Journeyman (30 page)

I started laughing and he went off on one: ‘Don't fucking laugh at me. When you've played 300 games then you can fucking laugh.'

Actually, Robbie, I've played about 400. Is that OK with you?
No doubt he would have cut me down with something about the number of Ferraris he owned or the millions he had in the bank, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

Derby improved in the second half but we were still going toe-to-toe with them. It looked as though our chance had gone when Derby equalised midway through the second half, but we continued to press for a winner.

Right on full time, Sergio Torres had a great strike flicked over the bar by Paul Green on the line. I'd love to say that, from the resultant corner, Dean Howell performed a well-thought-out set-piece routine, but the truth was he shanked his cross to the edge of the box. Thankfully it fell to Sergio, who managed to strike the ball through a clutch of bodies and into the bottom corner of the goal.

The whole place erupted and Sergio eventually appeared from beneath a sea of bodies after about five minutes. The goal came so late that Derby
had no chance to recover. Crawley was through to the fourth round of the FA Cup for the first time in the club's history.

I was happy with my own performance too. After another nervy start, I got into the game and caused the opposition a lot of problems by getting into those little areas between their midfield and defence.

The dressing room was buoyant after the game. Evo, being the hard taskmaster that he was, had us in for training the next day so I stayed in Crawley and we all celebrated with the supporters in the club bar.

During that evening I got talking to one of our mystery owners, Paul. He was very complimentary and praised my performance. He believed the influx of new players had made me raise my game. I begged to differ, and said that nothing had changed except the manager's opinion of me.

Paul was obviously in a buoyant mood as apparently he gave the gaffer a Rolex, allegedly worth £25,000, as a reward for the triumph. This cup run was financially beneficial for everyone, though. Our bonuses for League victories were minimal but we were entitled to 40 per cent of any prize money due from a win in the FA Cup, which was now getting pretty substantial. For reaching round four we received 40 per cent of £67,500, shared between the eighteen-man playing squad.

It was a strange time overall for me as, even though I was playing well when selected, the gaffer had a lot of midfielders available and was rotating the squad. I say rotating, but there were only four or five of us who were regularly rested; everyone else seemed to be untouchable. It was clear Josh and I were competing for one place and I was pretty sure Steve favoured Josh, but my performances meant the gaffer couldn't ignore me. It was an interesting one as, although we were both midfielders, we played the role in totally different ways. Josh was a lot more athletic and threatened the opposition by stretching the play with his forward runs; I played the position by coming towards the ball and knitting the play together.

I was left out of the squad for the next game at home versus Kettering
(where we laboured to a 2–1 victory), then I was back in for our away trip to Bath City (which we won 2–0). I was desperate to play every game but, I must admit, maybe the gaffer was doing the right thing by selecting which games I did and did not play in as things were going well.

That trend continued as I was on the bench for the long trip to Grimsby (where we ground out a creditable 0–0 draw), but then, surprisingly, back in for a midweek game at home against Cambridge United, even though we had our next cup game that Saturday, for which Josh was unavailable.

We beat Cambridge comfortably 3–0, although the gaffer did get a little stressed at half-time because it was goalless. We blocked out his normal overreaction, ignoring it to go on and make our superiority count. Jamie Cook reminded everyone of his quality with a wonderfully composed finish – the main thing holding him back was his almost horizontal outlook on life. I put in another decent performance but was especially happy with my set pieces, which I had put a lot of work into over the year.

We were up, out and on the road early on the Friday as we travelled to Devon to play Torquay United in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Steve had developed a taste for the finer things in life because, with the club's newfound riches, we were now staying in some lovely hotels.

On that occasion, we stayed at Woodbury Park – a hotel once owned by Formula 1 driver Nigel Mansell, boasting a beautiful complex and excellent training facilities. It was a far cry from my first away trip with Crawley the previous season, when we'd stayed at a Travelodge in Gateshead, full of boozy Swansea City fans.

We couldn't wait for the Torquay game as we all knew the vast majority of us would never get a better chance of making it to the final sixteen of the FA Cup. Initially we were – as I'm sure Torquay were too – disappointed with the draw because we wanted to play a Premier League club, but that all changed when we got to Plainmoor.

Even though it was a showdown between a humble League Two club and
an even humbler Conference National club, we could soon sense how big a game it actually was. Kick-off was delayed by fifteen minutes to allow the 5,000-strong crowd into the ground, including a contingent of 1,200 from West Sussex – quite an achievement considering we were averaging around 700 for home games just a year before.

The game was as competitive as you might expect, but we quickly got into our stride and took control. We looked like the higher-ranked team and Torquay tried to hit us on the counter-attack. Tubbsy put us into the lead six minutes before half-time.

The second half continued in the same vein and, at around the hour mark, we had a chance to put the game out of sight. I delivered an in-swinging free kick from the left that was inexplicably handled by Torquay's Chris Zebroski. The referee awarded a penalty and Zebroski was sent off upon receiving a second yellow card. Unfortunately Scott Bevan produced an excellent save to deny Tubbsy. However, we now had the added advantage of an extra man and, ten minutes later, we were awarded another penalty after Jamie Cook was felled in the box. After a slight disagreement between Jamie and Macca over who was going to take it, Macca stepped up but the Torquay keeper thwarted us again. We saw the game out though and it created a great buzz. At that time, we were only the second non-League team in the history of the competition to reach the fifth round of the FA Cup. The money was mostly irrelevant, but it didn't go unnoticed by some of the team that we were sharing 40 per cent of £90,000 for that victory.

The only downside to our success was that it wasn't shared by the neutrals. Normally the underdogs were embraced by the nation but, because of our financial backing and the unpopularity of our manager, we were receiving the opposite reaction. Everyone but our own fans seemed to want to see us get a very public hammering.

