If you haven't read Steve Claridge's autobiography,
'Tales From The Boot Camp', it's worth picking up. His chirpy, inconsequential charm isn't
as guileless as it seems. After all, it has enabled him to survive debt and homelessness,
legacies of his former betting obsessions. (He estimates that he's lost around £300,000
to various bookies, blowing a £30,000 signing-on fee in one afternoon!) It has helped him
to keep his head up in the face of footballing and other job failures. Perhaps, most
important of all, his winning personality has kept a series of backers onside: his
ever-patient parents and girlfriend plus a long trail of mates. He seems to have a PhD in
'ducking and diving'. His tale reveals how success can emerge out of so much shambles. I
find that quite comforting.
I first recall seeing Steve Claridge at Griffin Park. It was a cold,
grey Sunday morning in early 1993; a fitting occasion for a relegation fixture. I was only
there to appease my daughter's insatiable thirst for professional football. Although this
was more like swilling the dregs of yesterday's tea.
You couldn't miss him. He looked a mess. His kit appeared grubby and
ill-fitting and his tie-ups flapped around his calves like crap bunting (he was booked for
refusing to pull his socks up). Cambridge had apparently press-ganged a barfly to make up
their numbers. And yet he could play. Sure, he looked ungainly, but he held the ball up
strongly and ran menacingly at Brentford defenders Millen and Bates. He was easily the
best player on the pitch. Not that this was hard, given the assembly of footballing
low-life on show. In keeping with the subterranean quality standards, Cambridge's Paul
Raynor was dismissed for mugging a team mate. Presumably, a wide-eyed bookie had given
Steve preposterous odds.
I'm sure you'll love his warm recollections of life with Aldershot:
how he would sell fruit and veg out of the back of his battered, insanitary motor (it was
allegedly full of half-eaten sandwiches) to make up his income (the players weren't paid
for fifteen weeks); how he negotiated dog turds on the training ground; how he trained
with a team mate who qualified for a disabled car sticker (is that class or what?). His
tales from elsewhere are equally amusing: how he broke into and squatted in a club
director's empty flat, after blowing all of his dosh in yet another failed bet; how he had
half-time punch-up with former Cambridge manager John Beck, only then to be held up as
shining example of passion to his team mates by a somewhat disarranged or deranged boss.
There's some nice recollections about Barry Fry, too. The one I
enjoyed most of all was the time that Fry decided that one of his players was chicken.
Rather than substitute the guy, Fry contented himself by flapping and squawking up and
down the touchline whenever the maligned player came near. Man-management of the most
cerebral kind.
I've never been sold on sterile professionalism. Steve's example
seems to suggest that a 'Jack the Lad', without the blessing of outrageous talent, can
still make his way. But one essential ingredient shouldn't be overlooked, that it is
focussed determination. For all of his foibles, this guy always seems to give unstinting
effort on the pitch. I know that effort is not enough to transform a journeyman into a
good player. It's not enough to transform an inadequate player into a competent one. Poor
Liam Robinson proved that. But a little can still go a long way. Remember Ross Perot?
