With One Bound, He's Free

Welcome to the cousin of Suspend Your Disbelief.
He's a nice bloke, wants to be a footballer and is having trials with Brentford.

He's got a Beckham-bogbrush haircut and has just learned to drive. He wears those nasty plastic bananas on his feet that some people call football boots. His girlfriend is called Tanya and has orange skin. All his mates and their girlfriends are exactly the same. They go down the local boozer at weekends and shout really loud when they get pissed. If he's got a game on Saturday he usually ends up playing with a hangover. If he doesn't make it, he'll probably try to get on that telly thing with Jose Mourinho.

He's decided to start this blog to showcase his sports writing in particular. It's not rubbish, it's actually quite good. Better than he is as a footballer. Some of it comes from his dad who is like all of those fat blokes you see at every football match in England. His dad is absolutely certain of the fact that he was better than Pele in his day - it's just that no-one noticed.

You'll still find this stuff on SYD - but for those of you who carnt be bovvered to wade through stories about Kid Creole finding severed ears, or existential cups of tea, or people who paint their cars to look like they're characters in Scooby Doo - this might be more your plate of pie n mash.

So without further ado - welcome to Through Your Legs.
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The JPS

James Hunt. Jacques Laffite. Jody Sheckter. Nikki Lauder. Patrick Depaillet. Jochen Mass. Gilles Villenueuve. Clay Regazzoni. Carlos Reutermann. Riccardo Pattrese.

Watkins Glen. Monte Carlo. Brands Hatch. Monza. Interlagos. Paul Ricard. Nurburgring. Spa.

Being a racing driver in the 70's was surely the best job ever known to man. You just had to have a name that matched the glamour of your occupation.

Imagine - as much booze as you could drink, as many women as you could possibly shag (most of them on variations of The Barcelona Shirt's Roxy Music album cover - see that post) as many fags as you could smoke - and to be able to drive the fastest, most death-defying machine known to man.

My dad and I were in thrall.

For my part, I had to have a Scalextric. I'd had one earlier as a child. Eight pieces of black plastic, an overheating transformer and two cars: Graham Hill's Brabham and, er, a red one. Driven by the mundane John Surtees. I still remember that smell of burning electrical circuits.

But Scalextric was the coolest game - apart from Subbuteo - a young boy could have. I just needed to move to the next level of involvement in this adrenaline sport.

The answer lay in the JPS.

It was the most impossibly beautiful car I had ever seen. Black, slick and slim, dripping with gold bling - like a Harlem pimp. And it was driven by the cool, hard New Yorker Mario Andretti.

Andretti cleaned up.

I remember as a child watching Steve McQueen and James Garner battling it out in Grand Prix. This car seemed to take up where that film left off. It was sponsored by John Player - the cigarette company. Yes, there was absolutely no shame or debate in that. Fuck, everyone was sponsored by the fags - Marlboro sponsored McLaren, Gitanes sponsored the French teams such as Ligier. Camel another team.

The single reason I wanted to smoke as a kid.

Of course, I grew out of wanting to smoke - even grew out of Formula 1. It's shit nowadays with its anodyne drivers, endless regulations.

In the 70's there was no such thing as health and safety, downforce, computer-aided suspension, wet or dry tyres. You just got in this big petrol bomb and drove. In those days, people died in large numbers - like Ronnie Pieterson. Or were horribly disfigured - like Lauda.

Occupational hazard.

But worth it.

Every time I go through a speed camera, or get a ticket - as I tend to do nowadays more and more (one day I won't have a car to drive anymore -or I'll be dead) I dream that I am in the JPS.
I never did get that new Scalextric.

But Andretti got a new competitor - the youthful and highly talented Jochen Rindt.


My dad ended up with a Ford Cortina GT, suburban man's version of a sports car. Modeled on a US-style Mustang, but somehow more carpet slippers - like this:












For his part, Jochen Rindt ended up like this:

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Where's World Cup Willie When You Need Him?

My dad tells me that my love of football began at the age of 3, when in an act which would nowadays be construed as child cruelty, he plonked me down in front of the old bakelite telly to watch the 1966 cup final between Sheffield Wednesday and Everton. (Don't need to identify it as the FA Cup - the cup final's the cup final, innit?)

Anyway, apparently, the Owls got off to a flying start and were 1-0 up inside the first four minutes. Jim McCalliog had a pot-shot at goal and it took a wicked deflection off the England left back, Ray Wilson. For Everton, Mike Trebilcock had replaced then-folk-hero Fred Pickering in the line up. Mike had his greatest game ever, justifying his astronomical £20,000 transfer fee from Plymouth by scoring two goals as the Toffees romped home to a win. Sam Ellis, David Ford and Ron Springett were all also heavily involved in what was described as one of the most dramatic finals ever to be staged at Wembley.

I probably just sat there and dribbled saliva. But experiences like this across the country undoubtedly created a love of the game in most of the 40-somethings who are the main demographic for live matches nowadays.

I heard a skit on the radio this week: one of those crass 'this is what was happenning today in the 1960s' (probably made by a 20-year-old producer who assumes dinosaurs roamed the earth at that time) in which it was announced with incredulity that the most popular boys' and girls' names were David and Susan respectively.

Imagine that.

