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It may have been early July, but as I stepped onto the drab tarmac of Newcastle Airport the temperature barely reached double figures and the northerly wind cut right through me. True, the shorts and T-shirt I was wearing was hardly appropriate attire for a damp, drizzly English summer’s day, but the shivers that afflicted me had nothing to do with the weather. This time yesterday I’d been lazing on the veranda of my Cypriot villa in 30-degree sunshine, now I was about to take the biggest gamble of my life. Hartlepool, a little club in English football’s third tier, had a vacancy for a manager, and I was going to be the unlikeliest of choices to fill it.
First off, perhaps I’d better explain who I am and how, at the age of 27, my life’s now come full-circle from the shores of the Mediterranean to the rather less picturesque surroundings of the North-East of England. My name’s Michael Milligan, everyone calls me Mickey, and I’m a… well, I don’t really know what I am. I’d describe myself as a professional gambler, “serial bum” would be how the more unkind of my acquaintances might put it. What I do know, though, is that I used to be a footballer, and even though I say it myself I was a bloody good one.
In the immortal words of Glenn Hoddle, for my sins in a previous life I’d been born in Hartlepool, on April 12th 1978. For those of you who know Hartlepool, my deepest sympathies, but for those of you who don’t, it’s a medium-sized town on England’s north-east coast, sandwiched between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, and claims rather laughably to be a centre of history. That history seems, for the most part, to consist of a rather dubious tale of how the locals, many moons ago, once hanged an unfortunate monkey that’d come ashore after a shipwreck, believing it to be a French spy. I’d say the monkey got off lightly; they could have made the poor bugger live there.
Anyway, I digress. As a child, life in the Milligan household, with an alcoholic mother and bone-idle father, wasn’t exactly like the Waltons, and like so many before me I sought an escape route – mine was football. Mind you I didn’t really play seriously, just whiled away the days kicking a ball about with a few of the other latch-key kids on the local patches of wasteland (and that’s something Hartlepool had in abundance.) It was there, at 15, that I was first spotted by a scout from Hartlepool United, and invited down for a trial. Now I’d never played in a proper team before in my life, and quite frankly if the ball wasn’t at my feet I wasn’t interested – to me, tracking back was an obscure event in the Olympics and workrate was a small mining town somewhere near Leeds. But, give me the ball, and no-one could deny the lazy little bastard sure could play.
Time for some technical guff that I should have put in at the start. This is being played on FM06, version 6.0.3 (without the data update) and I'm running England (Conference N/S and above), Italy (Serie A, B and C1), France (1st and 2nd), Germany (1st and 2nd), Spain (Primera and Segunda Liga)and Scotland (all divisions). All those are on Full Detail, I've also got the top divisions of China, Australia, Argentina and South Africa on basic just so the game simulates the continental competitions. Database size is Huge
All results will be genuine, no cheating or editing, and I'll also include the traditional disclaimer: This story is purely fictional, any similarities with real persons living or dead are purely coincidental, and not my fault!
I eventually broke into the first team at the end of the 1994/95 season, scored twice on my debut at 16, and the media circus had begun, Suddenly I was the best thing since sliced bread, “the next Gazza” as one esteemed journalist cried from the Sunday pages. Of course it was all hype, and it really unnerved me. I played football because I enjoyed it, for the sheer love of having a ball at my feet. I wasn’t interested in training five days a week, or running ten miles a morning. At Hartlepool they tolerated me, indulged me even – they had to, for the simple reason that they needed me far more than I needed them.
In all I made 119 appearances at Victoria Park, scoring 91 goals, before my stint ended almost as dramatically as it’d begun. Unbeknown to me, Liverpool had been monitoring my progress very closely and in October 1998 in came a £2.5m bid from the Anfield giants. I wasn’t ready, mentally, for the demands of the Premiership and if it’d been up to me I’d have turned it down, but it wasn’t up to me; the Hartlepool board had grown tired of my lifestyle, jumped at the chance to offload me in a way that wouldn’t alienate the fans, and before I knew what was going on I was in front of a press conference sporting a bright red shirt and an even redder face. I was 20 years old, and while for many kids it’d be a dream to run out at Anfield, I knew this was never going to have a happy ending. At Hartlepool, I’d been King, a fans’ hero, and for the most part this had given the club enough leverage to keep the most lurid of my activities out of the daily rags. At Liverpool, I was just another lonely young fish in a very large pond, and I was never going to be allowed such luxuries. My life soon became a never-ending cycle of late nights and even later mornings, of wining, dining and other activities that I’ll leave to the imagination with the local young lovelies, and boss Gerard Houllier, a stickler for discipline, very quickly lost patience.
