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It helped him that the club had a brilliant youth set-up producing some talented players, as evidenced by the fact that City had won the FA Youth Cup in the 1985/86 season. We apprentices were looked after by coaches Tony Book and Glyn Pardoe, and it is these two men that I credit for giving me the basis of my professional career.
Tony had captained the side in a vintage era for City in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the likes of Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Francis Lee were at their peak. He had also later managed the club. Glyn was an outstanding full-back who had been forced to retire prematurely. He had suffered some appalling injuries including a horrific broken leg in a tackle by George Best, but it was a knee injury that finally forced him to stop playing.
What these two City men did not know about football was not worth knowing. The quality of their coaching was superb. They concentrated always on teaching us the correct things to do on the pitch, such as passing the ball accurately time after time. As all good coaches should do, they tried to get us to develop good habits both on and off the pitch.
Our routine as apprentices consisted of making sure that the kit for the senior professionals was properly prepared for them. Each of us looked after two players, and at first mine were striker Trevor Morley and the big goalkeeper Eric Nixon. Trevor went on to play for several clubs and is now a scout, while Eric later became something of a living legend at Tranmere Rovers. He was a huge fellow, six feet four inches tall, who would happily give you a thump on the shoulder if his boots weren’t prepared exactly as he wanted them.
It was the sort of apprenticeship where, if you got sent for a pot of tea, then you went without argument and fetched it. Another of my jobs was to clean out the toilets and the baths. It may sound as if it was slave labour, but I didn’t mind as I knew I was getting a good grounding.
The coaching by Tony and Glyn more than made up for the more tedious aspects of the job. They always tried to keep things varied and interesting, though we concentrated a lot on retaining possession, playing hundreds of hours of the game called ‘keep ball’. We would also play small-sided games, while Tony would give me special coaching in the afternoon sometimes, working on my ability to trap and pass the ball. I think it’s fair to say that the sort of player I became was established under the tutelage of Tony and Glyn. Later, Dario Gradi and Martin O’Neill would add to my game but my basic grounding was at City.
There was one unexpected development for me right at the start of my time at Maine Road. I had spent most of my youth playing in the forward line or at half-back, but as soon as I got to City, they tried to turn me into a right-back. Is it any wonder that I struggled a bit at first in that position? The move came about because I was put in at right-back in one of the early trials that I played for City. I didn’t do too badly, and then the club became short of cover at right—and left-back so that was me stuck in defence for the next three years. Though I mostly played on the right, they also tried me at left-back and even centre-half. It wasn’t until I moved to Crewe Alexandra that I got back to playing in my favoured midfield position again.
Mel Machin took a real shine to me when I first started at City. Almost from the start of my time there, I was able to do what I loved best which was playing. Mel put me into the youth team but as the 1987/88 season wore on, I began to play a lot of matches in the reserves.
It was terrific experience for a youngster, as we would often be playing against top professionals. I recall one particular match against Liverpool reserves when their team featured the likes of Jan Molby, Kevin McDonald and Craig Johnston. I was credited with having kept Johnston quiet during the game, which we won 2-0.
The club was suffering an injury crisis in February and March 1988 and I found myself becoming a regular in the reserve team. We were due to play Hull City when Mel Machin told me that I was on standby to play for the first team. I was covering for Paul Lake but in the event he passed a late fitness test and my debut had to be postponed. There were some pundits who queried putting a teenager in the squad, but Mel said at the time that ‘if they are good enough, they are old enough’, and it was only a few weeks before I did indeed make the starting eleven.
On 30 April, we were going to St Andrews to play Birmingham City, and I was delighted to be told I was travelling with the first team. I just thought I was going along to make up the squad numbers, but then, half an hour before the game, Mel read out the team to start the match and I was named at right-back. I was completely taken by surprise, just amazed that only six months after leaving school, I was going to make my first-team debut for one of England’s best-known clubs. I also knew that I had been given a great chance by the manager to stake a claim for a place in the first-team squad for the next season as it was well known that veteran defender John Gidman would be leaving the club at the end of the season.
I did not find out until much later that I was the second-youngest player to be picked by Manchester City for a first-team debut in modern days, the youngest ever having been Glyn Pardoe.
