No Nonsense Page 5

  Gavan was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, as a political storm broke about the failings of the council’s Care in the Community programme. He was deemed fit to plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility two years later, and returned to full-time supervision.

  Life went on, and continued to be summarily snatched away. Another lad, brother of a girl who was a year below me at school, hanged himself in the trees. No one saw fit to retrieve the rope for several days, so it became a macabre tourist attraction for bored teenagers.

  Kids are ghouls, aren’t they? A similar thing happened when Sean Catlin, another school friend, was crushed to death. He was playing a game of jumping on a moving bus, but miscalculated, lost his grip and fell forwards, underneath the back wheels. It took weeks for the bloodstains to fade from the road.

  I never saw the benefits of such a game, but we kept doing stupid things, oblivious to the dangers. Our games of chicken, running across the carriageway of the nearby M62, carried on as normal. The police caught us, threw us into a cell for effect and made us walk home from Huyton Village, but they might as well have not bothered.

  Even everyday activities, such as a game of golf on a municipal course in Widnes with Frankie Lacken and another friend, John Neil, had the potential for chaos. A gang of local lads demanded our clubs, attacked us, and got more than they bargained for during the subsequent brawl when Frankie hit their leader, an older man aged around 30 named Colin, across the side of the head with a 7-iron.

  They fled, terrified by the instant intensity of the violence. We went into fugitive mode, reckoning it was unsafe to take public transport or a taxi because we were covered in blood. We walked to a local A&E department, only to glimpse Colin being attended to in a nearby cubicle. He was oblivious to our presence, and didn’t seem the type to alert the bizzies, but we thought better of hanging around to have our faces and hands stitched. Frankie was more concerned by the irreversible damage done to the 7-iron, his favourite club. He often blamed its loss when I beat him in subsequent games of golf.

  There was a strange normality to renegade behaviour. We used to incite the local smackheads by making raids on their drug dens in the boarded-up flats above the shops. They would try to chase us through the eaves and gaps in connecting walls, so we simply climbed on the roof to wait them out.

  We took to whispering so they wouldn’t know we were around, but quickly got bored. We knocked holes in ceilings and tossed bricks and tiles at them to wind them up. Our escape routes, rat runs through what were once attics, were pitch-black, but we knew our way around them by teenage telepathy.

  Each derelict building was an adventure, and full of surprises. An old bed or a stained set of curtains with which to ring our camp were one thing. State-of-the-art surveillance equipment, discovered by chance in an adjoining attic, was entirely another. We took one look at the cameras and recording devices and decided the nous of bigger boys was needed.

  They surveyed the stash, and quickly worked out we had stumbled on an undercover police operation to monitor the activities of a known drug dealer, who operated his business empire from an unprepossessing end-of-terrace house opposite the abandoned building.

  Nothing was said, but a couple of days later we copped a few quid off an intermediary. The bigger boys got more money, but ours was enough for a new footie kit, a secret stash of Panini stickers and the odd ticket to watch Everton. As far as we were concerned, it was a victimless crime. The police could do one.

  It was a disconcerting time. I started to suffer from bad acne, as puberty began to kick in. I was hyper-sensitive to slights, and paranoid about showing even a flicker of fear. The part of my brain hard-wired to anarchic, illogical and self-destructive behaviour was still active. People would give me a swerve, because I just wasn’t worth the risk.

  The fabric of my life was in danger of being torn apart. On one level, we had regular holidays in Portugal, Mum and Dad didn’t fight too often within our earshot, and it was obvious we were loved. On another level, though, the strain was increasingly obvious. Dad was so much younger than Mum. He wanted to be out with the boys, and regularly went on weekend benders.

  Mum would leave us with babysitters, because my half-sisters had left home, and join him in the pub, whether he liked it or not. As an adult, I can rationalise her actions. She was fearful of losing him, resentful at her lack of freedom. This was real life, not some Daily Mail you-can-have-it-all fantasy. As a child, though, it stimulated a sense of emptiness.

