Massively Violent & Decidedly Average Read online

  To Maz

  Thank you so much for all you do for me and for your support and encouragement to write this book. I would have never had the belief to even start this project without your confidence in me. You and our boys Joseph and Christopher give me strength and purpose every day.

  Also in memory of my father-in-law, Denis ‘Denny’ Spillane, 1937–2017. Dearly missed – ‘Up the Kingdom.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks go to all the people who helped me to become a footballer, especially Norman Howey.

  Information for this book provided by Paul Watson and Laurent Degueldre (AS Hemptinne), Pat Godbold (Ipswich Town), Rob Mason (Sunderland), Bobby (surname unknown, of Buckingham Town), Brian Porter (Daventry Town) and Phil Curtis at the Sunderland Antiquarian Society was invaluable.

  Thanks too to Kevin Ball, Gary Bennett and Niall Quinn for the cover quotes. Also to proofreaders Keith Nixon, Alan Smith and Dave Turner. A mention too for Liz Gillan, for generally putting up with things.

  Finally to Tony Gillan, who has been a great support to me in putting this book together. My memory for details was a little vague, but you were able to fill in the gaps with research and humour.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1. In the beginning…

  2. Ipswich

  3. Belgium

  4. Big break

  5. Making a mark

  6. There’s a song about me, you know

  7. Punch-ups, my goal of the century and Klinsmann

  8. The season couldn’t end quickly enough

  9. Progress and Peter Reid

  10. We didn’t want the season to end

  11. Premier League

  12. Frustration

  13. Burnley: oh dear

  14. Northampton, downwards and the end

  15. And now…

  Index

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  So many memories from the pinnacle of football. The Champions League, the FA Cup final, the World Cup, England versus Brazil – I’ve watched them all.

  International fame, an MBE, streets named in my honour, documentaries about my career and the acquisition of a few million quid to keep me amused in my autumn years; these are just some of the things that never happened to me.

  Medically speaking, I really ought not to have played football beyond the age of nineteen, but I continued until well into my thirties. As a consequence my paso doble is not as acclaimed as it once was; I creak more than a little and not all of me is original, with various parts now composed of metal and plastic. A bolt through the neck might be my next procedure. It may as well be; a triple bypass and a hysterectomy are about the only other operations I have yet to undergo.

  Something else I had to contend with was deep, deep anxiety. Fear of a failure to perform and a feeling of massive responsibility to succeed, especially at my home town club.

  It all ended on a dark, freezing March evening in 2006 in an Eagle Bitter United Counties League Premier Division game for Buckingham Town at Ford Sports Daventry in miserable, driving rain. But this momentous occasion is not widely remembered outside my house.

  All of this brought me to where I am today – the payments industry with Judopay.

  But the chances are that you envy me.

  You may now be thinking how arrogant the previous sentence makes me sound. You may be asking yourself: ‘Who does he think he is? And why is he writing his story anyway? He was hardly Bobby Moore.’

  Allow me to explain. The fact that you have read even this far means that you are probably a football fan. If Paul Scholes or Tony Adams or even Kevin Ball happens to be reading this then OK, they aren’t likely to be too seriously stricken by the green-eye. But if, like most of my friends, you were never given the opportunity to play professional football, then it is only natural to feel a tinge of envy (which incidentally is not the same as jealousy).

  I don’t mean envious to an unhealthy level that disrupts your sleep, puts you off your food or makes you wish for another person to fall down a well. Just a small and natural dose of envy, such as you might feel for someone who can mend motor vehicles, or perform card tricks. As a football fan, you will inevitably feel more envy for Mario Götze than you do for me. He scored an extra-time winner, the only goal in the 2014 World Cup final for Germany against Argentina in the Maracanã Stadium. But I once scored an extra-time winner too, the only goal in an FA Cup third round replay for Sunderland against Carlisle United at Brunton Park.

  There were almost 75,000 spectators to witness Mr Götze’s goal first hand, including world leaders and Hollywood stars, with billions more watching on television to see his effort land the biggest prize in football. He must have felt sensational.

  But my little goal at Carlisle, a six-yard side-footer from a corner immediately in front of our own supporters, felt pretty damn good too. Although it has been largely forgotten and the ultimate prize for it was a 2–1 fourth round defeat at Wimbledon, I still say that it is, for most readers of this book, a small source of envy. It’s on YouTube, should you care to relive the moment (it has at least a dozen hits).

  There were more glamorous days in my career than that cup tie in Cumbria. I did win a First Division Championship medal. I got to play Premier League football in some of the country’s most famous grounds, against some of the most celebrated names in English football in the 1990s – including Jürgen Klinsmann, Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola, Peter Schmeichel, Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Fabrizio Ravanelli – and not always unsuccessfully. It wasn’t all assaults upon the kneecaps on wet Tuesday nights in Hartlepool.

  Returning to the question of why I have written this book, I have been inspired by several autobiographies of other footballers, past and present; household names with glory-laden careers whose exploits on the pitch will simply never be forgotten. I won’t name names and I am not referring to all football memoirs. But some of them have, despite access to such fabulous raw material, produced bloody awful books; predictable, plodding, repetitive, vain, self-important, expletive-strewn and just plain boring. So I was encouraged by these people negatively. They were far better footballers than I, but this is a more enjoyable book.

