I Could Have Been A Contender

Actually I've only used Marlon Brando's classic line from On The Waterfront because I couldn't think of a footballing equivalent.

In the spring of 1977 I was treading water academically, I'd passed eight O levels the previous summer and I was studying three A Levels: Economics, English and Geography, but for the first time in my academic life I was hating every minute of every day I spent at school. I wasn't skiving or being disruptive, being in the lower sixth form you were expected to behave like young adults, in return for which you could skip lessons (actually it was called opting out) in favour of personal study periods, in reality this meant staying in the Sixth Form Common Room and reading endless speculation about whether Led Zeppelin would ever tour again or if Graham Gooch or Chris Tavare would open the batting for England.

Anyway one day after football practice, not at school but at the club I played for, the manager mentioned that there was an opportunity for me to go to Belgium and play football there. He worked for Ford Motor Company in his day job and he was being transferred to Belgium where the company sponsored one of the professional teams and he would be running the football club in one of Belgium's lower divisions.

It seemed like an opportunity to good to miss. Between January 1975 and March 1976 I had played in six, yes six, trial matches for AFC Bournemouth. I had been chosen for the first one purely on the basis that I had scored more than 50 goals in one season in the under-15 league and schools football. To keep going back time and again was both exciting and dispiriting, I had the chance to impress but it was like going out with the same girl over and over again knowing you'd never get further than a Saturday trip to the cinema.

I wasn't asked back for a lucky seventh attempt at impressing the team, I did hear a rumour that I was considered too small, if that was true, and I suspect the truth was I wasn't good enough to make it, then good for Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Andy Cole as we are all the same height - obviously they were better than me!

Anyway I thought about life in Belgium, remembered how grim it had looked in that film about Van Gogh starring Kirk Douglas, and thought I couldn't do it. I mean I could get by in French and German but the thought of being away from family and friends for months on end just didn't appeal. In 1978 I went to France and was invited to train with Paris FC, I couldn't play but watching them train was like watching an alien game played out on another planet.

I carried on playing for another six years, winning County League Winners medals three years running and playing in a County Cup Final which we lost - mind you the opposition did have Paul Rideout as one of their subs and he did actually score the winning goal in an F.A Cup Final.

Then on the weekend after Remembrance Day in 1984 my football playing days ended. Midway through the first half of a Cup tie I went in for a 50/50 tackle on a parks pitch in Bournemouth my studs got caught in the turf and I tore the cartilage in my left knee. Adrenalin kicked in and I played the rest of the half it was only at half time when I stopped running I realised my left knee was swollen. Six months of physiotherapy followed and at the end of that time I went back to training and found that my left knee locked, a bit like Devon Lock in that Grand National, it was all over.

Life as we know is full of ironies. I went to Poole General Hospital and saw a specialist in knee injuries, he said to me "Are you a professional footballer," to which I replied in the negative. "I'm sorry," he said looking genuinely sorry, "there's nothing we can do for you."

If the same thing happened today I would have keyhole surgery as a matter of routine and be out playing again within a month. A lot of kids are disappointed that they never get the chance to make it as a professional, I think I just enjoyed playing.

I don't regret not going to Belgium as my life opened up in so many other ways but I wouldn't be human if my mind didn't sometimes wander, during watching a football match, to a foreign field and think "I could have done that."