How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography (3 page)

3

Making The Grade

THE real troubles of my youth took place within the four walls of Bangor Grammar School.

My relationship with that place is summed up by their reaction to my call-up into the Northern Ireland U-15 squad. There was a tradition that the school paid for their proud student’s team blazer. Not in my case, however. The authorities at the Grammar refused, even though they could have afforded the £80 easily.

It was a wealthy school, with a good reputation for delivering a solid education but from the start it was clear I had a major problem. They hated football. Hated it so much that they went out of their way to deter me from progressing in it. Most schools would have considered it an honour to have a student representing their country, but they saw it differently. It was just one part of an ongoing struggle. And my strife was nothing compared to some of the sick stuff going on around that place.

Certain sports were tolerated. Rugby was king. The walls were lined with pictures and stories of Grammarians who excelled with the oval ball. David Feherty, the golfer, also schooled there, and that was acceptable. There was only a passing reference to Terry Neill, a former Northern Ireland football international who then managed Arsenal. What they didn’t mention was that he only lasted six weeks in the Grammar, and I can understand why. The hostility towards my passion was remarkable.

In first year, we had one afternoon a week for sport, and the options were limited. Just one choice. Rugby. I’d never paid any attention to rugby. I like watching it now, but I detested it then and, on my first day, I decided to escape. But they caught me as I tried to sneak out the door when the teams were being assigned. The teacher stuck me into the ‘C’ team with the lads that were picked last. The rules were a mystery so I stood on the wing and just ran with the ball when I got it, and used my pace. A few tries later, I was promoted to the ‘A’ team. Which was fine until games were scheduled for Saturday morning, the same time when I was needed in Belfast by St Andrews. I always chose football, but it landed me in constant trouble.

I thought I’d found the solution in second year. Hockey was added as an option B, so I went for that. But their games were on Saturday mornings too. The meeting point was the bus station in Bangor, just across the road from the train station where I caught the service to Belfast. I’d creep quietly up the road, head buried in my jacket, and dart into the railway tracks hoping that the group standing on the other side of the street wouldn’t notice. The no-shows became an issue, and the school decided to punish me by suspiciously choosing a Saturday morning detention. I had to let St Andrews know that I’d miss a game. My parents spent so much time down the school complaining, that the other kids started to think they were teachers.

The biggest obstacle was the headmaster, Tom Patton. He marched around in this big black cloak, with an air of superiority, looking down his nose at everyone. He seemed to enjoy the power of his position, being the boss of a school that’s been around since 1856. A place that even has its own song, in Latin of course. Everyone had to jump to Patton’s attention. ‘Yes sir’, ‘no sir’. Mum found him unbearable. He refused to make eye contact with her and one day she’d had enough. “Mr Patton, when you talk to me, I look at you. When I talk to you, you bow your head. Please look at me.”

She told him that I wouldn’t be showing up if I was given any more of these Saturday morning detentions. He never listened. It was like he thought he was a god instead of a headmaster. And that was supposed to justify the petty behaviour, the pointless detentions and the refusal to fork out for a blazer. It felt like they were trying to make a student suffer for succeeding.

As it transpired, the decision makers in Bangor Grammar had more serious matters to be concerned with. In 1998, it emerged that the Deputy Head, Dr Lindsay Brown, my religion teacher, was a paedophile. Brown was always in charge of taking kids away on camping trips, and it came out that he forced himself on boys after pretending he forgot his sleeping bag. The victims showed bravery to come forward and say that he’d sexually abused them and he was sent down for seven years after being found guilty of nine counts of indecent assault, and two of gross indecency. I was stunned when I heard.

There were always stories about Brown going around the school, with other lads saying he was one to watch, but I’d never had a problem with him, although I only went to those religious camps once. I thought all the rumours were just kids spreading crap and having a laugh. In prim and proper Bangor Grammar I’d never have imagined that a teacher could get away with such despicable behaviour. A special report commissioned after the case found that Patton had failed to take complaints against Brown seriously. Imagine living with that on your conscience.

