Читать книгу Goals to Gold - Lee Sandford - Страница 17

At the age of 13, I was already on the books at Southampton, which meant they were seriously considering giving me a schoolboy contract once I turned 14. This would have tied me to them for two years, but wouldn’t necessarily guarantee me a paid apprentice contract at 16, which is what any young, hopeful footballer is looking for.

A few months after I turned 13, I went away for a week for the Hampshire trials. It was hugely exciting as it was my first real trip away from my home and family, and it meant playing football non-stop for a whole week. At that point, football-obsessed as I was, it was my dream come true. I clearly remember watching the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di while I was at the trials, so this must have been late July 1981. I arrived home from the trials tired but exhilarated, with the whole summer stretching ahead of me. All I could think about was football, about how many hours of playing I could fit in over the summer holidays.

The following week we were sitting down to dinner on an ordinary Thursday night and there was a knock on the door. It was Dave Hirst, a scout for Portsmouth Football Club (PFC), Southampton’s biggest rivals. He told me he’d been watching me at the Hampshire trials and that Portsmouth wanted me to sign schoolboy forms with them. I wasn’t sure. While I wasn’t that happy at Southampton, I felt like it would be disloyal to sign with Portsmouth. I knew Southampton was expecting me to sign schoolboy forms with them once I turned 14.

Seeing my hesitation, Dave pulled out his trump card. He told me if I signed the schoolboy forms with Portsmouth, they would guarantee me an apprentice contract when I turned 16. I was still only 13, so I couldn’t sign the schoolboy forms until I turned 14, but Dave said I could go down to Portsmouth that summer and see what I thought. If I liked it, I could sign with them when I turned 14 the following April, with a guaranteed contract at 16.

Southampton hadn’t made that guarantee so it was a massive pull. Plus, as I’d told dad only a few months before, I wasn’t really enjoying myself at Southampton anymore. I wasn’t feeling challenged there; it was becoming too monotonous. I wasn’t even sure anymore that I wanted to stick it out for two more years as a schoolboy at Southampton. Dad encouraged me to do whatever I thought would make me happy. So in the end it wasn’t a hard choice. Once I turned 14, I signed the forms with Portsmouth.

Clearly, I owe a lot to Dave Hirst. He saw potential in me and supported me throughout my time at Portsmouth. He had a keen eye for talent and helped to identify and develop many young players, such as Spurs midfielder and England player Darren Anderton.

I had to keep it a big secret at school; I couldn’t tell anyone about the contract I’d signed with Portsmouth that was going to allow me to leave, with a guaranteed job, at 16. Now, of course, I had an excuse to slack off my schoolwork completely. Why did I need an education when I knew I had a job to go to? I wasn’t cocky, but I didn’t worry if I got in trouble for not working hard enough. I knew something they didn’t know... that I didn’t need an education. Or so I thought in my naïve, football-obsessed teenage mind.

The future contract did keep me out of trouble in other ways. For teenagers who aren’t particularly academic, there are always too many distractions and temptations. It’s the same in any generation. In my day, glue sniffing was the drug of choice, but in every generation there will be those unhealthy choices that kids can make that will jeopardise their chances of getting a good education.

Sport plays such an important role in keeping kids focused on something healthy and away from smoking and drugs; they need a physical outlet. I remember plenty of parties during my teenager years – there were girls, there was beer – but nothing was more important to me than football. The best thing we can do for our kids is to keep them involved in sport, to keep physical exercise a big part of their lives, giving them something to focus on outside of schoolwork. But maybe not at the expense of it, as it became for me!

In my last two years at school, I was in serious training. Dad used to drive me to all my practices and games. He had been working as a postman for a few years by then. He would do a night shift from 11pm until 4am, sleep a few hours during the day, and then drive me to practice before going to work again. There’s no way I would have been able to do any of it without the help and support of my parents. I am forever grateful to them for all they did.

Paul got the same support, and he played for Basingstoke for a while, but his heart wasn’t invested quite as deeply as mine. I’m sure he could have made it as a professional player too if he’d pushed himself, but he had other, stronger interests. He was always very supportive of me, though, coming to games and proudly cheering me on.

Of course we had our brotherly fights, meaning proper physical fights. He was the older brother, I was the annoying little brother, so he was always telling me to get lost and stop bothering him, which obviously goaded me on. Dad would drag us off each other telling us we had to stop fighting and be kinder to each other because we were brothers; his own brother had fled to Australia in slightly dubious circumstances and he’d hardly seen him as an adult, so he wanted Paul and me to be close and appreciate each other. We did appreciate each other deep down. But we were also average teenage boys who showed their love through giving each other bruises and black eyes.