Читать книгу Shirts, Shorts and Spurs - Roy Reyland - Страница 13

I signed for Tottenham Hotspur as a 22-year-old in 1978, only not as a left-winger as originally intended, but as a member of the ground staff. Which was lucky, because, if they had given me a medical, I would have failed, having picked up a knee injury playing amateur football. And in a brief glimpse into the fantastic treatment I was to receive from the club, Mike Varney, the physio, said he’d take a look at my knee, which was causing me much trouble. I hadn’t been at the club long, so I was startled at the personal treatment I was receiving.

They told me I’d need a small operation and that the official Spurs surgeon, a talented man called Pat England, would perform it. It all sounded straightforward but, after the operation in the nearby Queen Anne Hospital, I woke up to discover that I had a plaster cast from groin to toe, which was devastating and very frightening.

‘When Mr England operated,’ the doctor told me, ‘it turned out you’d torn your anterior ligament.’ This was a disaster! He went on, ‘We’ve taken some ligament out of your knee, we’ve tightened up the ligaments and we’ve pinned them.’

I said, ‘Hang on, I need to get a grip of what is happening here. How long before I can play again?’

I’ll never forget his exact words: ‘Let’s make sure you can walk again, first.’

Now, when Mr England came back, I tearfully recounted what the doctor had told me. ‘Roy, you will walk and you will play again, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Nine months, and you’ll be playing again.’

To a bystander, you’d think the Spurs surgeon was talking to a centre forward with his career on the line! But that’s how they made me feel. The club completely rehabilitated me, as if I was a player. I used to go to treatment in the morning and do my ground-staff duty in the afternoon. Nine months and one day after the op, I was invited to play in a staff game, and once again I was kicking a ball, wearing lily-white and blue. I was back where I belonged, on the pitch, playing for Tottenham… in some capacity. You see, when you’ve got Tottenham Hotspur in your blood, it never leaves you. I suppose that’s why they sing on the terraces, ‘I’m Tottenham Till I Die.’ I knew then that I’d be at the club for as long as I could.

Mick Stockwell, the man who interviewed me for the position, was in charge of telling me all about life at the club. When I asked him, ‘What does the job consist of?’ he just smiled and said, ‘Everything’. He went on, ‘One day you’ll be a plumber, another day an electrician, a glazer, a groundsman, anything and everything.’

And he was right. For four years, I did just about every job in that stadium.

After every Saturday game, we used to come in on the Monday and sweep the stadium. We used to sweep every row, and then sweep the terracing, then everything else. Can you believe it took us three days to sweep the entire White Hart Lane stadium, and there were ten of us at it? You swept all the stands, seats, the concourses, underneath the enclosure and the car parks. And if there was a midweek game, they’d employ part-timers to come in and get it all crashed out in time for Saturday. Sweeping White Hart Lane was like painting the Forth Bridge – as soon as it was finished, it needed doing again!

We used to do all the cleaning too, including the toilets, the offices and the dressing rooms. I swear I’ve done more sweeping at White Hart Lane than Ledley King! But as an introduction to working at Spurs, it was invaluable. I got to know my way round that ground like it was the back of my hand. I’ve fixed the plumbing in the toilets, replaced light bulbs in the boardrooms, and, rather touchingly, it was one of my jobs to paint those big blue doors on the Worcester Avenue end of the stadium. The very same doors I’d spent my childhood pelting with footballs.

One of the worst jobs I ever did at the Lane was replacing the windows at the Worcester Avenue end. We had to take away the glass and replace it with Perspex, because local kids kept putting them through with their footballs. I’ve never been so cold, because it was midwinter, and the second you took the glass out, the biting cold wind howled through. But you know, doing the shitty jobs was all made worthwhile because you were doing it for Tottenham Hotspur. You got out what you put in, and Tottenham was one of the most exciting clubs to be with during this period in our history.

We’d just been promoted after a brief sojourn in Division 2, where we’d been relegated for the first time since 1950. From the very start of the 1976/77 season, Spurs had been in trouble, and Keith Burkinshaw, in his maiden season as manager at White Hart Lane, struggled to bring home the results. Martin Chivers had left to play in Switzerland, and John Duncan – Spurs’ top scorer for the previous two seasons – spent the season on the treatment table, leaving our forward line as effective as that proverbial chocolate teapot. The defence wasn’t much better, and, despite the signing of John Gorman, injuries rocked the team, with even the reliable goalkeeper Pat Jennings being ruled out.

If we were to fail to impress the White Hart Lane faithful in the league, worse was to come in the cup. We crashed out to Second Division Cardiff City in the FA Cup and, worse, to Third Division Wrexham in the League Cup. Spurs finished rock bottom in the First Division, and were promptly relegated, much to the dismay of the fans, many of whom took it for granted that Tottenham Hotspur would forever be a First Division outfit. But the board kept their faith in Burkinshaw, who did everything he could to send Spurs straight back to where they belonged.