  Trust me when I say that is not a massive boast.

  This book does not end with an unforgettable game at Wembley, or a 100th England cap, or even scoring the goal that averted a relegation. But I sincerely hope that it ends with the reader having had an insight into our beloved game when it was still imbued with some semblance of reality. I hope, more importantly, that it ends with the reader having had a good time. Despite the numerous setbacks, the abuse and the dodgy knees, I had a great time.

  Even if I could, I wouldn’t change a thing.

  I’m glad to say that football supporters who are old enough still remember me. In August 2015 I was invited to take part in an event at the Roker Hotel in Sunderland, to commemorate the famous football documentary Premier Passions. I joined Peter Reid, Richard Ord, Kevin Ball, Martin Smith, Bobby Saxton and Niall Quinn. Each one of us was introduced with a big build-up by the compère, Peter Daykin.

  Peter Reid got: ‘The man who transformed a failing football club as a manager; as a player he represented his country, won two league titles…’

  Niall Quinn was described as: ‘Sunderland’s messiah. A legendary goal scorer and a man who graced two World Cups…’

  Richard Ord was: ‘A classy defender, respected throughout football with over 250 appearances in the famous red and white shirt…’

  And so on, until it was my turn. Last and evide
ntly least.

  ‘Never forget that this man had the distinction of serving his club at centre-back as well as striker. In both roles he is widely regarded as not just massively violent, but also as decidedly average.’

  Oh well – if the cap fits. Not that I won any caps.

  Still, far better ‘decidedly average’ than not there at all.

  Lee Howey, 2018

  CHAPTER 1

  IN THE BEGINNING…

  Don’t worry. This is a memoir, not an autobiography.

  The main difference between the two is that memoirs give you only the goods, the juicy stuff, rather than being weighed down by unnecessary detail about how the author likes his eggs, the destination of his first holiday or his favourite films. This book will have none of that. Nor will it contain emetic passages about the gladness of my fluffy heart when my children were born, or purple prose descriptions of the languid sun setting behind Booze Buster on Fulwell Road, or how the twinkling stars in the dark skies above Roker Park inspired such stirring poetry in me during a goalless draw with Grimsby while some bastard was stamping on my ankle.

  No, none of that old guff. However, a bit of background may be in order. I can’t relate first-hand any events for this book from any earlier than 1 April 1969. That was when this particular Howey first saw planet Earth, from Sunderland General Hospital.

  I arrived without fanfare. This was by request as my mother hated trumpets, especially at a time like that. But both of my parents were apparently quite chuffed with the advent of their first-born and it is widely reported to have gladdened their fluffy hearts. My parents, Norman and Yvonne Howey, née Drummond, are still together and living in Sunderland. It hasn’t been a marriage abundantly laden with chocolates, flowers and candlelit dinners. This is despite my father being a former shipyard labourer from Pennywell. The tales you may have heard about the incurably romantic nature of Wearside’s maritime workers are largely apocryphal. But after a few decades of, well, each other, they’re still together. In most people’s experience, this is about as successful as marriage gets.

  Historians among you will of course immediately recall that Marvin Gaye was at number one with ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ when I first appeared. Sunderland’s most recent game was a 1–1 draw at Newcastle United (doubtless you will also know that Colin Suggett scored for Sunderland, Jackie Sinclair for Newcastle), President Eisenhower had died three days earlier, John had just married Yoko, men were about to walk on the moon, fashion was getting worse and voters were about to get younger; from twenty-one to eighteen.

  That’s enough scene setting I think. It’s not as though I remember any of it. What I do recollect vividly is the omnipresence of football. My father Norman played semi-professionally in the Northern and Wearside Leagues. This was football of a pretty decent standard, as well as bringing in a useful few quid. My mother Yvonne’s hairdressing career was scuppered by babies.

  In London it has always been possible to choose which club to support, which means a selection of about a dozen clubs in the capital, plus (let’s be honest) Liverpool and Manchester United. There can be very few Sunderland supporters, ever, who made a conscious decision that SAFC was the club for them. The ‘decision’ is made by genetics at the point of conception. So it was with my dad, and then me.

  Sunderland’s rivalry with Newcastle United back then was not as we know it today. It has always been the case that when one of the two clubs is at home, the other is automatically away. When I was born it was common practice among many in the North East to watch the home games of both. Norman did this. He was Sunderland daft but just loved football and, with so little of it on television, he would stand with his friends in St James’ Park every other week and happily watch Newcastle – albeit occasionally enlivening a dull game by verbally winding up those around him in the Gallowgate End in black and white livery. But it never went beyond banter. For those only familiar with the current relationship between the respective followers of the clubs, this may seem a mite difficult to believe, akin to the Orange Order arranging a bus trip to the Vatican. But I can assure you that it happened.

