I screamed at him: "Are you going to play like a woman all your life?"
He just stared at me, frozen to the spot, before I explained to him: "That"s exactly what the keeper wants you to do pull out of the challenge. You are allowed to block-tackle in his chest." I went on: "Don"t be dirty, but don"t jump over me again or I"ll hit you."
He was a bit frightened because he was only a 16-year-old lad. Seven or eight years later, that incident came back to bite me on the a.r.s.e. I was playing for Falkirk and we were playing a friendly against Blackburn Rovers, but as I dived at the feet of their forward...BANG, my lights went out. I lost a couple of teeth and got a couple of st.i.tches in a face wound, and as I looked up after the incident the young fella from all those years before on the Southampton training ground was standing there, protesting: "YOU told me to do it! You told me not to hold back!" You know who the boy was...Alan Shearer! I nurtured him and coaxed a bit more out of him back then when he was 16, and as everyone knows he went on to have a magnificent career.
To be honest, Alan Shearer had limited skill. He may not have been technically the greatest player in the world, but my G.o.d that kid wanted it so bad to be a successful footballer. At one stage, Southampton nearly released him, but he would work and work, always eager to learn and improve his game. He was only 17 when Chris Nicholl called him up to play in the first team. Alan used to babysit Thomas and Katie my children for a fiver a night when me and Janet would go out for our dinner. He became a friend and I had so much admiration for his att.i.tude on the pitch and training ground. It was no surprise that he got called up by Chris at such a young age, because his dedication was unbelievable. He was like me in that respect not the best, but he tried and tried and put as much as he humanly could into the game. Young Shearer made his full debut against a.r.s.enal on 9 April, 1988 a daunting prospect for any kid because in those days Tony Adams and Martin Keown formed the rock of the a.r.s.enal defence.
I went over to him in the dressing room before the game and said to him: "It"s only a.r.s.enal, we can beat these!" And he was in front of me as we went down the tunnel so again I put my hands on his shoulders and said to him: "C"mon son, you can do it, you"ve done all that training, you"ve go nothing to worry about." I don"t know if my words had any bearing, but he was certainly not overawed. He went out onto the field and scored with practically his first kick. He then scored again with a great typical Shearer diving header. His forte in his early these days was running on to a ball pinged between the centre-half and full-back. He would chase paper on a windy day, he was so keen! Ten minutes before the end he completed his hat-trick against a.r.s.enal; what a debut! We won that game 4-2, but Chris rested him for the next game, just to protect him a bit. Chris looked after him very well in the early days because he could have been burnt out if he wasn"t handled carefully, or the success could have gone to his head. But Chris Nicholl did an absolutely brilliant job in keeping young Shearer"s feet on the ground. I"ve always considered him a good friend and we kept in touch.
Another unbelievable incident that occurred at Southampton, which would come back to haunt me later in my career at Newcastle, was the time we played Tottenham Hotspur at The Dell in the league. They had all the big stars at that time, including Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, who had been World Cup winners with Argentina. It was a night game, but the floodlights at The Dell weren"t the best because they sat on top of the stand. I think it affected their keeper, Bobby Mimms, because he was having a bit of a nightmare. We went 1-0 in front when Glenn c.o.c.kerill scored with a deflection that went up in the air and over Mimmsy, who probably should have had it.
It was a real knife-edge game, and with us hanging on at 1-0 they got a corner in the last minute. Before they could take it, I got to the ball first and tried to waste a few precious seconds. Little Ossie came sprinting over to me, screaming: "Give me ball, give me ball!" and trying to prise it out of my grasp. I just said to him: "In one minute you can have the ball and let your kids play with it for all I care, just not yet." I handed it over, slow as I could, and as he turned round I gave him a little push. It was the slightest of nudges but he went down theatrically to the ground, holding his face and whining. "Referee, referee, he elbow me, ELBOW!" I was furious that he was trying to get me sent off. I leaned over him and shouted at him to get up and get on with taking the corner.
When the corner was eventually taken, Ossie was to find out that I had a beautiful little trick up my sleeve, purely in the interests of self-preservation. Because people used to try to stand on me at corners all the time, I used to retaliate by breaking the metatarsal bone in the top of their foot. I used to work on my back studs filing them down so they were like arrowheads. When the officials came into the dressing room before a game, nine times out of 10 they only had time to quickly run their fingers over the front studs and do the quickest of safety checks on boots. But the back studs on mine were like bullets because I"d filed them down. The reason was simple when people came up to me at a corner and tried to bully and intimidate me, or to stop me getting to the ball first, I"d take matters into my own hands. I wasn"t stupid about it. I"d have a look at the referee first, then the linesman, and if they were both looking the other way then I"d seize the moment. I"d bring my left or right boot down on the striker"s metatarsal BANG! It sounds cruel and dirty, but it was kick or be kicked, because the centre-forward would do it to you first if you showed even the slightest weakness. It was a necessary evil. When Spurs eventually took their last-minute corner that night, Ossie tried to get in a sneaky stamp, trying to tread on my feet. There was only one thing for it I gave him the old two-studs combination on the metatarsal, and he went down in absolute agony. Our defence cleared the ball upfield and we had won the game.
