Big Fry: Barry Fry: The Autobiography

CHAPTER FOUR

Bankruptcy and on the scrapheap

The massive shock to my system caused by my departure from Old Trafford was compounded when it became clear that I had upset Noel Cantwell and, for the first and only time in my life, I had a falling-out with my father. I telephoned my dad to give him the news that I had signed for Bolton Wanderers and to say that he was stunned is something of an understatement.

‘Who did you talk to about this?’ he asked, clearly upset.

I told him that it was my own decision and that I had consulted no one.

‘I thought you might have had the decency to discuss it with me.’

My protestations that I had received a £5000 signing-on fee seemed to irk him even more.

‘What good is money?’ he demanded. ‘Money has never meant anything to you. What are you doing? You should have come home to mull this over.’

And with that, he bashed the telephone down on me.

Noel, meanwhile, had been true to his word and gone to the trouble of contacting Ted Fenton, who had apparently been happy to discuss the situation. But my mind was swimming and I just didn’t bother to follow up Noel’s lead. He let it be known that he thought I should have acted more responsibly.

So it was against that very negative background that I embarked upon the next step in my career. I bought myself a brand new Datsun and everything went very well in a pre-season build-up in which I was a member of the Bolton senior squad, though I failed to make the team for the first couple of league games. They got off to an inauspicious start, with results going against them, and then they dropped Francis Lee for me. My debut was in a home match against Coventry City, who were managed by Jimmy Hill, and unfortunately I was unable to stop the bad run of results as we were beaten. My third consecutive game was at Cardiff, who had that marvellous team which included Ivor Allchurch, John Charles and Mel Charles. In our team were Freddie Hill, Wyn Davies, Gordon Taylor, Roy Hartle and Eddie Hopkinson in goal – a strong side and one in which I was to score my one and only league goal in a 3–1 victory. It was a headed goal in which I beat the mountainous John Charles to the ball. I ask you, men like him and Davies, as big as houses, and I score with a header!

We flew back to Manchester after the game and as I walked down the aeroplane steps I began to feel the after-effects of a crunching tackle I had received from Mel Charles. Suddenly, I could hardly walk. The pain was terrible. Forty-eight hours later we were due to play away at Middlesbrough. I still lived at Mrs Davenport’s and on the Sunday morning I walked round the corner to get some treatment from Jack Crompton, the United physio. He said there was no chance of my being fit enough to play. We were leaving Bolton at 11 o’clock the following day and by nine I was on the treatment table at Burnden Park. Then I tried to run round the track and it was hopeless. I couldn’t walk, never mind run. The physio told me to go and take a bath and as I soaked, feeling sorry for myself, the door opened and in walked the manager, Bill Ridding.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he inquired sternly.

I told him that I had done my groin.

‘I used to use that excuse to get out of things when I was in the Army,’ he replied, and walked out.

Fuming, I jumped out of the bath and set off in the nude in pursuit of Ridding. Of course, the floor was slippery and I doubled or trebled the damage that had already been done to my groin, but there was no stopping me.

‘Oi, what did you say? What the f**k are you talking about? Excuse? I don’t need any excuse. I’ve only just got into the f***ing team. I don’t want to be left out of it. I’ve just scored on Saturday. What are you on about?’

It was the worst thing I could have done. He never picked me again. It had been, I suppose, an unseemly event. As I reached screaming pitch, people were emerging from every door in the building to see what was going on and the manager being bawled out by a new player without a stitch on was not what they might have expected.

Franny Lee was back in the team at Middlesbrough and Bolton lost 4–0. It remained, however, a great dressing room. Nat Lofthouse was in charge of the reserves, to whom I had now been consigned. He kept telling me that I was doing well and then they would have Franny being picked for England and Wyn being called up by Wales and I thought I must get my first-team place back. It never happened. Instead they would draft in big Eric Redrobe, then Brian Bromley, then somebody else and somebody else, but not me. In the end I got fed up with the situation, so I decided to knock on Bill Ridding’s door.

‘What’s going on?’ Nat keeps saying I’m playing well, there are people away on international duty, you are short of players and I’m not getting a look in.’

‘I’ve been told you’re crap,’ he responded.

With this, silly Basil goes to see Nat Lofthouse.

‘You’re a f***ing two-faced bastard, you are,’ I screamed at him.

In life you realise sooner or later that there are some people you say that to and some you don’t. Nat was in the latter category. At least he asked for an explanation.

‘You keep saying that I’m doing well in the reserves,’ I said, ‘and now Bill’s just told me that your reports on me say that I’m crap.’

Before I could flinch he had me in a vice-like grip around my throat, dragged me into the manager’s office, and threw me to the floor.

‘What’s this about my reports saying …’ He was stopped short by Ridding entering the room.

‘Barry,’ Ridding intervened, ‘leave us, will you. Leave us, please.’

I got up, dusted myself down and listened behind the closed door as a huge row sparked up. Nat had a right go.

‘Don’t use me as an excuse!’ he thundered. ‘You tell him you don’t like him. You tell him he isn’t good enough. You tell him anything, but don’t tell him that I have been giving him bad reports when I have not.’

