Taking le Tiss Read online

  The best thing was that it came on a rare weekend when my dad came over to watch. It was the first time since my debut because it wasn’t usually worth trekking over from Guernsey just to see me sit on the bench. I immediately got the lads to sign the ball and gave it to my dad to thank him and my mum for all their amazing help and support. And I lapped up the headlines, particularly ‘The Wizard In The Blizzard’ which was a damn sight better than ‘Matt The Hat—And Dad Came Too’.

  Even better, I reckoned I’d made my point with Chris Nicholl. I couldn’t just last 90 minutes against tough, physical opposition in the freezing cold but score by the bucket. But no. Nothing changed, even though the fans were begging for me to play. I remember Chris said he didn’t give a monkeys about all the pressure on him to play me. As he very delightfully said, ‘With a face like mine, you don’t get hurt by criticism.’

  6

  PUNCH UPS, HANGOVERS AND LADY BOYS

  ‘IF WE ARE GOING TO GET A ROLLOCKING AT 8.30

  IN THE MORNING THEN IT MAY AS WELL BE FOR

  SOMETHING WORTHWHILE!’

  Everyone wants to know—what happens on club trips abroad? I’ll tell you: sex, drinks and fights.

  At that time I wasn’t old enough to drink, and didn’t want to. And on just £100 a week I didn’t have a lot of spare spending money so, while the rest of the lads went out drinking in Singapore in 1987, I stayed in the hotel. My vice was nipping out to KFC for a bargain bucket at one o’clock in the morning. But for the rest of the lads it was like they’d they had been let off the leash—and it was quite an eye-opener for an innocent young lad.

  On our last night I was woken at 2am by my room mate who had better remain anonymous. He told me to get out of the room for half an hour. As a 17-year-old I had no idea why or where I was supposed to go. He told me to go and sit in reception and, as I went out, this thing walked in. I think it was a woman but you can’t be sure out there. Certainly one of the lads got more than he bargained for when he took a ‘woman’ back to his room only to learn the truth when it was too late. Now if that had been me I’d never have told a soul. But he made the mistake of telling Jimmy Case in confidence, and as captain Jim felt it was his duty to ensure everyone knew.

  I did go out one night but I stayed sober and just sat at the bar enjoying watching everyone else get more and more drunk. At one point Jimmy Case caught my eye and started waving to someone over my shoulder. I thought that he’d seen someone he knew but, as he walked past me, he said, ‘That feller keeps waving at me. I’m going to have a word with him.’ It was only when he walked into a huge mirror that he realized it was his reflection and that he’d been waving at himself.

  Jimmy loved a drink and was fantastic value on a night out. I remember one trip to Puerta Banus near Marbella. Jimmy started before we even left Heathrow so by the time we landed he’d already had quite a bit. On the way to the hotel he made the coach driver stop at a supermarket and bought even more beer so, by the time we checked in, a lot of the lads were pissed. They just dumped their stuff in the rooms and hit the town. By midnight Jimmy wasn’t making too much sense, in fact he could barely stand.

  Dennis Rofe, the first-team coach, was meant to supervise us and make sure we didn’t go too far. Now Dennis liked a drink and a good night out as much as anyone. When he was a player at Leicester he once threw a punch at someone who was threatening him only to find it was his reflection in a shop window. So he had a lot in common with Jimmy, but even he could see that Casey was hammered. After some considerable effort he finally managed to pour Jim into a taxi and took him back to the hotel. Somehow he managed to prop Jim over his shoulder and dragged him into his room and threw him on the bed to sleep it off. As a responsible member of the coaching staff, Dennis thought he had better go right back and check on the rest of us, so he got the taxi back and walked straight into Sinatra’s Bar. And there was Jimmy, sitting at the end of the bar, raising a toast. The look on Dennis’s face was priceless, and to this day I have no idea how Jimmy got back before him.

