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Overview
When John McDermott received the annual PFA Merit Award, in recognition of his record-breaking career at Grimsby Town, he joined an elite group of footballers made up of the likes of Sir Bobby Charlton, Pelé and George Best. McDermott was added to the distinguished list of recipients in recognition of his record-breaking career at Grimsby Town. He played an incredible 754 games overall for the Mariners and is one of only seventeen players in the history of English football to play more than 600 Football League matches for the same. Now McDermott is lifting the lid for the first time on the career that made him one of the most respected defenders in the Football League for two decades and secured him legendary status among the fans at Blundell Park. He gives a humorous and revealing insight into what went on behind the scenes as the Mariners marched to back-to-back promotions to the second tier of English football and also muses on the pitfalls of staying loyal to a single club.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752497372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 08/05/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
John McDermott
It's Not All Black and White
By John McDermott, Simon Ashberry
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 John McDermott,All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9737-2
CHAPTER 1
The Longest Arms In Town
Grimsby has been my home for more than half my life now but my story starts in Middlesbrough. That is where I was born and bred, in a town that has always been a hotbed for football.
In recent years there have been internationals like Jonathan Woodgate and Stewart Downing but there has also been a long line of players from the town going right back to Wilf Mannion, who was a Boro legend either side of the Second World War. He was known as the Golden Boy because of his blond hair and there is a statue of him at Middlesbrough's ground.
In between, Middlesbrough has also produced the likes of Brian Clough, Don Revie, Chris Kamara and Peter Beagrie.
When you are brought up with that sort of history, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of playing football from a very early age – and that's certainly what happened with me.
I went to a junior school in Middlesbrough called St Pius where the school team had a really good reputation.
The school team was only really for fourth years as we called them in those days, the oldest lads at St Pius before they moved up to senior school. You pretty much had to be in that top year to have a chance of playing in the school team and as we didn't have any other teams for the younger kids that was your only chance of playing in a proper match.
When I was younger I started to go and watch them play and I was determined to be out on that pitch. I would think to myself, 'I'm good at footie. I want to be in that team.' At that stage, they were still three years older than me and I was only small so there was no chance.
But the next year, when I was still two years younger than all these bigger lads, I managed to force my way into the team. It was unheard of. You never normally got in to the school team when you were only a second year, no way.
I remember getting the kit – even that was really exciting although it was massive and didn't fit me properly! The other lads playing seemed massive too but it didn't bother me.
The day before the first game I was so excited I couldn't really think about anything else all day and I ended up wearing my football kit to bed. I was really worried that I might lose it or forget to put it in my bag so I thought the best thing to do was just not to take it off at all. So I had my boots on and everything in bed – my mam wasn't very happy about that but it was the best way of not forgetting anything as far as I was concerned.
We used to go straight to matches after lessons so you had to bring your kit and your boots and shin pads with you into school. But on one occasion I forgot my pads. There was no way I was going to have time to get back home after school to fetch them so I nicked out of class.
Now this was a junior school, remember – kids are always doing that sort of thing in seniors but that's not what generally goes on in junior school. Certainly not back in the 1970s. I knew that my house was only ten minutes away and thought no one would miss me so I bombed there and bombed back.
But the teacher who ran the football team found out that I had missed lessons and asked me where I had been. I told him straight, 'I had to go home and get my pads for tonight, sir.' I thought he would be pleased that I was so keen to play.
But he was furious. Instead, he decided that I needed to be taught a lesson for skipping school so he just dropped me from the team there and then and told me I wasn't playing.
I was absolutely mortified. And ever since that day I hate being late for anything, for any meeting, any game. In fact, I'll often get there half an hour early – and it all goes back to that day at junior school.
What made it even worse on that occasion when I bunked off to fetch my shin pads was that my mate got picked to play instead of me. I was so gutted I spent the whole game wishing he had a stinker so I could get back into the team the following week.
