Читать книгу To Cap It All - Kenny Sansom - Страница 15

Everything that happened during my childhood paved the way for my glory days in top-flight football. I was the lucky boy born with a gift that I enjoyed working hard to improve on. It was no hardship to train all the hours the sun was up, and at night I’d dream of being the best footballer in England. They say you need to have a dream to make a dream come true – and I certainly had a dream. So did my mum. She was getting so excited about my budding talent and, like most mums, all she wanted was the best for me. No problem was so big that it couldn’t be sorted out. She knew this from harsh life experience.

Six of her siblings had died in childbirth or childhood, so she knew all about loss and grief. When my dad left home she knew he’d come back, and he did, many times. But, when she reached the point where ‘enough was enough’, she switched off and focused on keeping the home fires burning, and her family became her life.

The scenes in our front room could have come straight out of The Waltons. We always had ‘goodies’ to devour in front of the television, especially at weekends, when crisps, nuts and other snacks and tasty bites were laid out on the table. We washed this down with Coke or some other pop that wasn’t exactly good for our health but made us feel all lovely and warm inside.

Outside in the parks my little brother David and I played and played until our skills were finely honed. We were both perfecting every aspect of our game and hoping and praying to make it to the top. We’d continually head balloons to each other over washing lines. Later we progressed to a proper football, which wasn’t exactly an easy swap because the footballs back then were very hard with laces you had to avoid if you didn’t want a black eye.

David couldn’t balance on fences or climb trees as well as I could, and, although he joined me in leaping across rooftops, I believe I was the instigator of these dangerous activities. I know David was as good as I was on the pitch, and it has always saddened me that we didn’t both make it like the Neville brothers, but I think I was hungrier and more willing to work and work till I dropped. I was very competitive and hated losing and I’m certain that it was this passion for the game that made all the difference.

As my ability grew, my mum was quick to realise both my potential to become a professional footballer and what opportunities it would give me – such as travelling and a good income on the right side of the law. She had aspirations that went way beyond what other parents wished for their kids. She was determined to do everything in her power to ensure I led a different life from the one I was in danger of falling into – a life in the underbelly of London’s gangland. Not because I was the type to fall prey to a life of crime, but purely because of the environment and association I had with boys who had a less fortunate upbringing than I had.

Many of my peers found themselves detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and Mum had the foresight to steer me clear of danger.

Later she was to hold my face and say to me, ‘You built my life, son.’

The fact of the matter is, she built mine. If my mum hadn’t been on the ball and known how I ticked, my career would have been over before it had even begun. Way back then she understood the lonely and insecure part of me and acted on an instinct – had it not been for her actions on one particular winter’s night, the chances of my going on to play professional football would have been slight. Like my brother David, I would have been lost in the shadows of fortune and fame.