Before the kick-off I was a nervous wreck, and shortly after the referee blew the whistle to start the match I was nearly a wreck of a different sort.
I remember running about the pitch and savouring the atmosphere. I was determined to enjoy myself, but Birmingham’s Scottish player Andy Kennedy had other ideas. About a minute into the game I took a pass and was moving down the right wing when Andy absolutely flattened me, taking my legs away and thumping me right over the touchline. It was late and dangerous and he was yellow-carded.
Our physio Roy Bailey and Mel Machin both came to attend to me and it took me a minute or two to get to my feet. Having been given a first-team opportunity, I was determined to carry on, even though I was still sore, and at least I showed I wasn’t going to be intimidated.
At that stage of the season we already knew City were not going to make the promotion play-offs, but Birmingham were deep in relegation trouble and perhaps that is why they tried to kick us off the field. I thought I had played reasonably well and was comfortable with the pace of the game, but five minutes into the second half, Ian Handysides came through and hit me just as hard as Andy Kennedy. He caught my ankle and it was very painful, I can tell you.
Handysides, too, was booked, which provoked the Birmingham fans into booing me. They appeared to think that the victim was guilty of getting their players booked, but then who says a football crowd is a thinking creature?
By now the physical punishment was taking its toll on me so Mel Machin brought me off the field after about sixty-four minutes. We went on to win 3-0, with two goals from Ian Brightwell and the third from Imre Varadi.
In the dressing room afterwards my ankle was swollen like a balloon, and indeed the injury prevented me from playing in any of the remaining matches of the season.
Despite the ‘treatment’, I had thoroughly enjoyed a great experience, and I remember calling home to Lurgan that evening where my dad couldn’t believe that he had missed my debut.
He never did get the chance to see me play for Manchester City’s first team, because that match at Birmingham turned out to be the one and only appearance that I made for the club at the top level.
Of course I had no idea that things would turn out the way they did, in fact I reasoned that having made my debut at the age of sixteen, I could look forward to an exciting time.
The sky was my limit, or so it seemed, because I was also back in the international frame. During that first season with Manchester City I was called up to play for the Northern Ireland youth side against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin, a match which ended in a no-scoring draw. It was further proof of how far I had come in a short time as it was only three years since I had been cut from the schoolboy squad. And there was more good news on that international front during the summer of 1988, when Billy Bingham, the manager of Northern Ireland, invited me to join the Under-23 squad and attend the Irish FA’s four-day coaching seminar at Stranmillis near Belfast.
Gerry Taggart was there, and he had also made his first-team debut for City, so it seemed that life was going to be pretty good for the two boys from Lurgan. It was certainly a quiet life—on YTS wages we were not exactly Jack the lads at that time, and indeed we rarely had a night out in my first two seasons at Maine Road, as we simply couldn’t afford it. The funny thing was that all my mates back home thought that Gerry and I must be loaded because we were playing for such a big team. If only they knew that we were dependent on the government for our YTS wages, and the occasional rock concert was a big event for us.
My second season at City turned out to be less than satisfactory, however. Mel Machin had added players to the squad, and I found myself further down the pecking order as the team made a strong bid for promotion to the First Division. Perhaps I tried too hard, but things just did not seem to work out for me, and I was stuck playing in the reserves and youth team. Looking back, I should have been less frustrated than I was, but I had had a taste of first-team action and I wanted more. When you’re seventeen and eighteen, you want to do everything in a hurry and rightly or wrongly, I felt that I was not making the progress I should have.
Playing for Manchester City at any level was no great hardship that season. The senior squad did indeed win promotion as we youngsters won the Lancashire Youth Cup and embarked on a tremendous run in the FA Youth Cup, winning at Mansfield, Bradford, Tottenham and Newcastle before facing Watford in the two-legged final.
With future England goalkeeper David James in goal, they restricted us to a 1-0 lead at Maine Road, and we eventually lost after extra-time in the return leg at Vicarage Road. It was a heartbreaker, especially as we had been so well supported by the City fans, 8,000 of whom had turned out to watch the first leg.
