Chapter Seven

HISTORY BECKONS

If I am being totally honest, I felt a bit of a prat (and a failure) sat in a classroom in my thirties with all those young students. Fortunately, there were a total of ten ex-professional footballers on the course and we would be invaluable as friends and motivators to each other to get us through those difficult first few months. Every one of us, at some point, had a personal crisis of commitment and threatened to quit, but the rest of the gang held firm and eventually, albeit four years later, we all graduated.

The course has helped many ex-professionals over the years, including Southampton boss Nigel Adkins, Mark Taylor, head of medicine at Fulham, ex-Oldham winger Rick Holden and Aston Villa physio Stuart Walker. Nowadays, though, the wages are so mind-blowingly good for the current pros I doubt the likes of Torres or Beckham will be enrolling.

I found the actual studying quite easy – if time-consuming – as I had been highly academic at school in Birmingham, but it seemed almost pointless at the time, when you needed a bloody job, to be sat in a classroom earning nothing, four years from being in the position of even applying for a job.

Having said all that, I did understand where the PFA were coming from. No doubt the idea of training ex-professional footballers to be chartered physios was a sound one and, while I could fully understand it might lead to great opportunities, the four-year wait seemed like a life sentence. The thought of living a life of selling clothes a couple of days a week and going to study the rest of the time did not impress.

Cue another piece of luck.

I went to sell my gear at Halifax Town, where the legendary Big John McGrath was now manager. It so happened that the club was looking for a physiotherapist and he asked me if I was interested. Obviously, he said, they would give me the time off to study. I was grateful but explained that, even though I was desperate to get back into full-time football, I really had very little experience in the field of physiotherapy after just a few months of study.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We will pay you a shit wage and then you won’t feel so bad.”

To their credit, they kept their word, and I started work at Halifax Town in the summer of 1992 on a paltry £200 per week plus win bonus (win bonus? This was Halifax – they don’t win). Those awful wages notwithstanding, the bottom line was that I would be heading back for another pre-season.

I was so happy and excited, probably more so than at any other time in my life. Yes, the wages were crap, it was a long way to travel, the club was struggling financially and I had to somehow combine it with completing my degree at Salford University, but it didn’t matter. I was back. Back in the bosom of the Football League.

I was quite optimistic and confident. I really felt I might be perfectly suited to being a club physio. I was still extremely fit, always got on well with the other staff and players, enjoyed the prestige of being ‘the one with the brains’ and knew that I had the enthusiasm and work ethic to be successful. This work ethic was driven by the financial difficulties my family and I had endured over the past 12 months. Although we had managed to hang on to our nice family home, we had very little cash and I had had to downgrade to an old Nissan Micra to run around in.

During that period, we had to tighten our belts significantly. Like every other breadwinner, I judged my worth, up to a point, by the amount of money I could provide to make their lives comfortable. Yes, I know money doesn’t make you happy per se, but I’ve been relatively well-off and relatively badly off, and I know which one I prefer. I think it was a famous golfer who once said, “Some people say money isn’t that important, but for me it’s right up there alongside oxygen.”

From the first day of pre-season training with Halifax Town in 1992 to the day I left Everton in May 2010, I am confident that nobody, probably in the whole of Britain, worked as hard and for as many days. I think over those 18 years I worked, on average, 350 days per annum. Honestly.

My first day at Halifax Town would be the first step on the ladder that would take me to a top Premier League team, and all the prestige and rewards that came with it. But please don’t begrudge me what I went on to achieve because I gave total commitment, day in day out, and most of my motivation was spawned during my ‘gap year’ when I was out of football, skint and my self-esteem hit rock bottom.

So I was back in the environment I knew and loved. OK, fair enough, I was getting paid peanuts and had to leave at noon three days a week to go to the university. It was slightly different this time, though, because for the very first time I was employed in professional football as a member of staff and not a player. They say nothing in football is as good as actually playing, and I would wholeheartedly agree. Being the physio is not as good as playing; it is better. If I thought I had enjoyed a rich and varied career as a player, then it would be nothing compared to what was to come as a physio.

The sport I returned to was beginning to change. It was the early ’90s. Football was emerging from the inertia of the ’80s. We were on the verge of the Premier League and Sky TV and we were all about to start sticking our quids in every Saturday for the National Lottery. Bit by bit, the old-fashioned, archaic stadiums were being ripped down and rebuilt or replaced. Some smart new rule changes were about to be implemented that would help re-energise our lacklustre product and drag the fans back in.