Eventually I did start playing for the school team again and the following year we won a five-a-side tournament. It was the first trophy I had ever won and it meant a lot to me even though it was only a tiny little thing, six inches high.
We had some really good players in that side. There was a lad called Michael Shildrick, who was our Dennis Bergkamp – he should have really made it as a footballer but didn't. And we had a lad in goal called Patrick McElwee who was a bit like the Sylvester Stallone character in Escape to Victory. He had never really been in goal before but ended up playing there for us and he was brilliant – he was like a cat! He was as hard as nails and used to threaten anyone who came near him, a great character to have in the team.
When it came to having the team picture taken with the trophy, the photographer said to me, 'Lean in, son, you don't want to miss out being on the picture.' But I must have got flustered and ended up leaning the wrong way! When you look at that photo now, I look a mess. Everyone is normal apart from me – I'm leaning so far over it looks like I have had a stroke and am about to collapse.
It was the first team photo I had ever been part of but our strip was like Sunderland's, red and white stripes. As a Boro fan I hated wearing it, as you can imagine. As far as I was concerned, red and white stripes were rubbish.
That was the age when you absolutely loved playing football. For some reason the teachers used to not want you to play if it had been raining. But we were always desperate to play, whatever the weather. I can remember getting the school caretaker's brush to try to sweep away the puddles off the pitch so we could play. In fact we used to love it after it had been raining – at that age, we all felt it was even better when it was muddy and you could do slide tackles.
In my junior school days I played midfield and I used to score goals for fun. Even though I was small, I used to love a tackle. It didn't bother me how big the opposition were. In fact, my thinking was that if I hit the biggest one first then the rest would be scared of me – so I used to go flying into them.
We did have some really good players at St Pius. A few of these lads were playing for Middlesbrough Boys and went on to play for the county. I am certain some of them had trials as well. Middlesbrough seemed to be filled with these good players, that talent was different class.
Some of the lads who were a year older than me went to play for a Sunday League team called the Priory. One day my auntie came back from one of their presentation evenings and started telling me about how massive the trophies were. I am a sucker for a big trophy so that was enough for me – I immediately wanted to know where to sign up for them.
By this time I had moved up to senior school and was playing in the school team there but the idea of playing Sunday league football was totally new to me. I didn't even know pubs had football teams. As far as I was concerned, the idea of playing for two teams – the school team and the Sunday league team – was brilliant. That meant even more chance of winning more trophies, the bigger the better. I really was a trophy-hunter, me!
My secondary school was St Anthony's, which was on its own campus with three other schools below us. We used to always end up fighting with the kids from there – they used to come up the hill and we would chase them off.
For a Catholic school it had more than its fair share of bad lads. In fact, at registration the teacher would go through all the names and sometimes it was a case of, 'He's not here, sir, he's on remand ... no, he's not here either, he's in Borstal.' The teachers were tough too – they used to box your ears for fun. But if you were a decent footballer you would get away with it much more so that was great for me.
To try to get a game for the Priory, I had to meet the guy who ran the team at a place called Saltersgill, which was an estate that felt in my small world like it was about three days away from where I lived.
My dad didn't have a car and there were no buses that went that way so I had to walk. It was a real trek but when I got to the pitch there was no one else there. Not to mention the fact the grass was six inches high, which didn't impress me.
I rang him later and asked him why he had sent me to a pitch with cows on it.
But of course, it was me who had gone to the wrong pitch. They had a game without me, which he told me about in no uncertain terms in his broad Scottish accent. I could barely understand a word he was saying – he was the first of many Scots I have encountered in my football career.
He asked where I lived and what my name was. It might even have been the fact that McDermott was Scottish-sounding that swung it but this giant of a man later came round to my house.
One of the things he asked me was, 'What's your favourite Scottish team, son?' I had to say Celtic because my dad was Celtic-mad. And I sat there praying he wasn't a Rangers fan because if he was I figured that my chances of playing for Priory were gone before I had even kicked a ball.
