A Misspent Youth
Sonic players need coaxing along, some need a kick up the backside to get the best out of them. I needed both kinds of treatment in my callow days and I got what I needed. Born a Methodist, I graduated from schoolboy football playing for a team run by a Roman Catholic priest and another team which operated in a local Sunday pub league, and I don’t suppose you can have greater contrasts than that.
My Soccer travels have taken me a long way since the days when I was kicking a ball around for my junior-school team at Old Clee, Grimsby, but I like to think that f still get as much of a kick out of the game now as I did then, although my views have changed somewhat over the years, and especially in the past 18 months or so. Some people might say that I’ve grown up, at last; others would argue that I have found my right niche in the professional game since I joined Everton and came under the influence of manager Gordon Lee. Me? - I feel that I have learned as I have gone along, that everyone I have encountered in Soccer has taught me something, and that my own native intelligence has taken me to a point where I have matured.
In my early days in the professional game, I saw some youngsters who needed coaxing being given the kicking treatment - verbally, if not physically and the result was that they failed to respond. I’m still convinced that they probably had as much ability as myself, had they been handled in the right way, psychologically, but what happened was that they became afraid. They were afraid of doing things wrong.