And of course it made me think:

Where are all the players with names like that nowadays? They probably aren't allowed anywhere near football clubs. Picture the scenario where a failed triallist is called in to be released: 'Sorry son, you're a great player but we can't have anyone whose name is not derived from Creole Patois in the team now.'

Although the Brazilian Fred is a notable exception to this rule, it does seem nowadays that you are only likely to get a place in the starting 11 if your name is Delorian or Chlyamidia or something. You can hardly imagine Mike Trebilcock selling loads of replica shirts, can you?

And what about team names themselves? Imagine calling one of the newer sporting franchises The Owls or The Toffees!? Right now, some executive somewhere is probably dreaming up a rebranding of Portsmouth that involves them being called Portsmouth Pirates or something. Look at what a ponced-up mess they've made of rugby league. Catalan Dragons my arse, as Jim Royle would no doubt opine.

The world has officially gone mad.

And this madness has now extended to the way in which we are marketing ourselves for the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. I mean, look at the figures above. It's no surprise that someone has started a mock-Twitter page designed to take the mick out of these pathetic characters. Who could possibly conceive that calling such a mascot Wenlock was going to enable it to be down-with-the-homies in the fashion presumably intended? You really do comb your own tongue at the crassness of it.

Unless of course, I've somehow missed a post-millenium baby-boom of people called Wenlock.

In my youth, we had World Cup Willie.

A lion - representing the values of courage and strength that the national team were to so-aptly demonstrate in the pulsating World Cup Final of 66. A lion with a real, honest-to-goodness-name, representing an honest-to-goodness working class ideology.

Wouldn't last 5 minutes now would he, before someone objected to the phallic imagery suggested by the name, or complained that there was somehow cruelty to lions implied by his presence. Either that, or anyone wearing Willie merchandise would be the subject of playground beatings and religious fatwahs.

Somewhere in heaven, Mike Trebilcock is laughing his head off.
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Rotherham 1 Aldershot 0

This evening, in a miasma of boredom, I find myself watching the above match on the telly.

It's a critical game, and victory will result in the winner going to Wembley for the Division 2 Play Off Final (Division 4 in pre-Sky TV old money.)

The winner will get the chance, Quixote-style, to play Dagenham and tilt at the windmill that is promotion to Division 1 (Division 3 really - but only men over 35 will understand this detail.)

There are about 400 TV channels to watch and still I choose this.

Here are the highlights, which I've helpfully also posted on Facebook.

45 mins: Rotherham are leading 1-0 in a tight game.
51 mins: 2-0! Kevin Allison's 50th career goal. It's quality according to the commentator.
53 mins: Aldershot miss a 'glorious' chance. Kirk Henderson is looking lively.
62 mins: Don Goodman is concerned that the Rotherham fans may be celebrating too early. Rotherham are playing on adrenalin, and certain players are 'flying close to the wind.'
70 mins: Ryan Taylor's got the 'hook.'
84 mins: Ronnie Moore is concerned about the 'needless afters' that may lead to a yellow card and rob someone of their Wembley chance.

Rotherham hang on for the win and they're dancing in the streets of the Don Valley...

...Rewind 35 years to Steven Herrington's house on a midsummer morning. The 6 week holiday stretches endlessly before us and we are in the middle of what promises to be the definitive Subbuteo competition of our lives.

For the uninitiated - girls and anyone from any gender under 40 - Subbuteo was to my day what FIFA2010World/Euro/Manager/Championship/NintendoWii/PS3blahblahblah is nowadays. The basic premise was that you each had a team of 11 little men on tiny plinths, whom you would flick or nudge to 'kick' the ball - which you can see was scalewise about the size of a London bus compared to the players (they hadn't invented perspective then.)

I would imagine my sons would find it just about the dullest thing ever invented, but to us it was reality. We re-enacted entire cup competitions, game-by-game, round by round. It took weeks. Each game could be played at its full 90 mins length, so we're talking about serious commitment here on the part of a young boy. From the age of about 8 to about 14, when I didn't play Subbuteo I played football, and when I didn't play football I played Subbuteo.

You had a green beize sheet in the shape of a football pitch, which you smoothed out to billiard-table levels on the living room carpet. No dog, mother or small child's toy could come within feet of the hallowed arena. Some of the more enterprising hammered their pitches to a large bit of chipboard to keep them flat. Then you just slid it under your bed to put away until game on the following morning. Of course, Nicky Pond and any of the nouveau riche in my area were able to afford some of the accessories it was possible to buy - referees, World Cup 74 footballs with black panels (see above - the normal balls were orange) corner flags, floodlights and even stands. I believe there was even a record you could buy that made crowd noises.

But we didn't need them.

Because we could provide our own crowd noises.

In my area, there were some talented crowd-noise merchants, at least 3 of whom could do a surround-sound-dolby-stereo-bang-and-olufsen quality impression of a live game. By now, Sportsnight With Coleman had popularised football on TV (still at that time a very rare occurrence) but also the art of commentating. So now we didn't just play Subbuteo we commentated on it, to give it the excitement of the games on the telly we'd been allowed to stay up to see.

Steven Herrington did a very passable impression of ITV's Hugh Johns, whose catch phrase 'One- Nothing' was stock-in-trade to all 12 year-old boys. I preferred the effortless authority of the BBC's David Coleman (catchphrase 'One-Nil') but I couldn't cut it with my impression of him, so I ended up not making much noise at all during a game.