  Jimmy was a formidable character when he had been drinking, as I found out when I ended up playing cards with him until 5am on another trip. We were staying at the Atalaya Park Hotel on the Costa del Sol and he owed me £80, which was a fortune to me back then. We had no cash on us so we were just writing the stakes on bits of paper. Jimmy was getting more and more drunk and wouldn’t let me go to bed while he was losing. Eventually he staggered away to the toilet so I legged it out the door and back to my room. I was sharing with Francis Benali who, incidentally, never got up to anything on these foreign trips. So he was well chuffed to be woken by me shouting that Jimmy had kept me prisoner for five hours and now owed me £80. Suddenly there was a loud bang on the door and I hissed ‘Don’t answer it.’

  Next thing there was a loud bang on every door as Jimmy went down the corridor, trying to find someone who wasn’t asleep. I conked out but was woken by a rap on the patio doors. Jimmy had climbed over his balcony and was standing outside trying to get in. We just hid and eventually he calmed down and went off. Next morning, when we left the room, we were greeted by the sight of Ray and Rod Wallace’s door hanging off its hinges. It wasn’t the normal flimsy door but a big, thick wooden one and Jim had just demolished it. Apparently he wanted someone to lend him some batteries for his personal stereo. It proved mighty expensive because the cost of the door got added to his bill. And no, I never did get that £80—and I’m still not brave enough to ask for it.

  The only time Jim had a drink ahead of a match was the night before the final game of the 1986-87 season. I was injured so I was back home in Guernsey but I heard all about it from Glenn Cockerill who was rooming with him, and who also liked the occasional drink. We were away to Coventry and both teams were safe and, with no prize money in those days, there was nothing riding on the match. So the lads had a few quiet drinks the night before, but Jim kept going all night. His breath was still reeking of alcohol when the game kicked off and he’d hardly had any sleep.

  After five minutes we won a corner and Jim went up to take it. Coventry cleared it, broke and won a corner of their own. It was Peter Shilton’s job to set up the defence and tell everyone who to mark, and he noticed that Jim was missing. Everyone looked round and eventually spotted him still at the other end of the pitch, where we’d had our corner, sat on a wall talking to a spectator. He was quickly subbed after that.

  After games, the lads would usually end up at Jeeves nightclub, but as I’ve said, at 17 and 18 I didn’t really drink. However I do remember being talked into going out one night for a few rounds. I was living in digs and didn’t want to wake everyone at 2am so Jim said I could stay at his place. We got back there at 2.30am and Jim started cooking bacon sandwiches while I sat in the lounge. I honestly just wanted to see his medal collection because he had won just about everything in the game, except an England cap, which is unforgivable when you think of his talent. On international weeks at Liverpool he’d be training all on his own. Everyone else would be with England and Scotland, etc. He was different class and I just wanted to see his championship medal because I had never seen one. I was stood looking at his trophy cabinet when his wife Lana came downstairs to see who’d woken her up.

  JIM KEPT GOING

  ALL NIGHT. HIS

  BREATH WAS

  STILL REEKING OF

  ALCOHOL WHEN

  THE GAME

  KICKED OFF AND

  HE’D HARDLY

  HAD ANY SLEEP.

  She had a bit of a go at Jim and I thought I was going to be in the middle of a domestic when she started having a go at me. She said, ‘What do you think you are doing?’ I stammered, ‘Jim said I could stay here…’ She hit back, ‘No, I mean what d’you think you are doing trying to keep up with Jim? You’ve got no chance.’ She packed me off to bed and warned me never to try that again. I was woken by the sound and smell of Jim cooking a full fry-up including eggs from the geese he kept in his garden.

  For
such a hard-tackling, harddrinking player Jimmy was very domesticated. On away trips he’d look after the whole team on the coach, making cups of tea and plates of toast. He was really happy doing it. Here was this senior pro, a real big name in the game who was happy to be the waiter. He also looked after his training kit. Most of the lads just chucked it on the floor to be cleared up by the apprentices but Jim always folded his up neatly. He was brilliant like that but very different when he’d had a few.

  It was quite an eye-opener for a naïve young lad who had grown up on Guernsey with something of a sheltered upbringing. I don’t think the wives were particularly pleased about these trips but it did us good to relax in a different country, and that togetherness played a huge part in keeping Saints in the top flight. We weren’t the most talented team but we had a real bond and spirit which got us through a lot of matches. You certainly couldn’t have a conversation without one of the lads taking the mickey. If you said something stupid, you instantly panicked wondering if anyone else would pick up on it, and invariably they did. Equally, there was a time and a place for it—which took me time to learn. I was always ready with a cheeky quip but it wasn’t always appreciated. These trips were brilliant for banter and team spirit. And of course we went right OTT.

