The papers are full of it. I write at the start of the week
in which Peter Shilton is poised to make his 1000th appearance, and they have already
started to run sympathetic profiles in preparation for this approaching milestone. All
seem agreed that this is an achievement to be celebrated for such a football legend. Sky
will even show the game for that sole reason. Why is it then that I cannot read these
pieces without a sneer and find the bile rising to my throat as tv gives time to this
story? Why is it that as I watch the Sports Review of the Year Shilts appears in
the ever dreaded `fun part of the show’ and I cannot help but hurl rude words at the
tv? Why do I even contemplate dragging myself to my local club Leyton for a noon kick off
this Sunday to sit with the Brighton fans just for an opportunity to jeer and in hope of
seeing Shilts celebrate his personal millennium by conceding a hatful?
I despise this man, which seems to set me apart from almost
everyone else in the country. What justification can I offer to people? None, unless those
people went to the Burnley - Plymouth playoff match at Turf Moor in 1994. Anyone who
attended that game will need no further explanation.
In case you didn’t, let me set the scene: a massively
hyped Plymouth side cashing in on the fame of their manager and with a substantial
transfer budget had nevertheless been relegated from Division One the year before. For
much of this season they had been around the top of the league, drawing big crowds,
getting many sympathetic match reports and garnering much praise for their attractive
football. Meanwhile, a Burnley side charitably described as mediocre had made the playoffs
with a game to spare. Late season jitters saw Argyle similarly confined to that
nerve-wrenching lottery. This was the first true test in the managerial career of a man
who hoped one day for the ultimate prize of the England job. Over two legs Plymouth were
confidently expected to win, even by us Clarets, who were resigned to another season of
disappointment.
And how did Shilton react to this test? Quite simply, and
quite obviously to anyone who was there to see his team, he sent them out to kick our best
players out of the game in the first leg, to save the fancy football for their home game.
This most experienced of men, playing against a side who the league tables showed to be
inferior, did not concentrate on beating us at football, or playing their own game in the
confidence that class would tell; fearful of failure and worried about his job, he went
for the most cowardly and yellow bellied tactics imaginable. Familiar with the skills of
Ted McMinn from days spent together at Derby, he told his players to kick him until he
couldn’t run any more. One by one the Plymouth players lined up to chop down the Tin
Man in full flight. It was organised. It was like something from the seventies. It was
unbelievable. Did the former England skipper allow himself a smile as his one time
colleague was finally substituted, a lump of flesh missing from his leg? The picture that
sticks in my mind of that depressing day is of a furious Mullen stood next to a prone
player, telling the referee that they had done it again. But what chance did the word of
an old Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham player stand against the reputation of an England
international?
We all know the story of the second leg. They expected to win
and didn’t. Shilts bleated after the game. Apparently we had upped the physical ante
after our bruising experience and were not letting them play the pretty football they had
promised themselves for the triumphant home leg. This was unsporting of us. Shilton’s
main gripe seemed to be that, after all that, McMinn was able to play, so they
couldn’t have kicked him hard enough. Strangely, the goalkeeping legend was silent on
the plainly racist antics of his keeper, Alan Nichols.
So you know that we went to Wembley, Stockport went ballistic
and, looking for a scapegoat, fell upon the bitter pages of the Plymouth fanzines. Thus
was born that brief and strange alliance, the `We Blame Burnley For All Our Failings
Club’, but this bond formed of sour grapes was not to last, for the very next season,
Plymouth went down. They provided me with many a comfort in our own sad season. They
sacked Shilton after a while. Even the Plymouth fans, once good friends who had fallen out
with us, wanted him to go by now, although they have never forgiven us. Shilts went but
they still went down. When he took over they were in the First. By the time he left they
were heading for the Third, for the first time ever. He had set many records in his time,
but this was somehow my favourite of them all: he had taken them lower than they had ever
been before.
It carried on going sideways for him, and I rejoiced with
each new exposure of huge debts. His financial problems were revealed to be colossal. How
had this man who had surely picked up a few nifty signing on fees in his time got himself
in such a state? Gambling, it seemed, had been his undoing, but cowards should never
gamble. There were many in Plymouth who would have put their house on winning that night.
It turns out that Shilton did. After repossession followed repossession, writ followed
writ, Shilton was forced into desperate measures. We were treated to the truly pathetic
sight of Shilts hawking his aged body round the football league’s lesser lights, like
an old man in the park turning up with a bag of different coloured shirts in case he might
get a game. Occasionally someone fell for it, and he would spend a month or two warming a
bench, exploiting the substitute goalkeeper rule and providing some tired column inches
when hacks could think of nothing new, then being shown the door when the proper reserve
goalkeeper got fit again and moving on, like a latter day John Burridge. Shilts had
entered the twilight world of minor celebrity, occasionally turning up on tv when they
couldn’t book John Inman to perform some derisory role, this once titanic figure
reduced to penalty competitions and the like. It was almost sad.
Invariably when the newspapers remembered he was alive, they
would report that he was stuck on some tantalising number of appearances. If there had
been any justice, his last would have been at the Turf earlier that season, when Nathan
Peel came off the subs bench to put two past this yesterday’s man clearly subsisting
on memories alone. I suppose what irks me still is that Shilton had always got a good
reception from a Burnley faithful that does not bandy praise lightly, as he had that day,
and in previous games against Derby.
In the end it was only fitting that Leyton Orient should hand
him his final shot at a grand, for they are a grotesquely hyped club, puffed up out of all
recognition and detached from the real world. When he gets his thousand, the FA are to
give him a plaque, then go away and forget about him. Turning out for Third Division
Orient at the age of 47 is about as far away from managing England as you can get. The FA
will not be there to check on his availability; ironically, they consider long time rival
Ray Clemence to be a much safer pair of hands.
The papers will come and write about Shilts, then return to
tales of the modern game of which he is not a part. Shilts has turned out to be a bit of a
loser, a sad man you might feel sorry for but who kids have never heard of. There never
will be a happy ending as a manager, although Orient fans must be sweating that he might
have one final crack, and Shilts is never going to lead a team out, as manager, at
Wembley, and even the current boss of Sligo Rovers has done that.
Whenever I might start to feel sorry for him, though, I
remember that bleak Sunday at Turf Moor. I remember walking from the ground, pale with
anger. I will always remember that when it came to the crunch he did a cowardly and
disgraceful thing. He deserves never to manage again. It’s not funny, but it is
heartfelt.
