I can’t remember the first time I kicked a football, and I cannot remember the moment I fell in love with sport. To my knowledge, it has always been there. A genetic gift from my father perhaps? He was not a sportsman though, but he loved sport, especially football. His brother Norman was a Welsh athlete, running in the 1958 Empire (predecessor to the Commonwealth) games in Cardiff. My mother was a decent swimmer in her time representing the school and my sister was a very good junior level gymnast.
One of my earliest childhood memories was the 1978 World Cup from Argentina. I remember it for two reasons. The amazing football kits and the fact I got stung on the arse by a bumble bee, hiding behind the curtains to watch a game my father had said I was not allowed to stay up and watch. To this day I still have a childlike fascination with football kits. I also have a deep seated loathing of the bumble bee. Anyway, whether it was the sting or the kits, I knew I enjoyed watching the TV with my father getting far more animated than when we would watch Dr Who together. I suppose in some ways it made me feel grown up. If you watched any programme as a child there would be passages of vocabulary that raised more questions than answers for a young child, but that is the thing with sport, it has a language of its own. You can be fluent long before you are allowed to write with a pen, and it is universal, understood by all who love sport. You don’t need a common tongue or a thesaurus like vocabulary to understand simple words like, goal, foul, draw and win.
I nagged him for a year or two before he conceded, but eventually he took me down to watch his beloved Cardiff City play. He had watched them for years, when work allowed, both home and away. I was lucky. Not only did I see a night match but I also got to see the City in their iconic blue shirts with yellow and white vertical stripe. The ultimate Cardiff City kit for all aficionados. I can’t help but let the nostalgia wash over me as I recall that night, the smells of burger vans outside the ground and the Bovril inside, the stinking urinals where the grown-ups weed, the fog being lifted and chased away by the glow of the floodlights, the noise of the fans as the team ran out onto the pitch, the fan my father knocked out for standing on my foot (that I never told my mam about in case I was not allowed to go again). I was completely and utterly hooked. All I wanted to do was play football from that point onwards. I wanted to be one of the boys in the local team that infamous Bob Bank cheered and, far more often with the fickle City support, jeered.
Match of the Day was now my favourite programme, and I would ask to be woken up to watch the highlights package on a Saturday night, having invariably fallen asleep on the sofa. My life was now all about football, and curiously enough, snooker. My next door neighbour had a four foot snooker table and that was often the sport we played when the rain stopped us kicking a football about. I was fortunate because on our street, a quiet cul-de-sac, (other than at weekends when the Deri’s finest would use it as a shortcut), we could play any sport we chose. Cricket was a favourite using the width of the road as the wicket and the lamppost as the stumps. The number of times we had a telling off from the street elders was innumerable. Jerry who lived next door to Kane Donovan, was the worst of the lot. The amount of times a cover drive or the like would hit his garage, front window or car was incredible and almost every time he would explode into an apoplectic rage. If you missed the ball however it would end up in in Mr Thomas’s garden which wrapped around the corner of the street. He would go white with fury at the mere sight of a cricket bat and tennis ball. Looking back you can kind of understand their view point, but there was never any malice intended, ever. Mostly never, anyway.
During the long summer holidays we would embark to the Mormon Church field, which backed onto to the local Deri Pub car park. We would play cricket there with no problems at all, and football too. Football consisted of playing ‘three and in’, or ‘cooler’. Cooler was a fantastic game, you could only score with a header or a volley. If you missed you went in goals, if the keeper caught the ball you went in goal. Before I even started junior school I was able to vary the pace of my headers and volley with either foot. In fact, a left foot volley of mine tore through the goal (no nets of course, strictly goalposts for jumpers in those days) and removed a wing mirror form a van in the pub car park. We got chased, we got caught and I had a hiding off my father. I remember the cost of the bill, £6. That shows how bloody long ago this was.
When I did start junior school I was streets ahead of most of the kids my age when it came to sporting ability as I had played so much prior to starting. I knew how to catch, throw and run. I could jump and boy, could I kick. Only in later years would I understand why the kick I had was so overpowered, but more of that later.