But the Crown-Prince of the commentators was Mark 'Sledge' Liversidge. Mark had perfected a way of manoevring spittle in his cheeks and keeping it inside his throat for minutes at a time which was an absolutely perfect copy of the crowd noise in the 1974 West Germany World Cup.

The stadiums in that competition were so large, and the fans so intent on a constant barrage of claxon blowing, plus the sound on tellies had evolved so much, that the overall impression was like a kind of Eno-esque white noise. This, Sledge did to perfection. He had even perfected the art of running with a football and doing it, shouting 'Rivelino.. to Cubillas.. to Beckenbauer' as he went along, with each touch pretending to be a different player. It was impressive.

To this day, given half a chance to play football with my kids in any park, I still do this. My kids look at me as if I am daft. But they know, for a moment, as I run with the ball, mimicking Gerson for Brazil in the 74 quarter final from Gelsenkirchen, I am exactly the same age as them.

I am also The Most Talented Footballer On The Planet And Certainly Way Better Than Them. I roll and cuss, fake and faint, Cruyff turn and generally ponce around like any Dad worth his salt would do in this situation.

I am 'Dad'alinho.

And you have the nerve to wonder why I watched the Rotherham game.

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Two Bobby Charltons For A Ralph Coates

Today, I received a wonderful present.

My friend Craig surprised and delighted me when he delivered impromptu a whole set of Manchester City football cards, which his son had collected. They were surplus to his requirements, but I didn’t care – the very feel and smell of them transported me back in time.

Marsden's sweet shop, somewhere in industrial northern England, 1970. The same shop in which Melanie Brown told the lie on me and Shorey that led to us being caned for the alleged and never-proven theft of a packet of Fruitgums – but also the central meeting place for any eight year olds worth their salt ‘n’ shake crisps.

Normally, the experience of going into Marsdens was a highly-charged one. Every lunchtime, me and Peter Scott would go home for our dinners. As I left, my mum would give me a sixpence and also one for Pete; whom I would then call for and we would in turn extort a similar sum from his mum.

Replete with our booty, we would head for Marsden’s. There was lot you could get for sixpence in those days. As beady-eyed old Mr Marsden watched my every move from over the ice-cream fridge, my sixpence would almost melt from the trauma of having to choose between the following:

6 Bazooka Joes
A quarter of Cough Candy
A Curly Wurly
A bottle of Cresta
3 giant gobstoppers
2 packets of Chipmunk crisps

...or a packet of Pannini football cards. Actually, stickers then, and certainly not as flash as the one here. Photos were often taken by amateurs - or so it seemed, due to the very poor quality of many of the images. Poses fell into two categories: tight-lipped-arms-folded-stare, and 'action shot' - usually not of the player kicking the ball because they hadn't invented electronic shutters on cameras back then.

So what you got was Franny Lee or Mick Jones running, with the ball long gone. It was a bit like Spot The Ball, the football gambling game which my dad used to let me do (just like the Bread Man and the Pop Man and the Fish Man there was the Pools Man - he'd bring the Littlewoods coupons, and also a picture with the ball somehow erased from it - way before Photoshop. You had to look at where the players' eyes were drawn to, and place an 'X' where you thought the ball was. Of course I assumed that the players would be actually looking at the ball when I did my 'X' - but it never seemed to be in the place I thought it would be.)

Anyway, the idea with the cards was that you would bring them to school, see what the other boys had, then swap yours with theirs to fill in the missing gaps in your album (at least I think there were albums then - that might have come in with stickers - it's more likely that you just kept them in a tin.)

My grandad had millions of them, being a lifetime smoker. In the 60s, as Swinging London grooved, Northern England collected coupons. It must have been a hangover from the days of rationing (I remember my mum and nannan would sing songs about rationing in the car when we'd go on journeys, as if they were actually nostalgic for it. I never did get the whole nostalgia thing - until I actually started becoming nostalgic myself. I wonder what today's cynical youth will be nostalgic for - 'Ah, Taneesha, remember the good old days of Chlamydia and Methadrone' they'll probably say as they laugh whimsically.)

Anyway, my grandad had sets of birds, cars, stately homes, scenes of rural England, biblical stories etc. The entire cohort of graphic designers which existed in the country at the time must have been kept busy by fag-smoking miners. As well as the ciggie cards, there were the Co-op stamps (Green Shield stamps) an early forerunner of the loyalty card system we have now in supermarkets. He had books and books of them, although as far as I could work out they seemed to have no value whatsoever - you could collect whole shelffulls and still only have enough to buy an egg cup.

So anyway, there I am, at school, bartering with Vaughny and Pondy et al over these football cards. It seemed as though most of the male population of the school had a collection - perhaps again, this is where the male fascination with collecting things comes from - we're all little boys at heart.

'I'll swap your Bobby Charlton for my Ralph Coates' was the playtime mantra. But what was really interesting was how, slowly over time, as more and more people bought them, the cards acquired a kind of intrinsic value - like money. The more people who played, the rarer the rare cards became. Imagine the primordial psychology among the Chro-magnon hunter-gatherer swamp dwellers which enabled the cunning to survive and prolong the existence of the human race; cunning that created money from bones or scraps of flint; money which enabled them to barter with the tribe in the next field for a leg off a Sabretooth Tiger or something - it's right there in our fights over the value of Cyril Knowles. Watch the opening scene from Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey and you'll se what I mean.