'Good lad!' he said. 'You'll sign for me – we play in Celtic kit.'
It felt good to play in those green and white hoops. The away kit was all white like Real Madrid because he believed in the idea that it helped you to pick players out more easily.
I got invited down for a trial match the following Sunday at the same place. There was another lad there called Danny Brown who became a good mate of mine over the years. We won something like 4–0 and I think we scored two each so we both got signed up.
Soon we started to sign up various other good players from my school and one or two other schools and before you knew it we had pretty much the best of Middlesbrough Boys.
He really did have a good side. And when we signed Steve Livingstone and his twin brother Andrew we knew we were going to have a great side. They were part of a famous Middlesbrough footballing family because their dad Joe had played for Boro and was Brian Clough's understudy at one time.
We won the league and just about every cup we entered. It was a fantastic time for all of us and the great thing was we stayed together until we were 16- and 17-year-olds.
The players hardly ever changed over that time although the club itself did change. It became part of Marton FC which has gone on to produce all kinds of top players like Jonathan Woodgate, David Wheater, Lee Cattermole and Stewart Downing.
People talk about Wallsend Boys' Club in Newcastle and the number of players they have brought through over the years but I think we produced just as many – when you think of players like Phil Stamp and Stuart Parnaby as well, there has been a real production line of talent from Marton FC.
Steve Livingstone went from our club to sign for Coventry as a teenager and then he went on to Blackburn and Chelsea. In the end he came to Grimsby and stayed with us for ten years. When Grimsby first came in for him there were plenty of other clubs interested but I think what swung it for him was the fact that I was there and we were best mates who had gone back so many years.
Two school friends playing together for the same professional team, we just knew it was going to be a great craic – it was bound to be because we had a fantastic time when we started out playing together as kids in Middlesbrough.
One year, the best players from the Teesside Junior Alliance, which was the league we played in, got chosen to go to Holland for a tournament. It was an amazing experience for us because we flew there – in an actual aeroplane!
I had never even really been on a proper holiday before. For us, if you went to Whitby in a caravan for a fortnight that meant you had made it. Suddenly, here we were on a plane flying from Teesside Airport. You even got a meal during the flight – we couldn't believe it.
Mind you, it was with Dan-Air, which was one of the more cheap and cheerful airlines in those days. I think it had those propellers where you half expected that you would end up winding up the elastic band yourself so we were bricking it a bit!
In Holland they split us up and we were living with local families. That was strange enough because not only were they feeding us what we thought was dodgy food, but they also put me in with a lad from Stockton who I barely knew so he was almost as much like a stranger to me as the locals were.
The Dutch treated us really well, although they always checked to make sure our hands were clean before we were allowed to sit down for meals, which we thought was really odd.
One day they took us to Ajax Football Club to show us the skills that their lads were practising. Christ almighty, they were doing 1,000 keepie-uppies – and we could only do about three! It was another world, we just didn't do all the tricks that they were doing.
But when it came to playing them in a proper eleven v eleven game we battered them. They just weren't used to the more physical, competitive element of the game that we had been brought up on. They had all the techniques but they didn't really play eleven v eleven games at that age.
Looking back, you can see now that theirs is the right way. We were miles behind in terms of technique, even though we beat them that day. The thinking in this country was that if you were too small, forget it. You almost had to be a man even though you were still a boy if you wanted to get on.
No one worked on your technique unless you were really special and had real ability but even then your ball skills weren't really properly nurtured. You didn't get any proper coaching, unfortunately – it was much more a case of 'let's put some jumpers down and have a game of eleven v eleven'.
Playing a game of eleven v eleven is exactly what you want to do as a kid but it's not the way to develop young players and I'm afraid they're still doing things that way to a certain extent in this country.
In that sort of environment, where the physical approach seemed to hold sway, you had to be tough if you weren't the biggest, like me. But I had no fear and led by example. I think that's why I ended up as captain of most teams I played for. I took it upon myself to get stuck in and when the rest of the lads saw that, they thought they had better follow my lead.
