Accidental Ironman (3 page)

Michael Morton

Paul Morton

Kevin Harborne

Harman Howland

Shaun Lester

Okay, I had maybe half-hoped I might have been picked ahead of a couple of these because I am slightly self-delusional and because we’re now getting down among the crappier choices. None of these five has any particular footballing ability although, to be fair, they are at least keen on the sport. Kevin particularly wants nothing more than to be a professional footballer and lives near Coventry City winger Tommy Hutchison, making him a popular supplier of autographs, written in suspiciously childlike handwriting. Sadly, he is denied his dream by being as good at football as Girls Aloud are at potholing. Michael and Paul are the most competitive pair of siblings since Venus and Serena Williams, and it’s a toss-up whether it’s safest to have them on opposite sides kicking lumps out of each other, or on the same side kicking lumps out of others. And each other.

Mitchell Edwards

Robert Fox

Darren Miles

Shaun Moorcroft

Now I’m worried and any ego I had developed by the age of seven has been seriously bruised that I have not been picked in with this group. Mitchell Edwards can run fast but isn’t interested, Robert is ponderous and couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, and Shaun’s only claim to fame is to be a cousin of Great Britain’s star Olympic runner and Coventry Godiva Harrier Dave Moorcroft. (As an aside, I now know Dave well, having become a Godiva Harrier myself, and he tells me there is no Shaun Moorcroft in his family, the little liar). Every street has its trouble family, and the Mileses are the trouble family in ours. Of the four sons, Darren is the worst so I can only assume he has been picked ahead of me through fear, although his team will soon be a man down after he gets sent off for hacking someone down, calling the teacher a wanker, or just jumping over the fence and running off.

And so, we are down to the last two, and their names are Andrew Owen and Martyn Brunt. The former is a timid but funny kid whose Italian mum used to stand at the school gates at home-time shouting: ‘Annderrrew, Annderrrew, hurrrry up or you getta no sweets’ and who had, according to Andrew, a ‘wooden buster’. And then we have Martyn, the worst footballer you will ever see in your life. Not only does he not particularly like the game, but he lacks even the most basic of skills, seemingly unable to control his feet without having to stare at them, unable to summon up the energy to leave the ground when jumping, and believing that the best tactic is simply to follow the ball around the pitch – or more accurately follow where the ball has just been around the pitch. Andrew and Martyn are the last two kids standing on the muddy pitch behind the main school building. The team captains would be quite happy not to select either of them but are forced to by the PE teacher, so it’s now an exercise in damage limitation. Which of these two will be the least inept? The captains are receiving words of advice from their assembled team about the various pitfalls of picking either one of them, and in truth whoever is picked will have as much impact on any game as Darren Anderton had on, er, any game. However, it does matter. It matters very much to Andrew and Martyn because neither one of them wants to be ‘Last Pick’ – the lowest of the low, rejected by all. Whoever is picked will sprint over to their new team, pathetically grateful for the crumb of consolation they have been fed. Whoever is not picked will not even have their name called out, they will just be stared at accusingly by the captain lumbered with them who will just say, ‘Come on then’ before turning and running off. And then it comes …

Andrew

If you grew up in the early seventies as I did, then this particular form of torture may be familiar to you. PE lessons consisted solely of football played between teams of about 25-a-side with a ball so heavy that if punted at you it would probably take your head clean off your shoulders. Teams were picked by choosing two captains (normally the two best players) and lining them up facing the clutch of skinny, malnourished bags of bones they had to choose from, whereupon the captains would make their selections by pointing at their chosen players with increasing indifference as they went through the ranks. Inevitably the best players got hoovered up first, and then so on until it was just me and some kid with a built-up shoe. This sadism was presided over by the PE teacher, Mr Williams – football fanatic and all-round bastard, and possessor of a tiny head yet enormous nose with cavernous nostrils.

