The Damned Utd

Day Two

September 1965. The Chase Hotel, York. Five pints and five whiskies playing hide and seek in your guts. Jobless and boozing, fat and fucked, you are in hell. You’ll play one more match for Sunderland. Your testimonial in front of a record 31,000 fans. Ten grand in your pocket. But it won’t last. Jobless and boozing. Not at this rate. Fat and fucked. Not unless Peter says yes –

Peter Taylor. The only friend you’ve ever had. Peter Taylor –

He was a Probable and you were a Possible for Middlesbrough back in 1955. Their second-choice keeper and their fourth-choice striker –

But he liked you then. He believed in you then. He talked to you about football. Morning, noon and night. Taught you about football. He brought out the best in you. Moral courage. Physical bravery. The strength to run through brick walls. He brought out the worst. The arrogance. The selfishness. The rudeness. But he still liked you when you became club captain. Believed in you when the rest of the team despised you, when they plotted and petitioned the club to get rid of you –

And you need him now. That belief. That faith. More than ever –

‘I’ve been offered the manager’s job at Hartlepools United,’ you tell Peter. ‘And I don’t much fancy the place, the club or the man who’s offered me the bloody job but, if you come, I’ll take it.’

But Peter is the manager of Burton Albion. Burton Albion are top of the Southern League. Peter has his new bungalow. His wife and kids settled. Peter is on £41 a week and a three-year contract. His wife shakes her head. His kids shake their heads –

But Peter looks at you. Peter stares into those eyes –

That desire and ambition. That determination and arrogance –

Peter sees the things he wants to see. Peter hears the things he wants to hear –

‘You’ll be my right arm, my right hand. Not an assistant manager, more a joint manager. Except they don’t go in for titles at Hartlepools, so we’ll have to disguise you, disguise you as a trainer.’

‘A trainer?’ he asks. ‘I’ll drop down from being a manager to a trainer?’

‘Aye,’ you tell him. ‘And the other bad news is that they can’t afford to pay you more than £24 a week.’

‘£24 a week,’ he repeats. ‘That means I’ll lose £17 a week.’

‘But you’ll be in the league,’ you tell him. ‘And you’ll be working with me.’

‘But £17 is £17.’

The five pints find the five whiskies. The five pints catch the five whiskies –

You put £200 on the table and tell him, ‘I need you. I don’t want to be alone.’

You’re going to spew if he refuses. You’re going to die if Pete says no.

‘I’ll come then,’ he says. ‘But only because it’s you.’

Peter Taylor. The only man who ever liked you. Ever got on with you –

Your only friend. Your right hand. Your shadow.

* * *

They are waiting for us again. My youngest lad and me. The crows around the floodlights. The dogs around the gates. They are waiting for us because we are late again, my youngest lad and me –

Thursday 1 August 1974.

Bad night, late dreams; faceless, nameless men; red eyes and sharpened teeth.

Half an hour arguing with my boys over breakfast; they don’t want to go to work with me today. They didn’t like it there yesterday. But my youngest lad feels sorry for me. My youngest lad gives in. My wife takes the eldest and my daughter into Derby to get their new school shoes. I have a slice of toast and don’t answer the telephone. Then my youngest lad and me get in the car and drive up the motorway –

The boots and the blades that marched up and down this route …

To the crows around the floodlights. Dogs around the gates –

Roman legions and Viking hordes. Norman cunts and royalist whores …

The press. The fans. The steady, grey rain. The endless, grey sky –

The emperors and the kings. Oliver Cromwell and Brian Clough.

I park the car. I get out. I do up my cuffs. I don’t look at my watch. I get my jacket out of the back. I put it on and ruffle my youngest lad’s hair. He’s looking across the car park –

Up the banking. To the training ground –

Hands on their hips in their purple tracksuits, waiting. Their names on their backs, whispering, whispering, whispering –

Bastards. Bastards. Bastards.

Jimmy Gordon comes down the steps. Jimmy says, ‘Can I have a word, Boss?’

I’ve known Jimmy Gordon since I was a player at Middlesbrough. Doesn’t work hard enough on the field, he once wrote in a report on me. Jimmy didn’t like me much then. He hated me. Thought I was a right bloody show-off. Big-headed. Selfish. He once told me, Instead of scoring thirty goals a season, why don’t you score twenty-five and help someone else to score fifteen? That way the team’s ten goals better off. I didn’t listen to him. I wasn’t interested. But I was when I went to Hartlepools. First job I had, I tried to get Jimmy to come and coach for us. But Jimmy wasn’t interested. That changed when we got to Derby. I spent five hours round his house –

He said, ‘Why me? All we do is argue.’

