From a Field to Anfield

Nick Tanner

Description

From A Field to Anfield is the inspirational story of Nick Tanner's against-the-odds rise from the uncompromising grassroots football scene in Bristol to the glamour of then-champions Liverpool. Nick's story is not one of spending years mollycoddled in an academy system and having success handed to him, but of graft, days spent working in a factory before making it to the top, and being sold to Bristol Rovers by non-league Mangotsfield United for a couple of floodlight bulbs. Nick was a member of the last Liverpool squad to win the title, was in the stands at Hillsborough in 1989, and scored a Merseyside derby goal at Goodison Park, so his tales naturally include Anfield legends and A-list events with Kenny Dalglish and the rest. Equally, though, his is an inspirational story for any budding footballer about just how far hard work and relentless dedication can take you if you are willing to put in the yards. Nick also opens up on the personal impact of his career-ending injury, along with his various ongoing struggles.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785313516
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2017
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Nick Tanner, 2017
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-307-3 eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-351-6
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Contents
Foreword by Kenny Dalglish
Prologue: There s a chap called Kenny on the phone
1. You never know who s watching
2. Never forget your roots
3. On the factory floor
4. The manager I enjoyed playing for the most
5. One of the lads
6. Going pro
7. Tanner, earn your money
From the Boss, by Bobby Gould
8. Microwaved toast
9. The north/south divide
10. From a field to Anfield
11. On the outside looking in
From the Boss, by Phil Thompson
12. Hotel life and the early days
13. 15 April 1989
14. London calling
15. Still waiting
16. Opportunity knocks
From the Boss, by Graeme Souness
17. Life in the first team
18. Elsie Tanner s Rovers return
19. Here s what you could have won
20. Goalkeepers are different
21. The end of the road
22. My best Bristol Rovers XI
23. My best Liverpool XI
24. I m managing
25. Life beyond football
26. The greatest man I have known
27. Win or lose, on the booze
Photographs
Dedications
Nick Tanner: For my late Dad Dennis, who gave me the inspiration to write this book. Thanks also to my Mum Mary, son William and brother Martyn. You were always there for me, encouraging me every step of the way, and I hope I have made you all proud.
Steve Cotton: For Roxy and Eva. Thank you for your unwavering support and patience over the past few months.
Foreword by Kenny Dalglish
N ICK has since said that when I phoned him at his parents house in the summer of 1988, and asked him if he wanted to leave Bristol Rovers to come and join Liverpool, he didn t believe it was really me at first. Unfortunately for Nick, though, it was!
Ron Yeats had recommended Nick to me, having watched him toward the end of the previous season, and we had a conversation with Gerry Francis, who was his manager at Rovers. We actually ended up giving them a wee bit more than he was asking for the transfer. Gerry was looking for 12,000 and we said, Let s not be silly over a few grand; we ll give you 20,000 for the lad. I think he was just trying to help out a young player by not asking too much in case we decided against pursuing the transfer, but we felt 20,000 was a good bit of business - and so it proved for someone who went on to play more than 50 times for the Liverpool first team.
We thought he was a good, strong player and a good competitor. Every time you sign somebody, you hope they will make it to the first team, and Nick had to be patient at first but he worked hard, played well for the reserves and got his chance. He would have played more, too, but you can t play when you re injured, and unfortunately Nick s career was cut short in his late 20s, denying him the opportunity to make many more appearances for the club. Looking back, though, to have got someone who went on to make nearly 60 appearances for Liverpool in that period for 20,000 was a sound investment on our part.
As with life, nothing is guaranteed in football, and injury struck for Nick at a time when he had been playing regularly for the club. At least he got the opportunity of coming to Liverpool and having a chance to make a contribution to the club s success, as he first did in the 1989/90 season, when he played four times in our title-winning team, before going on to establish himself later on.
Nick came on to our radar in the way a lot of players did: we had scouts out looking for certain things, and in his case the reports that came back from Ron were very positive. We did our homework, and the conclusion was that we felt he had a chance, so that was it - we went ahead and signed him, which for him meant leaving his hometown and moving north.
He lived in a hotel at first, which does not necessarily make for a smooth transition when you are moving away from home for the first time, but as he moved into a house and became more settled off the field, the more he started to prove himself on it, doing well for Phil Thompson s reserve team and then getting some chances with the first team.
