Smells Like Teen Linament

Smells Like Teen Linament

It's getting cold again. Today was the first example of the kind of pre-winter damp fug that envelopes the north east in October and doesn't let go until around May: then, after the briefest flicker, resumes its place, sitting like a fat Cheshire cat on the skyline. Only without smiling.

Except that of course it's bloody June.

I braved the cold to pop out for a sandwich and then it happened.

Deja vu - by smell.

As I passed a group of chatting teenagers I caught the faint yet unmistakable whiff - of linament. People who have played football as an organised thing, in particular in the 70s and 80s, will know what linament is. It's a kind of warming embrocation - the consistency of calamine lotion; white like the stuff you put on trainers; and smelling of dettol. Delicious. When you rub it on, however, the true magic of the lotion is revealed. It emanates a kind of deep heat that warms muscles and is supposed to relax you. Here's some:















It seemingly being minus 12 and a howling gale for the entire 1970s the warming properties of this embrocation on your legs were much appreciated. Every team used it, and the dressing room would stink of it before we ran out; hence the smell staying with me. We looked like a bunch of Brit-abroad sunbathers who had put on too much Factor 45.

Flashback.

1975. I am captain of the school football team and all-round heartthrob. I am playing for my Sunday league team against our greatest rivals, Netherton, and their star player Danny Thomas, later to be a fixture of the Spurs team of the 80s. My personal rival. He has probably forgotten all about me, but not me him.

Netherton are the Harlem Globetrotters of the area. They are a feeder team for Coventry's youth system and as a result get to wear that amazing chocolate brown Admiral kit that Cov had in those days. See below. They've also got Stylo Matchmakers - the boot-de-rigeur of the period. Two white flashes either side of the lace. Don Revie's Leeds team were their most famous models. Unspeakably cool boots. I could never afford them, and the only player who could in our team, Andy Dickens (Dicko) was of course the best player in the team by far. It was as if you weren't allowed Stylo Matchmakers unless you were any good. The entire Netherton team had them, of course.

Anyway, back to the match.

It's a typical 70's northern industrial town pitch: cowshit at one end and broken glass at the other. In the middle a sea of mud, and yet each goalmouth as barren of anything remotely reassuring for a goalie to dive on as your average car park. What grass there is is 6 inches long.

....and Didier Drogba or whoever moans because he's turned his ankle on the Wembley surface. Are these people complete jessies?

It's about halfway through the second half. Danny and I go in for a tackle. The two titantic captains go head to head.

What Danny doesn't know is that about a year earlier I have been diagnosed with a congenital weakness to my back - basically the last vertebra in my spine doesn't fit onto my pelvis - just sits on top of it. As I grow, it stretches away from my pelvis, the nerves get trapped, the pain goes down my legs and I can't walk. I have to wear a metal corset - not a good look - to hold myself in place until the growth spurt passes. It turns out this will be my last year as captain, because the injury will force me out of the game as a player. I wake up each day in pain, but won't tell my Dad because he would stop me playing. So I'm often struggling by the time the second half approaches.

So we go in for the tackle.

Now, I'm not saying Danny was a dirty player, but he was hard, as kids who make the grade tend to be. However, what happened next would undoubtedly result in him getting an early bath if he was a Premiership player now.

Danny goes in head first. Whether he slipped or something I don't know, but the effect is that I get nutted, Zidane-style, in the chest. I go over the top of him and land in a heap. Not only are two of my ribs broken, but my back has also pinged and I'm an invalid.

Danny gets up, sniffs, trots off - much in the manner of Billy Bremner in those staged matches in The Damned United.

Ref doesn't see a thing, natch. Then has a go at me for swearing. I think the actual appearance of the ambulance persuaded him to blow the whistle a few minutes early.

Funny thing is - looking back at it. Danny did me a favour.

I was a very promising player - on the verge of trials at City - but I probably wouldn't have made it in the way Danny did. My Dad felt so sorry for me he bought me my first record player; which kick-started a lifelong obsession with music; which led to me being in a band from my mid-teens; which led to Peel sessions, record contracts, TV, major gigs.

Unfortunately, however, I did not write Smells Like Teen Spirit. That was another fella, who apparently was injured in a horror tackle by Alexei Lalas, trying out for Seattle Sounders.