The Bromley Boys Page 19

  As soon as the voting started, I knew I was in trouble. Everyone seemed to be voting for Dana, who eventually won easily, much to Dave’s delight.

  David Alexander Winter of Luxembourg finished rock bottom, making history in the process by scoring no points whatsoever.

  Luxembourg had inadvertently become the Bromley of the Eurovision Song Contest.

  •••

  Afterwards, we got to talking about his sister.

  I’d asked him to ask her what she’d say if I asked her out. The thinking behind this strategy was that if she said she would say no, I could claim I was only joking.

  So he asked her.

  And then asked me if I wanted to know what she’d said. I said that I did and steeled myself for rejection.

  The good news was, she liked me. The bad news was it was only as a friend. This was the one thing no teenage boy liked to hear. I felt crushed and suddenly didn’t feel like talking any more. It was even worse than I felt after we’d lost to Wealdstone in that Amateur Cup tie. Worse than when I heard Una Stubbs had got married.

  At least it explained the lack of Valentine’s card.

  I vowed to try and forget about women and just concentrate on football.

  ISTHMIAN LEAGUE HOW THEY STAND

  26TH MARCH 1970

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The next morning I learnt that anything Bromley could do, Corinthian Casuals could do better.

  When Bromley had lost last week, the Casuals had drawn. And just when we’d finally drawn a game, they’d won. This meant they were now three points clear of Bromley, a gap which looked like a gaping chasm, considering we’d only got one point all year.

  The news for Hayesford Park Reserves was even worse. Anything we could do, every other team in our division could do much, much better.

  Our form had completely deserted us, as evidenced by the latest game against Chelsfield Colts.

  For once, I blamed Derek for the defeat. He hadn’t been able to make it so a replacement goalie was needed. There was only one volunteer who was idiotic enough to believe that playing for 90 minutes behind a non-existent defence was going to end in any way other than disaster.

  Me.

  I still clung to the belief that I was a more than adequate replacement and certainly looked the part in the warm-up, confidently catching the ball and tipping a couple over the bar with unnecessarily flamboyant dives.

  The problem came when the game started. My first save almost bent my hand backwards and I yelped in pain. I had never had to face such a hard shot. The ultimate ignominy followed seconds later when Roy of all people had to come to my rescue by clearing the ball off the line.

  From then on, it was a procession of goals, eight in the first half and a further six in the second. It was only after the game when I realised that while it was really embarrassing when your team lost 14–1, it was doubly so if you were the goalkeeper.

  I had also ruined my dad’s driving gloves, which I’d used on the basis that any gloves were better than no gloves. Even if they were made from really expensive leather.

  Afterwards, we went to the pub and sat outside, talking about the game. This was about the only time I was conscious of being a boy playing in a men’s team. While they all drank shandy, I always had a couple of pints of blackcurrant and lemonade.

  It was still one of the most enjoyable things about playing for Hayesford Park Reserves.

  Sometimes, it was the only enjoyable thing.

  •••

  When Charlie King had left for his round the world trip, Bromley had only won four times. Now, three months and 30,000 miles later, he was back and Bromley had still only won four times.

  What’s more, when he left we were about to play Wealdstone away and when he returned we were also about to play Wealdstone away. He must have felt as though time had stood still.

  He had missed the 1–1 draw at Wealdstone last weekend as he’d only just got back, but he was soon back in action at his beloved Hayes Lane.

  He was selling programmes outside the ground before the Hendon fixture, as I turned up in plenty of time before my shift at the tea hut. He looked tanned but worried. The fact that he’d had results telegraphed to him on board ship had probably meant he’d been unable to completely relax.

  I’d read in the paper that the first thing he’d done on his return was give a vote of confidence to the underachieving Alan Basham, which was more disappointing than surprising.

  It didn’t make any sense to me. Since Basham had taken over from the committee, Bromley hadn’t won a single league game. And that was about five months ago. I wanted to know what hold he had on the club and Mr King in particular.

  Peter hadn’t yet arrived, so the tea hut was still locked. I leaned against it and read the programme.

  The team news wasn’t good. Jeff Bridge, who had spent Christmas at former teammate Colin England’s hotel in the French alps was going back there for Easter. This meant that Phil Amato was being recalled after his ‘resting’.

  Then Roy ran over looking flustered, which was pretty much his normal state. He’d heard that Peter wouldn’t be able to make it and wanted to know if I’d be OK running the tea hut on my own.

  Pride and panic collided in my brain.

  I had been well trained and knew all the jobs off by heart. Boiling the urn was the first job, before preparing the pot. I got the Cadbury Fingers and Jacob’s Club Biscuit packets out of the cupboard and put them out on display. Next, I got the cups and saucers out and lined them up. Roy had brought the milk over. After making sure the sugar bowls were full, I was ready to open the shutters for business.

  The good thing about me being out in sole charge now was that the crowd wasn’t expected to be very big. Hendon were a good side, one of the big two in the Isthmian League. Traditionally, them and Enfield were the two teams you could count on losing to. This season, that list had expanded to include pretty much everyone else as well.