Those fights at Manchester United which were not my fault and those two incidents at Bolton were to have a positive effect on me in my subsequent managerial career. It has always been the case with me that if I have the occasion to say to a player that he is playing crap or has been an empty shirt, and he turns round and has a real go back, I never take offence. They can throw cups of water in my face, they can call me a f***ing c**t, they can even punch me. I would still pick them for the next match. So much is done and said in the heat of the moment in normal life. In football, every moment is heated. For instance at Barnet, where in all probability I first came to the attention of the modern-day football fan, I had in our non-league days a very good player called Robert Codner, whom I got for nothing from Dagenham and later sold to Brighton for £115,000. I had been telling England’s non-league representative Adrian Titcombe for some time that he was worthy of an international place and Adrian came along to watch him in a match against Weymouth. In muddy conditions we were 2–0 down and came back to win 3–2, getting out of jail courtesy of two great goals by Steve Parsons with the winner a 30-yard screamer in the last minute. As the players came off the pitch I was shouting from the dugout.

‘Well done, Frank. Brilliant. Phil, Brilliant. Well done. Robert, f***ing empty shirt. You’re a f***ing waste of time.’

‘What did you say?’ Codner demanded as he stopped in his tracks.

‘You, you c**t. F***ing waste of time.’

He nutted me, there and then, flush on the nose and I was sent sprawling flat on my back in a foot of mud. I got up and as I entered the dressing room I went straight over to Codner and gave him a full-blooded smack across the face. All the lads jumped in, but it soon calmed down and within minutes I got into the bath and sat next to Codner.

‘F***ing hell, boss,’ he said. ‘That hurt.’

‘Your head-butt didn’t do me a lot of favours either.’

I got dressed and walked down the corridor into the boardroom, where the chairman, Stan Flashman, greeted me.

‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘I’m banning that c**t.’

‘Who?’

‘Rob Codner, of course.’

‘No you ain’t, Stan.’

At this point we were joined by Adrian Titcombe.

‘Well, that’s buggered that boy’s chance for England. He will never play for his country.’

‘What are you talking about, Adrian?’ I said.

‘Codner. He head-butted you.’

‘Bollocks,’ I replied. ‘What makes you think that?’

He said he had seen the incident from the stand, but I countered.

‘Look. I had plimsolls on. I shouted something to him which he didn’t hear, so he came back to see what I had said. At that moment I slipped. It’s knee-deep in mud out there. You can see for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with me. Head-butted me – that’s a laugh!’

‘Oh, all right then,’ Adrian said. ‘He can play for England.’

And play for England he did.

I never see the point in allowing situations to fester and what happened at Bolton taught me that lesson. Two spats with the manager completely finished me. I have often wondered what would have happened if I had just sat in the bath that day and said nothing to Bill Ridding, but the fact remains that after just a year I was on my way again, this time to my most local league club, Second Division Luton Town.

They had wanted me as a boy, when George Martin was the manager. He was still in charge and he telephoned me to say that it had come to his attention that Bolton were letting me go on a free transfer and he would like me to go along for a chat. The fact was that I was going home anyway. There was nowhere else to go. When we came face to face all George could say was: ‘When you left school you should have come here.’ I signed a one-year contract and that season Luton finished within 0.046 goal average of being promoted. Again, though, I didn’t play much. I was in and out of the team and I left the club having played a career total of fewer than 20 league games while at three clubs, which was disgraceful for what I had to offer.

At the age of 21, six short years after walking into Old Trafford with the world at my feet, I was on the scrapheap. Finished. Caput. Not a single league club wanted me.

The only club of any description to show even the remotest interest was Southern League Gravesend & Northfleet, who were managed by Walter Ricketts. They had a lot of experienced players like Jim Towers, formerly of Brentford and Tosh Chamberlain, who had been at Fulham, while John Dick, the ex-West Ham stalwart, was the coach. So here I was, living in Bedford and set to join Gravesend, which was almost the other side of the world. And part-time football into the bargain. I joined them purely because I wanted to play football, but it was clear from the outset that I would have to get a job in the Bedford area to make ends meet. A firm called Advance Linen in the nearby village of Kempston required a driver to make deliveries of those pull-down towels which you see in the ladies and gents toilets at pubs and restaurants and I was successful with my application. I had to do my rounds in quick time because on Tuesday and Thursday nights I had to be at Gravesend for training sessions.

I was inhabiting a totally different world. While in Manchester I had met at a dance the girl, Anne, who was to become my first wife and she was no small part of the equation at this time and in these new circumstances. She had no interest in football, even though she lived in Salford right next to The Cliff, and I told her on the dance floor that I was a bricklayer. It was the kind of lie that only a woman could spot and she asked how I could be a bricklayer with such soft hands. Three years on we married in Salford but set up home in a flat in Bedford. It was a very difficult time. My life had been turned upside down. Instead of getting up and looking forward to work because I loved the running around and the training, followed by the afternoon off and going to the races, I was reporting for duty in a mundane job at 7.45am and rushing to allow time for the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Gravesend. Also, I was newly-married.

Even though they had players who were far more experienced than I, Gravesend made me captain. I had been there for just six months when Walter Ricketts was appointed as assistant manager to Dick Graham at Leyton Orient. He told me straight away that he would be taking me with him and, presto, I was back with a league club. I was buzzing. Dick looked after me, giving us a club house at Gants Hill. By this time we had Jane, our first daughter, but the move wasn’t really of any concern to Anne because of her apathy towards football. It would not have mattered to her where we lived. She never came to any of the games and, consequently, didn’t mix with football people.

I was never a regular in the Orient team, and in one of my periods on the sidelines something was to happen which would change the course of my life. The players arrived for one game to find that the trainer, the man with the magic sponge, had done a moonlight flit. No explanation. He just didn’t turn up. Dick was naturally concerned, but I volunteered to do the job. I allayed his misgivings about my qualification to take on the role by telling him that any silly bugger could apply cold water where it was needed and, anyway, we had a doctor on hand to deal with any serious injuries.

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