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Dave Quinn - Football Manager
Dave Quinn - Football Manager
Dave Quinn - Football Manager
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Dave Quinn - Football Manager

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"With the ball about to cross the line, Spanner took an almighty kick at it, missed, followed through and kicked himself full in the face, ever the competitor, he had his arm in the air claiming a foul before he had even hit the floor." If you've ever been involved in kids football; Manager, coach, bucket-carrier, supporter, parent, player, whatever, this book will bring it all flooding back, the good, the bad, and the downright funny.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 14, 2014
ISBN9781909833197
Dave Quinn - Football Manager

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    Dave Quinn - Football Manager - Dave Quinn

    INTRODUCTION

    My name is Dave Quinn, and I am an addict. There, I have said it now, I have come clean, apparently that is the hardest part, admitting it to yourself. Like all addicts I have gone to enormous lengths to indulge my addiction, I think about it constantly, I don’t sleep because of it, and if I do sleep I dream about it. I have done it in bars, I have done it in public parks at dusk, I have done it in a whole succession of seedy little clubs up and down the country, and I have even skived off from work to do it. It has caused arguments and fall outs with family and friends, and it has cost me a fortune, it has also taken an enormous toll on both my physical and mental wellbeing, and now, almost inevitably, my own son has also fallen victim to my addiction. My name is Dave Quinn, and I am a football fan.

    I can’t claim to have been an addict since birth, I can’t push the blame on to my mum. I do know that she did not smoke or drink during the time that she carried me, but I don’t know if she sat in front of the tele watching endless football matches, I doubt it, anyway I don’t think that you can absorb football through the womb, mind you, I do know a few new mums that have claimed to have pushed one out in the other direction, so who knows. No, I can’t blame my mum.

    I can actually trace my addiction back to one specific date, 3rd May 1975, the day that West Ham won the FA cup, before that date football did not exist to me, but I grew up in the east end of London, I grew up in a road called Moore Walk, named after the great Bobby Moore himself, the next road was called Brooking Road, I never stood a chance, football and West Ham United were always going to get me in the end. We had a street party that day, by the end of it I was full of cake, full of cake and football.

    But why football? I really don’t know the definitive answer to that question, I have asked myself it many times, I think that there are numerous reasons why. Maybe it’s the togetherness, the sense of belonging, when you play it, you play it with ten other people who are all striving for the same thing, they can’t do it without you, you can’t do it without them. When you go watch it, you can watch with ten, or twenty, or thirty or even a hundred thousand other people who all want the same thing as you do. It really is the peoples game, the Volkswagen Beetle of games, anyone can take part, rich or poor, black or white, good players and poor players, anyone, regardless of the circumstances that they find themselves in can join in to some degree or other, you don’t need loads of fancy equipment, just something to kick, even if it’s only a rusty old baked bean tin, catch it just right, close your eyes, and even a rusty old baked bean tin can win the World cup final.

    A simple game, that’s what football originally set out to be, that was its goal, so to speak, and that’s exactly what it succeeded in being. But what happens if you start to look to deeply into it? When you attempt to become knowledgeable about it? When you start taking F.A coaching badges? When you have spent one Saturday afternoon too many sprawled out on the sofa listening to the panel on Sky Sports? I will tell you what happens, then it starts to become over complicated, 4-4-2, 3-5-1, 4- 3-3, Zonal marking, Diamond formations, Christmas tree formations, Easter egg formations, ok I made the last one up, but it’s like speaking a foreign language. The way that football is spoken about these days you would think you would need to be a university graduate just to be able to play the game, but in actual fact more often than not it is played at the very highest level by people who can hardly string two words together, and who only go on to complete a full sentence if it’s been awarded for drink driving.

    I still think the bloke who sat in front of me for four years when I had season tickets at West Ham had it right. He had very severe learning difficulties of some kind, mind you I say that about him, but about forty of us renewed our seats, season after relegation haunted season in that very same block at West Ham for those very same four years, so who are we to comment?

    Every game he shouted out only one piece of advice to the team. The exact same piece of advice, over and over again, throughout the entire ninety minutes, every home game for four years. Everybody around him used to laugh at him, or take no notice of him, but they just could not see it, they could not see what was in front of their faces, they could not see what I could see, he was a visionary, a genius. He had taken all the complicated jargon and tactical mumbo- jumbo out of the game, he had stripped it down to the bare bones. He didn’t need a panel of ex professionals to explain it, he saw it clearly, he saw it how it was, how it was always intended to be. Go on West Ham he would shout kick it, kick it in the goal.

    Maybe that’s why I am addicted to football, because of its simplicity, its simplicity is its beauty. Of course all of that crap goes out of the window the moment you agree to manage a kids football team!

