Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City
BLUE MOON
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN WITH MANCHESTER CITY
Mark Hodkinson
Blue Moon is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Eveline Duffy (12 September 1915 to 14 December 1998).
‘How do you remember all those words, Mark?’
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Epub ISBN: 9781780572703
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Copyright © Mark Hodkinson, 1999
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh EH1 3UG
Reprinted 2000
ISBN 1 84018 207 5
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‘Blue Moon’. Words and music by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; © 1934 EMI Catalogue Partnership and EMI Robbins Catalog Inc., USA. Worldwide print rights controlled by Warner Bros Inc., USA/IMP Ltd. Reproduced by kind permission of International Music Publications Ltd.
Contents
Introduction: A Summer Birdcage
1. Great Expectations
2. The Heart of Darkness
3. The Go-between
4. A Talent to Annoy
5. The Winter of Our Discontent
6. The Return of the Native
7. Far from the Madding Crowd
8. The History Man
9. Seize the Day
10. The Road to Wigan Pier
11. Goodbye to All That
12. Fiesta the Sun Also Rises
Introduction
A Summer Birdcage
Back then, I didn’t properly understand how you got from here to there. The world was confused and disconnected. It was streets and streetlights, cars and buses, fields and houses, and suddenly you were there. We made it to Maine Road, somehow. City drew 1–1 with Sheffield United. It was 1971 and I was six years old. A bus ride, and we were back home. I don’t remember the game, only the noise, the overcoats, the rich green of the pitch, the overwhelming magnitude of the event – that people gathered together like this and sang and cheered and created something so much bigger than themselves.
Twenty-five years later. My first match report commissioned by a national newspaper. It could have been at any ground between Derby and Newcastle, such is the approximate patch of a northern football correspondent. It was Maine Road, obviously. It rained. The sky was thick with clouds, the match was dire. City drew 1–1 with Coventry City. Alan Ball, City’s manager, provided the ‘line’ without really trying. At the after-match press conference he almost drowned in his own peculiarly random agitation. He coloured a grey day red, and we were all rather grateful he had. The report is included in this book, since it preceded City’s downfall.
Thereafter, I did not return to Maine Road until the beginning of the 1998–99 season. I had spent the previous season as The Times quasi writer-in-residence at Oakwell, Barnsley, from where I had filed a weekly bulletin. Barnsley, after 110 years in football’s backwater, had been promoted to the FA Carling Premiership. In short, it was a small club suddenly thrust into the big-time. Adopting reverse logic, The Times asked me to take on City in 1998–99, and relate the fortunes of a big club in the small-time. This famous club – with two League Championships, four FA Cup wins, two Football League Cup wins, one European Cup-winners Cup win – was at its lowest point ever, the third tier of English football.
Initially, I had reservations. A season in the life of a football club is a long haul. I had lived the Barnsley experience. They were with me always: awake, asleep, stalking thoughts and dreams. A football club from close-up is consuming, it blocks out the view and life gets bent out of shape. As well as the interviews and the writing, there are the books, programmes, newspapers and fanzines to read. When the phone rings, they – friends, colleagues – talk about the club; another opinion, another insight, another snippet of news. And then the matches, the supporters’ club meetings, the letters of complaint (or praise!) about last week’s column. It becomes a loop, and real life becomes a half-life with indistinct edges. But this was City, Manchester City. The club of my home city. My grandad’s club. My first love, my second-favourite team.
I spoke for some time with Keith Blackmore and David Chappell at The Times. They sold me the project. We were in a quiet room, blinds drawn, late summer afternoon. They are good motivators, they listen and then cajole. Half-way through the meeting I became ashamed of my reticence. This was one hell of a story, and I knew they would allow me to relate it without interference, but with encouragement and support.
I wanted the column to have a cinematic or literary title, ‘Down and Out in Millwall and Colchester’, ‘Kick Out the Blues’ or something similarly wide-screen. Over the course of a few weeks, ‘Blue Moon’, the club’s unofficial theme song, became quietly but defiantly insistent. It is the supporters’ song, and sums up everything about Manchester City. It is a lament, a torch song for the bruised, the last swig of hope for the sentimental. When City are playing well and winning, it becomes a heady, uplifting force. It breaks the heart. It is not a chant, but a sweet refrain offered to the sky and whatever lies above it. We called the column ‘Blue Moon’.