In my first year of junior school I was selected to play for the school football and baseball teams. I was handed the number 8 shirt, the inside right position as my sports teacher Mr Kemp explained. Anyone who knew me in my latter stages as a hard nosed defender would cry out in shock that I started as a striker, but I did. I was also a prolific striker. I had a turn of pace, skill and a real eye for goal, finishing my first year as second top scorer tied with Michael Reece but a way behind Andrew Ballantyne. It just proves in the case of the latter that anyone can be a star in junior school football.
Here’s the thing though, it was too easy. Even as the smallest member of the team I could do things with a ball others couldn’t and I got bored. I begged for the chance to become a defender, I just wanted a change and halfway through the second season in the red shirt of Rhiwbina Junior School, my wish was granted. In the years that followed I only played two games in any other position than centre half. After my ‘proper football’ was over I played in many positions but as an aspiring kid through the years to my fateful leg break, centre half was MY position. I loved it. I loved the physicality of getting stuck in, and in those days you could. I would get an adrenaline kick when our full back would be skinned by a winger and I could sprint across to dispossess them. You were far more involved in the game. In a match you may get two or three opportunities to score, but you would get ten times that in terms of tackling chances. You also had the chance to play from the back, to see the options ahead of you and dictate the play. I suppose it was the ‘libero’ role made famous by Mr Franz Beckenbauer, but it was perfect for me. We won the league in my third and fourth years and only lost one game, a 2 – 3 reverse against a strong Coryton team. I didn’t play in that game but in the rematch I did and I dominated. Their star players didn’t get a look in and the game petered out into a nil nil draw.
Unknown to me I had been watched by a man during that game who I owed so much to in the next few years to come.. The father of the Coryton striker Ryan Nicholls was setting up an under 12’s team and he had just seen his free scoring son get dominated for a game. That night my father received a phone call. He asked me whether I would like to play football for a club, Cardiff Corries. In those days there were no junior leagues, no mini football. From the age of nothing to 12 you played at under 12. I was that naïve that I didn’t even know you could play football outside of school, other than in Cubs, and I wasn’t ever one for wearing a woggle. For the previous two years we had had to appear in the City Hall at the end of May, next to the museum in Cardiff Civic centre. We would sit in the huge hall and wait for the winners of Junior School Cardiff North winners to be announced and would then have to walk up to the stage to collect our certificates as league winners. My father framed them but in all honesty it was only in latter years I began to appreciate the silverware, or paperware, that successful seasons would bring. I loved to win, I am a fierce competitor, but there you have it, I was a competitor. I would hate to feel I hadn’t competed to the best of my ability regardless of the scoreline.
So William Paterson and myself made up the Rhiwbina contingent at a meeting held in the youth club at Cardiff High School. We were introduced to the manager and coach of the club Bryan Nicholls and his coach Brian Morgan. I was so nervous due to inate shyness but I just had to go with my gut instinct. Something just intuitively felt I had to do this. I signed on the dotted line and that was it, I was a new member of the Cardiff Corries U12 team. This team was made up of some brilliant players and they spanned the breadth of Cardiff. Andrew Gee from Llanedeyrn, an exceptionally skilful but diminutive midfielder, Ryan Nicholls, Matthew Patterson, Keith Munday, Andrew Thomas and Phil Browne all from Coryton, Nick Barnett from St Athan, Andrew Williams from Eglwys Wen or Newydd, Stuart Rodgers, the goalkeeper extraordinaire from Birchgrove, Ross Morgan from Ely. This was a cosmopolitan team. Having never been put forward for Cardiff Schools trials by Rhiwbina, I wasn’t to know our new manager had picked the best of the best from the junior ranks in Cardiff football.