Mr Williams was Welsh and, this being the early seventies meant that Welsh rugby was in its pomp. Mr Williams, though, was from north Wales and a ‘devotee of the round ball’, which meant we got nothing but football all year round. This was pretty good news for most kids because it was the era of the first superstar footballers of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, with players like Kevin Keegan, Lou Macari, the Greenhoffs, Steve Heighway, David Fairclough, Sammy McIlroy, Charlie George, Malcolm Macdonald et al, struggling to get off the ground under the weight of their sideburns and growing perms so big that they obscured entire stands. Even Coventry City – my team – had a couple of good players, with Ian Wallace and his huge, ginger, bepermed scalp dazzling defenders, along with the aforementioned Tommy Hutchison, who could probably still get in the side now if he fancied it.

This football focus also had its drawbacks. My school, Allesley County Primary, lay in a village right on the outskirts of Coventry and each year it would hold a school sports day full of such athletic events such as the 100m sprint, long jump into a dogshit-filled sandpit, shot-put with a beanbag, high jump over a couple of poles and a rope, and a longer run of some unspecified distance that involved a lap of the playing field. No training was done for this because Mr Williams didn’t like anything that wasn’t football, so our school was not generally a hotbed of athletic achievement. In fact, about the only non-football exercise we got as kids in the early seventies was from trying to outrun creepy TV celebrities. We did get to have a go at the occasional alternative sport and I vividly remember that in the wake of Virginia Wade’s win at Wimbledon we had a ‘tennis lesson’ – which involved trying to hit an airstream ball against a wall with a wooden paddle. If you managed it twice you could have lessons, and if you didn’t it was back to the classroom and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the arse on the way out. Needless to say I was back inside doing times tables before you could say ‘Navratilova’ and a possible future tennis great was lost to the sport, athough sitting on ‘Brunty’s Bulge’ doesn’t sound quite as appealing as ‘Henman Hill’.

What I’ve done in the past couple of pages is to try to set the scene for the rest of this book (and, perhaps, pique the interest of any passing psychiatrist) by underlining that, from a very early age, I was deemed as being
shit at sports
. Mostly this was because I was
shit at sports
, although I grew up slightly resentful of the fact that I was deemed
shit at sports
because I was shit at football. It was some years before people learned that I was also shit at rugby, cricket, hockey, athletics, squash and tennis. Whether I was shit at them because I already lacked self-belief in my sporting abilities, or because I was genuinely shit at them, is one of those chicken-and-egg debates. Actually, no it isn’t. We’re friends now and I can truthfully confess to you that I was indeed
shit at sports
.

Things did not improve when I went to secondary school – although at least I was spared the hated football, because at my new grammar school they didn’t play it, no doubt considering it a pastime for pikeys and chavs. Instead – horror of horrors – they played rugby. I didn’t think it was possible for me to dislike playing any sport more than football, but I quickly realised how wrong I was the first time we were made to play rugby. It took precisely one lesson for the sports master to work out exactly who were going to be the gentlemen in the team in the years to come and who was going to be condemned to fruitlessly farting around on the outfield with the ‘other ranks’ for the next fifteen school terms. The rugby team at school seemed to be populated entirely by thick-necked, slow-witted types called Ollie or Will, and their attitude towards those of us who weren’t interested in rugby – as well as their general attitude towards girls, art, music, any sport that wasn’t rugby, anyone slightly camp and thus a bit gay, and anyone with vaguely dark skin – did not make me yearn for their company.

On the plus side, though, the sports master, Mr Jones (another Welshman, although at least this one was the real deal, having played rugby for Wales), didn’t want us lightweights getting in the way of his fit, committed, well-drilled bunch of homophobic racists. So we were spared the humiliation of having to play in the same games as them, and were instead banished to the fringes of the playing fields where we were made to play endless games of rugby, largely at walking pace and supervised by the music teacher, Mr Sutton. He was probably as uninterested in the whole process as we were – and at least we got to stand around with our hands on our knackers when it got cold, which he couldn’t do without ending up on some kind of register.

