The Bromley Boys Read online

  Terry Hennessy’s favourite food was steak, creamed potatoes, mushrooms and braised celery, all of which sounded disgusting. After wondering how he could possibly enjoy eating celery, I got back to my form filling:

  Miscellaneous dislikes: Rugby, going to school, homework.

  Favourite music: The Seekers, The Archies, The Beatles, Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg.

  Nickname: The Black Cat. (This was a nickname I’d given myself and no-one had yet used. It was taken from the Russian goalie, Lev Yashin.)

  Club supported as a boy: Bromley.

  Biggest influence on career: David Jensen.

  What would you be if you weren’t a footballer: I’d just go to school.

  What advice would you give a youngster: Work hard and get qualifications.

  Favourite TV show: Dr Who, Tomorrow’s World, Junior Points of View, Crackerjack, Match of the Day.

  For the final question, I couldn’t think of anything so just copied what Terry Hennessey had said, which was:

  Biggest drags in soccer: Players who feign injury.

  There was one question I had deliberately left unanswered. The most embarrasing moment. It had dredged up unpleasant memories of the incident I had spent the past four years trying to forget about.

  Inevitably, football was responsible.

  I always sat in the back of the class and one of the advantages of this was that I could get changed for football just before the preceding lesson – in this case Maths – had finished.

  I was in the process of slipping my shorts on when the teacher, Mr Barrett, noticed what I was doing. He immediately told me to come up to the front of the class to write the answer to a Maths problem on the blackboard.

  I tried to pull my shorts up, but he insisted I get there immediately.

  I trudged up to the front, shorts around my ankles, white Y-fronts pulled up around my waist, my face as red as a Liverpool shirt.

  From that moment on, I was marked out as an oddity.

  Girls found me odd, too. I’d joined the local youth club, specifically for the purpose of meeting them, but since I lacked the courage to speak to them, I never got very far.

  I didn’t fit in at school, either. Most of the other boys seemed assured of a successful future and knew exactly what they wanted from life, even at the tender age of 14. Some of them went on to become household names, including an Oscar winner, an England opening batsman and an obscure member of the royal family.

  The one thing that made this particular school unbearable was the fact that they played rugby. I hated rugby and still do. For two years, I lobbied for the school to put out a football team. Eventually, they agreed and I immediately appointed myself captain and sole selector.

  But the only time I felt I truly belonged somewhere was when I was watching Bromley. My love for them was so all-consuming that I had recently started a campaign to move to Downham, which was about two miles away and a far less salubrious area. In truth, it was a pretty rubbish place to live, but it had one thing Bromley couldn’t offer.

  A postman called Pat Brown.

  I could imagine no better start to the day than having one of my idols deliver the mail and maybe hang around for a kickabout afterwards.

  My dad weighed this up against having a perfectly nice house in a good area, close to the shops, park, library and schools, then decided we’d be staying put.

  I stoically hid my disappointment and turned my attention to Saturday’s start of the new season.

  •••

  Wycombe had beyond-cool shirts, made up of dark and light blue quarters, while their pitch sloped dramatically. So much so, that you had to tilt your head at a slight angle to watch the game properly.

  The coach journey typified the unusual stresses of being a Bromley supporter, by getting hopelessly lost before we’d even left town. The driver had managed to confuse High Wycombe with West Wickham and wasted a valuable half-hour before he got his A–Z out and found the right route. As we drove past Bromley South Station for the second time, I saw a couple of park friends making their way to Selhurst Park, for the Crystal Palace vs Manchester United game, which marked Palace’s return to the top flight. While they would be watching the likes of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, I was travelling much further, just so I could watch a bunch of teachers, postmen and printers.

  As usual, I sat at the back with Derek, Roy and Peter. They were all older than me, but we somehow gravitated towards each other. Derek was short, about 5’5". He was the one we all looked up to, due to him having his own home – a three-bedroomed townhouse just around the corner from me – and a tax-consultancy business. He was in his early 20s and very serious with a habit of pausing emphatically during speech, so you could absorb what he was saying. Roy was a wild-haired dustman with the thickest glasses I had ever seen and firm opinions on everything, which were generally misguided. Peter was an enigma. He hardly ever spoke and no-one knew what he did for a living. The only available information was that he lived with his mother in a small bungalow. Maybe that was all we needed to know about him.

  Together, we made up a core group of supporters who followed the team everywhere, no matter how far we had to travel or how bad the weather. We were drawn together by an undying love for a club that rarely deserved such devotion.

  We got to the ground and I quickly took up my place behind the Wycombe goal, so I’d have a perfect view of all the action. It didn’t matter that the cold, driving rain was blowing in our direction. The atmosphere was one of anticipation mixed with relief. The three months or so between football seasons seemed to drag on for years.

  •••

  As the home team warmed up, their supporters gave them a rousing welcome, with several shouts of ‘Come on you Chairboys’ coming from the large group of Wycombe supporters. Or at least that was what I though they were saying. ‘Did he say chairboys?’ I asked Derek, who agreed that that was what it had sounded like. I felt strangely smug in the knowledge that someone had an even worse nickname than ours.

