No Nonsense Read online

  When, somehow, Knowsley held on, the scallies invaded the pitch and let fireworks off. Everyone was asking, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ The Carlisle players were similarly bemused when they arrived at Goodison to find Dad blocking the narrow corridor between the home and away dressing rooms. He was making use of the only convenient socket to plug in his razor and shave his head. The full-time pros meekly waited for him to finish before going in to change.

  The culture shock would have deepened had they known other aspects of his pre-match routine. Dad had a touch of OCD, and had to hoover the house from top to bottom before he could take us to games. We had to sit obediently on the settee while he brushed the rug until it was spotless, and virtually threadbare. Mum, bless her, preferred shopping.

  He had his chance to be a hero after 10 minutes, hitting the bar after going clear with only the keeper to beat. Carlisle won 4-1, but they knew they were in a game. I wouldn’t have liked to play against my dad, because he was a really tough bastard and Knowsley could put it about a bit.

  They provided a finishing school for young pros at Liverpool and Everton, who were routinely roughed up in Liverpool Senior Cup ties. I can still see the fear and bewilderment in Michael Branch’s eyes when the boys used him for target practice. He was the Chosen One, a 17-year-old spoken of as Everton’s equivalent of Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler, but he looked lost.

  That was prophetic, since, at 37, Branch is serving seven years for supplying amphetamines and cocaine. When football turned sour, and the struggle became too wearing, he succumbed to the streets. I know a hundred lads with a lot less talent from an identical background who made the same alarmingly simple life choice, and went into the drug trade. Some are up to no good on a ridiculous scale.

  They don’t have two heads. They were once ordinary kids. Some have had the stuffing kicked out of them, others simply don’t care. Dad fell out with a neighbour because he conditioned his son to the inevitability of joining the family business, dealing and distributing industrial quantities of the stuff. He knew how vulnerable I was, but football gave me just enough scope to survive.

  I had no choice in my allegiances, since he ensured I was blue from birth. I had my first Everton kit before I could walk, and by the time I was six I understood the consequences of indoctrination. I just missed out on the great Everton team of the mid-eighties, when Gary Lineker, Andy Gray and Peter Reid were denied fulfilment by the European ban on English clubs, and had to settle for relative dross.

  I was first taken to Goodison by a mate of Dad’s. Bob was known to everyone as Striker. We stood in the Lower Bullens, close to the dugouts. It was from there that I first sensed the scale and speed of the game. I bought old programmes from St Luke’s Church, between the Gwladys Street End and Goodison Road stand, and eventually queued for spares, getting into the ground for £4 as a Junior Evertonian.

  I kept goal in the playground until I was seven, because they said I spoiled things by being too good as an outfield player. I was closer in spirit to David James than Big Nev Southall, as I was easily bored. I got fed up waiting for the game to happen in front of me and consciously made things as difficult as possible by under-hitting passes to my defenders, so I had to redeem myself with a save.

  I still get the gloves on after training, when the lads are taking shooting practice. I’m unorthodox, but effective. It drove my gaffer at Burnley, Sean Dyche, mad. He used to spot me from a distance and yell: ‘What the fucking hell are you doing? Imagine you are a manager. Imagine someone shoots and you put your shoulder out? If someone else was doing that you’d be moaning.’

  Fair do’s, but I learned long ago that rules are there to be broken . . .

  At seven, I was officially too young to play for my Roman Catholic junior school, St Agnes. Mr Alcock, our PE teacher, quietly ignored that because he wanted to win the area’s top trophy, the Hanson Cup. We did, twice, with me up front. That didn’t stop me playing as a ringer for another school, whenever they needed a result. Mr McCormack, their PE teacher, was putting his career on the line because they would have been thrown out of the league if any of my mates had grassed me up.

  Everyone knew me by my nickname, Danger Mouse. Just like the cartoon character, I was first in, headfirst, if anything happened. It didn’t matter if that was a scrap or a dare to launch myself off the highest diving board in the leisure centre. No one bothered to hold me back. I laugh about it now, but I keep him for posterity as a tattoo on my left foot, to remind me of the wild child within.

