The Diary

16 November 2006: Mystic Mogga, Simon's Book, And Me!

Thinking further about what I said last Sunday night about Mystic Mogga?s ongoing bedding-in difficulties, his continual frustration that we all-too frequently find ourselves infuriatingly-incapable of not only scoring, but sometimes, having done so not once, but twice, thereby letting the opposition grab a belated points-saving lifeline ? or three! ? very late on in the game, his overall prediction being we?ll sort it eventually, here?s a few more pertinent thoughts for you on a similar tack.

As you may recall, I used our 1967-68 season as a bit of a benchmark of just what can be achieved once the percentages start rolling your way, at long last. A fairly reasonable assessment of what a decent incoming manager can do to turn the tide, I reckon, provided he?s allowed sufficient leeway to just get on with it, and not having to constantly justify what he?s doing to moneyed people with more of an eye for hard-nosed commercial cost-benefit calculations than an inborn gut instinct for what genuinely concerns both players and regular supporters.

The more I look at those figures culled from Albion?s stats, the thing that really astonishes me is the wonderful goal-glut we supporters lapped up like gravy at the time. No less than 75 goals for, with 62 conceded, the former being far more than from most sides finishing higher, the Manchester Mafia top-two finishers excepted, of course. As for those let in, that really was our major downfall, back then: ?cowin? inconsistent, ay we??, most supporters of that time reckoned, whenever the question was put to them over a pre-match pint or three, and they were probably right, of course.

Had we been able to string together a lot more winning runs at the time ? or undefeated ones, even, given just two points for a win and one for a draw meaning a stalemated result exerting far less impact upon one?s position in the table than is the case at present ? then the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool might have had some serious Midlands-based competition to contend with on their seasonal travels. Of those finishing higher than we that season, only sixth placed Chelsea let in more. And there was something else. Not just one Albion player getting into double figures, mind, and well in, too, but an incredible THREE of them. Speaking as someone with so many wonderful memories of that season, it can?t be coincidence, either, that lots of our first-team regulars back then were that modern manager?s wet dream: ?good in the dressing room?.

How come? I don?t wish to allow the sort of dewy-sentimental, rose-tinted spectacled thoughts that maintain football was in some sort of a ?golden age? back then too much leg-room, mind, because it simply wasn?t the case. You should see some of those tackles from a viewpoint some forty or more years further down the line, for starters: therein lies an instant cure for such a nonsensical line of argument. What was to prove to be a pretty pernicious hooligan problem for clubs had just started to rear its violent head, also. Catering? A few grotty pies, Bovril, and awful beer from the bar ? if you were lucky. And, my dears, the toilet facilities, both male and female, literally stank!

The thing was, though, that daily routine for our players was very different, back then - and, dare I say it? ? much less individual opulence and greed involved, too. This seeming egalitarian outlook on their chosen careers resulted in considerable knock-on effects as far as team morale was concerned, some aspects of which I daresay modern-day performers would find quite unsettling, comparatively speaking.

?Team spirit?, what the military are prone to call ?esprit de corps?: pride in the unit in which you serve, in other words, just like the Guards, say, or the SAS, even, provided you could correctly identify just which of your mates it was lurking beneath that balaclava the memorable night you all Went And Sorted The Bad Guys Out. An elusive quality that most managers set much store by, is team spirit, and just as desirable today, of course. Back then, though, football?s answer to Nirvana was vastly more achievable. For starters, most players and their families ? well, ours, at any rate ? lived in very close proximity to each another, courtesy of what was then known as a ?club house?. It did exactly what it said on the tin, free (tied) housing for the player and his family, and usually located in a part of the borough where Albion had several such properties.

A bit like Army married quarters, if you like, and just as much of a ?goldfish-bowl? existence for wives (but never girlfriends, a la modern-day WAGS: players ?living in sin?, or unfortunate enough to get a girl ?in the family way?, as it was so coyly termed then, would have ended up transferred to Carlisle United or its southerly equivalent within a matter of hours of the club finding out). Another downside to such a transparent way of life was players effectively being retained on twelve-month rolling contracts only in those days: upset someone, be it manager or director (as per the above scenario, but leave the chairman?s daughter with ?a bun in the oven?, say, or simply demand more money from the board!) and you?d be out as quick as Christ would let you.

But the relative lack of both privacy and security of tenure did have some beneficial aspects, especially for a young girl suddenly finding herself stuck in a strange part of the country, with a couple of toddlers to bring up, and, as was the norm then, not expected to go out to work. That was when she would become part of the ?wives? community, a mutual support group, almost, whenever their menfolk were away: by turns catty, bitchy, hierarchical, unbelievably so, sometimes, but always there with a tissue and a few words of quiet sympathy whenever you needed a shoulder to cry on for whatever reason. I really dread to think how modern spouses, imprisoned in their gated ivory towered mansions as they usually are, cope with similarly-stressful situations. What the Rolling Stones used to call, as per the famous song: ?Mother?s Little Helper? perhaps? Let just a hint of any personal problem, marital or otherwise, get out, and it?s invariably splashed on the back ? or, increasingly, these celeb-obssessed days, at the very front page of the tabloids, literally within hours, sometimes.

There were various other factors serving to bind the small community together, of course, one of these being the club doctor, who, back in the Sixties, invariably doubled up as family GP for both wives and kids. As you can see, the heavy but basically paternalistic hand of the football club cast its shadow absolutely everywhere, but there were other small compensations to be found in the situation: lots of ?girly nights out?, nattering sessions in each others? houses over endless cups of tea or coffee, for instance, or just basking in the reflected glory of their menfolk when it came to all those Wembley and European games. Not too dissimilar to the services, of course, inasmuch as there was a not-too-invisible ?rank structure? flourishing nicely among the wives, with spouses of long-serving players and team captains quietly lording it at the apex of the heap, just like the Colonel?s lady of old.

But few outward signs of what we now term ?conspicuous consumption?, a la Victoria Beckham et.al. ? how could there be when the maximum wage (?20 per week: a pretty good working-class salary in those days) had only been abolished some five or six years previously? Sure, Fulham?s Johnny Haynes became the very first ?100 per week footballer not so very long afterwards, but even back then, Albion were incapable of competing in that sort of wage-inflated league. Or professed they were!

You trained together, socialised together, lived together, in a manner of speaking, bitched about overzealous training methods or the latest example of club parsimony together, a la the famous 1963 ?tracksuit revolt? ? and, on Saturdays, played together. No surprise, then, players found it comparatively easy to ?gel? as a team. The old ?us versus them? scenario wins every time: just ask the Army, who, being very much into the business of practical psychology, used it as a building-block of basic training back then, and still do, as far as I?m aware.

And no small wonder that if one player got badly hurt, say, during a game, and it was caused by sheer maliciousness on the part of the opponent that did it, retribution would be very, very swift! Upset one, and you upset the whole flaming lot. ?All for one, and one for all?, and not a single duelling sword or Dartagnan to be seen anywhere! It also helped, comparatively speaking, that there was very little movement, either in or out: certainly, not on the sort of scale we see now. Transience, a journeyman existence, and the sort of instability such an uncertain lifestyle could quite easily produce, was not a phenomenon seen too frequently at our end of the League tables at that time: it wasn?t at all unusual for players to spend an entire ten or fifteen years with just one club. The bait, of course, was that testimonial game you got come the end of your career, assuming your board of directors liked the cut of your jib, of course. Just the job to set you up in a pub or similar, once you?d hung up your boots for good.

The psychology and sociology of what makes groups of people react in certain ways to various stressful situations can be quite complicated, of course, but in the case of the early-to-mid-sixties Baggies sides I?m talking about, you only need to take a cursory look to realise just what it was that made them tick. A happy side is like a good blend of whisky, or brandy: certain notes predominating at first, then, as the drink finally hits the stomach, quite different ones coming to the fore. Albion? For starters, you had out-and-out extroverts like The King providing the real pre-match laughs, with, say, Bomber Brown playing the ?straight man? role beloved of music-hall acts everywhere: a sort of ?Morecambe and Wise? if you like. Or ?Little and Large?; with such a huge size differential going for them both, you certainly couldn?t sue.

Then there was the strangely gaunt-faced Ossie, and his peculiarly-dry sense of humour, but one that was quite capable of sparking into outright lunacy as and when the situation demanded. Tales of him walking through the middle of the town?s shopping precinct in broad daylight wearing trousers previously shredded by team-mates hell-bent on a practical joke session abound. But when you?re dealing with a character who liked nothing better than to light up a crafty fag donated by a handy spectator when in goal, right in the middle of a First Division game, and everything else conveniently happening at the other end of the pitch, what else would you expect? Balance was provided by introverts like Chippy Clark, whose entire persona and innermost thoughts always seemed to run much deeper than most. And as befits such an outwardly-quiet personality, he only seemed to really come alive when in possession of the ball, and giving some poor opposing defender or other absolute hell on the left flank.

Despite having earned many plaudits for the more delightful aspects of our game, even we had to make use of Mister Nasty-type methods, sometimes. No sixties side, however principled, would have been complete without at least one ?hard man? in their regular first eleven, of course, and in Duggie Fraser, Albion sure as hell had one. Not much got past him at the back ? and even if someone did, they?d usually end up bitterly regretting such an act of folly within seconds - and club captain Graham Williams never let the grass grow under his feet in that direction, either.

He too had a distinctly-warped sense of humour: one tale I recall was of the time when he was doing his National Service, and, like most footballers of that era, eventually becoming a PT Instructor, with an accompanying rank of Lance Corporal: the lowest possible rung on the military ladder of command, ?tis true, but a mighty powerful one all the same, especially when dealing with raw rookies who weren?t to know any better.