  I needed a maternal influence, and found it in my nan. She was the one who cooked the Sunday roast, cleaned our clothes and made sure we were bathed and in bed at the right time. She was the one who thought nothing of imposing a 7pm curfew, and embarrassing me by dragging me away from mischief. She used to hand out my uncles’ oversized Stone Roses tee-shirts for me to wear in bed, because she didn’t run to pyjamas. She was a rock.

  I used to hate Sunday mornings, when my parents were trying to sleep off the lock-in. I loathed the cronies, sprawled on the settee where they lapsed into unconsciousness. I got tired of rifling through Dad’s kecks to sweep up enough loose change to sort out my subs, and buy sweets and a drink after football. I didn’t mind running to matches, because my stamina was my secret weapon, but I wished I got the lifts home other lads took for granted.

  I felt I was in the way. There was only one course of action, which presented itself when Dad returned from another session to find his clothes cut to ribbons, and a few belongings stuffed into three black bin bags, tossed into the front garden. There had been explosions before, when Mum refused to allow him over the threshold, but this was terminal. I let him in silently through the sliding glass doors at the back to retrieve what he could, and soon joined him at my nan’s.

  No one really wins in that situation. Andrew was really tight with Mum, so Dad instantly became the Antichrist. Mum’s suspicions were confirmed when a new woman quickly turned up on the scene. I held that against him for a while, but eventually decided life was too short. As a woman, Nan understood the magnitude of the betrayal, but as a mother her love was unbreakable.

  Mum was pretty feisty, but understood Nan’s rules of engagement. Never, ever, fall out with your own. Nan was willing to help out with childcare, and expected a line to be drawn under historic tensions. Her job was to stabilise things, and she understood how fundamental football was to my future.

  My life had reached a crossroads. Drugs were everywhere on the estate, and I wasn’t daft. Dad’s generation was into frighteningly cheap cocaine. There were tales of lines being chopped in the pub, and hoovered up at house parties. I could either go down to the park on Friday nights, to get high with school friends who were quickly progressing from weed to tabs of acid, or I could limit myself to the adrenaline high of competition.

  I was fortunate that I didn’t like the taste of hard drink. Dad offered me my first pint when I was 15 but I didn’t touch alcohol until my 17th birthday, when I was taken out by my uncle Tom to Natterjacks disco bar on Roby Road in Huyton. Swigging warm sweet cider from plastic bottles in draughty bus shelters wasn’t my idea of a good time.

  For a while, I was caught in the crossfire of wanting to be in the old gang, having a good time getting up to no good, and wanting to make new friends, and to make something of myself through football. The telly in Nan’s lounge, beside a roaring fire, was my tutor and bodyguard.

  I was a child of Italia 90, of Roger Milla’s slinky street dance and Gazza’s distraught tears. Milky pictures from the Welsh language channel, S4C, allowed me to study the princes of the Italian game – Ancelotti, Baggio, Baresi and Maldini. Then Gazza took his fake breasts to Lazio, and Channel 4 offered weekly masterclasses from Batistuta, Donadoni and co.

  I fell in love during USA 94. They called Gheorghe Hagi the ‘Maradona of the Carpathians’, yet he was in a different league to the wild-eyed, drugged-up genius who was sent home in disgrace. The Romanian was small, but shielded the ball f
erociously and used it stylishly. One goal, in the 3-2 second-round win over Argentina, stays with me from childhood. Hagi picks the ball up, just inside his own half wide on the left. He takes out four opponents with a single pass, and sprints into space to receive the return. It is hot, airless and frantic in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, yet he freezes time. He jinks inside and rolls another pass, which evades three covering defenders and gives Ilie Dumitrescu a tap-in. Wow. He scores later, with his wrong foot, but nothing beats that.

  I just wanted to be him. I loved his arrogance, organising the wall for his goalkeeper at free kicks, and cutting teammates dead when they wanted to take a throw-in instead of him. I cut my socks down and put white tape around the top in his honour, and begged for six months for a pair of his Lotto Stadio boots. I felt like crying when a minor growth spurt meant they were too small, too soon.

