Following the Football round London; on teaching and football and teaching football.

'appy 'ammers







The Boleyn

One early morning I got a call from the Fat Controller to go and do a day’s supply teaching in a school in West Ham. I was new in town and much taken with the idea of going to one of the cradles of good footballing philosophy; the great John Lyall and Ron Greenwood, architects of modern English coaching and responsible through the years for such illustrious names as the incomparable Bobby Moore, the hero of ’66 Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters who was so good he was still playing in the 1st division when he was 37. Trevor Brooking, the Lampards, father and son, the list goes on and on. And all of them proper footballers; passers and runners, not one would've hoofed it up into the stratosphere for it to come down with snow on or indulged in a hopefull punt up to the big lad.



The school was a little like that to. I was totally redundant, useless, only there because of the legal requirement. I learnt far more than the kids did, even if it was boring having to sit and watch them teach themselves. And the little ones. I had a Y6 class, the biggest people in the school, the class had three assistants from ethnic backgrounds working with immigrant children who came from an incredibly diverse background. The Deputy Head, who’s class it was, had left an “integrated day” on a white board; this is jargon for a list of things for the kids to do. And that’s what they did; all day. My highlight was to get the key to the Sports Cupboard and open it for the girls who then gave an infants class a PE lesson. I just watched, open mouthed. In class I tried to help, but they were all so confident and competent that I was genuinely redundant. Like that big fella up front down the Boleyn waiting for the long ball lofted hopefully goalward. That’s just not the West ‘am way, see, and it was the same in school. Superb coaching – in this case by the Dep who’d got her class running like clockwork and could go out for the day and it all tick tocked away without her – or me. Simply wonderful; if a tad boring for me.



The imaginatively named Boleyn pub.

Once upon a time we stayed in West Ham with Joe, he knew of a great pub, right next to the Boleyn Ground, fancifully called the Boleyn. And it was. Great. In the back room there was proper dancing with a proper organist playing all the old tunes that your Mum and Dad knew. Just like Cockneys were supposed to be. Everyone was dressed to the nines, none more so than a large, elegant West Indian gentleman with a fairly impressive girth stretching his waistcoat tight, gold watch chain dangling at just the right angle, who was an obvious Romeo. The East End has always been an immigrants destination; Milligan and his Irish mates fighting Mosley’s Black Shirts down Brick Lane, anti-Jewish riots, the West Indians sailing into the docks often stayed, nowadays it’s the Bengali sweat shops in the Rag Trade. West Ham United’s Clyde Best is widely credited as being the first division’s first black player.

            What Joe had forgotten was that it was F.A.Cup semi-final day and that from Villa Park down the M1 to London doesn’t take that long. Soon the bus loads of fans began returning and crowding into their local, and singing at the top of their liberally liquid laced voices, “Wemberleee, Wemberleee.” Yep, the ‘appy ‘ammers ‘ad done it again. Off to Wembley.

C'mon you Spurs!

The next club on my Fat Controllers list was T.H.F.C. The Spurs. The Yids. The Double. Kick and Rush. Gazza in tears. All of that and more. Much more; a proud institution. The school was literally in the shadow of the East Stand, the kids were almost totally Afro-Caribbean, an excellent, if demanding place to work. The boss was a Yorkshireman and after a few days there I asked him how he managed to run the place so well.

“Simple” he answered frankly, “I’ve got a very experienced staff and I go over budget ever year because of it. I offer my governors my resignation every year when they complain about it, but I’m still ‘ere.”

Next I asked him if he was a football man, tread gently see, not everybody is.

“Leeds United, man and boy!”

So I asked him about the big place casting its shadows over our little playground.

            “Never been in since they went PLC.” Was the blunt Yorshire reply, “The Arsenal send their lads up every season! But the other lot haven’t been in since they went public. Says everythin’ dunnit.”

If you click on the link you can see how close the school is to White Hart Lane.

http://maps.google.com/maps/empw?url=http:%2F%2Fmaps.google.com%2Fmaps%3Ff%3Dq%26source%3Ds_q%26hl%3Den%26geocode%3D%26q%3Dwhite%2Bhart%2Blane%26sll%3D51.603276,-0.065854%26sspn%3D0.025749,0.076818%26ie%3DUTF8%26hq%3DWhite%2BHart%2BLane%26hnear%3DWhite%2BHart%2BLane,%2B46%2BWhite%2BHart%2BLn,%2BWhite%2BHart%2BLane,%2BLondon%2BN17%2B8HP,%2BUnited%2BKingdom%26ll%3D51.603276,-0.065854%26spn%3D0.016633,0.038418%26t%3Dh%26output%3Dembed&hl=en

            One afternoon as the tidal wave of kids surged down the corridors I came across the boss looking a little more frantic than usual. Apparently the lad who ran the school Athletic Club hadn’t turned in. I immediately offered to do it.