When the final whistle went I did my usual ritual and ran to the Southampton fans to applaud the crowd at the top end of the ground. But as I was clapping them I heard this shrill voice in my ear behind me, hissing: "You ANIMAL!" It was an irate Ossie, and he was behind me all the way as I went down the tunnel. At Southampton there was a flight of 10 stairs on the way to the dressing rooms, and as I started to near them I could still hear Ossie going crackers behind me. I saw that Terry Venables, who was in charge of Tottenham and a man I had the greatest of respect for, was nearby and I warned him: "Terry, get him away from me, you know what I"m like and what I"ll do to him." But as I got to the top of the stairs Ossie sneaked up behind me on my blind side and pushed me. I started to stumble down the stairs, but managed to stop myself after I"d slid down three or four of the steps. I tried to control my temper, but he was still gobbing off at me, so I smacked him. I told Terry to take him out of my sight and away to the dressing room or I"d break his neck. Britain had just been at war with Argentina over the Falklands, and I lost it at that stage, shouting: "We"ve just beat you in the Falklands, now I"ve just beaten you here, now f.u.c.k off!" My head had completely gone. I shouldn"t have said it, but he"d pushed me way too far.
After the game, a complaint was filed by Tottenham Hotspur about my behaviour after the game. It was kept between the clubs, and the FA were not involved, but it annoyed me that it was all being put on me and that it was being suggested that Ossie Ardiles was blameless in the whole incident. I was later summoned to the manager"s office and when I told Chris that he had pushed me down the stairs, and that I was only trying to mind my own business, he accepted that. That was the end of the matter...or so I thought. My clash with Ossie would resurface later in my career in spectacular fashion.
CHAPTER 16.
HOWAY THE LAD.
"Losing in the play-offs to Sunderland was one of my most heartbreaking moments in football."
I had three fantastic years at Southampton, but it wasn"t the biggest of clubs, and to me it seemed football would never come first in the city. That irked me a bit, because I like cities that are as pa.s.sionate about their football as they can possibly be. After three years with Southampton, I started to hear rumours that Newcastle United were interested in signing me. Coming from that part of the world I knew what size of club it was and what football meant to the people there. Newcastle were in the Second Division at the time, which would mean taking a step down a division again, but that didn"t bother me because I knew with my track record of helping to get teams up, we had a great chance of getting promoted. At first it was just newspaper talk and I didn"t hear anything further. I kept waiting and waiting for a phone call, and all the while Chris justifiably was warning me that unless I signed a new contract at Southampton he couldn"t play me and he"d play Timmy instead.
I was on tenterhooks and had a strong gut feeling the call would come from Newcastle. It eventually came through an agent called Steve Wicks, who had been my centre-half at QPR, and he knew the Newcastle manager Jim Smith very well. He confirmed that Newcastle wanted me, so I jumped into my Porsche and drove up there on the Sunday. By that time Thomas had taken up ice hockey, and because the kids had such a happy life down in Southampton, I had to make sure that they wouldn"t miss out on the things they enjoyed if we moved north. I chose Durham as the ideal place to live, because they had the big ice hockey team of the day and I wanted to encourage Thomas. I didn"t want to live in Newcastle because it"s a big, sprawling, industrial city, and I wanted to live somewhere neutral. I met Jim Smith to talk over the potential move, but to be honest he didn"t need to sell the club to me I could see for myself what a huge club Newcastle United were and I didn"t hesitate for a second to sign. Everything I asked for I got, and I saw the move to Newcastle as a great opportunity for me, because I was 38 years old. I regarded them almost as my hometown club, because although I was brought up in Workington in the north-west, Newcastle was only about 60 miles away, and the club had a huge following in the surrounding area.
It was a great feeling to go to Newcastle; there was a vibe about the place that convinced me that this was one move that was meant to be. Jim Smith was an excellent manager, and like me he was a bit of an eccentric. He was part of the reason the move was so attractive to me. He shouted a lot, but I was now at the age where I could take it when it was dished out. When I had been at Villa and Ron Saunders was giving me earache, I could be a bit of a shrinking violet and I couldn"t take being shouted and screamed at. But by this stage of my career, managers could say pretty much whatever they wanted because I had been through the mill and played hundreds of games, so it was easy to take water off a duck"s back.
My first season went unbelievably well and off the pitch everything was rosy too. I had managed to find a lovely house in Durham a former monastery although I had lost 75,000 on my house in Southampton, having paid 300,000. On the pitch, we had a team full of characters and good professionals including Micky "The Mighty" Quinn and Roy Aitken, the Scottish international, who I quickly became very good friends with. Roy and I were the non-drinkers of the team and wouldn"t be seen in the nightclubs, so we bonded right away. I think a lot of people saw me and my eccentricities and immediately thought I must be a bit of a drinker because I was outgoing and liked a laugh, but that was never me. Because of my antics, people thought I must be a wild man and a big bevvy merchant, but they were a millions miles away from the truth because I was totally dedicated to my football. I"d be in bed early if I was playing, because matches and making the most out my career were what mattered to me more than anything. You do hear of a lot of players from that era who thought the best way for a team to function was to play together and drink together, but Roy Aitken and I were proof that you didn"t have to drink to be respected and be part of the team.
