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ROBERT RYDER

Long before I became ‘God’ – before Growler, before The Toxteth Terrier/Terror, before I was even Robbie Fowler – I started to make a name for myself as a goal-scorer, and my name was Robert Ryder. Not Robbie – Robert. I don’t know whether that’s a Liverpool thing or a Catholic thing, or whether it’s a ‘thing’ at all, but whereas Coronation Street was ‘Corrie’ and your electricity was ‘the lecky’, everyone was known by their full names. Anthony (with the ‘th’ fully enunciated!) Gerard. Thomas. Robert. My mam and my old fella were never the most conventional of folks and, best mates though they were, they never really got around to the ‘living together’ part of being a couple. To me and my big sister Lisa, there was nothing unusual about Mum and Dad living apart – that was just how it was, and maybe that’s the secret to how they stayed the best of mates! Anyway, the fact is that they never really lived under the same roof but, to us, that was often the best of both worlds. When we lived in Windsor Street, Dad was literally just over the road in Upper Warwick, so I’d go down the pitches with him, do my training, maybe watch a bit of footy at his, then come back to ours at bedtime. I never felt anything other than complete love and protection from both of my parents, and my grandparents, right from my first steps and I’m grateful for the upbringing I had.

I went to St Patrick’s Primary, just around the corner from our maisonette, and everyone knew me as Robert Ryder. It was only when I went to secondary school – Nugent, in Wavertree – then later when I first started training with Liverpool, that I had to take my birth certificate along. From that point on I began using my dad’s name: Fowler. I don’t know, maybe I had this vague thought that Fowler sounded more like a footballer’s name, a goal-scorer’s name. There was a cricketer, Graeme Fowler, who was known as Foxy. On some level, I might have been thinking ‘Fox in The Box’, but there really wasn’t any big reason behind the change. I was Robert Ryder all the way through primary school and then, when I went to big school, I was Robert Fowler.

Fowler or Ryder, I’d scored goals from the off and as young as seven or eight, I started trying to perfect my finishing. I’d be looking for that sweet spot just inside the post, where not even the best keepers could keep it out. When we moved on to playing with nets, I’d hit the inside net, time and again. Maybe that’s a result of playing with a smaller ball in my earlier years, maybe there’s some instinctive eye-to-foot co-ordination, but what’s for sure is that I practised, day after day, aiming for those far corners where not even the best goalies stood a chance of getting up or down to the ball. Another thing that might have been a factor in the way I was able to clip or bend the ball into those unreachable spots was that, from a young age, I played snooker and pool.

A gang of us would go down to St John’s Youth Club next to the big Park Road sports centre in the Dingle and, for our 20p entry fee, we could play footy, pool, snooker or just hang out. This is where I first met my lifelong pal, Ste Calvey. It was one of those situations where we’d been hearing about each other for a while and I think everyone expected us to be big rivals, even enemies. But we just hit it off, right from the start. It was partly that we both had similar, daft senses of humour and partly that he was only one who could give me a decent game of pool! It’s not like I’ve analysed it to any great degree, but I do think that games like pool and snooker, even golf, can perhaps help your accuracy when you’re using a lot of side edge and spin and aiming for a very small target. Like I say, it’s not a scientific theory, but I’m sure, over time, you must absorb little things like clipping a ball on its side to make it swerve and so on. And when you move from a small ball and a small target to a bigger ball with more to aim at, it can only help your accuracy. So St John’s is where I first met my lifetime bezzy mate, Ste Calvey, who has accompanied me on many an adventure – including some very early forays into culinary heaven. As a seasoned athlete my body has always been a temple, so me, Calvey and the gang used to round off our nights at St John’s with the original haute cuisine – a dirty great tray of chips and gravy, sometimes with a side order of crisps. I’d like to think the svelte figure I’ve carried into early middle age is living testament to that nutritious and delicious F-Plan Diet!

When I was nine, I started playing Under 11 football against the best teams in the South Liverpool area. My first team was Singleton and I used to get the bus down to Jericho Lane to train and play. As much as you go on to achieve in the game, there’s nothing to touch that feeling, the moment when you put your kit on for your first competitive side. It’s magic, pulling your shirt over your head and being a part of something: being in a team. The colours of your shirt seem brighter and more vivid than normal colours – the whole ritual is electric. Singleton had this beautiful Argentina-style kit and I’ll never, ever forget the feeling, pulling that top on for the first time to go out and play in a proper, competitive game. Sometimes I still feel that same shiver of excitement – it’s half anticipation, half nerves or nervous energy – when I drive past the Jericho pitches; it takes me right back to those very early days with Singleton.

