7
WHEN JACK Charlton did eventually get round to buying a centre-forward it was in December 1975 and he dug deep into the club’s coffers to pay £72,000 for Phil Boersma from Liverpool, a striker of some pedigree who had been a fringe part of one of Liverpool’s golden eras. As I say, Jack didn’t spend anyone’s money, his or the club’s, lightly so this was a big investment by our standards.
What we had achieved in 1974/75, our first season back in the top division, had been remarkable considering that his only outlay had been on a left-back. But we needed to refresh some of the staff and to bolster what was already a decent squad, just requiring a player or two to make us serious contenders again. However, the Boersma signing proved to be little short of a disaster.
Phil was a nice enough lad, Merseyside born and bred and quick and lively on the pitch, when we could get him out on to it. At Liverpool he was behind Kevin Keegan and John Toshack in the pecking order but had made some useful contributions, often as a substitute as the Reds won the league title and the UEFA Cup. I think he had had a few differences of opinion with the Liverpool manager, Bob Paisley, and both had come to the conclusion that it was time for him to move on.
Mindful that he needed at least one new forward to supplement John Hickton, David Mills and Alan Foggon, Jack caused a bit of a stir on Teesside by breaking the club transfer fee record to bring Boersma to Ayresome Park. Jack justified it by saying that our new man could also play in midfield or wide so he had two or three players rolled into one. On that basis alone, his great versatility, and the experience of playing at a top class club, made his signing something of a coup and our fans were genuinely excited by the prospect of a Liverpool player coming to join us. We players were also pleased that Jack had splashed out for a well-known footballer whose record of 17 goals in 82 league matches for Liverpool pointed to his quality.
His signing also told the outside world that Middlesbrough meant business in that we were now signing household names, as Boersma was because Liverpool enjoyed such a high profile. Until his arrival our players had been home-developed or had been bought from teams like Mansfield in Stuart Boam’s case or Cardiff in Foggon’s. So Boersma carried a huge burden of expectancy among us all, and then spectacularly failed to produce.
Phil was super, super fit and yet never fit to play, there being a big difference between the two states. There was always something wrong with him and as a consequence his two years at Middlesbrough will not be remembered with any affection either by him or the club’s baffled followers. In short, he was not half the player we thought he would be. Searching through the record books I see he played 47 times and got three goals which, even allowing for the fact that he didn’t always play as an out-and-out striker, more often in midfield, says something of his struggles.
Jack must have wondered what he had done bringing Boersma across the country to the North-East. He was most unlike any player Jack would have encountered at Leeds or among those he had inherited at Middlesbrough. One of the qualities on which we based our success was durability, the capacity to shake off knocks and get on to the pitch much the same side every week. There were times when I went into matches not fully fit but it would never have occurred to me not to play and so it was with my team-mates. It was the Middlesbrough way. But poor old Phil never conformed to any of that. He was on the treatment table more than he was on the pitch and Jack became more and more exasperated.
There was one match at Old Trafford where Phil was a substitute and Jack told him at half-time to get ready to go on at the resumption. But Phil said, ‘I can’t go on now. I need 20 minutes to warm up.’ Jack was open-mouthed. Never before had he heard such an excuse, if it was an excuse because I think he actually wanted to play. But not just at that moment.
We anticipated great things of Phil, perhaps too much, and he was not able to deliver, leaving Jack to rely yet again on Hickton and Mills for his goals while I chipped in with half a dozen that season. Phil moved on to Luton in 1977 and I reckon he must have been glad to get away. At least with us he forged a lasting friendship with Graeme Souness which was to stand him in good stead later. Phil became a qualified physiotherapist after his playing career wound down at Swansea and when Souness became a prominent manager at clubs like Southampton, Blackburn, Newcastle and Rangers, Phil followed him as a coach and as a physio.
The Boersma episode aside, Jack stuck to the players he knew. The failure of his star signing from Liverpool probably made him a little wary of entering the transfer market again and we went through 1975/76 with the same ever-reliable group among whom I was the only ever-present. And we did at least end the season with some silverware, albeit the Anglo-Scottish Cup which may not rank high among glamorous trophies but it was there to be won, and win it we did.
