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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
'A man who had such a huge impact on my career and so many other young players at West Ham United. I highly recommend this fantastic read.'FRANK LAMPARD JR 'This man passed on the West Ham DNA to the best generation of academy graduates to come through the West Ham system.' RIO FERDINAND 'A West Ham United man, a must read for every West Ham United fan.' MARK NOBLE The autobiography of a West Ham legend - including exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and Mark Noble. Tony Carr is one of the most influential coaches of all time. Having achieved his boyhood dream of signing with West Ham United in 1966 and training alongside the inimitable Bobby Moore, a leg break forced Carr to end his playing career before it had even begun. Not to be deterred, he decided to forge himself a new path and was appointed director of youth football at West Ham in 1973, aged just 23. As Carr tells in this book the very first time, over the next 43 years he honed his craft, becoming hugely admired for identifying and nurturing young talent, guiding multiple generations of international starlets through the ranks at The Academy of Football. In his brilliant, understated style, Tony tells the incredible story of his footballing life. He recounts the highs and lows of his time with West Ham, with tales of the twelve managers he coached under. This unique evocation of a coach's craft includes exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and current West Ham captain Mark Noble as they talk frankly about football and their place within it.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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‘A man who had such a huge impact on my career and so many other young players at West Ham United. I highly recommend this fantastic read.’
Frank Lampard Jr
‘This man passed on the West Ham DNA to the best generation of academy graduates to come through the West Ham system.’
Rio Ferdinand
‘A West Ham United man, a must read for every West Ham United fan.’
Mark Noble
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tony Carr was born in Bow, East London and joined West Ham as a teenager, spending 48 years at the club. He won the FA Youth Cup twice and was made an MBE for his services to football in 2010. He lives in Essex.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A heartfelt thanks to Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard Jr, Mark Noble, Michael Carrick, Steve Potts and Joe Cole for giving me their time for their interviews.
Thanks also to Ken Dyer and Giuseppe Muro for their help in transcribing the player interviews and particularly to Ken for his stream of advice. To Stuart Prossor for his regular helpful calls from New Zealand, to Steve Blowers, and to my literary agent Jonathan Hayden for his support and enthusiasm in getting the book published. Finally, all the managers, staff and players I have had the privilege of working with throughout my career.
For my wife Brenda and my children Dean, Neil and Louise in thanks for their constant support throughout my career.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
As a schoolboy at St Paul’s Way School
A pleasing memory of a hat-trick
The East London team with the English Schools’ Trophy
Scoring against Oxford, 1966
A letter of congratulations from Wally St Pier
With Pat Holland in 1968
At the point of signing as a professional
With West Ham players, August 1966
On the summer youth tour to Zambia and Malawi, 1969
A pre-match photo at Plough Lane
A charity game with Bobby Moore
With Peter Brabrook and Pelé
With Javier Mascherano
Coaching at a Premier League event in 2013
A coaching pose, 1995
The testimonial match, 2010
With Frank Lampard Jr
With Rio Ferdinand
Receiving an Honorary Doctorate, 2010
Receiving the MBE, 2010
With family after receiving the MBE
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of images used. The publisher will be pleased to credit in future editions any rights holders not mentioned here.
1
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER
Nothing lasts forever, especially in football where, so they say, a week is a long time – but when the end came, in 2016, it was still a shock.
I had been West Ham’s youth academy chief for 43 years, beginning in 1973, but the writing had been on the wall since 2014, when the club’s vice chairman Karren Brady called me to a meeting and told me I was going to be replaced by Terry Westley, who had previously worked for West Ham’s co-owners, David Gold and David Sullivan, plus Brady herself, at Birmingham City.
At the meeting, Karren told me the club wanted me to stay on as ‘academy ambassador’ to help Westley settle into the club, to be his sounding board, to offer advice and to help mentor the young coaches at the academy. She said it was a ‘new and exciting role’ and ‘we will call you director of football’, but they quickly discovered that the then manager, Sam Allardyce, had it written in his contract that the board could not appoint a director of football so a new title had to be dreamed up. Nevertheless, the board felt I would be the ideal person to fill this ‘new and exciting role’.