So, down to the primordial swamp we duly descended. Fights broke out, satchels were looted, noses were bloodied and teeth forcibly removed over these cards. The natural order was preserved as Vaughny and his clan mugged the 'puffs' for having the sheer luck to acquire Gordon Banks from Marsdens.

And in the same spirit, did I not today receive my cards, wave them about in front of every bloke I could find (100% of whom were genuinely excited for me) to the utter bemusement of those females within hailing distance.

Then, when no-one was looking, I locked them in my drawer so no-one could nick them.

I'm buying an album tomorrow.
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The Barcelona Shirt

1974. How was a pubescent boy from the north of England going to discover romance in life?

Answer: Miss McDermott.

Miss McDermott was one of the 3 most beautiful women on the planet in 1974. All my mates had a crush. Pondy wanted her. Shorey wanted her. Vaughny wanted her. But they were all too thick and too proletarian. Miss McDermott was mine.

She taught Art and had a yellow Triumph Stag. She had long dark hair and a sultry pout. She was my heart's desire. When I think of her I think of the woman in The Lamb's Navy Rum ad, above.

Or the models on the cover of Country Life, below:

I loved Art. Mr Mellard, the Head of Art, had studied under Frank Auerbach at The Slade (no mean feat for a guy from Rotherham. By the way - Luddites - look up Frankie-boy and learn.)

But he wasn't Miss McD. Obviously.

My other main squeeze was Miss Hunt: blonde bob, and resplendent in a chain of figure hugging woolens. She had the best tits ever known to human science. I literally could not concentrate in History lessons, and put my failure to pass O Level History entirely down to drooling over her. Me and Pondy were obsessed by her.

The third most beautiful woman in the world was my Spanish teacher, Miss Henderson. In our first lesson she gave me a Spanish name, which she always called me: Pablo. All the class had names, but mine seemed somehow more authentic. I began to love Spanish life and culture, as we learned about (what was then) life under General Franco. And of course I fancied the arse off her.

I think a study should be done into the educational attainment of 14-16 year old boys. It would clearly reveal that exam success rates show a direct relationship to how much they fancy their teacher; and failure rate would likewise depend on how much they were trying to wank off in class because they also fancied their teacher.

I suppose Miss Henderson must have had a love of Catalunya, because I don't recall ever being told anything good about the Franquistas. Barcelona, was, however, the home of la revolucion, and seemed to me to represent all that was good, modern and progressive about a Spain which was still mired in manana, omerta and bureaucratic crap.

And so it was that we were given the chance to go on a school trip to Barcelona.

I've been once, and it has become my favourite city ever since. Something about it - La Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi park, Las Ramblas - seduced me and stuck with me ever since.

It was in Barcelona that I first snogged Hazel Spotswood. It was in Barcelona that I ordered my first ever cerveza.

It was in Barcelona that Johann Cruyff played football.

In Sugg's sports shop there were 4 football boots of choice to the truly discerning young player: Adidas Beckenbauer, Puma Pele Rio, Stylo Matchmakers (more of which in another chapter) ...

...and Puma Cruyff.

These were the most gorgeous boots known to man. Because Cruyff was the most gorgeous man known to woman. He was like a Dutch Georgie best - only better. His skills were outrageous: the Cruyff turn is still something today's footballers struggle to master. You wanted to be him. He had 14 on his shirt. I only thought football shirts went up to 11. It was incredible.

And Cruyff had transferred that year from the impossibly glamorous Ajax of Amsterdam, to the utterly-unimpeachably glamorous FC Barcelona.

I'm reminded of this at present, because this weekend is the weekend of El Gran Clasico - Barca v Real Madrid. The republic and the people v the preening royalists. A club still owned by its fans versus one mired in debt, debauchery and scandal. A club which did not take sponsorship on its shirt (until latterly it became sponsored by UNICEF) versus Corporate Mammon Whore. Wonderful Messi v cheating bighead, ex-Man U Ronaldo.

There is and can only be one team to support. This is what happened the same year when Barca met Real in
el clasico.



And so it was, in 1974, that I saved up my entire spending money for the school trip, and went to El Corte Ingles to buy a Johann Cruyff Barcelona shirt. The very one below.

My mum saves everything. So a year or so ago I asked her if she still had it. The answer she gave me broke my heart.

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The Rec'

The Rec' was a muddy football pitch, replete with cowpats and broken bottles; later to have the addition of a swing, that was where we hung out as kids.

It was the place I learned to french kiss with Julie Garton; the scene of my first proper appearance in a football team (managed, unfeasibly, by Neil Warnock) - in short, legendary. But legendary maybe for one particular reason.

All the good fights happened at the Rec'.

To explain why, you need to know a little more about the politics of living where I lived in the 70s.

You may have read about school bully Vaughny and his dynasty in other posts. But before Vaughny there were other contenders.

Neil Beever for one.

Bee - and later his neanderthal brother Ian - were part of a triad of loosely-related fiefdoms that ruled where we lived in the 70s.

It was like South Central Los Angeles in industrial England: to the south was Barber Close, in which Vaughny and his brother Dave lived. To the east, in 60s regeneration 2up2downland, was Beever territory. But to the north, in the old houses by the church, was the even more imposing hegemony of the Rattenburys, Neil and Alan.

