Ah well, we shouldn’t be surprised.
This happens every summer. Good players with much to offer the club are allowed to drift
out of contract by an ever complacent regime, then offered a renewal on derisory terms, so
their agent looks around and finds, surprise surprise, that they can earn substantially
more elsewhere, whereupon they leave. The fans are duped into taking the club’s side,
and should we ever chance across our old boy’s new team, scorn will be poured on his
head. If he doesn’t want to play for the club let him go, they say, we don’t
need players who are not committed, dragging down the morale of the whole team. Let the
greedy bastard go and line his pockets elsewhere.
Shouldn’t we be asking how come this happens every
summer?
So Gerry Harrison’s unlikely Burnley career came
to an end. But the idea of Ged ever showing less than total commitment is laughable. The
concept of non-existent team morale being lowered is bizarre. Gerry is a player who got
treated like shit by a succession of Burnley managers yet never played with anything other
than heart on sleeve determination to do his best. I recall the defining moment of the
disastrous waddle project, Oldham away, when we saw our whole season in one game,
brilliant until a crass tactical intervention by the ex-England failure, useless
thereafter. It was Ged who staged a running battle with their wide player. It was Ged who
left the pitch at the end with tears in his eyes, utterly distraught at how it had been
allowed to come to this. In a season where it appeared the very people who took decisions
at the club couldn’t get too interested, here was one player who could be bloody
bothered. We need more players like that at the club as we start yet another new era, not
less.
It was not Ternent’s fault, but rather that
yellow-bellied slime ball waddle’s, that Ged was allowed so carelessly to drift away.
Full credit to Ternent for speaking out at the ridiculous situation he inherited from the
cursed one. It seemed that, as our mess of a season plummeted towards a crisis of his own
making, waddle couldn’t be bothered to plan ahead and take steps to ensure this
wouldn’t happen again by getting our few good players to stop at the club. Waddle was
a notoriously lazy manager, and I can only assume that he found the question of contract
renewals either too much work or too intellectually challenging. As with Cooke and Little,
who had a year remaining on their contracts when Ternent arrived (and he set about making
it his first task to get them to sign extensions), so Ged should have been offered an
extension last summer. The golden rule in this Bosman age is that it doesn’t stop
them leaving, it just means you’ll get something in return when they do.
Of course, we wouldn’t give Ged an extension last
summer, as the new dream team of waddle and roeder had arrived, and were vigorously
sweeping their new broom throughout the club in all the wrong places. We weren’t then
to know quite how much the dream was to turn into a nightmare, but we should have got a
hint in their attitude to Ged. Neither of them has played in this division before, they
oddly boasted, and they didn’t plan to spend too much of their illustrious careers
(roeder?) slumming it in such plebeian surroundings when they clearly deserved better.
They were going on a voyage, and if anybody didn’t want to come with them that was
fine, they would just have to be hauled off and replaced. It’s easy to see that this
arrogant attitude would foster a disdainful approach towards the personnel already at the
club, who had after all got the club to a respectable position the season before. If this
division was dismissed out of hand, so would be the players in it, and the reaction of the
managerial team could only be to bring in a host of players from higher divisions. We all
know how well that worked. In passing, we should compare the approach of waddle and
roeder, talking loudly but carrying extremely small sticks, to the more realistic attitude
of Ternent, who gave players a chance to impress before bringing in replacements.
Ged, like many other players, found himself starting
the season frozen out on the sidelines, surplus to requirements and transfer-listed. He
was in good company, with Andy Cooke, Paul Weller, Damien Matthew and Glen Little. All
were to finish the season fundamental to our survival. We should be thankful that no one
made a serious approach for Harrison at this time, for without his contribution we may
have ended the season one or two points lighter. Apparently Rochdale (Rochdale!) made a
derisory offer, although that may have only been a rumour.