Roy was Captain Fantastic for us. He was a hard boy and he kept the team running. He was a terrific professional. The first year I had at Newcastle was great, we were fighting for promotion all the way and I got voted player of the season after a string of solid performances. As we neared the end of the season, we had a great chance to go up. We played Middlesbrough, and if we had won we would have got promoted to the First Division. Boro were in a bad way at that time. Their existence was under threat and they had to win to stay up and have any hope of keeping the bank manager at bay. We should have wanted a win in that game as much as they did, but for some reason they were more fired up than us on the day and they beat us 4-1 at Ayresome Park, which was a grim place to play. My memories of Ayresome Park are particularly unpleasant, as it was the one ground where fans would throw everything at you, including p.i.s.s! I"m not joking; when you went to ask for the ball back from the crowd for a goal kick they would chuck plastic cups full of p.i.s.s on you and saturate you.
The defeat against Boro put us into play-offs in May 1990 and as fate would have it, we had to play Sunderland our greatest rivals. You hear all about Celtic v Rangers, Manchester United v City and Liverpool v Man Utd, but this rivalry was every bit as fierce. It"s a huge game up there in the north east Geordies v Mackems and to be up against Sunderland in the play-offs was one of the biggest games ever between the teams.
We went to their old ground, Roker Park, on the Sat.u.r.day for the first leg and it was packed. I had one of my best games in a Newcastle shirt, and with the score at 0-0 in the 90th minute they won a penalty. I"d seen the Sunderland left-back Paul Hardyman take penalties before, because when I wasn"t playing I used to watch a lot of games during the week and I"d seen him stick one to the keeper"s right against Torquay. I had a funny feeling he was going to put it the same way, and he did. I leapt low to my right and made a decent stop. The Newcastle fans went mad, but the lights went out for me Hardyman"s frustration boiled over and after missing the penalty, he followed up by kicking me right in the face as I lay on the ground clutching the ball. All the Newcastle lads went crazy, and it turned into a free for all, while I lay oblivious to the battle going on around me as I stayed down on the turf. Hardyman was sent off for booting me in the head, denying me any chance of revenge, and everything seemed stacked in Newcastle"s favour to beat them in the return leg.
After my penalty save I thought to myself that it was all fated I was completely convinced we were going to win the second leg at St James" Park. It was a funny situation, because whoever won would be going up. Swindon Town were about to be punished for alleged financial irregularities, so whoever got to the final at Wembley Newcastle or Sunderland would automatically be promoted, regardless of their result against Swindon, as they were heading for the trapdoor anyway.
The atmosphere was frenzied for the return leg, but my pre-match vibes that Newcastle were going to finish the job were proved sadly wrong. Eric Gates and Marco Gabbiadini scored for Sunderland and they beat us 2-0 at St James" Park it was devastating. It wasn"t a nice game to play in, and I"m not just saying that because we lost. I love derbies, but there was just too much at stake for both sides and there was an ugly atmosphere. The fans" frustration boiled over, and a pitch invasion after the second goal held the game up for half an hour. Losing that game was definitely one of the most heartbreaking moments for me in football, especially after I had stopped that penalty in the first leg from Hardyman. But, the way I look at it, everything happens for a reason. If we"d gone up that season Newcastle might not have enjoyed the revival they experienced under Kevin Keegan four or five years later, and seen their ground transformed into the magnificent stadium it is today. I later ended up working for the club for 12 years as a player and a coach so I was well placed to judge a few years down the line. In my opinion, if they had gone up back in 1990, Newcastle would have remained the yo-yo side that they always had been. We would have gone up in 1990 and straight back down again we weren"t well enough equipped for a sustained run in the top flight at that time. It all changed when Sir John Hall bought Newcastle and brought Kevin Keegan in. They bought guys like Les Ferdinand, Philippe Albert, Alan Shearer, Robert Lee all unbelievable players but I honestly think none of that would have happened had we gone up in 1990.
The play-off disaster aside, I really enjoyed my first season at Newcastle, and I was playing out of my skin at 39 years old. Sadly, Jim Smith carried the can for failing to get us up and he got the sack towards the end of the following season. There were three or four games left of the season, and as we sat in the training ground it was announced that the new manager was being brought to meet us. n.o.body knew who it was, it was all hush-hush.
We were all sitting there in the dressing room speculating who it might be, when the chairman Gordon McKeag came in and announced with great gusto: "I want to introduce to you the new manager of Newcastle United Football Club..."
The door opened and in walked my old sparring partner, Osvaldo Ardiles. The incident at The Dell, where I had clocked him for pushing me down the stairs, immediately invaded my thoughts. My mind was racing and I honestly managed to convince myself that he wouldn"t remember it was ancient history and water under the bridge as far as I was concerned.
He started going round the dressing room smiling and shaking hands with the players, and when he arrived in front of me, the chairman blissfully ignorant of the history we shared said: "And this is John Burridge, our star goalkeeper...". I extended my hand for him to shake, but he totally blanked me and walked on to the next player.
"This isn"t good," I thought to myself, and went home for a sleepless night. I trained the next day, and began to think it would all just be a storm in a teacup. The team were due to play West Ham at the weekend, then Charlton Athletic the following Tuesday in two back-to-back away games, so the plan was for the squad to stay down in London for the duration of the two matches. The day before we were due to head south, I was in my car when Janet phoned to say she"d just seen the local paper and it was reporting that I"d been dropped. "No chance," I thought, as we"d just won 2-0 in our last game and I"d saved a penalty. But when I got to the training ground my kit wasn"t in its normal place in the first-team dressing room. I asked the kit man where it was and he sheepishly told me that the manager had ordered him to put it in the reserves" dressing room. Ardiles hadn"t even had the guts to tell me, and instead word was pa.s.sed down through the ranks that he wanted me to train with the reserves.