For me the great fights of the 70s - Rumble In The Jungle Ali vs Forman; Ali vs Frazier in the Thrilla In Manilla - were matched, nay surpassed, by the battles taking place in my own home town.

Because when there was a fight, everything stopped. Word would go round in advance, like social networking nowadays, and any kid worth his salt would arrive at the 'Rec to see the latest spectacle.

I remember one particular battle between Vaughny and Bee. We were playing football - as we did every day after school, until it got dark, day in, day out - and often there would be some niggle between one person and another that would lead to fisticuffs.

But this was different.

Bee vs Vaughny was a grudge match trailed in advance. Vaughny's hegemony was in full swing - he was smart, attractive, hard, and clever. And Bee wasn't. He was barely able to express himself in the English language. And Vaughny had humiliated him with some taunt or other about how thick he (actually) was. And he was Einstein compared to his brother.

It was like Ali vs Frazier. Don King was probably there to promote it.

So we probably played football for 3 or 4 hours that night, and only at the end of the game did the real action start. There was no spontanaeity to it - everyone knew there was going to be a fight - but at the end of the game, so it seemed, the number of kids on the 'Rec grew by about a million percent.

I think the fight lasted about an hour. It was a truly spectacular event, in which each man fought the other to a standstill: cheered on, so it seemed, by hundreds of thousands of people.

Try as he may, Vaughny could never quite break Bee down. He tried everything - gauging, kicks to the bollocks, hitting him with tree branches - and still Bee would not go down. People came and went; bought ice creams and drinks; went home and had their teas and watched Magpie on telly; did their homework - yet Vaughny and Bee fought on.

Eventually, everyone got bored and it got dark and the fight just stopped. But Vaughny and Bee had gained a new respect for each other. From that point, two tribes melted into one, and the Vaughan/Beever alliance briefly threatened total domination. Hoppy (see Hoppy and Vincey) hitched a ride at this point.

But they still could not compete with the Rattenburys.

The Rattenburys were royalty: Vaughan and Beever merely new money. The Rattenburys' right to the title of hardest in the town went back to the days of the Domesday Book.

And it too had its defining moment.

The fight of all fights had happened a few weeks before, by the tree-swing from which you could enter the 'Rec across a small stream by the main road:

Neil Rattenbury vs his own brother Alan.

I had befriended Alan, who was at least 4 years older than me and in the 5th year (Year 11 to you modern people) at school when I was in the first year - year 7 nowadays. (By the way, what exactly IS year 7 or 11? You went to juniors until year 4 and then you started again in year 1 at secondary. Bollocks to all the rest. New age shit.)

Anyway, I think Alan indulged me because I was younger and so I became his second in the fight against Neil. We walked down together to the fight, and I remember an immense sense of pride that I was in Alan's corner. I felt good. Vaughny, Bee et al were metaphorically in the front row, checking out the opposition.

The fight was short and brutal. Alan won, memorably, by ripping his own brother's eyebrow off.

The 'Rec's reputation as a legendary venue was secure; and I was, briefly, the centre of the universe.

Alan Rattenbury went on to a life of being a butcher or something.

Somewhere in a womb, Mike Tyson was watching and taking notes.
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The Day I Grew Up

June 1973. I am 11 years old and about to leave primary school for secondary school: a whole new world of violence, Shangalang and kung fu stars.

Ian Vaughan - Vaughny - is in his omnipotent pomp: soon to graduate to the position of King of secondary school reserved for him by his brother Dave (see other blog entries).

Below him in the hierarchy: Grant Hopkinson (see earlier chapters again); Martin Mitchell; even the dreaded 'Drac' - Neil Boulton, the first child I ever saw with black teeth. Six foot of spittle and venom.

Most of the girls at primary school were anonymous in gingham and pigtails. Julie Garton however though actually only 11 herself at the time, was sex on legs. There was only one Julie, and she knew it, and she had us all dragging our tongues on the floor.

But how to win Julie...

It was impossible. Vaughny had it stitched up, and anyway she was going to a different school to the rest of us - in only a few weeks' time.

It seemed that only the most dramatic gesture would work.

And so the day came of the school sports day.

Sports days for most normal people were not the anodyne affairs those of us with our own children know so well in the modern era. Imagine the mentality of creating non-competitive sports days - as nowadays - in which everyone wins and no-one loses. I cannot think of a worse lesson in life to teach anyone. Sport teaches children how to take knocks in life, to lose with dignity and to win with sportmanship and good grace. So let's throw beanbags around in a circle to make sure no middle class Jemima or Noah cries - thus saving the school from their irate, equally middle class, equally useless-at-sport parents who themselves had suffered cruel humiliation in their own childish sports days and determined thereafter to create a legal framework where no-one actually ever wins anything in case anyone else gets upset.

Political correctness gone mad.

I'm convinced the world is actually run by people who were crap at sport as children.

So to the day. The usual egg and spoon races come and go. The scores are neck and neck. The last race is the hundred metre sprint. Peter Vince is in it (German, chocolate box house etc); so is Ian Goldthorpe (the only thing about whom I remember is he had a budgie and a clarinet - so loser from he outset)....

...me...

...and Vaughny.