Baz was reborn, all kitted up and ready to go. Ready to give his all for the Halifax Town cause. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be back in training kit, back in the inner sanctum that is the dressing room, and back among those familiar smells.

Close your eyes, open your nostrils and instantly step into the time machine that is selective memory. It had been a year – a whole year, a long year, and a tough year. Reacquaint yourself with those heady aromas and promise never to let them go again. Leather, Vicks, Deep Heat, shampoo – I am back.

Never again would I take being involved in professional football for granted. The only slight blot on the landscape was that I was a physiotherapist who didn’t have a clue how to do the job.

And what of Halifax Town? They were going through a losing period that had started in 1911 – the year they were formed. The smallest club in the Football League, based in a predominately rugby league-supporting town, they had only ever known struggle. If it’s true that money talks, then Halifax Town were mute. The smallest average crowd in the Football League generated the smallest income which, in turn, gave them the smallest budget, which afforded them the cheapest players and, hence, the worst team. It was ever thus.

But it was a terrific little club. I loved it from the first minute I walked through the door. Talk about homely and friendly. In many ways, Halifax’s raison d’être was to struggle. That’s what they did. That’s what defined them. I don’t think any club had applied for re-election to the Football League as many times. The fans, however, were unbelievable. OK, there were only between 1,500 and 1,800 of them, but anybody can support Manchester United; it takes a very special fan to follow Halifax Town.

That season would be one of the first in history where the team that finished bottom of the division would be automatically relegated into the obscurity of the Vauxhall Conference and non-league football. Halifax were odds-on at the bookies to achieve that dubious feat.

It was great being the physio. It all just clicked into place. I knew a bit more than I thought, based mainly on my experiences as a player. I got on really well with the lads and I think they looked up to me because I had also been a player – in fact, a player who had played at a much higher level than them. All the treatments were based purely on rehabilitation. No fancy machines; just hard work to invigorate, motivate and stimulate. Get them to the training ground early, work them hard and then let them go home – it is still my mantra today. It works. I know – I was a player.

In practical terms, it was great. The players had one of the few physiotherapists who could kick the ball, dribble the ball, and control the ball as well as them, if not better.

I even played in all the reserve games. And then, for the crowning glory, I was asked if I could possibly run in the pre-season cross country and try to keep up at the back just in case somebody sprained their ankle or something. Keep up at the back? I won it by 200 metres to the astonishment of everybody. That was definitely it; I had found my true calling in life. I knew, sadly, I’d had the character defects which stopped me from being a top-class player, but not now, not in this situation. I was born to be a physiotherapist.

Oh, and another thing, as I’d had every injury known to mankind over the past 16 years, I could empathise with the players, get inside their injury, understand it and instinctively know how best to rehabilitate it. Although I considered myself to have been generally lucky with injuries, over such a long career you do tend to get a wide range of them.

I suffered loads of relatively minor injuries – broken nose (numerous times), stitches, minor strains to nearly every muscle over the years and repeated sprains to my right ankle that has left me with a very odd-looking joint. I have suffered with years of back pain and sciatica due to long-term disc problems, and so many concussions that I can’t even remember them (probably due to all those concussions).

Being a footballer can be a dangerous job at times, but I was uniquely qualified to be a physio after all those experiences as a player. Clearly, God had put me on this earth to be a physiotherapist. All right, that might sound a bit over the top but I was at peace and had found my calling.

After a couple of weeks, I heard it for the very first time – the sentence that would define me. “Fucking hell! Don’t get fucking injured here whatever you do because Baz will work the fucking bollocks off you.” It was, however, always said with affection and respect and I would hear it many times over the years, and each time I would fill with pride.

The medical room at The Shay was an old portakabin. The medical equipment consisted of an ancient ultrasound machine that looked like it had been invented by Thomas Edison and hadn’t been serviced since the last war – and I don’t mean the Gulf War.

No gym, no pool, no cardiovascular (CV) equipment, no ice machine, no strappings, no weights, no energy drinks, no energy bars, no supplements, no heart-rate monitors. No nothing.