That first year we went the entire season unbeaten, League and Cup. Maybe it was our Argentina kit that inspired us, but we played some lovely one-touch, give-and-go football. In our Cup final we came up against Dove & Olive from Speke, who were the other really strong team in South Liverpool at the time. The final was at the Metal Box sports club down Garston way. Metal Box was one of the big factories back then and their pitch was just beautiful. For us kids, who were used to playing week in, week out on boggy fields with no drainage and trying to make the best of it, it was a pleasure running out onto a surface like that – it was as close as any of us had come to a proper, pro-standard pitch.

Dove & Olive had a lad called Kevin Keegan playing for them, whose reputation went before him – and not just because his name was Kevin Keegan, either. Even at that age, the best players are already starting to get a name for themselves around the Junior scene and this Keegan lad had been scoring for fun all season. So, with me scoring a few too, this final between Singleton and Dove & Olive was being billed as the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. They started really strongly and Keegan scored a first-half hat-trick, but I scored five in the second half and we won the Cup 5–4! I’ll never forget the referee, Mr Daley, congratulating both sides and saying it was the best game he had ever officiated at.

The big thing about winning that first cup is that it gave me a feeling, a deep sense of satisfaction, that we’d achieved something together as a team and I’d more than played my part in it. That basic feeling never left me, as long as I played. The urge to repeat that sensation – a gang of you, made up, all hugging and congratulating each other as you hold a silver trophy up in the air – honestly, there’s nothing like it. The drive to keep on winning and experiencing that same ‘champions’ feeling drove me on for the rest of my career. Today, there’s a certain sense of achievement for finishing fourth or qualifying as Best Behaved or whatever and, I don’t know, don’t get me wrong, I understand the knock-on effect of qualifying for the UEFA Champions League and everything that comes with it, but all I can say is that none of it comes close to holding a cup aloft – just ask Jordan Henderson how that feels!

I got the taste for it that day at Metal Box and it drove me on and inspired me, just wanting to do it again and again. For me, personally, I want to be judged on what I’ve won rather than what I nearly did. A club’s directors, sponsors and owners may well celebrate fourth place in the League, but I can tell you most players would rather hold up the FA Cup or the League Cup or any other cup that gives them a moment, plus a medal they can celebrate together on the day and cherish forever, long after they’ve hung up their boots.

After Singleton, I moved on to Thorvald in the Edge Hill Junior League. Again, Thorvald was a strong team all round – we used to rattle up some eye-popping scorelines. One game, we beat Hazelton 21–0 and I had a penalty saved, but I still scored 12 in that one, anyway. We even managed to beat that score, winning 23–1 against Durning – I racked up a measly 17 in that one! Both Singleton and Thorvald played in the Sunday League, which left my Saturdays free, so when I could get the money together, I would go up to watch Everton if they were playing at home.

Most Division One football (which was what the top division was called, before the Premier League) was still played at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon in the 80s, so that would be my aim – get the money together and get to the game. It’s well known now that I grew up supporting Everton. I used to idolise Graeme Sharp and Tricky Trev – Trevor Steven, completely different types of player who were just dynamite together. Graeme Sharp was the complete striker’s striker, not just for the goals he scored but his all-round game, the way he brought other players into an attack – he was much more technically gifted than he’s really been given credit for. Maybe that’s because he had Trevor Steven alongside him, providing his supply-line – anyone would look cumbersome next to Tricky Trev. He was so clever and inventive, he could go past defenders with ease and get these inch-perfect, pinpoint crosses into the box, time and again. Looking back, I think I wanted to be both of them. I wanted to make goals, score goals, go past players, slide killer passes in – but, top of the list ahead of everything, I just loved sticking the ball in the net.

As much as I idolised Graeme Sharp, I also admired Ian Rush a lot. Obviously, I wasn’t there in the flesh at the Liverpool matches back then, but I still picked up a lot from Rushy, just watching him on Match of the Day or The Big Match. It’s funny, because one of the great tactical revolutions in modern football is the High Press: asking your strikers to close down the opposition defence, forcing them into a hurried clearance or nicking possession from them, high up the pitch. Roberto Firmino does that brilliantly for Liverpool, Tottenham play that way, lots of the top teams these days try to harry defenders in their own box – but it’s no different to what Rushy was doing in the 80s. He was magnificent at that basic attack as the first line of defence philosophy. If you gave him the merest sniff of the ball, he was so fast, he’d be on to the defender in a flash and take the ball off him. I would sit right in front of the telly and watch him close up, trying to pick little things up.