That was illustrated during ITV's FA Cup highlights show in the evening. The panel, which included Chris Coleman, seemed to take a very dim
view of Crawley. They highlighted an argument that Paul Raynor had with Torquay's groundsman before the game. Our strikers had wanted to practise some finishing in goal – a fair request really – but the groundsman had thought otherwise. We'd gone ahead and practised regardless, which the TV pundits said showed a lack of respect.

They then went on to point out our robust tactics, which, incidentally, were no more combative than Torquay's, and also highlighted Jamie and Macca's disagreement over the second penalty.

What were they expecting? We were never going to get another chance to reach the fifth round as a non-League club. Were we meant to just go there and let Torquay roll us over? In their eyes, we didn't deserve any credit, despite the fact we had beaten teams from League Two, League One and the Championship to get where we were.

Theirs was not the view shared by other media outlets, though, as I did a great interview with Danny Kelly for TalkSport radio on the coach home.

The next day I was at home by myself when the fifth-round draw was made. The numbered balls were slowly being whittled down and we had not yet been pulled out. The two teams I'd really wanted, though – West Ham United or Arsenal – had already been drawn, so we just had to wait and see.

In the end, we were one of the last two remaining and then it dawned on me who else was left at that point.

We were going to play Manchester United.

The penultimate ball was lifted up and shown to the nation. We would be playing at Old Trafford!

The phone calls started coming in straight away and they didn't stop. I was getting requests for tickets from family, friends and people I hadn't spoken to in ages.

On the Monday I went to my local BBC studio and did an interview for Radio 1, then, later that evening, I did another for Radio 5 live, not to mention interviews with several local papers. There were still three weeks
to go so I wondered how mad everything would be in the week leading up to the game itself.

I felt the pressure mount almost immediately. This was going to be a great occasion and I was absolutely desperate to play. During my career I had seen former teammates play in similar sorts of games and I really thought such a chance had passed me by. I certainly wasn't going to get another opportunity to play at Old Trafford.

One problem we had was there were still three important League games before our glamour tie. As much as the gaffer told us to concentrate on those games, he knew everyone's focus was on making it to the week of the big game injury-free and in good enough form to be selected.

Just before the transfer window closed, another player was added to the squad. Willie Gibson, a whinger – I mean winger – joined us from St Johnstone. He seemed nice enough, but, for someone who'd just signed for a new club, he was a bit of a miserable git – something that didn't really change during his time at the club.

Our game on the first Saturday after the draw had been brought forward to Thursday because it was being screened by Premier Sports. We laboured to a very uninspiring 0–0 draw with Kettering. As a result of the rescheduling, we had a free weekend and were to be treated to a short training trip over in Portugal.

I personally, without wishing to sound ungrateful, would have preferred a few days' rest – I wasn't sure whether the trip was a treat or just something the gaffer could quote in the press to show how ‘professional' Crawley were.

Evo, as usual, did not let us down with the accommodation. We stayed on the Algarve at a lovely resort. The complex had also just had a brand new pitch laid, which was better than anything we were used to. It would've been immaculate had it not been re-turfed just a few months before and not quite knitted together properly.

We had a night out on the Saturday and, although the town was quiet,
some of our new signings made their mark. Two players drank a fair amount of urine – more than a shot and less than a pint – as part of their initiation, and another new recruit, who was a little worse for wear, had to be carried home to bed before midnight just after being showered in urine, seemingly the theme of the night.

We returned to Gatwick on Tuesday evening and, despite my initial doubts, I'd really enjoyed the trip. The weather was nice, I hadn't missed my daily commute and I'd even been able to forget about the Manchester United game for a while.

The next two games were, strangely enough, both against Wrexham – firstly at home, and then in north Wales the following Tuesday.

I started in the first game but it was a disaster. We were 2–0 down at half-time and I had one of those games that could be an occupational hazard when playing ‘in the hole'. I received very little service and found myself constantly trying to battle for balls that seemed to be endlessly up around my neck.

The gaffer was, quite rightly, not happy with us and he said he had to make a change at the break. He admitted it could have been any one of a group of seven or eight players, but that was no real consolation when he revealed I was to be replaced. I wasn't happy but I also accepted that when a manager wants to change his formation, it is often the so-called ‘luxury player' who is sacrificed.

I'm going to be really honest here and reveal that things didn't get any better for me: we went on to win 3–2. The fact we turned the game around, in my mind, vindicated the manager's decision to take me off. In reality, we hadn't really played much better in the second half than in the first, but the sheer will to win that had been instilled in us by the management was enough to drag us through. Well, that – and Tubbsy's brilliance in scoring a hat-trick.

There was only a week to go until the biggest game of my life and I had
been dragged off at half-time – I was sweating over my place in the starting line-up.

We went up to north Wales a day early to prepare for the return game against Wrexham. I was named on the bench, which further confirmed my doubts. It was hard to decipher the thinking behind the decision, though, because there were players who were cup-tied for Saturday, so they were more likely to play in Wales. We ground out a 0–0 draw in a game watched by the then Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and his assistant Mike Phelan.

Maybe the gaffer knew they were coming and purposefully put me on the bench so I could be unleashed as our secret weapon on Saturday?

All joking aside, their presence showed the level of detail someone as successful as Sir Alex went to during his career. He could have easily sent one of his coaching staff to Wrexham on that wet February evening, but the fact he went himself gives some insight into why he enjoyed such longevity at a single club during an illustrious career.

Although we hadn't been playing at anywhere near our top form, we had negotiated our three League games since
that
FA Cup draw without defeat. We were ready to concentrate on the biggest game of our lives.