Budgie - The Autobiography Part 1

Budgie - The Autobiography.

John Burridge.

FOREWORD.

by ANDY GRAY.

What can you say about John Burridge? Oddball, crazy, madcap, loony, eccentric Budgie's been called all of those things over the years, and laughed most of them off, but the fans absolutely loved him, his team-mates admired him and I defy you to find me a man more dedicated to football than him.

I first came across Budgie when I signed for Aston Villa in 1975. I was checking into the hotel Villa had put me in and there was Budgie waiting for me in reception, pacing the floor and hyperactive as ever. He had just signed for the club himself, and he made me very welcome as a fellow new boy. From that moment on we became pretty good friends.

We were vastly different people, but still we bonded. Both of us were focused on the same thing making Aston Villa good and making ourselves better. We shared that common goal. But Budgie was no night owl two halves of lager for him and he was gone. Drink didn't interest him, only football. I used to enjoy that part of football, a couple of beers with the lads, but Budgie was Mr Dedication 24/7.

Budgie would always be pus.h.i.+ng the boundaries and thinking outside the box, to the extent that he would turn up at training wearing a big combat jacket, which had every pocket packed full with sand. It weighed a ton, but his vision was that if he wore the sand-filled jacket during training, when he took it off for games he would be floating like a b.u.t.terfly and stinging like a bee. I'm not quite sure if it worked, but he would try anything if he thought it would make him a better goalkeeper. He may have been as mad as a hatter, but he was great company and single-minded about his football. Nothing got in the way of his preparations for a game not his wife, not his kids, not anything.

I remember one infamous time he took Janet out for a date when he was courting her. He phoned her up and said: 'I'm going to take you out tonight darling.' Janet thought that would be nice, so she got on her high heels, make-up, short skirt and a jacket. When Budgie picked her up he was all wrapped up nice and warm. So off they went for their hot date...to spend a cold winter's night watching Peter s.h.i.+lton! Budgie took her to a midweek game where the England keeper was playing, because he wanted to study the England No.1's every move and see if there was anything he could learn from him to make his own game better. So they stood behind the goal where s.h.i.+lton was playing, with Janet s.h.i.+vering away in her glad rags. When half-time came, Budgie took her by the arm and said: 'Come on then, let's go' and Janet thought to herself: 'Thank Christ for that, we're going to get something to eat and drink now.' But no, Budgie led her to the other end of the ground behind the goal s.h.i.+lton would be defending in the second half. Amazingly, Janet still became his wife.

He took great pride in his performances and hated it when someone got the number one slot before him. I remember once Jimmy Rimmer was picked ahead of him at Villa and Budgie found it really hard to take. We were practising corners at training one day and the manager Ron Saunders asked Budgie to play as an attacker the worst thing you could possibly let him do in the circ.u.mstances and he spent the next six or seven corners trying to smash poor Jimmy so he could get his place back.

We had some crazy times together at Villa and a lot of success too, and we were reunited a few years later at Wolves. I was already there when he joined the club and he had nowhere to stay at first, so I put him up at my house in Wolverhampton. I had a couple of big sofas that faced each other, so on a Friday night he always used to put on his gloves to get a feel for them in time for the match the following day. He would make me sit on the sofa across from him while we were watching Coronation Street, with a bowl of fruit in my lap, and every now and again I had to throw an apple or an orange his way to try and catch him out. He would be diving off the sofa trying to clutch these flying pieces of fruit, and that was his warm-up on a Friday night. He was just a fantastic character in everything he did, even if some of it was a little bit bonkers.

A lot of people move away from football, but I never thought for one second that Budgie would step away from the game he is addicted to. I think he will be in football until football retires him and not the other way round. He's a one-off. He used to have me in st.i.tches with all of his stories in the 1970s and 1980s, so he must have ten times that amount to tell now! Enjoy.

CHAPTER 1.

A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH.

'I'd gone a bit doolally and thought I'd be better off dead.'

They say that when you go mad, the men in white coats come and take you away. That's not true. It's the men in green boiler suits.

I'd been barricaded in my room for days, crying. I had persuaded myself that I had nothing to live for and suicide seemed like the best way out. It was eating away at my mind. The three o'clock buzz of playing professional football I had felt for more than 30 years had gone, and I couldn't find any subst.i.tute for that surge of adrenaline you feel coursing through your veins when it's time to run up the tunnel and hear the roar of the crowd. A 90-minute drug I had depended on was no longer there, and I was just now just plain old John Burridge, ex-goalkeeper, nearly 50. Now what was left for me?

When you stop playing it's like being a rock star whose glory days are behind him. It's hard to replace the thrill of playing and the attention you have come to depend on when it's gone. Football had been my life since I was 15, when I started off as a 5-a-week apprentice with my home-town team Workington in the Fourth Division. I'd played at Wembley, won the Football League Cup with Aston Villa, won the Scottish League Cup with Hibs and won promotion and champions.h.i.+ps with Wolves and Crystal Palace, but now it had all gone. The game had chewed me up and spat me out. I was finding I couldn't live with football, and I couldn't live without it.