As Spurs fans spent the summer of 1978 watching the World Cup, held in Argentina, they contemplated life back in the First Division. Like them, I had watched Ossie Ardiles win the World Cup on television that summer, with no idea that he would be coming to play for Spurs. I was bursting with excitement when rumour suggested that Ossie and Ricky Villa would come to Spurs. Ricky was a bit-part player in that World Cup, and Keith Burkinshaw had tried initially to sign just him, but somehow we compromised and a deal was struck that included Ossie too. It turned out to be a dream partnership, and a bargain to boot. I had just started at Tottenham myself, and I remember when they first turned up to training, these two foreign lads with World Cup winners’ medals – it was frankly unbelievable. Just awesome. Keith had brought, essentially, the first International stars to the First Division. The team was never going to be the same again.

Looking back at Spurs at the time, prior to those boys arriving, we already had Steve Perryman, Steve Archibald, Glenn Hoddle and Tony Galvin. This was becoming some team. As an onlooker, it was interesting to see the two Argentineans fitting into London life and the fast pace of what was then the First Division. Ossie settled in more quickly than Ricky. He was more confident and he adapted to the game quicker. Then Ricky… well, Ricky just evolved. He would come into his own. Ossie picked the game up by the scruff of the neck and just played, but Ricky added another dimension. I used to watch them train whenever I could, and I have to admit I’ve never seen skill like it, the Argentines fitting in well with the English stars we had, like Glenn Hoddle.

Hoddle was a magnificent player, and a great man. I lived near Glenn in Harlow, and I used to have a drink with him occasionally, as I used to play for his uncle Dave’s Sunday team. Glenn and Chrissie Waddle used to watch us play sometimes, and Glenn even managed the side for a while! It was quite the role reversal, them watching one of the ground staff play.

Being able to watch the Spurs matches for free was of course a major perk of being on the ground staff. Instead of standing up behind the Park Lane end with my brother-in-law Roger, I sat with the rest of the staff in a little pen next to the tunnel, with benches specially reserved for us to enjoy the game. Ask anyone who’s ever sat on the bench and they will tell you, it is a pretty crap view. It’s just a mess of legs, running around. But you get used to it, and today watching football from any other angle seems alien. If I go and watch a game at the Lane now and I sit upstairs, it doesn’t look very quick at all. You see all this space that you don’t appreciate from the touchline, because at grass-roots level everything looks so fast.

And with Ardiles, Villa and Hoddle we became a very quick team, the fast Argentines setting an impossible pacemaker for the rest of the league. Together they made the most exciting midfield in the country, although the rest of the team needed a little while to bed in. We only finished in mid-table in the 1978/88 season, and made just the last eight of the FA Cup. But the team began to grow, and in May 1980 Spurs signed Steve Archibald from Aberdeen and later Garth Crooks from Stoke City. Like the Argentines they were both quick, and perfect accessories to the sublime skills of Glenn Hoddle. And by 1980 we had a formidable defence, too. We had an old-fashioned bruiser of a player, Paul Miller, at centre half, and he and Graham Roberts, who was called up to the first team in 1980, were like rocks. They would bash people for free, given the chance. Graham came from non-league football, and he later captained the team and even played for England. You don’t hear many stories like that any more – a player climbing that ladder to such dizzying heights.

I spent that season high up a ladder, too. I think I must have painted nearly every surface of that stadium. All the crash barriers were painted silver, while in the old enclosure we had blue panelling, and I really enjoyed painting them. I used to concrete the steps, too, as they broke away under the force of 40,000 fans trampling over them week in and week out. And I decorated everywhere, from the toilets to the boardroom. My boss then, Micky Stockwell, was a great character and a fabulous man. He was a dead ringer for Sid James. Micky, the maintenance foreman, knew every stopcock, every nail or screw in that entire stadium. We had a painter called Freddy Gold, who was also a great character. When I first started, we sat in this tiny room before work and I used to see him with a massive wad of money, and I’d think, ‘He must be rich!’ That is, until much later I noticed that he used to wrap his banknotes round an old toilet roll!

Then there was Bill Fox; he was a painter too, and another likely lad. Everyone had a bit of banter, and everyone mucked in – they were great times. I worked with ‘fishy’ Bill, although I can’t print why we called him that, and Harry Crossley, a man who with his wife used to put up the young players at their home. Harry looked after Graeme Souness, when he ran back to Scotland homesick, but later returned. Harry always kept in touch with Graeme, and they are still really very close. There were probably five or six of us on the ground staff, and, although the work was tough, the thing was that I didn’t care what I did, so long as it was for Spurs. You see, when you join the team, it becomes personal.

In those days, we also used to do the pitch as well. Bill Nicholson was a consultant in that era, and, although Keith Burkinshaw was now manager, Bill had a big say in the pitch. I remember seeding the six-yard box myself, by hand, using a six-inch plank of wood. You’d seed the length of the plank, move it, and start again. It was painstaking. But the thing with Bill was that he never asked you to do anything or told you what to do: he was out there with you, so I spent one happy summer’s day with Bill Nicholson, hand-seeding the pitch. It is a fond memory.

