Chapter Two
I bail early from the post match title-winning party. I’m in the mood for a wake.
Joy and elation soon dissolve into anger; my hatred for Duncan reaches new levels by the time I wander into one of the hospitality suites at Wolston’s stadium, Lowfield Road, for our ‘celebration’ dinner.
I feel robbed. The euphoria of scoring the winner lasting barely the time it took to reach the centre-circle, right about when the substitutes’ board with ‘number nine’ appeared.
Come in number nine. Your time is up.
Okay. I know what you’re thinking.
Poor old Dave Shaw, is that violins I can hear in the background? Look at the bigger picture. Bop wanted to tighten up things in midfield, run the clock down.
Fine. I understand all that. I don’t need a refresher from the coaching manual. But why me?
Didn’t my goal prove once and for all I was over my ankle injury?
Bopper put his arms around me back in the dressing room, maybe the fact I was sat there forcing a smile through a grimace had given the game away.
I listened as he explained his reasons. We’d won a title. I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I was being self-centred and selfish.
Dave Shaw to a tee; the individual in the team.
So be it then, guilty as charged, but sat in the midst of all the bedlam I felt detached. Alone even.
Wolston’s hierarchy turns up to mark our achievement. Chairman Bryan Roe, first team manager Mark Peacock and Rob Duncan sit at the top table, the mastermind behind the latest triumph smugly holding court. This is another feather in his cap.
I pick at a five course meal. Mum and Dad probably putting their offspring’s dark mood down to sheer exhaustion as the last dregs of adrenaline drain from my body.
Duncan’s after-dinner speech is the final straw. Not for me. I make my excuses to Mum and Dad as the Scot stands to address the gathering and tell them I need some air. A favourite bolt hole beckons.
I manage to sweet talk a security guard into letting me wander out of the function room and through an emergency exit door leading to the stadium concourse. He buys the same cover story as my parents. I make my way down one of the gangways from the Sky Blue Stand, across the gravel track that borders the pitch and up the emergency steps into the West Stand behind one of the goals.
I want to sit in our family seats at the front of the upper tier. The same place Dad took me to watch Liverpool. The place we had season tickets practically every year since.
All those happy memories, maybe the odd bad one as well, this was Wolston after all. Those classic games, goals, songs, celebrations.
It was nearly midnight. The pitch is in total darkness. Only the lights from the hospitality suite in the Sky Blue Stand illuminate the ground on the near side.
Just me and 25,000 empty seats with my thoughts for company. I look down at my watch as the old day disappears.
A new dawn. A fresh start. I tried so hard not to let anything distract me in the build up to Arsenal, but now what? I peer out into the vast darkness. Right then I just don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to run out on that beautiful pitch, to live the dream and emulate my idols. It was within touching distance but still a million miles away. I bury my head in my hands to try and block out the bad thoughts.
Rob Duncan has all the answers and he isn’t telling. He told us that prior to Arsenal. No distractions. Just concentrate on the football.
Well, that was easier said than done, chief.
Dad tried to catch Bop off guard over the previous month or so in a bid to stop the badgering from his anxious son. All the academy coaches were well-versed in swerving interrogations from loved ones. Vows of silence just fuelled the rumours.
Rovers were looking at bringing in a couple of Welsh lads, three young Danes, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. The club did have strong Scandinavian links. I knew that much myself after playing junior tours over there most summers, but I couldn’t remember any stand out strikers.
Certainly none better than me.
It was pointless even trying to second guess Duncan. Wolston could look anywhere across Britain and abroad. Competition was fierce. The fact they were a Championship club competing against the bigger boys was actually a strength not a weakness. The facilities at The Lodge are second to none; every academy side we’d ever played at our place says the same. Wolston’s training complex was built when the club pushed the boat out to be more than just mere Premier League cannon fodder.
That gamble backfired but the infrastructure is still in place and Peacock was prepared to give youth a chance. How many teenagers can break into Man United’s or Liverpool’s first team squad? Elbow aside Premier League winners, Champions League winners, full internationals, players at the very top of the tree?
One or two exceptional talents, maybe, but not many. Any 16-year-old with his feet on the ground and parents prepared to look at the bigger picture may get their heads turned by a scholarship offer from Wolston.
Come and learn your trade out of the limelight, get an early first team chance and plenty of senior games to develop before the Premier League clubs come knocking. That’s if you hadn’t already got there with Wolston.
I had no interest in playing for the big boys. Dave Shaw wants to star at Lowfield Road, in front of his family, in that sky blue shirt and score bagfuls of goals at the West End.
A shaft of light appears from the same emergency door in the Sky Blue Stand. I’d been out here for a good hour. The title party must be coming to an end and someone is embarking on a search and rescue mission.
The earlier rain had returned, swirling around the deserted stands as I make my way down the steps.