If you look over Nick s Liverpool career in the context of the club as a whole, there was probably nothing outstanding about it, but nor was there anything disastrous. He was a good, steady player - an honest and dedicated player, who adapted to a new position on the field and gave everything to stay in the team. The best teams don t have the 11 best players - you need people to come in and do a job, and complement those around them, and Nick worked hard to ensure he could be that kind of player for Liverpool. If you play in defence, you have to enjoy defending and he played as if he did enjoy that side of the game, even when he wasn t necessarily in his preferred position. Nick certainly doesn t have anything to worry about in terms of how he acquitted himself during his time at the club - the fact he spent five years there, and would have been there longer but for injury, proves that.
It cannot have been easy making the move from the Third Division, and coming from a club and city where he was established and knew everyone, especially arriving into a squad that had been so successful over such a long period of time. Fortunately for everyone, though, it turned out well - and, for 20,000, I don t think anyone could ever say Nick didn t provide value for money as a Liverpool player.
Kenny Dalglish, April 2017
Prologue
There s a chap called Kenny on the phone
A S personal turning points go, the summer of 1988 could hardly have been bigger. I had made my name at my hometown club, Bristol Rovers, in what was then the Third Division, and they had offered me another year s contract on the same money. For a lot of players that would have been straightforward: same cash, hometown club, playing in the first team at the age of 23 - Where do I sign? I didn t really get on with the manager, Gerry Francis, though, so I started to look elsewhere.
Torquay United came in with an offer of 10,000, which Rovers seemed to accept without a great deal of hesitation, and I soon found myself in conversation with Torquay s manager, the former Tottenham Hotspur and England left-back Cyril Knowles, who got straight to the point. I was a single lad back then - and Cyril knew that, so he tried to play on that to tempt me down to Devon. Come and live down on the English Riviera, son, he told me. There are loads of young female students here. They ll be right up your street. You ll love it down here. I have to admit, it did sound good and I was very tempted, even though Torquay were in the old Fourth Division and it would have meant dropping a league.
It was a serious offer, and I was still giving it some proper thought - with Cyril s words fresh in my mind - when the phone rang at my parents house. I was still living with them at that point and my parents weren t into football at all, so when my mum, Mary, answered the phone she certainly didn t recognise the famous voice on the end of the line. She told my dad, Dennis, to get me and he shouted up to me, Nick, there s a chap called Kenny on the phone for you.
That was in the days of having one phone in the house, with no mobiles or anything like that, so all I was worried about when the phone rang was that somebody might be ringing up to have a moan about something I had done when I was out drinking, or that some girl s father was ringing to ask why his daughter had got in at three in the morning. But the phone was passed to me and when I heard the voice on the other end of the line, I naturally assumed it was one of the Rovers lads taking the piss.
Kenny Dalglish here, went the Scottish voice. I want to sign you for Liverpool.
Of course I didn t believe him at first. I knew Liverpool had been watching one of my team-mates, Gary Penrice, but I had no idea they held any interest whatsoever in signing me. These days, if a club such as Liverpool were watching a lad at a club such as Rovers, it would be all over social media, agents would be talking, and the player would be well aware of the interest.
Quite literally the first I knew of Liverpool being keen on me, though, was when the manager - the great Kenny Dalglish - rang my parents house and told me he wanted me to sign for the champions. Three years earlier, I had just quit my job at British Aerospace to join Rovers full-time from Mangotsfield United, and now I was on the phone to Kenny, with a choice to make: Torquay or Liverpool? The discussion soon turned to money and of course there was no agent on the scene to do my negotiating for me.
I was quoted in the Western Daily Press a few days later as saying, It certainly hasn t trebled my wages at Rovers as some people have suggested. I wish it had - and so did my dad. Kenny asked how much I wanted. I was on 220 a week at Rovers and being daft I wondered if he would stretch to 300. Of course, Nick of course, came the reply. I was more than happy with that and could not wait to tell my dad the good news, but the significance of what was happening didn t really mean too much to him at first. In fact, his initial response was, What are they paying you, son?
Being a hard