As I lay there contemplating suicide, I would occasionally hear my wife Janet knocking at the bedroom door.

'Do you want a cup of tea, John?'

'No, go away.'

'Do you want fish and chips, John?'

'No, go away.'

'Do you want some pasta, love?'

'No, go away and leave me alone. I don't want anything.'

And so it went on. I hadn't shaved, I hadn't brushed my teeth for days. I was a complete mess. I had got depression and I had got it bad. I'd been called mad often enough in my career for walking on my hands during warm-ups, doing somersaults, sitting on the crossbar during games, having brawls with my manager, sleeping in my goalie gloves, following the same diet as African tribesmen. None of that was seen as normal behaviour, but I hadn't been mad, just 'Mr Dedication' someone who was way ahead of his time. But this was a whole different ball game I was in meltdown and maybe this time I was mad. I just wanted to crawl into a corner and die.

I was thinking about giving up on my life because I didn't have a job, I didn't have anywhere to go in the mornings, no training to go to, nothing to prepare for, and most painful of all to me was that I didn't have anywhere to go on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. If I'd been thinking clearly I would have been able to see I had plenty to live for my wife Janet, my son Tom and my daughter Katie. But I wasn't thinking clearly; I'd gone a bit doolally and I thought I would be better off dead. I was suicidal, but mercifully Janet recognised the signs that I was about to top myself. She suggested that I should go into hospital or look for professional help to sort my head out, but I wasn't having it. I must have been so difficult to deal with. I just locked myself in the bedroom for days on end, crying.

My friends and family were worried sick about me and in desperation my wife rang Kevin Keegan my old boss and pal from Newcastle United and told him all about it, and how she couldn't get through to me. Between them, they decided the only way to save me from myself and get me better was to have me sectioned.

So there I was, lying on my bed in a sorry state, staring at the ceiling and thinking I might as well do everyone a favour and kill myself, when CRASH my bedroom door came flying off its hinges and three giants in green boiler suits came wading in. I was a born fighter and there was no way I was going to come quietly, so it all kicked off. I was trying to knock h.e.l.l out of them until they stuck a needle in my a.r.s.e with a knock-out drug and sent me to sleep. When I woke up I was in the Priory.

At first I wanted to run away. I would have done anything to get out of that place I was like a caged animal. Eventually, though, I got used to my medication and calmed down a bit. I was soon well enough to attend group therapy, which was a real jolt to the system. When it was my turn to say my piece, I stood up and said: 'I'm John Burridge, I'm 47 years old, I've played football all my life and I can't play any more. I'm suicidal.'

But the next person to stand up was a woman, who told us how her husband and both her children had been killed in a road accident. That was like a lightning bolt. It woke me up and put things in perspective. There were people in this world with far worse problems than me, and I felt pathetic that I was letting my problems get on top of me when this poor woman had been through far worse. Her bravery was humbling and it sent a message to me to get a grip of myself.

I decided to knuckle down and get better. I was in there for five months and I came out with a much better att.i.tude to life. I came out full of positive thinking, but the first thing I needed to do was to get out of the UK. I had to get away from the frustration of not being able to play. I also needed to be far away from the p.i.s.sing rain and the howling gales. I knew that I couldn't go to a match again because I would start crying. Some people come out of the Priory determined to give up cigarettes and alcohol. I came out of there vowing to give up English football.

I did just that, and I moved to the Middle East where I spent a decade working for the Oman Football Federation as goalkeeping coach. In many ways it was my dream job I worked maybe 60 days a year with the national team, going to football matches and training sessions. I've been to places you can't even spell! Unfortunately, as part of a backroom team, you sometimes carry the can for the supposed mistakes of the coach, and in January 2011 the Oman FA decided to axe the head coach, Claude Le Roy, and pretty much everyone a.s.sociated with him. b.l.o.o.d.y happy new year, eh? That unfortunately included me, even though we'd been keeping a lot of clean sheets and our goalkeepers had been playing really well. It was another blow, an absolute sickener to be honest, but one I am determined to quickly bounce back from. The old John Burridge spirit has served me well for nearly 60 years, and I'm going to need it again.

I'm not sitting on my a.r.s.e feeling sorry for myself, though I'm keeping busy as a television pundit in Dubai. It's great work if you can get it getting paid for the privilege of watching and talking about football games from around the world. I'm keeping my mind and body active, and the world is still my oyster. There's nothing left for me in England now, but Janet and I own three houses in Muscat, and it is paradise out here in the Gulf. As I tell you my story, it's the middle of winter and I'm lying here in my hammock, gazing out at a stunning beach with the Indian Ocean beyond. Yet I still get asked whether I want to come back to England...no chance, not if I can help it! But England gave me plenty of cracking memories, and so did Scotland. I played 771 league games in Britain and had 30 clubs. Now seems as good a time as any to reflect on it all.

