No Nonsense Page 3

  The pair claimed self-defence and were acquitted of manslaughter, but the law of the concrete jungle applied. They knew, better than anyone, that their lives were cheap. They fled the area with their families before vengeance could be taken.

  The human cost was terrible. Both Julie, who lost one of the twins she was carrying due to the shock, and my uncle Paul, who had been with Joe and was consumed by guilt at his failure to protect him, suffered from subsequent depression. I was too young to understand, and have only the vaguest memories of anguished family gatherings, but violence was a fact of everyday life.

  Ice-cream men fought in the streets during one of the more bizarre turf wars. The corner shop was protected by concrete barriers, but was still regularly ram-raided. Drug dealers controlled the high-rises. The police didn’t dare arrive in groups of fewer than six: their vans were bombarded by bricks and their patrol cars were torched if they were left unguarded while they chased local scallies down blind alleys. Once the bizzies were lured into the rat runs near the Labour club, they were lost. I retain affection for the place, despite its rough edges, because it is home to good people doing their best in difficult circumstances. Dad was a man’s man, in the days when that phrase didn’t offend the easily offended. He was a good fighter and a great drinker. He could lend his hand to anything. If you needed a shed building, a roof mending or a fence erecting, he was up for the job. He painted the house, converted the dining room into a playroom, and knocked a wall down to install a new kitchen.

  He was softly spoken but could handle himself. Although he played football at the weekends, thereby avoiding involvement in most of their most notorious exploits, he was a member of the Huyton Baddies, a group of casuals who caused havoc following Liverpool and, to a lesser extent, Everton around Europe in the eighties.

  Their greatest urban legend features a circus strongman, who rather rashly threw a Baddie through the window of a local pub because he attempted to chat up his companion, a trapeze artist. A council of war was called, and the following evening the big top was stormed. The strongman was beaten up, together with the ringmaster and any member of the supporting cast foolish enough not to flee. The tent was burned down and, for good measure, someone decided to release the animals from their cages.

  The story goes that a lion was shot outside the King’s Head pub. A tiger was cornered outside Betty’s Hair Salon in Mortimer Street. An elephant rampaged across the common and was heading into town until a police SWAT team, supported by vets, imposed some sort of order on chaos.

  If that episode had cartoonish elements, cold-blooded cruelty scarred the landscape. Paul Hagan, who worked as a roofer with my dad, was beaten to death with his friend Francis Perry by two bouncers wielding metal baseball bats. Their fatal mistake was to make a beeline for the wrong girls in the wrong place, a Southport nightclub. The court heard that one of the killers, Sean Jackman, urinated on the dead men.

  Dad had a set of unwritten rules, shaped by circumstance. Protect your own. Back your mates up. Big sticks where necessary, but no tools, knives or guns. Rely on your fists, whenever possible. Impose your own form of justice, without fear or favour. I am reminded of the consequences of that regime, on a daily basis, by a scar across the end of my nose.

  I was approaching my fourth birthday when I was playing with two plastic cars in a concrete tunnel in the playground at Sylvester school. From what little I remember, and according to what I have since been able to piece together, an Alsatian appeared at the other end of the tunnel. I tried to be friendly. It mauled me, biting my temple, nose and face. My half-sisters Sharon and Joanne, who had left me for a few seconds, were alerted by my screams.

  They fought the dog off, and helped Nan get me to hospital, where I stayed for 10 days. The doctors were worried about me losing the sight in my right eye, and they decided I needed minor plastic surgery on my nose. Dad was tracked down to the local pub, where, after making sure I was in good hands, he borrowed a mate’s van and headed towards the playground.

  He was enraged to discover the dog was still off the leash. It had avoided capture and was roaming across the school playing fields. Dad drove through the gates, ran it down, and reversed over it to ensure it was dead. He leaped out to confront the panic-stricken owner, who lived nearby and saved himself from a beating by apologising profusely.

  ‘Fuck off back to your house,’ he was told. The man saw the fire in Dad’s eyes, and knew better than to argue. He returned to collect the corpse under the cover of darkness, and never complained about the vigilante action. It was the St John’s way. Everyone respected Dad for his football, and his fury. It wasn’t abnormal. It was an accepted form of behaviour.