    I AM THE SPECIAL ONE

    It really was a good goal. It was a last minute goal. It was a goal fit to win any game, Michael rolled the ball out to Baley, he played it down the line to Spanner, Spanners first time cross was headed down into Psychos path by Bradders, and Psychos first time volley left the opposition goalkeeper grasping thin air as it ripped into the back of the net. It was a goal that I will remember for the rest of my days, not because it won us a cup, or a league title, not even because it won us that game, but because it brought the curtain down on seven years of my life.

    I don’t think that too many people measure their lives in units of seven years, well except those people that make that television programme ‘Seven up,’ you know the one, where they have followed a group of people every seven years since the age of seven, my personal favourite is the cheeky little Cockney boy, who grew up to be a cheeky little Cockney cab driver, anyway, I digress, I think that most people measure their lives in units of five or ten years, in decades, they have five or ten year plans and stuff. So seven is not only an odd number, it is also an odd number to measure a portion of your life by, and the only reason I use it is because for the past seven years I have been the manager of a kids football team, and this is my last season.

    Psychos stunning volley was not the last official act of my managerial career, we still had a weekend away on tour, and then our clubs presentation day to come in the next fortnight, but it was the last competitive league game of my reign, a reign that had started almost by accident, a reign that had started almost seven years ago to the day.

    My son Michael had already been playing in goal for the team for about a year. Initially I was a little bit reluctant for him to join a team, partly because I was not sure if my little boy was quite ready to run the gauntlet of the touchline ‘Loonies’ that I remembered so well from own my experiences of playing kids footy, but mainly because I was still playing Sunday football myself. I had spent the past three seasons playing for the very tongue in cheek, but aptly named, Nearleigh Athletic in the local veteran’s league. I was having the time of my life, my devastating lack of pace, coupled with an equally devastating lack of ability with either foot, was giving defenders, mostly my own, nightmares, and had secured me a regular place in the Nearleigh Athletic midfield.

    Nearleigh Athletic were a fantastic team to be a part of, they did not take themselves too seriously, every misplaced pass, or wildly sliced shot would be met with gales of laughter, the mickey taking was ruthless, but never nasty. Finny, our manager, Rob, Goose, Julian, Huggy, Daz, Dodge, Boozey, Big Dave, Chris and Andy O, to name but a few, played the game for the love of it, for the enjoyment of playing a game of football with your mates. Not only did Nearleigh Athletic help a fairly quite person settle quickly into a new area, but unbeknown to me at the time, it also moulded my attitude to the world of kids footy that I was soon to join. Namely that win lose or draw, there is no better place to be on a Sunday morning than on a football pitch with your mates.

    In football, sometimes timing can be everything, playing for Nearleigh Athletic on one freezing cold Sunday morning, suddenly my right calf exploded. I had just picked up a loose ball, brought it under some semblance of control and was poised to burst into a stroll, when bang! It felt like someone had shot the back of my leg off, I seemed to take a few more steps and then crashed to the floor, and all of this met with the usual howls of derision and laughter from my concerned Nearleigh Athletic team mates. First, and last, onto the scene was our assistant player/manager/physio Paul, but known to everyone as Goose, a worrying nickname for a Physio if ever I’d heard one, although much to my relief it was only bestowed to mark his resemblance to Tom Cruises wing man in the film Top Gun, rather than his initial examination technique.

    "You alright Quinny?

    I think I’m shot

    Don’t put yourself down mate, you’re not that bad

    Shot, I said, shot

    Oh yeah, shot, course, I thought you said

    I know what you thought

    By this time Andy O had wandered over complaining of a blister, therefore doubling Gooses caseload. After a slight pause Goose carried out a quick triage on us both, having deemed me to be his priority, he then rubbed his chin for bit before declaring that my injury, in his considered opinion, was The funniest thing I have seen in ages, you looked like one of those oil tankers trying to slow down, you better go to A and E

    It turned out to be a badly torn calf muscle. Which pretty much put paid to the rest of my season, or at least it would have done, if I had not had the stupidity to try and play again six weeks later, which resulted in me tearing it again, only worse, which pretty much put paid to me ever playing again.

    To be honest the torn calf stopped me from having to make a heart breaking decision, I absolutely loved playing for Nearleigh Athletic, but I also did not ever want to miss watching Michael play, and quite often we kicked off at the same time, little did I know that someone else had just made an equally big decision, a decision that would ensure that I did not miss Michael kick, or in his case, save a single ball for the next seven years.

    Ken was the manager of Michael’s team, and now Ken’s car had pulled up outside my house. This was a strange and slightly frightening occurrence. Strange because although Michael had been in Ken’s team nearly a year, Ken had never actually been to our house before, I knew he had our address, because he had to have full contact details for all of his players, but he

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