I feel strangely optimistic for the first and only time this evening, like I’ve forced myself to accept the worst.
Wolston don’t want you? Okay, someone will.
I proved I can be a professional footballer and whatever Duncan, Bopper or anyone else thinks of my Arsenal performance, I made the difference. Title or no title, party or no party, it was all down to me.
I was deluding myself to think I could flick a switch and be the player I was before my injury, scoring goals like they were going out of fashion. Stupid really, pure bravado on my part.
When it didn’t happen instantly I panicked, but I delivered yesterday when it mattered, when the pressure was on.
The final make-or-break showdown with Duncan is weeks away. Wolston’s academy chief needs time to pour over his dossiers and meet Bop and the rest of the academy coaches. For me there is another priority. Exam revision.
I can’t believe I’ve just thought that.
With Arsenal out of the way I promise Mum no more football. Since Christmas it was a struggle to get the balance right between school, training, homework, bed, then playing matches at the weekends. Press repeat and go again on my own personal treadmill.
Maths and Chemistry were going to be tough subjects but I planned to cream German. My teacher, Frau Lewent, was good at convincing me I had to learn the language for when her beloved Hamburg got in touch. Personally I was hoping for Bayern Munich.
Welcome to my new reality. A twilight world with no football and no fun. School during the day. Study at night.
Tonight it was History. I glance up from a text book on World War Two, reach across my bedside table and flick the calendar over a page. April 30, Duncan, The Lodge. Next to the message I’d scrawled a question mark in red felt tip. In my mind it should’ve been a tick.
Just over a week away now and my mind is drifting from the Battle of Britain to Sergeant Major Duncan.
My Rovers’ FA Cup-winning screensaver pops up. Peacock, skipper Brian Killen, Burrows, Peake and the rest with the trophy at Wembley, exhausted but ecstatic as they pose for pictures.
I lie back on my bed, close my eyes and indulge in my favourite fantasy. Me in that team photo with a winner’s medal clutched tightly in my right-hand.
&nbs
p; ‘David, can you come down a minute.’
My old man’s voice pulls me away from the lads. I’ll catch up with them on the open top bus tour. The Blitz can wait for another 30 minutes as well.
I move my laptop to one side, swing my legs over the bed, open the bedroom door, and head across the landing.
Did I forget to leave the recycling bin out that morning? Again. No, no, I definitely remember seeing that fit neighbour heading to work first thing.
I catch sight of the back of a guy being ushered into our living room by Dad as I reach the top of the stairs.
‘Hello, young man,’ says the stranger who hauls himself out of Dad’s favourite armchair to greet me after I bolt down the staircase.
‘Hello.’
‘My name’s Nigel Evatt. I work for Chapel United football club.’
Chapel United. A Championship team, like Rovers, based in the north-east. United had made the play-offs last season. I watched them win at Lowfield Road to clinch a play-off spot. Their travelling fans celebrated by spilling onto the pitch. The East Terrace was always packed when they came here.
Why was someone from Chapel United sitting in our living room?
‘David, I’ve been speaking to your father over the past few weeks and he kindly invited me to come and speak to you in person this evening…to talk about the future. Your future.’
I half-turn to glare at Dad. I’m sure I’d just heard the words ‘spoken over the last few weeks’.
Have I missed something here?
‘David, your mother wanted you to concentrate on your exam revision.’
My scowl clearly produced the desired effect.
I perch on the arm of our sofa. Maybe Dad was right. I hardly needed this grenade thrown into my exam prep.
‘How’s the study?’
‘I’ll be glad when I get the first one over. Maths in a fortnight. I hate maths.’
‘You and me both,’ laughs the imposter in our midst. ‘I can just about use a calculator but when my children want help with algebra I tell them to ask Mrs Evatt.
‘Good luck with the exams, David. They really are every bit as important as football at this moment in your life. That’s my biggest regret. I wish I’d seen mine through.’
Evatt looks over at my old man.
‘Left school before taking my ‘O’ levels you see, Mr Shaw. That’s what they were called in those days. I’m afraid I was in too much of a rush to turn professional.’
Dad had been the same, straight into work at 16 with no qualifications. Shaw senior appears firmly onside as the conversation heads down memory lane about their shared life experiences. Evatt was a regular in Everton’s first team, capped by Northern Ireland in his teens, like his son a centre forward with his whole career ahead of him, until a bad knee injury on the eve of the World Cup in Spain.
Now there’s one problem with my old man’s football memories. They always contain Wolston as a reference point. Get him on something that happened to an obscure South American football team and the story would somehow end up back at Rovers.
Dad is recalling a goal Evatt smashed in from the halfway line against Rovers at Lowfield. One of the best he’d ever seen.
Evatt edges forward in his seat. The guy looks almost embarrassed. It’s going to take more than that to impress me. I’ve never heard of him, way before my time. He’s just some grey-haired old man sat in our living room.