Apparently, our tame Welshman?s ?party piece? when taking groups of unfit and unwilling squaddies for cross-country runs was to wait until the sweaty hordes reached a point in the course where both sides of the path were absolutely packed, waist-high, with loads of stingers (nettles, that is), then scream, very loudly: ?GRENADE?! A particularly evil little ploy, that, as back then, the Word From On High was that on hearing this particular command, the massed ranks of trainee soldiery had no choice but instantaneously dive for ?cover? ? with predictably painful results! Bullying? Probably, and I daresay Army training personnel wouldn?t even dare in this more-enlightened age, but it certainly got results in terms of what would now be called the ?bonding process?.

Which brings me neatly back to the vexing question of players being ?good in the dressing-room?, and what?s to be expected in terms of ?bonding? these days. Back then, because everyone in the side knew everyone else, and their families too, you quickly ended up with a wonderful kind of camaraderie spread throughout the entire side. If one player was thinking of spending the evening in a local pub ? or, in the case of, say, The King, and Bomber, the local Labour Club, for a snooker session! ? then some of the others, getting wind of this, might well tag on themselves. None of this retreating into vast gated mansions, literally miles and miles away from both club and training ground, once the day?s work was done. But where are those characters now?

It?s all getting a bit like those old biology essays one had to do for school homework, isn?t it? ?Compare And Contrast?, in other words, in this case, not the old chestnut of ?insects versus spiders?, say, but the wonderful togetherness that was to be had then, with the completely-fragmented, unreal, glitzy goldfish-bowl-like off-duty existence that the current crop seem to have as standard today. It?s also a much more ?me?-oriented world these days, football, with wage-structures so convoluted, so secret, even, that it sure takes a bold type of player to unburden on others, team-mates included, any residual worries. And, with most team members scattered to all four winds of the county the moment training?s over for the day, just how can you share a social life?

And even if they did all live within a pretty tight radius of each other and got on swimmingly, present-day fitness and dietary requirements would mean opportunities for the sort of socialising I?m thinking of being very much in the realms of near-impossibility. And that?s even before you remember that the constant presence of the paparazzi outside the sort of places footballers frequent in their off-duty moments resulting, more often than not, in pictures likely to prove somewhat embarrassing to the subject ending up splashed all over tabloid (and not-so tabloid, sometimes) front pages ad lib.

When you come to weigh up each and every single factor that plays an important role in the lives of so many of our finest, that?s when I don?t envy the task our new manager has. To bond and motivate people who might be members of a side literally at the other end of the British Isles in six months time, and, not just that, currently earning the sort of wage that?s literally light years ahead of your own? Yes, I know, it?s all down to that old man-management chestnut, ?force of personality?, but as comparatively recent events at our favourite football club have amply shown, so called ?sergeant-major tactics? do have their limitations.

From what I?m currently hearing about our leader, he seems to be going very much with the ?carrot? leadership doctrine, rather than constantly bashing with the ?stick?. In that, he reminds me very much of Alan Ashman, who couldn?t have given out a ?proper rollicking? to save his life ? but was never once taken advantage of because of it. Although I?m not aware of him having any formal qualifications in the subject, as opposed to Martin O?Neill in the seal sanctuary down the road, what he?s doing is very much psychologically oriented, and on similar lines. As far as I?m concerned, that?s very much the right sort of approach to use in this situation: have patience (and that definitely includes ME!), for one day soon, everything will click into place, the sun will shine, and the opposing goal-net happily bulge left, right and centre. On these matters and many others, Mystic Mogga has spoken, so it?s got to be right!

And Finally?.. Tomorrow evening sees a walk down Memory Lane of quite a different sort for me, when ?Im Indoors finally gives his book its much-anticipated launch. Despite ?them? doing it, I was quite pleased to see the Sunday Mercury feature the Harold Bache stuff so prominently recently, because that was the chapter I was most involved with, World War One being just one of my non-Albion interests.

Just in case you?ve been holidaying on the Planet Tharg for the past few weeks, it?s all being held in the East Stand tomorrow night (16.11), in what was the Platinum suite, but now has another name I can?t remember for the life of me, and the kick-off scheduled for seven. If you?re not reading this stuck in some impenetrable bit of Amazonian jungle, or hacking through the Arctic permafrost, even, why not turn up on the night? There will be a bar laid on, of course. As I?ve said before, everyone?s most welcome, and we?ll even have a posse of former players on tap to give your newly-purchased copies that final seal of authenticity, plus Laraine Astle, who did the foreword for us, and with Sutton Branch holding a ?meeting? involving a Q and A session with former players afterwards.

Oh ? and some of my immediate family will be turning up, too, including my great-nephew Ethan, age six, who only recently attended his first-ever Albion game! A real live-wire, he is, and remarkable, with it, considering he was born at just 26 weeks gestation, and only weighed about as much as a standard-sized bag of sugar at the time! Just like the rest of my clan, once heard, never forgotten: you have been warned!

 - Glynis Wright

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