Of course, it is perfectly legal to write about a football club without its express permission, though it is judicious and good form to ask first. I met the club’s PR man, Chris Bird, late in July 1998. Over the season, I was to have more contact with Bird than anyone else at City – he was the official first-port-of-call. He was relatively new to the club, a protégé of the City director and ex-player, Dennis Tueart. They are alike in many ways. Drawn from traditional working-class backgrounds, they are straight-ahead, flinty characters. The drive and ambition is immediately noticeable in them both and they make no attempt to conceal it or dress it up. As we spoke in the reception area at Maine Road, Bird seemed a man suddenly flushed by power. He has a smile that can appear condescending but, as I later discovered, it is ingenuous, the real thing.
I was sure Bird would decline to co-operate, but he phoned the next day and said the club would be happy to help in any way it could, within reason. He said he had done some ‘research’ on me. Barnsley had told him I was a ‘good lad’, which, to a journalist, is both a compliment and a criticism. Was I a good lad because of my integrity or my compliance? ‘In the end, we’d rather have you pissing from the inside than the outside, if you know what I mean. At least we can have some control over you that way,’ said Bird. He was often direct and candid; I liked him for it. Too often, PR people couched their language in unctuous jargon. Bird spoke like a football man – told it like it was.
Manchester City, as everyone is aware, have what is typically known as a ‘colourful’ history. They have, down the years, becom
e a stereotype of reckless profligacy and magnificent failure, usually in comical circumstances. I was determined that the columns would not dwell too much on the past, or the stereotype. The club had been held hostage by it for too long. Occasionally, I did seek out former personnel, but primarily for a slant on the club’s current fortunes or, quite simply, because they were characters whose shadow still fell over the club. If anyone would like to place the 1998–99 season into a truly historical context, they should seek out Gary James’s Manchester The Greatest City, a benchmark work by which other club histories should be measured. Likewise, the calamitous recent past is documented in Ashley Shaw’s Cups for Cock-Ups, a breathless, if sketchy, resumé of Francis Lee’s tenure as club chairman.
The season coincided with Manchester United’s most successful campaign. They did the treble, winning the European Cup, FA Carling Premiership and the FA Cup. It would have been negligent not to mention United at certain points but, again, I wanted to avoid viewing the two clubs in parallel. It has become a futile comparison, since most clubs in England now trail United by some distance, such is their domination.
I have kept the news items between the columns as succinct as possible. Although City’s league status was low, they remained a continual source of gossip and news. The club was based in a city with a high media presence, and stories, many of them speculative, emerged on a daily basis. They were linked with literally scores of players, and listing them all would have soon become tedious. In the columns I sometimes made reference to the most pertinent news items. Occasionally, this has led to the odd spot of repetition through the book since the ‘news’ is relayed as a snippet, and then commented upon in a column: please bear this in mind.
The columns published here are not strictly identical to those printed in The Times. In some cases, pressure of space necessitated either subtle or swingeing cuts – the versions here are unexpurgated. The additional comments underneath the pieces were written at the end of the season, after the event as it were, with the benefit of hindsight. Obviously, these are more direct because they were not – unlike the columns – laid before the club every Saturday morning in The Times. I hope no one at City will regard these after-words as vengeful, a sadistic dig-in-the-ribs once I had left their vicinity. I have assiduously followed the maxim of trying to write fairly, accurately and without malice.
It was magnanimous of City to open their borders to a prying journalist during such a baleful period of their history. Football clubs are changeable places: when a team is successful, the mood lightens dramatically and everyone is welcome aboard. Alternatively, when a team is struggling, they contract, draw in on themselves. In City’s case, they had also been the subject of much damaging ridicule in the media. This led to intermittent bouts of paranoia and mistrust but, generally, the club was welcoming and generous. Everyone gave their time freely, and a time-limit was rarely placed on interviews. The only person to ask for payment was their former coach and manager, Malcolm Allison, who abruptly ended our telephone conversation when he learned none would be forthcoming. On the subject of City old boys, I made 17 calls to Francis Lee’s office, spoke to him once and got a half-promise of an interview on the day of which he departed for Holland on business.
I did not attend every City match throughout the season. I wanted to stay at a reasonable distance, to remain as impartial as possible. I already had an emotional attachment to them and did not want to compromise my position further. Towards the end, though, rational, cool-headed thought regularly collided with partisanship.