CHAPTER 2.

'BUDGIE' HATCHES.

'It was a hard upbringing. I was a man by the age of 12. I had a chest on me that was bigger than Marilyn Monroe's!'

I would love to tell you that I had a warm and loving upbringing, but my life as a child was absolutely horrendous. I was born on 3 December, 1961, to my mum Greta and dad Jim in Concrete Terrace, Great Clifton a small mining village near Workington, c.u.mbria, in the north west of England.

My early memories of the village were of a grim landscape dominated by slag heaps the leftover materials from down the pit. The horrible smell of sulphur was always in your nostrils and everyone led a no-frills existence. You wouldn't believe now that people lived in such harsh conditions, but there was no time for complaining. They just got on with it.

In a mining village, the men were men and the women knew their place; they kept their mouths shut or there would be hard consequences for them if they didn't. The women did all the housework and kept the family in check while the men worked hard and drank hard, my dad included. My mother was a wonderful woman who did everything she could for me and my two sisters, Lillian and Marian. My dad was the bread-winner, and like most men in the village, he was something of a hard man. Not in a way that he would throw his weight about or be a bully, it was more just a case of his harsh way of life making him that way. There was one pub in the village called the Queen's Head and that's where all the miners would drink.

I have early childhood memories of us being huddled around the radio, because we didn't have a television, and my dad would come home from the pit and if I didn't have a bath ready for him I would be in danger of getting a hiding. If you got a crack about the head or body from your dad when you were a kid, you took it like a man. If you complained, he would hit you harder. It was done to toughen you up because round these parts you had to be tough. We never had any hot running water we used to have a washhouse and my job was to get the coal fire started, set a fire underneath a big pot filled with water and then get his bath ready for when he came home from the pit. I would have to scrub his back as he was covered in coal.

It was traditional for men in the village to go down the pit, and I was faced with the prospect that that was going to be my life too. I was taken down the pit when I was still very young to see what it was like, to give me a grounding for what was seen as my inevitable career as a miner. I watched my dad and the other miners slogging their guts out in a dark confined s.p.a.ce with water running round them. My job was to collect all the coal and slurry he had dug out, shove it into a barrow and wheel it away.

I used to be frightened to death down there and I hated the dark. I couldn't admit that to my dad, though; he would have thought I was soft and disowned me. Mining accidents were commonplace and you would hear all the time of people dying down there. It was a very hard life. How my dad used to do it I'll never know. They were hard, hard men. On Sundays, they would actually have fist fights outside the pub. You would see them outside, s.h.i.+rts off, stripped to the waist and ready to knock h.e.l.l out of each other bare knuckle. It was like UFC 1960s-style but after the punch-ups, you would see them the next day going to the pit again, comrades together, with no lingering hard feelings.

The pit may have held plenty terrors for me, but I wasn't scared of hard work. I got a job working on a farm when I was 12 and that made me grow up fast. I had to be up at 5.30 every morning, then run a mile to get there before I started getting on with my jobs. Then I had to run another mile to get the dog to help round up the cows. I was mucking in with anything that needed doing, including gathering and moving the hay bales, chopping wood, sawing wood I wasn't the tallest kid, but my muscles and strength were developing fast with all that hard graft and I had a chest on me that was bigger than Marilyn Monroe's! I used to get a 10-s.h.i.+lling note every week from working on the farm. All the Burridge kids had jobs so we had an Oxo box that we used to have to put our wages in to help with the housekeeping and pay our way.

Workington wasn't really a football area. It was a big rugby league stronghold. The rugby league side, Workington Town, were a big club playing in the top division, while Workington Reds the football team were in the old Fourth Division and were very much in the shadow of the rugby team. Like most of the miners, my dad would always go to watch the rugby league side when they were at home. They would come out of the pit on a Friday and you would never see them again till two o'clock on Sunday for their weekly rugby game on the village green. The only time I would ever see my dad at the weekend was when he came out the pub. They used to have 15-a-side games for cash, and you wouldn't be able to play if you hadn't put your share of the kitty in. I was only 11 or 12 years old but I was playing against 18-stone miners at rugby league. We would go into the village field and wait for the miners to come out of the pub. I was wearing clogs, not football boots, because we couldn't afford them. It was 'skins' against s.h.i.+rts and we would play in all weather people would take their s.h.i.+rts off even if it was snowing. I remember one game when my dad was in the opposite side to me. He was a good player and a good athlete. I saw him coming towards me, and there was no question of him going easy on me. SMASH, he battered right into me and scored. He took the money, went straight into the pub, with not even the slightest remorse that his boy was outside with a black eye. There was no mollycoddling, but I wouldn't change it for anything. Playing with the miners was hardening me up, and it stood me in good stead when I played with lads of my own age, because it seemed far easier by comparison. It was a hard, hard upbringing. I was a man by the age of 12.