Not having been lucky enough to win the FA Cup or League Cup, despite near-misses, the Anglo-Scottish Cup will have to go down as some sort of consolation but it was fun while it lasted. We were placed in a group consisting of ourselves, Newcastle, Sunderland and Carlisle and the derby aspect gave it an extra edge so that the main aim was merely to make sure we didn’t get beaten by them, and we were not. We beat Carlisle and Sunderland and drew at Newcastle, placing us in the quarter-finals where we were joined by Fulham, Mansfield and Blackburn and in Scotland by Ayr, Hearts, Motherwell and Aberdeen. The matches were played in September and we saw off Aberdeen in the next round over two legs and then Mansfield in the semis, again on aggregate.
Our opponents in the final were Fulham for whom Bobby Moore and Alan Mullery would have played in more illustrious competitions. There was only one goal scored over the two legs and I’m claiming it. One or two publications have it down as a Les Strong own goal but it was mine and I’m annoyed if posterity says it was his. My goal, I repeat, my goal enabled us to win the first leg at home and the second at Craven Cottage was goalless.
There was no open-topped bus through the streets of Middlesbrough but in its way it was an achievement, only won after nine arduous matches against good opposition, and it was another medal for the trophy cabinet, not bad for a lad just short of his 21st birthday.
There should have been a Wembley final that year as we were agonisingly close in the League Cup to glory. We played 59 league and cup matches that season and six of those were in the League Cup where we marched to the semis after beating Bury, Derby, Peterborough and Burnley.
The semi-final was a two-legged affair with Manchester City, the first at Ayresome Park. As now, Manchester City had some wonderful players but the difference was that the vast majority of City players in the mid-1970s were British. They were a great team to watch and much admired. They had at that time on their books Colin Bell, possibly the outstanding midfield player of his time, Rodney Marsh, Dennis Tueart, Mike Doyle and Peter Barnes, great players all. I said it was agonising and it really was.
We won the first leg in front of a big home crowd but only 1-0, which meant we had a huge task on our hands to hold on to our lead at Maine Road. One goal was probably not going to be enough. The scene was set for an immense second leg but Jack had every faith in this tight group of players and, as much to the point, we also had a strong belief in ourselves. Manchester City, a goal behind, were going to have to bombard us from the start and that was going to suit our counter-attacking style.
We needed the best of preparations and we didn’t get it. The team bus was caught in traffic getting to the ground and as the minutes ticked by it was clear we were not going to reach our destination much before the evening kick-off. The order came for us to get changed on the coach because there would be no time to do so at the ground. We got there with nothing to spare for what was by that time one of the biggest nights of my life.
The match had barely got under way, and we were still finding our feet when I intercepted a back-pass intended for the goalkeeper Joe Corrigan. I beat him to it and shot against the post. We were inches away from a 2-0 aggregate lead and I’m convinced we would have gained confidence from that and gone on to earn a place at Wembley. We knew how to defend when it mattered. As it was, buttressed by their escape, City scored soon afterwards and with a huge and excited crowd behind them, they hammered us with a tidal wave of attacks and we simply caved in, losing 4-0 on the night. It was a terrible blow, no doubt about that, having got so close.
In the league we were again contenders but fell away badly. Ironically the start of our decline came early in March at Anfield where Boersma would have enjoyed beating his old club 2-0, but instead of taking heart from such an outstanding victory we failed to capitalise and fell away alarmingly. In fact we lost seven of our last nine matches to finish a distinctly moderate 13th and I think it should have been occurring to Jack that we couldn’t go on using the rump of players who had seen us through good times and bad for so many years. There had to be changes. There had to be reinforcements.
But there weren’t, not so you would notice them, anyway. For the season 1976/77 the stalwarts were still very much in place. Platt, Cooper, Craggs, Boam, Maddren, Souness, myself, Mills and Hickton had been together years and had done an excellent job in getting us promotion, winning the Anglo-Scottish Cup and stabilising us in the First Division. But we needed freshening, a charge of adrenaline that new signings bring to a squad. Phil Boersma was still with us, of course, and there were some good young players coming through like Stan Cummins, David Hodgson, Mark Proctor and Alan Willey but they were not ready yet to turn us into title contenders as we had been two years before. Hodgson and Proctor had not yet played in the first team.
In fact this was the beginning of the end for Jack Charlton as Middlesbrough manager. There was no way he should have been playing John Hickton, but Jack persisted. Hickton even started the season in the team, playing a few matches but his day was long past and it was wrong for Jack even to have thought he could lead the attack yet again through another long and arduous campaign, especially if it ran to 59 games as the last had done. Alan Foggon had gone, briefly to Manchester United and then on to Sunderland two months later without playing a game for United. United are said to have lost £15,000 on the two deals.