  Gazza fascinated me, because I empathised with his restlessness and poorly hidden unhappiness. My horizons were being broadened by the game, and its inherent disciplines, but I was torn between diligence and recklessness. The dark side of my character was largely dormant, but never far from the surface. It intermittently threatened everything I held dear.

  I was ticking, ticking, ticking.

  I would get into needless scuffles during training sessions at Everton, like a child testing the limits of a parent’s love. Black moods would overtake me without reason or warning. I played well in the Milk Cup youth tournament in Northern Ireland, but got into all kinds of bother when I threw a borrowed set of golf clubs off a cliff and into the sea.

  I couldn’t honestly explain why I did it. I was the toddler who stuck his fingers into the electricity socket to see the panic and concern on adults’ faces, yet I was indulged. Football clubs have their own moral codes, shaped by expedience rather than ethical standards, and my promise was deemed more important than my immaturity. I’d grow out of it.

  The coaches told me to lighten up, that it was sometimes better to walk away from conflict rather than to front up and try to take on the world. They probably knew they were wasting their breath, but honour was satisfied on both sides.

  I was being noticed. At the end of one of my Sunday morning matches a familiar figure introduced himself. He asked how things were going at Everton, and suggested that he could find a place for me in Liverpool’s academy. I couldn’t believe it. I was being tapped up by Steve Heighway, the former Liverpool winger who was developing a reputation as one of football’s greatest talent spotters.

  It was a beautiful, old-school scenario. Steve’s wife worked at Seel Road Comprehensive, and got some of my mates there to put in a good word. I knew I could have learned so much under him, but also knew there was no way the ultimate betrayal would be allowed. Steve was persistent, if nothing else, and rang our home several times before Dad took the call. He barely had a chance to explain how impressed he had been with me when he was cut short. ‘No, no, no, no,’ Dad exclaimed, ‘We’re Evertonians, mate.’ With that, he put the phone down. Job done, family honour protected.

  Superficially, things were progressing smoothly. Though development coaches decry a results-based approach, my group at Bellefield had built an unbeaten run across two seasons. I should have been smart enough to recognise the warning signs when Neil Dewsnip was recruited to run the academy, since he represented everything I resented.

  He had a narrow teaching background and was a smooth political operator. What really upset me, though, was his fundamentalist approach to the game. He was a disciple of power and physique, size and strength. He had an obsession about young players being bundled off the ball, and concentrated on the development of big, well-balanced lads who could retain possession.

  It soon became obvious that he felt I was too small – ironically the same drawback that once threatened to hold back his star pupil, Steven Gerrard, whom he had taught PE at the Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School in West Derby. All I could do was get my nut down, work hard, and expose the stupidity of his prejudice.

  Decisions were being reached so haphazardly that Leighton Baines failed two different trials with us, an oversight that was to cost £6m when he was eventually signed from Wigan, but word was out that I was among nine Everton players being considered for a place in the FA’s National School of Excellence at Lilleshall. This was a Big Deal.

  Lilleshall, a former stately home set in a 30,000-acre estate in Shropshire, was football’s Hogwarts. It was home for two years to the 16 best players in the country aged between 14 and 16. The idea was simple, too simple as it turned out. Train the best with the best. Consume them with football. Teach them to be internationals. That reckoned without the standard of coaching, which proved to be over-managed and mediocre.

  We weren’t to know that, when the trials process began at Stockport County. This featured the top clubs in the Northwest; Everton’s contingent, which included Phil Jagielka and Bradley Orr, was pitted against the most promising lads from Manchester United, Liverpool, Blackburn and Manchester City. This was my type of challenge, every man for himself.

  Assessors split us into two groups, and I was told cursorily that I’d be playing at right back. If that was a ploy, to see if I would sulk, it didn’t work. I looked around in the tunnel beforehand, and saw the telltale signs of inner turmoil – quickness of breath and darting eyes. I had them where I wanted them.