I enjoyed rugby, but football was always my main pa.s.sion, and for some reason I always wanted to be a goalkeeper. I don't why, but I was just attracted to the one position that made you stand out from the crowd. I was a born showman. The field in the village was kept like a bowling green and you would find me and my mates down there most days kicking a ball about. When I go home now I'll drive past that field, but you never see anyone playing football there now which is sad. I was the most popular lad in the village because every Christmas my dad used to give me a leather ball because I was always playing football. If I wasn't in the football field during daytime, I was in the Miners' Welfare boxing. I was a good boxer and I could look after myself. I was always fighting older lads. I was in the c.u.mbrian YMCA under-16 champions.h.i.+p at Carlisle when I was 14, fighting lads who were 16; another thing that really toughened me up.

I was playing rugby one week, football the next, and boxing in between. At 13 years old I was playing for the Workington district team, and I also later played for England schoolboys at rugby, second row. At 13, I was playing football with 16-year-olds they were all big but I was a little hard nut, and I was an athlete, because I was so strong from working on the farm. We had a very good district team. We had a lad called Dave Irving, who played for Workington and then Everton, and Peter Nicholson, who started off at Blackpool and went on to play hundreds of games for Bolton. I got noticed playing for our district team and then made the progression into the c.u.mbria area team, where we would play against the likes of Scotland, Yorks.h.i.+re and Lancas.h.i.+re, with our home games taking place at Carlisle. Scouts were starting to watch my games and I was getting noticed. It was only a matter of time before a club came calling.

To be honest I was very ashamed of my house. There were no indoor toilets in those days, and our lavvy, like every other house round our way, was outside. If you wanted to go during the night, we had these quaint things we called 'p.i.s.s pots', which would be kept under the bed for emergencies. Rather than walk across the yard in the snow in the middle of the night you would just forget about dignity and use one of those. They put flowers in them now and you see them being sold in antique shops, but they had a more practical use when I was kid. Unluckily for me, I was the one given the job of emptying the p.i.s.s pots in the morning. I love the smell of p.i.s.s in the morning! It wasn't exactly the perfect way to start your day, that's for sure. My dad had a novel approach when the p.i.s.s pot was full and after downing a few drinks, he would come in drunk and with his bladder full of ale and at bursting point, so he would be needing to go a few times during the night. But there's no way he was going to stumble outside into the yard to use the toilet, instead he would just p.i.s.s into the pot then chuck the contents out the window. It would go splas.h.i.+ng all over the yard outside. Or, if he had really had a skinful and even that was too much trouble, he'd just open the window and p.i.s.s straight out into the yard.

It was shameless the way we lived, but I suppose that's how you find footballers a lot of them came from that kind of working-cla.s.s background. You talk about favelas in Brazil, but a favela in Brazil looked like a five-star hotel next to my house. I was brought up in such a harsh way. The conditions and the squalor were horrendous. As I said, we had no hot water and when I came in from playing football or rugby I would have to do my own was.h.i.+ng, and often my kit wouldn't dry out in time for my next match.

So when I started getting noticed playing football, people would be coming up to me after games and asking where I was from and where I lived, but I was a bit ashamed to tell them. Finally one day somebody took the plunge and turned up at my house unannounced. The first manager to set foot on the Burridge family pile was Tony Waddington, the famous manager of Stoke City, who signed Gordon Banks and later Peter s.h.i.+lton, and won Stoke the League Cup in 1972. He obviously knew a good goalkeeper when he saw one! Waddington had driven all the way from Stoke to Workington, and we saw his big car pull up at the end of the drive.

As courtesy demanded back then, before he could sign me he had come to speak with me and my dad about the possibility of me joining Stoke, who were one of the bigger clubs of the day. But when you were an apprentice professional in those days, it didn't matter if you went to Manchester United or a Fourth Division team your weekly wage was 5 regardless. It was all regulated by the FA, to stop the big clubs cherry-picking all the best young players, and to give the others a chance of operating on a level playing field.

We had never seen a big car like his, so there was quite a buzz in the house as he pulled up, with everyone looking to see who it was. It had been a wash day and we had all the wet was.h.i.+ng hanging up in the yard to dry on the wash lines. You could see Waddington fighting his way through the was.h.i.+ng to make his way to our door, but after year on year of my dad p.i.s.sing in the yard it had become a treacherous, slimy surface, and he slipped when he reached the middle of my dad's target area, and went down like a sack of spuds, slap bang on his a.r.s.e. His brand new Prince of Wales checked suit was covered in p.i.s.s. It was so embarra.s.sing, you could see the look of disbelief on his face as he put his hand to his nose to smell what he had slid in, and then had his worst fears confirmed.