  While the announcer was running through the teams I was shocked to hear so many changes. It was typical Bromley that so many players were out for so many bizarre reasons. Eric Nottage was best man at a friend’s wedding. Postman Pat Brown had to work. Gaston, Green, Proud and Rhodes were still on holiday and Phil Amato simply hadn’t turned up.

  Amato always looked the perfect footballer. He was tall, dark and athletic. Only one thing prevented him from becoming a star: the fact that he was completely useless. He spent more time posing than defending, and was prone to temperamental outbursts which I’d put down to his fiery Italian nature and Mediterranean upbringing, until I learnt he was from Hayes.

  His absence as well as the others’, meant that a handful of hastily signed replacements like Graham Farmer and Dave Mills were drafted in alongside half a dozen regulars. The team played as though it was the first time they’d played together, which it was, and it was no surprise when they conceded their first goal of the season after half an hour and their second only three minutes later.

  At half-time, the consensus amongst the Bromley fans was that we were lucky to be just two goals down. That luck didn’t last as our makeshift defence was torn apart in the second half, with Wycombe winning 5–0 – despite missing at least four more chances that even I would have scored.

  I had fallen into a state of shock by the time I took my seat on to the coach for the long journey home. I had set out that morning convinced that Bromley would be starting the season with a win and naively hadn’t even considered the possibility of a more predictable result. I stared out of the window at the Buckinghamshire countryside feeling angry, hurt and betrayed, my ticket to the game torn up and deposited in the ash tray.

  I had spent the afternoon getting soaking wet, peering off into the distance, as all the action took place at the other end. Bromley hadn’t threatened the Wycombe goal and had played even less impressively than they had towards the end of the last season, when th
ey had been terrible.

  Little did I know that things were about to get even worse.

  •••

  A couple of days later I lost my part-time job and watched Bromley crash to another heavy defeat. Neither of these should have surprised me.

  The Saturday morning job at the chemist was going well until the football season started and then I began making all sorts of unreasonable demands, including finishing an hour early when Bromley were playing away and a large pay rise to cover the coach fares.

  I’d been there since I was twelve and had become proficient at washing and drying old medicine bottles so that they could be reused. I’d also perfected the art of peeling off the old labels, which had taken me years to get right. I thought the job was mine for life, so wasn’t expecting them to decide it would be more prudent to replace me than to give in to my demands.

  I tried desperately to backtrack, but it was too late. They even said I could leave straight away when I asked how much notice I’d get.

  Perhaps even more predictable than this was the loss to Kingstonian. The last time the K’s (another rubbish nickname) had been to Hayes Lane, a rabbit had robbed the team of a well-deserved win, but there would be no such help for Bromley on this occasion. Back then, a perfectly good goal had been disallowed because the ball had crossed the line and gone through the net, that had been gnawed by a rabbit that had wandered onto the ground from the nearby common. The referee, who obviously hadn’t considered this scenario, decided that the ball had passed outside the post and awarded a goal kick instead.

  This led to a brief burst of national infamy for Bromley (and the rabbit), which I was convinced would be used as motivation by today’s visitors. I felt a pathetic gratitude to the rabbit and even considered lobbying my parents to get one I could keep as a pet. I had decided I would call it Nora, regardless of its gender, as a reference to it’s gnawing of the net.

  •••

  As it was the first proper home game of the season, there was almost a festive air at Hayes Lane. The crowd was big considering what had happened at Wycombe the previous Saturday, and it was a beautiful late Summer evening.

  The team, on paper at least, looked better. Postman Pat Brown, legendary striker Eric Nottage and the brilliant winger Eddie Green were all back. No-one had failed to turn up, gone to a wedding or had to work.

  Despite this, it only took five minutes for the visitors to burst the bubble, with a goal which once again exposed Bromley’s defensive shortcomings. Pat Brown fell over, allowing the Kingstonian centre-forward to make it 1–0. Twenty minutes later, home keeper David Jensen joined the party by inexplicably diving over a weak shot from 30 yards out and it was 2–0. As if the away side weren’t finding it easy enough to score, Pat Brown then took it upon himself to try and help them by heading the ball against his own post, with Jensen well beaten.

  One spectator, who was sat directly behind me, couldn’t take it any more. When former skipper Ian Wigham lost a boot midway through the game he shouted out, ‘Don’t bother putting it on again, mate. Just hang them up.’ The rest of the crowd nodded in agreement.

  It wasn’t even half-time and people were already starting to file out of the ground. They must have known something, because the second half brought more of the same: another speculative long-range shot left Jensen flapping ineffectually and another piece of comically inept defending led to an easy tap-in for goal number four. But none of this mattered when John Mears scored Bromley’s first goal of the season with a superb shot from outside the area. That was the way I saw it, anyway. A more neutral observer might have pointed out that it was almost identical to Kingstonian’s second goal.

  The final score was Bromley 1 Kingstonian 4. Only about half of the crowd were still there to witness the final whistle.