And do you know what? I was glad. You don’t need all that fancy stuff to be a good physio. No electrotherapy machines? Good – they have never been proven to work and are time-consuming. No weights? Good – we can do press-ups. No CV equipment? Good – we can use the terraces. No ice machine? Good – we can get in cold baths. You don’t need fancy equipment to be effective. Extrinsic stuff like those things may look impressive and modern, but it is the intrinsic things that are more important – enthusiasm, energy, personality, lifting the morale of the players when they are injured, shaking the cobwebs off the long-term injured, getting them off the treatment tables, out of the treatment room, into the fresh air and on the way back to full fitness. Physio for the mind as well as the body. Lift their spirits, motivate them, work them hard, and they will love it, respond to it and start to get better. The mind holds the key to the body’s healing.

Big John hit the nail right on the head on my first day when I asked him where all the rehabilitation facilities were. He took me over to the window and pointed to the nearby fell.

“You see that big fucking hill over there? You have my permission to use as much of it as you want.”

It was quite funny (the big man still had it), yet it was not without an element of truth. The point is it’s not the facilities, it’s the personnel. And the personnel at Halifax Town were brilliant. Good people, a fantastic little club and, without doubt, the most loyal and long-suffering set of fans ever.

I was happy and proud to be there and was looking forward to the first League game of the season – the local derby at Rochdale.

I had never actually run on to the pitch to tend to an injured player before the game and I must admit I was quite nervous. Although 99 per cent of the time you were attending to trivial stuff, there is always the potential to be called on to deal with a life-threatening situation. I took my responsibilities very seriously. I took a first-aid course. I thought I was prepared for every eventuality. However, with all the preparation and rehearsal in the world, I still didn’t know how I would react when the occasion actually presented itself. Before every game, I spent a few minutes going over all the emergency procedures in my mind. I was still very nervous, though.

I quickly learned that when somebody does get injured, there is a simple rule of thumb that should quickly help to judge the severity of the situation. If players are screaming and rolling around on the floor, then – contrary to what you might think – they are usually OK. It is the ones who just lie there motionless you need to be concerned about.

In my very first game at The Shay it happened – the dreaded serious one. Jimmy Case, our ex-Liverpool legendary hard man, went down over on the far side of the pitch and didn’t move. He was quickly surrounded by the referee and some of our very concerned players. They frantically gestured to me to get on right away. Oh, shit. This is what I had been dreading, and for it to happen in my first home game spooked me even more.

I sprang from the dugout. My legs were like jelly (just like that night at Tottenham back in 1976 – shit, I thought all that stuff was history) as I raced across the pitch to the stricken figure. As I ran, I went through all the emergency drills in my head – secure his cervical spine, check he’s not choking, airway, breathing, circulation, 15 chest compressions and two breaths with his head extended. Or should that be 15 breaths and two chest compressions, and shouldn’t I flex the neck?

By the time I got to Jimmy, everything I had ever learned had totally evaporated from my memory and all I could do was lean over his motionless figure, shake him and plead, “Jimmy, Jimmy, please Jimmy, are you OK?”

He opened one eye, winked and, with that dry Scouse humour, whispered, “Did I get him booked?”

That was a cruel practical joke he played on me that day and I later found out the lads had been planning it all week.

We won 3-2 and it promised to be the year Halifax Town would finally make the headlines.

They would, but sadly for all the wrong reasons.

Fortunately, since that inauspicious start, I have attended many such incidents and, amazingly, nobody has died.

Jimmy was a great fellow. On the pitch a snarling, aggressive, fearsome character, but off it an absolute gentleman, especially when you take into account how much he had won with that great Liverpool team. He would always be helping with the kit and taking his turn to brew up. Always encouraging, never bollocking, a great team player.

And hard? You are not kidding.

After one game down at Cardiff, he came up to me and whispered that he had got a ‘scratch’. He rolled down his sock to reveal a huge gaping wound about three inches long and right through to the bone.

“Jesus! Don’t worry, Jim, I will take you down to their doctor and he will sort it out.”

We went through to their medical room where the doctor started to get his suturing kit out. He sent me down the corridor to the kitchen to get Jim a cup of strong sweet tea. When I got back, he was ready to start stitching, but his needle was so blunt he had to force it through the skin with considerable might. It was stomach-churning stuff and there was a lot of blood.

“Seven, eight, nine, last one, son,” said the doctor.

The last one was the most difficult one because it was the area where the wound was most open and, as he forced the needle through the skin for the last time, it embedded itself into the shinbone. Finally, and for the first time during the whole gruesome procedure, Jimmy grimaced.

