Red Machine by Simon Hughes

Author:Simon Hughes [Simon Hughes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2013-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

ARRIVING LATE, John Wark

THE ADDICTION REMAINED. LONG, LONG AFTER PROFESSIONAL retirement and beyond his 51st birthday, John Wark was turning out for a team in the Licensed Trades Sunday League in deepest Suffolk. The Glaswegian signed for Sophtlogic FC in 2003 after being asked to do a favour by a friend.

‘I was working as a personal trainer for this guy, and he had a few bob,’ Wark explains from his home near the unremarkable town of Stowmarket. ‘Part of the deal was that I coached him during the week and played for his business’s team at the weekend. I ended up as manager and took them from the Fifth Division to the Premier Division in successive seasons.’

Liverpool’s former goalscoring midfielder retired from professional football in 1996, aged 39, while still a Premier League player at Ipswich Town. But he missed the game, the joshing and the beer – ingredients that are as much as part of a dressing-room as Deep Heat.

‘It’s inaccurate to say I missed the beer, because really that’s never been away,’ he jokes – adding that soon after obliging with this ‘favour’, his responsibilities on a Sunday morning also involved devising appropriate warm-up routines, physio work, washing heavily soiled kits and organising social gatherings such as Christmas parties.

‘We often got changed in car parks and round the back of pubs,’ he continues in a remarkably gentle accent. ‘If we had an easy game, I’d play as a striker and terrorise the opposition defenders. If the opponents were good, I’d sit at the back and try to blag it as a hatchet man. It was just great to be a part of a group again.’

Sunday League football had its pros and its cons.

‘For every person that wanted to join us, there were quite a few that wanted to get one over on us as well. In one of my first games, I was playing up front and headed home a cross to give us the lead. This centre-back comes running in from nowhere and head-butted me. He looked at me and just said, “Oh, sorry – I was a bit late there.”’

Wark disbanded the team in the summer of 2009.

‘We were only getting seven or eight turning up regularly. I was spending Saturday nights calling ringers in.’

He now considers himself in semi-retirement.

‘I’ve been missing it – I can’t deny it,’ he admits. ‘On Sundays, I’m itching for a game. I still look for the same buzz now that I did when I started all those years ago playing parks football in Glasgow. My friends think I’m daft.’

In his heyday, Wark was one of the few players to achieve just as much if not more at another club as he did at Liverpool. With Bobby Robson’s Ipswich, he won the FA Cup then the UEFA Cup three years later and twice finished runner-up in the league championship. In the first of three spells at Portman Road, he became the 1980–81 PFA Player of the Year – a campaign in which he scored 36 times.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.