The problem was we didn’t replace Foggon, whose pace and goals had been so important to us. In retrospect it was the beginning of the break-up of Jack’s solid backbone and we never quite recovered.
Murdoch was clearly finished and with Hickton now a spent force, Jack had to do something. His answer was to bring in Alf Wood on a free transfer from Hull City at the start of October. To say that Wood’s signing was not quite what we had been looking for would be an understatement. Alf had started his career at Manchester City as a defender and on being converted to centre-forward had some lower division success at Shrewsbury, Millwall and Hull. Alf was a nice lad, a steady player, awkward to mark, I imagine, and he put himself about. But there was no way Alf was a First Division player. Other teams, noting his scoring prowess, would have looked at him over the years and realised he didn’t have the pace, the class, the ingenuity to open up top defences. He battled hard enough but the Middlesbrough fans, who had been hoping for a big name or two, were understandably disappointed for us to be bringing in a player from our neighbours, and for nothing. Why Jack was not more ambitious or adventurous, I only wish I knew.
The problem was that with those three star players either gone or on the way out and not being adequately replaced, others became restless. Mills was placed on the transfer list in December briefly although he went on to get 18 goals and clubs started to look at Souness and myself. I was not aware of anyone actually bidding for me but there were always rumours, which can be flattering if big clubs are involved.
Jack’s answer would surely have been that we weren’t a bad side without Foggon, Hickton and Murdoch because on 9 October we beat Norwich 1-0 to go top of the First Division for the first time since 1950. Sadly we couldn’t stay there. We did get back to fifth in February but we were never serious challengers because we lacked goals. While Mills got 18, 15 in the league, I got ten but Hickton didn’t get on the scoresheet before being loaned to Hull and Alf Wood managed only two.
Mills was getting frustrated. I thought he was a great player and it was a surprise to me that no one came in for him when he went on the list that December. In fact it was almost another three years before he got away, to West Bromwich Albion for a British record £550,000, and he was never as effective away from Middlesbrough as he was with us. I am thankful he stayed since without him I’m not sure what might have happened because he was almost carrying the attack on his own for a time.
At one stage we went 12 matches without a win, prompting Jack to say we were on the crest of a slump. What did he do about it? Not a great deal. He still maintained great faith in those who had stayed loyal to him over the years, indeed myself, Craggs and Boam played in every game, but we ended in mid-table again (12th) and there was a disquieting lack of progress or purpose. It did cross my mind to follow Mills in asking to leave but we always had just enough good results to justify staying.
My friend Bobby Kerr provided some light relief when we went to Sunderland and were thrashed 4-0 in February, 1977. Bobby was playing against us and Sunderland were one up in no time and coasting through the second half. At one point it looked as if Sunderland might run up a cricket score so during a lull in play I told Bobby to ease up on us. Bobby said, ‘I tell you what. I’m going to leave a gap for you and will chase you, but making sure I don’t catch up with you.’ Sure enough, he was as good as his word. A big opening appeared where he should have been which let me in with only Jim Montgomery, the goalkeeper, to beat but Monty made the save and the chance of a plotted consolation had gone. Bobby smiled as I went back towards the halfway line. ‘You’ve had your chance,’ he said, and I didn’t get another.
We had some measure of success in the FA Cup after a shaky start at Wimbledon, then a non-league side, in the third round. Not so many years later Wimbledon, by then an established First Division side after a meteoric rise through the divisions, actually won the Cup but here in January 1977 they were still very much the underdogs. We were lucky to get away with a replay with Jack blaming the Plough Lane pitch, ‘We couldn’t play football today, the replay will show if Wimbledon can play.’
In fairness to Wimbledon the replay confirmed Jack’s worst fears. They could play and were overcome only by my penalty. By now I was taking Middlesbrough’s penalties and continued to do so throughout my career when required, although at Southampton there was always a queue in front of me. I used to practise spot kicks in training at Middlesbrough by telling Jim Platt, our goalkeeper, which corner of the net I intended to place my shots. The run-up had to be right but I scored many, many more than I missed.