‘Bill Nick’ was ‘the man’ when I started at Spurs. I had only been at the club a few weeks before I met Bill properly and, when he came over, I felt very nervous and excited. Bill grasped my hand with his, and said, ‘Welcome to the club, son. This is a great club, a family club, and you’ll get looked after here.’ I had quite an affinity for Bill.

Over the years we would grow closer, and in the mid-Eighties I remember taking my two dogs into the ground on my day off to pick something up. I took them in to meet Bill, and he made such a fuss of them. Bill and his wife, Darkie, used to send me a Christmas card, but from that year on, it was always ‘To Roy and family and dogs’. Bill was a lovely, lovely man. He was fantastic to work with and a fascinating man-manager. If you ever talk to people like Steve Perryman, and many of the staff who worked with him, they will say he was authoritative, but he never ranted or raved. His motivational skills were second to none. You’d be painting a panel and he’d make it his business to come and talk to you, and it made us love him.

But back to the late Seventies, when I was really finding my feet at the club. Still a young man in my early twenties, I would enjoy messing around with the apprentices and the other young lads on the staff. The groundsman, Colin White, who started at the same time as me, was a very funny man and a typical Southampton lad with an endearing south coast accent. We struck up a great relationship, and were like two toe rags at Spurs. If there was something to get up to, we’d be in the thick of it, and along with Andy Church, the training groundskeeper, we were like the three amigos. Myself, Colin and Andy would become famous for our pranks with the youth players, and this would really make our name around the club.

Once, Colin and I were over in the car park, kicking lumps of polystyrene into skips. We were just passing the time really, having a bit of fun. We saw Tony Parks, Ian Culverhouse and their gang of apprentices strolling over, and we hatched a plan. The liquid used to whiten the lines was like a chalk white paint, so we got a real heavy, stippled brick and dipped it in the pot, and I swear you wouldn’t tell the difference between that rock-hard brick and the innocent lumps of polystyrene!

Well, Tony being Tony, came over all cocky and said, ‘I’ll show you why I’m going to be a pro and you two will just be ground staff forever!’ (He was very cocky in those days.) And with that, he took an almighty kick at the ‘brick’ and it didn’t move an inch. The language was unbelievable! Talk about turning the air blue. We all ran for it, when suddenly, Tony threw a shovel, and it flew over our heads and stuck straight in the wall, and the handle snapped off! If it had hit either of us in the neck, we’d have been killed instantly. But, oh, how we laughed!

We used to get up to all sorts of mischief in those days. When builders were pulling down the old stand, we would nick their dumper trucks and race them up and down the East Stand concourse, where today you buy your hotdogs and beers. The old East Stand used to have metal pillars but you could walk the whole length, and we would have terrific races between ground staff and players in those dumpsters. We could have killed ourselves, but it was great fun. Competition was fierce between staff and apprentices, and there was an old pool table in the West Stand where we held epic matches. It was the shabbiest old table you could imagine, with a huge rip on the surface, a hell of a roll, and no tips on the cues.

One day Colin and I were playing Mark Falco and Micky Hazard, who were trainees at the time, and it was a tense finale. Falco was on the black, to win, and missed the winning shot, leaving the black ball waiting agonisingly over the pocket. Now, these games weren’t just competitive – professional footballers don’t have it in them to treat any competitions as less than life or death – and I was very nervous as Colin passed me the cue. He whispered to me, ‘Hit the ball slowly… then run!’

I hit it so slowly, sending the cue ball trundling towards the black, and we both turned and ran! I ran all the way down the concourse of the West Stand, and you could hear these snooker balls bouncing along the floor; they were launching the whole lot after us!

Tommy Heffernan used to head snooker balls for money. The Irish centre half would bet cash that he could head a snooker ball, and would make extra cash on the side. Little things, when you look back, were actually quite dangerous, but often just as funny. One day, Colin was cutting the grass, sat on the big lawnmower. A few apprentices and me hatched a plan to grab him off the mower, for a laugh. Then we stripped him completely naked! Every piece of clothing he had on was divided up and raised up the flagpoles on opposite sides of the ground! Shoes, pants, the lot.

Colin being Colin, he took the joke, got straight back on the mower and, with it being a lovely sunny afternoon, carried on cutting the grass, as naked as the day he was born. But that’s not the end of the story. In those days, the directors’ box was sealed off by metal shutters that could only be opened from the inside. And with the sun coming out, the directors decided to come out for much-needed fresh air. What they all saw was the sight of Colin, sat completely naked on the mower, bold as brass, mowing the grass!

Another time, soon after we signed Steve Archibald, the striker and his glamorous wife were standing in the goalmouth, having photographs taken by the press. It was a great shot, but it was somewhat ruined when Colin White ‘accidentally’ turned the sprinkler on behind the goal, soaking the pair of them. Archie was not best pleased, to say the least!

They were fun times, and our escapades brought us all together as a team. I enjoyed mucking in with the apprentices, and many of them went on to become first-team stars. I was forging relationships with players that were about to become big names, and I was about to get a promotion myself…