Football Crazy (2 page)

“
And can you wonder?” Sarah Jane said, pouring more scorn on him. “When it saw thee with that paint pot it probably ran off with its tail between its legs if it’s got any sense.”

Stanley was indignant. “I didn't paint Fentonbottom, Sarah Jane. I dyed him. Painting a dog could kill it.” He resumed painting, then added, “According to that bloke at B and Q.”

Nowadays the Coca-Cola Football League, of which Frogley Town is a member, has a minimum standard for the stadiums of the football clubs who wish to play in its competitions. Fortunately for Frogley Town this minimum standard doesn't apply to clubs who were already members of the league when the standard was introduced, as it is doubtful whether their stadium at the present time would get them into the Tonga League Division Eight.

This was not always the case. In their glory years in the 1930's the stadium was reckoned to be one of the finest in the north of England - indeed at one stage there was talk of it being used as a venue for an FA Cup semi-final - and as late as the 1960's it could be compared with stadiums such as Maine Road and Goodison Park.

But in the 1960's the fortunes of the club began to decline, and although it was a gentle decline they nevertheless found themselves in the old Third Division, now the Coca-Cola League Two, by the 1980's, and thereafter in a constant battle to stay in that division and miss the drop to the dreaded Nationwide Conference; which they only just managed to do year in year out by the skin of their teeth.

Like breeds like and the decline of the stadium went hand in hand with the decline in the team's fortune. It was the same old story, lack of success on the field equals fall in attendance, equals fall in revenue, equals less money to maintain both stadium and team, equals more lack of success, equals more fall in attendance, etcetera etcetera.

There was a time when the stadium could, and did on occasions, hold sixty thousand spectators - twelve thousand in the grandstand and forty eight thousand standing. Now, due to the old grandstand having fallen into such a bad state of repair that it had had to be demolished in 1995, and the entire 'popular' side having been fenced off as it had been deemed to be too dangerous, the ground capacity was much reduced. What remained of the stadium in Offal Road was terracing behind each goal, one end covered, one uncovered, although the covered end might just as well have been uncovered, so many and so large were the holes in its corrugated iron roof; and a temporary grandstand, hastily erected when the old grandstand had to be demolished - but for 'temporary' now read permanent, since there was about as much chance of the club ever having the money to build a new grandstand as there is of Arsene Wenger ever seeing one of the Arsenal players committing a foul.

Compared to the sixties the stadium today had a capacity of just twenty thousand, two thousand spectators in the grandstand and eighteen thousand on the terraces. It wouldn't have mattered if the capacity had been reduced to only two thousand, there would still have been empty places; the average attendance at Frogley in the previous season had been just eighteen hundred and thirty.

Now, three weeks before the new season was due to begin, the stadium having lain fallow over the summer months, there was more grass on the terracing than on the pitch. For the past couple of days the groundsman, old Rutter, had been weeding it, but the weather was fine and sunny now, after a week of solid rain, and it seemed to Rutter that the grass was growing faster than he could pull it out.

The club didn't run to a practice ground, and while Rutter was removing clumps of grass from the terraces the Town players were kicking out clumps of it from the pitch. Due to all the rain the pitch had taken recently it wasn't really fit to play on, but the new season wasn't far away, and needs must. A practice match was in progress, nine a side, for the club only had eighteen players on its books. There was no referee in charge of the game. No coach was in attendance either. Donny Donnelly, the man who performed the dual role of manager and coach, was in his office, one of three portakabins stood on bricks in a corner of the ground that served as the club's offices and dressing rooms. Every so often Donny would open the window and offer encouragement or criticism to his squad, usually the latter, but at the moment the window was shut.

The players of Frogley Town were a mixture of a few older players who at one time had played in a higher league but were now on the way down, a couple of younger players who were on their way up, but mostly players in their mid-twenties who weren't on their way anywhere. Their football reflected this. That isn't to say they were bad - when judged alongside amateur footballers they were good - but they weren't good enough, as is the case with the personnel of most lower division teams, the Premiership being as far removed from such players as the planet Neptune.

