When I returned from America, in November 1989, I was in debt for the first time in my life, and had no immediate source of income apart from football.
I was a good footballer at a lower level, but once I moved up to non-league it was apparent that there were many more skilful players than me around. I decided to make up for my lack of skill by being a good worker, and by that I mean running and tackling.
At that time, it was expected that within every non-league team there would be one or two players whose job it was to stop the better footballers in the opposing team from playing. This was often achieved by the type of tackling that would result in you receiving an ASBO in today’s game.
That was my job and one I did reasonably well. My semi-professional football career included a number of clubs. The general pattern was that I would sign for a team and after two seasons move on, either because I had fallen out with the manager and wasn’t getting picked, or I had a better offer.
Whilst playing for Southport in 1991 we played against Liverpool in the Liverpool Senior Cup. This was a tournament that involved the local non-league sides and Liverpool and Everton, who would play their reserves. That night I marked a young lad who Liverpool had just signed from Bournemouth called Jamie Redknapp, and though we both have different memories of who was the better player on the night, neither of us could have imagined we would become good friends some 20 years later. For anyone interested, I was the better player … it’s my book so that’s what is going in!
I devoted a lot of my life to football and, in many ways, I regret this because I never did any other sports or engaged in activities such as going on weekends away. I needed the income from the semi-pro football on a Saturday, and I also got great pleasure from playing in the Sunday league sides my dad ran. I’m now starting to take up other sports, although it’s quite apparent that I am pretty rubbish at them all.
I also played for money, which changes the whole raison d‘être. You turn up three times a week because you are paid to be there, not because you choose to be there. When I stopped playing non-league football for good after around 14 years, I never missed it. I missed the dressing-room banter and the lads that I played with, but I never missed the travel and the commitment. You only have to draw 0–0 away at Bishop Auckland on a cold, wet and windy Tuesday night in front of 50 people and a dog a few times before you start thinking there must be better things to do with your time.
I had two epiphanies during my non-league career. The first was at the end of the biggest game I played. I was playing for Hyde United, and we were in the semi-final of the FA Trophy against Telford who played in the Vauxhall Conference, the league above us. This is basically the FA Cup for non-league sides, and the final is played at Wembley. The semi-final is a two-leg affair, and we went into the game a goal down from the home leg, but still feeling we had a chance. We scored early and for a period it felt like we might make it, but eventually Telford went through as well-deserved winners.
I hadn’t played particularly well and was substituted with 15 minutes to go. At the end of the game I was completely deflated. That morning I had been 90 minutes away from Wembley. By the time the final whistle blew, that dream was over and I felt I would never get there. I had been given a chance and had blown it.
It was 15 April 1989. In the dressing room, amidst the disappointment, news started to come through that something had happened during Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. In the time it took to shower and change, it became apparent that a disaster was unfolding, and people began talking about fatalities. I have always been a Liverpool fan and almost certainly would have been there had I not been playing. Within minutes of my biggest disappointment, football didn’t seem to matter at all. Writing these words, it still seems incredible what unfolded afterwards and that families are still fighting for justice. If ever a day changed my view of the importance of football, it was then.
The second was to come years later. I was married with a new baby, had a full-time job and was playing for Caernarfon in the Welsh League. Caernarfon was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my house. My son, Joe, was a few months old and I was still training twice a week. On a Saturday, I would set off around 10.30 a.m. and return when he was in bed around 8.30 p.m., and that was for home games. In the Welsh League, you could be in mid-Wales or even down south, which was an even bigger commitment.
I can’t recall who we were playing against, but it was spring and, as the sun lowered itself in the sky and began to signal its departure by unfurling a beautiful red aura across the sky just behind the corner flag, I found myself standing in the middle of the pitch, with the game going on around me, as I looked at this brilliant splash of colour on the horizon. I stopped running and just watched the day end.
I looked around the small ground at the 70 or 80 spectators, and it hit me. I was in my thirties, I was never going to get any better – if anything, I was getting worse. I was just making up the numbers in the team, and if I wasn’t playing, someone else would have my shirt on. I offered nothing unique and gained nothing except some extra money, which is what I had used to justify not being at home. But yet another day was over and my son had not seen me. He had grown another day older and I had missed it.
For the rest of the week I would be away again, working. I was giving up the opportunity to be a better father in pursuit of extra cash, cash he didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t the cash from playing football that made him laugh, it was me pulling faces. It was me who bathed him, who changed his nappy, who read him stories, who tickled him and who rocked him to sleep. It was me who did all of those things, but it was also me who had chosen to give that time up so I could chase a ball. I realised the only place I was unique was at home being a father, being a husband. Only one person on the planet could do that job, while there was a queue of people who could stand in mid-field and tackle.
‘Bish, what the fuck are you doing?’
The game was still on, and whilst everyone else was defending an attack I was down the other end of the pitch gazing at the sky.
The manager’s voice broke my trance. I ran back to defend, but finished my non-league playing days shortly after. I had more important things to do, which didn’t involving kicking someone – well, not often.
I still played football locally for a year or two and now I play every week with my mates on the five-a-side pitch I have had put in my garden. I even had a dug-out installed, which Melanie says only proves I am still a little boy wanting to be a professional footballer! I also still have season tickets at Anfield and go regularly with my dad, my brother and the two sons who like football. We had a season of a family table in the corporate part of the ground where you can get a four-course meal before the game before we all agreed it wasn’t for us, and went back to our normal seats. I love going to the game, and it’s also one of the places where I seem to be left alone. People know I am just going with my family, and it’s really nice that this is respected. I never mind giving people photographs or autographs – it’s a privilege that they ask. But it is nice sometimes to be left to do something normal. As my brother says, ‘Who’s going to be arsed with you when the match is on?’
• • •
One thing that has been great about living the dream I never expected – that of being a comedian – is that I have also been granted the opportunity to live the dream I wanted by playing in celebrity charity football matches. I took part in the Hillsborough memorial game for the Marina Dalglish charity at Anfield, and also played at Old Trafford with Soccer Aid, as well as taking a penalty at Wembley on A League of Their Own.
Of course, you are only there because you are good at something else, so it’s not like being a real professional footballer. But as a friend of mine said, ‘If you get a beautiful woman because you’re rich not because you’re good looking, you still have a beautiful woman. Even if everyone looking at you thinks you’re a perv.’ If you play football at the best grounds in the world because you’re a comedian, not because you’re a good footballer, you are still playing at the best grounds in the world, even if everyone looking at you thinks you’re shit. There is logic in that somewhere.