‘You’re too kind, Mrs Shaw.’
Mum appears with a tray of biscuits and tea. The best china, the stuff we only used at Christmas or for special occasions. This was a bit much.
He’s not royalty, is he?
Evatt is being welcomed into our house like a long lost relative.
‘Well David, I’m sure you’re more than a little puzzled as to the purpose of my visit?’
Evatt rests a digestive on his saucer and gently places his cup on the coffee table.
Too right, fella. Why don’t you cut to the chase here?
‘I work for Chapel United’s academy as the club’s head of recruitment. We have local chaps out and about watching junior matches every week, every season basically, and they file reports to me which get fed into our database.’
Still not impressed. Rob Duncan probably has spies spread far and wide as well. Every club needs a scouting network. The only difference is where you looked.
Clubs like Wolston and Chapel will focus on talent closer to home rather than trying to compete with bigger rivals casting their nets worldwide.
‘We’ve known about you for quite a while. We’ve been monitoring your progress at Wolston. How’s the ankle by the way?’
Whoa. Now he definitely has my attention.
‘Yeah. No problem, Mr Evatt. Thanks for asking,’ I mumble in reply.
‘Good. I know from my own career what bad injuries can do. As your Dad rightly says it robbed me of a chance to play in a World Cup. Back then the medical treatment was nowhere near as advanced as it is today.’
Fascinating stuff Mr Evatt, sorry about that and all, but can we move this back to me?
I was beginning to lose my patience.
‘What a fantastic goal against Arsenal the other week; such an epic game. Take it from someone who knows, you’re a natural finisher.’
‘You were there?’
‘Oh yes. There were quite a few of us at that game. Some very talented lads on show that day.
‘Now tell me. David. Is it right you haven’t been offered a scholarship contract yet by Wolston?’
Bingo. It took a while but we finally get there after the tea and biscuits and small talk.
So many questions were bouncing around me head but I realise one thing, Evatt had did his homework. He knew about my injury, my goals, even my contract situation; or lack of.
Hang on. Duncan. Should I be having this conversation?
What would Wolston think if they knew I was talking to another Championship club, or any other club for that matter? Not that this little gathering was my idea, you understand, Rob. What the hell was my old man thinking inviting him into our house in the first place? Without even consulting me?
‘It’s okay, David. I know it must be a lot to take in. Don’t worry.’
Evatt senses my awkwardness. Or maybe it was the grinding noise from my brain.
‘My understanding of the current situation at Wolston is some of your team mates have already been offered academy deals.’
That snippet was like letting a water cannon off inside my head. Carnage.
‘Sorry Mr Evatt,’ I say. I can hear my voice wavering. ‘Could you repeat that?’
I must have misheard. It sounded distinctly like he’d just said Duncan had already started cherry picking his assets?
‘The captain, Goddard, along with another boy, I believe have already signed. I spoke to the Goddard family after the Arsenal match and they told me Rovers had already offered their son a scholarship.’
Dad, kick this joker out of our house now and get straight on the phone to Rob Duncan.
What was happening here? Was Duncan selecting his chosen few from Wolston’s championship-winning squad before sifting through the rejects bin?
‘It’s my understanding the club is close to signing at least three or four more.’
Four. Maths might not have been my favourite subject, but even I could work out that left only a small number of scholarships. Wolston had never taken on more than nine new scholars each intake since winning their last academy title.
Trivia like that was colliding for space inside my throbbing head over recent weeks alongside Periodic tables and the Allied air war. This guy appears to have a hot line to the Glaswegian.
More uncomfortable pauses, Evatt is obviously used to silent impasses in his line of work.
‘Don’t be surprised David. It’s a very small pool of talent with a lot of clubs fighting for the same young players every year. I’m afraid at our level the game is terribly cut-throat. The ol
d saying is so true, information equals power. People talk. Everybody knows everybody’s business in this day and age with all the technology available.
‘It’s not like the old times. When I first started after hanging up my boots you could still unearth gems playing in the back streets. Less and less boys and girls play the game nowadays. I know from my own children’s lives there are far too many other distractions.’
Dad was nodding in agreement. He’d struck a chord on that particular topic.
‘Your father tells me how much it means for you to play for Rovers. I know because I had the same feeling towards my club.’
Evatt is opting for another dip into nostalgia to break the impasse.
The former Evertonian grew up a red on Merseyside, the first team I’d ever watched at Lowfield Road.
I can hear the passion in his voice. He speaks from the heart. I can feel that. He understands what it means to have a deep love for your club. It doesn’t matter he played in a different era, he knew exactly how I am feeling and what a huge wrench it would be to turn my back on Rovers.
The truth is I want to be a professional footballer, but I’m greedy, I want to be a Wolston player. It isn’t about the money, the cars, the fame, not even medals.
