The Cat Without The Cream

His name is Ricky Spraggs. He's 22 and as keen as the Met on a drugs bust. I get it. I remember it. I'd have cut the first-choice 'keeper's fingers off for a game when I was his age. ( Just ask Neville Southall!) In any team you can have 4 defenders, 3-4 midfielders, 2-3 strikers but only one goalkeeper. Short of injury, 6-goal humpings and substance addiction, you don't change goalies. Unless you're Ron Greenwood of course and that bizarre policy he had about alternating Clemence & Shilts during the '80s and look how THAT worked out!
Mac took me aside. He was very nice about it. Well, as nice as the grumpy ol' bastard could be and he did get the jibe in about me telling him every year that this was my last season but the decision was to go with the new guy at the start. " This will give you more time to concentrate on the after-dinners." he said, which was true if not a little bitty below the belt.
I'd started that last year. The supporters club organised a Player of the Year gig and as the senior player in the squad as well as being the only one who'd ever been interviewed by Sky Sports, I was asked to say a few words.
I'd rattled the free Chianti by that point. Good bottle and a half I reckon but I staggered to my feet and started talking about the career and, it has to be said, it was pretty funny. They even lapped up the impressions. Mac, natch, but a bit of Fergie, Clough, Jimmy Hill and a more than passable Alan Brazil had them pissing themselves before the coffee and mints arrived.
Anyway, before you could say  " Ballotelli's bonkers" I was getting calls from the local cricket club, golf clubs, welders federations and even some posh bib & tucker event an hour's drive from here. It's been going so well, I'd even picked up an agent but, fuck me, I didn't think it would be taking me away from what I do best.
DID best as now Mac's wants to give Spraggsy ( 5 minutes in the door and they've given him a nickname altho' it's hardly the work of Charles Dickens, is it?)  my gloves on his hands and my balls on a plate.
Still...no hard feelings. Mac also told me the boy would need a mentor but given that Carey says that I'm not even responsible with the remote for the telly in my hand, there's not much chance of me taking a rookie under my armpit.
Still...I'd better talk to him.

Back in training

Hello Hello, tell all of your friends, I'm back, I'm back, as a matter of fact...I'm back!  Gary Glitter's pre-paedo classic pretty much sums it up as I arrived for the first training session of the new season. Mac's there. Gruff Glaswegian who thinks that the word  " bastard" is a form of affection. He's been managing the club for five years now and has seen us though a couple of promotions as well as a visit to the third round one year away to Blackpool.
I remember we pissed ourselves at them. I mean, it was so feckin' ridiculous! The trams, the karaoke, that tower...the Pleasure feckin' Beach! This was a club that lived in the past more than The Monkees. Ooh, Stanley Matthews....ooh the duck at Wembley and yet...last year, the Premiership!! Didier Drogba asking Ancelotti if he could have a shot on the Waltzers and a candy floss before getting back on the bus!!
Anyway, we weren't pissing ourselves when they duffed us up 4-1. Even then, our counter was an own-goal. I could hear the laughing policeman at the Pleasure Beach as I went left and the ball right from a free-kick for the fourth. Still, we got a decent bag of chips on the way home.
Anyway, Mac didn't seem too upset after that one altho' old Chuzzlewit the chairman wept when the Tangerines drew Man U in the next round.
It could have been us!  he wailed for a week and only started to recover when we went to the top of the division the following Saturday.
So, Mac's here and Jimmy Rivers as well.
" Riv" had no close season. He just wandered around the training pitch mourning the lack of training until it all started again.There he was, setting up the traffic cones with all the eagerness of the 40 year-old virgin on his wedding night.
And the lads were there.
Cracknell, Hopgood, Herberts, Spock ( you gotta check his ears!) etc etc etc. I'll introduce you to the rest of them as the season unfolds.
There's a new guy as well. I didn't recognise the coupon although everybody else seemed to know him.
Mac was doing that face-to-face-with-the-new-boy routine that he always did at this time of the year....
I've brought ye here cos ye kin dae a joab fur me ya bastar'. We dae the work doon here, oan the training grun'...blood, snotters....
It's the pish he doled out to me on my first day..
...guts 'n' glory...
like he's been watching Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday..
show me second an' i'll show ye the loser...
and then the piece de resistance...
...we're a team, we play as a team, talk as a team, eat as a team...if needs be, wank as a team...
I was loving it until he said...
...so git yer arse in goal ya bastar' and we'll chuck in a few cross baws!
And that's when I learned he'd only gone out and signed another 'keeper!!!!!!!!!
Bastar'!