“Wow,” I said, “you are human.”

“No lad,” he said, “too much fucking sugar!”

Those first few months of my first physiotherapy job were so good they were even on a par with my initial 12 months at Birmingham City all those years ago. I loved being the physio. I loved being the physio more than I had loved being a player. Why? Well, even though I finally overcame my early fears and went on to have a career I could be proud of, I had remained a very nervous player and used to start getting butterflies that gradually built up from Thursdays onwards. That’s one hell of a lot of butterflies in 16 seasons as a professional player.

But physios don’t have to get quite so nervous, as the pressure is so much less on them than it is on the player – or so I thought back in those early days of innocence.

Being the physio was just as I had dreamed it would be – all the involvement, but none of the pressure. I was even thinking of growing my nails.

The only fly in the ointment was the fact that, as ever, Halifax Town were struggling – on the pitch as usual but, more worryingly, off the pitch as well. As they were losing so much money every week, the club started a ‘Save the Shaymen’ appeal. The message was simple: without the support of the town, the club would go out of business. This was real, not a bluff. The only trouble was that the townsfolk had heard the same line so many times before it was all wearing a bit thin.

When a club is struggling financially, it affects everybody involved. If it goes bust, you don’t get paid. Simple as that. OK, I was only getting £200 per week, but at least it was paying the majority of my bills.

That autumn of 1992 was tough for Halifax Town and it was by no means guaranteed they would still be competing in the Football League come Christmas. As ever – and such is the nature of football – even in the midst of that dire financial situation, there was still a funny side to life at Halifax.

We used to get paid on the last day of the month when the club secretary would drive down to The Shay from the little club offices just up the road and pay us all by personal cheque. Sadly, such was the parlous financial state of the club that sometimes there weren’t sufficient funds to honour all those cheques when paid in, and only the first players to present the cheques would be guaranteed any money. You should have seen those lads exiting The Shay, like bats out of hell, to be the first to present their cheques at the nearest bank. As Big John would, somewhat harshly, comment, “That’s the fastest some of those cunts have moved all season!”

To the eternal credit of the board and the fans who kept digging and digging ever deeper into their pockets, everybody got every penny that was owed to them. It must have been so difficult just to keep the club’s head above water. It’s all too easy for outsiders to sneer and criticise the directors for being stingy and not investing enough money into the club, but these guys were not millionaires; many were just small local businessmen who kept putting up the cash to keep their beloved club afloat.

On one occasion, I witnessed first hand the financial commitment the directors were prepared to make to the club. I had been invited to a board meeting on a different matter, and they concluded their business while I was still in the room. As ever, the main business of the day was Halifax Town’s sorry financial state, and Jim Brown, the chairman, basically asked all the directors to put some extra cash into the kitty or the club would not survive the week.

To a man, those guys got their chequebooks out and donated money – donated, not invested, because they knew they would never see it again. One guy gave £8,000. He was only a small businessman – and, don’t forget, this was nearly 20 years ago. I would see this blind altruism many times over the years, at every level of the game, from these often maligned club owners – all for the love of their teams.

Thankfully the fans, board and town collectively came up with the necessary cash, the latest financial crisis was averted and the club breathed a huge sigh of relief when they were cleared to continue playing at The Shay until the end of the season.

It meant the medical budget had to be cut back by 50 per cent. Not that it mattered – what is 50 per cent of nothing? We had no strappings, scissors, bandages or other standard equipment. I used to scour the away team dressing room after every game to see if I could pick up a few dog-ends. I know it’s a cliché, but . . . we were poor but happy.

I developed a great relationship with the players. To be a successful physiotherapist, I think the relationship with the players is the most important part of the whole job. You need compassion, but you can’t be soft. You need a relaxed environment, but it can’t be a holiday camp. You need to be a friend and confidant to the players, but not to the point where respect is compromised.

The physiotherapist occupies this unique middle ground between the players and the staff. I never betrayed the confidence of any player to the manager and, equally, I never commented on a player’s performance. Psychologist, medic, friend and motivator – the good physiotherapist is all of these things.

But on the field, the results just wouldn’t come. I shouldn’t have been surprised. We had a tiny squad, poor facilities, players who, with respect, only came to Halifax because they couldn’t get in at any other club. Inevitably, Big John came under pressure for his job. But what more could he do? It was ever thus.