Our first game was away to St Philip Evans ‘B’. My father could not come to the game as it was midweek and he was working but I turned up, not knowing what to expect. I scored the 13th goal of the game with a 30 yard shot into the top corner, not bad for a centre half. We won 18 – 2. When I got home my father went ballistic when I told him the scoreline. He was convinced I was lying and it was not until the following weekend when we battered another junior team , again scoring double figures that he realised I had been telling the absolute truth. He never apologised though.
That season we destroyed everyone we played against. We won the league, 30 games, without dropping a single point. We scored over two hundred and fifty goals and conceded only 12. Our biggest rivals in that first season were supposed to be Z Sports. I was ill for that game and had to wait until the Football Echo was published that evening to see the junior results. Cardiff Corries 13 – Z Sports 2. That summed us up, we were simply the best. Our first actual trophy came in a six a-side tournament at Dinas Powys but there were many, many more. Our club organised a huge 6 a side tournament involving clubs from not only over South Wales but from as far away as Yorkshire. Over two days we were crowned champions with a 2 -1 final win over Georgetown, a very tough valleys team containing Jason Bowen, later to appear for both Wales and Cardiff City.
We won the league cup, the South Wales FA and League cups, and were crowned Welsh Champions, a 3 – 1 win against Aberavon at Ton Pentre seeing us confirmed as the best team in Wales, bar none. With the season over we played a friendly against Georgetown and we lost, 1 – 2, at home, our only defeat that season. Our home pitch was Hailey Park in Llandaff North and boys walked off that pitch crying that we had lost. I didn’t and it annoys me to this day that some of our boys did. If you ask my daughter now, one thing I will not stand for is either petulance or tears on the pitch. You give your best and that is all you can give, regardless of result. That season I had got to play on Ninian Park as we convincingly won one of the cup finals 6 – 1 against Ely Rangers. Ross Morgan, being an Ely boy was unplayable that evening, scoring a hat trick from midfield.
Of course it was not only club football. I played schools football as well. As a Whitchurch High pupil we had a lot of kids to choose from and winning the league was a formality as were the inevitable local cup triumphs. Our eyes were set on the big prize though, the national Cup. We beat a distinctively average Llanelli team 8 – 2, and I had a rare outing in midfield, scoring the first goal. Our coach had warned before the game that I would be marking their superstar, nothing new there, but this time was different. My opponent would be a girl. As was the norm, I tackled her as hard as I would any other player, always the feminist sympathiser me, and she didn’t want to know after that. Easy.
Our semi-final was away to St Asaph, a little North Walian outpost. Rumour was that Ian Rush would be there as I was marking his nephew. The entire school turned up to watch. About 500 kids and parents making it a very noisy occasion. We won three nil, Peter Cheeseman grabbing a hat trick. Rush wasn’t there and just as well, his nephew never got a look in. In hindsight Rush was never going to be at that game, as that evening he was playing for Wales in Wrexham, against Spain. As I had agreed to play a game for the Corries the night before and travel up to North Wales after that, Mr Nicholls had treated Ryan and myself to tickets for that game, a game in which Mark Hughes scored Wales greatest ever goal, at least in terms of spectacle.
The final was held at the old Somerton Park, under floodlights. We were in our first full season and we were playing on a professional ground, again. We took in all the atmosphere but once the whistle blew that was it. The game was one all and in the final throes of the game a clearance was punted forward. I jumped to head clear, having called for it but Stuart Rogers, our goalie, clattered into me. The ball spilled loose and they popped in a winner. Well, it would have been had the referee not already blown the final whistle. There was no extra time and no penalty shoot out. We were crowned joint Welsh champions. There is a picture of me in the house, holding my trophy with tears streaming down my face. My father absolutely tore into me after the game, saying I could have cost the team the game and needed to ‘switch on’. This was often an issue between my father and I. You can watch football all your life, but unless you’ve played it at a decent level there are slight nuances that you can never hope to understand. When a centre half calls ‘my ball’ the goalkeeper backs off. It wasn’t my mistake. I made them for sure, but that one wasn’t one. The only time I ever got sent off was for telling my father to ‘F**k off’ in an under 12 game when again he was seeing a different game off the pitch to the one I saw on it.