I gave the offer some thought, talked it over with my family and finally accepted because I felt I could still make a useful 2contribution. I spoke again with Brady and we agreed a ten-point job description, including mentoring coaches, helping to promote the club within the club’s community programme (which I have always been committed to), supporting the new academy director and advising when asked, giving input on player selection and generally supporting staff and players within the academy. I still had fifteen months of my academy director’s contract to run, so it was agreed it would continue and the change of role would be implemented when it expired in September 2015 – whereupon I received a new one-year contract and the change of title to academy ambassador.
About nine months into the new contract, one morning in my office I took a call from the club’s HR department asking me to attend a meeting later that day. As academy director I had periodically spoken with Karren Brady – usually at monthly meetings – but since my role change, that link had been broken. This time the call was from Andy Mollett, the club’s chief financial officer and adviser on HR matters. I later found out that Mollett was the member of staff who was always the bearer of bad news regarding employment issues and redundancy.
At the meeting, which was very cold and to the point, he said the club didn’t think the role was viable any more and did not warrant a full-time position. I have no idea why this sudden suggestion the role was no longer viable was offered as the reason for ending my employment; I had more than just performed duties according to the ten-point job description agreed with Brady earlier. He also said that consultations had taken place with various members of staff who were no longer in favour of maintaining the role and the duties I had agreed with Brady. I didn’t understand why they should say such a thing as Westley regularly asked me to join meetings and 3routinely sought my advice on players; and I, in return, went out of my way to be supportive of him. Mollett went on to say that the ambassadorial role would be axed and a new role of ‘consultant’ was offered for effectively one day a week. The other option on the table was redundancy. It was as cold-hearted as that. I felt in the light of the way things had been laid out that they, the club where I’d spent almost all of my adult life, wanted rid of me – although they couldn’t bring themselves to use those words. I was being pushed into a corner with very little room for manoeuvre. I asked Mollett what the redundancy package was, and he told me three months’ notice and a minimal payment. That was it.
The timing of the meeting was exactly three months until the end of my contract and because I had technically changed jobs, it proved easy for the club to make this ‘new and exciting role’ redundant. It ran through my mind how convenient that was! Yet I was more disappointed with the way it was done than anything else. I was upset and, after 43 years of unbroken service, I thought it could have been handled better. It may not have changed the outcome, but it would have shown some respect for a lifetime of dedication to the club. This wasn’t the West Ham United way that I thought I knew.
I took advice from the League Managers Association (LMA) who thought they could improve the package for the redundancy, but ultimately the club simply wouldn’t budge.
The Daily Mail had got wind of what was happening and rang me. They said they’d heard that West Ham were sacking me, so I had to tell them that wasn’t quite correct and filled them in with as much detail as I felt prudent. I certainly didn’t slag anybody off. I told them HR had handled things when I thought, perhaps naively, a more senior person might have been more appropriate.
4A few days later a piece appeared in the paper and my LMA representative, Graham Mackrell, rang to say the club were ‘not happy’ with the article. I replied, ‘I’m not happy either!’ The club told Mackrell that they could sue me for breach of contract for talking to the press – it never happened – but they told me to clear my desk there and then and leave immediately.
So that was it after 43 years! It ended on a sad, unnecessarily bitter note. Should I have stayed silent when the newspaper rang me? Should I have said I was happy with the situation? I was told there was a big fans’ backlash on social media and subsequently there was a piece in the Daily Mirror stating how much I had earned; inaccurate as it was, it was over an eleven-year period and included the proceeds from my testimonial match given to me by the previous Icelandic owners.
The whole thing left a bad taste, as I felt then, and still do, that I had something to offer West Ham with regard to youth development. I wasn’t looking for a full-time role; a couple of days a week and a game on the weekend would have been enough. In these times where people say youth development is not what it was, I know, with my experience and knowledge gained over years working with Ron Greenwood, John Lyall and all the subsequent managers, I could have helped with carrying on the West Ham way and traditions. One of the first people to ring me was Tony Whelan, who is an experienced and valued youth developer at Manchester United and has worked with some of United’s top players. He said, ‘We have just had a staff meeting and your name came up and we are all amazed that West Ham have no use for a man who has 43 years’ experience in youth football. We can’t believe it!’ Well, that call cheered me up.