In the end, I didn’t even last a year. Things came to a head when I was sent home from the club’s pre-season tour of Holland in July 1999, after a punch-up with Robbie Fowler in the team hotel after he’d welshed on a poker debt. That was the final straw for Houllier; barely a week later, after 19 appearances and nine goals in the red shirt of Liverpool, I was on my way; my contract terminated “by mutual consent”. I soon realised that the queue of clubs after my signature was going to be a short one; at the age of 21, my career in English football was over, and I left England shortly afterwards never, or so I thought, to return.
So, what was I doing back here then? Well, in a nutshell, after a pretty decent few seasons by their standards the bottom had fallen out of what passed for the Hartlepool empire. The season before I’d left for Merseyside, Hartlepool had been bought out by a Scottish-based oil firm, IOR. Suddenly, what with that and the cash injection they’d got from the Liverpool deal, the club seemed to be on the up; things even went so far as to see Peter Beardsley, he of the England caps and the scary face, running out in the club’s colours. In 2003/04 they reached the play-off semi-finals in League One (as it is now) before losing to Bristol City, and last season went one step further; a win over Tranmere in the semis saw them earn a trip to Cardiff, and the honour of facing Sheffield Wednesday for a place in the Championship.
That, though, was where it all went wrong. They lost to Wednesday in extra-time, and within a few days of that defeat came a shock announcement; IOR, due to what they called “financial pressures”, were pulling the plug on their deal. Manager Neale Cooper followed through the exit door too, chairman Ken Hodcroft stayed on, but his reputation amongst the fans was about as low as a worm’s privates. He needed something, someone, to keep them happy; and I was that someone.
Now, as well as being a footballer, I was also a bloody good poker player (as Mr. Fowler had found out to his cost!) and, since fleeing the less-than-fair shores of the Mersey that’s how I’d been keeping the wolves from the door. Ever since I was knee-high to a Jack Russell I’d had an almost photographic memory, plus the ability to keep a cool head under pressure, and so, despite my future at one stage looking about as bright as an eclipse, I’d carved out a pretty comfortable and carefree life for myself. After a fair bit of moving around I’d settled down in Cyprus, rented a villa near Paphos, and the free-and-easy lifestyle was right up my street.
For all the problems I must have caused the board whilst at Hartlepool, Ken Hodcroft and I had always got along pretty well. He was a laid-back kind of guy, liked a drink and a laugh, and he’d always been good to me. That’s probably why I agreed to take the job, that and the fact that I was bloody impressed he’d come all the way to Cyprus to see me personally. When Ken first knocked at my door I’d turned him down flat, part of me thought it was another wind-up, a bigger part of me wasn’t keen on being back in the public eye. But after a lot of persuasion, and even more alcohol in the fleshpots of Paphos, I found myself shaking Ken’s hand and promising to meet him in Hartlepool the following week.
So that’s how, on a typically damp July morning, I came to be seated next to Ken Hodcroft and in front of the press, and I came to be placing my scrawled signature on a two-year contract as manager of Hartlepool United. I was surprised by just how full the room was; given my, ahem, “colourful” past, there’d been an unusual amount of interest from the nationals (unusual for a crap second division club, that is)
To be honest, reaction to my appointment was pretty mixed. Most of the fans seemed happy to see a cult hero returning to Victoria Park, most of the sports writers thought the chairman had taken leave of his senses. But there was no going back, no time for regrets; for the distinctly unprincely sum of £525 a week, I was the man charged with steadying the ship at Victoria Park. Whatever happened, it was going to be bloody interesting!
The first, and most pressing, task as manager was to find myself an assistant; when Neale Cooper left, he took most of his backroom staff with him, and as well as the lack of a number two I was left with only one coach. It was time for a little help from my friends.