What had been a breathtakingly successful season ended on a sour note however. Ryan and I, plus Matthew Paterson were asked to travel with the Georgetown boys for a friendly against Luton Town. They had just had an artificial pitch installed and it was on this pitch I suffered my first proper football injury, a broken wrist. I was treated at the ground and was in the changing rooms when a couple of the pros who were receiving treatment themselves popped in. Steve Foster was a hero of mine, a huge centre half who was famous for captaining Brighton to the FA Cup final a couple of seasons before and for sporting a head band. Not the type worn today to keep the hair out of a players eyes but to protect the scar tissue that had built up from so many aerial challenges and errant elbows. He was brilliant even signing my plaster cast. The other player was a goalkeeper who I won’t name as he died several years back. He was however, a truly horrible man that day, cursing that there was a kid in the hallowed changing rooms. This was Kenilworth Road, not Wembley. First impressions you toupee wearing buffoon.
The next season was no different to the last. We played, we won, our team had been strengthened and nobody could get near us, although other teams were now improving. There were no more 18 goal victories but hitting double figures was still commonplace. However, I was t be taught two lessons, valuable ones, that serve me well even to this day. The first was I had become a little bit too confident on the pitch, and off it, in terms of football only. If there was a five a side tournament I was the defender chosen to start, so it was a no brainer that in a full scale match I would play. I was commanding and a born leader. I never had the captains armband, that was reserved for the managers son, but I was the leader on the pitch, encouraging and putting my body on the line.
So you can imagine my horror one day when the team was read out and I wasn’t in it. I was gutted, and no explanation was given. In those days there were only two substitutes allowed and I hadn’t even been selected for one of those roles. I watched the game, cheered when I should but I was fuming. On the way home my father explained to me that he had told the manager I was getting cocky and that I needed to be educated by dropping me. His line that followed is one of the truisms of life, ‘Nobody is indispensable Son, not even God himself’. Now there are hints in that statement that could be extrapolated into a deep philosophical piece about man’s abandonment of God and religion in the face of science but I was 13, I couldn’t have cared less about that, I was just coming to terms that my father had played a blinder. I would never take my place for granted again, the team had won convincingly without me, I didn’t have a right to assume I would be starting every game, that was insulting to the talented squad we had.
The other lesson was one that is familiar in all walks of life so to learn it at such an early age was a real bonus. ‘It is not what you know, but who you know’. Wow, was there ever an apt saying. We had trails for the Boys Clubs of Wales national team. They were held in the Vale of Glamorgan somewhere, possibly St Athan, but I know one thing. I played brilliantly so to get the letter confirming my place at the final national trail was fair in my eyes. In that final trail I played one of the best games of my entire life, I did not put a foot wrong. I scored, out jumping my biggest rival for a place, made tackle after tackle and set up three goals. My side won the match 8 nil. I was a nailed on certainty especially when the managers of several other teams said they wished me well in the games coming up against the other home nations.
Two weeks later I received a letter telling me I had been unsuccessful in the trail. My rival had the place I found out, despite him trialling awfully, and being a far, far lesser player than myself. Still, what can you do when his dad was on the committee of this and that? It hurt, and it still annoys me that I never got to wear my country’s colours when I deserved to, but that’s life I suppose. I doubt very much I was the first and I certainly won’t be the last player to be ‘seen off’.
Running out of quality opposition the club had booked a tour to Germany, to Stuttgart to be precise. We also travelled to Millfield to play the best of the talent from England. We drew 2 -2 , a tremendous result considering the quality of the opposition in those ranks.
When we got Germany we had a blast. It was nice to being playing European opposition, and we were fostered with a German family for a week. Despite not being a German speaker I was able to communicate well enough, especially with their sixteen year old daughter. Despite not understanding a word of English, we both shared a common tongue, French!
The football was tough, a 4 -4 draw against Nienberge FC and a close win against a team who for once, I forget the name of. The highlight of the trip other than my hosts daughter, was the trip to swimming pool where the reserved Welsh schoolboys were treated to the joys of communal changing rooms for the first time.