Despite the school’s best attempts, they couldn’t halt my path. The countdown to my departure from Northern Ireland was under way and my face was starting to pop up in the local newspapers. The real catalyst was the Milk Cup, a youth tournament that attracts top teams from all over the world to the small town of Coleraine, just 40 miles outside Belfast. It’s a big deal. In 1989, St Andrews were unable to participate and a team-mate from Northern Ireland, Rodney McAree, asked me to play for Dungannon Swifts. His father, Joe, was their manager. Nobody gave us a chance in the U-14 competition, but we progressed to the final, where we encountered a selection from the Dublin and District Schoolboys League, the biggest league in the Republic, who were the hot favourites to win the competition. We surprised them; I got the winner in extra-time. A local team winning made plenty of headlines, and a fair share of them were devoted to me.

The trips with Northern Ireland also helped my profile. Our U-15 group was decent, managed by the late, great Davie Cairns. We should have won the Victory Shield, the marquee tournament for the Home Nations, after beating Wales and Scotland and then leading England into injury time of a game that was played at Hillsborough in driving sleet and snow. Everyone was going down with cramp, and our legs went. They scored twice. I later heard that one of their goalscorers was over-age.

Still, it was a good platform for us, and the major clubs were represented. I received approaches too, even though the Manchester United deal was common knowledge. Liverpool made an enquiry, but it was politely refused. I belonged to United and, from afar, they were playing a bigger role in my life. It was set in stone that I would be going over in the summer after I turned 16. I spent all my holidays there during my final year, and was often flown in for games at the weekend. In the 1990 Milk Cup, I was in Manchester United colours, part of a team where the starring member was a winger called Ryan Wilson. I was still at school when he made his senior debut the following March under his mother’s maiden name – Giggs.

For Dad, that tournament was a special thrill. The head of the youth set-up, Brian Kidd, and his assistant, Nobby Stiles, were legends he’d watched from afar. He was particularly excited about meeting Nobby, one of his favourite players from the 1968 European Cup-winning side. We stayed in Harry Gregg’s hotel in Portstewart during the tournament. Harry is a Manchester United legend from Northern Ireland who survived Munich, and he loved catching up with Nobby and telling stories from the past. It gave us a sense of the club’s history, but we didn’t bring the magic onto the pitch. We exited at the group stage.

When I wasn’t needed in Manchester, I lined up for Linfield Colts, the youth side of the most successful club team in Northern Ireland. Linfield had an arrangement with United which was convenient when I became too old for St Andrews.

This was a jump up to U-18 level and a physical test. My first appearance against Ballymena went so well that the Linfield first-team manager enquired about bringing me into their ranks. The Irish League was a demanding place and I’d have been coming up against hardened semi-pros 10 or even 20 years older than me. United got wind of the idea, and vetoed it straight away. I was only small at that point and fairly slight. The experience could have broken me, so it was the right decision, although the idea did make me curious.

So, I stayed with the Colts and waited for the summer. The coverage increased in the final months. From the day the United news went public, the local papers were constantly on the phone. Inevitably, they trotted out the ‘next George Best’ line, a tag that was also attached to Whiteside in his youth. That’s the thing about being from a small country. The spotlight comes earlier than England, where promising kids can stay under the media radar until they reach the first team.

Dad handled the queries. “We’ve done all we can to help him,” he’d say, “but from 16 to 18, it’s up to him to make a go of it.”

I think I was too young to know what pressure was. But I was wary of getting carried away. I knew what people were saying. All the reports were positive, and I was supposed to be the next big thing, tipped for stardom as though it was a formality.

You often hear footballers giving interviews and talking about proving people wrong. This was the opposite.

When I packed my bags to head for England, the mission was to prove everyone right.

4

Fergie Fledgling

ON July 9, 1991, the Gillespie family gathered at the airport to wave goodbye to a 16-year-old boy who was daunted by the prospect of leaving home.