  On the bus home, I was seething with anger. I felt like Captain Hurricane, my favourite character from The Valiant comic, who would get so angry every week that he’d fly into what he called a ‘ragin’ fury’ and then destroy entire platoons of enemy soldiers single-handedly.

  The focus of my ‘ragin’ fury’ was Dave Ellis, the new Bromley manager. He was to blame for the abysmal start to the season and I was convinced that if he could be replaced, things would be different. Admittedly, this view had been strongly influenced by an article in the local paper, which blamed his lack of tactical awareness and poor selections. I took this to be gospel. After all, if it was in the paper, it must be true. And I’ve always been a bit suggestible. A few years later, I would formulate my entire political stance on Northern Ireland after listening to a Wings song.

  My parents were big on affirmative action and often took me on protest marches, so I decided I was going to take a stand on the Dave Ellis issue.

  When I got home, I got my favourite black t-shirt and a paintbrush, and using white watercolour paint, wrote the slogan ‘ELLIS MUST GO’ on it.

  I was going to wear it at the next home game, against Wealdstone on the following Saturday.

  ISTHMIAN LEAGUE HOW THEY STAND

  15TH AUGUST 1969

  CHAPTER TWO

  I pulled on my ‘ELLIS MUST GO’ t-shirt, and then, despite it being a sweltering hot summer day, also wore my thickly padded anorak. I wanted to dramatically unveil the protest message when I got to the ground.

  As the stand was virtually empty when I arrived, I got the perfect spot to watch from – my seat was right on the halfway line at the front.

  There was a small crowd – significantly reduced since the previous Tuesday – and as the teams ran out, the applause was distinctly half-hearted. It was time to take my anorak off and commence my one-boy protest.

  Which I would have done, if a familiar figure hadn’t chosen that moment to sit down beside me. It was Dave Ellis, who had come to watch the game from a different vantage point. He even asked me if anyone was sitting there and I admitted that there wasn’t.

  Now I had a dilemma.

  The heat was making me extremely uncomfortable. I could feel the sweat making the nylon lining of the anorak cling to me and I was starting to feel light-headed. On the other hand, there was a man under extreme pressure sat right next to me and if I removed my coat, he would see that I wanted him to lose his job.

  The anorak stayed on.

  Because of extreme discomfort, I can remember very little about the game. Bromley lost, obviously.

  The good news was that Roy Pettet scored a great goal from outside the penalty area, to make him Bromley’s joint leading scorer with one. The bad news was that Wealdstone got six, each of which was greeted with an anguished murmur by Dave Ellis.

  As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about him seeing my t-shirt. When I got home and finally removed my anorak, the sweat had made the paint run, reducing my defiant slogan to a grey smudge.

  Once I’d got changed, I received some news that turned a bad day into one of the worst days of my life.

  My parents told me that because of my increasingly poor attendance at school and difficulty getting out of bed in the mornings, I would be boarding there.

  Although this shouldn’t have come as an enormous shock, it did. I was distraught and pleaded my case for carrying on with the existing arrangement, which in theory was my waking at 7.30am, getting the bus to Sevenoaks from the end of the road and getting to school in plenty of time for assembly which started at 9am.

  That was the theory.

  What actually happened was that I’d leave the house around 8am, wander into Bromley where I would go to the Egg and Griddle and pass much of the day there, drinking tea. I would also spend hours on end at the office of the Bromley Advertiser, looking through full-sized prints of photos of Bromley games, occasionally buying one. My other regular place to visit was WH Smith, where I listened to the latest records in their flash new soundproof listening booth.

  It was decided that if I boarded at Sevenoaks, my school attendance would be more reliable.

  As the new school term dawned, I was begin
ning to realise the implications of becoming a boarder. The most obvious thing was that I would be forced to miss Bromley’s midweek fixtures. The school was a 55 minute bus journey from the ground and I was sure my House Master wouldn’t let me go.

  Also, as if wandering through the streets in a straw hat wasn’t bad enough, I’d have to wear a pink tie. It would have been easier to wear a sign around my neck inviting the town’s hooligans to please beat me up.

  I really didn’t want to leave home and I knew I would miss everything about it – my mum and dad, my dog Silas, my local park.

  Even my sister.

  Plus, I’d have to leave my precious Bromley programme collection behind. I felt powerless and went to my room – a room I’d grown up in and would now be leaving behind.

  My life was hitting an all-time low. And so was my football team.

  •••

  Barking (away) was a fixture I was confident would provide my struggling team with their first point of the season. It was good to finally be playing a middle-of-the-table side after three high-fliers in a row. Judging by the atmosphere on the coach, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

  There was talk of Dave Ellis’s new 4–4–2 formation being just what was needed to turn the season around. Graham Gaston, the 6’4" centre-half was rumoured to be making his first appearance of the season, after missing the first three games due to being on holiday.

  As usual, things didn’t quite go to plan. Gaston couldn’t make it as he was too busy working at his printing business. But at least Bromley started the game brightly and the new formation seemed to make a big difference.

  When Barking went 1–0 up just before half-time, I was confident of at least a draw.

  When they went 2–0 up early in the second half, I still wasn’t worried.