  I’ve always had a sixth sense, which tells me when I’m going to play well. It generates confidence and coolness. The bigger the occasion, the bigger the stakes, the bigger my performance. By half-time I’d done enough to be moved into my advertised position, central midfield. I was one of three Everton lads who went through to the next stage.

  I was given my third position in my second trial game. They played me up front, despite me being comfortably the smallest kid in the group. My opposing centre halves, two big lumps from the Midlands, couldn’t resist a smirk, but they weren’t laughing when I scored a hat-trick. Game on. I was to be Everton’s only representative in the final.

  Not for the first time, I was to learn that life was unfair. My versatility was a handicap, because I was now competing for a place with specialists, who were selected in positions they had played in all their lives. I was asked to play another unfamiliar role, left midfield, and although I felt I acquitted myself well, I knew I wouldn’t survive the cull.

  No fewer than 234 boys passed through Lilleshall in the 15 years it operated, before Howard Wilkinson opened a corporate can of worms by announcing the establishment of a club-based academy system. Some, like Michael Owen, Sol Campbell, Nick Barmby and Jermain Defoe, made it all the way to the top, but most were quickly lost to the game.

  One lad, much closer to home, used it as a formative experience. Tom Culshaw, my second cousin, played for England Schoolboys and progressed as far as being Liverpool’s reserve-team captain before opting to work in coaching and education. He is a big mate of Steven Gerrard and now looks after the under-13s at Liverpool’s academy.

  Despite the pretensions of men like Dewsnip, who was to spend 17 years at Everton before becoming an England age-group coach, youth development is an inexact science. Just as Bob Paisley used to say, the first two yards are in your head at the highest level; the most important few inches are between an emerging player’s ears.

  I felt no shame, then, going back to Bellefield as a narrow failure. I was established in the system on schoolboy forms, though my headmaster did threaten to refuse to give his approval when I called a teacher ‘green teeth’. I was respected by my team-mates and ready to do whatever was necessary to improve.

  I hated losing, even in the cross-country at school, where I would wear down the best runner, a tall, wiry lad called Neil Kearns, by simply refusing to go away. I’d be on his heels, talking to him: ‘Whatever it takes, la’. I’m just biding my time.’ It used to freak him out so badly he would try a desperate sprint before flaming out, and giving up.

  I looked around me at Everton and saw too many Neil Kearns. They
had more natural talent than me. They had more mature, better-developed bodies. But they didn’t want it to hurt. They didn’t have my love of unpromising odds. I fancied a 30:70 tackle in training. They would shy away from it, to save themselves for later.

  Some good it did me. A couple of months later, Dad and Nan were called into a Portakabin at the training ground for the usual end-of-season review. Dewsnip, who had earlier released Phil Jagielka and was systematically scything through the squad, did not stand on ceremony. ‘He’s finished at Everton,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but that’s how it goes.’

  I was playing Championship Manager in my bedroom when the kitchen phone was answered by Grandad. ‘Joe. It’s your nan for you,’ he shouted. I moved across the landing into her bedroom, lay down on the floor, and picked up the extension. ‘Look, lad,’ she said, ‘they’ve said they’re going to release you.

  ‘You keep your head up, because I’m the sort of lady you’ll knock down once, but you won’t do it twice. If people want to ignore me, or fall out with me, I won’t give them the opportunity to do it twice. There’s no one better than you. They may have a bigger house or more money, but there’s no one better than you.’

  Her words didn’t register until later, because I felt as if every ounce of air had been kicked out of me. I sobbed when I put the phone down, because I was trying to make sense of my life. I was powerless to stop my mum and dad splitting up. I couldn’t do anything about puberty, or my struggle to fit in at school. But, surely, when I’m rejected by football, I can control that . . .

  My thoughts raced, and the fighter made himself heard.

  You know what, they’re wrong. All of them. The careers teachers who smiled condescendingly when you said you were going to be a footballer, and told you to be realistic. They’re wrong. The coach who got rid of you because you’re not built like a brick shithouse. He’s wrong as well.