davidbr

I guess in all our lives there’s what we’d call a “day to forget” – 23rd July, 2002; that was mine. That was the day I went from being one of the hottest young prospects outside of the Premiership, to a drunken cripple who was one day rescued by a long-lost friend. Little did I know, the adventure was only just beginning..

First off, a bit of background. My name’s Edward Hamilton, everyone calls me Teddy, and I’m a footballer – or rather, I was a footballer. I was born in Cromer, a small Norfolk seaside town about thirty miles north of Norwich, and I grew up with a ball at my feet. My father was a schoolteacher but I had no interest in academic life, the only reason I went to school at all was because it was the one place I could always guarantee to find a few kids to kick a ball around with. No, football was my life, and I always knew what I wanted to be.

At 14 I became the youngest player to appear for East Dereham Town, at 16 I made my debut for Kings Lynn in the Doctor Martens’ League and after two seasons with the non-leaguers I got my big break; Peterborough United, then in the Third Division, had been watching me, obviously liked what they saw and came in with a £50,000 bid. I was a centre midfielder, I had an eye for goal too, and I quickly became a firm fixture in the Posh first X1. The fans had warmed to me too, and my status as a club legend was confirmed when I scored the only goal against Darlington in the 1999/2000 Third Division play-off final, that win at Wembley ending the club’s three-year exile in England’s bottom division.

Peterborough kept their Second Division status with relative comfort, finishing 12th in 2000/01 and then 17th the following season, and in that 01/02 campaign I was an ever-present, scoring 17 goals in 46 league appearances, and was voted Supporters’ Player of the Year for the second year running.

I’d also earned a call-up to the Wales squad the year before (my mother was Welsh) and had just won my seventh cap. The proudest moment of my entire career was scoring for Wales against Italy in the San Siro and listening to 60,000-odd screaming Italians go silent; we lost 4-1 that day, but those memories will never leave me. My international adventures had brought me to the attention of several top clubs, and finally in July 2002, the day after my 21st birthday, I moved to Tottenham for a fee of four million pounds; at the time, a record for a lower-league player. Sadly, I never got to play for them; just as my life should have been beginning, it very nearly ended in the blink of an eye.

davidbr

At the time I was dating a girl who I thought was the love of my life, she obviously thought differently and on the evening of July 23rd we’d been out for a meal when she told me it was all over between us. I was devastated, polished off more than a bottle of Grouse and then decided it was a good idea to drive home. I can remember skidding across the road, then pain, then darkness, then nothing.

I woke up nearly two months later, in the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal London Hospital. Doctors told me I’d “died” three times on the way to hospital and had needed four operations and thirty pints of blood just to stay alive. They left the really devastating news until later, though; in the crash I’d shattered both my legs, my right arm and my three lower vertebrae. I’d need extensive surgery but they said I’d probably never walk again let alone play football again.

And so it was that, nearly fourteen months and twenty-one operations later I walked, or rather hobbled, out of that hospital, hid in a whisky bottle and stayed there for as long as I could. But I missed football so much that, when I’d got myself as fit as I could, I signed up with one of the Sunday teams that play on the Hackney Marshes, just for the sheer love of having a ball at my feet again. And then came the moment I hit rock-bottom, when one day the manager told me he didn’t think I was “up to it” and that I was dropped for the next game. I mean I’d played in internationals, I’d played at the San Siro and the Bernabeu in my Wales days, and now I was being told I wasn’t even good enough to play against a bunch of fat pub regulars on a Sunday morning?

That, for me, was the final straw. I went home, opened a bottle of pills, and waited for darkness to engulf me.

davidbr

I’m not sure who it was, some philosopher or another, who said it’s when you’re at your lowest in life that your opportunities occur. And so it happened to me. I came round a week after my suicide attempt (apparently one of the neighbours had found me and called an ambulance) to the sound of the familiar monotonous bleeping of the Intensive Care monitors, and the unmistakeable sight of Richard Moore standing over me.

Richard, or Ratty as he’s universally known, and I go back a long way. He was a senior pro at Kings Lynn when I first signed for them, I roomed with him for a while, and we’d become firm friends. After my accident, though, we’d kind of lost touch, and it’d been the best part of two years since we’d spoken. Now, having heard about my overdose in the press (it was one of those “ex-pro hits troubled times” tales so beloved of the tabloids) here he was standing at my bedside. A no-nonsense Yorkshire lad, Ratty never was one to stand on ceremony.

“Think you’re ****ing clever, do you, all this attention??”