It was a well-worn joke at Halifax Town that the manager’s name was written in chalk on the wall next to his car park space. A shocking 4-1 defeat to non-league Marine in the FA Cup, followed not long after by a home reverse to Barry Fry’s high-flying Barnet, and the chairman reached for the duster.

It was the safest bet in soccer that Halifax Town would sack their manager every 12 months, so it was no great surprise when Big John ‘resigned’. What was a surprise – in fact, an almighty shock – was their next choice of manager: me!

We’d all had an inkling that Big John was on borrowed time. The players hadn’t really bought into his no-nonsense, somewhat off-beat style of management (although he had enjoyed success elsewhere and, as I’ve said before, I considered him to be an excellent boss). Morale was very low and there had been an all-pervading sense that something had to give. Jim Brown had phoned me a couple of times during that final week of Big John’s tenure, asking what the problem was, how the lads felt and what the atmosphere was like. He told me he’d had a meeting with some of the senior players and they weren’t happy. What did I think?

To be honest, I really didn’t think too much. When you lose every week, morale is always bad. Big John was merely the latest victim of the ongoing problems at the club – a chronic cash shortage. The chairman then told me I was very popular with the players and that they all wanted me to be the next manager. And he agreed.

Fuck me. I nearly dropped the phone. Me, the manager. The manager of a Football League club. I had never even taken a training session, team talk, press conference (they didn’t really have press conferences at this level; it was more a chat over a cuppa with a local journo). What did I know?

“But the lads like you, Baz.”

“They probably like Kylie Minogue too, but she won’t be offered the job, will she?”

Why me? I think the simple answer was that I was there, got on well with everybody, had nearly 20 years of experience in football and, probably most importantly, I was cheap. In Halifax Town’s annual turnover of managers, they had tried young, old, experienced, inexperienced, tactical experts, disciplinarians, everything – except clueless. So it was probably worth giving me a go; everything else had failed.

One factor I knew I would require above all others – and this applies to every manager who has had any success – was luck. When asked if he preferred brilliant or courageous generals, Napoleon replied, “Neither. I prefer lucky ones.” To be honest, I think even a guy who was confident and optimistic enough to try to invade Russia in winter would have thought twice about taking on this task.

Then it happened, a similar feeling to all those years ago when Trevor first approached me. I started sweating, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It had been such a long time since I’d last experienced these unpleasant feelings but, even after all this time, they were unmistakeable. This time, though, I embraced those sensations, determined they would not exert a negative effect on me at a seminal time in my life.

I was winning the fight. Those emotions and physiological responses to stress that had so paralysed me before now began to excite and stimulate me. This was adrenalin, this was positive arousal, this was me overcoming years of conditioning. This was my fate, this was my calling – I was born to be a manager. (Yes, I know a week earlier I’d been born to be a physiotherapist, but people can change, can’t they?) I wanted it, I wanted it so badly. I knew I could do it, get those lads playing for me, more motivated, fitter, faster, stronger (it sounds like the bloody Olympic motto).

The chairman’s voice interrupted my thoughts and brought me back to the matter at hand.

“Why don’t we just make you caretaker for a short period and see how it goes?” he suggested.

“OK yes, I will give it a go.”

And that was that. The next day, when Big John resigned, Jim Brown called a meeting and everyone awaited the announcement of Jimmy Case as the next manager of Halifax Town. It was assumed, due to his legendary status, seniority of years and expressed desire to go into management, that Jimmy would take over. What a bloody shock when they announced me.

It sent reverberations around the whole football world – OK, just Halifax then, with a few ripples spreading to the rest of West Yorkshire. The players were jubilant, cheering and back-slapping. The club had placed its future in my hands. A high-risk strategy. The true implications were just about to start sinking in – just like when Napoleon felt the first few snowflakes on his head in Russia. Christ almighty – it’s Baz the boss.

I pulled Jimmy Case to one side.

“Jimmy, I thought you wanted to go into management?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I didn’t and you did, so why am I the manager and you’re not?”

I can still see his face with its half-smile as he put his arm around me, pulled me close, and whispered, “Baz, if you start your managerial career here, you will finish it here. You have got no fucking chance.”

How profound those words would be.