He came into the house all fl.u.s.tered and smelling of p.i.s.s, asking: 'What the h.e.l.l is that?' My dad had been out for a few beers, and was sitting there rolling a cigarette, and he barely looked up as he demanded: 'Who are you, like?' My dad didn't know him from Adam. I didn't know who he was, because we didn't have a television and the only footballers and managers I knew were the ones I'd seen in my Charlie Buchan magazines. To his credit, he composed himself and replied: 'My name is Tony Waddington, I'm the manager of Stoke City Football Club. I've been watching your son play and I would like him to sign for us.'

My dad didn't beat about the bush and asked straight out how much they would be paying me. Waddington told him 5 a week, same as any other club. Without a moment's pause, my dad told him to f.u.c.k off. My dad wanted me to play for Workington rugby league team, because they were showing interest in me as well. He reckoned I could earn 10 down the pit and a further 10 playing for Workington 20 a week, which in those days was an awful lot of money for a lad just coming out of school. My dad had already told me he didn't want me playing football because he thought it was a 'poofs' game'. This poor fella had just driven hundreds of miles from Stoke, got covered in p.i.s.s, and my dad had sent him packing with two brutal words.

The next to have a crack at signing me were Blackpool, but they got the same treatment from my old man. I was in despair and I was sitting on the stairs crying my eyes out when my mum saw me and asked: 'What's up?' I told her how much I wanted to be a footballer and that I didn't want to play rugby or go down the pit.

A few weeks later, it was the turn of my local club Workington Reds to try their luck. The manager Bobby Brown came to the house, and said he was aware that other clubs had been keen to sign me. He made a really strong case based on the benefits of signing for my local club, including being able to stay at home. My dad was just about to give him the usual response straight to his face, but then amazingly my poor old mum stepped in. You have to remember that in those days women had to mind their own business. If they opened their mouth they would most likely get a crack in the face. You wouldn't even get done for a.s.sault in those days if it was a domestic matter between husband and wife; that was just the way it was. If you were a woman, you did the was.h.i.+ng, you did the cooking, and your reward was respect, but nothing more. So it took all the guts in the world for my mum to speak up. 'Jim, maybe we should let him sign?' she said. My first thought was: 'Oh, mum, what have you done? You are going to get the biggest black eye in the world!' G.o.d bless her, I'm in tears now recalling the moment. I thought she was going to get battered. I will remember her selflessness and unbelievable bravery to my dying day. But thankfully my dad was in a good mood that day and he listened to what she was saying. He turned to me and said: 'You've got a year. If you don't make it you're going down the pit to earn a real living.' I had one year to prove that I could play.

I thought: 'Brilliant I'm signing for my home-town club.' I was so excited. I couldn't believe my luck and kept expecting my dad to go crazy and have a change of heart, but he was quite relaxed about it. So Workington took me down to their ground, Borough Park, the next day and said: 'Here's your contract, son'. I had three or four weeks before I could leave school but on the day I left I ran right down to the football ground at four o'clock; I just couldn't wait to get my football career started. It wasn't an easy job though. Every day at Workington I had to be there at nine o'clock because I was the only apprentice on the books. I had 30 professionals to look after that meant there were 30 pairs of boots to clean, 30 jerseys to look after, 30 pairs of shorts, plus I had to mop the dressing rooms, absolutely scrub them. I'd be there at nine o'clock, hang everything out, make sure the boots were clean, then the players would start coming in from 9.30. One of them started calling me 'Budgie' I've no idea where it came from, but it stuck. Maybe it's because I was flying up and down doing jobs for them. I was only 15, but I would go out and train alongside them and they would treat me with respect it was a fantastic grounding. There were only two goalkeepers at the club and, while I was in the reserves, I would be involved in all the training games with the senior pros in the first team. I also got my first pair of brand new boots! Everything I had ever played in up until that point was hand-me-down. In the past, I had always been given boots that my dad had found me, or old ones he'd played rugby in even when I'd played for the schoolboy select teams painted black. But now I finally had my first pair of 'trendies', a handsome pair made by Adidas.

CHAPTER 3.

ONE GAME DOWN, 770 TO GO.

'Signing for Workington and becoming an apprentice footballer at the age of 16 may have been an exciting prospect, but there was no glamour in it. How could there be when we were toiling away in the depths of the old Fourth Division?'

To begin with, I was playing in youth team and reserve games, and just keeping my head down and trying to make a positive impression. My first-team breakthrough, when it came at the end of the 1968/69 season, was totally unexpected. There was no big build-up, it just happened. I'd just walked a mile from my house and was waiting on the bus to take me to Sunderland for a reserve game, and as I was waiting the manager pulled up in his car, rolled down the window and said to me: 'You're not going to Sunderland today son...you're playing for the first team.'

