Chris Hargreaves - Where’s Your Caravan? - My Life on Football’s B-Roads

To my beautiful family, Fiona, Cameron, Isabella

and Harriet. I am one lucky man.

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Where’s your caravan?

Early Days

1989/90

1990/91

1991/92

1992/93

1993/94

1994/95

1995/96

1996/97

1997/98

1998/99

1999/2000

2000/01

2001/02

2002/03

2003/04

2004/05

2005/06

2006/07

2007/08

2008/09

2009/10

Epilogue

Copyright

About the Publisher

Well, at the moment, metaphorically speaking (and yes, I know I have used a big word in the first sentence but don’t judge me yet, I may still confirm your suspicions) my caravan is parked up in the middle of Devon. It has an electricity and water hook up, and is on a nice little pitch. I don’t plan on moving it very soon but, if my career path is anything to go by, the chocks could be removed at any time and it could roll on out of town once more.

So why have I titled this book as I have? Well, for starters the nomadic lifestyle of a gypsy travelling around the country, stopping every so often to enjoy the local area and find some work, is very familiar to me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it also gives my trusty old horse a rest as well, as my wife Fiona may not appreciate being likened to an old nag! However, I have played for ten clubs and have moved house fifteen or so times, gradually migrating from north to south, so I can definitely empathise with the uncertain lifestyle of the traveller.

The second reason I have titled the book as I have is that for the vast majority of the seven hundred odd professional games I have played in (or been present at anyway!) the chorus of ‘Where’s your caravan?’ has reverberated around the main stand of the many grounds I have been to (and many times those main stands have been a bit sparsely filled, so you can imagine the quality of the acoustics in these cavernous spaces, and the clarity of the words). OK, so it may have been prompted by a slightly late tackle by yours truly, or a shot into row Z, but it is more likely that my long hair has caused many a punter to assume that I am, in fact, a gypsy traveller. I got used to this form of harmless banter/abuse, and whenever I heard it sung I would usually point to the car park, which would give the away fans a good laugh, and get me off the hook for taking out their number nine.

I’m not the only player who gets this type of stick. While playing for Torquay United a few years ago, we had a pre-season game against Derby, and who should be in their team but a certain Mr Robbie Savage (I think of him as a poor Chris Hargreaves – poor in skill, but perhaps richer in other ways). I had to laugh when the inevitable chant of ‘Where’s your caravan?’ was sung to him and, instead of pointing to the car park as I used to do, he shouted over to the main stand and said, ‘It’s in Monaco, lads.’

Old Robbie, if ever there was a man who could drive a yellow Ferrari it was him; I would say it matched his teeth, but after his latest Hollywood treatment this is no longer the case. (Give us the number please Robbie, I’m doing a bit of local TV down here in the south-west!)

Sadly, my career is now over, so that particular song will no longer be heard by me, which is a shame. What’s more, I recently had my hair cut quite severely, which, to some extent, is also a shame, but you can only get away with hair like that for so long. You either have to be a footballer or be in a band, and although I think my shower singing voice has a major chance of world stardom I am as yet unsigned.

I first started trying to write this book a couple of years ago, and my mood at the time could have been described as, at best, reflective. A recent promotion captaining Torquay United – scoring and lifting the trophy at Wembley no less – changed my mood ever so slightly, to that of mild euphoria. I subsequently left Torquay United, rejoined Oxford United, got promoted, got injured and have now retired.

My mood has obviously changed again. I am no longer a professional footballer, and I have to tell you that it is bloody tough. Not tough in the bigger scheme of things, by that I mean the poor souls who have lived through wars, tsunamis, disease, poverty and famine, or the heroes that fight for their country or who work seventy hour weeks saving lives in hospitals and operating theatres up and down the land. That is tough. By ‘tough’, I mean that football is all I have ever known and I never really imagined the end coming, even though I knew it had to. I would say I am definitely now in the real world. I still don’t like to say the word ‘retired’ (I must get used to saying ‘ex-footballer’ by the way) and part of me thinks I could still play; it’s difficult to know how I feel at the moment, but I will try to tell you during the course of this book.

I suppose what I am trying to get at is that, in the space of a couple of years, my life has been amazing, disappointing, exciting, and many other things ending with the letters ‘ING’. My writing style may therefore be a little bit varied, but they say everyone has a book in them, so I thought I would give it a go. Add to this, my life off the field, with my three lovely/demanding children and my lovely/very demanding wife, the many miles of motorway driving I have recently done to and from Devon, and the numerous nights spent in hotels, and you may start to see a picture of the life and mindset of a professional footballer.

I have mild to high OCD, I have got slight neuroses, and I am a practising, but reluctant, insomniac. I also seem to spend my life on the phone or computer trying to keep as many fingers in as many pies as possible, in order to bolster my chances of finding work, and money, after football. I am very lucky, or very unlucky depending on your viewpoint, to have played for as long as I have, but it is now over. Retirement from football ended my staying in hotels, smuggling in my boxes of Shreddies and M&S dinners, and smuggling out the hotel shampoo, tea and coffee supplies. I didn’t predict the ending and although I had tried to make a few plans for the future, towards the latter part of my career, right up until the end, football was totally and utterly my life.

I will intersperse my writing with little gems from my Devon clan, such as Hattie, our four-year-old firecracker who bosses us all about something chronic, tells me her friends have polar bears and lions for pets and has demanded ham, cheese and Toblerone for breakfast. She will break dance on request, loves being naked, and is ‘marrying Will next door’ who IS her boyfriend (yes, you guessed it, she takes after her mother!). The older two, Cameron and Isabella, consistently squabble over the TV control, are as competitive as gladiators, and are constantly planning which adventure ‘we’ will go on next. I don’t want any of them to grow any older, and I regularly tell the girls to never leave me. In truth, I love those goof balls so much it does actually hurt sometimes.

I will also tell you where I am writing from at any particular time – I started this section while in a hotel reception listening to a supermarket-style loop tape and watching numerous afternoon business lunches escalate into all-day sessions – no wonder those bankers have made such bad decisions recently!

In short, I will try to re-live with you the last twenty or so seasons of my football career. This will include spells at ten clubs, and having seen a good twenty-five managers come and go. It will include tales of fans, players and chairmen alike, it will contain more house moves than a Kirstie Allsopp book, and it will chart some of the seven hundred and fifty or so games that I have played in. At times I have hated this job with a passion, usually after defeats I might add, but I hope this book will give you an insight into why I still love the game that I have been paid to play for over twenty years. I hope that the young professionals starting out can learn from it, I hope that old pros coming to an end of their careers can empathise with it, and I hope that the bloke down the pub can relate to it. It’s about being a dad, a husband and, of course, a footballer.