The end of the season did bring some good news, however. I had concluded my YTS apprenticeship and the club now exercised the option of giving me a one-year professional contract, which at least earned me a bit more money. Mel Machin had confidence in half a dozen of the Youth Cup finalists and gave us all professional contracts.
We also went on a wonderful summer trip to Italy, playing four games for City in a prestigious youth tournament in Bologna, in which we lost the final to Juventus. We then moved to Venice where Gerry Taggart, Michael Hughes and I played in the Northern Ireland Under-18 youth team which won a tournament that involved sides from Russia, Holland and Italy, who we beat in the final on penalties.
I celebrated my eighteenth birthday back home in Lurgan where I decided that I would make a special effort to stay fit by playing Gaelic football. And in my ‘other’ footballing life, things could not have gone much better for me. My old teacher Seamus Heffron had been appointed coach of the Armagh county junior side, and he invited me along to train with them. As always, I enjoyed my ‘Gaelic’ and thanks to Seamus, this Manchester City player got to play for his county side.
But all too soon it was time to return to City for my third season with the club and my first as a fully-fledged senior professional footballer. It would prove to be a season I would not forget, but not for the reasons I had hoped.
CHAPTER FOUR Joining Dario’s Crewe (#ulink_4bceb654-1752-553d-9f97-d4ee7bc87fc5)
It was not all work and no fun for me at that time. In a bar in Manchester I had met a lovely girl called Claire Whiteoak and I plucked up the courage to ask her out. A stunning blonde, she was slightly older than me and worked as a hairdresser. Soon we were ‘going steady’, as the phrase was in those days, and I met her folks and got on well with them. She was my first love and we were very serious about each other. All of a sudden I was a very happy young man with a terrific girlfriend and good prospects even if I wasn’t earning fantastic money. I was on about ?00 per week, but out of that I had to pay digs as these were no longer provided by the club. After tax and outlays, I had about £20-£30 per week to live on—it certainly wasn’t the high life at that time.
Manchester City were back in the top flight, however, and good earnings would surely come my way if I could break into the first-team reckoning and City could stay in Division One. From the youngest apprentice to the manager and chairman Peter Swales, there was huge anticipation for the season ahead. You couldn’t help but get caught up in it, especially as City had bounced straight back after relegation. Personally I felt that, at eighteen, this could be my time to seal my place in the first team.
Yet from the start of the 1989/90 season, things did not go according to plan. There were times when the first team played very good football, but in retrospect there were not enough quality players to sustain the effort over a whole season—you need strength in depth simply to survive in a top league, especially when you make a bad start to the season, as City did in 1989.
There were some very good days, however. We had won only one of our first seven matches before we faced our great Mancunian rivals at Maine Road on 23 September 1989—a date emblazoned on every City fan’s memory. United had paid millions for Gary Pallister and Paul Ince to strengthen a squad which already had the likes of Steve Bruce and Brian McClair, but they were not going well either and the pressure was growing on manager Alex Ferguson. The atmosphere was electric at Maine Road that day, and by the end it was the City support which was celebrating, a record victory over their deadliest rivals, a feat which I know lives on in the memory of City fans to this day.
I was not playing that afternoon but was in the stand to watch an unforgettable match as we ran riot, blitzing United with terrific attacking football. Two goals from David Oldfield and one each from Trevor Morley, Ian Bishop and Andy Hinchcliffe earned us a final result of 5-1. You had to feel sorry for Mark Hughes as he scored United’s only goal and it was one of the best I’ve ever seen, a hitch-kick into the top corner performed about five feet off the ground.
We all thought that such a sensational victory would spark a mini-revival but it was not to be. By December we were deep in relegation trouble and had lost heavily on occasions, Derby County beating us 6-0 away, Nottingham Forest winning 3-0 at Maine Road and Liverpool also hammering us at our place, 4-1.
Mel Machin then paid the price for the poor run when Peter Swales sacked him. Joe Royle, then manager of Oldham Athletic, was appointed in his place but changed his mind before Howard Kendall, who had managed Blackburn Rovers, Everton and Athletic Bilbao, took the job. Howard had but one aim, to keep City in the First Division, and that was going to be a tough task given our lowly position at the time.
