PART TWO:

 

Physical violence has always unnerved me. I’ve never really been fan of fighting, in any shape or form and this had always been a bit hard on my dad, especially since his dad, my grandfather, had been a Welsh heavyweight boxing champion for a number of years. Try as I might though, I could never really share his love of the sport. I always shunned fighting as a kid, only reluctantly taking up the challenge of a fight with other kids on a couple of occasions when the gauntlet was thrown down to me. As there didn't really seem to be any actual reason for doing it, I was half-hearted both times and relieved when neither went beyond a brief skirmish of a few exchanged punches. I remember seeing a particularly brutal fight when I was about 10 that had really freaked me out, when two local village kids really went at it. One soon got the upper hand and started stamping on the other kid’s head and kicking him over and over in the back, yet no one in the crowd of kids surrounding them went in to break it up. All they did was keep on whooping and yelling and this went on until the kid delivering the kicking got fed up and gave up of his own accord.

 

A lot of stuff goes on unseen on a football pitch - digs in the ribs, stepping on toes, verbal intimidation, spitting, grabbing balls, and sometimes worse. This is all part of the game, though it was something I hadn’t really encountered much, yet. The 'dark arts', such as they are, weren't a part of things at U-16 level, but now here we were in a different world competing in Men's League and this new season was to be quite an eye-opener and a steep learning curve for me. Even though most of our opponents, aware they were playing against 'kids', made allowances for this to an exent, many did resort to bullying when things started going awry for them, since with our youthful exhuberance and the fact we had been hand-picked for our ability we often played them off the park and made them look stupid. This was only compounded when, around November time, we went to the top of the league. At first I didn't really want to know about this aspect of the game, but Freddie, as coach, kept trying to impress on me in his gentle way that I had to learn to be more assertive. Things could get pretty feisty at times though and I found myself thinking about it more and more. 

 

I was over six feet tall, lithe and agile and I'd already gained a bit of a reputation for being able to claim the ball in the air. This and my shot stopping were two of the main strengths of my game and I would come out and pluck out out of the air about anything my side of the penalty spot if the trajectory allowed. Cries of 'away from the keeper!' from opposition coaches and players alike to corner and free kick takers would often ring out. So to try and stop me doing this I was increasingly finding myself with company, particularly on corners, where they couldn't be offside from the kick. Heeding well one of Ron Healey's gems of wisdom that had stuck with me, 'you can always go forward but it's bloody hard to go back', I would position myself about halfway between my far post and the center of the goal, a position that became my springboard to attack the high ball and make it mine.

 

One midwinter's day, there we were defending a corner in the opening 15 minutes, their first of the game. Their big brute of a centre forward duly came and stood right in front of me on my goal line, landing his studs across my ankle to announce his arrival, then continuing to bob around and jostle me as much as him remaining fairly inconspicuous would allow. With all eyes in the direction of the kicker, he suddenly brought his arm back and delivered a painful elbow to my guts. In spite of him, my focus was on how many players were in the box and who they might be aiming for and I didn't see it coming at all. Though shocked and a little winded, I saw this as a challenge to take up and decided to retaliate. Barging him in the back, I stepped alongside him and as he turned I brought my own elbow back into his midrift, though in a hopeless, utterly unconvincing way with about as much charge as someone delivering a newspaper. In a collosal overreaction, the guy let go a half wail and stumbed a pace to the side in a feigned attempt to stay on his feet, a reaction I was totally unprepared for. Unluckily for me the referee had spotted it. Pointing his finger in my direction he blew his whistle, purposefully raising his hand to stop the corner being taken, and he marched right over and unceremoniously produced a red card.

 

It was one of only three occasions I ever got one of these. The second I did deserve, for a rugby tackle on a player who’d rounded me on an agricultural pitch in an agricultural cup tie in some agricultural mid Wales village nearly 10 years later. The third was much more colourful however, and amusing too, as well as thoroughly merited, and is perhaps worth a brief departure from this narrative to tell the tale of. 

 

It was the mid 90s, and now living in Japan I was playing in what was mostly a team of non-Japanese in a 'top of the table' Hiroshima City League game against Minami High Sschool OB. They were the premier football high school in the city and we won the league or were thereabouts every year so there was always needle between us, which usually ensured it one of the more interesting games on the calendar. That day the score was tied at 1-1 and things were already getting a bit heated when the officious amateur (and I use the term as disparagingly as possible) short-arse of a referee penalised me for picking up a backpass that had taken a massive and obvious deflection off an opposing player, enough that there'd been almost no appeal from their players for the free kick. For me this was one poor decision too many he'd made against us that day, mostly for our 'typical foreigner over-aggression', including a dodgy penalty for a hard but fair tackle for their goal, and it pushed me over the edge. I angrily bellowed my objections in his direction and though he would never have understood my choice words yet outraged that I would dare raise my voice and talk back to him, he instantly sprinted the 25 yards between us and stared me down from the edge of the box. I expected a warning or something but he said nothing, he just stared at me gloweringly. At this the red mist began to rise and I met the challenge head on. The ball was still in my hands and I proceeded to welly it as far as could downfield. This was enough for him to produce the card, which he promptly removed from his pocket and pompously waved in my direction, then turned his back as if done with the situation. With Welsh dragonfire now raging forth from every orifice, I rushed towards him. He turned, and to his credit, he bravely stood his ground, I was after all considerably bigger than him, though I can still recall his now frightened eyes and quivering lip. After delivering an even more inspired verbal tirade and teammates approached to attempt to interveve I ripped off my shirt, heavily laden with mud and gravelly sand, and hurled it at him full force.

 

During the latter part of the first half of that 1975/76 season, I found myself drafted more and more, usually at short notice, out of the youth team and the rigours of the Barry and District League into the Welsh League side. By New Year I was pretty much a fixture, and for the next season and a half I held the shirt. 

 

It soon became obvious to me to that the Welsh league players didn’t know anything about my Cardiff City experience. I’d assumed they would, and the fact they didn’t, not even the manager Alan Williams (no relation), frankly surprised me. It dawned on me one day when he was addressing words to me in the group in one half-time teamtalk quite soon after I made my debut, telling me how I wasn't 'playing parks football anymore' and that I had to ‘listen to everyone' around me. That was fair enough, of course, they had way more experience than me, but he kept making reference to the fact I had none, that I had 'just come up from the under-16s' and had to 'learn quick'. As this persisted I'd feel myself mumbling under my breath 'I’ve had six weeks of personal coaching with Ron Healey at Cardiff mate, thank you very much, and played twice in a virtual City first XI!'. 

 

A part of me wanted to tell at least him this, perhaps to justify my being there and gain a bit more respect in his and maybe all their eyes, and though I thought about it I never did. A big part of this was because I couldn't be sure how they would then view me for having ‘turned down Cardiff City’. From the perspective of many of them, working class lads with no truck with further education and stuck in crap dead end jobs who would kill for a crack at professional football, it would probably just serve to make me look like a real twat. 

 

This realisation bit even harder following a chance meeting in the Butts car park just before Christmas with Peter O'Shea, the secretary of the Under 16s league. The Barry and District Men's League that the youth team were in played on the Butts fields in the afternoon and I ran into him as I was leaving in the early evening dusk. I hadn't seen him since he'd helped liase with the professional clubs the previous Spring. He walked past me at first then did a double take when he saw it was me.

"What the bloody hell you doing here?" he asked quite brusquely, obviously shocked. 

I told him I was playing in the newly-formed Barry Town youth team. He was unimpressed. I followed up that I'd also been playing Welsh League, no reaction.

"What happened down The City (Cardiff) then?", he asked sharply. 

"We heard you'd gone there. It didn't work out?"

 

I briefly, and truthfully, told him the story, how I'd done the pre season, that they'd then offered me the apprenticeship and how I'd turned it down to stay in school, that I was in sixth form doing my A-levels (examinations for university entrance). He looked vexed, and turned his head away to the side. There was a silence, an uncomfortable one. He scrunched up his face into a grimace then scratched his cheek before turning back to me. What he came back with surprised me.

"Look, I can probably get you into Aston Villa if you want"

 

I was taken aback. I didn't know what to say, except to reiterate that I was staying in school and focusing on university. I was aware he'd be at a loss to understand the decision so I probably didn't sound very convincing. In response he ran his hands through his hair, screwed up his face and looked to the side again, as if calculating what to say next. At length all he came out with was "Well, it's your life, son". 

 

He genuinely wished me luck and turned to go, but after a couple of paces he stopped, rather like Columbo, and turned around. 

"Oh yes, we had an enquiry from New York Cosmos too last Summer. After you'd gone to The City it was, so we didn't bother telling you". 

At that, he went on his way. 

 

I stood there a bit non-plussed for a minute. It was all a lot to take in. His obvious bewilderment and that he was so obviously disappointed with me had left its mark. Here was another lifelong football man reacting surprisingly strongly to what had happened, and though his response was nowhere near the same gravity as Ken Whitfield's, it was the same energy and it brought the memory of that night a few months earlier deep under the grandstand at Ninian Park crashing right back in - the naked light of the office, the dark empty echoey corridors waiting for me outside. It left me feeling like I'd had the wind kicked out of me again. As I walked up to the bus stop in the gathering gloom, I couldn't help but reflect on that news he'd hit me with. Jesus, New York Cosmos. Of the fledgling NASL (North American Soccer League), who had enticed into their ranks the likes of Pele and Beckenbauer. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

 

I also got a couple of games in the Southern League team that second season too, both home games against Banbury and Dunstable, neither of which I recall much about now except that they both ended in score draws, 1-1 and 2-2 respectively. Though a much sharper and altogether superior standard of football, it was actually easier to play in. There was a lot less raw violence than in Welsh League, especially the threat of it, and the pace of the game was altogether much quicker. As a keeper that didn't really directly affect me much, but that wasn't true for the other youth team player who frequently got bumped up to the senior teams with me, Phil Powney, a diminutive but quick, sharp striker. After half an hour of his first taste of Southern League football, he was down on his haunches at the corner flag throwing up, solely due to the pace. 

 

Welsh League was by contrast dour and very physical, and certainly warped the definition of football as 'the beautiful game’. As an economically depressed post-industrial region, South Wales is a tough place, and violence, both actual and psychic, was an integral part not only out on the field with our opponents but of the dynamic within our own group of players too. You really did have to give as good as you got, and though I learned to step up to this plate in my own way, it always remained an aspect I could never really warm to or develop any degree of conviction for. As if the game wasn't hard enough, I wasn't prepared what I saw as an uncomfortably aggressive edge within the group with some of my teammates. As a callow, naturally sensitive 16/17 year old suddenly thrust into the breach with these battle-hardened, semi-pro mature men, it really quite unnerved me at first and I didn’t deal with it very well. Full throttle vitriolic verbal dressing room exchanges hovering on the edge of actual violence were par for the course with these guys, particularly if we were losing at half time or had lost, and I witnessed several. Rather than gee me up and sharpen my focus, as was the alledged intention, much of what went on only served to put me more on edge, making me terrified of making a mistake and letting everyone down and then, God forbid, becoming the focus of one. 

 

One character in particular freaked me out. An overly-aggressive, wiry midfielder who wore the No 4 shirt, probably the wrong side of 30 and with a bagful of dirty tricks, he was was constantly mouthing off and was by anybody’s standards simply just a horrible bastard. I can't recall his name now but I can still all too readily see his face, its slightly hideous, pointy features, eyes often bulging wildly as he mad-ranted in his abrasive, gutteral Barry accent, nasty stale tobacco breath mere inches from my face. I don’t recall ever genuinely incurring his wrath, but even so it seemed there was always something he felt the need to pull me up on. He’d always seem to be on the look out for me in the half time break so I’d be on the look out for him. I wished I had the courage to tell him straight to fuck right off, with the physical will to back it up if necessary, but my reaction was invariably to appease the animal and try and steer our exchanges clear of confrontation. In all likelihood he was liked by no one, just tolerated, but I was likely too fresh-faced and wet behind the ears to see this at the time.

 

One thing I did, but almost instantly regretted, was to appoint him as my ‘wall-meister’. This was a term I’d picked up from Ron Healey, one I’ve actually never subsequently heard. He told me as a goalkeeper you need to have one - a designated outfield player who’s not a defender whose role it is whenever there is a free kick in a dangerous position to right away help you line up the wall. He would turn to you, listen to your instructions and quickly pull players into position accordingly. I’m not quite sure how this guy ended up becoming that, maybe I wanted to placate him, even ingratiate myself with him, but that’s what happened. Even though it's always the keeper's shout, as you're the one with the view and can see what needs covering, he was so often obnoxious and aggressive with me in those situations and even critical of my calls. It always served to add an unnecessary and uncomfortable complication to free kick preparation, already a tense situation anyway.

 

As if to balance all this though, there was an older guy, a true veteran and gentleman with it, already probably into his 40s whose name I can't recall either but who was the polar opposite. He quickly recognised my general unease when I stepped up to the team and was always there with the metaphorical fatherly 'arm around my shoulder' when I needed it, which was quite often in the first couple months. A silent, strongman-type, hard as nails when it came down to it but with kind eyes and a compassionate gaze, and it was clear he had everyone's respect. He played in the centre of defence, where he was a true rock, a cool head and with bags of experience. He seemed to win everything in the air, and while understandably not the quickest anymore, whenever he put his foot through the ball it would sail high and far away downfield out of the danger area, bringing relief and respite to our whole backline. His presence always made me feel more secure, both on and off the field, but unfortunately he wasn't a week-in week-out regular and was absent more often than not. I was always happy to see him there though when I went into the dressing room on match day.

 

It’s fair to say there wasn’t a lot of money around in the Welsh League in those days, a far cry from twenty or so years later when Barry went full professional under former Wimbledon star John Fashinu and competed in European competition. There were no professional clubs yet though, facilities were pretty basic to say the least, and we got to play on some outlandish grounds. Pontlottyn's mountaintop eyrie springs to mind, where clearing the sheep (and their shit) off the field was a pre-match ritual and if the ball went too far off the edge of the pitch on the one side it would run about half a mile down the valley. There was another one, I can’t recall where now, where the ground sloped away so steeply in one corner that you could just see the kicker’s head and shoulders and you had to listen for the sound of boot on leather to know it had been launched. Margam Athletic's ground, right on the sea in the shadow of the huge and belching Port Talbot steelworks, was always debiltatingly windy. Generally speaking, the games were bitter, hard-fought battles played on invariably very poor pitches, even by the standards of the day, surfaces that made our own Jenner Park home and even Merthyr’s Penydarren Park look like little Wembleys. 

 

Though it was the steepest of learning curves on many levels, I did get used to it after a while. I never really took to the constant tension though and I can't say I enjoyed it much overall, but I did almost surriptiously acquire the hardened edge and keen battle hardiness that Freddie Halls had so implored me to develop over that couple of years. I didn’t really realise this though until I began playing again in my 20s, and particularly my 30s in Japan. I’ve heard professional soldiers talk about how in certain situations their training ‘kicks in’, and whereas I can’t ever claim to know what that really means, I found that this experience in Welsh League had elevated my focus to a much more competitive pitch that would similarly ‘kick in’. This would often result in me involuntarily playing with a far fiercer intensity and focus at times than my teammates, to most of whom it remained largely ‘just a game’.

 

By far the stand out event of that couple of years at Barry Town came late in the second season. In March 1977 there was a Welsh Cup quarter final against Newport County. I got to play against them again, this time in a real competitve game, but it turned out not to be a happy occasion since I made a glaring error that led to us losing. Not only that, it led to me receiving media criticism, for the first and only time in my life. Nevertheless it was a big thrill to play in this one, an unforgettable if double-edged experience. 

 

Given its magnitude, I was surprised at first to be given the nod. Then at the midweek training it emerged that it was to be the Welsh League team who were going to play, the reason being the Southern League team already had a game that day that they were unable to get out of, as that league was under the jurisdiction of the English FA and this was the Welsh Cup. As it turned out though, we were bolstered by three or four first team players and the team that took the field that day was by far the strongest Welsh League team line up I played in, and included in it too was my favourite centre half.

 

There was quite a buzz around town that week. I even got a special mention in school assembly on the Friday morning as I was playing in it. Also, most excitingly, now in the Newport ranks were three famous ex-Cardiff players including Brian Clark, the scorer of the famous goal that had beaten Real Madrid and now in the twilight of his career, the others being long serving Scottish centre back and former captain Don Murray and tricky Welsh international midfielder and winger Tony Villars, all of whom were there in '75. Their presence helped ensure there was a decent crowd at Jenner Park for the game, as big as I'd ever seen there and by far the biggest I'd ever played in front of. 

 

I couldn’t quite believe it at kickoff - there I was lined up against Brian Clark, in a real game. I soon made a damn good save from him too, in the first 5 minutes, one that is etched in my memory and it really helped settle my considerable nerves. Their wide man went past our right back and delivered a well-struck low cross. Clarkie ghosted in just ahead of our first defender and from the edge of the six yard box flicked it with the outside his right foot towards the near post. There was a hint of the ‘time slowing down’ phenomenon about it for me to enable me to get down to it and I did, quickly getting a good hand on it and turning it round the post. Generally crowds at Welsh League games were sparse, the proverbial 'man and his dog' pretty much, but on this day we had a real crowd in the early Spring sunshine and my save was greeted with a roar, the first time I'd ever heard one, followed by a round of applause. I felt the wave of energy go through me and it was an amazing feeling. As the resulting corner was about to be taken he brushed past me and whispered in my ear 'Brilliant, my son'. What a true gent he was. 

 

But then, just before half time, came disaster. We were already losing 1-0 to a Rod Jones goal but still very much in the game when I misjudged a shot from the edge of the box and somehow let it go in over my head. It wasn’t like it was even that well hit. I saw it long enough to go through a thinking process - rarely a good thing - that went something like ‘okay, catch this.. no, it's rising, better tip it over.. no no, I can hold onto it, no..’ only for it to somehow end up just brushing my fingertips. Next thing I heard was the sound of it hitting the net behind me. There was a sudden deathly hush around the ground and the sky fell. It was the turning point in the game. They ended up beating us 3-1 and I got panned for the error in the local newspaper. 

 

One thing about my game, at that time in my life anyway, was that I rarely if ever made errors, so it made this one all the more galling and hard to get over. Apart from that I'd played really quite well. To add to that early save from Clarkie, late in the second half I made another one, though it was already all done and dusted at 1-3 by then. This one too was a bit outrageous and one I had no right to make. I'd always call them 'A' saves, to myself that was, I rarely if ever shared that with anyone, but truth was there was rarely a game when I didn't make at least one these. I must also have come for and collected about 10 corners that day, some at the very peak of my height. Even so, throughout the rest of the game I couldn't shake the error and I never recovered. There is always talk of how you must 'put it behind you and get on with it', but the truth was I didn't really know how to do that. I just wanted the earth to open and swallow me up. I was thoroughly down and depressed after the final whistle and though I managed to hold my tears back until I got home, I didn’t have a very good weekend. Or following week either. When the report of the game appeared in the local paper the following Friday, my despondency turned to devastation.

 

This bitter experience though really set me thinking. It dawned on me that I hadn't been enjoying my football very much, not since the whole Cardiff City experience really. It had generally ceased being fun, and after a deep chat with my Dad I realised I actually wasn't helpless, that I did actually have the power to act and do something about it. Certainly the whole experience playing Welsh League had had a lot to do with it. I’d wake up on a Saturday morning not with joy to put a skip in my step that I had a game that day like I used to, but rather with a heavy churning feeling in the pit of my stomach. I now knew enough was enough, I didn't want to do it anymore. Going away to university helped as a get out and at the end of that summer I left South Wales. I spent most of the next year in Southampton then ended up changing universities to Aberystwyth in Mid Wales. I didn't play again in any serious way for five years. 

 

Though it hasn’t always been this way, looking back on all of this now some 45 years on I do so with genuine fondness. I got to rub shoulders with my boyhood heroes, to hang out with them for a month no less, and to experience and be part of the camaraderie of a squad of professional footballers and see what it's really like behind the scenes. And I can say I wore that Cardiff City shirt and never conceded a single goal in it!! 

 

There's a lot of 'what if..' in life, if you look for it, and God knows I have certainly wandered there with all this from time to time over the years. But to reproach myself for being unable to make a mature decision at age 16 is quite unfair, and absolutely futile. With the offer of the apprenticeship at Cardiff City and a career in professional football on the table, what young Paul needed at that time was an arm around his shoulder, someone to listen to and to sketch out the scenario for him in all its aspects the greatest detail possible and help him grasp the reality of the situation. What he actually got was a tug-o-war, two considerable forces pulling in opposite directions, each convinced they knew what was best for him. Had he fully realised in September 1976 that rejecting the apprenticeship and going back to school, despite accepting to the offer to attend youth team training, amounted to abandoning the dream, I still wonder how he would have felt, and what he would've done.

 

The simple fact of the matter, though I probably didn't realise it enough at the time, was that I was good. Like ridiculously good. I could make magic happen, perhaps not exactly at will but I could connect into it easily enough and the power in that moment when it manifested was immense, and I knew it as the most wonderful yet most natural feeling in the world.

 

My fantasy of 'what would have happened' for several years ran like this: I would play for the Cardiff City Youth team, make a name for myself and then break through into the first team in my early 20s. I'd grow into that and soon find myself performing that same magic for Cardiff on a weekly basis as I had with Sea View Labour in the Under 16s. Then I'd get picked up by.. Liverpool. Yes, Liverpool, and it was only ever them. Not that I'm a huge fan really, though I've always had a soft spot for them since they'd signed my erstwhile hero, striker John Toshack, from Cardiff in 1970 and broke my 11 year old heart. It's true they were the most successful and exciting team of that era and they displyed a unique passion, but all that's actually secondary. I can't explain it anymore than just to say I just had a strong, strong vision of myself as Liverpool goalkeeper, almost like I was somehow remembering something. And from there... where I wonder? 

Sounds fantastic, crazy, far-fetched, yeah I know. But that's the scenario I envisaged, such was the way the outrageous power inside the whole experience impacted my imagination. 

 

Here I'll quote song lyrics from Mike Scott of the Waterboys, one of my favourite musicians, who in later years has actually become a mate. It sums up completely the space I came to know through the 'Tao of Goalkeeping'.

"I've got brilliant intentions, unthinkable plans, I've got sparks and electric shocks just exploding from my hands

I'm preparing to fly, under my own steam, I'm preparing to fly, into a dream!"

My closest inner sense is still that with the right guidance I probably could’ve made it, perhaps not quite in line with the fantasy described above, but looking back at it all now I'm pretty sure I could have, in some capacity. Who knows though. Today I'm just more and more grateful for the wonderful experience it was in the immense journey of what’s happened along in my life. 

 

*As a side note from that 1977 Newport game, in later years a couple of teammates told me separately that John Aldridge played that day. Now, it's true that he joined Newport as a young player and had several successful seasons there before going on to fame in the mid 80s and 90s with Liverpool and the Republic of Ireland national team, who he represented at two World Cups. However, though I just accepted this as fact before the internet age, now it appears he didn’t sign for Newport until 1979. It’s conceivable he could’ve been on trial before that, I don’t know. He would’ve been the same age as me, 18 at that time. I have no recollection of him or anyone that looked like him from the game that day, but then when you're playing you generally just tend to see shirts, not faces, unless the likes of Brian Clark and Don Murray are lined up against you that is.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT - THE ‘REAL’ PART 2

Since I first posted this, Ron Healey has sadly died. Last year it was reported in the press that he got into difficulties during a cycle ride and died soon afterwards from a heart attack. He was just 65. 

 

Also, I was asked in a private message on social media this week where football went for me after this. 

So, as I’m postscripting, here goes.

 

During those next few years, music, which had by now become a rival passion in my life, gained the upper hand. After a complete two-year break I did go back to playing football, but in a very different arena. Crucially, just as I had before the whole Cardiff City thing burst into my life, it was now simply for the love of it, without inviting any pressure on myself whatsoever.

 

To this end, now in college in the mid-Wales coastal town of Aberystwyth, in 1979 I took to playing very much for kicks in the University’s Intermural Sunday kickabout league, for whoever would give me a game. My story had, it seemed, somehow gone ahead of me and with my long hair and bushy beard and being frequently seen round the many pubs, I think I was regarded as some kind of George Best character. Whatever, I soon ended up a regular between the sticks for none other than the Welsh National College Of Librarianship. They were, as they sound, not the strongest team in the world, though, curiously, they did have in their ranks a then-current Mauritius international player called Quincy, who while playing well within himself scored some seriously spectacular goals. The rest of them were Sunday driver no hopers, but here I found myself once more back on park pitches with a smile on my face, throwing myself around in the mud on lazy Sunday afternoons stopping 3-goal defeats from turning into 10. And loving every minute of it.

 

My antics didn’t go unnoticed however, and it wasn’t long before I was courted by the University representative teams. One boozy Saturday night in a pub, I was approached and reluctantly agreed to turn out the following afternoon for the University second team who were in a bit of a spot. One thing led to another and by the next season, my third and final year, I was kind of a regular for them. The fact it was more or less a level where I could still follow through with my favoured modus operandi of carefree involvement meant I didn’t fight it though and actually, if truth be told, I found it really quite enjoyable.

 

One particularly pleasant Sunday afternoon late in the year we were away 18 miles up the road at Machynlleth. We drew a fairly uneventful game 1-1 as I recall, but having imbibed a generous quantity of ‘tea’ imbued with a certain local 'fungal delicacy’ the previous evening and still feeling its effects, I spent much of the game dreamily gazing at the magical Tolkien's Shire-esque landscape all around. There's a deep peace in those hills, with an almost mystical, silent hum, and in my semi-altered state I found it utterly entrancing. It was quite simply the most delightful, idyllic place I’d ever had the pleasure of playing the beautiful game.

 

Two years later, after my crazy post-university ‘On The Road’ Kerouac-style year traveling in the States, I was back in the Mid-Wales area and happy to be there. A lot of things had shifted during that time and I had resolved upon my return to resist pressure, mainly from my mum, to 'buckle down' and get 'a real job'. Rather, I committed instead to giving myself some real breathing space and to set about creating a lifestyle for myself wholly on my own terms, for the first time in my life. 

 

A big part of why I’d even followed through with full time education and gone to college in the first place had been rooted in subliminal pressure from my parents. Though intelligent people, social circumstances in their early lives had meant they'd never had the opportunity. They really wanted it for me and that was the road that had been laid out, pretty much from the time I was first in secondary school and started excelling in class. It was simply the way to go and nothing else was on the table, as was demonstrated by what had happened over the football, I had bought into it, for sure, without ever making a conscious choice about whether I really wanted it or not. By the time I was staring down the barrel of going to university, hungry for new experiences and eager to live somewhere other than South Wales, I was still pretty cheerfully going along with it, despite what had happened with Cardiff City. However, while the lifestyle in its many aspects was truly wonderful and I was more than happy to throw myself headlong into that, I was anything but enthralled about the prospect of the studying part and that feeling quickly grew more intense.

 

So whereas I had a really good time, I could never deny that, and I learned to play guitar, which was probably my single greatest focus in those heady years, there was always an uncomfortable undercurrent knawing away at me and no little guilt that somehow I was there under false pretences. By design I was never the most diligent student, something of an understatement that, and my almost total lack of attention to matters of completing even the basics meant I very nearly didn't graduate. I paid very little attention to most of my alloted courses, instead using to the time and opportunities there to devise my own. I read deeply whatever grabbed me at the time, mostly philosophy and metaphysics, spitituality, consciousness expansion and fantasy-based fiction. Now I was resolved to give myself a period where there was no compromise, where everything I decided to put my energy into was truly mine, fed my spirit and made me shine. I wasn't afraid of a spartan, even poverty-level lifestyle, and to this end I lived in a succession of rustic old farmhouses and cottages with few mod cons and roaring open wood fires for heating. Where it would lead I didn' know, but I had a plan and in late 1982 I was following through on it.

 

One thing I had resolved to do when I got back even while still in the States was pick up the footy. I wanted to play seriously again. Another development, though the catalyst for this came after I got back, was to take up distance running. It’s not that I consciously intended to embrace the ‘distance’ part, at least not at first. It started off as a way to get myself back in shape for the football, since the last five years had largely been dominated by music, and the sex, drugs'n rock'n’ roll thing (with a fair bit of real ale thrown in there too), all of which had taken its toll a bit. 

 

In no time I was loving the thrill and discipline of the running. I was still just 23 and my body responded incredibly. Before I knew what was happening I was delighting in doing 15 miles every time I went out. This was invariably at night when most people were already in bed, especially when the skies were clear and the myriad stars filled the heavens, and the magic of the mid Wales hills was truly afoot. This, combined with a new found regime of regular daily yoga and meditation, which I fully embraced from this time in place of my previous more dissolute habits, stood me in very good stead to quickly pick up the football again. I was fitter, way fitter, both physically and emotionally, and more focused than I’d ever been in my life.

 

One night out running under those stars I decided it was time. First off, I needed to find a team. On the strength of the experience in Machynlleth that day I had a flash that it was there I wanted to play, so, out of the blue, for them anyway, a speculative letter addressed to the secretary at Machynlleth Football Club soon dropped through their door. I was careful to avoid mention of anything of my past, just offering my services in the present. I soon received a reply from team captain and player-manager Dennis Jones, inviting me to come to training.

 

With some 2000 inhabitants, among them Led Zep frontman Robert Plant, the delightful little town of Machynlleth nestles in the green Mid Wales hills on the southern edge of the Snowdonia National Park. It was, albeit briefly, an old capital of Wales, when the Welsh chieftain Owain Glyndwr united all the princedoms and he held his National Parliament there for its 10 year duration in the early 15th century - the only time Wales has escaped the clutches of English rule since we lost our independence with the defeat of the Llewelyn The Last in the 12th century. The old Parliament House is still there in the main street.

 

My new team mates turned out to be a great bunch of lads and there followed a quite wonderful couple of football years playing between the sticks for 'Mach'. The local inhabitants, perhaps a bit less used to odd specimens from the student population than my previous domicile of Aberystwyth just down the road, had little hesitation it seemed in accepting me and taking me in as one of their own.

 

It took a few months to get into the team. Obviously they already had a goalkeeper, and Brendan, the fella occupying the shirt at the time, couldn’t have been best pleased to see me show up. I trained hard though, never bemoaning my lack of opportunity, and it wasn’t too long before I got my chance - an away game in early December at Pontrhydyfendigaid, known as ‘Bont’ for short - and I grabbed it with both hands. We ran out 1-4 winners that day and I played a considerable part in that. At once Brendan graciously moved over and I found myself installed.

 

Without doubt the greatest memory from my time playing there came in November 1983, Guy Fawkes Day no less, when we were drawn away to soon-to-be Football League Division 4 side Kidderminster Harriers in the Welsh Cup. It was a hopeless mismatch really and we were soundly beaten, but it definitely fitted my brief - I made countless saves and stopped the 9-1 pasting we got from turning into 19, and then some! I was actually given a standing ovation as we left the field that day by the surprisingly decent crowd, despite their initial jeering of me, ostensibly for my hippie-like appearance (which was a fair cop). This was increasingly replaced by warm applause however as their goals mounted up to secure them the win and I produced save after save to prevent the proverbial cricket score. My heroics earned me the accolade of being the only one of our players to get a mention in their local newspaper, I still have the cutting, but that day was much more of a cathartic moment for me, much more so than I ever let on to anybody at the time, maybe even to myself.

 

 

Kidderminster Harriers v Machynlleth matchday program, November 1983

 

While I was at Machynlleth we progressed as a club from the local district league to the Central Wales League, the Mid Wales equivalent of the Welsh League in the south that I’d come to detest so much while playing for Barry Town in my teens. This time though it was different. I was older, stronger, and much more my own person. It's fair to say too though that in largely pastoral mid Wales the level of physical and psychic aggression that typically accompanies football was nowhere near as intense as in industrial, fast becoming post-industrial, South Wales. Once the Central Wales games began in the 1984/85 season, I thoroughly enjoyed the step up in level and welcomed the challenge of pitting myself against the best teams in the area.

All in all I had a very fulfilling few seasons playing with the Mach lads. I'm in touch with some of them to this day and I have a great fondness for the town. I'm very grateful for it all. The whole experience went a long way to enabling me to enjoy playing football again.

 

 

Machynlleth FC before a Central Wales League game at Aberystwyth Town, 1984.

 

In September 1986 I left Wales for Japan, where I continued playing football and it was all very interesting, different to anything I’d experienced thus far for sure. Without doubt the greatest adjustment was swapping the soft green/muddy Welsh pitches for hard compacted gravel, and wearing American football padding to try and protect myself on them. Even so, despite all my best precautions they would still manage to take the skin off my elbows and knees and in particular my hips with alarming regularity and I would inevitably wake up the next morning stuck to the bedsheets. It's my contention that the profusion of these gravel surfaces at school grounds all over the country and the paucity of real grass fields is a major reason why Japan, despite having excelled in producing top outfield players in recent years, has never yet produced a decent goalkeeper.

 

Over a decade later there followed a seven-year spell living in Hawaii. Here, given the almost constant rainfall, the pitches were lush, mostly anyway, and it was a mighty relief to play on green grass again. And as it had done in Japan, football was once more instrumental in opening up a route for me into the local community and I loved my years playing under the Hawaiian sun, particularly the inter-island tournaments. 

 

Maybe there's another chapter or two here, there are certainly more tales to be told. 

 

Thanks for reading.