There were tears, because it was an emotional time. A week earlier Mum’s mother, Gladys, had passed away. She lived around the corner with Grandad Robert and it hit us hard. Mum was only beginning to come to terms with that and now her son was packing his bags for good. It was the sacrifice that came with my new life. There was no other option.

I’d made the same flight plenty of times before but, as I turned around to wave goodbye before going through the departure gates, I knew this was different.

The minute I landed at Manchester Airport, I raced to one of the payphones to ring home and they were barely in the door. It’s a bloody short journey after all.

My next stop was my new lodgings in Salford, a digs run by a welcoming maternal lady named Brenda Gosling. She’d been looking after apprentices from the club for quite a few years, including a young Lee Sharpe. Her location was ideal, less than two minutes walk from the Cliff. Perfect for an occasional late sleeper.

Brenda cooked all the meals, and made life easy for her tenants. The house was split into two. She lived on one side, and I shared the other with four others. There was Adrian Doherty and fellow St Andrews graduate Colin Telford from Northern Ireland, a Scottish lad, Colin McKee, and a vain Welsh boy called Robbie Savage. We weren’t strangers. The cast of characters in my everyday life were familiar considering I’d been over and back since I was 13. But seeing each other 24/7 was a big change.

Robbie had plenty of quirks. He was my room-mate, which meant waking up to the sound of a hairdryer. His mop was shorter then, but he devoted a huge amount of time to it. I’d be hopping out of bed at ten past nine to report for training at a quarter past, and Robbie might have been up for an hour at that point, preening himself. And I was still usually ready before him.

I reported for duty on my first proper day as a professional footballer with a group of other fresh-faced apprentices. There were the Manchester lads like Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Ben Thornley, and outsiders like John O’Kane from Nottingham, Chris Casper from Burnley, and a kid who went by the name of David Beckham. It was an exceptional group, although I don’t think we’d copped it just yet.

Circumstances kept our feet on the ground. I was earning £46 a week, and Manchester United paid Brenda for my upkeep on top of that. The locals had a bit more cash because the rent money went to their parents, and they still had their mates from home about. So, the outsiders palled around together initially. We didn’t have the money to go out and party and, besides, we were too young to really be able to do it properly anyway. Instead, we led quite a tame existence in our first year. We didn’t see a lot of Manchester, bar the odd trip for a game of snooker or the cinema, but the five quid taxi fare from Salford to the centre of the city was an obstacle. I was saving my cash for the afternoons in the bookies. We’ll come to that in a while.

I became good friends with Robbie. He was from Wrexham, which was only around an hour and 20 minutes away, and as soon as he passed his driving test, he used to commute regularly. I went down and stayed with his folks some weekends, just to break up the usual routine of sitting in. Becks lived with John O’Kane in a digs on Lower Broughton Road which was a bit further away. They were talented players with a different work ethic. John was a laid back type, probably too much so, whereas Becks was a real worker. He’d always spend time after training practising free-kicks and his ball striking. Off the pitch, he put the graft in as well. John used to call him the pretty boy and reckoned I had it easy waiting around for Robbie in the morning. Long before the Spice Girl days, Becks was the first of the group to have a girlfriend. He bought an old Ford Estate off Ryan Giggs and I’m sure that helped. The lads with a car were always a step ahead with the ladies.

Gaz Neville had no interest in them at that stage. Football was his obsession. We had strong characters in our group, and he stood out. We called him ‘Busy Bollocks’ and with justification. On and off the pitch, he found it hard to relax. He used to come and play snooker with myself, Robbie, Becks and John O’Kane. Robbie and I were pretty decent, Becks was average and Gaz was crap. Whoever his partner was, we generally had to give them a head start. But he still ended up on the losing side more often than not, and he hated it. There were other strong personalities. Chris Casper, Gaz’s centre-half partner, was another talker. Nicky Butt was well ahead in terms of physique and stature, and it was no surprise when he rapidly moved up the ranks. You didn’t mess with Nicky. I learned that when I wound him up in the showers one day, just messing about pinching him, and he decked me. By contrast, our other ginger midfielder, Scholesy, was a late bloomer, and therefore a peripheral member of the squad in that first year. He was a quiet lad with sharp wit; fame didn’t change that.