I still couldn"t believe it. I thought he was just trying to scare me, so when the team bus was about to leave for London I still turned up in my suit and club tie, ready to head down with the rest of the lads. It was when I read the team-sheet and saw my name wasn"t on it I knew it was no joke. I got into my car, totally disappointed, my thoughts all over the place as I tried to make some sense of it all. With Osvaldo down in London with the team, the earliest chance I would get to speak to him face to face would be the Wednesday. So I bided my time till the Wednesday, then headed in to St James" Park for a showdown. As I was standing in reception, ready to have my say, the secretary Russell Cushing came down and said: "Sorry John, the boss wants you out of here. He doesn"t want you on the training ground; he doesn"t want to see your face in the club again."
I had two years left on my contract so it was a lot to take in. It was obvious that he harboured grudges big time. I couldn"t believe that he didn"t have the guts to tell me himself.
CHAPTER 17.
HIB, HIB HOORAY.
"A forward booted me right in the face and burst my nose. I could just hear him growling "Welcome tae Scotland, ya Sa.s.senach"."
My treatment at the hands of Ossie Ardiles at Newcastle was difficult to take at the time, but it proved to be career-changing and for the better. This cloud really did have a silver lining. When Ardiles was appointed and froze me out, it was near the end of the season and there were only four or five games left. I had won the player of the year award that year and even though it was traditionally presented to the winner on the pitch at the last home game of the season, Ardiles wouldn"t let me have it. Micky Quinn and I were the best sellers at the time or merchandise in the Newcastle club shop, but when I popped in all the signed pictures of me had been taken off the shelves, and so had the No.1 jerseys. He was trying to obliterate every last trace of me from Newcastle, and I thought he must really have hated me.
I didn"t even get picked for the reserves, so I just trained and saw the season out. In the summertime I was contemplating my future and what to do next. My old club, Blackpool, who were in the Third Division, came in for me, which would have been a nice move, and Hartlepool also made an offer, which would have allowed me to stay at home in Durham. Falkirk, who were managed by Jim Jefferies, had also been alerted that I was available, and I played a pre-season game for them with a view to going there. But as I was pondering those possibilities I got a call from Hibernian one night. Their manager Alex Miller rang me up and said: "Do you fancy trying something different the Scottish Premier League? Come up and see me, and have a look for yourself."
This was all happening a week before pre-season training was about to start, and there was no time to waste. I got on the train from Durham, and was first of all surprised at how short the journey was an hour and 20 minutes. The journey up was scenic, and I was already getting good vibes. When you get off the train at the Waverley Station, Edinburgh is one of the most impressive cities you have ever seen in your life as you come up the ramp from the station you see the big castle on your left and Princes Street on your right. I liked the cobbled streets and I thought to myself this is a nice place to be. I took a taxi down to the Hibs ground, Easter Road, which was a nice little stadium and I got a feel for what Scottish football is all about.
When I met Alex Miller, he explained to me: "We"ve sold Andy Goram to Glasgow Rangers for a million pounds, and we"ve only got a couple of kids, Chris Reid and Jason Gardiner, as keepers and I don"t know if they are ready yet for playing week-in, week-out in the Premier League." I was impressed by the city and the club, and I decided I would give it a go. We came to an agreement on my salary it wasn"t a lot in terms of a weekly wage, but I was 39 and there was a good signing-on fee, so we shook hands on the deal.
What I didn"t realise when I signed was the trouble Hibs had been in at that time. I didn"t know anything about Scottish football as all my attention had been on English football, and apart from looking at Aberdeen"s results from time to time when Ian Porterfield was manager, I hadn"t paid much attention to the Scottish Premier League.
I had to report for pre-season training a few days later, so I caught the train up and headed down to their training ground at Wardie where I would meet up with my new team-mates. To say it was a shock doesn"t do it justice it was the worst training ground I"d ever seen in my life. It was basically a public park. You got changed inside a hut and the showers didn"t work properly. At clubs like Aston Villa and Newcastle, I had been used to purpose-built training grounds where you would be well looked after. I was used to being given breakfast and a cup of tea and having people fussing around you. But at Hibs, we had a dive of a training ground, and the players started turning up looking down in the dumps.
I then started hearing stories that there was no money in the club, that they"d nearly gone bankrupt, and that a fella called Wallace Mercer, the chairman of their rivals Hearts, had tried to put them out of business to make Edinburgh a one-club city. I heard that people had been threatening to kill him or shoot him because of what he was trying to do to Hibs. I thought to myself: "What have you let yourself in for here, Budgie?"
We started training and it was all very downbeat. I took that for three or four days then said to myself: "I"ve got to do something to lift this place". I was reading the Edinburgh evening papers and all the talk was how the players were unsure of their futures. The season before I arrived, 1990/91, Hibs came close to being relegated as they"d finished ninth of the 10 teams. The league was reconstructed to make it a bigger 12-team league, and while they would have stayed up anyway as only one team went down, everyone knew Hibs had beaten the drop by the skin of their teeth.