With the season over my trophy shelf was now bursting. Our only defeat came in a five a side tournament in the Valleys against a strong St Phillip Evans team. We lost and I was carried from the pitch with a torn muscle in my back. I couldn’t even move. I didn’t care. The winner of this tournament went on to play the winners of an English tournament as part of the pre match entertainment at Wembley Stadium before the League (Littlewoods Cup) Final. That was a hard pill to swallow.
The next season and we were up to U14 level. The usual scenes unfolded. We were unbeatable although the ever improving St Philip Evans did manage to take a point of us with a fiercely fought draw at Roath Recreational Grounds in the final game of the season. We won everything we entered, including all the schools tournaments. The highlight of the season was not on the pitch but recognition off it as I was asked to train with Cardiff City. This was in the days before academies and all the modern day perks that are taken for granted. We trained in Trelai School’s dutch barn. The best players from all clubs were there and it was interesting to see bitter rivalries from club matches reversed into genuine friendship. At the end of every training session, Jimmy Mullen, one of our coaches would offer a pound to any player who could hit the backboard of the basketball net from forty yards. I won enough that season to keep me happy. The most notable game was a winner takes all event against St Philip Evans away from home. We had raced into a three nil lead but Simon Jones was on form. A free kick and a penalty had oulled it back to three two. However, straight from the kick off our central midfielder, Nick Davis took it upon himself to shoot and when the ball sailed into the top corner any fantasy comeback was on about. Special mention to Simon Jones here as well. A superbly talented player but without doubt the most annoying I ever played against. I could handle him as a player but it was the constant commentary when he was playing that would annoy you. ‘Jonah spins away, megs, leathers it, ooooohhhhhhh’. It was incessant. Looking back it was bloody hysterical, but to play against him you just wanted to chin him.
One other perk was free tickets to watch Cardiff City play, grandstand seats as well. Both my parents and I would take full advantage of this, watching the Bluebirds win promotion from the old Division 4 with the goals of Gilligan and Bartlett, the long hair of Wimbleton and the charismatic Mike Ford. My personal hero was the centre half, Terry Boyle. He was a proper hard man type defender and despite not being overly tall for a player in his position, rarely, if ever lost an aerial battle. He also popped up with the odd goal too.
One of the coaches down ‘The City’ at the time was Stan Montgomery. A tall, elderly gentleman who knew everything there was about football, and more. An ex defender he had played countless games for Cardiff City after World War 2 as well as playing county cricket for Glamorgan. The other was Gary Davies, an ex pro whose career had ended due to a devastating knee injury. Stan took a shine to me immediately, as he reckoned I had the same characteristics that he had once had. With the improved training structure in place, I now signed Associate Schoolboy forms with the club. As they did not have a junior team in the league at that time, and this was a long time before state of the art Academies and the like, we trained at Sofia Gardens on the astroturf pitch twice a week. It was first rate training, with defenders being taught how to defend and attackers taught to move like an attacker, generic training was outdated even this far back. Our match experience was still gained from playing with our respective local club sides.
The Under 15 season was the best of the lot, for personal and team reasons. We won the league, again, and the cups, but the highlight was twofold, a tournament in Germany and a Welsh Cup Final for Cardiff Schools. I’ll start with Germany. We were entered into a tournament for my club side in Munster. The line up was impressive and the organisation incredible. Teams that featured were Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, Ajax Amsterdam, Schalke, Bayer Uerdingen and a host of Eastern European teams. Prior to the tournament itself we were tasked with taking place in a parade through the local town, and I was selected to carry the Welsh Flag at the head of our team. It was the biggest honour I had ever received. I felt twenty foot tall. Then we entered the stadium and were lined up as the national anthems of the respective countries involved were played. It was hugely emotional, and the crowds added to the spectacle. A big crowd for us in those days would number a hundred at most, except for the odd final or big school match. Here there were a few thousand. For a fourteen year old you couldn’t help be both nervous and extremely excited.