Not surprisingly, he sent for some of his Everton ‘Old Boys’ to help out, including Peter Reid, Alan Harper and Mark Ward. Every manager needs people around him he knows and trusts, but new signings also mean that younger players get pushed to the back of the queue while other players are sold or swapped to make way for the newcomers. My mate from Lurgan, Gerry Taggart, for instance, had made ten starts for the first team but in January was sold to Barnsley for £75,000. It was a very good move for my friend as he made such an impact at Barnsley that within a few weeks he was called up to make his full international debut.
I knew I was going to miss Taggs and I also wondered what fate lay in store for me. For in truth, the reserves were not Howard’s priority, though I could soon see that he was a great coach, a very good man manager who knew how to build a team.
He didn’t seem to notice me so all I could do was keep plugging away in the reserves where I hardly missed a game. However, I was soon spending more time on the treatment table than I would have liked, due mostly to a succession of niggles which affected my groin area in particular. Still, I played every reserve match and thought I was doing well, and I was quite confident of having my contract extended at the end-of-season talks with players which every manager held in those days before Bosman pre-contracts and transfer windows.
Sometimes in the reserve matches you would find yourself playing against big-name players who were either coming back from injury or had been dropped to the reserves for some reason. I remember having a rare old tussle with Nigel Clough, for instance, and Viv Anderson was another famous player I faced on the pitch.
Playing Manchester United was always a bit special no matter what level it was. Reserve matches were played more often at Maine Road than Old Trafford, which was probably just as well for my landlord and friend Len Duckett. He would come along to support his City lodgers, such as Michael Hughes and myself, and when we played United he would use his season ticket and find himself shouting for us while sitting among his fellow United fans. They would tap him on the shoulder and ask him, ‘Why are you sitting here with us and shouting for them?’
Undaunted, Len would reply, ‘I’m a season-ticket holder but that’s my boys out there.’ That’s the type of character Len is—loyal to a fault.
We went out of the League Cup at the quarter-final stage, beaten 1-0 by Coventry City, and lost in the FA Cup to Millwall after three games. First Division survival was all that mattered and the club spent £1m on Niall Quinn to see if he could provide the goals that would save us from the drop.
He scored on his debut to earn a 1-1 draw with Chelsea and then we beat league leaders Aston Villa away which sparked a run of victories. Howard Kendall had managed to turn things around and by Easter Monday of 1990, City were safe from relegation. All that remained was for me to make it into the first team and get my contract extended.
I thought I might get a run out in the first team in the end-of-season games but that did not happen. All the contracts were sorted out on one day shortly after City had ensured First Division survival. I remember being in the dressing room waiting to be called up. Another young player, Ian Thomson, and myself were the first to be called out. I thought it was not a good sign that only two of us were given the call, and I was slightly apprehensive when I was the first to be summoned to the manager’s room, though I still did not feel too worried at that point. Although I had only played for the reserves, I had done consistently well so I did not think there would be a problem.
Howard had Peter Reid with him, as he was his assistant at the time. The manager got straight to the point. ‘This is the time of year when it is good news or bad news for players,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid that in your case it is bad news.’
He proceeded to talk to me for at least another five minutes, but I’m afraid I can barely remember a single word he said. My mind just could not take in the enormity of the fact that I was being sacked, though football calls it by the supposedly nicer name of ‘free transfer’.
There have been thousands of boys like me in that same position. I doubt if any one of us could really explain how it feels when you hear the dreaded verdict that someone thinks you are not good enough to make a career as a professional with his club. You really do feel as if it is the end of your world, and in a sense, it is. If you’re with a top-flight club as I was, then the only way to go is down, or even completely out of the game.
Maybe Howard Kendall and Peter Reid advised me to look for another club down the leagues. At least that’s what I assume they said, but I was so deeply in shock that I really cannot recall much of what they said. I do remember Howard finishing by saying that he would put my name on the flyer containing the names of players who would be out of contract that went round every club. He added that he did think I had a future in the game but it just wasn’t going to be with Manchester City at that point.