  Brad and I used to play for Pine DIY, sponsored by a chain of stores owned by Phil Thompson, the Liverpool captain. It was one of those typically hyped youth teams, a collection of pot hunters which consisted of all the best kids in the area. At heart, though, I was at home on the pavements, or the glass-strewn gravel on which we played pick-up games.

  I’d leave my ball in the bushes outside St Agnes each morning, and play fantasy football on the way home. Dustbins were international defenders, to be dazzled by my close control. I dominated central midfield, playing deft one-twos off postboxes and parked cars. The owners would bang on windows or bawl abuse, but they’d be lost in the roar of an imaginary crowd.

  I fended for myself. After school I’d change into my Everton shirt, trackie bottoms and trainers, and be out. Each street would have its posse. There were up to 20 of us, of all ages, plotting and practising for games that rapidly descended into gang warfare. Losing bragging rights in school or on the estate was not an option, so tackles became progressively worse and the assaults became more spiteful.

  Inevitably, it all kicked off. When I was first involved, I made myself scarce. But gradually the violence became an end in itself. I began to love fighting as much as I loved football. As so often, a scar, this time on my right hand, tells the story. That was where I punched John Beaton’s buck teeth, and had to prise my fist free. The legend of the Bisto Kid was born.

  We became mates in later years, but he ran home to get his dad, who pinned me down when we resumed scrapping. John, known as Bisto because he looked like the lad in the gravy adverts, saw his chance and got in a few free punches to my unprotected face and stomach. A line had been crossed. No one, least of all an adult, steps in when the fight is fair. ‘Sound,’ I said, as I wrenched myself free. ‘No problem. If that’s how it is, we’ll sort it right now.’

  My hand was streaming with blood from where I had chipped his teeth, so I didn’t need to play the drama queen too enthusiastically when I found Dad in the pub and explained the circumstances. He calmly put his pint to one side and said, ‘Come on.’ It was about a two-minute walk to Bisto’s house, and Dad left me sitting on the wall in a square front garden, dominated by a large conifer.

  Barry, Bisto’s elder brother, tried and failed to convince my dad that his old fella wasn’t in. I saw the look of panic as he was told: ‘If you don’t get him, I’m going to come in and get him. I’ll give a slap to anyone who gets in the way, and that includes you.’ In that tumbleweed moment my conscience began to whisper:

  ‘He’s going to fill him in.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But he had hold of me. He deserves it.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. You should learn to fight your own battles.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I’m too far in now. I can’t say, “Listen, let’s leave it.” ’

  My reverie was interrupted by the appearance of Bisto’s dad at the door. I could only see his head, but he looked sheepish, with good reason. Dad dragged him out and the conifer began to thrash around, as if tormented by a sudden wind. A disembodied voice barked out the order, ‘Stay away from him’, and I was suddenly on my own. Dad left without further word, to pick up his pint as if nothing had happened. He knew I’d see his bloodied victim picking himself up from a privet hedge.

  It’s funny how age offers perspective and cheap wisdom. If I’d known then what I know now, that Bisto’s family had been fractured by his mum’s death from cancer, would I have been so set on revenge? I hon
estly don’t know, but remorse isn’t the sign of weakness I once assumed. It is only when I return to the estate that I realise how small my world was.

  Our mini-Wembley seemed huge but it is in fact a small triangle of council-trimmed grass. The lamppost at which I aimed for hour after hour, so that I could pass accurately with both feet, has gone, and the road is scarred by black-and-white signs that bark ‘No Ball Games’, that brusque summary of officialdom’s contempt for childhood.

  Goals were scrawled on garage doors. We would play cricket, 20 a side, in a quadrant. Fours were hit into nearby gardens, sixes on roofs. Smashed windows stopped play quicker than a cloudburst in the county matches Lancashire used to stage across Liverpool, at Aigburth. What are the kids supposed to do these days? No wonder the estate is scarred by wilful destruction. Factories and community centres, where we used to play table tennis, have been burned down. The artificial pitch on which we once played melted when older boys used it to torch stolen cars.