He was a stick-on. Had to be. He was the best at pulling girls, the best at football, the fastest, the hardest and the most glamorous. And he was Born To Be King.

I suppose you can only imagine the events that followed if you are mentally playing the theme from Chariots of Fire in your head.

Ok... that's better...'Dum da da da dum dum...'

A photographer took a picture of it (which I have sadly lost, but which made the papers and everything) and which explains the whole thing. I have borrowed a pair of rubbish spikes from I know not who. I've trained, dieted, prepared my best and am pumped up. I've even made my own gum-shield out of toilet paper.

The gun goes.

I get off to a flyer. Streak past Vincey. Streak past Goldie. I can see my mum at the sidelines cheering me on. I can see Julie Garton watching, willing me to win, I know.

Fifty yards. No Vaughny. Sixty yards. No Vaughny. Eighty yards. No Vaughny.

By this time the crowd (seemingly millions) is in a frenzy. The shock of a lifetime is on the cards. I seem to see Julie's face at all points on the journey, as if she is following me down the track. She is saying to me 'win it for me Paul and I will be your prize', like a kind of Greek goddess in the sky. They say some religions are promised 70 virgins in heaven as a reward for a righteous life. I just wanted this one.

Ninety yards. Still no Vaughny. Julie's panties were a whisker away.

As I breasted the tape, years before Colin Welland ever had the idea in his head, the photograph was to reveal all.

We had been separated out into teams - each given a colour - Goldie yellow, Vincey green, Vaughny red and me blue. There were actually only 4 colours in the 70s anyway. We had to wear these sashes over our shoulders signifying our allegeance (Julie was also a blue, natch).

Vaughny's had become caught up as he faffed around with it at the start, and had held him back.

Of course he never forgave me. But that day I won Julie's heart - over him - and took my first step towards being a man. I felt like bloody Lancelot.

Julie left soon afterwards and went to a nearby secondary school. The only times I ever saw her after that was when we played them at football. I captained our team, and she would come and watch me after her own netball match had finished.

It is now 35 years since I last saw her.

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Cityitis Strikes Again

Cityitis - the law of if it can go wrong it will go wrong in the world of Manchester City Football Club.

At around lunchtime today, an hour before the Manchester derby was due to begin, I contacted a friend (United supporter - from Nottingham, natch).

My text: stick on united win, probably as a result of some contentious decision which united get away with.

As the game progressed into the second half, United brought on Michael Owen. I've seen Owen play against City a million times, and it's the law that he always scores. So I text my mate: owen always scores against us.

The ref plays six minutes of Fergietime at the end of the game - when he had added on four. Owen turns up with 15 seconds of this to go and scores to send City fans into a slough of despond.

Work tomorrow will be a nightmare. I'm already thinking how I can throw a sickie, merely to avoid the self-satisfied non-Mancunians rubbing it in my face. And this when I'm on a hair-trigger with everything else that's going on.

Why am I always right - even when I don't want to be?
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Hide The Children

'Boxing fans, hide the children' was the ring announcer's introduction to Mike Tysons' s 12th fight against the 6'6" Eddie Richardson. He put him on the floor with his first punch.

At this point in his career, Tyson was irresistible, pure and true. He'd put down his 10th opponent, Covay, in 37 seconds. His 11th opponent said he'd never been hit as hard. Interviewed after, Tyson was calm, eloquent, polite, respectful - but most of all forensic - capable of analysing in minute detail each feint, each counter, each measuring-up-move that led to the demise of the latest sap. His voice, almost camp, lent each analysis a kind of kindness - indeed, he often comiserated with his opponents, almost sorry he'd given them so little chance.

Interviewers were not greeted with snarling self-aggrandisement - more delight to even be doing what he was doing; pleasure at having entertained the local fans; self-deprecating analysis of his own performance, and always a plea that he hoped his opponent was OK. At this point, Tyson didn't have a national audience in the US, much less an international one.

For his own part, whoever was put in front of him, Tyson would look him straight in the eye, no fear. Part of being a man, he said, was facing and overcoming your problems. It's an almost unbelievably mature thing to say. He must have been about 20 at the time.

How much of a man were you aged 20?

A few fights later, in arguably his best performance, he put down Trevor Berbick, who was at the time beating allcomers. Berbick's confidence was shattered by a right cross which staggered him backwards in an exaggerated, theatrical, moonwalk dance. One of the most confident, competent contenders of the time turned into a puerile, babyish, legless mess in front of my eyes.

This is the man we know and love - forget the monster accusations, the rape allegations, the financial scandals. This is a man at the peak of his beauty and I defy any other man not to want to be him at this point in his life.

I did.

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Thrilla In Manila

I have just watched someone die.

Funny to think of it, but this was the moment that Muhammad Ali took the first step towards death.

He was fighting Joe Frazier, his nemesis, his absolute apotheosis, in one of the three major bouts they had - bouts that not only defined the 70's: they were the 70s's.

Prince Far-I, the legendary 'toaster' (for anyone who understands old-school reggaeisms), recorded 'Big Fight' in homage to it. "Dreadlocks v Babylon - fifteen roun' of boxin.'" Ali was Dreadlocks - beautiful, free, cocky, sexy, irresistible. Frazier was Babylon: the Man - the police, the acceptable face of the ghetto; illiterate to Ali's poet; representative of mundane normality - as if he was personally bringing destruction to you, and would then laugh over your grave.

