was scored by a young Ashley Barnes, who went on to play for Brighton and Hove Albion and Burnley. He looked raw and was a real handful but GT decided against taking him on loan.

The management decided we should play a 4–5–1 or 4–3–3 for our first game against Leyton Orient, depending on how much of the ball we had.
We had experimented with this formation during the friendlies but the lads were not really buying into it. At the time, that style of play was quite a new concept. We had enjoyed the vast majority of our success playing a tried and tested 4–4–2 but we were pretty much forced into this new style of play through our lack of strikers.

Dean Beckwith, one of our stand-out performers from the previous season, gave us an early lead, but it didn’t give us the boost we’d hoped for and we deservedly lost 2–1. Orient were no great shakes but we looked like a team that didn’t believe it was good enough to be at that level.

My performance mirrored my team’s and I was dragged off before the end. My former teammate Tamika Mkandawire marshalled me with ease and barely broke sweat. I was still desperately searching for some sort of form.

The gaffer was not happy and we had an inquest on the Monday morning – something that became a pretty regular occurrence that season. However, he persevered with the same style of play for our League Cup game against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

We lost 2–1 to a Victor Moses-inspired Palace, but during the game I had that sudden feeling you get when you start to regain some form. Palace won pretty comfortably but I felt good and thought I had turned a corner. I wanted to be influencing games like I had during the vast majority of my two spells at Hereford, but I had to bear in mind the fact that the quality of players and teams we were up against was of a different level.

Just three games into the season and it was already getting to the stage at which I was struggling to see where our first win was going to come from.

Next up was a trip to the Memorial Ground to play Bristol Rovers. I had always loved playing there as they had a really vociferous crowd who created a great atmosphere. I also knew their passionate fans would turn against them if we could keep the score level for the first thirty minutes.

Craig Sansom, one of our new goalkeepers, had joined us from Scotland. Before the game I warned him about Rovers’ centre forward, Rickie
Lambert, whom I likened to Matt Le Tissier. I told Craig that he loved to hit shots from distance.

The advice worked really well as we managed to keep Lambert quiet for a total of seven minutes before he smashed in a great strike from about 30 yards…

To make it worse, this was not even the first goal – we had already gone a goal behind after three minutes. Their strike force of Lambert and Daryl Duffy was cutting through us like a hot knife through butter. The game was effectively over after twenty-two minutes as we went 3–0 down.

Ironically we were playing quite well on the ball and enjoyed a lot of possession. The problem came when we didn’t have the ball. By the seventy-eighth minute, Lambert had curled their fifth goal into the top corner via a 25-yard free kick. I was still captain and had never felt so embarrassed on a football pitch.

All I wanted was for the final whistle to go so I could get changed, go home and lock myself in the house for the rest of the weekend. Unfortunately Rovers had not finished handing out the punishment and still had time for a sixth goal. Steve Guinan did manage to nick a goal for us but we still lost 6–1. As I’m sure you can imagine, almost 7,000 enthusiastic Bristolians thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now, you are probably assuming that after a result like that us players faced some severe repercussions – GT giving the hairdryer treatment, players arguing with each other etc. Sorry to disappoint, but that wasn’t the case. Maybe that was our problem though – we were all just too nice. The gaffer and John just said the usual lines about the result being unacceptable (as if we needed to be told – although, saying that, we did have a few players who were a little deluded, so maybe we did).

The results were confirming what many of us senior players had suspected from the off: our squad was not good enough. We would probably have been struggling in League Two, let alone League One, and I believe we would’ve been battered by our team from the previous season.

That week officially saw the club hit the panic button. The management was keen to make changes after our heavy loss so a midweek reserve-team match was arranged against a young Aston Villa side to give other players some game time. This plan massively backfired though as Hereford got spanked 7–1. I wonder if a club has ever had a worse week!?

We had dabbled with 4–4–2 but, after Bristol, we reverted back to 4–5–1 with a tweak to the midfield. It worked particularly well for this game as Crewe played a 4–4–2, allowing us to put pressure on their central midfield players. We went on to win the game 2–0, which was a great relief and meant we were picking up our first points of the season. You could almost feel the pressure being lifted from our shoulders; after the game, we all took a deep breath and relaxed. What that led to is something I witnessed throughout my career and is what I think separates top players from us also-rans. Everyone instantly became visibly relaxed and the whole place became a happier environment but I think, instead of taking our foot off the pedal, we should’ve been channelling the hurt we’d felt after the Bristol Rovers game and the intensity we’d trained with leading up to the Crewe game. We had only won one game, after all. That isn’t necessarily a criticism of the management as this pattern happened at every club I had ever played at; it is just more of an observation.