There was no special treatment for us at that stage though. We trained twice a day in a competitive environment, and the intensity carried over to the changing rooms where the second-year apprentices ruled the roost. The newbies had to go through an initiation process, a series of dares that varied in levels of humiliation. Although he was a first teamer already, Giggsy was technically a second-year apprentice and the chief tormentor. The seniors would sometimes come down to enjoy the established tradition of the first years being put through hell.

I had to pretend to shag a physio bed in front of the mob. Other days, you might have to chat up a mop as though you were trying it on with a girl in a club, or else perform some kind of dance for everyone’s entertainment. For shy teenagers, it was painful. I didn’t have any real experience of the actions I had to impersonate. Robbie loved it though. He was the showman, and looked forward to his turn.

There was punishment if you refused a challenge. You might get smacked over the head by a football wrapped in a towel, or lined up for a flurry of punches that would leave you with a dead arm. Worst of all was getting stripped naked, and having the design of a United kit rubbed onto your body in boot polish with a sharp brush. Or getting thrown into the tumble dryer for a spin. A few years previously, Russell Beardsmore was left in the sauna with ten tracksuits on and had to fight to get them all off before he was let out. The club put an end to the rituals a few years later when it got out of hand.

At least, in hindsight, it was a laugh. Another rite of passage was far less entertaining. Thursday was school day. Continuing studies was part of the contract. I was in Manchester when Mum rang with my GCSE results. I remember them clearly. An A in History, Bs in English, English Lit and French, a C in Maths, Ds in German and Latin, and an F in Physics. Science never interested me and I didn’t even bother with revising. My French grade was the regret; I was aiming higher.

Nevertheless, my results were respectable, and put me near the top of the apprentices’ dressing room. For our day of learning, we were divided according to our results. I went to Accrington College, with Robbie, Gaz, Chris Casper and another lad, Mark Rawlinson. And the others? They went to a place in Manchester that we called the stupid college. I don’t even know what they did.

That said, I don’t really remember what we were doing, either. It was some kind of BTEC in Leisure and Tourism, but it was boring. There were other apprentices from Man City, Burnley, Blackburn and from around the north-west. I guess myself and Robbie were a bit disruptive. We were in class from 10am until 5pm and needed some amusement to pass the time. The girl in charge grew sick of our messing and punished us with six Thursdays together in the library away from the group. As if sharing a room with Robbie wasn’t bad enough! The course was a waste of time although, somehow, I managed to pass.

Our real education was at the Cliff, where the blasé attitude we took to Accrington would never have been permitted. The tone was set from the top. Discipline and hard work was the mantra. It was no place for big-time charlies. Eric Harrison always told us that.

Eric was our manager, and the person who moulded the raw materials into a serious team. He had a modest playing career, predominantly with Halifax, but quickly made his name as a coach. Ron Atkinson hired him and, when Alex Ferguson arrived to sweep a broom through the club, Eric was retained. It was obvious why.

The youth-team supremo must instil discipline while gaining respect, and Eric found the balance. He was a tough Yorkshire man who could really flip when he was angry. You feared being on the wrong end of his bollockings.

Our games at the Cliff were surreal. Rather than watching from the sideline, Eric would be up in his office behind a glass window with an elevated view of the pitch. During a match, we would sometimes hear a relentless banging, and glance up to see an animated Eric losing the plot with his mouth moving at a million miles an hour. Or, worse again, you’d hear the noise and then look up and there’s nobody there. That meant he was on his way downstairs to aggressively make his point to the culprit. I’d be praying that it wasn’t me.

The attention to detail extended to everything. We all had our jobs to do around the club, and mine was to clean our dressing room. Sweep up the rubbish, mop the floor, all of that. We couldn’t leave to go home until Eric came to inspect and gave the all-clear. If whoever was on duty in the first team dressing room had erred, it didn’t matter if the apprentices’ changing room was perfect. As a group, we were kept back, and the guilty one sure as hell heard about where they’d gone wrong.