For Ged, however, there was a special sting in the
tale. From the moment waddle chose his old buddy to fail alongside him, Ged was a marked
man. There was some history between him and roeder. When we signed him, Ged had played for
half a dozen geographically diverse clubs, including Hereford, Huddersfield and Watford. I
naturally assumed he was some thirty-ish journeyman touting himself around the lower
leagues. When I found out he was in fact in his early twenties, alarm bells rang. He was
either a man who had an unrepresentatively good trial, or a troublemaker and rabble-rouser
who was too hot to handle. On reflection, I decided I quite liked the latter. Anyway,
he’s gone now, so I suppose the rumour I heard can now be told. Let me just think how
to phrase this. Bear in mind that Ged’s dad is apparently a lawyer. One of Ged’s
other brief stop-overs in his bid to play in every region of the land was at Bristol City,
and I believe early in his Burnley career he still kept up a flat in Bristol, to which I
was told he returned each Saturday night after playing. Naturally, given his track record,
he wouldn’t expect to be stopping long up north. Bristol is of course, well known for
its famous dance scene, as typified by the trip hop style of acts like Massive Attack and
Portishead. Fill in the blanks.
For whatever reason, this town wasn’t big enough
for both Ged and roeder, and roeder’s handling of Ged earlier on in the season was
described as "bullying." Odd that, while hard taskmaster roeder spent half his
time jetting off to be a Hoddle groupie, it was Ged who knuckled down, worked hard and
kept his powder dry. This spoke of a new found maturity in the player. He was no stranger
to managerial difficulties, including at this club, where Mullen had once dropped him and
stated he would not play for us again, only to have to pick him subsequently. It was a
testament to Ged’s quality of play that two Burnley managers pronounced him surplus
to requirements only to have to eat their words. It’s sad to say that of the Burnley
managers, only Heath ever treated Ged right (but then, there was some clue of his
admiration: he named his son Harrison Heath). This last period of internal exile
culminated in the defeat at York, when the following started chanting Ged’s name. The
next game, our manager, who variously insisted that (a) he had no reason to listen to the
crowd and (b) if the crowd sang things he would leave, took the hint, and Ged was back in
the team. He was back for the rest of the season, and a crucial player. He well deserved
our player of the year award. Cooke and Little were the only other credible candidates.
Ged was the exception to the rule of free transfers,
the good free transfer. I couldn’t credit Mullen with any special insight. Working on
the monkeys with typewriters rule, we were bound to get a good player for nothing
sometime. It would be wrong to say he was an exciting signing. I marked him down as yet
another waster, come to sign on for two years before buggering off to the non-league. His
debut came in inauspicious circumstances: as a sub at Oldham in our rotten first division
season after Marlon had been sent off by one of the world’s worst referees, Mr
Allison of Lancaster. He showed something that day of the player he was to become,
impressing me with his aggression in what was a very bad-tempered game. As the season
dragged on and an increasingly desperate Mullen tried out all the permutations, he
gradually established himself in the squad, endearing himself to the manager by his
willingness to fill in in all sorts of positions. He scored a few goals too.
He quickly became a favourite of mine, not least
because of his temper. There were also those mad, head-down runs he used to go on once a
game, when he picked up the ball, ran forward, held people off with strength, and then
fizzled out. When Sol Campbell did that in the world cup and commentators raved about it,
it took me a couple of seconds to work out where I had seen it before. My favourite Ged
moment combined all those characteristics. Against Southend at home the other Christmas,
when we beat them 5-1, Ged embarked on one of his runs. Was this to be the one where he
finally scored? But he overhit the ball, and in straining to reach it, tried to kick
through the man in the way. Already booked, he would now be off, so, when the referee was
near enough, he opted to go with style, and lamped the bloke. This became less funny when
he received a three match ban. That was the man all over.
We were the first club Ged established himself at. This
must have been the first were people sang his name. It is sad that we couldn’t keep
him for the challenges ahead. It’s sadder still that, having taken him, Sunderland
don’t even seem to want him. Meanwhile we have a huge gap at the heart of our team.
Can we have him back?
But what the hell. I get tired of writing tribute
pieces for good players. I did Steve Davis a few years back, when
he was so keen to get out of the frying pan he couldn’t see the fire, and even
defended Kurt Nogan. Nothing’s changed, and for all the bullshit being talked about
white knight rescuers who it turn out have slightly less money than even I have, I don't
suppose it will. Which player do I do next?