We consolidated our win with a home draw to Swindon, but our mini-revival came to a swift end when we lost our next game away to Southend United – one of my former clubs.

Our results clearly showed we were not good enough so, as you would expect, the gaffer continued trying to strengthen our squad and he did so by adding former Everton and Plymouth Argyle striker Nick Chadwick. Nick made a great early impression by putting us 1–0 up on his debut at home against Scunthorpe United. That game also marked the return of Gary Hooper to Edgar Street.

We were still ahead at half-time and GT praised me for conscientiously
tracking back during the break, which was unusual as he very rarely gave out praise and I very rarely tracked back.

Ten minutes into the second half, though, Scunthorpe equalised. The ball was played into Gary Hooper’s feet and, being the clever midfielder I thought I was, I tried to nick the ball from the front. I should have known better because Gary’s touch was as immaculate as usual and the midfielder I was supposed to be marking ran off the back of me. Before I knew it, Hoops had flicked the ball into him and the midfielder had smashed it into the back of the net.

I instantly knew I was at fault. If I hadn’t tried to be so clever and had just stayed with my man, the goal would not have happened. Within five minutes, the inevitable had happened: Hoops had got his customary goal and we’d lost the game 2–1.

My lapse in concentration had shifted the whole momentum of the game. I was really frustrated with myself. Ironically I had played quite well but, at that higher level, any little mistake I made was punished. So far in the season, I had already been directly at fault for two goals that had cost us points.

GT was fuming and made a specific point about how he had praised me for my diligent defensive work and I had then switched off. I might be paraphrasing him slightly, but I’m pretty sure he said: ‘I don’t know why I fucking bother!’

Even more concerning for me was the fact I’d made a high-profile error in the weekend preceding one of the biggest games of our season. We were due at Elland Road to play Leeds United and, after winning and performing so well there the season before, I was desperate to play.

A couple of days before the game, the gaffer added to the squad again with the temporary signing of Bruno N’Gotty, who had played for the likes of Lyon, PSG, Marseille and AC Milan. It was an amazing coup for our club but what I admired most was the fact he was willing to come and play for a team of our stature when he was no doubt financially set up for 
life. He was coming to the end of his career and sitting on a nice, chunky contract at Leicester City, but he wanted to play first-team football rather than just sit in the reserves.

His class was immediately evident. One thing I hated as a midfield player was having my passes read by the opposition. I prided myself on being able to punch them through at such a pace that my opposite number couldn’t intercept them or to put enough disguise on them that I fooled my opponent. However, during his first couple of training sessions, Bruno read my passes so comfortably that it felt like he knew where they were going before I did!

In the week leading up to the Leeds game we did a lot of work on the shape of our team. It was clear we were going to change our formation and revert back to five in midfield. What was also clear was that it was between Simon Johnson and I for the position just off the striker. John Trewick, who led the vast majority of training sessions, kept interchanging us for that role.

I was wary because I knew GT had a knack for playing people against their former clubs, thinking they would feel as though they had something to prove. Simon had spent many years at Leeds, both as a schoolboy and a professional, so, adding that to my lapse in concentration the previous week, it was not looking good for me.

We travelled up to Yorkshire on the Friday and stopped off to train at what is now the St George’s Park training complex (back then it was just a collection of nicely manicured football pitches). The team was not confirmed that day but it seemed clear that I was going to be left out.

It was confirmed the following day and a very disgruntled midfielder took his place on the bench. The game itself was a non-event – we lost 1–0 but it was as one-sided a 1–0 as you will ever see. I managed a ten-minute cameo on the wing.

As I’d got older, though, I’d realised I couldn’t let managers get away with leaving me out without getting an explanation. After all, if it wasn’t clear what I’d done wrong then how could I rectify it?

The process of seeking out an explanation was a little different at Hereford United. Normally I’d have a chat with the manager, but because Graham was both the manager and the chairman he was always very busy. So how it worked was you spoke to John Trewick, unless it was something really important.

I had been stewing all weekend about not playing and went straight in to see John on Monday morning. Meetings with him could often be long, drawn-out affairs and normally took the following format: ask a question; John rocks back in his chair and brushes his hands through his very-impressive-for-a-man-of-his-age hair; question is answered with a question.

On this occasion, I asked him why I had been left out of the team and it went something like this: