Budgie - The Autobiography Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  FAST CARS & FAST WOMEN

  ‘I was going out drinking too much and pulling birds for fun. I was literally living life in the fast lane. Because I was hitting the clubs my mind was wandering.’

  After our adventures in the Anglo-Italian Cup, I had a great big pile of bonus money burning a hole in my pocket. During my summer holiday, a couple of weeks before we were due to report back for pre-season training, I was on a train passing through Carlisle one day when I saw this fantastic car sitting gleaming in a garage forecourt. It felt like it was calling out to me for me to buy it. It was a Lotus Europa – the same kind of wheels George Best had at the time – and I thought to myself: ‘I’m having that!’

  The next chance I got I took the train back to Carlisle and swaggered into the garage, all cocky, and asked the salesman how much he was looking for. He looked me up and down and said: ‘You couldn’t afford it, son. It would cost you £20 to even take it for a test drive.’ I peeled out some fivers and he reluctantly let me take it for a spin, with him sitting beside me in case I drove off into the sunset with it. He told me it would cost £1,300 to buy, but I could have it for £1,100 if I paid cash. ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Have it ready. I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  When I got there the next day, the salesman was waiting for me and after I’d shown him my bag full of readies he asked me to sit and wait for a moment while he sorted out the paperwork. He scuttled off, and after waiting for 10 minutes I saw two coppers arrive. They came straight up to me and asked me if I could pop into the office for a moment. ‘Son, where did you get all this money?’ one of them asked. ‘I got it playing football,’ I said.

  When I said that, something clicked with the other policeman, and he asked: ‘Are you John Burridge that used to play for Workington Reds?’ I told him I was at Blackpool now, and that we’d just won the Anglo-Italian Cup and had a whole load of bonus money to spend. Thankfully they believed my story and that was the end of the little misunderstanding. The salesman said sorry for the inconvenience and then got his business head back on, desperately trying to salvage the deal. He explained to me that he had been suspicious that a young lad like me was in a position to buy such a flash car, and his first thought was that I’d been drug smuggling or robbing banks, because I was waving around a big bag of cash. That’s why he had panicked and called the cops. He kept saying sorry and trying to butter me up, and although I was quite tempted to tell him to stick it up his arse, the bottom line was that I still wanted the Lotus. We did the deal, and off I drove – parking the car proudly outside my council house in Workington.

  I loved that car, it was absolutely fantastic. I would take my mum for a spin to Keswick in it, or just head out at three in the morning, flying round the roads in the Lake District. Because it was the same car that George Best had, it gave me plenty of street cred, and it was a magnet for the girls who all wanted a shot in it. I’d found out what girls were for by this time, and had put my sexual encounter with the sofa behind me! Because I had more money than I knew what to do with, I wasn’t being at all careful and was giving it away to people and spending more than I should. I was going out drinking too much and pulling birds for fun. I was literally living life in the fast lane.

  With the summer over, it was time to report for pre-season training, but each day when I headed to Bloomfield Road I would leave my Lotus hidden round the corner, because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and have the lads making a big deal of it. But one day, as I was sitting on the bus outside the ground with the rest of the team waiting to be taken to the training pitch, my car came whizzing round the corner and screeched to a halt in front of the bus. My first thought was that somebody had pinched it, but my heart sank when I saw the doors swing open and then Mickey Burns and Tommy Hutchison clamber out in their training kit. They climbed on to the bus grinning like Cheshire cats and waving the keys around. ‘New car, Tommy?’ Bob Stokoe asked Hutch, but when he said: ‘No, this is Budgie’s,’ Stokoe was absolutely fuming, and he had every right to be angry. He must have been thinking to himself: ‘I was buying this kid some clothes not so long ago, and here he is turning into a flash Harry.’ I didn’t have to wait long to find out what he thought about my new car. When I got back from training I was summoned down to the manager’s office for a quiet word.

  ‘Think you’re in the big time now, do you?’ he said, with the veins in his neck bulging. ‘One minute, I’m having to buy you blazers and pants, now you’re turning up in a fucking spaceship! You are meant to be a young footballer. I don’t mind you buying yourself a car, but get something sensible, don’t buy yourself a spaceship. Go away and have a think about what direction you want your football career to go.’

  He was absolutely right, and I knew it was not the time and place to be cheeky and to try and defend the way I had been behaving. It was time to take a long, hard look at myself. Because I had started drinking, going out with girls and hitting the clubs, my mind had started wandering – and it took Bob Stokoe to point it out to me. Money does affect you if you don’t know how to handle it, especially when you are young and you have more money than sense. Saturday nights rather than Saturday afternoons had become the big thing for me, which was all wrong. I was right into Northern Soul music and dancing, and the Mecca nightclub – an absolute cavern of a place not far from Bloomfield Road – was one of the high spots for me to be seen on a Saturday night. The queues at the Mecca could be 300 yards long and three or four abreast to get in. But on a Saturday night, I would drive right up, throw my keys to one of the bouncers, and I’d stroll straight in. I was being distracted from my football with all the drinking, dancing and girls. I couldn’t see it at the time but I had my priorities all wrong. I can see why Sir Alex Ferguson has made such a successful managerial career of keeping young players’ feet planted firmly on the ground at Manchester United. With all the wining and dining I was doing, I wasn’t playing anywhere near as well as I was capable of, my concentration levels were wavering, and I lost my place at Blackpool to George Wood, an excellent keeper who would go on to become a Scottish international.

  I only had myself to blame. They had signed big George from Stirling Albion and he made an impact straight away. I realised I wasn’t the big shot I thought I was and that I was definitely replaceable in Bob Stokoe’s eyes. All of a sudden I found myself lost. I was in the wilderness. I had gone from being the hero, playing out of my skin, playing in the First Division and taking all the accolades, to just another fringe player in the Second Division. I took stock of the situation and decided that the first thing I needed to do was to dump the car. I took it back to the garage and they were quite happy to have it back at half the price. I swapped it for a Ford Capri, which was a little more professional and less flash than a Lotus Europa.

  Len Graham, our trainer, did a lot of extra work with me, helping me work on crosses and I also became regimented doing my own intensive training. The local paper described my methods at the time, saying:

  John’s dedication is best illustrated by the commando-standard training schedule he sets himself:

  Sunday: Six-mile fells walk in Lake District

  Monday: Goalkeeping on the sands in the morning. Weight-training afternoon and evening.

  Tuesday: Mornings are for hard running; afternoons for shot saving.

  Wednesday: Practice game in morning, weight-training after lunch.

  Thursday: Sprint work. In evening, he coaches local team.

  Friday: Agility work.

  It wasn’t only my car and my attitude that was changing; my life was about to change forever after a chance meeting with my future wife Janet. I was sitting on a wall outside my digs one day, feeling a bit devastated and down in the dumps because I wasn’t in the limelight any more, when this girl walked by and caught my eye. She was younger than me – I was 19 at the time and she was 15 – but we started chatting away. She was telling me about her brother, how he played in a Subbuteo league, and after gett
ing through a bit of small talk I arranged to see her again. She came round for me at the digs one night, and all the other lads were giving me stick, saying ‘Budgie, your girlfriend is here to see you.’ I was trying to protest that she wasn’t my girlfriend, just a friend, but I didn’t really care about all the ribbing I was getting – the truth was I was comfortable in her company and we just seemed to hit it off right away.

  Her dad was the owner of Granthams Signs, a well known company in Blackpool, which had offices just over the road from the digs. I thought her family were quite posh – posh compared to where I had come from anyway – and they had money. They were all lovely people and I quickly became good friends with not only Janet but her family – her brother, sisters and her mum and dad.

  I started to go round to their family home most nights. She wasn’t one for drinking, even though she was too young anyway, so we would just spend quiet nights together, chatting away. If there was a match I was playing in nearby, she would come along and watch me. We were still just friends, rather than serious boyfriend/girlfriend, but after five or six months it blossomed into a proper romance. On a Saturday night, instead of going out for a drink like I had been doing before I met her, I would go for a walk with Janet, seeing the bright lights of Blackpool and having a natter. We got on like a house on fire and were just perfectly suited to one another. It was having a positive effect on my life – no more going out and behaving like an arsehole. I fell in love with her.

  I got back into the first team and started to make the headlines again. Janet would try to be there to cheer me on every game. She would catch the supporters’ bus down to away games. If we were playing down in London, the team coach wouldn’t get back into Bloomfield Road until late at night, but she’d be sitting there in her duffel coat waiting for me. There were no mobile phones back then, so if we were running late she might have been sitting there for an hour or two. That’s what I call devotion. Everything was fantastic. I moved out of the club digs and got my own place, and there was no doubt that Janet turned my life around – from going off the rails, she had got my career back on track.

  It was all change at the top at Blackpool, too. Bob Stokoe, the man who had brought me to Bloomfield Road, left to take the Sunderland job. I wouldn’t say he had been the nicest man in the world to play under; he was an old-fashioned, dour kind of manager, but he knew how to keep me on the straight and narrow and, looking back, I have a lot to be grateful for. With him, it was a case of ‘Do it my way, or else’ and he would put the frighteners up you all the time. But I won’t take anything away from his achievements – he was a great manager, and his move to Sunderland proved to be an inspired one – he went on to win them the FA Cup, with another one of my future managers, Ian Porterfield, scoring the winning goal against Leeds United in 1973.

  For that cup triumph, he was hailed as the Messiah of Sunderland. He came back to Bloomfield Road for a league game the next year with Sunderland and was getting a bit of stick from the Blackpool supporters who were calling him a traitor. I had been having a good game, but that was mainly his doing after he’d rattled my cage before the game. When we’d been heading out towards the tunnel before the match, the Sunderland players were walking past our dressing room door at the same time. Stokoe, in an effort to get the psychological upper hand, started slagging us off, pointing at me and a couple of the other Blackpool lads and saying: ‘You’re shit and you’re shit.’ That sparked me off a bit and I went out with a point to prove. Sunderland were awarded a penalty and I saved it. It was a tight game, and it was decided by a moment of genius. Mickey Walsh, who went on to become an Irish international, was only a youngster back then and had just broken into the team, but more or less straight from my penalty save he went down the other end, cut in from the right and hit a brilliant swerving shot with his left which flew past Jim Montgomery into the corner. It was such a great strike, it was voted goal of the season on Match of the Day.

  Sunderland were a big scalp to take, the recent FA Cup winners, and after we had won 3-2 the Blackpool supporters were going crazy. Going up the tunnel after the game, I heard a familiar voice screaming and shouting at me. ‘You moved! You moved before that penalty was taken.’ It was Stokoe and he was raging at me. I was doing my best to just ignore him, but the old sod came right behind me and wellied me up the arse – a right hard toe-poke. I was furious, but when I turned round to ask him what the problem was, he kept at it, and started poking and pushing me in the chest. Stokoe had been a hard man as a player, and he was bellowing with rage. He’d lost the plot. When someone provokes me like that, I find it impossible to hold back. So, as he continued to shout in my face and push me, I felt I had no option but to defend myself and hit him with the old left hook/right cross combination. He went sprawling to the ground and his head hit the wall with a sickening crack. All hell broke loose in the tunnel. My team-mates were trying to pull me back and the Sunderland players were trying to retaliate, but in those days there were always fights in the tunnel. It was the norm. My team-mates were a bit shocked, too; after all I’d just decked our old boss. They managed to bring old Stokoe round and there was no real damage done. He didn’t press charges because he knew he was in the wrong, but it was an unbelievable incident. He’d been good to me when he was manager, and I owed him a lot, but I have to say he was completely to blame after that game. He was too wound up about coming back to face his old club. He’d obviously copped for a lot of flak during the game from the Blackpool supporters, and tried to take it out on me. It was a bad move.

  I was playing well and felt firmly back in the groove. I was keeping a lot of clean sheets and playing so well at the time that there were big stories going on in the papers, especially the People on a Sunday, that I was being lined up for a move to a First Division club.

  Janet and I were saving to get married and had our eyes on a terraced house that was going to cost us £10,000. We were saving money and were looking for £4,000 to put down as a deposit. We had managed to save a couple of grand and her dad was going to put some in, but First Division wages would help my cause. There had been stories in the People that Manchester United were going to buy me, which was obviously very exciting to read. Tommy Docherty was in charge of United, who were about to be promoted again as Second Division champions after the unthinkable had happened the season before and they had been relegated. When we played them I had a really good game, and at the end of the match Tommy sought me out, patted me on the back, and said: ‘See you at United in a week or two, son.’ Nothing is ever certain in football, but to me that was all I needed to hear at the time – Manchester United wanted me and I would be going to Old Trafford before long. Alex Stepney was getting close to retiring and United were apparently on the lookout for a young goalkeeper. Because Blackpool was so close to Manchester, people were putting two and two together and coming up with my name as the likely successor to Alex and that would have suited me nicely.

  I was excited about the thought of signing for United and, after what Tommy had said to me, I thought it was only a matter of time before I got the call from Old Trafford. I heard nothing in the weeks since I’d spoken to Tommy Docherty, though, and I started the 1975/76 season still at Blackpool, with United going great guns back in the top flight. I had been at training one day in September and was getting changed when our trainer Len Graham came up to me and said: ‘Budgie, the boss wants to see you.’ This has to be good news, I thought to myself, because I’d been keeping my nose clean, playing really well and I knew a lot of big clubs were watching me, especially United. I had Manchester United on my mind as I headed into the office.

  Harry Potts was the Blackpool manager by then and he said to me: ‘Come in and sit down, son.’ I knew what was coming next, or at least I thought I did, and it was all sticking closely to the script I had imagined as he continued: ‘I’ve had to sell you, the club need the money. We’ve had an offer of £75,000 for you and we’ve got to take it.’ So I said: ‘Okay, where am I goin
g – Manchester United?’ But to my surprise, he told me I was being sold to Aston Villa. I asked him about United, but he explained that they’d only offered £50,000, and Villa had topped it by 25 grand. The player didn’t have any choice in a situation like that – in those days you were sold to the highest bidder, so my dream of becoming a Manchester United player was dead in the water.

  CHAPTER 7

  HEROES AND VILLAINS

  ‘If you had to go to war and take only one man with you, it would be Andy Gray.’

  It may have been a disappointment to learn that my move to United wasn’t going to happen for the sake of 25 grand, but Villa were a massive club and the thought of moving to them still appealed to me. They had bounced back from one of the darkest times in their history, rising from the Third Division to the First, and looked like a club that was going places. My move to Villa Park unfolded at break-neck pace. I was told the Villa manager Ron Saunders wanted me to head down to Birmingham to see him straight away. So I got in my car, packed a bag and drove down to the Midlands to see Ron. He said he wanted me to sign a three-year deal, and if I agreed I’d be straight into the team on the Saturday, just a couple of days later, against Birmingham in the local derby at Villa Park.

  The financial package they had put together was irresistible – I would be on £500 a game, which was treble my wages from Blackpool, and I’d be getting a £25,000 signing-on fee, which was an awful lot of money and would pay for the house Janet and I had set our hearts on. I didn’t have much time to think about it, and although Saunders asked if I wanted to take a moment to go outside and think it over, I was on the spot and said yes.

  Villa put me up in a hotel, and I rang Janet to tell her I’d signed. She was a bit worried about what going to happen to us, but I just said to her: ‘Well, there’s only one thing for it – we’re going to get married.’ It was as simple as that – not exactly a romantic setting, down on bended knee with violins playing in the background. I told her: ‘I’m not driving home to Blackpool every weekend; I want you here with me.’ Janet drove down to join me in Birmingham and she quickly set about the task of trawling estate agents for a house for us to set up home. She eventually found us somewhere near Lichfield, in a small village near the training ground. It cost us £16,000 and we paid cash for it. It was a beautiful house, five bedrooms with a big garden and we put it in both our names. I said I’d marry her on Valentine’s Day that next year. Janet was my anchor, my guardian and I knew I’d have gone off the rails if she hadn’t been there for me.