Chapter 2
The Ghost of Billy Element
Billy Element was born to score goals: 112 in a single season for our boys’ team. He had pinched features, a pudding bowl haircut, and a watchful, predatory nature. I remember him smiling only once, when he chipped a goalkeeper with a penalty kick. At the age of twelve he had the keys to the magic kingdom, far beyond a council estate built on a sewage farm in West Watford. Scouts flattered his family with the relentlessness of Tudor courtiers, and he signed for QPR, then an emerging force in the old First Division. We envied his ability, the breadth of his ambition. Football was his release, his salvation, our dream. We prayed his stardust would settle on us, like the white parachutes of dandelion seeds that carried on the wind when we blew them off their stalks. We were young, naive, and about to be ambushed by reality.
One summer’s morning, an ambulance parked alongside the ash trees that doubled as our goalposts on the patch of grass outside Billy’s house. He emerged in a makeshift shroud of blankets, and left a vacuum that took 35 years to fill. His memory was summoned when Kenny Jackett was driving me to a core stability class for his Millwall squad, run by an aerobics instructor with a stereotypical fondness for drum’n’bass remixes of Phil Collins’ greatest hits. Kenny had grown up believing that Billy had swallowed his tongue. My theory that he had died of meningitis was confirmed in a mobile telephone call to Tony Wilson, a childhood friend. Billy’s death, once a blur of bewilderment, acquired sudden clarity. He symbolised the fragility of life, the privilege of talent, and the dark truth of the oldest football cliché in the book, about taking one match at a time.
Holywell Estate, where we grew up, was hardly Fort Apache. The newly-built houses quickly became homes. People took pride in making something of their flint-strewn gardens. The Highwayman, the solitary pub, had its fair share of cartoon brawls and comedy copping off, but lacked menace. Mediocrity, rather than the petty villainy that preoccupied the local police, was its curse. Too many regulars accepted self-imposed limitations, and drifted on the ebb tides of everyday life. We vowed to be different.
I was among the bigger boys strutting their stuff on King George V Playing Fields, one of 471 in the UK named after the founding father of the House of Windsor. Kenny was one of the younger kids who played on Caractacus Green, a small patch of grass named after the tribal chieftain who led British resistance to the Romans. We each carried boyhood traits into manhood. Kenny was dogged, quietly determined, and easy to underestimate. I was uncoordinated, compulsively competitive, and had too much to say for myself. Sport offered us social mobility without compromising the reference point of our background. We followed our parallel careers at a distance. Our fathers swapped stories in the pension queue at the post office, and sustained our faith in the unfashionable fundamentals of family, honesty and hard work.
The highlight of my football career was selection as a ballboy for Watford in the 1969–70 season. Our washed-out bottle green tracksuits itched like a penitent’s hair shirt. We changed next to the home dressing room, savouring the incense of liniment and the murmurs of the crowd that filtered through a frosted fanlight. I was thrilled by the intimacy of the setting, the insights into human nature that even a Third Division club could provide. Vicarage Road was where I saw my first grown man cry, on 21 February 1970. He was a Liverpool fan, sagging against a wire-mesh fence beside the wooden hut that housed the Supporters’ Club. He had mutton chop sideburns, and wore a long red and white scarf, studded with pin badges, over a donkey jacket. Bill Shankly’s team had lost 1–0 in the FA Cup quarter final on a moonscape pitch, and I convinced myself I was centrally involved in the goal.
Through the modern miracle of a 52-second clip on YouTube, I can see myself, aged twelve, throwing the ball to Ray Lugg, a midfield player recruited from Middlesbrough earlier in the season. I hop from foot to foot, as he takes a short throw to Stewart Scullion, the obligatory Scottish wing wizard of the era. Lugg moves into space, receives the return pass, and nutmegs Peter Wall, the covering full back. The flight of his cross, a gentle out-swinger, is directly in my eyeline. It is met by a diving header from Barry Endean, which evades goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence, the fabled Flying Pig. Endean, a water buffalo of a centre forward, gave me a sudden affinity with girls of my age, drooling over soft-focus posters of Donny Osmond and David Cassidy. I was smitten.
Endean lasted another season with Watford, and became a builder in his home town, Chester-le-Street. Lugg emigrated to the United States. Their fifteen minutes of fame allowed me to understand what I wanted to do with my life. I observed a moment of sporting and social significance from a privileged vantage point. I felt the pulse of a community, sensed the spirit of that broken man on the wire. Shankly decided, there and then, that he had to break up his first great Liverpool side. Within a year he had ended the careers of Ron Yeats, Ian St John, Geoff Strong and Lawrence. Ray Clemence, Larry Lloyd, Steve Heighway, John Toshack and Kevin Keegan developed the dynasty. I met Shankly shortly before his death, in 1981, and told him of the ballboy’s role in his downfall. ‘Aye, son’, he said, in that Cagneyesque growl, ‘a bitter day, son. Bitter.’ I broke professional protocol and asked for his autograph on the double album of his reflections on football. That has happened only twice since – Pele signed a Manchester United programme, Nelson Mandela his autobiography.