In his office Donny Donnelly, wearing only a leopard skin thong, was lying on his sun bed topping up his tan. Prominent on the wall of the office that faced the door were two large framed photographs, a spotlight playing on each of them, thus guaranteeing that any visitor to Donny's inner sanctum would need to be as blind as a bat to avoid seeing them. One of the photographs was of Ron Atkinson, who was Donny's hero, despite his recent problems (of which Donny claimed Atkinson to be totally innocent, preferring to believe that the disgraced pundit hadn’t called Marcel Desailly a lazy nigger but a mazy dribbler, and had been misquoted). The other photo was of Ron and Donny together, Ron with a friendly arm around Donny's shoulder. It was signed, 'To my mate Donny, Big Ron'. All the money in the world could not have bought it.

Apart from their respective heights, Ron being about six two and Donny nearer five two, the images on the photo were quite similar, both in build and features. Both of them had pudgy bodies and fat faces sporting a Mediterranean tan, and both had blonde hair worn combed over the top of their head in the manner favoured by Bobby Charlton when he still had some hair to favour. However if you looked closely at the photo you would see that while Ron was naturally blonde Donny was blonde courtesy of a bottle of peroxide, his black roots giving him away. Furthermore Donny had plenty of hair and, unlike Ron, didn't really need to comb it over the top of his head in a vain attempt to camouflage a balding pate.

His thirty minutes up, Donny swung his legs off the sun bed, got to his feet, and went to the mirror to check his tan. It was spot on, midway between light and George Hamilton. Pleased, he went to the window to check on his squad.

As he looked out at them one of the players, Higgs, a man short in stature and even shorter in talent, was about to take a throwin near the corner flag. About ten players were jockeying for position in the penalty area. Donny nodded his approval. He had recently put in a lot of time coaching Higgs in the art of the long throwin and now the player was putting his newly acquired skill to good effect.

Higgs threw the ball in. Its trajectory was all wrong, much too high, and the ball landed well short of the jostling players. Donny groaned, opened the window and shouted out. “Higgsy!”

Higgs looked over to the portakabin. “Boss?”

“
Arch your back more.” Donny demonstrated the required technique, bending backwards from the hips. “To give yourself more leverage.”

Higgs nodded. “Boss.”

The ball was booted back to Higgs by one of the players, missing him by several yards, and after collecting it he prepared to throw it into the penalty area once again. The players jockeyed for position. One of them, Darren Briggs, called over to Higgs. “On me head, Higgsy my son, on me head!”

“
How can ye miss a target like that Higgsy!” mocked the player guarding Briggs, Jimmy 'Floyd' Cragg.

“
Bollocks, you Scottish wanka,” retorted the Londoner.

Higgs drew his arms back, arching his back in the prescribed manner.

“
That's more like it Higgsy my son,” Donny encouraged him.

Inspired by this, and determined to impress his manager even more, Higgs arched his back even further, but only succeeded in overbalancing and falling flat on his back in the mud, much to the amusement of his team mates.

At the portakabin window Donny rolled his eyes. It was going to be another long season. Then he remembered his idea. He smiled to himself. No, it wasn’t, it was going to be an excellent season.

Joe Price, the owner of Price's Pies, a large, stout man in his seventieth year, was seated on the back seat of his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, registration number 1 PIE, on the way to his pie factory. His face told anyone who looked upon it that its owner was contradicted about once every Preston Guild.

As always Price was dressed in a black jacket, black and grey striped trousers and bowler hat, a form of dress he had worn for business for the last fifty years. From the back, with his traditional short-back-and-sides hair style, he looked like the character 'OddJob' in the James Bond film Goldfinger; a coincidence that was instrumental in giving birth to an authentic piece of Joe Price folklore. At the time of the release of the Bond film a youth, noticing the similarity, and seeing Price alighting from his Rolls one morning, had shouted 'OddJob!' at him from across the street before laughing and running off. Later that morning Price, with his chairman of the local Chamber of Commerce connections, had found out where the youth worked and had gone there and demanded he be sacked. He was, immediately and without ceremony. Making further use of his connections Price then made sure the youth failed to find employment anywhere else in Frogley. A week later Price knocked on the youth's front door. When the youth answered the knock Price shouted 'No Job!' at him, laughed in his face, then went on his way.