I didn"t know any of that when I signed. I hadn"t done my homework if I"m being honest, and all the emphasis was on keeping away from relegation; that was the chat from the manager as well because they had fought a relegation dogfight the year before and it was still preying on their minds. It was a terrible atmosphere and I thought: "C"mon Budgie, you have to work your magic here," so I started the old Budgie antics around the dressing room, making people laugh and lifting their spirits. I remember one morning I let the rest of the lads go out before me, telling them I"d be out once I"d put some tape on my fingers. They were all out on the pitch, kicking a ball about, when I ran out to join them totally starkers apart from my goalie gloves!
We played four or five pre-season games against part-timers up in the north of Scotland. We didn"t do very well we were hopeless in fact, drawing or losing against a bunch of amateurs. I knew we had to start winning and quick. I knew if we couldn"t beat Highland League teams then we could be heading for trouble.
I looked at the team and we weren"t bad we had some good players, we just had a problem with motivation and belief. So I started having a laugh and a joke around the place and all of a sudden it was a bit more joyful and we started to get rid of the bad feeling that had been created by Wallace Mercer and his attempted takeover. But the only way you can truly get rid of that feeling is by winning football matches. It was as simple as that.
We played St Mirren in the first game of the season on home turf, and I knew that a win was vital, because a defeat could sap morale and set the tone for a long, hard season. The Scottish Premier League was of a much better standard than I thought it would be. I mistakenly thought it might be Third Division standard, but when we kicked off I soon knew I"d misjudged it. In the first 20 minutes we were awful, just far too nervous and inferior in our minds because we didn"t have the winning mentality. I remember a cross came over and someone gave me a right good clatter and I dropped it. I gathered it at the second attempt, but the forward booted me in the face. My nose was all bleeding, and I could just hear a voice in a broad Scottish accent growling: "Welcome tae Scotland, ya f.u.c.kin" Sa.s.senach." I was playing against my pal from Newcastle, Roy Aitken, who had moved to St Mirren because he couldn"t get along with Ossie either, and I knew he was an out-and-out winner and would have them fired up. But whatever they threw at us, we threw back. We settled down and started to play out of our skins; we won it 4-1, and I was delighted with my own performance too. I ran to the fans, on a crest of a wave, and they seemed to take to me right away as I bowed before them and threw my gloves into the crowd.
We then won our second game, against St Johnstone, so we were off to as great start, and kept up the good work by going the first 10 league games unbeaten. The lads started believing, and you could see them visibly growing in confidence. They were enjoying their football again. I was playing as well as I had done in my career and I made the crowd laugh with my gymnastics. I was playing up to them, putting the smiles back on their faces, and it was a completely different atmosphere. A local millionaire called Tom Farmer, who had made his fortune from the Kwik-Fit garage chain, had come in and put an awful lot of money in to stabilise the club, and I think he had helped pay for Keith Wright, who we had signed from Dundee for half-a-million. Tom had bought the club first and foremost to stop Wallace Mercer shutting it down, but to his delight we had made an unbelievable start to the season.
I had a system of defending that Terry Venables had shown me at Crystal Palace which I took with me to any club I was at it was like shoving the opposition down a funnel. I was basically coaching the defence while I was on the pitch. Alex Miller used to watch me doing this at training with players like Murdo MacLeod and my full-backs Graham Mitch.e.l.l and Willie Miller, and I noticed that he used that same method a few years later when he was Scotland a.s.sistant manager to Craig Brown. The gist of the system was that we wouldn"t let teams play down the outside on the wings; everything would get pushed down the middle where they would run into players like Pat McGinlay or Brian Hamilton, who could both tackle. It was simple, but effective. If opponents beat me once or twice a season from 25 yards down the middle then I could accept that, but if you allow teams to keep getting crosses in from wide areas then they are going to hurt you and you will concede a lot of goals.
I was coaching this method and we started to adapt to this new system comfortably. You could see the central defenders Tommy McIntyre and "Geebsy", Gordon Hunter, believing in themselves and getting stronger. Gordon wasn"t the tallest lad in the world, but he was a brilliant tackler and he was quick. Tommy was strong and excellent in the air, but to begin with he was a little bit soft and timid. He had everything needed to become a fantastic centre-back. I told him he was good enough to be an international, but first I had to get him to stop being so negative in his thinking. Everything was going well and Alex Miller seemed happy enough to let me get on with it and use this system because we were winning football matches and keeping clean sheets, with Mickey Weir and Keith Wright banging in the goals at the other end. From being a skint club that was on the verge of going bankrupt, we were riding high in the league and enjoying a great season.
CHAPTER 18.
HAMPDEN HERO.
"I had never seen anything like the scenes in Edinburgh that night."
The League Cup, or Skol Cup as it was known then, comes thick and fast in Scotland and back in those days it would be all over and done with by the end of October. It was a good format, and it captured the public"s imagination because you"d be playing every week. I hadn"t being paying too much attention to cup runs because my main concern was to keep Hibernian in the Premier League after all the pre-season talk about relegation. But we beat Stirling Albion, then Kilmarnock, then Ayr United in the quarter-finals all away from home and before we knew it we"d made it into the semi-finals by September.