What really hurt was that the two members of the coaching staff who had worked most closely with me, Tony Book and Glyn Pardoe, thought otherwise, believing that I could have a future with City.
I was angry and bitter for some time afterwards. I felt I had done enough to justify being kept on, but I learned as I progressed in football that such oustings are often not the fault of the player and that managers can get it wrong, about youngsters in particular. I myself have often said that I am a late developer, so I want to make it clear that I do not hold any grudges against Howard or Manchester City in any way whatsoever. He had a decision to make and he took it with a view to what was best for the club at the time. He just concluded that either I was not going to make the grade at Maine Road or that I would not be suitable for the kind of team he was trying to create. I don’t blame him for that—even though he was wrong!
The worst thing was that I then had to go back to the dressing room and relay the verdict to my colleagues and peers. I just could not face them. I went into the toilet beside the manager’s office and immediately burst into copious tears. It must have taken me about five minutes to compose myself. Eventually I made my way into the dressing room but as soon as I had told them, I started crying again anyway.
My first thought was for Claire. Things were going so well between us, but here was I with no job, no prospects and probably no money in a few weeks’ time. It already looked to me as if I would have to go home to Lurgan and start all over again, so I just could not see a way ahead for us. It appeared that I would lose my career and my girlfriend in one go.
All the lads in that dressing room were sympathetic and gave me plenty of advice, most of which was not to panic and try to find another club as soon as possible. I think I have shown over the years that I’m a pretty resilient character, but back then as an eighteen year old it was difficult to bounce back. Eventually I told myself that I would show Howard Kendall that he had made a mistake and that I could make it as a professional.
Luckily for me, there were seven or eight reserve games left so I could put myself in the shop window. My contract did not expire until the end of June so I had about two months to find another club, and I soon became pretty determined to do so as I wanted to stay in England and hopefully play for a team near Manchester and Claire.
I also had another method of showing the football world that I was worth signing. At the beginning of April 1990, I had been picked for Northern Ireland’s Under-21 squad to play against Israel at Coleraine—the place where I had enjoyed such good times in the Milk Cup. Perhaps that was a good omen for me, because manager Billy Bingham put me straight into the team to play Israel.
This was a memorable game for me as it marked my debut at that level, but I’m sure the other players who took part and the small number of spectators who attended will remember it for other reasons, as there was a blizzard in the second half. The match had to be abandoned two minutes from time as the floodlights failed—the second time that had happened in matches between the two countries, the first time being in Tel Aviv in a World Cup qualifier.
I have to say I was never totally impressed with Billy Bingham, not least because he had the annoying habit of calling me Noel, and my dad was amazed and angry that the manager of the national football team couldn’t even get my name right. He did it so often that even the football writers picked up the habit and one of the reports of that match against Israel refers to me as Noel Lennon. It was not as if they could confuse me with Noel Bailie, who was also in the team that night, as we look nothing like each other.
It was Noel who set up the move for our opening goal, scored by Iain Dowie of Luton Town. Banini should have scored for Israel after thirty-eight minutes but he dallied and I just managed to nick the ball off his toes. Israel did equalize after eighty-five minutes but Paul Gray of Luton, who had come on as a substitute, scored three minutes later. We were still celebrating when the floodlights failed, and since the game was a friendly the score stood in the record books.
I knew I had done well and a few weeks later I was delighted to be picked for a rather more prestigious game, this time at Under-23 level. Although the players of both sides often play alongside each other in England, games between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are always keenly contested and the match at Shamrock Park, Portadown, on 15 May was no exception.
By that time, I was feeling rather better about life as I was doing very well in the City reserves and had already received a couple of calls from scouts and one manager. The first person to take an active interest and come along to see me play was Des Bennett, a scout acting on behalf of Crewe Alexandra of the Third Division.
Des watched me play a couple of times and persuaded Crewe’s manager Dario Gradi to come along and see me. After he had watched me a couple of times, Dario called to say ‘We would like to take you aboard at the end of the season.’ No details were discussed but at least I had an offer.
Obviously I was still hoping for an offer from a bigger club, and the Under-23 game gave me an ideal opportunity to show what I could do. A couple of newspapers highlighted the fact that I was in the shop window and I told them that I felt I had been badly treated but was still ‘determined to make the grade’.