  They were only about halfway in the table, but had loads of games in hand due to several successful cup runs. They had several internationals and always seemed to treat Bromley games like light-hearted training runs.

  By this stage, Charlie King had taken up one of his other duties as ground announcer. This included revealing the name of the latest winner of £5 in the Bromley Supporters’ Club ‘200’ club. It was a certain Mr E Nottage, c/o Bromley Football Club.

  He then ran through the changes that anyone who read the Bromley and Kentish Times already knew about and left us with the usual sounds of marching music.

  •••

  The busiest times in the tea business are in the ten minutes before a game and at half-time.

  The secret is to anticipate the number of customers and to prepare accordingly. I decided that I would probably be serving around 70 customers, most of whom would just require one cup. The exception to this was The Grubby, who would want two.

  As I glanced up at the teams running onto the field, it was clear that I was a lot more nervous about the afternoon ahead than they were.

  The first and only sign that an upset was on the cards came just as the first wave of tea drinkers had been served. Right in front of me, Mick Lloyd put in a perfect cross which ‘200’ club winner Eric Nottage nodded past the England amateur goalie, John Swannell.

  Bromley had taken the lead. I wanted to run out of the hut to where The Grubby was sitting and share the excitement with him. But that would have been unprofessional.

  Alan Soper then made one of the mistakes that so frustrated Bromley fans. He could be brilliant at times – every bit as good as Swannell. But he could also do some really embarrassing things. I suppose that was why he was playing for Bromley instead of someone good.

  On this occasion, he made a great save from John Baker’s header then undid the good work by dropping the ball and watching it roll into the net.

  What made this worse was that Bromley were playing so well and would have deserved to go in at half-ti
me leading.

  If Hendon’s first goal was the result of Soper’s generosity, their second was down to pure good fortune. A hopeful shot from 20 yards out hit John Miles and bounced to another England amateur international, Rod Haider, who tucked home the winner.

  It had been another excellent Bromley performance, but I was so fed up with Hendon’s luck that I never wanted to see them again.

  Unfortunately, we were playing them away later that week.

  •••

  All Bromley had to do was beat a below-strength Sutton side at home and they would have a mathematical chance of avoiding finishing last. According to my calculations, anyway.

  Sutton’s idea of a weakened team was only having two England internationals instead of their usual three. Ken Grose, the history-making substitute from the game earlier in the season, had made the starting line-up. I was distressed to see that the man who had effortlessly scored a 20-minute hat-trick against us was a defender who had only revealed his goal- scoring prowess in the one game that season.

  Charlie King’s programme notes once again steered clear of reality by pointing out that Alan Basham was now well advanced in his plan to build a team ‘capable of restoring our club’s prestige.’

  To contradict that, the next sentence announced that in tonight’s line up, Phil Amato would be at left-back.

  From my limited view from the tea hut, I spent the first half-hour of the game watching Sutton goalkeeper Bone jump up and down, trying to keep warm. All the action was at the other end. He had only one save to make, from David Wise, who managed to injure himself in the process of shooting and had to be carried off.

  The inevitable Sutton goals both came at the start of the second half. One of their remaining England internationals, Larry Pritchard, dribbled past Amato to put the visitors into the lead, and then defender Ken Grose got his fourth of the season against Bromley to take Sutton to the top of the table and ensure Bromley finished bottom.

  Alan Basham and Charlie King felt we needed strengthening in just three positions to make Bromley a ‘very different proposition’ for next season.

  I don’t know what positions they were talking about, but as far as I was concerned, only Soper, Nottage, Bridge, John Miles, Pat Brown and Ginger Warman were good enough to wear the famous white shirt.

  •••

  It was the school holiday, so I had arranged to go and stay with Dave until the weekend, when we would be going our separate ways – he was off to Highbury and I was going to Hendon.

  As we were sitting in his room, listening to Blonde on Blonde, I spotted something on his desk that made me realise instantly that we would be friends for life.

  It was a large scrapbook, with the word ARSENAL painted in big red letters and a detailed sketch of the cannon from the team’s badge, which must have taken him hours to draw.

  I felt my heart rate increase with the excitement of this discovery. I had thought I was the only one who kept such a detailed record of my team – and now, thumbing through his book, I realised I wasn’t alone.

  I got even more excited when he explained that there were several other volumes in the cupboard, but this was one from a couple of years ago that he’d been reading last night.

  It had page after page of yellowing match reports, rumours of new signings (which had almost never come to fruition) and articles about players.

  This was the kind of thing a true friendship was built upon, I realised. A shared love of something. In our case, football. His scrapbook seemed to contain every mention Arsenal had ever had in every newspaper.

  Most impressive of all was the comprehensive record of Arsenal’s participation in the Quiz Ball TV programme, in which various football teams had to decide whether to take the easy route to goal and answer one-point questions, or do it the hard but direct way, with four-point questions.

  There were also two- and three-point questions, but successful teams rarely bothered with those.

  Ian Ure had captained an Arsenal team which included Terry Neill and Bertie Mee as well as their guest supporter, the Radio Two disc jockey Jimmy Young.

  In his neatest handwriting, Dave had faithfully recorded every answer given by the team and had devoted a whole spread to their triumphant run a couple of seasons ago.