We were lying mid-table and that day we were playing Newport County, who were third from bottom. My head was spinning with excitement as he took me back the 10 miles into Workington in his big Ford Zephyr 4 car. It was still hours before kick-off, so I just sat there in the boiler room from half past ten till about half past one when the players started coming in. There wasn't even much opportunity to feel nervous because before the game, as part of my apprentice duties, I had to help get the dressing rooms ready and mark the pitch with the groundsman Billy Watson. Billy wasn't one for soft-soaping you and treating you with the kid gloves; he treated you like a man and made you work like one too. One day, before our first game of the season, he was so pleased with his handiwork that he wanted a photo of the pitch, looking all lush and green like a bowling green, so he handed me an old camera and told me to climb up the floodlight pylon to take the picture. I was terrified of heights, but he told me 'If you don't get your a.r.s.e up there, I'll make sure you get the sack!'

He was quite a character and had been great pals with Workington's former manager, the great Bill Shankly, who had wanted to take him to Anfield as groundsman there. But Billy stayed at Workington to look after his mother. Shankly hadn't been the only great former Reds manager; Ken Furphy had been there in the early 1960s, and it was him who had signed the man I was about to displace as No.1, Mike Rogan a goalkeeper I was able to learn a lot from. He played more than 400 times for Workington, so he was the perfect guy to look up to in terms of his experience.

But he'd picked up an injury and it was me and not him who would be in goal that day against Newport. There I was, sitting there an hour before kick-off, about to play the first of 771 games in my career. The older pros were doing their best to make me feel at ease, but there were 11,500 people in the ground and it was impossible to keep the nerves at bay. Newport had a big lump of a centre-forward, well over six feet, and when they took an in-swinging corner he got in front of me and scored at the near post. I couldn't believe it their first corner of the game and I'd already let one in. I was feeling a bit out my depth, thinking to myself, 'My G.o.d, what am I doing here?' But we equalised, and then we went 2-1 in front. They equalised again, but to my relief we won the game 3-2. It wasn't a fantastic debut by any stretch of the imagination. I hadn't done very well and I got a bit of stick for it. Welcome to professional football.

But Mike was still out injured and I was the only other keeper they had, so it didn't matter how I'd played, I would be in at the deep end again. Every team, especially in the harsh environment of the Fourth Division, had a big centre-forward in those days who would be used as a battering ram. They used to do their best to put the fear of death up goalkeepers, and while I wasn't scared of them, I did learn some hard lessons playing against some of those grizzled old campaigners. I remember we had a midweek game against Oldham, and they had a centre-forward called Jim Fryatt, who had a reputation for being an intimidating character. He was bald and on a wet day you could hear the ball slap off his head. The local paper had been suggesting John Burridge was too inexperienced to be playing against an old warhorse like Fryatt, who was built like a brick s.h.i.+thouse and could dish out some harsh treatment. It was a big game for us, because Oldham had just been relegated the season before from the Third Division, and they were seen as the big boys of the league and the team that everyone wanted to beat.

It was a horrible wet and windy Tuesday night, and they slung everything in for big Jim Fryatt. I may have been 16, but that didn't matter to him he was an a.s.sa.s.sin in football boots. If I was old enough to play, I was old enough to take whatever punishment he felt like dis.h.i.+ng out. First chance he got, he came steaming in and broke my nose. There was blood everywhere. My nose was all over the place, and my eyes were stinging, but what I would in time refer to as the 'John Burridge spirit' kicked in and the broken nose just made me even more determined to succeed. I made save after save and I played a blinder. With five minutes left, we scored and won it 1-0. The manager ran on to the field and picked me up, shouting: 'That was brilliant, son.' I must have lost half a pint of blood out of my nose. The papers the next day had changed their tune after giving me some stick on my debut. They were now saying that I could be the next Gordon Banks and hailing a fantastic performance from the plucky 16-year-old who had stood up to big bad Fryatt.

These big centre-forwards used to do everything they could to mash you up, but I never held any grudges. It was a man's game, and all those hard knocks were part of my education. It was the making of me, and it only helped to toughen me up. So, to Jim Fryatt, I suppose I should say thank you for breaking my nose and preparing me properly for a life in football. Another game that sticks in the mind was an away trip to Southport where I was up against a fella called Eric Redrobe. He also had a reputation for being a bit of a hard man, and at corner kicks he would be growling under his breath that he was going to kill you. True to his word, he hammered into me and broke my rib. I was in absolute agony. I was still recovering from the smashed nose, and now I had a cracked rib to add to the broken bones collection. But again the never-say-die spirit kicked in. There were no subst.i.tute goalkeepers, so I just had to get on with it. I played on and had a good game and we won, so I was starting to believe in the philosophy 'no pain, no gain'. If I had any broken bones, strains or bruises, they would just strap me up for each game and let me get on with it. I was young, strong and a quick healer. To me, getting a few b.u.mps and bruises was just an occupational hazard. I was loving it. I was also driven by the constant threat hanging over my head that if the football didn't work out, my dad would make me play rugby and work down the pit that was all the motivation I needed to stick at it and be a success.