  He didn’t need a textbook on social conditioning to know his parental duty was to make sure no one fucked with me. All I could do was imitate and intimidate in my own small, less-than-sweet way. The lessons he administered were sharp, unsubtle, but undeniably effective. They began in earnest when I was six, soon after the birth of my twin brothers, Michael and Andrew.

  He hated bullying, because he had been picked on as a kid. I overstepped the mark one November afternoon by punching the living daylights out of a lad who’d tried to stop me pinching his bike. His mum came to the door to complain, and I knew what was coming. I concentrated on Dad’s slippers; when they began to move I accelerated towards the first step on the stairs and tried to slip under the slap. Some hope.

  Our gang worked out pretty quickly that there was limited safety in numbers. When we were seven Paul Morson, a lad who lived with his mum at the top of our road, used to prey on us individually, and take our pocket money. Everyone knew him as Birdie. He was 10, and thought he was the business. His mistake was to underestimate our desperation; we simply attacked him as a group, and gave him a bit of a shoeing.

  He got his revenge, of course, when we let our guard down and walked around on our own. We’d simply regroup, and beat him up again. He soon got bored of the indignity. He became a bit of a rogue, and disappeared in 2011. Two men were jailed for life for his murder, after being found guilty of abducting him, and torturing him with a hammer. His body has never been found; some say it was thrown in the Manchester Ship Canal, others believe it was chopped up and fed to pigs.

  Everyone knew the faultlines on the estate before they knew their six times table. Get caught on Cowper Way, and your trainers and pocket money would be nicked. The back-doubles on the way home from my cousin’s house on Scott Avenue were dangerous, but on this particular day I decided they were worth the risk because I figured the bigger boys would be having their tea.

  Big mistake. I ran into a rival gang who gave me a kicking. A lad called Chrissie Hogg, who was about 12, ran off with my football. I arrived home, whimpering and feeling sorry for myself. ‘What are you crying for?’ Dad asked, reasonably enough. When I explained the ambush, he went to the cupboard under the stairs, which contained the electricity meter. As in so many houses, it had been fiddled with a filed-down coin.

  He rummaged through discarded trainers and emerged with a wooden rounders bat. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Don’t come back into this house crying, ever again. Never let someone take anything from you. If he is bigger than you, hit him with a stick. If he pulls a knife, run. Do you understand? Go and fucking sort it.’

  He pushed me out of the front door, and left me to my fate. It wasn’t long before I reached the point of no return. The older lads were playing with my ball. They saw me, and laughed. ‘Want some more?’ they sneered. I had no option. I ran at the nearest kid, screaming like a banshee and swinging the bat at anything that moved. I managed no more than a glancing blow, but they scattered and left the ball behind. Chrissie Hogg never went near me again.

  So that was the way it was going to be. I could protect myself by cultivating a reputation as a lunatic. Any time I was confronted, I had to go over the top in terms of spite and aggression. I couldn’t show a flicker of fear. If they didn’t know what I was capable of, they were too scared to ta
ke the necessary risk to find out. Feeling lucky, punks?

  I was a law unto myself, even at junior school, where I’d get sent out of class, kick the fire exit open, and run home. Mum would take me back, but the cycle was quickly repeated. I’d answer back to the teachers, refuse to stand outside the headmaster’s office to await punishment, and leg it. If anyone apprehended me, I’d wriggle free and invite them to do their worst.

  Ridiculously, it worked. They tried to pander to my better nature, on the assumption it existed, because they knew the process was futile. I sensed the teachers’ weakness when they were confronted by someone who didn’t really want to learn. My classmates were in awe and a little afraid, because I’d simply tell people to fuck off.

  Yet it was a front. People were reluctant to engage with me, and preferred to leave me alone. When we played football in the street they’d be fearful of tackling me because they couldn’t trust me to react normally. On one level that was great, because I felt somehow safe. But on a deeper level, it was killing me.