We were drawn against Ajax, Uerdingen and a team made of consonants from Yugoslavia in round one. We played Ajax first. They had some good players in that team, Michael Reiziger, Edgar Davids and Jordi Cruyff. We lost one nil, but we showed ourselves to be up for this tournament. Coming off the pitch a man put his arms around me and said in a Dutch accent ‘You are a very good player, well done’. Thanks for that Johan Cruyff. I was awestruck. The next two games we won convincingly, and that put us into the quarter finals the next day. We demolished a poor local German team and were now drawn against Inter Milan in the semi-finals. Inter Milan!! This was like a Boys Own story.
Now it is easy to say we were outclassed, that we were beaten convincingly, we were, by three goals to nil. That is half the story though. Three of the ‘U15’ Inter players were sporting full beards; one had a wedding ring on. We actually held on well in the first half conceding only one goal but experience and just sheer athleticism saw us having to compete in a third place play off against…..Ajax. Nil, nil at full time, nil, nil after extra time. Penalties beckoned. I had never been involved in a penalty shoot out before. Our players were spent and I volunteered to take a penalty. I was the third up and we were already two down. If I missed, we lost the game. My manager had told me to blast it. I didn’t, I simply placed the ball down and passed the ball into the bottom left hand corner. When it hit the back of the net I don’t think I have ever felt relief like it. The nerves prior to taking the kick were immense, the most I ever felt on a football pitch. Having seen my daughter take part in a few, admittedly at a much lower level, I know how she feels. We lost that day but I remember the penalty as a highlight as it proved I could hold my nerve, and besides, third or fourth aren’t first, so it didn’t really matter in the great scheme of things.
I’ve covered my shyness before, but taking a kick in those circumstances was awful. All eyes WERE on me. Two in particular. There was a beautiful German girl who had taken a fancy to our team. I assumed she was interested in our strike force, it was only when we left the ground and she ran along the bus banging on the window and pointing at me I realised it was actually me. She threw a piece of paper onto the bus with her name, address and phone number. My first and only ever groupie!!! I lost the paper on the ferry home but remember the name to this day, Nicole Schruns.
A few weeks after this we had to play the Welsh final, at county level, a two legged affair against the hated rivals, Swansea. We played the first leg at Ammanford Town and by half time were four goals down. It was horrific. We were not getting beaten we were getting humiliated. The team talk at half time was crucial and the big game players and personalities on the pitch, like myself, let loose. We fought back to score three unopposed second half goals. The second leg would be huge, a real battle. It would be held at the National Sports Centre in Sofia Gardens. I had just started going out with a girl called Angelina, and I was around her house when I realised I had was an hour later than I should have been. I nearly didn’t get on the on the pitch such was the annoyance of team manager Wally Carter. I did though.
To win a game of football you need one or two players to excel and four or five others to play well. That day all eleven players excelled. I had been given a new centre half partner, Justin Thorpe and when he skipped past two players and slotted home from twenty yards early on, we were all level. By half time we had scored another three, we completely and utterly dominated in every area of the pitch. I never lost a challenge, I made a fool of their star player and even got talked to by the referee and told that blowing him a kiss as I picked him up off the floor after another strong challenge was ‘not so much unsporting as absolutely taking the piss, son!’ .
Having gone six goals up we eased up and let them grab a couple as we made substitutions. A 9 – 6 aggregate win that secured Cardiff their first country triumph at this age group for 27 years. This match was one that nobody will ever forget such was the importance and the level of performance. Quite possibly, it was the proudest I ever felt after a match.