Gerry Taggart captained the side that night, having already made his debut at senior level, and my City colleague Michael Hughes also played. There were several managers from big clubs in the stadium that night, such as Chris Nicholl of Southampton, and I wasn’t the only one out to impress them.
In the first half in particular I played out of my skin, as did several others in our team, and we went in at half-time 2-0 up. The Republic fought back and equalized when John Sheridan tripped over me in the penalty box and the referee pointed to the spot—the match reports say I brought down John but of course we full-backs, as I was then, never see it like that. David Kelly of Leicester scored from the spot and also hit the winner ten minutes from time.
To lose 2-3 after being 2-0 up against our old rivals was hugely disappointing to put it mildly, but at least I had performed well overall. Back in Manchester, there was better news for me as John Rudge, the manager of Port Vale who were then in Division Two, called to say he was interested in signing me. He explained that he still had to sort out who was going and who was staying but he would get back to me once that process was completed.
Dario Gradi, meanwhile, had invited me down to Gresty Road, home of Crewe Alexandra. I did not know much about the town or the club, so I was in for something of a surprise. I knew the Alex, as locals called them, were nicknamed the Railwaymen because of the town’s huge train station and links with the rail industry, and I knew of Gradi’s growing reputation, but that was about the extent of my knowledge.
It was a complete culture shock when I arrived at the club. Maine Road was not the biggest and best stadium in the First Division, but it was a light year ahead of Gresty Road. I suppose it was very traditional in an old-fashioned Spartan way, but the facilities left a lot to be desired. The gym, for instance, was nothing more than a sweatbox with some weights—I was to get to know it all too well though, as you will discover.
Dario was impressive as he communicated his plans for the club, but when we began to talk money I was a bit disappointed. As a reserve player at City, I had earned £100 per week, so as a first-team player—even in the Third Division—I was expecting to earn double that. But Dario outlined the club’s budget and financial problems, and offered me a two-year deal worth £110 per week, plus bonuses.
I had been hoping for a bigger club and more money, but Dario proved very convincing and he did have a reputation for his work with young players. In particular, he was good at improving players freed from other clubs and selling them on, as he had done with David Platt, who he got for nothing from Manchester United and sold to Aston Villa for £200,000. Also, when I had played for City’s youth team against Crewe Alexandra, they had always impressed me as a team who were trying to play good football.
I had to make my mind up quickly as my contract was running out, so though I was bitterly disappointed at having to join a club two divisions lower, I only had one concrete offer on the table and it was a two-year deal, so I decided to sign. I suppose I could have waited to see whether an offer materialized from Port Vale or some other club, but Dario had done such a good job selling Crewe Alexandra to me that I plumped for them. At the time it seemed a disastrous backward step, but in hindsight it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I have long since learned in life that sometimes you have to take a step backwards to go forwards.
Dario did indeed live up to his reputation as a fantastic coach, particularly of youngsters like myself. At times he could be very straightforward, even curt, but at other times he would be funny and he was always very encouraging. He kept telling us to go out and play football and enjoy the game, and try to express ourselves on the pitch.
He was very ‘hands on’ or should that be ‘feet on’. I particularly remember that when we were practising set-pieces, if we did not get it correct and hit the wrong spot with the ball, he would march up and get hold of the ball, then deliver the free-kick perfectly to the exact place he wanted it.
He taught us a whole range of things which were new to the game in England. He had been very influenced by Ajax of Amsterdam and their training methods, and in a way it was he who brought the continental philosophy into the game in England, following their approach a few years before the big influx of players and managers from abroad in the 1990s. He emphasized movement on and off the ball and told us to try to copy the good European teams.
Goodness knows how he managed it, but he persuaded Red Star Belgrade to play Crewe in a friendly, and even though we lost 0-4, it was a really pleasurable experience to take part in a game with such skilful players. They scored four, but it could have been fourteen, and afterwards Dario told us that he would love us to play like them—we ended up getting relegated and Red Star won the European Cup that season, so that plan didn’t exactly work out.