  Opportunity can be lost in so many ways. My cousin Paul Taylor, middle son of my Auntie Theresa, was seen as a future star. Liverpool loved his left foot and his ability to make a ball talk. They couldn’t tolerate his habit of thieving anything that wasn’t nailed down. His direction of travel was confirmed the moment he broke into Anfield’s fabled boot room, and stripped it of 30 pairs of the first team’s finest.

  News of a bunch of scallies strutting around in Robbie Fowler’s Nike Tiempos, and the adidas Predators once worn by Paul Ince, inevitably got back. The club demanded their return, and kicked Paul out. He couldn’t give a toss. He had an aversion to authority, and took it in his stride in the same way he dealt with being excluded from school. His sticky fingers were to be the least of his, and our, problems.

  Close my eyes, and I can see other familiar faces. Tagger and Mash. Cambo and poor old Birdie. Entire families – the Lubys, McElhinneys and Lackens – all up for whatever life presented. Senses heightened, I can hear my grandad’s faltering voice, when I rushed from a kickabout into his kitchen to ask what was happening at Hillsborough on the afternoon of 15 April 1989.

  ‘They’re dying, son. They’re dying . . . ’

  He had a portable radio clamped to his ear, and motioned me through the connecting door towards the television. I sat with him for more than an hour, monitoring the fragments of an unfolding tragedy until it was time to buy the Echo, and confront the facts, as they saw them. Seventy-four dead, according to initial reports. Ninety-six victims would require justice more than two decades later.

  Everton were at Wembley, having beaten Norwich City 1-0 in the other semi-final at Villa Park. It seemed obscene even to mention it. Many from St John’s were caught up in the tragedy. I overheard their horror stories, of contorted bodies, botched rescue attempts and politically orchestrated malice. Details varied, in degree, but there was unanimous agreement on one issue: the Sun’s front-page headline, ‘The Truth’, was the greatest, foulest lie of its generation.

  The city that rag impugned on the whim of its masters could not be beaten down. It rallied, and pride filtered from funereal grief. An honourable goalless draw in Liverpool’s first match following the disaster, a derby at Goodison, suited the mood. Cup final day, 20 May, cauterised the wounds, without healing them.

  Blues sat next to reds in street parties which were only interrupted for the match, when normal tribal rules applied. The kid in me loved Ian Rush. He was the sort of striker I admired from afar, clever, clinical, calm under unimaginable pressure. The fan in me hated him when he scored twice in extra time to give the other lot the trophy the nation craved.

  I was nine when Harry Tyrrell, the scout who ran my Sunday morning team and the local newsagent’s, engineered my successful trial for the Everton academy. My best mate Frankie Lacken was snapped up by Liverpool. He was born on the same day, in the same hospital, as me. His family moved in next door but one and our fathers, who met in the maternity ward, were friends.

  Stephen, his elder brother, boxed, like his dad. Warren, his younger brother, was a good footballer. We were the best in our respective years at senior school, but Frankie was better than me.

  The mini derby matches between St Thomas Becket High School and Seel Road Comprehensive drew a swarm of excited pupils around the pitch we shared behind the local chippy. When we played in a local cup final I was introduced to the pressure and power of expectation. I got as big a buzz from the abuse as I did from the shrieking, salivating encouragement.

  The game was frantic, full-on, but little different in intensity to our street scuffles. Frankie and I exchanged backhanded compliments in the form of a stud down the Achilles heel and a kick boxer’s knee-high lunge. The difference was that the shame of defeat was obvious and instant. We won 3-1 and the losers shrank away, belittled as warriors.

  I last met the Lacken brothers four years ago, at Glastonbury. They were in the nightclub business in Puerto Banus, on the Costa del Sol. Frankie had been a decent semi-professional player, but was in the process of leaving football behind. I’ll let the sociologists ponder the nature/nurture debate, but the Lackens’ back garden did stage another rite of passage.

  Boxing was in the genes of both our families. On my nan’s side, Bob Culshaw won the ABA junior bantamweight title in 1999. Peter Culshaw, who fought as the ‘The Choirboy’, won the ABA light flyweight title in 1991. A Commonwealth champion, he won world titles at flyweight and super flyweight as a professional.