Imagine, fifteen three-minute rounds. Long ago they did away with that, certain in the knowledge that people were dying as a result. Today's pretentious, PC, health-and-safety conscious world just didn't exist in those times. The very idea of someone throwing a sickie to avoid work; or a footballer diving to earn a dubious penalty; of people having ME; of perfectly well people on Disability Benefit - man, they were something from another planet. So they long ago reduced it to twelve rounds - and if anyone so much as gets a nick, the towel comes in nowadays.

Ali and Frazier fought each other to a standstill. By the end, huge, egg-shaped weals covered Frazier's face - but he never for one moment stopped believing, stopped coming forward. His gum shield was ripped from his mouth on several occasions (nowadays they call a time-out, wash the gumshield - as it has been on the floor, god forbid) but he just had to fight on, mouth being turned inside-out by cruel punches, aimed deliberately to maim.

At the end of the fight - the 14th round to be precise - Frazier just couldn't continue. But even then, he didn't make the decision to quit. You can see him arguing with his cornermen, begging for one last chance.

But Ali is in fact worse. He has won the fight, but at first doesn't actually realise it. He is virtually comatose in his corner. I am convinced that this is the precise moment that Parkinsons begins for him. Something has happened to his mind. No-one is giving him any fluids (of course they didn't understand the importance of that in those days) so: he just slumps. In fact he tries to stand up, but drops to the canvas with exhaustion and needs to be helped onto a stool. Still no fluids administered. His brain must have been frying at this point.

Harry Carpenter, the legendary BBC reporter, talks about how Ali has 'harmed his own future' with this performance. How prophetic those words were to become. Carpenter tries to interview him in the ring but Ali can't communicate with him.

Two weeks ago, Ali came to Manchester. Just as I had thirty years ago with Pele, my other boyhood hero, I missed it. I may never, ever have the chance to see him in person again before he dies.

One of the greatest regrets of my life.


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I Shook Up The World

In 1964, Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston.

Didn't just beat him, annihilated him. He was 22. I was 2.

After the fight, there was bedlam in the ring. Liston was the meanest mofo on the planet, a really, really unpleasant individual from ghetto roots and determined to adminster ghetto retribution. Clay simply made a fool of him and delighted in his ritual humiliation. There followed some wonderful self-aggrandisement which set the tone for boxing interviews forever. The post-fight interviews and celebrations lasted longer than the fight. The entire posing canon of boxers who followed would copy it.

I had that picture on my wall for years.

It symbolised all my own fights, all my own fears and how to overcome them, my own self-belief. I went to many boxing matches; became a kind of amateur boxer; was fascinated by the combined brutality and nobility of the sport.

In this early pre-digital, pre-Sky, pre-everything era, when I was a little boy, sporting events from America were not available live - adding to the mystique of America for me - but broadcast days, maybe weeks later on the legendary Sportsnight.

Sportsnight was a kind of extension of the BBC's saturday sports show, Grandstand, but somehow more exotic to young boys because a) you had to stay up to watch it and b) it brought events you had literally never seen before: Clay v Liston. Real Madrid v Brian Clough's Derby County in the European Cup. The FA Cup final replay between Chelsea and Leeds. An era of The Damned United, which all of we 40-something little boys remember nowadays like our lives depend on it.

That's because they do.

My Dad would put me to bed at 8pm, but I didn't sleep, only pretended. Because he had promised me that if I went to bed he would wake me up and let me watch Sportsnight. Compliantly, as all children in that era were, I did. And so it was that I would be allowed to watch these wonderful events, now cynically available 24/7 on any digital channel you like, as if they were the most magical, mysterious events I'd ever seen - certainly since the moon landings. School the next day would buzz and crackle with thrilled post-match conversation.

Children Of Today: there is really nothing left to amaze you - is there? You are bored of everything almost as soon as it happens; cynical about everything; impatient about everything; want everything now without working for it.

That's why Clay - when I was asked during some poxy management training session in a nonedescript plastic hotel - about heroes; was my choice and will always be my choice. When he dies I will mourn the passing of possibly the greatest human being outside of Mandela still alive.

He exists in black and white, like my childhood, and belongs to an age when people were kind and noble, uncynical and never, ever bored.

And he shook the world, like I wanted to but only managed the slightest undulation. Still, I wouldn't've even disturbed the ripples without him.

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My Seat

This is the view from my seat at the City of Manchester Stadium - home, if you don't know, to Manchester City Football Club.

This seat is my property. I live here. And I will die here. This seat will be my viewpoint on triumph, tragedy and disaster. And long after I have gone, this seat will continue to exist - in the same way that in the cycle of life, we die, decompose, and feed other organisms, whom in turn feed the next generations.

This seat will be where I am sitting when I hear the news that my dad has died; my son has been returned to prison; my car/house/belongings have all been destroyed in a fire; my girlfriend has left me.

And you know what, I'll sit there, hunker down, take it all in and philosphise that at least there is somewhere that I still belong.

My love for Manchester City is deep and longstanding. On top of that, I've been a seasonticket holder on-and-off for the entire time I've been a parent. It's as if I needed another baby. This year, being a seasonticket holder is more special than ever. City are officially the richest football club in the world. We can buy whoever we want: Pele, Maradona, Shaquille O'Neil, Johnny Depp, Barrack Obama - anyone.

