Читать книгу Super Frank - Portrait of a Hero - Douglas Thompson - Страница 12

‘He’s destined for the very top. He’s dedicated, he trains like a demon, he’s a great lad and he’s got a great attitude.’

SOUTHAMPTON BOSS HARRY REDKNAPP TALKING IN 1998 ABOUT HIS NEPHEW FRANK LAMPARD

For much of the past century, London’s East End was patrolled by the valiant and the villains, but, whichever beliefs or trade were adhered to, the family always came first.

Frank Lampard’s upbringing, which had novel and unorthodox aspects as he was to find out, was very much meat and potatoes from the outset. It was traditional. Dad was playing football. Or he was down the Black Lion pub, sipping lager with Bobby Moore and the lads. His mother Pat would be in the kitchen, and her sister Sandra’s husband Harry Redknapp, Uncle ’Arry, would be talking about the future of West Ham with Frank Lampard Senior. And, after that other bottle of red wine, predicting the futures of the cousins, Frank Junior and his own son, Jamie Redknapp.

What an England line-up! What a night out!

His dad was a Barking boy and Uncle Harry’s local pub was the Blind Beggar in London’s Whitechapel, where George Cornwell was murdered by the Kray twins, the bullet from Ronnie’s gun and the urging from Reg Kray.

It was that sort of topsy-turvy world. Money, politics and football. What’s changed?

’Appy ’Arry Redknapp and Frank Senior were heroes. They’d go to Top of the Pops and meet Pan’s People and the Rolling Stones and The Who, but they’d rather be back in the East End at the Ilford Palais or the Room at the Top nightclub where they knew the words to the songs.

Football made them stars, not dockers.

Frank Lampard Senior began his career at West Ham in 1967 with World Cup heroes like Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst, the Boleyn Boys. He made 633 appearances for West Ham and played twice for his country.

He became part of East End football folklore when he played in West Ham’s 1980 FA Cup final win over Arsenal. That victory only became possible because of his unheralded appearance in Everton’s penalty area, when he scored a back-post header after a cross from Trevor Brooking, in the semi-final replay. OK, it was the defender’s dance around the corner flag that contributed as much to his legend as the goal.

The one man he couldn’t handle with a football was Harry Redknapp SENIOR.

A clever player, the elder Harry Redknapp confused the much younger man when they had a kick-around game on the Isle of Sheppey in the late 1970s. And Frank Senior had just been picked to play for England; his brother-in-law still enjoys telling the story.

The two men are from the fringes of London, only a couple of Tube stops from Upton Park. When Frank (born in Canning Town on 20 September 1948) and Harry (born in Poplar on 2 March 1947) met Pat and Sandra Harris, sisters from Barking, they didn’t stretch their geographical expectations.

Silver Wedding anniversaries long ago celebrated, it seems the marriages were destined to be. Harry met Sandra and they went out for some time before breaking up.

Later, by chance, his fellow player Frank started going out with Pat Harris. And learned that her sister had once dated his pal Harry. Frank Senior takes up the story: ‘I suppose I was to blame. We were both players, Harry and I, and when I started to go out with my wife, who was then called Pat Harris, she told me that her older sister, Sandra, used to go out with Harry. So I suggested a foursome, Harry and Sandra got together again and it ended up with both couples getting married.’

The West Ham boys romanced the two sisters where local highlights were once visits to Barking Baths. ‘For weekend dances they used to floor over the swimming pool and have a band at the deep end,’ recalled Patricia Brown, who worked on the local newspaper.

‘You could smell the chlorine, but for lots of people in Barking and Romford and Ilford it was a big night out. There was nowhere else to go. The alternative was the Ilford Palais, but that was about it.

‘Later, for Frank and Harry and the sisters, there would be the Lotus Club in Stratford and also the boxer Billy Walker’s club in Forest Gate.

‘It was a different world: I’d see Bobby Moore, who was from Barking, on the 23C bus on his way to Upton Park. He’d get on at River Road.