My football now was all consuming. I trained three times a week and played at least two matches a week. I also went for four three mile runs a week, and did a mile and half in just under seven and a half minutes, every day. On weekends during off season I would be running over the Wenallt, and would bang out 500 sit ups and press ups as a matter of course. I had never been fitter or stronger. That summer however I had the toughest of choices to make. Cardiff City were now forming a team to compete in the U16 league. I had a choice, go with them, or stay with the Corries. We were so used to scouts being at our games that Cardiff City wanted to ensure they had a facility to ensure they retained local talent. It took a lot of soul searching but I knew I had the ability to be a professional footballer, and to ensure this was a reality as opposed to a pipe dream had to place myself in the best position to achieve this, so agreed to transfer. I was told in no uncertain terms by my ex manager that this was a bad move for me but I was adamant.
That season I proved him wrong to a point. We lost our first game in the league 1 – 3 to Z Sports but then went unbeaten for the rest of the season. We played the Corries on the same pitch as the infamous cup final. This was the grudge match to end all matches, and they were winning 1 -2 with a final corner to be taken by Cardiff. I had never been allowed to venture up for corners for the Corries but had already scored eight goals this season for my new team from set pieces, including a spectacular overhead kick. When the ball fell to me eight yards out, I hammered it into the back of the net. In my exuberance I followed the ball in and stood there screaming and shaking the back of the net before I got mobbed by my own team mates. The look on my former managers face, who ironically was standing right behind the goals was priceless. That draw had effectively won us the league with only a handful of fixtures left. So it was onto Ely Rangers, April 10th 1989. The night it all came crashing down, for me at least.
We were a select band of players, the elite in our age group. This was in the days before Development Centres and Regional Squads, we were playing in the local district league, the future stars against distinctly average players. As a result we were always a target for the opposition, a scalp to be taken, a notch on the goalpost. We were kicked off the park in every game and you know what, I loved it. I could handle myself well enough on any pitch in any conditions.
Our goalkeeper had already been taken off with two broken fingers, jeered from the sidelines by the parents of the opposition and called names that I would hesitate to use even at my ripe old age. The rain was torrential and I was angry. I battled harder than ever and one player on their team was being a complete idiot, late for every challenge, leading with an elbow in the air. I went through him, bad challenge, and left my studs in, not a leg breaker but a taster, a lesson we could fight back. Ten minutes later a ball span on the wet grass. A real fifty fifty challenge, the sort I loved. I stamped down to clear the ball and a split second later his leg came crashing onto mine. In that instant I knew, I heard a crack and felt the burn up my leg, I was in real trouble here.
When I arrived at the hospital, I was informed I had clean breaks in both the tibia and fibula. I was devastated. I was also lucky. Despite six breaks in the two bones, I would not require surgery immediately as the bones had already moved back into a place where a plaster cast should allow the bones to heal. Twelve weeks later and my leg was out of plaster but I was distraught. My leg had literally wasted away in those three and a half months. What had once been the leg of a footballer was now more sparrow like.
I decided to go for a run, only a one miler but halfway up Wenallt Road, I had to stop, the pain was just too much. I walked home, sat on the toilet and smoked my first ever cigarette. I liked it.
I was still selected to train with the apprentices the next season but I was not up to it. Whereas before I had been so committed, that had gone, the drive was nothing to what it had been and when I was told to walk up and down the Bob Bank to strengthen my withered muscles I refused. I walked out of Cardiff City that day and never played for them again. I had played at youth level for them, been substitute in a reserve game but this was it. Do I regret that decision? Of course I do. A year later a far inferior player than me made his first team debut and became a cult hero on the terraces. I always thought he looked a bit like Yazz the ‘pop’ singer.
I was offered a lot of choices in terms of where to play next but decided to join the South Wales Police U18 team in the MacWhirter National Youth League. I shouldn’t have bothered; I wasted their time and my own. I refused to play at Britton Ferry one Sunday as my athletes foot was playing up. I only played again to prove I was not a bottler, as so many had written me off. I remember the first fifty fifty I was ever involved in after the leg break. I was playing a preseason friendly in Caldicot and it hurt, a lot, but I looked up and could see the looks from the sidelines. Did I have the strength, mentally, to play again? I got to my feet, beat my chest and raised my fingers to my lips to silence those who said I couldn’t still do it. I could, I just no longer really wanted to.
