Budgie - The Autobiography Part 9

So, I don't necessarily agree with them holding it in Qatar, but the good thing is it will put the Gulf and football here firmly on the map. I hope to be there of course, and if the British teams happen to be there, be sure to look me up. I'll be the good-looking one that's still chirping away like a Budgie...

CHAPTER 28.

HOW OTHERS SEE ME.

'I'm dreading the day he has to pack it all up I think he'd sooner have his heart taken out.'

JANET BURRIDGE.

Over the years, my eccentricities and behaviour have generated a few thousand column inches in newspapers, magazines, fanzines, football programmes and autobiographies. Some of them sound a bit too crazy to be true but believe me they are! I've also been touched to read some of the tributes and fans' memories that are floating around cybers.p.a.ce on the net, and I am proud that a Facebook page has been set up by fans in my honour. Everyone seems to have their say about me, and here's a selection of my favourites from over the years...

JANET BURRIDGE.

(Interviewed towards end of Budgie's playing career, 1997) He twitches, fidgets and relives every moment of a game. He grabs at imaginary shots, sets himself ready to spring for a corner ball and yells warnings to defenders. I'm used to it. He's just so energised when he's watching or replaying a game in his mind's eye, he just can't keep still. He was watching a match in bed one night. I'd fallen asleep as I was dead tired after a day in our sportswear shop. But he woke me, made me sit up and was shouting: 'Watch this! Look at the keeper, he's sold himself. Sold, sold, sold himself! What do you think of that?' He made me watch the slow motions three times until I said I knew what he was talking about. I didn't really, but it kept him quiet.

Once when we were sleeping, he hit me with his elbow. And when I woke him up he couldn't believe it. He said he was going up for a ball at least that was his excuse. I'm dreading the day he has to pack it all up I think he'd sooner have his heart taken out.

When he plays he has terribly desolate moments, even if his side has won 5-1. The fact that he has let in even one goal leaves him devastated. If he's made just one mistake, he is inconsolable. But whatever happens, he is either going through the game in his sleep, pus.h.i.+ng shots over the bar and waving his arms about, or sitting bolt upright saying to me: 'It's all right, love, someone just hit a tremendous shot at me.'

Even when he's watching a game on telly, his body starts to sway and his eyes are elsewhere, in a penalty area somewhere, and we can see his fingers getting ready to grab a shot. He ends up in a h.e.l.l of a state. I've even heard him give an interview to BBC television in his sleep. But he's such a No.1 optimist he just got himself all fired up again and bounced back mostly in his sleep, of course.

(Interviewed in 2011) Coming to the end of his playing career was an event so devastating to John that it is hard for many to comprehend. Once he started to cope a little with not crossing that white line at 3pm on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, he knew he still had his physical fitness, which he worked on meticulously 'just in case he was needed in the Premier League'. But then the accident that would have killed most people took that away too.

His zest for the game has never wavered, whether it is a park game or a cup final. Wearing gloves to watch a game on TV was his way of living through the game as if he was in goal. He would wear his boots to make sure they were match fit and totally comfortable, like a second skin. He would say 'Fail to prepare, prepare to fail'. The equipment he took with him onto the pitch was cared for with the utmost reverence I wouldn't dream of going near his kit! It never went into the team kit skips, nor was it ever left at the ground. Throughout my 40 years of knowing John I have heard others say that different players are dedicated, but let me tell you, not one has ever come anywhere close to John. He lived football 100% of the time and that has never changed.

His love for the game is infectious. When we moved to Oman he realised a dream, that of playing beach football every evening just like on the Copa Cabana. I remember the first night he went down to play he was like a little boy, wondering if he could get a game! After a week he was upgraded to another team, then after a while he came home with the biggest grin on his face telling me he had been first pick! For a beach game! Whichever team John played on (strangely enough he never played in goal) would win. He used to go down to the beach an hour or so before the game to prepare the 'pitch', even having special goals hand made. Yes, I am talking about a 50-year-old who played over 1000 top-flight games. I could go on forever!

STEVE HARPER.

(Newcastle United goalkeeper, 1993present) If you are not brave then you cannot play in goal. It is all part of the job. I can remember on my first day as a professional in 1993 John Burridge screaming at me, saying I had to taste blood running down my neck. Budgie was a cracker who used to encourage forwards to go in on our keepers, but he was a huge influence on my career in my first two years.

TIM FLOWERS.

(Team-mate at Wolves and Southampton) Enjoying football, whatever the result, and having a rapport with the fans, are two of the many things I learned from Budgie. My style is totally different to Budgie's because I'm a different shape and a different person. But when we were at Wolves together and again at Southampton he always put in 100 per cent, which is what I try to do.

ALAN SHEARER.