So that was it. I was now the manager. The youngest in the league, certainly the least experienced and, without any shadow of a doubt, the worst paid. The club, to be fair, immediately put me on a wage commensurate with my new high-powered role – they gave me a £100 a week pay rise (you know me by now, I accepted without a word). At least I was on slightly more than the first-year professionals. I am not afraid to admit my wife actually phoned up the chairman and got me an additional £100 per week on top of that.

My club-issued Ford Escort became a club-issued Ford Sierra and I moved from the tiny spartan medical portakabin to the slightly bigger spartan portakabin next door. We didn’t have a game for another ten days (thank God), so I had a bit of time to settle in and get my name chalked up on the car park wall.

I will be perfectly honest – it felt great. Great to be in charge. I decided what to do, when to do it, who to pick, who not to pick (not such a big deal with only 14 players to choose from).

I set the tone of the club. My aim was to learn from Ramsey, Smith, Kendall and Saxton – take something positive from each. Generate that electricity. I knew I was in a high-pressure situation – Halifax Town were facing the unthinkable. If they finished bottom, they would be out of the League for the first time since they were founded in 1911. Would I achieve what two World Wars and the depression couldn’t and consign little Halifax Town to footballing oblivion? What responsibility.

I would give my all.

Yes, I was still sensitive, easy-going and gentlemanly, but I had grown up a lot over the years as a result of my various experiences – both good and bad. I was not going to shirk my duties, not this time. Time to stand up and be counted.

I saw this huge challenge as a great opportunity to redress the balance and wipe the emotional slate clean. Deep down I had always felt a sense of regret and, up to a point, guilt at what had happened to me at Birmingham. I was about to enter another very high-pressure situation, but I felt if I could prevail here in these fraught circumstances and emerge triumphant at the other end it could, psychologically, go a long way to exorcising those Birmingham demons.

In fact, the pressure wasn’t really that great – we had no money, very few players, even fewer points and no facilities. I was only the caretaker manager anyway. I hadn’t asked for the job and the feeling in the town was that I had very much been left holding the baby. The players had pledged their public support, as had Jim Brown and the board. I wasn’t stupid. Jesus, if I could succeed here, the world would be my oyster. Forget physiotherapy; a successful manager could earn 50 times more. I saw this as a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

What could I offer this beleaguered club? I made a mental promise to myself on that first day: none of my players would dread coming into train, like I used to. Training would be enjoyable. I would always treat players as I would wish to be treated myself. They would be as fit as possible, motivated as possible and, most importantly, they would wake up on the morning of the game and want to play.

Was that achievable, realistic or naive? I would soon find out.

We had no designated training ground as such and rotated between two or three of the town’s cabbage patches, depending on the weather. We used to get changed at The Shay – or the ‘Stadium of Shite’ as we called it. It was very run down in those days but the playing surface was immaculate. I would compliment Bill the groundsman on the quality of the pitch and the cheeky sod would always reply, “Well, there’s been a lot of shit on it over the years.” Quite funny, to be fair.

From now on, though, it would be nothing but the best for my lads. I told Bill we would be training on the pitch at The Shay.

“OK,” he said. “But it is £40 per hour.” Amazingly, it turned out to be true – £40 per hour to use our own bloody pitch. Unfortunately, as the council now owned the ground, they were entitled to charge us that amount. Fair enough then, but not too much goodwill.

Nevertheless, we broke the bank and hired the pitch to prepare for the next game – my first game as manager.

The training was brilliant, exuberant and stimulating – it started with a warm-up, then a small-sided game, shooting and finally a few simple shuttle runs, but at an intensity and with a feeling and determination that showed me these lads would give their all for me. I wasn’t going to weigh them down with tactics (I didn’t know any anyway). We would play with smiles on our faces – well, until the first game anyway.

The first step on the managerial ladder that would probably end up with me lifting the World Cup would be on a Tuesday night at Huddersfield Town in the Autoglass Trophy (at least I think it was called that – the competition has changed sponsors so many times no one ever knows for sure). They were our nearest club geographically, so it would be another local derby.

However, they were in the division above us, so it would be a tough baptism. As the fixture was local, I allowed the players to make their own way to the match (I say I allowed them to make their own way to the match, but we had no choice because the club refused to pay for a team bus).

To say I was nervous would be the understatement of the century. I actually picked the starting XI by drawing numbers out of a bag – only joking – but I did have a unique plan up my sleeve to motivate the players. Cue the ghetto blaster and Tina Turner’s Simply the Best. I put that timeless classic on, full throttle, just before the team went out on to pitch and we roared out the chorus at the top of our voices.