We got drawn out of the hat to play Glasgow Rangers at Hampden Park and obviously they were going to be big favourites to win that game. It was the height of the Graeme Souness era and their team was packed full of internationals. They had one hundred times the budget Hibs had, and they always fielded their strongest team in the League Cup. It was the first time I had played against them, and the first time I had been able to play against Andy Goram who had been something of a Hibs hero and the man I"d been bought to replace. I had heard stories about Andy Goram from the lads that I couldn"t believe. While I was Mr Dedication, I heard how they used to have to pour coffee down his throat or give him a hot bath to get him fit enough to play because he had been drinking like a fish before games. They said he would be in some terrible states, but then would go out and play brilliantly. That was the complete opposite to me. I would be in bright and early, doing my warm-up routine and preparing for games, so I was sick of hearing about Goram and what a wonderful keeper he"d been. I would ask them: "If he was so great, how did you nearly get relegated last year?"
It was my first time playing at Hampden. All the lads were buzzing though and the green end of Edinburgh was on fire, but Alex Miller took a bit of geeing up. I"ve come across a lot of pessimists in my life, but Alex Miller was the biggest pessimist I have ever seen. At the start of the season I had to battle the team"s collective depression, but I constantly had to battle the manager"s depression as well. He used to give long-winded team talks about how good Partick Thistle or St Mirren were. He would tell us that Chic Charnley was going to belt one in from 25 yards, that he was going to break everyone"s legs, that he needed to be watched going on and on and on about this team. I eventually snapped and said: "For G.o.d"s sake boss, it"s Saint f.u.c.king Mirren not Saint Peter we"re dealing with! I"ve played about 700 top-league games and you"re trying to make me scared of St Soddin" Mirren!" All the lads were giggling away in the dressing room as they saw Miller"s serious face develop into an even darker frown, but I had the bit between the teeth and I went on: "Don"t stand there telling us what they are going to do to us, tell us what we are going to do to THEM!"
I wanted him to be optimistic and to have them worrying about us. But before the Rangers game, he started it all again, bigging them up during the team talk in the hotel. He had played for them in the 1970s and obviously was in awe of them a bit. He was raving about how good they all were Ally McCoist, Pieter Huistra, Mark Hateley, John Brown and Mo Johnston. He said to me: "Budgie, see Hateley be careful, he"s going to mince you in the first few minutes. He does it to all goalkeepers; he hammers you, and smashes into you with his elbows." I couldn"t believe what I was hearing and I said back to him: "Young Mark? His old dad [Tony] might have tried to do it to me when I was 16 at Workington, and he was playing for Notts County, but this f.u.c.ker isn"t going to do it to me." The lads were falling about laughing. For good measure, I added: "I"ll put him in the hospital. Talk about us, not about them."
He didn"t know what to say, he was gobsmacked.
When we got to Hampden, I was in the dressing room before the game telling jokes and playing pranks, putting people"s stockings in the showers, that kind of thing, when Alex Miller came over and told me to be serious. Now, anyone will tell you I am deadly serious when a game starts, but if you"re helping to make people laugh in the dressing room it takes pressure off the game. If you got out there with a smile on your face, you play better.
Miller asked me again: "Are you being serious, Budgie?" That rattled me a bit and I said: "I"ll show you how serious I am." So when we got into the Hampden tunnel, where both of the teams were lining up and preparing to be led out, I spotted Hateley and gave it to him with both barrels. I shouted at him: "Hey Hateley, I"m going to break your back if you come in my six-yard box, you big fairy!" I saw McCoist trying not to laugh, so I turned my guns on him. "I dunno what you"re laughing at, McCoist. You were a failure at Sunderland and you couldn"t cut it, son. You"ve had to come back to Scotland and beg for a game!" Murdo MacLeod, who was the captain and player-manager, was getting a bit concerned at all the shouting and swearing and asked me what I was doing winding them up before a game, but there was no way anyone was going to stop me having my say and I continued, addressing the whole Rangers team this time (at least any of them that would look me in the eye). "The whole lot of you are f.u.c.king rubbish," I said. "You play in a chewing gum league. If you want to play in a big league, come down south and prove yourselves down there!"
All the lads were laughing their heads off. I was ready to take on the whole Rangers team if they wanted a fight, I was so pumped up. I had my fists clenched and I just wanted to get out there. After the game started, in front of a full house at Hampden, I was really enjoying the occasion, and pulled off two or three great saves in the first half. I got a sharp reminder just how hard I would have to work to maintain my concentration when I made one silly mistake and dropped a cross. To my horror I saw that the ball was about to fall to Hateley it would have been a major embarra.s.sment for me if he"d scored after all my mouthing off but big Tommy McIntyre pulled me out of a sticky situation by kicking it clear.
We were more than holding our own against Rangers, and we made the breakthrough just before half-time when Andy Goram mis-punched a ball to Mickey Weir on the right, who crossed it back into the box for our centre-forward Keith Wright to score with a header. I came out for everything in the second half as we battled to hold on to our one-goal lead. They were throwing men forward and I made one of the best saves of my life.
Ian Durrant hit a perfect shot, which I touched on to the post, and as it came back to Ally McCoist, he hit it full pelt from seven or eight yards out. I got across the goal like lightning and managed to catch it, and I could hear him grumbling: "What a f.u.c.king save." It was our night; we had beaten a star-studded Rangers team and were heading into the final against Dunfermline on the crest of a wave.
We were big favourites to win the game, and there was an enormous Hibs crowd at Hampden expecting nothing other than victory. They felt it was fated that they were going to win their first major trophy since 1972, and do so just over a year since they were nearly wiped off the planet by Wallace Mercer. After a tense, goalless first half, little Mickey Weir got bundled over for a penalty and big Tommy McIntyre kept his cool to put us one-ahead from the spot. When Keith Wright added a second, you could sense the emotion pouring out from the fans. We"d done it!