I remember playing against Leeds Boys a few times from when I was about 12 onwards and there was a little blond lad playing for them who was a hard little bastard. His shin pads were like mine – they looked huge, like cricket pads.
The thing about him that I noticed was that when they were at home he used to get really stuck in but away from home he didn't fancy it quite so much. So I always made sure I got at him early on when he was at our place. That usually sorted him out for the rest of the game.
He was a good footballer but he was like me in a lot of ways – because of his small size he knew he had to be hard to make up for it. With him playing for Leeds, it certainly seemed to me like he had a little bit of that Billy Bremner spirit in him.
You might have guessed who I'm talking about – it was David Batty, who went on to play for England at the World Cup so he didn't do so badly for himself.
The size thing did get to me sometimes. There was one game I played in which was a county trial, Middlesbrough Boys against Langbaurgh Boys, for the chance to play for the Cleveland county team. They had some very good players but we beat them 4–2. Steve Livingstone scored two and I got two.
At the end of the game, they sat us all down and went through the side for Saturday – and I wasn't in it. I wasn't standing for that so I piped up, 'Sorry, but you've missed my name off.'
The guy asked my name and went down the list again and said, 'No, you're not on it.' I was furious.
'Not on it? Are you kidding me? Were you watching the same game? I just scored two goals and virtually won it for you!'
But the coach said, 'The county team's about big boys, bigger than these. You'll struggle. Sorry, but it's not for you.'
I was so cheesed off, I just went home and cried my eyes out, I did, honestly. It wasn't so much that I hadn't been picked but what he had said to me. I was gutted because I started to think this was really going to hold me back in football.
My dad must have seen how upset I was so he screwed a bar across the doorway at home and had me doing stretching exercises! It sounds funny now but I was prepared to try anything to see if it worked. So I would be there hanging from it for ages. I didn't grow at all but I ended up with the longest arms in town! I looked like a monkey – my arms could reach down to my shins.
I had the bright idea of doing it the other way round hanging off it by my feet but my dad soon pointed out that was no good because the blood would just rush to my head.
We tried everything, all kinds of other ways of trying to get me to grow a bit – stretching exercises up on my tiptoes, drinking stout, eating steaks, you name it. It must have cost my mam and dad a fortune. But nothing worked. I had a metabolism like a greyhound – whatever I ate just went flying straight off me again and I certainly didn't grow any taller.
It was a big disappointment that I didn't get in the county team but looking back, none of those lads in that group made it as a pro apart from me and Steve Livingstone. I suppose that shows that your ability does come through in the long run more than the size you are.
Now that I'm coaching, when I pick a side, I make sure I pick the best players regardless of size. People sometimes try to tell me the best players are not always the right players if they're not big enough but I won't accept that. No matter how big he is, if he's good enough, he'll get in.
It happens in league football even to this day. Teams, especially in the lower divisions, go for brute strength, pace and physique. They often play from back to front and think they can manage without having any football-playing midfielders in the centre of the pitch so they go for powerhouses instead.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from John McDermott by John McDermott, Simon Ashberry. Copyright © 2013 John McDermott,. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword,
1 The Longest Arms In Town,
2 A Saveloy For A Nose,
3 Bullies,
4 Morning, Sergeant Major,
5 A Clean Pair Of Shorts,
6 Harry The Haddock,
7 Up The Football League We Go,
8 Boiled Eggs And Peach Schnapps,
9 It's Only A Scratch,
10 Not So Mickey Mouse,
11 You'll Need A Lifejacket, Son,
12 Ali Bomaye!,
13 Bombing On,
14 Crazy Creatine Gang,
15 Paying Peanuts,
16 Bursting The Boil,
17 The Final Curtain,
18 Twelve-Inch Elvis Quiff,
19 Frozen Out,
20 Excuse Me But It's His Do,
21 Learning Curve,
Appendix – Macca's Choice,
Plates,
Copyright,