Okay, I’m lying. It wasn’t only about the material things that come with being a footballer. There’s something much deeper driving me on.
Wolston will never challenge the big boys. I know that even at 16. A club of our size can only hope to tread water in the Premier League, maybe enjoy a decent cup run now and again - like the best day in our history.
The establishment can dream of winning Premier League titles, mixing it every year in the Champions League with Europe’s finest.
None of that matters to me. Wolston is my world, my life.
‘David, Chapel United wants you.’
Evatt’s offer jolts me back into the present.
‘I think you have great potential. The club I work for wants to get back in the Premier League but, like many, many others, we can only do that by investing in young players. We’d like to offer you a two year scholarship contract.’
I look at Mum and Dad for reassurance.
Do I need to answer right here and now? Was I going to make the biggest decision of my life perched on our sofa in front of a bloke who 45 minutes ago I didn’t know from Adam?
They both smile back. I should be elated. This guy, who I’d never set eyes on before, never even heard of, is offering me the chance of a first step on the ladder. The problem is it’s not the right ladder.
‘Mr Evatt I’ve got a meeting next week with Wolston’s academy chief and...’
‘Yes, I understand that David,’ Evatt cuts me off, probably afraid of what he is about to hear, ‘the last thing I want tonight is to rush you or your family into a snap decision. Take your time. Weigh up your options. I’d do exactly the same in your situation. I just felt it was important to come and meet you in person before that meeting to make it clear how much we want you to be part of Chapel’s future.
‘Football is still my life after all these decades. I played to a decent level, coached some good players and scouted many more who have gone on to enjoy fantastic careers. I believe I know the game, I know what it takes to be a footballer and in my humble opinion you have the raw ingredients to make it.’
Man, I am loving this. Okay, he is laying it on a bit thick with the salesman’s pitch but I would have had to put a gun to Duncan’s head to get even a ‘well done, laddie.’ At least that’s how it felt.
Maybe Evatt is telling me what I want to hear. He knew about my upcoming Wolston meeting and was pulling out all the stops, but it is a great delivery.
Mum looks ready to stand up and applaud. Not that she’s biased when it comes to her son.
Mr Evatt seems the total opposite to Rob Duncan. He had turned up with the carrot rather than the stick to persuade me. Just to hear I am talented enough to become a professional is great. I’m not kidding myself, there is a long road ahead but Chapel United is prepared to take a punt.
Evatt is morphing from a complete stranger to a mentor with each warm eulogy about Dave Shaw.
Now he moves onto the small print with Mum and Dad. Chapel’s scholars live in purpose-built lodgings at the club’s training base. He’s talking about educational opportunities, tie ups with a local sports college. All the right buttons to press with Mrs Shaw.
Then the invite to tour the club and academy facilities after my exams. It all sounds too good to be true.
Hold on a second. Just rewind that last bit.
Did he say ‘living in purpose-built lodgings?’ Until that moment it never even dawned on me. Playing for Chapel means moving home, leaving family and friends behind, heading to the opposite end of the country where I know no one and no one knows me.
The only time I’d been away before was on short summer tours with Rovers or school trips; like that Swiss school exchange a couple of years ago when I got into trouble with Ray Yap for breaking our curfew and was grounded for the last two days.
Or the football tour to Blackpool one Easter when Marcus Fox broke his bed diving off the wardrobe in the guesthouse and slept on the floor rather than own up to the coach. Great trips, cracking stories, but boy I was always glad to get home to Mum’s cooking, my own bed and our television remote.
Now my safe, secure bubble was in danger of bursting. Like going from being the big fish to small fry at a new school.
Evatt indulges in polite small talk about places to visit around Wolston as he shakes hands with my parents in the hallway.
He’s slick, I’ll give him that.
The guy hands Dad a business card.
‘Young man, it’s been a pleasure to meet you and your family tonight. Thanks for inviting me into your home.’
‘Thank you Mr Evatt.’ It was nothing. No, really, it was nothing, as I try to suppress the sarcasm in my voice.
‘David, you’ve got one of the biggest decisions of your life to make. I’ve given your Dad my contact numbers. Ring or email any time – day or night – if you want to chat. I’m sure there are a million and one things racing through your mind right now. Just sleep on it for a few days and whatever you do, don’t make any hasty decisions. Sit down and talk with your parents but, remember, at the end of the day it’s your life, your career. Don’t forget that. You need to do what you feel is right.’
I shake his hand. Now I had another date to circle on my bedside calendar. July 1. The start of Chapel United’s new scholarship programme. I stand there with the front door slightly ajar as he strides down our garden path.
Lights flash on a smart, black estate car, one of those expensive German jobs. Evatt smiles and gives me a final wave as he climbs inside.
I watch him pull away, brake at the end of our cul-de-sac and turn out of sight.
Life was obviously very good at Chapel United football club.