  We lived in a high-rise block in Gilley Law in the south of Sunderland. As far back as I remember I was kicking a ball around in the streets. At every school playtime and lunchtime, I played football. Then, at the end of a trying day of education, I would go home and unwind by playing a relaxing game of football. The weather was never a cause for postponements in the streets of Gilley Law, although there was the occasional breather from relentless football when we would trail our mucky feet back indoors to watch a bit of television – especially if there was football on.

  Lest you should think I was an obsessive child and not a properly rounded individual, I should point out that I was also an avid reader, and not just of Shoot! I was also an occasional subscriber to Match weekly, Roy of the Rovers and everything in between.

  Aged around five, I was the youngest player in the neighbourhood, so a specific natural law was upheld. The sacred codes of jumpers-for-goalposts football and universally cognisable human reason are inextricably entwined: i.e. they made me go in goal.

  I was desperate to join in and accepted my lot until such time as an even younger and smaller partaker would slither his way into the game. More of him in a while. It was a sort of apprenticeship. The venue was usually a ‘pitch’ that is still there today. It was a nearby field with a 1:3 gradient, which thereby presented an obvious advantage to whichever team was defending the summit. Keeping goal at base camp was rather less appealing, but I persevered. Only the dark could end the game, at which point I was thrown into the bath to be pristine and presentable for Yvonne when I arrived at school the following day.

  The People’s Republic of Gilley Law and its surrounding dependencies would later prove to be something of a stellar neighbourhood. Many of the regular participants in our games were then of approximately school leaving age. They all had about ten years on me and projected carefree confidence and, so it seemed at the time, a dash of sophistication. Several of them would achieve much in the game. They included Kevin Dillon, who became part of the renowned team of hard-nuts at Birmingham City in the 1980s and the last player to be given a debut by Sir Alf Ramsey.

  Then there was Mick Harford, later capped by England and a League Cup winner with Luton Town. He also played for Newcastle, Derby County and Chelsea, and was ever so briefly a colleague of mine at Sunderland. His Premier League career (the league didn’t start until 1992) lasted for a total of fifteen minutes, during which time he scored the winner for Coventry City against Newcastle at Highfield Road in 1993. He was also another of the renowned team of hard-nuts at Birmingham City in the 1980s.

  Mick Smith was not one of the renowned team of hard-nuts at Birmingham City in the 1980s. He joined Wimbledon in 1979 when they were in the Third Division, and played for them over 200 times as part of the incipient ‘Crazy Gang.’ By the time he left them in 1986 they had been promoted to the old First Division.

  Occasionally we were joined by Mick Hazard, who would sometimes wander over from Thorney Close. He would go on to play for Tottenham in two winning cup finals: the FA Cup of 1982 and the UEFA Cup of 1984. He also spent years at Chelsea, then Swindon, where he played in their only Premier League season. If he harbours disappointment at never having been part of the renowned team of hard-nuts at Birmingham City in the 1980s, he has never made it public.

  As far as kids’ kick-abouts go, this must be about as lofty as it gets. I wasn’t going to be allowed out of goal in a hurry. It made me dream of possibilities for myself. Four older lads from my neck of the woods would forge successful careers, and one of them wasn’t even called Mick.

  If only to temporarily stem my compulsion to constantly play football, football and then more football, my dad began to take me to Sunderland home games in his battered old van. Like the first record you bought, most fans have an eidetic memory of their first game. I’m afraid that mine is a little sketchier. I do r
emember that it was in the dark during the freezing pit of winter when I was about five. Looking at the record books, the favourite would appear to be a floodlit Division Two game against Manchester United at Roker on 18 January 1975, in front of 46,000 people, but I can’t be certain. Whatever the fixture was, there and then I became even more hooked on the game and a very easy child to buy birthday and Christmas presents for: Sunderland shirt, Sunderland tracksuit, Sunderland pennant, a ball, Shoot! annual, etc. (I would eventually do one of those cheesy Q&A sessions for Shoot!: favourite meal, best friend in football, pet hates and so on – a load of old moon juice of course, but still a strangely proud moment.)

  • • •

  I exaggerate how much football I played. Slightly. My mates and I did have a wide range of academic interests, such as climbing trees, jumping off walls, riding our bikes, rummaging round building sites and being a general nuisance. We were just let out like semi-feral cats and away we went, as did millions of other kids the same age. It was simply the norm. I tell this to my children now and it truly seems like a different world. In many ways, it was. I’m fairly sure that perverts had been invented long before the 1970s, but they didn’t have today’s high profile.

  My best friend was John Sproates. We were virtually inseparable and our friendship even survived the time that I killed his dog. Geoff Thomas may now be reading this with knowing cynicism, so I must stress that it really was a complete accident. I was calling the dog to come to the other side of the road where I was standing. My voice was the last thing that poor Smokey heard. The last thing he saw was the radiator of a Ford Cortina. May God have mercy upon his soul.

  John is over it now. As he is today a highly trained British serviceman and recently to be found bobbing around the Indian Ocean looking for Somali pirates, I certainly hope he’s over it. Animal lovers and advocates of karma may be heartened to learn that I was run over myself six weeks later. John also mentioned that it served me right. Happily, it was for a relatively short period of time that I was known as the Wearside Dog Murderer.