Although I was keeping Mike Rogan out of the team, there was never any danger of me getting ideas above my station. Whatever I did out on the pitch on a Sat.u.r.day, I was still just a 5-a-week apprentice and the only way to survive at a club like Workington was hard graft and showing plenty of respect to your elders. I may have been playing every week, but I was still the dogsbody and I had plenty of jobs to do around the ground. After the home games, even though I'd just been playing myself, I had to run down to the opponents' dressing room with a brush and sweep all the mud that had come from the players' boots into a corner so they didn't get their feet dirty when they stepped out of the bath. I would come down with my kit still on, and they would do a double-take when they saw me standing there and ask: 'Haven't you just been playing in goal for them?' After I'd done my bit in the away dressing room the manager used to make me pick up and sort out all the kit in our dressing room. I had to make sure the jerseys weren't inside out, then put all the red s.h.i.+rts together, gather the white shorts in another big tub full of soap powder, and pick up all the red stockings and stick them in another container. Next, I had to sweep out the home dressing room. When I'd done all that, I could finally have a bath myself, but I still had to cycle the 10 miles home. By the time all my duties had finished and I'd cycled home on my bike it could be about half past ten and all I was ready for was sleep.

My father was no fan of football, and when I first made the breakthrough I got no obvious signs of encouragement from him. I didn't want to start crowing about it in case he took that for me being a cheeky b.u.g.g.e.r and shut me up in the easiest possible way by telling me that I could go and work down the pit like him.

I used to get two complimentary tickets for each game and I'd sometimes ask my dad if he wanted to come down and watch me, but his response was always a fairly blunt: 'I'm not coming to watch b.l.o.o.d.y football it's a poofs' game.' He had his set routine each weekend he'd have a skinful on a Friday night and keep drinking in the pub till the Sunday. The rugby team would be at home one week, and the football team the next, and while he would usually head down to see the rugby boys in action, he didn't pay much attention to how I was getting on with Workington Reds...or so I thought.

There was a home game against Southport and during the match one of their forwards caught me flush in the face. I could feel his studs raking right into my forehead as I dived at his feet. I was out cold briefly, and as I came back to my senses, I became vaguely aware of a figure lurching towards the forward that had just booted me. Then it hit me it was me dad on the pitch, making towards the penalty box...with a pint pot in his hand. He'd been on the p.i.s.s since Friday night by this time it was about 4.15 on the Sat.u.r.day and he was well and truly the worse for wear.

He headed right for the bewildered forward, shouting at him: 'You! You big b.u.g.g.e.r! Pick on someone your own b.l.o.o.d.y size. C'mon and fight me!' He then swung an arm and threw his beer all over the guy. All h.e.l.l broke loose and the two of them got into a fight. I was a bit groggy from the boot in the face, and I thought I had concussion or something because, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, my old dad was on the pitch fighting with Southport's centre-forward.

The next thing I knew the police came on to the pitch, got a hold of my dad, and arrested him. I'd snapped out of my daze, realising it wasn't a dream, and I started screaming at the coppers: 'Leave 'im. It's me dad!' In the end they just threw him out of the ground instead of arresting him and chucking him in the cells and that was the end of the matter. There were no TV cameras, so there was no need for any inquest or fuss after the game. Football was a working-cla.s.s game and n.o.body got on their high horse.

I wouldn't have let him know it, because there wasn't much in the way of outward displays of emotion in the Burridge household, at least not where my dad was concerned, but I was just secretly chuffed that he'd been at the game in the first place. It said a lot for his principles too, that he would rather pay to get in than take a complimentary ticket from me. I spoke to a few of his mates, and it turned out he'd been there before shouting encouragement, so even though he didn't show it, he must have been proud to watch his boy in goal for the Reds.

I wasn't ashamed at all that my dad had waded in that day, sticking up for his boy, but there was no hiding my shame and embarra.s.sment when I did perhaps THE most stupid thing of my career in another game.