‘That’s why I want you,’ I told him.

Five hours later, Jimmy still didn’t like me. But he had his price. Everybody has. So I found him a house and I got the chairman to pay a £1,000 interest-free deposit on it –

But Jimmy still didn’t like me much then. Jimmy still doesn’t like me much now. Jimmy looks around the room –

‘What the bloody hell are we doing here?’ he asks me –

I’m sat in that office. Don’s office. In that bloody chair. Don’s chair. Behind that fucking desk. Don’s desk. My youngest on my knee. To cheer me up. A brandy in my hand. To warm me up –

‘They’ll never forgive you,’ says Jimmy. ‘Not after all the things you’ve said. They never forget. Not round here.’

‘That right, is it?’ I laugh. ‘So why did you agree to come and join me then?’

‘Much as I don’t like you,’ he smiles, ‘I don’t like to think of you in trouble.’

I finish my brandy. I ask him, ‘You want a lift tomorrow morning?’

‘So I can drive you back?’

I pick my lad up off my knee. I put him down. I wink at Jimmy –

‘Best not keep them waiting any longer,’ I tell them both.

* * *

Welcome to the edge of the world. To Hartlepools –

You can drop off the edge of the world at Hartlepools. On the beach at Seaton Carew. Bottom of the entire Football League and up for re-election again –

Many men will never know. Many men will never understand –

Heaven is here. Here where the Victoria Ground was cursed by a Zeppelin bomb, here where the roofs now leak and there are buckets in the boardroom to catch the rain, where the stand is made of wood and the terraces are covered in chicken feathers, where the chairman is a five-foot millionaire who made his money as a credit draper and who bugs your office and your house, and where the players are adulterers, drunks, thieves and gamblers who play in their street socks. This is heaven here –

For you and Pete, together again and working again –

The youngest manager in the Football League –

You on £40 a week, Pete on £24 –

The bucket-and-sponge man –

‘We’re in the shit good and proper, make no mistake,’ says Pete. ‘We’ll be asking for re-election at the end of the season. Bound to finish bottom. Lower if we could. Something’s got to be done about this lot and done fucking quick.’

But it’s you who paints the stand. Who unblocks the drains. You who cuts the grass. Who empties the rainwater from the buckets. You who goes round the colliery clubs. Who sits in committee rooms and stands on stages, asking for donations. You who borrows hand-me-down training kits from Sheffield Wednesday. Whose wife does the typing. You who takes your Public Service Vehicle Licence so you can drive the team bus. Who organizes the cars to Barnsley when you can’t afford a coach. You who buys the team fish and chips. Who goes without wages for two months –

The newspapers, the photographers and the television cameras, all there to witness and record the whole bloody show. The pens, the tape recorders and the microphones, all there for that big bloody open mouth of yours:

‘Age does not count. It’s what you know about football that matters. I know I am better than the five hundred-odd managers who have been sacked since the war. If they had known anything about the game, they wouldn’t have lost their jobs. In this business you’ve got to be a dictator or you’ve no chance, because there is only one way out for a small club: good results and then more good results –

‘How hard it is to get them results, few people will ever know.’

Should I talk the way you want me to talk?

The bloody microphones and that bloody mouth of yours –

Say the things you want to hear?

Infecting the press. Inspiring the players. Infuriating the chairman –

This is the start of it all. This is where it all begins –

That new accent. That new drawl –

Hartlepools, 1965.

* * *

Pre-season. Fun and games. The 1974–75 season begins for real in sixteen days. Before that Leeds United, the League Champions, will play in three friendly matches and in the Charity Shield at Wembley against Liverpool, the FA Cup holders. The first friendly is at Huddersfield Town on Saturday, the day after tomorrow –

‘Enough pissing around,’ I tell them. ‘Let’s have a few games. Seven-a-sides.’

Hands on their hips, the first team shift their weight from foot to foot.

‘Bloody get on with it,’ I tell them. ‘Come on, get fucking moving.’

The team turn to look at Syd Owen, stood at the back with his hands on his hips –

Syd shrugs. Syd spits. Syd says, ‘Hope no one gets hurt.’

‘Thank you, Sydney,’ I shout back. ‘Now come on! Two teams.’

They take their hands off their hips but they still don’t move.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ I shout. ‘Harvey over there, Stewart here. Reaney there, Cooper here. McQueen there, Hunter here. Bremner there, Cherry here. Lorimer there, Giles here. Bates there, Clarke here. Madeley over there, and I’ll be here. Jimmy gets the whistle. Now let’s get fucking going —’

They amble about, pulling on bibs, kicking balls away, scratching their own.

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.