In the summer term, thank the Lord, the school switched to cricket – which was at least a sport I liked, albeit still one I was shit at. This was a new experience for me and I recall my first feelings of frustration that here was something I liked, wanted to do, and yet couldn’t get into the school team because of a crippling lack of talent. I was bloody awful at batting – the highlight of my batting career being a match-winning stand of 51 with a lad called Jamie Walker, with him getting 50. However, I was a reasonable fielder and, dare I say it, a not entirely bad bowler, capable of maiden overs and the odd wicket. I didn’t have a particular style, although I had one delivery that was a full toss that used to lure batsmen into taking a big swing, only for the ball to suddenly drop from its trajectory like a turd dropping out the back of a cow and flop past their swishing bat on to the wicket. Around the time that I was at my most keen there was a programme on the television called
Bodyline
, which dramatised the controversial England victory in the Ashes in Australia when Douglas Jardine’s men started pelting Don Bradman and the Aussies in the ribs and faces. The bowling attack was led by fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, and I became obsessed with turning myself into the next Larwood. I spent hours in the back garden slinging balls at the shed, giving myself a back so hunched my mum started ironing my shirts with a wok and I had to stick my thumb up my arse to get my school tie on. This attempt at becoming the next Fred Trueman petered out eventually, leading to precisely no wickets but ending with the satisfying achievement of hitting my friend Paul Etherington squarely in the balls with a full toss that saw him plummet to the ground and vomit lavishly all over the stumps.

I should point out at this moment that I am not a descendant of a particularly sporty line. My mum was a figure-skater and gymnast when young, making her by far the most accomplished sportsperson in the whole family, and she actually met my dad while ice skating when he swept her off her feet. I don’t mean this romantically, I mean he literally swept her off her feet by crashing into her.

My dad’s sporting talents were less obvious. Throughout my childhood he claimed to be a tennis player of some renown and we used to play games together in my early teens. However, after he passed away a few years ago my mum debunked the myth that he was any good by saying that he was deemed the best player of their circle of friends simply because he possessed a racket with all the strings in it, had tennis balls that hadn’t had all the hair thwacked off them, and didn’t have a fag on the go while playing, unlike my Uncle Toms (plural). Throughout his whole life I never knew him to break into a run, and I only ever saw him swim once when we went on holiday to America and he swam by bobbing about face down in a San Diego swimming pool like the body from an improperly weighted Mafia hit. He did own a bike, but his idea of cycling was to pedal uphill to the next village three miles away with Uncle Tom number one, stop at the Bull and Butcher pub, and then freewheel all the way home. On the occasions that I was allowed to go along on my Raleigh Commando bike (with twist-grip gears in the handlebars no less) I was usually away off at the front on the way up the hill, made to sit outside with a lemonade during pub time, and then left for dead on the way back as they hurtled back down the hill, Uncle Tom only stopping if his Benson and Hedges went out.

Even my wider family lacked any sporting heroes. My Grandad Jack was a physical training instructor in the army until a German machine-gunner put paid to his kneecaps, although this didn’t stop him cycling between Birmingham and Walsall every morning after the war to his job as a steam engine driver. As he said himself, all that metal around his legs made him much better at playing the spoons. Grandad Albert had played some football in his time but his real passion was gardening. He grew the largest vegetables that the Birmingham Council allotments ever saw. I would spend hours with him in his garden, watching him swapping trays of seedlings with fellow green-fingered enthusiasts to the extent that I grew up thinking that seeds and cuttings were some sort of illicit currency. Later in life he was frustrated by his inability to do the things he used to do – like bomb the Japanese.

The only other member of my family worth mentioning is my cousin Sharon, who was so fat that if she fell on her back she’d rock herself to sleep trying to get back up again. At one point she topped 20 stone and this was back in the seventies when seeing fat biffers waddling around with their bum cracks on show was unusual enough to be worthy of comment from passers-by. We were not close as cousins due to her being a good bit older than me, and a spoilt miserable sow – you’d think if someone is going to be overweight then at least they’d have the common decency to be jolly. I well remember coming home one day from school to be met by my dad standing in the drive, looking very solemn and saying: ‘You know how your cousin Sharon was told to lose five stone or die? Well I’m very sorry to tell you that … she’s lost five stone.’