Wow. What a rush. What emotion. Bring them on. We are invincible.

We lost 5-0.

I was absolutely devastated. We actually played OK, but without much luck, as Russ Bradley, our skipper and best defender, was stretchered off in the first minute – and I will swear to my dying day their fifth goal was offside.

Unless you have been a manager, you will never know the feeling of absolute and total despair every time the ball goes in your net.

1-0 down – we can still win.

2-0 down – we can still get a draw.

3-0 down – we need a consolation goal.

4-0 down – we are fucked.

5-0 down – please don’t let it be six.

Talk about being brought back down to earth with a bump. It was time for changes. Tina Turner had played her last game for Halifax Town.

I drove home alone, deep in thought and deeply, deeply depressed. Not since those times at Birmingham had I felt this low. Why did this setback make me feel so bad? I had been on the losing side many times before. Beaten 6-0 at Manchester City, my name being booed by the Birmingham City fans, roasted by Leighton James, sent off in 1979, getting four out of ten in the Sunday People – all previous lows.

Jesus, I had never realised just how many lows I’d had. But this was different, this cut deeper, this was me taking the collective responsibility for the whole team – the whole club. Previously, all the bad times had been personal and individual. This failure was on a different scale. At least when you are a player on the end of a bad result you can console yourself with the fact that you gave your best, tried your hardest and, in that pure physical effort, worked the bad feelings out of your system, thus salving your conscience.

But not as a manager. I felt impotent, incapable, unable to stop thinking about the loss. I tried to rationalise the performance and result (you might call it making excuses?). We were away from home, against opposition from a higher division, and lost a key player in the first minute.

Stop kidding yourself.

I soon realised the reason I felt so utterly bad may have been nothing more than the simple case of my ego being deflated. I had been naive in the extreme to think, even for a second, that I could transform little old Halifax Town by simply allowing the players to enjoy their training. I had to be strong now, stronger than I’d ever had to be before in my life.

I have assumed the responsibility, I told myself. I cannot shirk it. I am not the same pathetic person I was all those years ago. Think Howard Kendall. What would he have done? He would have rolled up his sleeves, marched back into the club and lifted the gloom. Sadly, though, I am not Howard Kendall; I am Mick Rathbone – with all the associated bad memories and baggage.

I slept badly that night, tossing and turning, dozing off only to be woken up in a cold sweat by bad dreams – players in blue-and-white shirts (Huddersfield Town) scoring goal after goal against us. Cries of “Rathbone out”. The next day the players were off, so I went into the club alone and got changed with the intention of going for a run. Instead, I just sat in the dugout at The Shay. I was hurting like I hadn’t hurt since the horrors of St Andrew’s all those years ago.

There was, of course, a very simple solution which was becoming more appealing by the minute – just jack it in. Right now. Phone the chairman and tell him you have changed your mind and it’s just not for you. He will understand; everybody will understand. This is the ultimate no-win situation. The club is in dire straights, hanging by a thread financially and staring at the footballing oblivion that would be relegation from the Football League. Why take on the burden? What chance do you have of turning the situation around anyway? One phone call and it’s over. You could probably even revert to being the physio (when I say revert, that’s not technically true because I was still doing the physiotherapy).

Go to your office now, pick up the phone, call the chairman and get out. Breathe a huge sigh of relief. Save yourself a world of pressure. Don’t let your legacy be that you were the man who took Halifax Town out of the Football League.

Or, in other words, bottle it, shit yourself, and chicken out.

No!

No!

No!

I am not that man now. I have changed. Once is enough. Time to stand up and be counted. The lads need me. At the very least I can ensure they stay united, shielded from the pressure, looking forward to coming in every morning. I will not let them down.

The decision was made.

I felt euphoric, invigorated, and reborn. We had mountains to climb. Many difficult times lay ahead. It would be rough. I knew I would be under intense public scrutiny. I would almost certainly be criticised – again publicly. The chances of a good outcome for me and the club were remote.

But all of a sudden, those things no longer mattered. Sat there in the dugout, all alone in that empty stadium, I had just won my finest ever victory. I had finally conquered all my fears and insecurities. I felt a bit like Carton at the end of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (just prior to him getting his frigging head lopped off). Sacrificing himself for the good of others, his finals words were: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

I just hoped it would work out a bit better for me than it did for him.