(Team-mate at Southampton) I often used to join Budgie and a few others in small-sided matches after regular training. On one occasion I chased a through ball and he went down at my feet, so I jumped over him to avoid a nasty collision. Budgie stood up, stopped the game and said: 'Look, son, when a goalkeeper dives at your feet he expects you to clatter him. Don't disappoint him.' I got the message straight away. It was John's way of suggesting I had to develop a ruthless streak. A few years later in a friendly match between Southampton and Falkirk, Budgie was in goal for the Scottish club. During the game he threw himself at my feet to smother the ball, I followed through, caught him on the head and split it open, leaving a wound which required three st.i.tches. Budgie wiped away the blood and came over to me. I was half expecting him to have a go at me, but he patted me on the head and said: 'Well done, son, I'm proud of you.'

NIGEL MARTYN.

(Protege at Leeds United) Budgie has helped improve every aspect of my game. He's very pa.s.sionate about football. The word mad comes to mind. But he comes to see me at Leeds from Blyth, and gives me the intensive work I need. And if I do well on a Sat.u.r.day, he'll ring me up that night and tell me. If things go wrong, I'd rather discuss things with him than go away on my own.

ALI AL-HABSI.

(First Oman player to play in the English Premier League, with Bolton and Wigan) Budgie came to England with me, because I was a 17-year-old from a village team and everything was so new for me. No one imagined a Middle East footballer would ever play in the Premier League. Like many other players I had dreamed of that, but never believed it would come true. While I was here Budgie took me to Old Trafford, and he could see I was wide-eyed and overawed by being there. He said: 'If you work hard and fulfil your potential you will play here one day.' But when it actually happened, I could still hardly believe it. If it wasn't for John's help and what he taught me about goalkeeping, the dream wouldn't have come true.

ASHLEY HAMMOND.

(Local reporter, friend and failed Budgie agent, Oman and UAE 20062011) To me, Budgie was just a face on the back of one of my football cards and a pa.s.sing reference in various players' memoirs as the fruit-loop that walked on his hands, wore gloves to bed and got his wife to throw oranges around the room at him. When I met him in one of my first a.s.signments as a young reporter in Muscat, Oman, working on a local paper there in 2006, he was to instantly mean much more than that not a day has pa.s.sed since where I haven't had at least ten missed calls from him before seven in the morning. He affectionately dubbed me 'Harry Harris' or 'Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter'.

One image of Budgie that still plagues me was when we travelled from Muscat to London to watch Ali Al-Habsi make his Bolton debut in the League Cup against Fulham, a game the Wanderers won 2-1. Ali had played a blinder and afterwards John and myself ran to the bottom right of the Putney End to congratulate Ali. John had tears rolling down his face and was attempting to jump the barrier, shouting, voice croaking, 'That's my boy, that's my boy,' as he was held back by stewards. Ali walked into the Cottage oblivious just out of earshot to Budgie being apprehended by the orange army. That, for me, typified the sort of thankless situation Budgie often found himself in. He still looked a prat even in that poignant memory, though, with a fluffy Biggles leather aviator's hat and goggles on with floppy dog ears covering his lugs.

DAVID HARDIE.

(Hibs football writer, Edinburgh Evening News) Budgie probably embodied the saying that to be a goalkeeper you also need to be a bit mad. Eccentric without doubt, a character both on and off the field but also an exceptional goalkeeper, one who enjoyed a lengthy and varied career thanks not only to his undoubted ability between the sticks but his slavish attention to fitness.

He may have drawn more than a few laughs from his team-mates when he'd roll up for training at Wardie on that tiny moped on which he completed the final couple of miles from his home in the north of England after arriving by train at Waverley each day, but once the gloves were on it was down to business as the young goalkeepers at Easter Road at the time soon realised.

Chris Reid, Stephen Woods and Jason Gardiner, who were all born AFTER Budgie had made his League debut for Newport County in 1969, presented him with a cake to mark his 40th birthday a few months after he'd helped Hibs lift the Skol Cup, all three admitting they were left simply in awe of the punis.h.i.+ng workout he'd put himself through before returning home for another 90 minutes in the gym.

Like any goalkeeper Budgie was strong-willed and determined with an unshakeable belief in his own ability, once famously claiming: 'Peter s.h.i.+lton? I wouldn't let him keep my pigeons.'

DAVID HARRISON.

(Writing in Wolves' matchday magazine) I was a frequent visitor to the Burridge household when he was a Wolves player from 198284. 'Just pop round for a chat and a bit to eat' was the regular invite. The evenings were never dull. Tales of Budgie's madcap methods were already legendary. I was once told that when he was at Aston Villa his neighbours were alarmed one night when they heard a constant thumping noise from next door. On further examination, they found Budgie jumping from his garage roof. He was working on his agility and landing techniques.

If you get the impression that he was slightly eccentric, you are wrong. He was mad. Barking mad.

But he was also a consummate professional. There was method in his madness. He maintained the highest level of fitness of any footballer I have known. To have played for 29 clubs in 771 games over a period of 30 years he must have been doing something right.

TIM NASH.