  I remember when we almost got chucked out of the prestigious five-star Dona Filipa hotel on the Algarve. Why we went to a luxurious hotel during the season I’ll never know. It was full of really posh people dressed smartly for dinner while we were in shorts and T-shirts, larking around and getting drunk. There were several complaints about us so the hotel manager summoned Dennis Rofe who called a team meeting for 8.30am, which we thought was a bit unreasonable as we’d only just got in. We had no idea what was going on.

  Dennis read the riot act and said the hotel manager was on the verge of throwing us out but he’d managed to talk him into giving us one last chance, and we had to be on our best behaviour or we were out. There was suddenly quite a sombre mood but I didn’t pick up on it because I hadn’t sobered up and piped up, ‘I thought if you were calling a meeting at 8.30 in the morning, it must be for something serious.’ Dennis had a face like thunder.

  Generally Rofey was good value on tour, mucking in with the lads. As first-team coach he was a kind of bridge between the players and manager, someone for us to moan to or laugh with. He was popular with the fans too because he had Saints running through him, despite the fact that the club sacked him three times. The first time was when Chris Nicholl got sacked in 1991. The board assumed that the new manager would arrive with a ready-made coaching team, but that wasn’t the case. Ian Branfoot came solo so there was absolutely no reason for Rofey to go. Dave Merrington brought him back as youth team coach in July 1995, but he was sacked again a year later when Graeme Souness came in as manager and brought in his own team of coaches, most of whom weren’t a patch on Dennis, who returned for a third spell in April 1998. He was appointed as Academy coach but worked his way up through the Reserves to regain his position as first-team coach in March 2001. But he was sacked again in December 2005 following the appointment of George Burley who discarded most of the coaching staff. It was Rofe justice (OK, OK) because all the players and fans liked him, especially because he wore his trademark T-shirt on the touchline even when it was freezing in midwinter. He’d even had a stint at the club as a half-time pitch announcer, winding up the crowd to get behind the team, cracking jokes and even singing.

  He fancied himself as a bit of a crooner and never hesitated to lead a sing song when he’d had a few. I remember a pre-season tour of Sweden and, after the final game, the host club laid on a dinner and drinks in a Wild West barn. There was a bucking bronco which all the lads tried, the beer flowed and Dennis got up on stage to sing a few Roy Orbison numbers before delivering a thank-you speech. Dennis thought it would be a nice touch to finish by thanking them in their native tongue but made the mistake of asking our midfielder, Anders Svensson, to tell him the Swedish for ‘Thank you and good luck.’ Dennis could never quite understand the lack of applause as he actually told them to kiss an intimate part of the female anatomy. Stunned silence all round.

  Then there was the time we almost ended the career of one of England’s greatest ever strikers before it had begun. It was 1989 on a close-season trip to Portugal and Micky Adams, Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock and Barry Horne had been partying quite hard, ending up with Micky and ‘Razor’ having a punch-up even though they were best mates. They were thick as thieves but the punches were flying and I remember thinking it wasn’t a fair fight looking at the size of them. But Micky, who’s maybe 5ft 6in, could take care of himself; not for nothing was he known as Fusey because of his short temper. Anyway, everything quickly calmed down and I went back to my room while they resumed drinking until they had emptied their own mini-bars, and that’s when they went looking for someone else’s. Alan Shearer’s.

  WHICH BRINGS

  ME TO ANDY

  COOK AND HIS

  BIZARRE SEX-SPECTATOR

  INJURY ON A

  MID-SEASON

  BREAK…

  Alan wasn’t a big drinker so they decided there would be plenty of booze left in his fridge. He was relaxing in the bath as they burst into his room. ‘Razor’ emptied a bottle of vodka over Alan while Barry picked up his mini-bar and ran off with it down the corridor—as you do! Of course Alan jumped out of the bath and gave chase, unfortunately there were a load of glasses on top of the mini-bar and, as Barry raced off, they all smashed on the floor. Alan had nothing on his feet and as he ran through the shards of broken glass he practically severed three of his toes. They were cut to the bone and almost hanging off. Everyone sobered up pretty quick when they saw that. It is no exaggeration to say his career was hanging as precariously as his toes.