We were playing against Southend and coasting along towards full-time, five or six-nil up. I had had very little to do in the game, and my concentration wasn't fully switched on. I was getting a bit bored and just wanted to hear the final whistle and get in for a bath to warm myself up, so I turned round and asked the photographer sitting behind the goals how long there was left to play. He checked his watch and told me we were already well into time added on. A minute later, our full-back pa.s.sed the ball back to me, and I picked it up then started bouncing it and rolling it around the box, just trying to run down the final couple of seconds. He obviously thought there was time for us to get another goal and was screaming at me: 'Budgie, Budgie, give me the ball back!' But I wasn't paying him much attention. I then heard the whistle, and as I turned round to get my cap and gloves from the back of the net I threw the ball up and volleyed it as hard as I could into the net. It was only when I turned round that I realised I had made a terrible mistake. The referee was signalling for a goal and trotting up towards the halfway line. It hadn't been him who had blown the whistle; it had been some joker in the crowd with another whistle. Our full-back was on the floor laughing his head off. We might have won the game 5-1, but after the game the manager went crazy at me. He didn't really see the funny side. I was mortified at my mistake and just kept shaking my head, trying to say sorry and pointing out that it didn't really matter we had won the game easily anyway.

I wasn't the only one in the team who was as daft as a brush, though. I remember after one game we'd lost, the manager was going crackers at us all, shouting and swearing his head off. He picked on John Ogilvie, and pointed to his club badge and said: 'You've no idea what that badge stands for'. John was having a f.a.g, as a lot of players did in those days, and he looked him up and down, staring at the big badge that said 'WAFC'. He casually took a drag of his ciggy and said: 'Of course I know what it stands for "What A f.u.c.king Football Club"!'

I had a few managers at Workington, even though I was only there a relatively short time. First there was Bobby Brown and then Frank Upton, and I didn't always see eye-to-eye with the man who eventually sold me, Brian Doyle, who took over from Frank in 1968. Brian had been known as a bit of a hardman as a player, but my first impressions of him were not good. He came into the dressing room all surly and told us: 'I'm the boss, if anyone wants to argue, come behind the stand with me now and we can sort it out.' There were a lot of experienced professionals in that dressing room, and it didn't matter that they were Fourth Division players, they deserved far better treatment than that. It's not the way to get a team pulling together, and his management style was only going to get him nowhere fast. He was the boss, and I respected that. I had no problem with those in authority, but I couldn't take anyone trying to pick on me. It wasn't in my nature.

We used to play training games on an ash pitch and on Fridays he used to join in with the five-a-sides. I was already wary of him, but when he came charging into me in goal, I blocked him the best I could then smacked him with the ball right in the face. I didn't say anything. I just did it. He got up and you could see he was starting to lose his head, but he didn't want to make a big issue of it and lose face in front of the rest of the lads, who were loving every minute of this young upstart putting the bully boy in his place. They were shouting: 'Go on Budgie son, give him some more!' I would have fought him no problem if it had come down to it. I always had that aggression from my upbringing, and my boxing. So if somebody banged me in the nose I was going to react. It didn't come to that, but you could see him seething with rage, and I was always watching my back when he was around.

My Workington days were very harsh but it was a great grounding to start a career in professional football. It gave me a chance to play at a very early age that I would not have got anywhere else. I picked up so much invaluable experience from the older professionals. If I had signed for one of the big clubs, then I would have trained every day with kids my own age, and been kept separate from the first team. At Workington, everyone trained together, and I quickly grew up and started to get a lot of confidence. I may have been wet behind the ears for that first game against Newport County, but I soon found my belief and discovered how to protect myself against the seasoned professionals you found in the Fourth Division. You only get experience by playing and learning from any mistakes you make. I could have gone to someone like Manchester United but I would never have been picking up that type of experience. I'd come a long way since that first game in a short s.p.a.ce of time.

CHAPTER 4.

BLACKPOOL ROCKS.

'No more Southport and Southend United, now it would be Manchester United and a.r.s.enal. I was about to leap up three divisions in the blink of an eye.'

When my dad died, I was almost fined for it by Workington. Even though I was by now playing for the first team, I was still expected to turn out for youth and reserve games, and on the day my dad died we were due to play a fixture against Bradford Park Avenue. I went to the house to get my stuff for the game, but when I got there I was told not to come in; my mum was in a right old state and her friends broke the news to me that my dad had dropped dead.

Because I hadn't turned up in time for the Bradford game, the manager was blazing mad with me, saying he was going to fine me. But when I explained to him what had happened, both he and the club couldn't have been more helpful. He didn't fine me, of course, and he really helped my mum cope with the grief. The club told my mum that if there was anything they could do for the family, they would do it. The club helped with the funeral, the ceremony and all the arrangements for the crematorium. I was just a young kid and wouldn't have known where to start with the arrangements, even though I was now the man of the house. The boss and all the players came to the funeral to lend me support, which meant a lot to me. I suppose I could have taken time off, but in my mind I had to keep playing; it was the best way to cope with the situation. I knew that if I wasn't playing then Mike Rogan would be straight back in the team, and if he played well then the gloves would be his again and it would be my turn to kick my heels and wait for my chance to get back in. It was a harsh outlook perhaps, but I needed to be harsh on myself if I wanted to be a success.