5Leon Britton – a Swansea player, who was very technically gifted and a player with great passing ability – used to be with me at West Ham where I coached him as a youth player; he also rang.
‘It can’t be right what I’ve just read in the paper, can it, Tony?’
‘Unfortunately, Leon …’ I had to tell him, ‘… yes, it is.’
Steve Heighway, Liverpool’s former player and previous academy director, for example, is employed part-time at Anfield, helping out and mentoring young coaches and I believe I could have done something similar at West Ham. With the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) by the Premier League, clubs are required to employ more coaching staff; these coaches in the main are young, newly qualified and in need of guidance. This is a role that more experienced coaches like me can help with.
I never had a cross word with my successor Terry Westley. Whether he felt he didn’t want me around as a constant reminder of the past, I don’t know, but we would only have been working towards the same goal – which was improving West Ham’s young players and doing our best to get them into the first team.
I will admit that initially the whole business affected the way I regarded the club. I was angry. Should I have expected more? You could say it’s just the way the football industry is, but it’s not the way I would do things.
The club let me keep two season tickets for the 2016/17 season and I went back to watch games at the London Stadium with either of my sons Neil or Dean, but the following season they weren’t renewed by the club, nor was I given the option to buy them! My son Neil did tell me that when he was in one of the club’s new prematch lounges with friends, they had my picture on the wall, but I’ve yet to see it!
6Various clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur, Fulham, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sheffield United all asked me to help out with their coaches – generally advising them and giving them the benefit of my experience of coaching and dealing with young players. I’ve been back to watch a couple of West Ham youth games at Little Heath and been to a few first-team games. I am also chairman of the London Football Coaches Association, and my work with the Premier League is developing, so I am keeping quite busy.
It’s been difficult because, for the first time since leaving school, I have not had a full-time job and a busy day ahead … and I found it hard – I still do a bit. I’ve been involved in a small way with the Football Association on their youth coaching awards and have done some work on the FA Pro Licence, presenting to coaches from clubs at the national football centre at St George’s Park. After talking on one of the advanced youth award courses, Ugo Ehiogu, who was then coaching at Tottenham, approached me and we had a long discussion on young player development. He was hugely enthusiastic and looking forward to forging a career in coaching. A few months after our conversation, Ugo sadly passed away and although I didn’t know him well, it hit me quite badly.
Currently I am in a role with the FA Premier League as a consultant and mentor for their various courses. It is a part-time role and suits me down to the ground, mixing with staff of the Premier and Football League clubs and is something I relish. I hope I offer something of value too, but after 43 years at one club it’s hard to let go, even allowing for the interest other clubs have shown in me. But, as they say, in life you must move on.
It’s ironic that the reason the club gave for the change in my role away from West Ham’s academy director was that there were 7no players coming through. The day I left, one of my former youth-team players and now a first-team regular, James Tomkins, was sold to Crystal Palace for £11 million plus, while Declan Rice, Grady Diangana and Ben Johnson were already on the academy production line. So, on the whole, with the number of players I helped develop and with the transfer fees they generated, I don’t think I did a bad job!
2
AN EAST END EDUCATION
The score is 9-6 to Northleigh House, who are playing Shillingford House in the regular game played on the 30 × 15-metre playground on our council estate that was off Devons Road, Bow in London’s E3 district. It was usually an eight- or nine-a-side game, very tight with little or no space, but you learnt to cope and to play both as an individual and combining with each other in such a restricted space.