One season at this level and I knew I could not hack it, my fitness was now on the decline, my weight on the rise and I wanted to enjoy my football, have a laugh whilst playing with no expectations. It was then I met Simon Bigmore, the manager and occasional winger for Deri Rangers, a local pub team. I was invited to trial in a friendly match. I played awfully in my eyes, but such was the lower standard of football I clearly impressed. I was given the nickname Boris, as one of my challenges was so bad and late, it was claimed Boris Karloff couldn’t scare people like I did.
That afternoon and evening I smoked forty cigarettes, drank a gorilla snot (mix Baileys with Sherry and you will see why this is so aptly named) and had to sing a song for being man of the match. The next three seasons I loved my football. We had a really good team for this level in fairness, the midfield quartet of Andy Williams, Glen Powell, Simon Jones and Stephen Joyce were far too good to be playing here. In defence we had myself and the effervescent Mr Smead who could score an own goal with any part of his body at will and the hero of the team, the chain smoking, laissez faire psycho between the sticks, Mr Stephen James.
We had some right battles, the games against Channel View were actually evil incarnate. One Boxing Day and playing at their venue, they emptied bottles and bottles of bleach into our changing room. I was really upset as my brand new purple suede Tacchini trainers turned pink. There were mass brawls, with the fans as keen to fight as the players. All of this under the nose of club chairman/secretary and football statto, Dave Sugarman, who was clearly horrified at the amount of paperwork coming his way from the league disciplinary committee.
We used to win our league, gaining successive promotions and we even had a cup final at Ninian Park. This was my last game for the side. I had to come off halfway through the second half with cramp in both calves. We won but even at this level I no longer had the determination or stamina to thrive. From Inter Milan to matches against the Cow and Snuffers in five years.
I decided to form my own team, AC Butchers, based from my local pub. We had a laugh, that was all that could be said. We had a coup in signing Steve James, but we were made up of very poor players in general. The sort who can now talk a good game but never even once sniffed the levels I had taken for granted. My last ever game as an outfield player came in that inaugural season, playing away at Eastern Leisure Centre. Stephen James is convinced to this day I was shot by a Japanese sniper. I wish it had been that heroic. Chasing back towards the left hand corner flag, my hamstring went from a healthy size to the size of a gnats bollock. I fell as though I had been shot, I walked off laughing. That was it. I played the next season as a goalkeeper but other than rushing to the halfway line to sort out a melee the highlight that season was my freakish kicking I touched on earlier.
At U12 level I had scored from a goal kick. Not a kick from the keeper’s hands but from the edge of the six yard box. I had caught the ball well and it bounced once before looping over the keeper and in, on a full size pitch. I could kick a ball from the hands to the edge of the opposition area with no effort at all. The reason I would only discover in later life. I had hyper extension in my knee joints, and this coupled with short hamstring and obscenely developed calves and quadriceps was perfect for striking a football.
To this day there are many that only remember that big kick, whether to clear a defence of danger or to set up an another attack. I know different and those that know their football know different to. I was good, once upon a time, very, very good and I threw it all away but then things happen for a reason. I enjoyed my football, on the whole, and I wouldn’t change one thing, other than a broken leg. That same leg has now been broken four times. In winter, it hurts when the cold weather kicks in, but it also serves to remind me that it could also have been a hell of a lot worse.
So that’s that. I could have filled a thousand pages but I will do what all ex footballers do now and list my favourite teams, managers etc, some of you will be surprised.
Manager: Bryan Nicholls
Coach: Stan Montgomery
Best XI I played with
GK: Stuart Rogers
RB: Craig Hewings
CB: Keith Munday
CB: Me (Captain)
LB: Daniel James
RM: Jason Bowen
CM: Andrew Williams
CM: Simon Jones
LM: Matthew Paterson
ST: Ryan Nicholls
ST: Jeremy Wall
Subs: Ian Jones, Geraint Evans, Andrew Gee, Nick Davies, Justin Thorpe, Stephen Joyce, Gareth Morgan.
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