Like I say, Ratty had always been a sensitive soul. It’s just as well he’d never considered a career in the Samaritans; you wouldn’t be able to move on London Bridge for falling bodies. I tried to mumble an answer, but was immediately interrupted.

“Shut the **** up. I’ve got an offer for you, now listen hard.”

davidbr

And so I led there in silence, as Ratty mapped out his vision of my future. Much of it was stunned silence; in the time since we’d last crossed paths, a lot had happened to my old mate.

What had happened? 7, 18, 21, 34, 41 and 45, that’s what had happened. Those were the six numbers that flashed up on the BBC one Saturday night, and those were the six winning numbers on that evening’s National Lottery draw. Yep, that’s right, my former team-mate, a man who’d been living above a kebab shop in Kings Lynn and never had two brass farthings to rub together, had gone and won the f**king lottery!!

“How much?”

“Twelve and a half million!!”

By now, several nurses had stopped work to eavesdrop on our conversation, and I distinctly saw one pretty young thing undo the top button on her uniform to display just a hint of cleavage.

“Jeez, congratulations, mate. What’re you gonna do with it?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Ratty began to explain. Unlike me, he’d never had much of a playing career to write home about, had spent a few seasons around various lower-division clubs without making much of an impression before eventually dropping down into non-league football and, at 36, he’d retired from the game altogether at the end of the last season (we were in June 2005). His unexpected windfall had spared him the life of monotonous drudgery that awaits most ex-footballers who retire without much of an education or a Beckham-esque bank balance to fall back on, and he’d always had one over-riding dream; to own a football club.

Now, even with an eight-figure sum in the bank, buying up a football club isn’t all that easy to do. It cost Malcolm Glazer almost a billion to buy up Man U and you’d need a good fifty or sixty million to even come close to getting your hands on a Premiership side. No, Ratty was going to have to lower his sights, and here again luck was on his side.

Bristol’s a long way from Kings Lynn and even further from Ratty’s native Sheffield, but it was here he’d finally achieve his dream. Gripped by a power struggle and heavily in debt, League Two strugglers Bristol Rovers were prime candidates for a takeover. Geoff Dunford and the other board members didn’t put up much resistance when Ratty came calling with his cheque-book, in the end it cost him nearly half his Lottery cash but at the start of June, 2005, Richard Moore had been proudly unveiled as the new owner of Bristol Rovers Football Club.

And, what part would I play in this revolution? I was going to be the manager!!

davidbr

Right, time for some technical drivel. This is being played on FM06, v.6.03 (minus the data update) and we've got loaded the leagues of England (all divisions), Scotland (all), Wales (all), and Northern Ireland (top two only). Database size is set to Huge.

davidbr

So that’s how, one hot summer’s day in early July 2005, I came to find myself on a train from London, heading west towards unfamiliar territory. I’d never been to Bristol before, the one season Hartlepool had been in the same division as Rovers I’d missed the trip through suspension, never had to face Bristol City either and had never seen any good reason to make a special journey. And, as my train pulled up at Temple Meads Station, a good hour late as per usual, I would admit to feeling more than a bit apprehensive. I mean, from what I’d heard the West Country was full of strange folk, who spoke an unintelligible dialect based on the words “ooh” and “aar” and spent their evenings listening to the Wurzels whilst knocking back vast quantities of fermented apple juice powerful enough to kill an elephant at ten paces.

In fact Bristol’s a thoroughly modern city, and when I stepped onto the platform there wasn’t a farmer, Wurzel or a pair of wellies in sight. Ratty had been living down here for a month or so, he’d bought himself a flat smack-bang in the middle of the city centre, and for the time being at least I’d be lodging with him; it was a great relief that my new beginning in a new city didn’t have to include a spot of house-hunting.

Since, given Britain’s wonderful rail network, I had no idea what time I’d finally get here, I’d arranged to meet Ratty in a pub, the Bay Horse, in the centre of town; from the sounds of it he’d already found his “local”. Right now, after a hellish train journey, I was hot, bothered and fed up so the idea of a pint or five suited me fine. Deciding that some fresh air would help revive me, I decided to walk the mile or so from Temple Meads to the town centre; given that I’m a man who could get lost on a straight road, what happened next was all too predictable. Yep, I got lost.

Still, I made it in the end, ordered a very large whisky from the attractive young girl behind the bar (I couldn’t fault Ratty on his choice of pub so far) I wandered over to join my new boss at his table, where he was finishing off the dregs of his third or fourth pint. He’d brought along some papers for me to have a look at, just basic stuff about the club and the like, and the rest of the afternoon into evening were lost in an alcohol-fuelled discussion of our grand vision for Bristol Rovers Football Club.