This is where I learnt to play football growing up in the 1950s. Here we were in the East End of London, whose close proximity to the docks had resulted in it being badly bombed during the war. Still the evidence of the Blitz dominated the landscape with bomb sites strewn indiscriminately about. The estate was full of young families, many with young men recovering from the horrors of the Second World War, making the best of post-war austerity. I lived in Northleigh House, and before that in Ranwell Close, on a housing estate which was off Old Ford Road in Bow, opposite Gunmakers Lane which led directly into Victoria Park. We lived here until I was six months old, when my parents moved us to Northleigh House – newly built after all the bomb-damaged streets had been cleared. I grew up with a sense of pride in our new home that we had 10been given. It had three bedrooms, an indoor toilet and a separate bathroom, which for a young family of the time were unheard-of luxuries! For all its modernity, the only heating was supplied by a coal fire in the ‘front room’.
I had a brother, Bernard, and two sisters, Kathleen and Christine, and Mum and Dad – Kathleen (or Kit as she was known to everyone) and Charlie who worked for the London Electricity Board as a joiner, joining electricity cables together underground. On my walk to school, I would often see him down a hole in the road the electricity board had just dug, fixing cables and welding them together with lead from a pot boiling away from a gas bottle. Mum was a typical East End housewife with a part-time job on the side. She used to be up very early, usually before 6 o’clock, and worked in St Andrew’s Hospital – long since demolished – right next door to Bromley-by-Bow Underground station, where, incidentally, I was born. She prepared the breakfasts for the doctors and nurses. Dad prepared our breakfast and got us ready for school while Mum would get home at lunchtime.
Family holidays were spent at a caravan site in Burnham-on-Crouch, along with my nan and grandad on my mum’s side, Kathleen and Bill, who lived nearby. My father’s parents, Bill and Mary, had died when I was a baby. We would all travel down by train from Bow and arrive at Burnham some four hours later. The first stop was always the pub at the bottom of the hill from the station. My brother, sisters and I would sit outside with a bag of blue, red and white-packaged Smiths Salt ’n’ Shake crisps (‘Look for the little blue salt bag’) or an arrowroot biscuit and a glass of lemonade. The caravan site was next to the sea, the River Crouch being an estuary of the English Channel north of the Thames. I 11would go down to the local butchers with my brother and ask for some scrap meat so we could go crabbing. We would run a line and hook and ‘fish’ by the water’s edge and collect crabs by the dozen. At the end of the day, we would empty the bucket full of crabs and watch them scuttle back into the sea. This was our daily activity and I cannot tell you how much fun we had doing it. The caravan site was also right next door to a scout camp and I can remember quite vividly the trumpeter playing reveille at 6 o’clock and waking everybody up! We went to Burnham for several summers and to this day the happy memories bring a smile to my face. These days Burnham is only about an hour away from my home by car, but back in the late 1950s, the journey seemed like one massive adventure as if we were crossing continents.
A few years later, it would be Nan who would be the first of our immediate family to pass away. I, along with my brother and sisters, had gone round to see them one Christmas morning and we were quickly aware that something was wrong. When we got there the flat was cold and Christmas dinner remained uncooked. Nan and Grandad seemed confused, vacant even. We quickly reported back to Mum, who straight away went over to sort them out. It transpired that this was the first stage of dementia for our nan, who eventually lost control of everything – even of her memory, which was particularly sad to witness. She grew increasingly muddled and confused and would need constant care thereafter. It was not long afterwards that she was hospitalised and died in St Andrew’s Hospital – the same hospital I was born in. When she died, I was on holiday with my future wife Brenda and we did not find out that she had passed away – and indeed had been buried – until we got home. I was very upset to have missed the funeral, but you have to remember this was 12long before the days of mobile phones and instant communication. After a while, Grandad (we called him Grumps) went to live with my mum’s sister, Eileen, and her husband John. He lived out the rest of his life quite happily and died peacefully at home. His funeral service was held in a local church in Dagenham, Essex. Having already missed my gran’s funeral, this one didn’t run too smoothly. The slowly driven hearse left my Aunt Eileen’s house at the appointed hour with the rest of the family following behind in cars. When we were about a mile from the church, the hearse broke down and a lengthy line of cars drew up behind it where we all sat waiting for a replacement vehicle. It arrived sometime later and in the middle of the street, to the bemusement of onlookers, the coffin, the wreaths and the flowers were painstakingly transferred to the replacement hearse. Not a great start to Grumps’s send-off.
