Jimmy puts the ball down in the centre circle of the practice pitch.
‘We’ll kick off,’ I tell him, tell them all.
So Jimmy blows the whistle and off we go –
For hours, hours and hours, I run and I shout, but no one speaks and no one passes, no one passes until I finally get the ball and am about to turn, about to turn to my left with the ball on my right foot, on my right foot when someone puts me on my arse –
Flat on my arse like a sack of spuds, moaning and groaning in the mud.
I look up and I see my youngest lad, my youngest lad watching and worried. I get up and I see them watching, watching and whispering –
‘I told you someone would get hurt,’ smiles Syd. ‘Bloody told you.’
No one is laughing. But they will, later. In the dressing room and in the bath. In their cars and in their houses, when I’m not there.
* * *
You start to keep clean sheets. You start to build from the back. Even win away from home. You finish seventh from the bottom of the Fourth Division in your first season, 1965–66, and this is how your chairman says thank you –
‘I can’t afford two men doing one man’s job any more.’
You open the autobiography of Len Shackleton, Clown Prince of Soccer, to page 78. You show the blank page to Mr Ernest Ord, millionaire chairman of Hartlepools United:
The Average Director’s Knowledge of Football.
‘Piss off,’ you tell him. ‘Pete’s going nowhere.’
‘You’re getting too much publicity and all,’ says Ord. ‘You’ll have to cut it out.’
‘Piss off,’ you tell him again. ‘This town loves it. Loves me.’
‘My son will handle publicity,’ says Ord. ‘You just manage the team. You manage it alone and all.’
‘Pete’s staying put,’ you tell him. ‘And I’ll say what I want, when I want.’
‘Right then,’ says Ord. ‘You’re both sacked then.’
‘We’re going nowhere,’ you tell him –
This is your first battle. Your first of many –
You go to Conservative Councillor Curry. You tour the clubs. You get shipyards and breweries to pay players’ wages. You raise the £7,000 that the club owes the chairman. You are never out of the local papers. Never off the local telly –
‘It’s him or me,’ you tell the board. The press. The fans. ‘Him or me.’
Mr Ernest Ord, millionaire chairman of Hartlepools United, resigns –
Your first coup. Your first blood –
1–0.
* * *
I shower, bathe and dress alone. Except for my youngest lad. Then down the corridors, round the corners, back to the office, his office, to wait for Jimmy; Jimmy taking fucking for ever. I look at my watch. It’s not there. I look in my pockets. But it’s bloody gone –
Maurice Lindley puts his head round the door. No knock –
Maurice Lindley, assistant manager of Leeds United, right-hand man to the Don, another one of the Don’s backroom boys along with Les Cocker and Syd Owen, Bob English and Cyril Partridge, another one that the Don left behind …
Maurice Lindley puts a thick file marked Top Secret down on that desk, his desk. Maurice says, ‘Thought you’d be wanting to see this.’
Maurice Lindley, football’s master spy, in his trench coat and his disguises.
I look down at that file on that desk. Top Secret. I ask him, ‘What the hell is it?’
‘Dossier on Huddersfield Town,’ says Maurice. ‘The bloody works.’
‘You’re joking?’ I ask him. ‘It’s a bloody testimonial. A fucking friendly.’
‘No such thing,’ says Maurice. ‘Not round here. Don didn’t believe in friendlies. Don believed in winning every game we played. Don believed —’
There’s a knock on the office door. My youngest lad looks up from his pens –
‘Who is it?’ I shout.
‘It’s me, Boss,’ says Jimmy. ‘I got it.’
I get up from that bloody chair. From behind that fucking desk.
Jimmy comes in, brown parcel in his hands. He passes it to me. ‘There you go.’
‘What about the petrol?’ I ask him.
‘It’s in the boot of the car.’
‘Good man,’ I say and unwrap the brown paper parcel –
I unwrap the parcel and I take out an axe –
‘Stand well back,’ I tell them all. ‘Look out, Maurice!’
And I swing that axe down into that desk, his desk, Don’s desk…
I swing it down and then up, up and then back down again –
Into his desk and his chair. Into his photos and his files …
Again and again and again.
Then I stop and I stand in the centre of what’s left of that office, panting and sweating like a big fat black fucking dog. Maurice Lindley gone. Jean Reid too. Jimmy bloody Gordon and my youngest little lad flat against one wall –
I’m a dynamite-dealer, waiting to blow the place to Kingdom Cum …
Then Jimmy and my youngest help me gather up all the pieces of the desk and the chair, all the photos and the files, all the bloody dossiers and every other fucking thing in that office, and we take it all outside and pile it up in the far corner of the car park, and then I go to the boot of Jimmy’s car and take out the Castrol and pour it all over the pile, then I light a cigarette and take a couple of drags before I throw it on the pile and watch it all bloody burn –
To Kingdom fucking Cum –
Burn. Burn. Burn.
* * *
You saved Hartlepools from re-election in your first season. Now you have taken them to eighth in your second. You have also had a third child, a girl –
But these are not the things you will remember about Hartlepools United.
You don’t hear this story until ten years later, but it haunts you; it haunts you here and it haunts you now –
Ernest Ord turned up at Peter Taylor’s door in his Rolls-Royce and he told Peter, ‘I’ve come to give you a warning. Your mate has finished me and one day he’ll do the same to you. Mark my words, Taylor. You mark my words.’
Haunts you here. Haunts you now.
Day Three
I have been in the shadows here, in the corridors and round the corners. I have been in the wings, with the crows and with the dogs. Heart racing and legs shaking. My tongue still, my mouth closed. Ears back and eyes open. Under grey skies –
I have kept my own counsel …
No kids with me today. Not today. Today there are things to do. Things to say. Not things for kids to hear. For kids to see. Under grey skies –
Until today; Friday 2 August 1974.
The first team traipse down the embankment from the training ground to the car park, their studs across the tarmac. The team stand around the black cinders in the far corner of the car park. Their hands on their hips, their names on their backs, they move their boots through the white ash. Under grey skies –
‘Players’lounge,’ I tell them. ‘Ten minutes.’
* * *
Two families by the seaside. The Royal Hotel, Scarborough. Oh, you do like to be beside the seaside. You are happy here, with your ice cream and your deckchair. Your wife and your three kids. You are a home bird and a happy bird now. The fear of unemployment and the need to booze, both are gone for now. Evil Ernest Ord has been vanquished and Hartlepools have finished eighth from the top this season –