You have to be a City fan to understand what this means. City have always been shit. I mean, always. The gloom has been occasionally lightened by glimmering moments of drama - the play-off final v Gillingham in '99; the Keegan promotion season, and, er, that's it. Since the 60's anyway. United fans have a banner with removable stickers, showing how many years it is since we've won anything. They just change the number each year. That's how crap we are.

Compare our fortunes with 'the other lot'. In 1999 we got promoted from the second division (third division in old money). United won the league, cup and European Cup. Plus 3 Oscars for Best Picture, OBEs, the final of Celebrity Come Dancing and the Queen's Award for Industry. I was living in Hulme, at the bottom of the road which leads down from Old Trafford. United had an open-top bus parade virtually right past my house. The complete BASTARDS. It felt like they were personally rubbing it in.

The ex-manager Joe Royle coined a phrase to describe the fortunes of the club: Citiyitis. What he meant by this was, it doesn't matter how much money we have; how many fantastic players come; how many people come to games; who the directors or manager are - City will always fuck up. If something can go wrong, it will - and still does. That's why many City fans view our new-found wealth with mild amusement, just waiting for Cityitis to kick in.

So what makes a person follow this team?

Perhaps it's an almost Shakespearean fatalism - as if we enjoy the catharsis of the next tragedy which is about to befall us. Conversely, it's a kind of dogged optimism - we've stuck with them for this long, surely things will eventually come good, if we just wait a little bit longer??

For me, it's something more. Every 3 or 4 years, my life can be relied upon to contract Cityitis. If something can go wrong, it will; and try as I may, I seem unable to break this cycle. It's a relationship breakdown; it's the realisation that my career is stuck in a dead-end; it's a financial meltdown; it's some personal tragedy. Often it's all of them together. And I can feel it happenning again, soon. I know the signs - personal and professional relationships sour, to the point of non-communication and fixed, belligerent stance. A sense of being beleaguered by the numerous hangers on and dependents grows - a feeling that you're getting absolutely nothing out of all the effort you've put into life, all the support and help that you've given other people, and all of the money you've thrown at it. There is only one solution - move on. Break the cycle somehow. This usually involves a complete change of circumstances - new town, new job, new friends, new life.

I'm so absolutely fucking sick and tired of it. I want to walk into the sea.

Then I remember City.

So I go to the next game, sit in my seat, believe and belong.


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Rainbow Over The 11th

I wouldn't say that golf has become more important to me than sex or money, but there are times when it comes very close. Look, Hemingway managed to make bullfighting interesting to the uninitiated so, as the saying goes, suspend your disbelief.

Golf at its best is a duel with the elements, whilst at the same time the player is at one with the elements. Today, for example, I was simultaneously caught in a howling gale on the 9th, pissed all over on the 10th, and sweating in a heatwave on the 11th. That's what caused the rainbow, of which more in a moment. I saw a family of coots cross the 11th, parents like a school crossing patrol, ushering the fledglings from one side of the fairway to the safety of the stream on the other side. I saw a falcon hang in the air and then silently dive to take its prey as I putted home for par on the 13th. Then on the 16th, I was surrounded by a swarm of around 100 swallows, hugging the contours of the fairway in low-slung swoops; gliding in search of flies, like water boatmen across a clear lake.

Oh, and I also got round the back 9 in a more-than respectable-but-not-exactly-Tiger-Woods score of 44, against a par of 37. I'm not shabby.

That's because I've put in the hard yards - hours and hours of socking it down the driving range in the wintertime; then tentative knocks from the ladies' tee to build my confidence in the spring. Then finally, when I got my new clubs (Ping G10s, natch), hammering it off the pro-tee with the best of them. It's a metaphor for my personal and intellectual development. I feel that at this stage of my life and career, I've done the work I need to do to get here - personally and professionally I'm on the pro-tee.

I almost always play alone - normally because I hate most of the white-van-men whose outsize egos are only matched by their outsize waistlines; not by their limited talent or technique. And judging by the lack of women on the course, that lack of technique is not limited to the golf course. I wonder what happens behind the bedroom doors of a thousand north-east golf widows. I really hope they're getting some from the milkman or the neighbour's teenage son.

So it's against this background that I stepped out today. It had been a hard day - in so much as I'd broken my holiday to dutifully go into work and collect latest performance results - which were an abberation. As I popped my head round the Director's door the senior managers sat in a disgruntled huddle - like grizzly bears, awoken from their winter slumber to find something has shat in their cave. I knew that next week I would pay.

I left as soon as I humanly could, and tried to reason why I still worked there at all. I couldn't find a reason - not even a lukewarm one.

I'm in the middle of a mid-life crisis. I don't even want to work. I want to write, take photographs, walk the earth, speak other languages, feel the sun on my back. I don't give a flying fuck about performance data or the corporate bottom line. I'm working in a metaphorical McDonalds. All that experience and training, and I'm serving people metaphorical burgers, so in turn they will be able to go forth into society and serve other people burgers.

So when I got to the 11th, away from all that, and looked back over the fairway from the green, I looked at that rainbow with renewed hope. Things do - and will - have a way of working out. I don't know how yet, but that rainbow reminded me that it just might be possible.
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