Growing up on our estate brought lots of opportunities for young kids to lark about. Every day the milkman arrived on his horse-drawn cart. He would pull up in front of our flats and start the arduous process of walking up and down the stairs in our four-floor block with bottles in hand. While he was doing this, we used to dare each other to run under the tethered horse; this was great fun until one time the spooked horse moved suddenly and trod on one of the boys’ feet. It immediately put paid to that particular adventure and was a very painful lesson learnt by my friend Johnny Hood.
Throughout our East End childhood our playgrounds were the ubiquitous bomb sites around Bow. As kids we spent hours exploring these ‘playgrounds’ with no thought given to the potential dangers involved.
When Guy Fawkes Night came around we always used to build a ‘Guy’ and hawk it around the streets asking the timeless, ‘A penny 13for the Guy, mister?’ Our nearest bomb site was called the Sand Hills and we would collect wood from bombed pubs or houses, there to build a massive bonfire on which to position our effigy of Guy Fawkes. More often than not, other groups of boys would set fire to our bonfire before the fifth of November, so we had to set a constant watch to ensure this did not happen! As soon as it got dark on the fifth, the bonfire would be lit and cheap fireworks and crackers would be set off. Nobody (including the amused adults) would say it was an organised event – certainly when compared with the safety-conscious organised displays we have today, and it was a dangerous spectacle as rival groups of boys would throw fireworks (mostly bangers) at each other.
One such incident was truly frightening and might have had long-lasting damaging consequences. My brother Bernard was temporarily blinded when a banger was thrown into a crowd of boys just as he was bending down to ignite a rocket in a milk bottle. This necessitated a trip to hospital, about which my dad was not best pleased. Fortunately, Bernard made a full recovery. Frankly, we couldn’t see the (very real) dangers. It was only as we got older we realised how foolhardy it all was. But I guess most of us are still here to tell the tale.
Every now and then, as a treat, a group of friends would buy a ‘Red Rover’ – which was an all-day ticket to ride on any red bus in London. We would explore various points of interest, but always ended up at the Tower of London. And in those days, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, you could explore the small beach area at low tide on the River Thames under the shadow of Tower Bridge and mudlark around the water’s edges. Unfortunately for safety reasons no one is allowed to do it these days. The steps down to the ‘beach’ 14are still there, preserved for history, but the gate is permanently locked.
One of our adventures was a day out at Whipps Cross boating lake. We used to go on the bus or cycle there and it was about a 30-minute journey from Bow. We would mess about on the lake’s edge and go out rowing on the lake – many a fine summer day was spent there. On one occasion a circus had arrived in town. We watched agog as the trucks holding a variety of animals came to a halt and brawny-looking men began the lengthy process of setting up the Big Top. For us young ’uns, this was something really exciting and we asked the circus guys if we could help. He told us if we helped clear the animal cages and trucks he would give each of us a ticket for the circus. Well that was all the incentive we needed, so we set about cleaning the cages, getting all the old straw out and filling them with new stuff – and in case you’re wondering, there were no animals in the cages at the time (see general lack of health and safety concerns of the era above). There were four of us and we dutifully spent the whole day doing as we’d been asked, at the end of which the guy said, ‘Lads, come back in a few days and I will give you the tickets for the show.’
So we came back a few days later and true to his word he gave us a ticket each. My parents were horrified that we had nearly, in their minds, run away to join a circus and to compound matters had ridden on our bikes over five miles of busy London roads back to Whipps Cross to collect our tickets. But it was worth it! A circus didn’t come to town that often and we had free tickets. There was a sense of freedom about in those days – a small group of friends exploring the city and surrounding areas – a freedom that is sadly lacking in today’s climate. On Sundays it was Sunday school at the 15nearby Kingsley Hall and most of the kids on the estate attended. It was the usual fare of religious stories from the Bible and a few hymns to sing along to. Kingsley Hall also became our youth club where we could play snooker and table tennis and listen to the popular music of the day, The Beatles being among my personal favourites.