Although much of the attention focused on Dario’s youthful brigade, the Crewe squad at the time were not just a bunch of raw youngsters. Kenny Swain was the assistant manager and he had won the European Cup with Aston Villa in 1982. He was still playing even though he was coming up for forty and was fantastically fit. Apart from being a really nice guy, he taught us a lot and for all his achievements in the game he was a modest man.
Steve Walters was another fine player. He had been Crewe’s youngest-ever first-team player and had captained the England youth team. He was a very talented boy but he didn’t make the impact expected of him later in his career.
One of the players who joined us for a season later in my time there was someone I knew quite a bit about. Jim Harvey hailed from Lurgan, and like myself he had started out with Glenavon FC, though he had played rather more than my two matches with our home-town side. He had gone on to have a long stint with Tranmere Rovers before moving to Crewe. He was in the later stages of his career, and went on to become assistant to Sammy McIlroy when he was manager of Northern Ireland, where I encountered him several years after I had left Crewe. Jim was manager of Morecambe of the Nationwide Conference League for a dozen years and twice took them to the brink of Football League qualification, but he was sacked in May 2006, to be replaced by none other than Sammy McIlroy.
Other players at the time included Rob Jones who went on to sign for Liverpool for £300,000 and then played for England, while Craig Hignett was a Scouser who was transferred to Middlesborough for £500,000. I recognized one player as soon as I walked in the door—Andy Gunn had played against me in the Manchester City v Watford Youth Cup Final.
It was a happy dressing room at the start of my time at Crewe and would generally stay that way for the rest of my time there. It took me a while to get to grips with the demands of playing for the first team even at that level, but Dario had confidence in me and picked me from the start of the season, which sadly began disastrously as we took just one point from our first six league games.
The first really big games I played for Crewe were against a club who were legends of world football. After knocking out Grimsby Town, we were drawn against Liverpool in the League Cup. We actually took the lead against them at Anfield, but that probably only served to annoy them and they came back to overwhelm us 5-1. The return leg was an all-ticket affair at Gresty Road, which at least showed that the stadium when full could generate plenty of atmosphere, but we were on the wrong end of a 1-4 drubbing. In fairness to us, that was the Liverpool team who were league champions and even to be on the same pitch as the likes of Ray Houghton, John Barnes and Ian Rush was a big thrill for all of us, especially since I was still only nineteen.
I had decided to stay in Stockport, and even though I wasn’t being charged the earth for my digs, money was very tight. Those were the days when a tenner could buy you five or six pints, which was just as well as that was usually how much I had left for a night out.
My favourite local pub was the Elizabethan in Heaton Moor Road, Stockport, and it was there that I met and drank with two friends, Chris Mooney and Scott Woodhall, who are still mates of mine to this day. There were a lot of talented people who drank in the Elizabethan at that time and formed a loose grouping of friends. There were actors such as Craig Cash who was in The Royle Family. He and a guy called Phil Mealey wrote a television sit-com called Early Doors which was based loosely on The Elizabethan where they both drank. Sally Lindsay, who played Shelley Unwin on Coronation Street, was another regular, and it was a place where a lot of musicians gathered, including two brothers called Gallagher. I was just getting seriously into music at that time so you will not be surprised to learn that I was a big fan of Mancunian music at the time of ‘Madchester’, when bands like the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays burst onto the scene.
Noel and Liam Gallagher were a class apart from the start. They were just putting their band together and it was great to watch them develop and became bigger than all of the other Manchester bands. I’m still a huge fan of Oasis today. From the first time that I went to see them I was blown away by their live performances, and I saw them quite a few times before and after they were famous.
One of their best-ever gigs was at Maine Road in Manchester in 1996. Everybody wanted to be at that concert and it was generally reckoned to have been a high point in the Manchester scene of the 1990s, but I don’t have the fondest memories of that day.