Price's Pies was by far and away the leading employer in Frogley, over three thousand workers passing through its large iron gates every day. It was also the largest manufacturer of pies in the country by a fair margin. They were excellent pies too, prize-winning pies, their recipes unchanged since the very first pie was baked by Joe Price's father Joshua in 1923.

Price ruled his pie factory by fear. He had found out that this method worked when he took over the running of the factory on the retirement his father in 1958, and had never found reason to change it, even if he'd had the inclination.

There were no trade unions at Price’s Pies. Price had always paid his workforce ten per cent more than they could get elsewhere locally, and made them work twenty per cent harder for it, so everyone was happy. Price, however, was the happiest. Someone had once tried to get a trades union going in the factory but Price had dealt summarily with this pesky intrusion by giving all non-union workers a twenty per cent rise. Everyone who had joined the union quickly left it to qualify for the rise, and soon after they had all returned to the fold Price dropped everyone's wages back to the previous level.

Now, seated in the back of the Rolls, Price was feeling particularly pleased with himself. He had just met with his solicitors to tie up a couple of loose ends, and the objective he had been working towards for the past couple of months was now a done deal. In a couple of days he would announce it to the media.

Suddenly there was a screech of tyres as the Rolls braked hard, throwing Price forward into the back of the driver's seat with a painful bump. A small dog, dyed in the Frogley Town colours, had suddenly shot out into the road, causing the car’s chauffeur, Slaithwaite, to take evasive action. Alarmed, fearful that his employer had sustained an injury, Slaithwaite turned to him.

“
Sorry. Sorry Mr Price, sir. Is tha all reet?”

Price straightened himself up then sat back in his seat. “No bloody thanks to thee, Slaithwaite.” He indicated to the chauffeur to continue the journey with an impatient wave of his arm. “Get me to my pie factory. And then get out of my sight, tha'rt sacked!”

“
But …but it were Fentonbottom, Mr Price,” Slaithwaite protested.

“
What bottom?” said Price.

“
Stanley Sutton's dog, Mr Price. Fentonbottom. It run reet out in front of me, I'd have hit it if I hadn’t braked.”

Price was unmoved. “Tha knows t' rules, Slaithwaite.”

“
But....”

“
And but me no buts! Joe Price’s chauffeur brakes for nowt only human beings; and then only them as can still work. So get me to my factory, and sharp about it; then get theeself down to t' dole office, if tha’s a mind.”

Donny put on his track suit, replaced the gold medallion round his neck, then carefully combed his hair in the mirror. He checked a couple of times with the Ron Atkinson photos on the wall to ensure he had it just right, as he always did.

The door opened and the occupant of the other half of the portakabin, George Fearnley, the club secretary, came in. George had been with the club for more years than he cared to remember, back to the days when they'd had a decent team, and was Frogley Town through and through.

During his time at Offal Road George had seen eighteen managers come and go, some of them good, some of them not so good, some of them downright bad. As far as the coaching side of a manager's duties was concerned George judged Donny to be the second most ill-equipped that the club had ever had, being only marginally better than Gianfranco Floriano, the Italian they'd once had who couldn't speak a word of English. In their wisdom the Town board of directors had reckoned that Floriano's reputed coaching skills overrode the language barrier, as he would soon learn English. What they didn't reckon with was that within a week of taking up his position the Italian would be rendered blind when a large piece of masonry fell from the crumbling grandstand and hit him on the head, and that following this, and despite neither being able to talk to or see his players, Floriano had insisted on seeing out his two year contract with the aid of an interpreter and a guide dog. As the guide dog appeared to have an almost pathological aversion to footballers and often bit the Town's players, quite often putting them on the injury list, this new arrangement had proved to be less than satisfactory.