I used to place them but my policy changed after having one saved by Everton’s Neville Southall at The Dell when I was playing for Southampton. It was not uncommon for the Dell pitch to be extremely muddy and unpredictable and after we had been awarded a penalty, the spot was repainted by the groundsman while I waited and then I slipped as I ran up to take it. From then I resolved to blast my shots so that goalkeepers, as Gary Bailey of Manchester United once did, might guess right but they would be beaten for power.
We were beaten eventually 2-0 in the quarter-final at Liverpool but the round before we produced our best display of the season in beating Arsenal 4-1 at Ayresome Park. Souness was outstanding that day, dictating play from the middle of the pitch, and Mills caused havoc by scoring a hat-trick. We always enjoyed playing teams from the south at our ground. There were some, who might not have been the stereotypical southern softies, who seemed not to like coming so far north and rarely gave good accounts of themselves. We were always ready for them. But we were never able to sustain a run of good results so we fell away to 12th in the league and made no lasting impression in the cups.
All the good work of previous seasons was in danger of slipping away through managerial inertia. Maybe Jack had run out of ideas. He was certainly not seen at his best in the transfer market where, Murdoch apart, he had clearly failed to bring in the high class replacements we so desperately craved. On 21 April after a home defeat by QPR, he resigned, claiming he needed six months’ rest to recharge his batteries. I can’t say I was surprised, perhaps only by the timing because there were still five matches to be played and he might have seen the season out.
As it was, Harold Shepherdson came to the club’s aid, as he had done so often in the past, and became caretaker yet again. It says much for Harold, a Boro man to his bones, that we improved instantly, going unbeaten over the last five matches in which I scored twice in a 3-0 home win over Manchester United. As Jack rested, Harold made it clear that he didn’t want the job permanently so the hunt was on for a long-term successor.
I think Jack realised his chance had passed him by. He had lost his way. There was that huge opportunity for him to build a truly great side when we were promoted but he didn’t take it. I think he lacked confidence and know-how in the transfer market having come from Leeds where the culture was rarely to recruit from outside. There is a saying in football that the time to sign players is when you are successful, not when you’re struggling. Jack led a great group of players out of the First Division but didn’t add to them. We can blame Boersma and Wood as much as we like in isolation, but that would be unfair because there should have been others before and after them, many more in fact.
Knowing when and whom to buy and when to sell is a key part of a manager’s job and in that respect Jack could have learned some lessons from the other major manager in my career, Lawrie McMenemy, who was a master in the market. Jack didn’t have that flair, which was a pity because we were so near to success but so far in the end. Jack could see the group of players who had worn the Middlesbrough colours with such distinction beginning to break up and it was time to go, providing an opportunity for the Middlesbrough board to be bold in their choice of Jack’s replacement. Five days after the end of the season they appointed little-known John Neal and charged him with the task of doing what Jack had not done, refurbish an ageing squad.
Neal had awoken interest for what he had achieved at Wrexham, guiding them to the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1972 and the quarter-finals of the FA Cup but his arrival might have annoyed some supporters who had been expecting someone of a higher profile. Neal was from County Durham so he appreciated the mentality of the North-East but compared with Jack he was quiet, unassuming and not prone to acting without deep thought. Coming to Middlesbrough was a big step up for him but it was also a difficult one.
The club was about to go through a transitional stage and it was clear straight away that the older pros were going to test him out. A few days after his appointment we were booked for a tour of the Far East to include Hong Kong and then Australia. Souness and Boersma got as far as Hong Kong and when the rest of us flew on to Australia, stayed there in open defiance. There was another time when Neal had to suspend Cooper for not going on another trip to Norway. Souness was a bit of a ringleader here and some of the more experienced players followed his example, Neal relying on me to some extent to keep the dressing room stable.
New players needed to be brought in and a fair few others needed to be shipped out. One of those inevitably was Souness who had been outstanding for us over the previous three or four years but was becoming stale. Neal had disciplined him in early January, suspending him for seven days and he never played for us again. On 11 January 1978 he was sold to Liverpool for £325,000, a transfer record between English clubs at the time, and it was a relief to all concerned, not least Neal whose authority was being questioned continually.