  I was bright enough to know that the only person I was really hurting was myself. I felt lonely, isolated, lost. I needed structure, reassurance. The real problem was that there were no rules with my mum. I did pretty much as I pleased. I yearned for Sunday nights at my nan’s, where I developed the love of tea and toast that still irritates my nutritionists. It was served on a brown leather ottoman, and accompanied by her parables and stories, such as the one about Spring-heeled Jack, a Victorian bogeyman who was supposed to have been spotted on the roof of St Francis Xavier Church in Everton.

  Grandad took advantage of the diversion, and used to sneak into the garden shed for a cheeky smoke. He gave me my favourite toy as a toddler, a plastic hammer. I badgered him for small nails, spare pieces of wood, and made a fuss if I didn’t get them. Dad, seeing my wilfulness, made sure I had a regular supply of plastic footballs to kick against the fence. He excelled at every sport, and was paid to play football.

  He was non-league, but the best player on the estate. He was respected, admired. He quickly became everything I wanted to be. Football gave him an edge, a strange sheen. He was my hero, and the game was my escape route.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JOLLY BOYS AND THE BISTO KID

  Dave Taylor is a very lucky man. There have been Kamikaze pilots with greater regard for their own safety. He somehow survived the biggest decision of his managerial career, dropping my dad for a Wembley final. It might have only been the FA Vase, but 29 years are not remotely long enough to ease the pain or dilute the anger.

  Dad was left out of Warrington Town’s 3-2 defeat by St Helens Town in 1987, despite scoring in a 3-0 aggregate win over Collier Row in the semi-final. All he cares to keep from that fateful day at the old Empire Stadium are a loser’s medal, awarded as an unused substitute, and a few photographs of a five-year-old, who was smuggled on to the pitch by his uncle Paul to take a pre-match penalty.

  I scored, of course, though Dad insists John O’Brien, the goalkeeper, deliberately dived over it. He’d like to lose the details of his disappointment in the mists of time, but they come in handy when he tries to reinvent himself as a cross between Duncan Ferguson and Duncan McKenzie. A move was inevitable, and by the time I was eight he was patrolling midfield for Knowsley United in the Northern Premier League.

  My football journey had begun. It took in Whitley Bay and Colwyn Bay, Gainsborough Trinity and Goole Town, Barrow and Bishop Auckland. The coach journeys and the dressing-room rituals were private pleasures. I peered through the fog of pre-match roll-ups and glimpsed the joy of working men playing a boys’ game for beer tokens. Their results might have been in the small print, but they were stars.

  No one talked down to me on those special Saturdays. They even tried to kick me on Tuesdays and Thursdays if I was a little too cheeky when I joined in training with Bradley Orr, whose dad Pedro was manager. We were ejected, kicking and screaming, whenever they wanted to work on team shape. On game day we would act as mascots, and run out in spare adult kits. Our shirts were like nightgowns and our shorts were held up with string, but we showboated for England in the warm-ups.

  We were sent to fetch any balls kicked over the fence during home matches, though Brad and I preferred to sit in borrowed warm-up jackets at the end of the bench. We were spellbound by what was going on around us. We’d take everything in, from the body language of the players to the manager, shouting and swearing at the referee, linesman or opposing manager. Even at that age, I was quietly working out how I would set up the team.

  The ground was owned by Terry Phillips, a bodybuilder who won the Mr Universe title four times in the seventies and eighties. The boys were paid out of the proceeds from the fruit machines. Attendance figures were fictional, so the books could be cooked. Dad discovered that his cousin Tony Kelly, who played 500 league games in midfield for Wigan, Shrewsbury and Bolton, had secretly negotiated a second wage packet; it was swiftly retrieved, and placed behind the bar each week.

  The dressing room was a treasure trove of knocked-off gear, ranging from suits to CD players, perfume to pots and pans. Win or lose, they were on the booze: raiding parties used to lay waste to off-licences on the way home. The older lads provided a diversion for some of the petty thieves, who would walk out with cases of lager, which lubricated the endless card games at the back of the bus.