(Football writer, Wolverhampton Express and Star) As a young Wolves fan of 12 in the summer of 1983, I attended training sessions at Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletic Club, based at Aldersley Stadium, two miles from Molineux. I was amazed to discover, on looking at a ma.s.s football match going on in an adjoining field, Budgie playing outfield. There may have been up to 15-a-side playing, and Budgie was throwing himself around the pitch, albeit in what would have been the closed season!

MARTIN HAWORTH.

(Durham City fan) He spent the entire 90 minutes of each game coaching the back four. You would imagine that for someone who has played at the very highest level that he wouldn't really be bothered with football at this level, but his enthusiasm really was infectious. He played for Durham in a friendly against Sunderland, and again he was a joy to watch. When Durham were stuck again for a keeper in September, John was unavailable because of his contract with Blyth Spartans, but he arranged for one of the youth team keepers at Leeds United to turn out for Durham, ferrying the lad to and from the lad's Hull home for the two games we needed him. The man is an absolute diamond, and as mad as a hatter.

PHIL DAVISON.

(Enfield fan) When he played for Enfield, he once travelled down south to catch the team coach back to the north-east for Bishop Auckland v Enfield (FA Trophy) because he said it was good for team morale (it was!). Rumour has it that when Enfield signed him, the chairman wasn't too sure about having a goalie older than he was so Budgie proved his fitness by diving over the boardroom table three times. He never let in a goal in a league match for Enfield before the lure of Aberdeen became too much for him.

ANDY BIRD.

('Budgie the Legend' Facebook page) I saw Newcastle win away at Brighton 3-0 in 1989/90. It was totally out of the blue as we were totally rubbish at the time, John's reaction after the game was like we'd won the European Cup and he practically climbed into the away end. Total and utter legend. Respect.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

When a club has just sold the country's No.1 goalkeeper and replaced him with a veteran in his 40th year, fans can be forgiven for being a little sceptical about the new man's ability to fill the gloves. I was one of those hasty doubters in 1991, when my team Hibernian transferred Andy Goram to Rangers for 1 million and picked up John Burridge on a free transfer. I knew who Budgie was I'd seen his animated face grinning out at me from Topps bubble gum cards throughout the seventies and eighties but I was unaware what a larger than life character he was until I saw him prancing about his goalmouth like the oldest gazelle in town. It's safe to say Budgie was an instant hero.

The day Budgie puffed out his chest and bounced into Easter Road, Hibs had just emerged from the darkest season in a proud 116-year history. The previous summer, the owner of Edinburgh arch-rivals Hearts, Wallace Mercer, had launched a hostile takeover that would have shut the club down and ripped a famous old inst.i.tution out of the community. After a bitter battle, the predator was vanquished, and Hibs were saved.

Against that backdrop season 1991/92 arrived with optimism still in short supply. However, within his 90 debut minutes, 'Budgie' had lifted the gloom and shown the fans what an incredible goalkeeper they now had at their club.

The charismatic lunatic between the goalposts was a born entertainer, and would always catch the eye with his bizarre blend of gymnastics and unbridled enthusiasm. He insisted on taking time out at the end of each game win, lose or draw to run to the fans to applaud their contribution, and that common touch earned him respect and admiration.

He would fully cement his place in the club's folklore by helping to lead Hibs to a fairytale League Cup success at Hampden in 1991 barely 15 months since they had nearly been wiped off the face of the planet. The scenes that unfolded in the Scottish capital that October night as the trophy was paraded along Princes Street will never be forgotten. Not that Budgie stayed up for the party though 'Mr Dedication' took his well-deserved bow then headed for bed after a job well done.

To this day, Budgie is widely regarded in the green half of Edinburgh as a 'legend' a hackneyed phrase within football perhaps, but in Budgie's case no one can deny him that status.

His stay at Hibs was, of course, just one small slice of an amazing record-breaking 771-match career, spread across five decades as a player and a coach, and fans and players of the many other clubs he served will have their own memories to treasure. My own happy recollections of Budgie led me to track him down to his adopted Gulf homeland of Oman, where he works in the desert sun. He served the Oman national team as goalkeeping coach for a decade and is still going strong as a television pundit in Dubai. Budgie's antics and escapades have long popped up in the pages of teammates' autobiographies. At last, he shares with us his own roller-coaster story which truly reflects his personality.

They say you have to be mad to be a goalie. I think Budgie might have invented that phrase.

Colin Leslie.

Co-author.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

Thanks to all those who made this book possible, particularly the Burridge family, Scott Stevenson, David Hardie at the Edinburgh Evening News, the library staff at The Scotsman, Tim Nash at the Express and Star in Wolverhampton, Steve Canavan and Alison Bott at the Blackpool Gazette, John Wright and Sandra Kirkbride at the Workington Times and Star, Mel Eves, Dave Harrison, Joe Morrison, the Oman Football a.s.sociation, Mike and Lillian Cooke, Andy Gray, Stevie Burns, Ashley Hammond, Allie Collins, Mich.e.l.le Signore and John Blake.