Not Such a Bad Life by Dave Thomas

Author:Dave Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

PLAYER OF THE YEAR AND TWO SPECIAL GAMES

ON THE day that we met again, it was Frank Casper’s birthday; he was 75 and still sharp as a pin. Once again, we were in Tubbs talking. He had a simple maxim for young players. ‘Look smart, play smart.’ He was always smart himself and few if any people had a bad word to say about him. His career came to an end prematurely thanks to a tackle in a game against Leeds United at Elland Road when Norman Hunter took him out well after the ball was gone. Facebook is notoriously inaccurate at the best of times, a place where people can put all kinds of accusations, so maybe you take with a pinch of salt the guy who wrote that Hunter had told him he remembered the tackle, and said that the Burnley centre-halves had been winding him up and the red mists came down. The 70s we look back at as a glorious age for football. But it was also a time of tackles and aggression that would not be tolerated today. There was a simple rule back then when there was real brutality: if the referee doesn’t see it, it isn’t a foul. There were some wonderful players and you stopped them any way you could.

It was also Chris Waddle’s birthday on the day of the Burnley versus Newcastle game, the previous weekend. Burnley won 1-0 by the way, in foul rain and sleet and a biting wind. There was a programme feature about him. Twitter was filled with clips of his time as a player, and boy could he play with magical skills in his prime. We may have been baffled during his time as manager at Burnley but as a player he was peerless. We should not forget that. Watching some of those clips was an education.

* * *

Football is all ifs and buts. If Burnley had won one more game in 2000/01, we’d have been in the play-offs. If I hadn’t been so ill and had all that time out of the game … if I’d been signed by West Ham … if I’d been offered a contract before Stan Ternent left the club … you could dwell on this kind of thing forever.

But 2000/01 was the season I was back, properly, with 43 appearances for the side. All that work, all that training, all that effort, all that determination through three operations. And back then, how many times had I inserted that damned squeezy thing up my rectum? Every day for months and months. But how it paid off. The ‘rebel’ tag was gone. I must have been doing something that was right. By the end of the season I’d won a shedload of supporters’ player of the year awards.

It was in the October that Stan said, ‘We need to get you signed up. What do you want in a new contract?’

‘More than so and so,’ I answered. ‘I’m better than him,’ and named one of the players.

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