Scouting For Moyes

Les Padfield

Description

All football clubs have scouts: men (for they are almost always men) who watch teams to check how they play, who watch players to see how good they are. Les Padfield, though, is not your typical scout. Not many scouts are also published poets! A Londoner, he was a schoolboy footballer of great promise but then chose to become a teacher of Physical Education and English. He became a scout when, having been persuaded to attend a match at Millwall, he met an old friend, John Sainty - the chief scout at Preston North End. This is his fascinating and unusual story.

Informations

• Publié par: Sportsbooks
• Date de parution: 21 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781907524097
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Title page
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter 1     August is Approaching
Chapter 2     School
Chapter 3     The Lions’ Den
Chapter 4     Palace v Tottenham
Chapter 5     July
Chapter 6     North End… Baggies
Chapter 7     Brazil v Sweden
Chapter 8     Kick-off Times
Chapter 9     Early Blues
Chapter 10    Werder Bremen v Nurnberg
Chapter 11    Back in the Big Time
Chapter 12    End of August
Chapter 13    Scouts
Chapter 14    Gaps
Chapter 15    …And Managers
Chapter 16    October 3
Chapter 17    Leyton Orient v Gillingham
Chapter 18    Breakthrough
Chapter 19    Lest We Forget
Chapter 20    Bolton v Portsmouth
Chapter 21    Trick and Treat
Chapter 22    Stories
Chapter 23    Mr Brown
Chapter 24    Telling Colin
Chapter 25    In and Out of Africa
Chapter 26    Berwick Rangers v Stenhousemuir
Chapter 27    The Horse’s Mouth
Chapter 28    Livingston, I Presume
Chapter 29    FGR
Chapter 30    Ground Rules
Chapter 31    Oh Danny Boy…
Chapter 32    Tottenham Hotspur v Chelsea
Chapter 33    Something Old, Something New
Chapter 34    QPR v Tranmere Rovers
Chapter 35    Christmas Cards
Chapter 36    Out with the Old…
Chapter 37    Mixed Feelings
Chapter 38    France v Nigeria
Chapter 39    The Bleak Midwinter
Chapter 40    Offers and Calls
Chapter 41    Fads and Fashions
Chapter 42    Prince of Portsmouth
Chapter 43    GM Crops
Chapter 44    Room with a View – Nearly
Chapter 45    Portsmouth v Reading
Chapter 46    Winter Break
Chapter 47    Different Customs
Chapter 48    Millwall v Leeds United
Chapter 49    Stuck at the Withdean
Chapter 50    Arsenal v Blackburn
Chapter 51    Down Among the Dead Men
Chapter 52    Pyramid Selling
Chapter 53    Visit
Chapter 54    Orient v Scunthorpe
Chapter 55    Steve’s Story
Chapter 56    Life at the Palace
Chapter 57    Hearts v Heads
Chapter 58    Extremes
Chapter 59    Shoots of Spring
Chapter 60    Croatia Zagreb v Man Utd
Chapter 61    Wise Words
Chapter 62    Just When You Thought…
Chapter 63    E-Mail
Chapter 64    Hungary
Chapter 65    Chalk and Cheesecake
Chapter 66    Ash Sunday
Chapter 67    Crouch End Rovers
Chapter 68    Last Hammerings
Chapter 69    Fond Farewells
Chapter 70    The Italian Disconnection
Chapter 71    Bringing it On
Chapter 72    Pot of Gold…
Chapter 73    Hola!
Chapter 74    Bafana Bafana
Chapter 75    Germany Through and Through
Chapter 76    Sideshow
Chapter 77    A Wing and a Prayer
Chapter 78    At the Rainbow’s End
About the Author
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to the following people who have helped in various ways in the compilation of this book. No blame for any mistakes, inaccuracies, imaginative embellishments or complete desperate falsifications attaches to any of them.
Justyn Barnes; Keith Burt; Vas and Lisa Christo-doulou; Terry Darracott; Steve Dawson; Sven-Goran Eriksson; Tom Graham; Alan Harper; Colin Harvey; Steve Jenkins; Steve Leatherbarrow; Cliff Portwood; Vince Nacey; Greg Wildigg; Robert Wilson and Livingston FC; friends and family members.
FOREWORD
Les Padfield has worked as a scout for me at five different clubs over the years, going through highs and lows, promotions and rescue acts, providing team assessments, player reports, suggesting who I might and might not buy. I’ve told him regularly that if he’d done a better job I might be England manager now. He’s told me that if I’d paid him more he would have. Having read this book he’ll be lucky to get any payment at all in the future.
Scouting is an aspect of football that gets little coverage, but a knowledgeable, reliable and conscientious scout can be a great asset to a club. I look forward to finding one! Stories in this book illustrate some of the ups and downs of the job as well as giving some insights below the surface of this crazy, compelling, chaotic game called Football. The chapters are short enough to hold the attention of even an Australian and when one doesn’t work it’s quickly subbed by another. Ideal to pick up when the ITV adverts interrupt the coverage. Enjoy.
Gary Megson
Chapter 1
AUGUST IS APPROACHING
The long, empty, aimless days of late May and June and July are receding. The boring bare-top barbecues, the warm walks by the rippling river, the compensating thrills of Test match cricket are turning tail as the spectre of winter winds rises up on the horizon. The temperature is dropping. A new season is beginning. Meaning and purpose are returning to life.
Bolton have stayed up.
Megson is still in a job, at least for another four or five games. Colin Harvey, an Everton legend, remains the chief scout, though he still refuses to employ an interpreter of Scouse. And the lovely Liz, who organises tickets and I’m certain really runs the club, still brightens up days with her cheery Lancashire twang at the end of the phone.
I’ve devoured the fixture lists, highlighting my likely match reports. Holidays and trips away for the next nine months need to be planned carefully to coincide with fallow periods. Family weddings, anniversaries, christenings have to be negotiated with tact. Funerals may prove more difficult. The newspapers are gradually tilting the balance back from golf and tennis and cricket to the oncoming season. I relocate my notebooks, my diagrams, my player database, my long-johns, scour the internet for the latest transfers and sackings and gossip. I can feel the tension in my toes already. The sap is rising. The virgin season waits to be disrobed…
Here I come!
Chapter 2
SCHOOL
‘Sir, sir, is it true you’re a scout for a Premiership team?’
I’ve only been at this school for three days, my sixth post-retirement job, and suddenly my street-cred is in the ascendancy.
‘Mr Evans says that you’re a football scout, sir. Is it true?’
I smile and nod. ‘That’s right Chris, I am.’
‘Which team, sir? Man U or Liverpool or Chelsea?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Arsenal?’
‘Actually, it’s Bolton. Bolton Wanderers.’
I see the curtain of disappointment slowly descending over the group of faces that have gathered round expectantly.
‘Oh,’ Chris says politely before turning away with visible indifference.
‘But I do get to see some really good matches,’ I add quickly, trying to rescue some credibility. Un-successfully.
Another voice chimes in. ‘Do you support Bolton then, sir?’
‘No,’ I laugh desperately, ‘I wish I did. I support a London team.’
‘West Ham?’
‘Lower division.’
There’s a brief pause for thought. ‘Charlton? Millwall?’
‘Actually it’s Orient. Leyton Orient.’ There’s a hiatus in proceedings. No point in saying any more. A helpful voice chimes in: ‘My mate’s dad used to support Leyton Orient.’ I am thankful for small mercies. ‘But he said they were crap and now he supports West Ham.’ My lips are squeezed tightly together to hold back the tears.
‘So, you work for Bolton and support Leyton Orient?’ I can hear the mixture of contempt and disbelief in Chris’s voice.
‘Well, you know Chris, win some, lose some, as they say,’ as the crowd begins to drift away. A parting voice adds, ‘Don’t win too many with those two though, sir.’
I’m a marked man.
It could be worse. A few years ago it would have been, ‘Er, Stockport County’, with attractive fixtures like Barnet v Rochdale to watch and invite a guest to. Spells at Southampton, then Stoke City, West Brom and Nottingham Forest – all beacons on the path to the Reebok.
After a few weeks, when I’ve taken Billy Gleeson to watch Arsenal play his beloved Chelsea, the kids come round and start talking to me again. It’s the magic of the universal game. There must be a few places in the world, like Kashmir or the Shetland Islands or the whole of North America, where the ice can’t be broken by a chip to the head or mention of Ronaldinho, but with a few horribly balanced people as exceptions, the Esperanto of sport is an open channel to communication in most continents and certainly most schools.
Even the headmaster of St Olave’s tries to get in on the act. He’s really a rugby man, though he has boyhood affinities to Oxford United, but talk of Arsenal and Tottenham and the like has made him keen to go to a match. I promise to take him sometime, enduring a few sarcastic staffroom comments about brownie points in the process.
Shortly after, I am invited to the Governors’ Garden Party.
Chapter 3
THE LIONS’ DEN