  Frankie’s dad fought for England, and had a punchbag in his shed, at which we would take a swing when the mood took us. We were little scrotes, but styled ourselves as mean and magnificent. On summer afternoons, the beer, barbecues and boxing gloves would come out, and a makeshift ring was strung up near the rose bushes.

  Don’t run away with the idea that this was the human equivalent of cockfighting, but when sons are sparring in front of their fathers they are damned if they are going to back down. We had no headguards or mouthpieces, just big gloves and a desperate desire to impress. A bloody nose did no one any harm. It was good preparation for the playground.

  Something was obviously stirring. One day Dad broke cover. I was 12, and it was time for a man-to-man chat. ‘How do you fight?’ he asked me. ‘There are some bigger kids than you at the senior school. Don’t try and box them. They’re heavier, stronger and have a longer reach. This is what you need when it comes to a fight. Stand here.’

  I did as I was told.

  ‘The first thing you do, with your left hand, is grab the other boy’s neck as hard as you can. Grab his school tie or shirt, and never let go. Now, put your head straight down, towards the floor and grab my neck.’

  This was getting weird, but I complied.

  ‘Now. Just keep throwing punches with your right hand, like a piston, and aim at the top of your fist. Don’t lift your head up at any stage. They’ll just hit the top of your head, which is the hardest part of your body. Keep punching. Pop, pop, pop. Eventually they will raise their chin with the effort. All you need is to connect once on the button, and they’re gone. Never let go of that neck until they stop. I’ve won so many fights with that technique, in pubs and town centres.’

  How can that be a conversation between a grown man and a 12-year-old? I can’t conceive of doing something similar. As I grew up, a mess of conflicting emotions, I railed against him for not teaching me something more constructive. I yearned to be shown another way. It took me years to understand the depth of his devotion, and what he was trying to achieve.

  This wasn’t about emotional development. His world was a dark and dangerous place, as rough as fuck. He’s living the drinking, the drugging, the violence, the randomness of it all. He knows words won’t help me. He’s telling me how to act, giving me skills that will get me through the most dangerous time, before I reach 17 or 18. As he saw it, that’s when I would be in the Premier League. That’s when I would have left the gangs, and the scrapping, behind. To use a football cliché, he was setting my stall out, ear
ly doors.

  If I put myself in his position, would I want my son to understand how I have done things I am not proud of? Would I take the risk of that being a hindrance, rather than a help? I am not trying to excuse myself, or rationalise my many mistakes, but maybe in 10 years’ time it will be good for Cassius to truly understand the environment that produced me.

  It was a hard place, with harsh, often deadly, lessons.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TICKING

  Tommy One-arm had obvious psychiatric problems, but seemed harmless enough. He lived in a flat overlooking the school field where we played football, and often gave chase to the boys who threw stones at his windows. He would work himself into a rage, but soon give up.

  His real name was Leo Gavan. In quieter moments, we’d see him hanging around the chippy and the off-licence on the estate. He claimed he played for Real Madrid, and was the best one-armed goalkeeper in the world, but couldn’t return to Spain because he was afraid of flying.

  He was a timebomb. On one cold Sunday morning in February 1996, he didn’t take the medication prescribed for his schizophrenia. A group of lads smashed one of his windows, and took shelter on a nearby flat roof when he went berserk.

  Incensed he was physically unable to reach them, he returned to the flat, broke up his furniture and threw it into the street. He then lay in wait, watching from a back window. When his tormentors climbed down, he grabbed a carving knife and set off in pursuit.

  They reached the local flower park, where we would play football on the bowling green when the old fellas weren’t around, and scattered. Gavan cornered Lee Kinch, who had not been involved in the fracas, in a garden and stabbed him once, through the heart. He was 14, and died instantly.

  I was in the leisure centre when a lad on a bike gabbled the news. Naturally, we headed to the crime scene to gawp and gossip. It seemed unreal. Lee was a popular lad at school, and lived close to my mate Mash. His funeral, which we all attended, was horrendous.