‘Today it’s all Ferraris and private jets – back then one of England’s greatest ever players took the bus. Pele was the world’s greatest attacking footballer and Bobby was the world’s great defender – and he’d be taking the 23C bus.

‘Were they better days? I don’t know.

‘For us they were all major stars – Frank Lampard and Harry Redknapp were the youngsters following Bobby and Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst. West Ham was where it mattered and Frank and Harry kept it in the family.’

Frank Senior explained, ‘It was all football when Frank was growing up. The family have been lifelong West Ham fans and it seemed inevitable that Frank would join the club. He had offers from Tottenham, but it was always the Hammers for him.’

Young Frank and his sisters – Claire was aged thirty-four and Natalie thirty in 2005 heard football stories, the dramas, the near-misses, the mistaken referees, the boneheaded management – and managers – and the egotistical players, the temperamental ones and the class acts; they lived the ups and downs of the glories and defeats.

Every Saturday, three hours before home games, Dad would eat a steak. Before 6pm, around the time Dr Who started and they’d finished reading the football pools results on the radio and television, Frank Senior would be in the Black Lion with Bobby Moore and the others after one whistle blew and a different tune started. The personnel may have changed, but the routine for Frank Senior didn’t vary too much between 1967 and 1985.

‘Most of us came from the same area and we were mates. We’d enjoy ourselves, but if you do the right things on the pitch I believe it helps make you lucky.

‘Even when you pack up playing, the discipline which served you well as a player still holds you in good stead. We did a lot of long-distance running and we didn’t see a ball for ten days. We had someone to help us with our agility work, but warm-ups took ten minutes then; now it’s half an hour at least and it involves much more stretching.

‘Bobby Moore used to come in on a Sunday morning after the night before. He would put on a tracksuit, a couple of jumpers and do ten laps around Upton Park.

‘The biggest difference, though, is off the pitch. We could go out, have a few beers and relax, but now these players have to watch what they do.’

‘Win or lose always on the booze’ was Bobby Moore’s saying, and one that was often repeated by Uncle Harry. Harry Redknapp made 149 League appearances for West Ham before moving to Bournemouth in 1972. His life at Upton Park, like many of his team-mates, revolved around the game, betting, on cards and the dogs, and enjoying a drink.

‘We were just East End kids who went into football. That was the way it was in the sixties, but professional footballers can’t do that any more. They have to be more aware of diet, training and how they behave.’

He’s renowned for his quick often self-deprecating wit. ‘Even when they had Moore, Hurst and Peters, West Ham’s average finish was about 17th. It just shows how crap the other eight of us were.’

‘When our family gets together, all we do is talk football. In the old days I’d go round my mum Violet’s and have a cup of tea and egg and chips and a chat. And we’d watch the football. What more do you want?’

Harry Redknapp said of Bobby Moore in his autobiography (Harper Collins, 1998), ‘In my eyes he was every kid’s hero. I have a picture of him and in it he’s only ten years old, playing for Barking schoolboys.

‘There he is, the team captain, the blonde locks flowing, collecting the trophy. Looking at it you can imagine he knew his destiny was to go on and captain his country and win the greatest trophy in the world.’

Frank Lampard Senior was born ‘just down the road from the Boleyn’ and was a players’ player from the word go. He just frowns at any suggestion that he might have played for any other club than West Ham: ‘Claret and blue flows through my blood.’

In 1971, Sir Alf Ramsey gave official recognition to his talents by naming him in the England Under-23 side. Originally spotted by the legendary scout Wally St Pier, the strong (5ft 10in, 12 stone in his day) defender had suffered a severe leg break in 1967 and endured a long and painful recovery; but for that his England career may have enjoyed more of a flourish.

‘They were raising eyebrows about Frank’s future after he broke his leg,’ said an old friend of the player’s in 2005. ‘I went to visit when he came home from hospital. His mum, a very dejected lady, opened the door to me.

‘He had a hip-length plaster on and was not a happy man. He had been done down. The leg was a major problem and he’d not heard much of anything from anybody. I had a chat and gave him some magazines along with lots of encouragement.