  Dad, who loved a laugh as much as he loved a tackle, had a decent voice. His party piece was to sing Deacon Blue’s ‘Dignity’. Brad’s old fella massacred Ringo Starr’s ‘You’re Sixteen’. The team had their version of the rugby song, ‘Alouette’. I’ve used variations of that throughout my career; Nobby Nolan insisted on it being the theme tune for our celebrations at Newcastle in 2010, when we were promoted back to the Premier League. It was wheeled out when Burnley repeated the feat in 2016.

  I was blessed to have that upbringing, that football education. I understood the importance of camaraderie, team spirit, a collective ethos. Knowsley punched above their weight season after season because they had players who cared. I was captivated by their genuine love of the game. It has remained with me because that is the first trait I look for in any team-mate.

  There was no envy, no resentment at the optimism and opportunity of youth. When they knew I was in Everton’s academy, no one burst my bubble. They’d all been at clubs, and come close to making it, and could so easily have been sour and cynical. Nobody went, ‘Nah, dream on, kid.’ They might have taken the piss in public so that I knew my place, but they quietly told me to believe.

  Those rough-arsed footballers taught me that the human chemistry has to be right, regardless of the level at which you play. It is about a blend of styles and personalities, a commitment to a common goal. A bank manager must be able to partner a potential bank robber in central midfield. A central defender must acknowledge the courage of an irritating little shit of a winger who knows he is going to be kicked, yet still tries to push the ball past an opposing fullback.

  Strokes were pulled on these Jolly Boys outings, and no one stood on ceremony. Dad excelled himself at Eastwood Town, where things got a bit spicy and he was sent off for leaving his foot in once too often. The home fans had been giving him stick, so instead of walking down the tunnel, he decided to vault the fence. He laid out the noisiest of his critics, removing his two front teeth with a single punch.

  He happened to be an off-duty policeman, so the inevitable call for reinforcements was made, and the Keystone Cops chase was on. Dad wasn’t going to hang around for the team bus, because he knew he would be nicked, but left word he was to be picked up at the first motorway service station on the northbound carriageway. He sprinted out of the stadium, in street shoes and his kit.

  His getaway driver was the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, who happened to be Brad’s grandad and club chairman. The police searched the dressing room and prowled between parked cars like confused bloodhounds. The boys, of course, obeyed the law of omertà. The teamsheet might have offered Nottingham
shire’s finest an unavoidable clue, but players couldn’t remember Dad’s name, and didn’t know where he lived.

  Someone smuggled his suit and boots on to the coach, which pulled up as planned at the service station. Dad leaped into the luggage compartment for a few miles before everyone was convinced the coast was clear, and he was applauded on to his seat. He couldn’t play for a couple of weeks, because the East Midlands police turned up at subsequent matches, and played as a ringer for a few months before the heat died down.

  He broke cover to appear on Match of the Day in 1993, when they played Carlisle United in the first round of the FA Cup at Goodison Park. To get there, Knowsley had to beat Stafford Rangers, who were two leagues above them in the Conference, in a second replay, following 1-1 and 2-2 draws.

  I used to be able to play football in the run-off areas during the game at Alt Park, and nick on to the pitch at half-time for a kickabout. Not on this Tuesday night. The estate had emptied, and the scallies stole in through holes in the fences. No one could move. We even had stewards. It felt like a real football club.

  With 10 minutes to go, and Knowsley winning 1-0, goalkeeper Lee Williams, a chunky Welsh lad, brought down a Stafford forward in a one-against-one situation outside his penalty area, and was sent off. There was no substitute keeper, so Dad volunteered to go in goal, where his style was closer to Mike Tyson than Joe Hart. He couldn’t catch the ball to save his life, but he ran through a ruck at corners, trampled over the centre forward, and gave it a right-hander. The ball fled, beyond the halfway line.

  It was some sight. His borrowed jersey didn’t fit and he had a maniacal look in his eye. He was a lower league version of Monk, the mad Scottish keeper played by Jason Statham in the Vinnie Jones film, Mean Machine. People didn’t know whether to laugh, cheer or gasp, so they did a mixture of all three. The crowd sounded as if they were on helium.