Darren Agnew and I go back a very long way. He was a senior pro at Hartlepool when I first signed for the club at 15, and he took me under his wing. He became like a brother, father and uncle all rolled into one, I idolised him, but he was also the original club hell-raiser and while he was most certainly an influence on me, whether he was a good influence is very doubtful. It was partly thanks to him that I spent my 18th birthday in the cells after a fight at a strip club, it was also thanks to him that I spent the night of my 19th chained to one of the Victoria Park goal-posts strangely minus my trousers. Those were just two of many weird and wonderful moments spent in his company.
Yes, Darren was a party animal. The last time I saw him was in Cyprus just over a month ago, he’d come over for a week and most of that week was lost in an alcoholic haze. But he was also a football man, he’d spent his entire playing career at Hartlepool, and that loyalty stayed with him off the pitch. If he took an interest in something you could be sure that his interest was entirely genuine, and if he started something you knew he’d be there to finish it. There was no-one I’d rather have as my assistant, and the terrible twosome were about to be reunited.
After a few rings of the phone, a woman’s voice answered. I didn’t recognise her, but then that was hardly unusual; Darren had always been a ladies man and got through girlfriends at a rate of knots, that was another habit I’d picked up from him. After what seemed like an eternity, a groggy voice came on the line.
“Mickey? That you?”
To cut a long story short, Darren was soon heading up North, and I now had a second-in-command.
The buzzing sound resonated in my eardrums, and slowly and groggily I climbed to my feet and tried to get my bearings. Gradually, I recognised my hotel room and I recognised the sound of the alarm clock.
I couldn’t remember setting, or even having, an alarm, but it was 8am, it was the start of my first full day as manager, and I had to get a move on; I was meant to be meeting the chairman at ten. Then, I noticed the head of blonde hair on the pillow next to mine. I had company.
Heading for the shower, the events of last night slowly came back to me. Darren had arrived just after six, and we’d decided that the start of my managerial career deserved its own celebration.
I could remember going in pretty much every bar in Victoria Street, I could remember being in Bar Paris, and I could remember being served there by the young lass who now shared my bed, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember her bloody name. Thankfully her uniform was slung over the chair next to the bed, her badge was still on it, and the mystery was solved; I decided to let Claire sleep on for a bit.
When I came out of the shower she was up and dressed, and a very pleasant sight she was. Long blonde hair, stunning figure… But there was no time for that; I was going to be late. I reached for the phone:
“Reception? Yes, Michael Milligan in room nine. Could you order me a taxi for nine-thirty please?”
Claire reached across and took over the phone: “Could you change that to nine o’clock? Ta.” She turned round and kissed me. “It’s just I’ve got to be there for 9.30. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, I guess not. I don’t follow though. Be where?”
“At the ground. I’ve got to be dressed up by ten; we’ve got a photo shoot arranged. For your first day in charge, like.”
“Y..You work for Hartlepool?”
“Only part-time, while I’m at college.”
This was getting a bit close to home for my liking. What do you do, then?”
“I’m the mascot.”
Remember I mentioned the monkey-hanging thing earlier? Well, the club’s cottoned onto it and H’Angus, a bloody great furry monkey, is Hartlepool’s official mascot. And that was Claire?
“Y..You mean you play H’Angus?”
“Yeah. It’s a doddle and it earns me a few extra quid. Daddy sorted it out for me.”
“DADDY???!!!
I mean, what were the odds? My first night out in Hartlepool, I pull the prettiest girl in the bar, and it turns out to be the chairman’s fecking daughter?! I made my way to the mini-bar; I needed a stiff drink!
“No, it’s not that, I had a great time and you’re a beautiful girl. It’s just that it’s my first day at the club, and your dad, what with my reputation.. Let’s just say, I’d rather he didn’t know about what happened.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be our little secret. On one condition- you promise me a repeat performance sometime.”
“It’s a deal. What about tonight?”
As our taxi pulled into Hartlepool’s car park, Darren was just getting out of his battered Volvo. He noticed my companion, and raised his eyebrows. I responded with a shrug. Claire went to kiss me, but I pulled away; I didn’t know who might be watching, and it wouldn’t make my meeting with Ken any easier if he knew I’d just spent the night with his little angel.
Dances With Monkeys 
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