Author's note: Something that I missed off the "technical guff" post. I don't live in Bristol (although I have visited the city), any pubs/clubs/casinos etc mentioned by name are taken from Net sources and should be regarded, detail-wise, as entirely fictional.

I guess what I'm getting at is, if you should go to Bristol, end up in a bar where Teddy & co had a whale of a time and find it's a dump - don't blame me!!

sherm

got to say i like this start
very informative, writing is good and bodes well for rest of the story kutgw pal :thup:

davidbr

Cheers for the comments, sherm :thup:

The first part of this story has been posted on another site, but that one appears to have died a death.

davidbr

First, perhaps I’d better start with a brief introduction of Bristol Rovers, and of Bristol itself. Bristol’s a city in the South-West of England, in fact it’s the main city in the South-West of England, and the population’s somewhere around the half million mark; in other words not small, but not exactly overwhelmingly large either. It’s a city with a long and varied history behind it; not all of it positive, mind you – Bristol’s main claim to fame is as a leading centre for the slave trade - but on the whole it seemed to be a pleasant enough place, with a pace of life that was far more sedate than the London I’d just left behind.

However while the city itself may have made its impact on history, Bristol Rovers FC most certainly have not. The club’s nickname, as you’ve probably gathered from the title of this story, is “The Pirates”, and consequently their badge features a pirate and the club mascot is also, you’ve guessed it, a six-foot blue and white pirate. A pair of Third Division championships, in 1990 and way back in 1953, is all there is to show for more than a century’s existence, Rovers have never played in the English top flight and, until fairly recently, they’d never played in the bottom division either.

That all changed in May 2001, when just a year after narrowly missing out on a play-off spot a 2-1 defeat to Wycombe Wanderers condemned them to relegation to the Third Division, or League Two as it is now. In the four seasons since they’ve never threatened the top of the League Two table, finishing 23rd, 20th and 15th, and even last year’s 12th place couldn’t hide yet another season spent glancing over their shoulders towards the Conference trapdoor. Managers, in that time, have come and gone, but it seems to have been Geoff Dunford who’s borne the brunt of the Pirates’ fans vitriol. A lack of investment and bad managerial appointments by Dunford and his board have been blamed for Rovers current desperate plight, financially the drop down the leagues had taken its toll. Faced with a club in debt and growing hatred from the fans, which apparently included attacks on Dunford’s business interests and family, he didn’t hesitate to accept Richard Moore’s (Ratty’s) takeover offer. The fans seemed to have welcomed Ratty on board, then I guess right now they’d have seen Ronald McDonald as a positive change.

So, what were our, my, aims for the season ahead? Ratty just wanted mid-table respectability, I wanted to prove a point. Since I had no managerial experience, I wasn’t expecting my appointment to receive a universal welcome, but some of the things that have been printed in the local rags over recent days, dredging up incidents in my past and, especially, the crash, have been very painful for me. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help taking some of the comments personally.

So, I’m gunning for promotion, I’ll show the bastards what I can do. Realistic? I don’t know a lot about the squad I’ve inherited (pre-season training starts in a couple of days) but looking at their form last season there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of talent here. Transfer-wise, Ratty’s agreed to make available £500,000 should I need it, but this isn’t going to be about a club with a sugar daddy. Once we’re back on our feet, Bristol Rovers is going to have to pay its own way, and I’m anticipating most of the players I bring in will be on free transfers. Still, I’m confident. I’ve got a plan.

davidbr

6th July 2005

“Giggs cuts inside, finds Hamilton. He’s past Cannavaro, away from Nesta. Hamilton on his left foot..1-0!!! That’s a lovely finish from Teddy Hamilton, and Wales take a shock lead at the San Siro!”

Just as I prepared to run to the travelling support, my arms aloft… I was shaken rudely awake. My greatest career moment, and one that crops up frequently in my nocturnal thoughts. Back in the real world, though, my head was throbbing like a Russian wrestler was doing a war dance on it, and a glance towards my bedside table and the bottle of Jack Daniels showed just why; Ratty and I had decided our new partnership deserved a celebration, and the way we chose to celebrate was with vast quantities of alcohol.

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I glanced up to see a vision of dark-haired loveliness standing over me, clutching an equally welcome cup of coffee. Very strong, and very black (the coffee that is, not the girl).

“Thanks, darling.”

Given my current state of alcohol-induced amnesia I had no bloody idea what her name was, so for now “darling” would have to do.