Many people have contributed to this book. The original idea belonged to The Times’s Sportsdesk, chiefly Keith Blackmore and David Chappell. Support was offered from other quarters at The Times, namely Richard Whitehead, Mark Herbert, Kevin McCarra, Peter Dixon and Gertrud Erbach. Bill Campbell of Mainstream Publishing was forthright and committed enough to commission the book within days of our initial conversation. Paula Ridings generously allowed me compassionate leave and confined the commotion made by our two young sons, George and Alec, to other parts of the house. She also provided valued sustenance in a hundred other ways. Thank you.
Stephen Hewitt was a consistent source of information and gave invaluable assistance with the manuscript. Ann Hewitt kindly undertook a fair amount of word-processing. Other journalists, especially Mike Barnett, Mike Grime, Guy Raynor, Richard Burgess and David White (not the ex-City player) supplied phone numbers or a perspective on the City enigma, as did City-supporting friends Tony Kerr, John Wallace, and Steve Harrison – who also welcomed me into his executive box at Maine Road. Fred Eyre was always willing to offer an insight or two. Richard Lysons and Guy Patrick were a source of inspiration. John Maddocks was willing to double-check facts and figures, and Graham Williams kindly proof-read an early draft of the book.
The editors of the various City fanzines – Noel Bayley (Bert Trautmann’s Helmet), Dave Wallace (King of the Kippax) and Tom Ritchie (City ’til I Cry!) – were all helpful and supportive. City supporters have the fanzines they deserve: informed, heartfelt and intelligent, though each with its own idiosyncratic perspective. While I undertook the project, David Cooper, Rob Kerford, Ursula Lumb, Joanne Mortimer and Sarah Aspinall took care of business.
Within the club itself, everyone was polite and courteous. Chris Bird was consistently helpful. Calls were returned promptly and he often pieced together interviews at only a few hours notice. David Bernstein was accessible – he gave me his mobile phone number soon after meeting, for instance. Joe Royle was good company, and Willie Donachie too. In fact, all the backroom staff – Jim Cassell, Paul Power, Alex Stepney and the others – were kind and trusting with information.
Finally, the supporters. At the beginning, I was keen to challenge the stereotype of City’s support. It had been portrayed as the most loyal in the country to the point of tediousness. Surely this masked some kind of conceit and vanity. I was determined to take a reactionary view and, since I was looking for it, I found the solidarity impeached by touches of arrogance, bitterness and martyrdom. They were only touches, mind.
The most perceptive comment on the subject came from Professor Cary Cooper, a City fan and psychologist, whom I interviewed at the end of the season. This erudite man had come to quite a simplistic conclusion, that City supporters were a cause of real celebration. They had remained loyal and committed, in it for the duration, when all around them was fickle and transitory. He plotted this to their working-class roots, Manchester’s industrial past, the legacy of trade unionism and a cohesion born from a common adversary – United. His comments will be viewed by the sceptical as rather fanciful and romantic, but City does feel like a community and the supporters carry with them something that is extraordinary, something special.
Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon
You know just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will hold
I heard someone whisper please adore me
And when I looked to the moon it turned to gold
Blue moon
Now I’m no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper please adore me
And when I looked the moon had turned to gold
Blue moon
Now I’m no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon
Now I’m no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
One
Great Expectations
/> BALL BRINGS PASSION TO DRAB TALE OF TWO CITIES
(match report, The Times, Monday, 22 January 1996)
Alan Ball, face on fire, glass of beer in shaking hand, played the press with the same dearth of finesse that his side had shown in a bleak 1-1 draw with Coventry City. ‘You lot write what you want to write. You all want to say it’s doom and gloom and panic, but I was really pleased with the team,’ was his crabby reply to the mildest of queries. Ball’s invective, delivered in his famous tinder-dry shrill, was the most passionate interlude on a wretchedly cold afternoon of non-football.
The first half was supremely desolate, with only Niall Quinn supplying some levity as he twice sent stewards scampering to retrieve a ball which should have been in Coventry’s net. Georgi Kinkladze, as usual, played as if on a magic carpet but his team-mates were strictly terrestrial; in fact, some of his prods and stabs were clearly Russian to the journeymen at his heels.
The draughty stands at Maine Road rang with groans and moans at half-time, the seagulls circling overhead providing a greater spectacle. Both teams had played ambitiously enough but basic inaptitude had so often ravaged their best-laid plans.
Ball was later to claim that young Martin Phillips had ‘lit up Maine Road’ when he came on as a substitute but it was, in truth, more 40-watt than 100. Phillips, at least, gave them shape, as John Salako did for Coventry when he raised sufficient valour to run for goal in earnest.