‘I was just a friend. I had no influence in football, but I was concerned for him. He’s been kind to me ever since, for many, many years. It’s just the way he is. He’s not a man to show emotion, but it’s something that runs deep inside the Lampards. It’s in his boy, too.

‘Either of them would fight to the death for you if they believed in your cause. Or in you. Look at Frank’s mam that day with the broken leg. Nobody at the club had gone to see him. Their attitude seemed to be: “The boy is finished – that’s that.” But his mum never forgot my visit. Every time I’d see her she’d rush up to me and give me a peppermint and a smile.’

Frank Senior has blocked much of the pain and frustration of that bust-up leg from his memory, but did reveal: ‘If I have one regret, it is not winning more caps for my country. But the moment I walked on to Wembley in an England shirt was the proudest of my life. I’ve still got the shirt tucked away somewhere – it is a trophy they can never take away.

‘The feeling of walking out in front of such a huge crowd is indescribable and one that stays with you forever. Things change when you represent your country. Wherever you go, fans want to shake your hand and talk to you…’

In 1973, Brian Clough was with Derby County and tried to buy Bobby Moore and Frank Senior from West Ham. ‘Mr Clough was turned down flat,’ the Hammers manager Ron Greenwood, in ailing health in early 2005, revealed at the time. It was great fuel for the lads’ gossip, though.

Frank Senior took out insurance for his family’s future by investing in the haulage business, a pub and a dry cleaners in Canning Town, but his first priority was always football.

He arrived at West Ham as the guard of Moore (who played 642 times for West Ham between 1958 and 1974), Hurst and Peters was beginning to change, ‘The great strength of the sixties team was that it had its roots in that part of London.

‘It was one of the few real areas of England which bred footballers and, in those days, it was always around them that West Ham’s future lay. I would love to have had some of that sixties spirit in my teams.’

Frank Senior went on to say, ‘I come from Canning Town. It is right on the doorstep for the club. In those days times were hard and one way out of it was to become a footballer. All my mates at school – all we wanted to be were footballers.

‘I just felt I had done all right and that football had given me a chance to experience things and places I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise in life.

‘I thought that if Frank was good enough to come through as a player then the rewards are there.

‘I don’t think I am any different from any other dad in that I am my son’s worst critic and yet his biggest punter. It’s not been easy for him to make the grade, as he’s had to put up with the sniping behind his back.

‘I always stressed to Frank that he should be more of an attacking player, because it is always the midfielders and the strikers who get all the accolades.

‘When I was a kid Bobby Moore was one of my heroes. The way I played, the way I thought about the game was from him.’

Moore, only fifty-one years old when he died from colon cancer in February 1993, had offered his thoughts on the training and encouragement of young stars like Frank Junior in 1985. Bewilderingly, one of the most inspirational of men on the pitch never achieved success in management. But he knew, really knew, what it was all about.

Stoic and always private about his own problems to the very end, Moore also mentioned Frank Senior who played for him when he managed Southend in the Fourth Division. Bobby Moore was there for his love of football and Frank Senior because of his love and respect for Moore.

And, of course, loyalty for where they both came from.

They had a relationship which resonates now in the career of Frank Lampard Junior. Frank is not coy about encouraging or praising his team-mates. Sure, he wants to score the goals – that’s where the glory is – but the essential lesson he’s learned is that you are nothing without the club. You have to earn your place and work to keep it. If you are on the bench, you might as well be in the Falkland Islands. Bobby Moore, for all the accolades, knew that, ‘When youngsters join a club they copy the pros. If they are copying pros who arrive in the morning, sit down and read the paper and dash off as soon as training ends, that’s how they are going to grow up.

‘They should learn the good habits that were instilled in us at West Ham. Everybody wants players who are prepared to work that little bit extra.

‘It’s no coincidence that Frank [Lampard Senior] is still playing professional football at age thirty-seven. It’s because he’s strived to keep up a standard of fitness and a high level of performance. He would always do that little bit extra. What happens? Someone else follows his example. Then someone else, and so it snowballs…’