Souness, an excellent one-and two-touch footballer, needed to be among top players and firm management, as he would have encountered at Liverpool. He had got to the stage with us where he wouldn’t release the ball, which upset the rest of us at times and the pleasant, easy-going Neal was reluctant to impose firm control on senior members. Although he brought in good players of his own like John Mahoney, a committed and terrier-like midfielder, for £90,000 from Stoke, and the too-nice Billy Ashcroft, a gentle giant of a centre-forward from Wrexham for a club record £135,000, they were not to be compared in terms of calibre with the likes of Souness.
I could see the drop in class and quality and for the first time I was becoming seriously unsettled. I liked Neal for the way he encouraged us to express ourselves and to be more expansive in a way that the rigid Jack would never have allowed. But there was talk of Tottenham and Leeds showing an interest in me and for the first time I began to think of a life beyond Ayresome Park. Neal thwarted that by making me the midfield playmaker where Souness had once patrolled aggressively, but there was no denying we had become a selling club and were not replacing the better players.
Cummins was in and out of the team around that time, once described as the first million pound player. Neal dropped him after one match to Stan’s great dismay. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said to the manager. ‘The People newspaper gave me marks of nine out of ten last week.’ John had to explain to him that good marks arbitrarily handed out by a reporter under pressure were not necessarily a reliable guide.
One of Neal’s first acts was to dispense with the under-achieving Boersma but we were poor that season, recovering from a dreadful start in which we won only one of our first eight matches to finish 14th. There was however a definite hint of a club going backwards.
I was the only ever-present that season as my long run of consecutive matches continued so that some fans began to think I could go on forever. But around that time I began to feel jaded and the supporters, who had stood loyally behind me from day one, suddenly started to turn against me, not in any great numbers but enough to make me realise that perhaps I should step aside for a bit. Passes were going astray, I became sluggish, slow to see situations developing and must have looked like a man going through the motions without enthusiasm or energy.
I went to see the manager to tell him I thought I was in a rut and to see what he thought might be for the best. Neal had come to depend on me as the Anderson/Charlton team began to break up because I got on with my job and didn’t complain. He said, ‘David, even on half capacity, no one could replace you. You will come through it.’
The problem was that since getting into the team at 17 I had also played for England Under-23s, England B, pre-season, post-season and other matches likes the occasional testimonial. It all mounted up and while I loved playing everyone gets tired in their job sooner or later.
I was living at home at the time and at least I had the support of my parents during this blip in my career, or so I thought. I used to drive from Middlesbrough to Durham on Saturday evenings after games wondering where it was all going wrong. But instead of getting a sympathetic hearing from mam and dad all I got was an anxious and concerned inquisition. They had watched the matches, noted the crowd reaction and seen me struggling to cope where once I had been one of the club’s best players. Then it happened a second Saturday and finally a third. The pressure was so great even at home and as they questioned me about my listless lack of form, I burst into uncontrollable tears. The only place I thought I was safe from this mounting criticism would have been the sanctuary of my home. But here I was sobbing my heart out on the kitchen table.
The trouble was my parents had become fans and they wanted answers as much as the next man on the terraces. Only then did they realise what they had done and start to get behind me, showing the sort of remorse and support expected of parents in a highly unusual situation. It was just that they couldn’t separate being supporters from being parents.
I came through it eventually but it must have lasted half a season and the more I thought about it, the worse it became for a time. The problem lay in the fact that I had been a senior player, laden with responsibility from an early age and had been taken a little for granted. Not missing a game of any sort for eight years or so had taken its toll. I consoled myself that even at my lowest ebb no opponent ever overran me and I was never dire. I was just ineffective and plodding, anxious to get through the 90 minutes without making mistakes or being exposed. A crisis of confidence, I suppose. John Neal might have taken the heat off me by resting me but it showed the state of the club’s playing resources that he had absolutely no intention of leaving me out and in any case had no one able to replace me.
Neal did occasionally flex his managerial muscles and not allow matters to drift, as he had done in my case. Just before Christmas 1978 we decided to have a players’ party three days before the festive season and an important match with Chelsea. John got wind of it and was horrified. He called myself as a senior player and Jim Platt, our PFA representative, into his office and he told us he was going to fine us all if we partied, but we resolutely refused to back down. We told him we would not overdo the booze and could be trusted to behave responsibly.
A couple of days later, on 16 December, fully recovered from our night out, we beat Chelsea 7-2 with Micky Burns scoring four. John kept his thoughts to himself and didn’t carry out his threat to hit our pockets. Instead we cheekily put forward a motion saying we thought we should have a party every week.