As The Scotsman newspaper reported the following day: "Hibs" journey back from two years of abject misery was completed yesterday when the Skol Cup was won by goals from Tommy McIntyre and Keith Wright. It was Hibs" first trophy since winning the League Cup 19 years ago, and signals the return of the club to what they have has always perceived to be their rightful place at the forefront of the domestic game."
Murdo MacLeod went up the Hampden steps to lift the trophy, and then it was time to go and properly celebrate with our fans. There were around 40,000 of them in Glasgow that day and they were demanding a lap of honour. I lifted Alex Miller up on my shoulders and said: "C"mon, let"s go." The time for grudges was over. He was reluctant to join us for the lap of honour, but I picked him up and carried him round the pitch and made him look a hero. I told him he was the boss and he deserved a big share of the credit which he did.
We went back to the hotel and had a good knees-up. I had won cups before, with Aston Villa and Blackpool, and a t.i.tle with Crystal Palace where we had ridden through the streets of Croydon on an open-top bus, but I had never seen anything like the scenes in Edinburgh that night. As we returned from Glasgow to the outskirts of the city, we switched from the team coach to an open-top bus. I had never seen anything quite like it for mile upon mile there were huge crowds of well-wishers lining the streets.
The whole of Edinburgh came out even as we drove through the Hearts end of town it was packed and it took us about three hours to get to Easter Road, where there was a full stadium waiting for us. The highlight for me was coming along Princes Street, where the crowds were 20 deep. All of the statues had been dressed up in green flags and green hats, and people had climbed up on top of them to give us a wave. Everyone was so happy Hibs had done well that season. Back at the stadium was an amazing experience too, and we went out on to the pitch to do another lap of honour. I climbed up on to the fence with the trophy and shook as many of the supporters" hands as I could it was a wonderful feeling.
We were taken up the Royal Mile to the City Chambers to meet the Lord Provost and all the local dignitaries and receive more accolades. All the boys were in the mood for a ma.s.sive party, but although I enjoyed every minute, I was no night owl, and I was content just to go back for a good night"s sleep at the hotel with Janet.
The League Cup was the crowning glory of a marvellous season, considering all the doom and gloom that had been surrounding the place before a ball had been kicked. By winning the cup, we had automatically qualified for Europe; we"d also done really well in the league, finishing fourth, and got to the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup too, so it was Hibs" best season in 20-odd years.
Playing for Hibs in Europe was great. We got a plum draw out the hat Anderlecht, who were on the biggest clubs around at that time and could boast a side full of internationals. There was an electrifying atmosphere at Easter Road and we should have beaten them. The German referee had a nightmare. We had got an early goal from Dave Beaumont, then he gave a penalty against me just before half-time. He said I had brought down their player Bruno Versavel, but I won the ball clean as a whistle, and was doubly annoyed when they buried the penalty. The Dutch international Peter van Vossen put them 2-1 up, and then the referee continued his horror show by sending off wee Mickey Weir, but we showed tremendous spirit and Pat McGinlay grabbed a late equaliser to give us a bit of hope for the second leg in Brussels.
The scenes in Belgium were nothing short of amazing. There were 3,000 Hibs fans over there and they sang their hearts out for the whole 90 minutes. We got off to a nightmare start when Anderlecht scored in the first five minutes, but Darren Jackson soon equalised and we gave them a torrid time. We just couldn"t get that killer second, and their fans actually applauded us off the pitch and booed their own players. We"d gone out on away goals, and with our heads held high, and the fans stayed in the stadium for an hour to cheer us. Every time we started to head towards the dressing room, they would demand one more bow, and I was as usual at the front.
CHAPTER 19.
MANAGEMENT ISSUES.
"The simmering bad blood between me and Alex Miller boiled over during a game at Airdrie, when we came to blows."
On the back of all Hibs" success, Alex Miller had just been given a fat new contract by the chairman Douglas Cromb and a fancy BMW, and while I didn"t begrudge him that I felt it was my turn. Alex and I didn"t see eye to eye very much, and my pitch for a new deal was to bring the underlying tension to a head. I think he resented me, because although he was trying to be the boss, he knew I had the dressing room. None of the players liked him and they were a little bit frightened of him because he was a bit of a shouter, but at this stage of my career I wasn"t afraid of him, and it ended up a war of attrition between us as to who was going to be the boss.
When I started my contract talks, Miller already had his new deal signed and sealed. He had been given his rightful share of the credit for a good season, but I felt I was being given no recognition for the part I had played in lifting the lads. His words at the start of the season had been all about beating relegation, but I had aimed higher than that. The club had brought in an awful lot of money as we"d got into the Uefa Cup, won the League Cup and done well in the league.