            “I can’t pay you ‘owt, you know that!” said the boss. I told him it would be fun and he agreed and just told me to give them a few races and let them go home when they’d had enough. The thing is that if you do something like that for children, they don’t forget. So we did some silly warm ups I know of; every one jogs in a line and you shout out body parts for them to touch the ground with. You start with the obvious and accessible stuff like right hand, left hand, the knees, the elbows, then you throw in “Your bottom”, giggles galore, and eventually you go for the nose and the ears by which time the kids are mostly lying on the floor in hysterics. I still do it with my Spanish children. And they still love it. Then we did some silly races; hopping, crab walking, frog jumping. Then it got serious; heats, semi-finals and finals. Boy can those kids run. Its in the balance, and the stride; there’s nothing more natural than running, is there. Its flight and chase – forget the gathering, its hunting and being hunted, pure and simple. It was beautiful to watch their natural grace and ability, great to hear the laughter and see the smiles, but best of all, the next day every one of them greeted me going past down the corridor or in class. Yes!

Up the Arse!

I know its infantile but I simply can’t resist it. During one of my many sojourns in the city of pea soupers and soot, I lived hard by Highbury. It’s a proper football club still, is the Arsenal. Many of the supporters still live nearby and walk to the game. There’s a school at the end of the road and, of course, sooner or later I got to go there too. I’m a massive fan of these lovely old Victorian schools; huge big classrooms full of space and light, steps so worn by generation after generation of children that the top of one tread almost meets the bottom of the next. What they often don’t have is playground space. One Tory government or another hit on the hooligan idea of selling off school playing fields and of course, in London land was at a premium. Which is one of the reasons why I think the Arsenal should be so applauded; for breaking the bank to keep the Emirates local. I worked a few days in another Islington school with a tiny playground underground; I kid you not, literally underground, all electric lighting and troglodytes. None of the kids was over three foot tall. I seem to remember some barbarian had built a car park on the top where their playground used to be. What I remember best about Highbury Primary School was the football. There was only room for one pitch at playtime, but under the benevolent direction of Doreen at least six games were in progress at any one time. Talk about 3D chess – nothing on this mun! It was mindboggling to watch, incredibly all ran smoothly, disputes ran at the normal level or below ……… unb’lievable as we say in Wales.

The other thing about the Arse is that they invest in their, and Tottenham’s, community. I was privileged to be in a school one day when “the lads” came in to work with our kids. There were three of them and they were all about 7 feet tall, no more than 17, utterly professional, utterly charming and brilliant with the kids, who loved them. They did some football stuff which should have had me scribbling furiously, but I just watched open mouthed again at their easy confidence and control, both of the ball and the children; believe me they were good, very good. At the teaching bit and the football bit. Then they did some Literacy work, all football inspired, which the kids lapped up in a way they mightn’t have done in class. Brilliant.

The other other thing about the Arse is the ladies. I’m a huge believer in unisex sport. Arsenal Ladies is the most successful women’s football team in Britain. They’re semi-professional and have sometimes made their Continental professional opponents look silly. A wonderful role model for all British girls, not just Londoners. The club have academies for both boys and girls and their inward investment is an example to all clubs, especially other North London clubs who ignore little schools on their doorsteps. Let’s hope that’s changed.

British primary schools are almost uniformly excellent and on the very rare occasion that they're not its because the managemant is crap. And so it was that I went to a tall old Victorian building in Newham where a Super Head had been installed to effectively break up the school. Staff were not happy. Senior staff were disgruntled. So when I asked the Deputy at lunchtime if I could use the playground some time in the afternoon for a PE lesson, she said, "Stay out there all day for all I care!" she was bitter, you could sense it. So we did - stay out there all afternoon. We did some skills for a bit and then played one of the longest games of school football ever played. In fact I'm off to fone the Guiness Book of Records now ............

That afternoon still occupies a high spot in my professional memory as the time I got paid 120 quid to play football all afternoon. Not bad, eh.

And finally I’d like to tell you about my friend Paul, a lifelong Spurs supporter. When we worked together he let slip one day that he’d played in a youth team with Glenda Hoddle. After the Ooohs and Ahhhs had died down, Paul said that wasn’t his best namedrop. He claimed that he’d beaten Olympic gold medallist Linford Christie in a race. And he had. Its quite well known that as a youngster Linford wasn’t what you could call an enthusiastic trainer. He also ran the 400m rather than the pure sprints he later became so dominant in. 400 hurts. He was also quite fond of what we can term recreation; disco’s, late nights, girls, who knows, maybe even a little recreational spliff or two. And so it was that Paul caught him on a bad day and beat him in a 400. He also claims to have snogged Kim Wilde, but that’s just going to far isn’t it!



Wet dream or what?