One of the stories associated with Kingsley Hall is that in 1931, Mahatma Gandhi stayed there for twelve weeks while he was visiting London for talks on the future of India. He had refused the offer of a stay in a hotel, preferring to live among the ‘working classes’. The visit was a huge success among the local people with whom he freely and joyously mixed. Among his visitors during his stay were Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw and the politician David Lloyd George. It turns out that Gandhi was a keen football fan and having established three football teams in South Africa, there are reliable reports that during his stay he attended several West Ham United games and even visited the Boleyn pub where he socialised with the West Ham fans while drinking cream soda! He already had a strong connection to West Ham United through his friendship with its founder Arnold Hills (owner of the Thames Iron Works, where West Ham United originated) while he was living in London completing his law studies in 1888/89. During this period Arnold Hills brought the young Gandhi on to the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society. Today, there is a blue plaque on the wall outside Kingsley Hall commemorating his visit to East London.
3
FOOTBALL: THE START
Every boy on the estate loved football. We would play for hours on the small grassed areas (except when the caretaker would chuck us off!) or, at the weekend, in Victoria Park (Vicky to us). Over at Vicky Park we would normally find another group of boys to play a match with, using trees, bags or jumpers for goalposts (all respect to Paul Whitehouse). This lasted until I left Old Palace primary school at the age of eleven and moved on to secondary school in the early 1960s. Although we played football during games lessons at Old Palace, we never had a team as such. In fact, I would never play in an organised team until I went on to secondary school. Our teacher at Old Palace was a Mr Wilson, whose greatest love was for cricket. In the school he would have us explore the nature and etiquette of the game, explaining the positions, the nature of spin bowling (lost on ten-year-olds) and the intricacies of the rules (soon forgotten). It was a pity he didn’t have anything like the same affection for football.
Meanwhile, headmistress Miss Greenaway’s passion was for English country dancing! To the school hall we were shepherded where we would have to hold hands with the girls and dance around the hall to ‘Greensleeves’. At that age, having to hold hands with 18the girls was the worst bit! All said, it was a happy time at Old Palace, where I made lots of friends as we all grew up: Tommy Ziepe, Johnny Cook, Kenny Hagger, Johnny Alison, David (Pudding) Hood, Frank (Buster) White, John and Mike Kelly, Alan Parlour, Freddie Hayward, Sammy and Terry Elves and many more. But now it was time to move on: secondary school was beckoning. New friendships would have to be made as the group of boys I’d known for years would all be dispersed to different schools around the East End.
I was sent to St Paul’s Way School, a secondary modern which was just off Devons Road, almost opposite the council flats where Harry Redknapp lived with his family. And it was here at secondary school that my football career started to blossom. The school was actually two buildings: for my first and second years (years 7 and 8) it was in Southern Grove just off the Mile End Road – an old Victorian building that had been previously named after the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In my third and fourth years (years 9 and 10) I moved to the site in St Paul’s Way itself. I was twelve years old before I played in my first organised game in a team – which happened to be the school team. Along with my new bunch of teammates we played regularly every Saturday morning, mostly over at Hackney Marshes, Meath Gardens (Bethnal Green) or Eton Manor (Stratford).
I vividly remember the very first games lesson at Oakfield sports centre: it lasted all morning after the whole year group had met at Mile End Station for registration and taken the Central Line special to Fairlop and the sports fields that were a short walk away. The PE teacher, Mr George, asked which boys had played for their junior school football teams and, because our school never had a team, I didn’t put myself forward. There I was all kitted out in a West Ham 19replica kit and shiny football boots and he must have noticed me … He asked why I was not in our school team and I had to explain that we didn’t have one. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you come with us this morning.’ Therefore, thanks to my West Ham uniform, I was put immediately into the school team group. Out we went onto the pitches and the first thing that struck me was that the goals had nets. Wow! To shoot at a goal with a net was something really special and was a first for me.