But that Everton team around the mid-80s was every bit as good as Rushy’s Liverpool team of the day. Between 1984 and 1987, the two sides shared just about every prize going. I would try anything – literally anything – to get along to Goodison as often as I could, to see my heroes close up. It sounds mad saying this now I’ve got a young lad myself. I don’t think I’d be happy with him even walking to the shops, but I quite often used to walk to Everton all the way from Liverpool 8, often on my own. It wasn’t a big deal at all then. Obviously, I’d get the bus if I had money, but unemployment was at its peak in the city around 1984/85 so whatever cash I could get together would be spent getting into the ground. I knew what pubs my dad and my uncles would be in, so I’d do the rounds, scrounging ten bob here, a pound there, until I had enough – I think it was about £2.50 to get in – and I saw some fantastic games.

Just as I was saying about pulling on your first kit for your first team, there’s nothing quite like those first few visits to a proper football stadium to see your team play. Your first glimpse of the stands as you approach the ground, the noise and the smells, the people in the streets, all excited – the scarves and hats and footy shirts. Then going through the turnstiles and up the steps; your first sight of the pitch – a different shade of green to anything you’ve ever seen! All I could think was: I want to do that, I want to play in games like this, on a pitch like that, in front of a crowd this big.

Yet it was always Liverpool who were after me! The goals I scored for Thorvald and Singleton led to an invitation from Liverpool Schoolboys to come for trials at Penny Lane. A lot of people who only know Penny Lane from The Beatles’ song think it’s an imaginary, fantasy street, but, to me, it looms large in my development as a player. Whether you’re going past there today on a Beatles Tour or the 86 bus, the Penny Lane pitches are still there, just about visible behind Liverpool College and the big Tesco superstore. Bearing in mind how diddy I was back then, I suppose I was a little bit intimidated by the set-up. It wasn’t just that everyone seemed huge, but that first trial was the one and only time I can remember when I thought my boots were a bit crap, compared to every else’s. I must have done okay in my old-school ‘Billy’s Boots’ anyway, because I was invited into the squad. The very next day, Dad went out and bought me a boss pair of Nike Rio to celebrate this big moment in my development as a football player.

Playing at Liverpool Schoolboys level was a big step up in standard and intensity; it was as close to the real thing as anything I’d known up until then. You’re talking about top, top players, even at that age. Our captain back then, and one of my very best mates to this day, was Tony Grant. Granty had everything – he was a good size, he was athletic, he was good on the ball and, even at that age, he had a bit of grace about him. The very best midfielders – the ones who dictate play like Jan Molby did for us – always seem to have time on the ball. They’re unflappable, their head is always up, looking for the best option, and that was Granty – he was the type of player that gives you confidence, just by having him on your side.

I played a lot of games up front with a lad called Paul Flaherty from Tuebrook – he was a good player too; him and Granty ended up going to Everton – and another Toxteth lad, Dele Adebola, who joined Crewe Alexandra and went on to have a good career at Birmingham City. Between the three main attacking players we had a good mix of pace, brawn and skill and we all knew where the goal was – plus, we had Tony Grant conducting the orchestra.

Right from that time, age 11 onwards, LFC’s main youth scout, Jim Aspinall, was on the scene, too, giving myself and my dad the soft sell about joining Liverpool. At first, it was nothing too intense. It must be a fine line for the scouts – or it was in those days – not to put you under too much pressure. Jim would come over, have a little chat with me and Dad, keep on reminding us how much they rated me, and then leave it at that. He’d leave us his calling card, which was one of those Prontaprint jobs with ornate swirly writing at the top:

Jim Aspinall – Area Representative Scout to Liverpool FC

You half expected it to say: ‘Reasonable rates, music to suit all ages’ underneath! I’ve kept all the calling cards from the scouts who showed an interest and the one that always makes me smile is the Everton rep, who wrote: ‘Sorry, no Comps for Dad.’