  The only one sober enough to drive was a young lad called Steve Davis who went on to have a decent career as a player and coach with Burnley. He drove Alan to this primitive hospital where he was left in an A&E in a bed with no curtains beside an assortment of car crash and broken leg victims. Thankfully a doctor managed to sew the toes back on and no lasting damage was done, but I often wonder if he realized who he was treating and what a favour he did England.

  Which brings me to Andy Cook and his bizarre sex-spectator injury on a mid-season break. We were staying at a hotel and one of the single lads brought a girl back to his room but left the curtains open. A Big Mistake. Of course we all climbed over the balcony from the next room to have a good look and, when he finally spotted us, we all clambered back apart from Andy who decided to jump to the ground. Next day in training he complained that his heel was sore but, when he was named in Saturday’s team, he decided not to mention it because he wasn’t a regular and wanted to play as much as possible. After 30 minutes he was subbed in pain and an x-ray showed he’d broken his heel with the jump. But sometimes things got even worse. Time to tell you about David Speedie, and how he joined Southampton.

  In the autumn of 1992 we’d made our usual shocking start to the season. During the summer the club had decided to sell Alan Shearer, who had made it clear he wanted to move to bigger and better things. That was fair enough but Saints allowed themselves to be bullied by Blackburn through the negotiations, even though they were in the driving seat. Alan had three years left on his contract so Southampton did not have to sell, and they certainly did not have to accept any old deal. I think the directors’ eye lit up with pound signs at the prospect of a British record fee, and they rushed the deal through in case Alan got injured. They even pulled him out of a pre-season trip to Scotland for the same reason.

  To be fair to Ian Branfoot (read all about it in Chapter 9), he wanted to take Blackburn striker Mike Newell as part of the deal, but Rovers didn’t want to let him go. Instead of playing hardball and holding out for a quality replacement, Saints caved in and sold Alan for £3m with NO sell-on clause. Even I can work out that if they had insisted on getting 20 per cent of any future fee then when Al eventually moved to
Newcastle for £15m, Saints would have pocketed another £3m.

  Instead of getting Mike Newell we ended up taking David Speedie. It seemed to me as though Speedo didn’t want to be here. He never got what Southampton was about, and it looked to me as though he resented being used as a makeweight in the deal. So Ian Branfoot spent part of the fee on Kerry Dixon in the hope of recreating the successful Dixon/Speedie partnership at Chelsea. Kerry had been an ace striker in his time but his best days were behind him. He had lost that yard of pace and sharpness and Speedie just didn’t settle. It was hardly a match made in heaven, and it didn’t help the situation or the fans’ mood when Branfoot made the staggering prediction that Speedie and Dixon would outscore Alan Shearer that season. Kerry got just two goals and Speedo precisely zero while Al had scored 16 by December, when he picked up a bad knee injury ruling him out for the rest of the campaign. The following season he scored 31. (Kerry did try and I set him up for both his goals, including his two-hundredth league strike at Leeds. I was through and could have shot but I knew he was on 199 and, the way things were going, this would be his only chance to get to 200 so I teed him up for a simple tap-in, and spurned my best chance to score at Elland Road. Leeds were the only established Premier League club that I failed to score against.)

  Anyway, it is fair to say that David Speedie didn’t really settle in at Southampton. I don’t think he liked me and we certainly didn’t get off on the right foot. When he joined, he met up with us at the airport as we were heading off on a pre-season tour. As it happened the Manchester United players were at the same airport and I was chatting to Lee Sharpe because we shared the same agent. When we arrived at our hotel David Speedie accused me of being a big-time Charlie who wanted to talk only to the United players, and he promptly launched a bar stool at my head. Which was a good start. But he surpassed that several weeks into the season after we lost 2-1 at home to QPR. The fans were restless, the mood was grim. So the manager Ian Branfoot decided to take us to Jersey in the Channel Islands for a bonding trip. It suited me because it meant I was able to get home to Guernsey but it meant that I missed all the excitement.