I played centre forward and was always among the goals. Mr George and his colleague Mr Hurley were keen football fans and were very supportive towards an enthusiastic group of kids from the surrounding council estates, encouraging us to play and to enjoy the game.
Soon I was noticed by a local youth football club called Senrab who invited me to play for them. Senrab was a Limehouse, London E14-based team whose name is derived from the local Barnes Street – Senrab is Barnes spelt backwards! Senrab had a great history and many of its players would go on to play professional football including the late Ray Wilkins, John Terry, Jermain Defoe, Bobby Zamora, Mark Falco and many more. A guy named Jimmy Tindall helped run it, but more about Jimmy later.
Senrab’s matches were played on Sunday mornings, and we also played in a Tuesday night floodlit league on a red gravel pitch at Glamis Road, Shadwell. In the floodlit league we played with an ordinary brown leather ball that had to be painted white so we could see it; the lights were not that great! Every time you headed the ball, you ended up with a blob of whitewash on your forehead. The balls were also very heavy when wet and heading was no fun. Sometimes it was especially painful when the laces would untie 20and flap about so when you headed the ball they would flick you in your eye. I won my first ever football medal playing for Senrab and still have it today.
Senrab was a magnet for local professional scouts who, at that time, had a relationship with Tottenham Hotspur. My first contact with a professional club was an invitation to train at Tottenham in the evenings. The club’s cohort of schoolboys were invited to sit on small stools around the touchline at White Hart Lane during Spurs first-team games and I did this on more than one occasion. Not long after I also had an invitation to train at West Ham United. It came following a game where I played for East London under-14s, which had just been formed, at Barking Park. I was approached by a scout named Tony, for the life of me I can’t remember his surname, and this invitation was simply too good to turn down. West Ham were my team so it was an absolute no-brainer.
It was 1964 and I was thirteen. Training at West Ham as a schoolboy, particularly during the winter months, was held on the tarmacked forecourt at Upton Park using plastic footballs and if someone had left a car parked overnight, well, we would just play around it. We also trained under the West Stand and used bread trays as goals; it was all very basic, but it produced players.
Around this time the local district team (East London, now Tower Hamlets) had just started to run an under-14 team and I was picked to play for them. We played all the other London districts on a regular basis, our home ground being either Eton Manor or Victoria Park. I scored lots of goals for East London and this led to being picked to play for London vs Birmingham Boys at Highbury. My team also featured Charlie George and Jimmy Neighbour. I was also promoted to play for East London under-15s in the final of the 21Corinthian Shield against Tottenham and Edmonton at White Hart Lane. I remember it was a tough game on a very wet pitch, but we managed to win 2-1. During the first half I turned my ankle and was hobbling around for a few minutes. From the dugout the coach shouted, ‘Are you OK?’ to which I replied, ‘Can I leave it until half-time and see how it goes?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘the rules state that we can only make one substitution up until half-time and none in the second half.’ That concentrated the mind, so I stopped hobbling and fought on and ended up playing the whole game. This was 1965 and substitutes had yet to be introduced into the professional game: the eleven players who started were the eleven that had to finish the match. If you had a bad injury that prevented you from continuing you played on with ten men, which meant at schoolboy level, substitutes had very strict use, but it made me get on with the game and not worry about a twisted ankle!
One day at school I was called to the office of my PE teacher, Mr Hurley, who had recommended me to go for England Schoolboy trials that were being held over five days at Bisham Abbey. One of the coaches staffing at the trials was John Cartwright, who was an ex-West Ham professional and who was coaching on a part-time basis at my school. This was handy as he could give me a lift to Bisham Abbey. Over the years I struck up a good relationship with John, who was a really passionate coach and someone who was highly critical of the tendency to over-coach young players. He was always a champion of the development of players who could run with the ball, dribble and excite the watching public. We had endless debates on the subject and still do.