I had just signed for Leicester City and Steve Lomas, a great friend of mine who was captain of Manchester City, managed to get us backstage passes for the day. It would be fair to say that we had enjoyed a drink or five before the gig even started. I remember there was a long corridor backstage and as we went along it I spotted Liam and Noel and Liam’s wife Patsy Kensit, plus Stan Collymore and a few of the Liverpool players. As we went outside to stand beside the executive boxes, for some reason Steve Lomas and I started to have an argy-bargy. I cannot even remember who started it or why, but we were soon rolling about on the floor in front of all the VIPs, trying to punch each other but failing miserably because we were under the influence. The bouncers took a dim view of our scrapping, but for some reason it was me who got thrown out and not Steve. A few years later Oasis played a gig in Glasgow and we managed to get backstage to meet the band, the Gallaghers being great Celtic fans as well as Manchester City diehards. The first thing that Noel said when he saw me was ‘Right, you, no fighting tonight.’
Back in the early 1990s I was happy to be on the edge of what was a hard-drinking, drug-using scene, but I was a little like a spectator looking in. As I played football for a living, I could never get involved in that sort of heavy stuff, but I did enjoy the craic and the music.
The early 1990s were exciting times to be in the Manchester area and I was reluctant to leave when Crewe was only thirty-five miles down the road, but transport was a problem. Even though I had learned to drive and had a licence, I was so badly off that I couldn’t afford a car and at first I had to hitch lifts off other players to make the journey back and forth to Stockport. My young person’s bus pass came in very handy at that time.
Eventually I managed to scrimp and save enough to get myself some wheels. My first car will strike a chord with those who remember British Leyland and some of its more ‘charming’ products. The second-hand—or maybe about tenth-hand—Austin Montego that I bought during my first season at Crewe was at least an improvement on the bus.
One day Dario asked me to pop up to the train station in my car and pick up the scout who had spotted me in City’s reserves, Des Bennett. I parked my car at the top of the hill outside Crewe station, and went looking for Des. I couldn’t find him and when I went back to where I had parked it, my car was gone. My first thought was ‘who would nick an Austin Montego’ but as I looked around I spotted my car rolling down the hill. There were a lot of cars parked by the station that day, and my Montego hit four of them on the way down. I did the honest thing and left notes with my details on the windscreens, and the insurance company picked up the tab, but the Montego didn’t last long after that.
As I totted up the appearances for Crewe I knew I was doing well, and I was flattered to read in the newspapers that the great Brian Clough, legendary manager of Nottingham Forest, was apparently having me watched. But as would happen so often in my career, reports and rumours proved to be just that.
In late November, we were deep in the relegation zone and things were looking very glum when we went away to play Cambridge United who were then chasing promotion. I remember that game well because it marked my first goal for Crewe.
Kenny Swain was making his 100th appearance for Crewe that night, becoming only the second player after Peter Shilton to reach that mark with five separate clubs.
Dion Dublin, who would come to Celtic late in his long career and end up scoring in the Scottish League Cup Final, notched the opener for Cambridge after two minutes, but we equalized before Steve Claridge, later to be a colleague at Leicester, put United ahead on the stroke of half-time.
About a minute into the second half I got the ball and went on a run past three of their defenders before poking the ball past John Vaughan in the Cambridge goal. I was ecstatic and remember running over to the Crewe fans and jumping onto the barrier in my excitement. I would score three goals that season, which proves I could actually hit the net with somewhat more regularity than I have done with Celtic.
Our league form was dismal from then on, frankly, but we went on a fair old run in the FA Cup, beating Lincoln City, Atherstone United, Bristol Rovers and Rotherham before drawing West Ham in the fifth round. There were television cameras at the ground and I had told all the people in the Elizabethan to watch out for our game—it was slightly embarrassing when only thirty seconds of the match was shown.
I wish they had shown more because we played really well in that match. Dario had told us to go out and have a go at the First Division side, and we certainly did. United had my old Manchester City colleague Trevor Morley playing that day while Frank McAvennie was back with them and proving dangerous. But we not only held out, we attacked them and could have scored when Craig Hignett missed a relatively easy chance. It looked as if we would earn a money-spinning replay but with about twelve minutes left, Jimmy Quinn scored for them and we were out of the cup. I recall their fans as well as ours giving us an ovation as we trudged off Upton Park. We just could not replicate that form in the league, however, and despite a late surge when we won four out of our last five matches, the terrible start cost us dear and relegation became inevitable when Chester City beat us 3-1.