2 October 1996
It started with a chance meeting one Wednesday night at Millwall.
My mate Bob, an ex-pro and a feted coach down in Sussex, had managed to get a couple of tickets for the Millwall game against high-flying Stockport. It was a while since I’d been to a game, the mania of the ’60s and ’70s having been watered down to almost invisibility by the cynicism of Leeds United, the fences that turned grounds into prisons and the pathetic performances of the England side for thirty years with their mediocre players who seemed a million miles away from Hurst, Moore and co. But it was a freebie and Bob was driving.
I was amazed, though I shouldn’t have been. I remembered the old Den and its clientele – I’d even played there before going off to college. Since time immemorial the Millwall faithful have been as pleasant and welcoming to visitors as Baghdad would be if George Bush appeared there as a stand-up comic. A new and more luxurious setting seemed not to have impressed many into improving Neanderthal manners one iota, adding to my conviction that Communism is rubbish. I was not surprised to find the same degree of hostility and stupidity that I recalled of old. But tonight we were in the hospitality section, not on the terraces behind the goals. And it was the guys in suits and ties, having just got off the train from the City, who were doing even more effing and blinding – or maybe just using more extensive adjectives to describe everything that moved outside and sometimes inside a blue shirt. These weren’t dockers any more. The new breed of Millwall higher thinkers probably worked in solicitor