The day arrived for me to leave for the trial and my dad, Charlie, and I met John outside Bow Church and off we went. I had hardly 22ever been out of the East End of London until now and I remember thinking we were going for miles and miles, through the City into open countryside and arriving at Bisham Abbey some hours later. It is in a beautiful setting on the banks of the Thames near Marlow in Berkshire. Bisham Abbey is exactly what it says it is – an old monastery built around 1260. Later, apparently, Henry VIII granted the house to Anne of Cleves as part of their divorce settlement but it is now owned by Sport England and was used as the training base for the England football team before St George’s Park was opened in 2012. We were roomed in the Old Abbey and for a boy from Bow this was pretty scary stuff. My London Boys teammates Charlie George and Jimmy Neighbour were also there. The trial consisted of a series of skills practices and games. While not intending it as an excuse, I must report that I had back pain all week and was too shy to say anything about it as I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. I didn’t make the England squad. I had played all week in pain and could not perform to my best. I remember very well our last night at the Abbey. It was a Thursday evening and we were all in the TV lounge watching Top of the Pops. Sixties pop group The Animals were performing their latest hit ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’ and everyone sang the chorus as loud as we could – We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do. I think we were all ready to go home after five solid days of intensive training and if my feeling were any guide, suffering from considerable homesickness. Later on in my career as a coach I had a lot of sympathy for boys we recruited who had to leave home, perhaps for the first time, and live in lodgings. I empathised with the lads who felt homesick.
When I reached the age of fourteen, Wally St Pier, who was chief representative for West Ham, asked me to sign as an associated 23schoolboy. At the time, this form demonstrated a real intent on the part of the club and that they recognised you had the potential to become a professional player. Of course, as a West Ham supporter, I signed unhesitatingly.
As a gang of eleven-year-olds from our council estate we were regular visitors to the North Bank. We would get to the game very early and bunk in (slip in without paying) as the match deliveries were unloading and we would hide in the cage until the gates officially opened. The cage was an elevated area on the north-west corner of the North Bank, surrounded by bar-like fencing, hence the cage. This was quite a regular ruse for a lot of the local youngsters at this time. My playing idols around this time were John Dick, Mike Grice, Phil Woosnam, Lawrie Leslie in goal and a young Bobby Moore.
Around this time, my mum knitted me a claret and blue scarf with all the players’ names embroidered in the alternate claret and blue panels. I never took it off and wore it in all weathers. One day – I think I was about ten years old and still in primary school – I went to get my school dinner but the very firm dinner lady wouldn’t let me queue for dinner until I took the scarf off. Well this scarf was sacred and I refused, so she made me wait until the very last child had been served before we came to the compromise that if I loosened the scarf and just let it hang around my shoulders I could get served. I was getting hungry, so I agreed, sacred scarf or not!
After I had signed associate schoolboy forms, West Ham reached the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup to be played at Wembley Stadium – the venue where West Ham had won the FA Cup for the very first time, defeating Preston 3-2, twelve months earlier. They were to play TSV 1860 Munich and I queued up on a Sunday 24morning to get my ticket to the final. We travelled to the game on the London Underground, which was packed tight; it seemed like the whole of East London was going to Wembley. And it was a great, fast, entertaining game that West Ham won 2-0 with a terrific performance with free-flowing movement of the players and quick early passing. Manager Ron Greenwood, whom I had just started to get to know, would have hailed this performance as the way the game should be played. It showed the influence he was having as a coach on his new team. The next morning’s newspapers were full of praise for what West Ham had achieved. Travelling back, it was a celebration with everybody singing and in a really happy mood. West Ham had never had such success!
The following year, 1966, was momentous. England won the World Cup at Wembley and for the third successive year Bobby Moore, captain of England, was lifting a trophy from the Royal Box. West Ham also reached another final, the Football League Cup final, which was played over two legs, home and away. They played West Bromwich Albion and didn’t make it a hat-trick of wins, losing 5-3 on aggregate. This was the last time the League Cup final was played over two legs as the following season it was played as a final at Wembley. My football career really stared to blossom during this period. Playing for East London as an under-15, we were entered into the English Schools Trophy (a bit like the schoolboy FA Cup) in which we could be drawn to play teams from all over England.
