Читать книгу Goals to Gold - Lee Sandford - Страница 28

My loyalty to Stoke wasn’t just wrapped up in my loyalty to Alan Ball. In the end, Alan had only lasted a couple of seasons at Stoke City, but I was there for seven years.

Midway through Stoke’s first season in the Third Division Alan got the sack and was replaced by Lou Macari, who I struggled to get along with. Lou Macari was very serious; it was all work and no play. He didn’t drink and he was a taskmaster. We may have gone back up a division under him, but we never had as much fun as we did under Alan. To be honest, Lou was more the manager I needed, but I was still young when he arrived and resisted his ideas. Many of us did. We just wanted to kick a football around but Lou had us running up hills and doing real physical training. We longed for the old “hard work buys you hard play” days under Alan Ball, but Lou wasn’t keen on too much partying going on after hours.

Of course, now I look back, I can see how well Lou treated and managed us players at the time; he was spot on. I hope I get the chance to tell him this some day. I was also probably wise not to follow my old gaffer, my football dad, to his next club... bottom-of-third-division Exeter City.