When I first came to Hibs I was paying 20 out of my own pocket for my return fare from Durham to Edinburgh every day, plus another tenner for a taxi from the station down to the training ground and back. I eventually bought a rail season ticket for about 450, so I could travel any time, and I also bought myself a small motor bike, as I used to like them when I was a kid and I thought it would be handy for zipping around. It was just a little 150cc Yamaha and I used to park it in the Waverley Station on the bike rack. It was perfect for me, because when I had to queue for a taxi and head into traffic jams I could never gauge how much time it would take me to get down to training. But on the motorbike I was always at the front of the queue, and I knew I could get to and from the Waverley in less than 10 minutes. One day, however, I was running late and it"s a bugbear of mine that I don"t like being late for training. My usual routine was to get there about 45 minutes before the rest of the lads, so I could do my own technical work. I jumped off the train and went to get my bike so I could get down to training as quick as I possibly could. I threw on my helmet, which I used to strap through the bike chain so n.o.body could pinch it, and set off. But as I was riding down to Wardie I became aware of a terrible smell. Then the horrible realisation came to me somebody had c.r.a.pped in my helmet during the night! It must have been a Hearts supporter who had done it. As I weaved my way through the traffic, it was seeping out the edges of my helmet and it was running down my face there was nothing I could do about it and it took all my concentration to stop myself from being sick. When I got to Wardie, I jumped into the shower and scrubbed and scrubbed myself till there was no trace of it, and then I scrubbed the helmet. Naturally, the lads thought it was hysterical.
The rail fares and the bike all came out of my pocket, though, and I felt after the season I had just had, I was due a raise. I went in to see Alex and told him I wanted a big increase and a 50,000 fee to sign on again, but he bluntly told me: "You"re not getting an extra penny."
In those days, before Bosman, you couldn"t just walk out on a club they could make you play. Players were a bit like slaves in those days. Even though I was 40 years old, they could slap a million-pound transfer tag on me and stop me playing or stop my wages if they had really wanted to, and I knew Alex was well capable of doing that. It may sound like I asked for too much, but when money was involved and my contract was up I was ruthless; I had to be. I backed down a bit and said that the least the club could do was pay my season-ticket on the train, but again he said: "No, you"re playing on the same wages you did last season, not a penny more." That was the start of my downfall at Hibs. I had been prepared to play another two or three years with them because I was very, very happy, but Alex Miller took all the goodwill out of me.
I may not have been the club captain, but I had been the heart and soul of that team the season before. After Miller"s att.i.tude to my contract, I lost my enthusiasm. Some days I didn"t want to train the first time I"d ever felt like that in my career. I hadn"t lost any feeling for the club or the fans; I had just lost all respect for Alex Miller. It even got to the stage where two or three days a week I would call in ill. I just didn"t want to play for Miller"s Hibernian.
The new season started and my heart wasn"t it, and it was affecting my form. I missed a lot of games, and would ring in with false excuses. In the past, nagging injuries like dislocated fingers, sore shins or bruised toes had never kept me out, I would just strap them up and play, but now I was using them as an excuse not to play. I would have found a new club in the Third Division in England rather than play for a team where I wasn"t happy. I knew a few other clubs in Scotland had been asking about me too, but it seemed to be the case that Alex Miller was turning them down to make a point.
The simmering bad blood between me and Alex Miller boiled over during a game at Airdrie, when we came to blows. It was a foul night, lashing down with rain, and during the warm-up I had been wearing a big, waterproof, protective training top. I headed back into the dressing room to get my kit on, but two or three minutes before kick-off time I was still sitting there with my waterproof top on. Miller came up to me and barked at me: "You"ve got to wear the club goalkeeper"s shirt, Budgie." It was hammering down with rain and, although he didn"t know it, I was intending to wait till the last minute and put the proper goalkeeper"s shirt over the top of it. But when he came over and started trying to order me around, I couldn"t resist a great chance to have an argument with him, so I told him: "No. I"m wearing this instead." He started trying to pull the waterproof top off me so I elbowed him in the jaw.
All of a sudden he squared up to me, so I hit him and knocked him to the floor. The red mist had descended and I was on top of him, knocking h.e.l.l out of him until the a.s.sistant manager Murdo MacLeod jumped on my back and clocked me over the head with a big telephone not one of the slick little mobiles you get now, this one was like a brick. I was half dazed. Normally I wouldn"t have done it, but he had been holding me against my will, and all my frustration got the better of me. The whole situation really affected the boys, because they could see I wasn"t happy. I was no longer Jolly Budgie all the time, I was Angry Budgie. It had a negative effect on the dressing room, but in my eyes it was Alex Miller"s fault for not seeing me right.
Another strange incident happened during that match. To some fans and players in Scottish football back then religion was a big deal, and obviously Celtic had a big Catholic following whereas Rangers were known as the protestant club. An Airdrie player came flying into me, caught me with his studs, and shouted: "Take that, ya Fenian b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" I didn"t even know what a "Fenian" was; I had never heard of the word and would have needed a dictionary to find out what it meant, so I asked him what he was talking about. When he said it meant I was a Catholic, I told him: "I"m not one, but what"s that got to with anything anyway?" To my amazement, he just said: "Oh, okay, sorry then" and ran back up the pitch. It was totally bizarre, but Scottish football could be like that sometimes.
After the game, we got back in the dressing room and I"d played quite well, Alex tried to say well done, but I told him to stick it, telling him: "I did it for the lads, not for you, Miller." There was a real bad atmosphere between us, and it couldn"t go on. At the end of that season Hibs released me.
I regret that I was unable to build on the success of that first season, and gone on to have a couple more happy years at Hibs, but I always felt there was a jealousy from Alex Miller as well as an inferiority complex. He was wary of me because I was a bit more popular than he was and had the confidence of the players.