Box to Box by Curtis Woodhouse

Author:Curtis Woodhouse [Woodhouse, Curtis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471147746
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER 21

DIDN’T LIKE IT ANYWAY

Birmingham, February 2001

Funny how different relationships come to an end. You might be with a woman for only a few months and you’ll be smashing the place up when it finishes. I guess that happens when the fire inside is still burning. Sheffield United was the love of my life, the club that saved me. I used to think I was going to be at Sheffield United forever. Yet when we parted ways, as they say in the papers, there was no kicking or screaming. A cold conversation – ‘Stay if you like, I don’t really care’ – a shake of the hand, out the door, in the car, heading towards a club I knew I could never love. Heading towards oblivion.

I didn’t meet Trevor Francis before he signed me. I didn’t even have a medical. The word of Reg Holdsworth, who had joined Birmingham from Sheffield United the previous season, was apparently enough for him. Reg knew what I could do when I was on my game and I was still only 20. They were both thinking I had 15 years left in football. I’m pretty sure I would have passed a medical anyway. It’s not as if they could see inside my mind.

After I signed, Trevor was raving to the papers about me. After my debut against Norwich, he was raving about me even more. I only met up with the rest of the team a couple of hours before kick-off but I played a blinder and we won 2-1. Trevor made a comment afterwards about my team-mates struggling to keep up with me. And I was all smiles for the cameras. But that evening, I saw that big, shiny red button again . . .

‘Whatever you do, do not press that big, shiny red button over there . . . I wonder what that button does?’

Nag, nag, nag . . . I pressed it in the end. Birmingham had put me up in the Hilton while I looked for a house, so I was sat on my bed in my hotel room, staring at nothing in particular on TV, when the phone rang: ‘Hiya, Curtis. It’s Trevor Francis. What are you up to tonight?’

‘Nowt, gaffer.’

‘I was thinking maybe I’d come up to the Hilton with my wife, have a glass of champagne to celebrate your debut?’

‘I don’t drink champagne but I’ll have a drink with you, gaffer . . .’

A few hours later, there I was with Trevor and his wife, feeling about as uncomfortable as I’d felt in my life. So I thought: ‘I’m gonna get shitfaced, just to get rid of the nerves.’

Trevor is a lovely man and his wife is a lovely lady. They’re just not people I’d choose to drink with. I must have put away five pints. I spent more time at the bar than I did at the table. When I was at the table, I was swearing my head off and spilling beer. After the fourth

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