  This was when they had overcome a strong Leicester City line-up (including the in-form Lady Isobel Barnett) in the semi-final thanks to Ian Ure getting all four goals, before beating Dumbarton 7–3 (Neill 2, Ure 2, Young 3) in the final.

  As it was the only trophy the team had won in the 1960s, Dave had given this modest achievement a disproportionate amount of space and prominence.

  The scrapbook also featured a photo of Frank McLintock, with his arm around someone who looked a lot like Dave’s dad. It turned out to be his uncle, who was holidaying in Costa Brava and found himself at the same hotel as the Arsenal captain. I wondered if he’d said ‘It’s not for me, it’s for my nephew’ when he asked if they could have their photo taken.

  Dave’s Arsenal scrapbook was like a less obsessive version of my Bromley scrapbook.

  Once he had taken me through every single page, Dave announced it was time to go. He was going to Highbury to see his heroes take on West Ham, who would presumably be fielding their strongest side – something I still hadn’t forgiven them for failing to do at Bromley.

  While he would be watching Hurst and Moore (Peters had just moved to Spurs for a record fee of £200,000), I would be at Hendon for a meaningless Isthmian League fixture.

  With a wistful glance at his sister’s closed door, I left Dave’s house and cycled off to meet the coach at Hayes Lane, which would take me to yet another game we had no chance of winning.

  •••

  Hendon basically carried on where they had left off six days earlier. Bromley went into the game having conceded 96 goals and came out of it having brought up the 100 for the season. There was even time for number 101.

  Alan Soper, so often the hero, was at fault with goals number 97, 98, 99, 100 and 101.

  His mistakes were, in order:

  1. Giving away a free-kick by taking too many steps, which resulted in a goal.

  2. Letting a corner-kick float over his head and into the net.

  3. Dropping a shot at the feet of a Hendon forward, who gratefully accepted the gift.

  4. Giving a penalty away by pulling down a Hendon midfielder.

  5. Getting himself stranded and watching helplessly as a header found the empty net.

  I felt sorry for him. He’d had a great season, but his confidence must have been shot to pieces.

  After the final whistle, I once again climbed over the fence and ran onto the pitch, keen to re-establish contact with Alan Soper and reassure him that he was still brilliant, despite today’s lapses.

  But it wasn’t to be. The thought of a warm bath on a bitterly cold afternoon was clearly uppermost on his mind, because as soon as he saw me coming towards him, he broke into a light jog and reached the tunnel without looking back.

  It hadn’t been a productive day, to say the least. I hadn’t managed to talk to Dave’s sister (I still harboured hopes of changing her mind about me) or Alan Soper, the coach hadn’t stopped off at an Esso petrol station and Bromley had never looked like winning.

  At least I had another game to watch the next day. One that was even bigger than Hendon v Bromley.

  •••

  One man who was missing from the Leeds line-up to face Chelsea in the FA Cup Final was former Bromley reserve John Faulkner. His career since moving to Leeds hadn’t gone as well as he would have hoped.

  He’d played twice for the first team. In the first game, against Burnley, he scored an own goal. In the second, against Manchester City, he broke his leg.

  But this tenuous Bromley connection was enough for me to support Leeds as Dave and I watched the game on TV at his house. He wanted Chelsea to win, mainly because I didn’t.

  The rivalry became so heated that we had a bet.
If my team won, he would have to go to school with a T-shirt that had ‘Bromley are better than Arsenal’ painted on it. And if his team won, I would have to go to school wearing a T-shirt saying that Arsenal were better than Bromley.

  It was a bet neither of us wanted to lose and definitely added to the excitement of the match.

  First Leeds took the lead and then Chelsea equalised. Leeds took the lead again and Chelsea equalised again. Dave and I seemed to be swapping emotions every 20 minutes or so – the seesaw nature of the game meant hopes were raised then dashed before being raised then dashed all over again.

  Being a Bromley supporter, this was something I was used to.

  The match ended in a draw, the first one ever in a Wembley Cup Final and we were both spared any further humiliation.

  •••

  I had never been to a game where I wasn’t convinced that the referee was biased against my team.

  But the most blatantly biased refereeing I have ever seen cost Bromley two points against Tooting and Mitcham, and ensured that we would finish the season bottom of the table.

  We had three perfectly good goals disallowed, while Tooting and Mitcham were given two goals that clearly weren’t.

  The first hit the woodwork and bounced on the goal line before John Miles scrambled it clear. Unbelievably, Mr Clark pointed to the centre-spot.

  It was just like Geoff Hurst’s goal in the World Cup Final, the only difference being that while everyone in England knew that Hurst’s effort did cross the line, the one from Hutchins of Tooting and Mitcham clearly didn’t. I had a perfect view from the tea hut.

  But Mr Clark hadn’t finished yet. He then failed to give Ken Jelly, Tooting and Mitcham’s superstar striker, offside even when it couldn’t have been more obvious that he was. Everyone except the man in black could see that Jelly was at least three yards ahead of the last defender. The grateful centre-forward ran through to beat Soper from close range. He’d already scored 52 goals in the season. It wasn’t as though he needed to be given any more.