The scouts at Everton knew I was a Blue. I think they, and Granty, just assumed I would automatically sign for Everton, so they didn’t go over the top trying to woo me, at first. Yet, in spite of being brought up a Toffee, there was always something about Liverpool that got under my skin and made me want to play for them over Everton. This was all happening towards the end of the 1985–86 season, as Liverpool and Everton were going toe-to-toe in the race for The Double – in an era when winning the League and the FA Cup in the same season really did count as something special.

Everton were the reigning champions and top of the League; Liverpool and West Ham were chasing them. It was Kenny Dalglish’s first season as player-manager – and Kenny was soon to have a direct impact in my signing for the Reds. As the famous Liverpool terrace song says, it was Kenny’s goal at Stamford Bridge that brought the League title back to Anfield on the final day of the season, then the Reds went on to beat Everton at Wembley to clinch the Double.

At the same time, things were hotting up for me. There’d be times when scouts from all over the country would come to watch me play. It was exciting, starting to think that you might actually make it as a footballer – but it was hard to concentrate on your game. I’d do something good – or something I thought was good – and I’d find myself looking over to see if the scout had clocked it! Sometimes I’d catch sight of Jim Aspinall on the touchline, trying to look calm but clearly starting to get anxious. He’d put in so much spadework, it would have been a shame for his efforts not to bear fruit. Yet Jim would never overdo it – he seemed to understand that too much pressure might have an adverse effect. That wasn’t me or my dad being difficult – quite the opposite, really. It’s such a huge decision and you want to be sure you get it right.

So, it’s fair to say that Jim’s patient, paternal approach paid off in the end because, in September 1986, aged 11, I took up Liverpool’s offer to train there as part of the club’s Youth Development Scheme. That was another thing that always seemed larger than life – getting an official letter with a club crest at the top. My first ever Liverpool ‘deal’ was a letter of invitation, asking me to go and train with the club for the next 12 months. There was nothing contractual and no obligation to renew after that initial year, but nevertheless, I had an official offer on official Liverpool F.C. (and Athletic Grounds!) notepaper and I was over the moon.

Before Liverpool had an academy, Mal Cook ran what was then called The Centre of Excellence, with training taking place every Tuesday and Thursday. We did a lot up at Melwood (LFC’s main training facility) to give the trainees a sense that they really were now on a pathway to being part of the Liverpool set-up. Most of the Liverpool First Team players would have finished for the day by the time our sessions started at 5pm, but occasionally, you’d see one of the big players who’d stayed behind for physio or whatever.

I remember standing there on one of the training pitches just staring at John Barnes one time, when he was recovering from a long-term injury. You know that these players are real, they’re human, but there’s something mad about being a few yards from the actual person himself – they’re superhuman. You can’t help staring and you’re thinking, maybe, maybe one day, you’ll be pulling on the shirt and playing alongside players like these. When the weather was bad or Melwood wasn’t available to us, we’d train at the Vernon Sangster Centre – an all-sports venue in Stanley Park, just over the road from Anfield.

I started off going down the Centre of Excellence twice a week, training under Frank Skelly, Dave Shannon and Hughie Macauley, and this is where I sometimes think that, for all the skill you might have, for all the ability and opportunity, the big thing you just can’t legislate for is a slice of luck. Thinking of me and Granty, who most people involved with Liverpool Schoolboys football would have said were the two standout players from that crop of 86, I honestly think I made not just a good choice but a very lucky choice when I opted to train with Liverpool. Tony Grant comes from a long line of Evertonians and it never entered his, or their, head for him to play for anyone but the Blues. But if you stand back and look at the type of player he was – this elegant, cultured midfielder who could play a slide rule pass – he was coming into an Everton set-up that was going through difficult times.

Going into the mid-90s when Tony broke into the First Team, they had this Dogs of War self-image. You might argue that that mentality was what saved the club from relegation, but for Granty, I’m not so sure that that kind of backs-to-the-wall siege mentality was the ideal environment for his unique talent to flourish. When the chips are down and you’re staring relegation in the face, a nervous crowd won’t give you the luxury of an extra touch, or a moment’s hesitation as you pick the right pass. It would take unreal self-belief to carry on playing your natural game in those circumstances. Yet, when you look at the way players like Dom Matteo, Jamie Redknapp, Steve McManaman, Don Hutchison and myself came into a Liverpool team who tried to play a certain style of football, I can’t help thinking Granty would have thrived in our squad at that time. Like I say, you can’t predict what’s going to happen and you can’t personally influence whether your own luck will turn out to be good or bad … it’s just that I think I was pretty bloody lucky choosing Liverpool!