Eric could be terrifying in full flight, but he was also considerate. Every couple of months, he’d organise these sessions that were like a parent-teacher meeting except we got the feedback individually. In that environment, he was understanding, and tried to point us in the right direction. At the same time each week, all our eyes would be trained on Eric as he made his way to the noticeboard to pin up the teams for the weekend. The apprentices were split into ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams. From the outset, I was a regular in the ‘A’s – in fact, the first years quickly became the core of the team – so I didn’t get much chance to work under Nobby Stiles, who was in charge of the ‘B’ selection. I spent more time with Jim Ryan, the reserve manager, who drafted me in a couple of times not long after my arrival. Jim was mild-mannered compared to Eric, but he was a former Manchester United player, which gave him gravitas. He was assisted by Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson – no relation to the skipper – and together they removed the fear factor for a raw teenager encountering hardened professionals for the first time. The senior players on reserve duty were either on the comeback trail from a setback or simply out of favour. Jim had an ability to coax the best out of them, while acknowledging they would rather be somewhere else. “I know you senior lads don’t want to be here,” he would say, “but you have to put in a shift for the young players.”

The experienced lads couldn’t afford to switch off anyway, because there was always a chance that Alex Ferguson would be watching. He had a knack of keeping everyone at the club on their toes.

It could be a reserve match, a youth-team game, or just a routine training session, and the boss might suddenly appear unannounced.

Although we assembled at the Cliff, we trained at Littleton Road which was a five-minute bus ride away. The reasoning was to preserve the surface at the Cliff, but it also allowed the first team, reserves and the youths to train on separate pitches in close proximity to each other. It suited the gaffer perfectly. He could wander over and watch whoever he wanted.

Back at the Cliff, his office also overlooked the pitch, next to Eric’s and Brian Kidd’s. So, during a match, you might glance up to see Eric’s reaction to something and then catch a sight of the gaffer as well.

Around the club, the apprentices were always wary when he was about. His mood was impossible to predict. Sometimes, if you walked past him in the corridor, he’d stop for a chat or give a good natured “hello”. Other times, he would ignore you completely, so you’d just assume that someone was in trouble.

After winning the FA Cup in 1990, and the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991, some pressure had been lifted from his shoulders but the Holy Grail was the league, which had eluded the club since 1967. My debut season in England was the last one before the Premier League era. Leeds, managed by Howard Wilkinson, claimed the Division One trophy.

Despite the disappointment, there was a feeling around the club that the end of the long wait was imminent. And our crop was fuelling a lot of the optimism about the future. We had a big reputation.

A week after I left home, I was actually back in Northern Ireland for the Milk Cup, and in top form. That week, everything went right. We picked up the trophy, and I was awarded man of the match in the final and player of the tournament. That set us off and running and, as we carried that form into the new season, word spread fast.

Fans started to come and watch matches at the Cliff on Saturday mornings, and if the first team were at home that afternoon, the gaffer would be there until half-time. The injured senior players would come along as well. I remember the adrenaline rush when I spotted Bryan Robson standing on the sideline.

The old pros christened us the ‘Dream Team’ – I always remember Steve Bruce saying it – while the local newspapers called us ‘Fergie’s Fledglings’. The gaffer made sure we were well protected from the hype, but he laid the foundations to prepare us for what was coming down the line, like the day we were told to report to Old Trafford for a media training course. We went into a room where we took turns being asked questions by a man with a microphone. I remember being quite nervous because the rest of the boys were sitting there watching, giggling at any little mistake. It was all a bit strange.

Our mentors looked for signs that the attention was affecting us, but nobody was getting ahead of themselves. Yes, we had belief, and the fact that Giggsy was doing so well gave everyone in the youth ranks a boost. But we knew there was a long way to go, and with characters like Gaz and Butty around the place, complacency wasn’t an option. They always raised the bar.