Endean’s goal was my passport, my tipping point. I appalled Trog Turner, my terminally uptight grammar school headmaster, by abandoning my A-levels for a job on the local newspaper. Since then, I’ve watched sport in more than 80 countries, seen its enduring glory and recurring tragedy in one man, Muhammad Ali. I’ve sailed the wrong way around the world, studied dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert, politely declined the offer to purchase a machine gun and a two-kilo block of cannabis resin in the lawless border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I’ve raced around the Arctic Circle and Amazon Basin in politically incorrect car rallies, and even kept my Mum happy by getting my photo in the paper. Would I have swapped it all for a short career as a journeyman centre half?
Probably.
Kenny was no journeyman. He was a cultured left back, equally at home in central midfield. He played for Watford in the 1984 FA Cup final, winning 31 caps for Wales and making 428 appearances for his only club before he was forced to retire with a chronic knee injury at the age of 28. He forged a reputation as an outstanding youth coach and won promotion with QPR as assistant manager. He managed Watford and Swansea, working for Sven Goran Eriksson at Manchester City before taking over at Millwall in November 2007. Unusually, in an institutionally insecure profession, he has never been out of work. His understated personality is responsible for a low media profile that fails to register the respect in which he is held in the game.
His story begins, like so many, in a study of a relationship between father and son.
Frank Jackett was a wing half, a defensive midfield player in modern parlance, who signed for Watford from Pontardawe Athletic in 1949. He played fourteen League games over three seasons, had four matches for Leyton Orient in 1954, and then realised he could make more money in non-League football. He played part-time for Ramsgate and Margate while working as a printer.
Frank was a natural teacher, delivering common sense, leavened by experience, to his two sons. At 82, he was afflicted by Alzheimer’s. Alan, the elder by ten years, and Kenny radiated respect and a profound love for him when they spoke of his influence on their lives. Alan, a thoughtful, well-connected coach in his own right, was released by Luton, came close to a return to League football, but never quite made the grade. ‘Dad was superb at putting football thoughts into a nutshell. He always said to me that Ken did the right thing at the right time on the pitch. That’s what makes a pro I think, selection. I had a lot of ability on the ball but he said, “Alan, clear the ball from your own fucking penalty area, don’t dribble it out.” I didn’t listen, Ken did.’
Frank, who had the same forensic approach to golf, his other passion, sensed Kenny’s potential before any of us. He watched him from the age of eleven, and treated him with a subtlety alien to the Bad Dads and Mad Mums of the current Academy system. Football matches were tutorials, rather than mere entertainment. ‘I grew up in an environment of analysis – following, watching, picking up the bits’, Kenny recalls. ‘I saw Alan play a lot. He had a really good spell at Enfield, when they were one of the top non-League clubs. He got real close there, as an integral part of a really good team. I was in the bar with them afterwards. Not drinking with them, because I was a kid, but my Dad would point out their attitude, almost how not to do it. The things he said guided me in the right direction, really hit home. He spoke of attitude, approach, and the technical side of the game. What to do and when. We’d watch games, and he’d say, “You do this, you don’t do that, you watch what he does”. It was pretty clever – he was pointing out my weaknesses, but it didn’t seem he was directly criticising me. He set up football as an education for me.’ Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, Kenny unwittingly learned to think as a coach rather than a player. Saturday afternoons were spent in London with Frank, watching individuals, studying team shapes and systems: Steve Perryman at Tottenham, where Glenn Hoddle was coming through; the QPR team of Gerry Francis, Stan Bowles, Frank McLintock and Dave Thomas. Kenny admired Arsenal for the subtleties of Liam Brady, and ‘for their dour professionalism, their never ending attitude’. At fourteen, he was entrusted into the tender care of his first youth coach, Tom Walley, one of the game’s hidden heroes.
The coach’s craft spans the generations. In one of those strange coincidences, life, in 2009, had turned full circle since Walley was the driving force of the Watford team that defeated Liverpool on that fateful February afternoon in 1970. In semi-retirement, at 64, he was now overseeing one-on-one coaching for my fourteen-year-old nephew Jamie, a promising centre forward. He saw a boy with latent talent and determination who refused to succumb to the remorseless setbacks of football life. He could have been looking into a mirror at Kenny Jackett, whom he remembered as ‘the boy who was as white as a pear’.
Walley has the ferocity of an Army PTI, the warmth of an adoptive father, and the philosophy of a Jesuit priest. Give him a boy at fourteen, and he will give you a man. He built FA Youth Cup-winning teams at Watford and Millwall, helped lay the foundations of Arsenal’s development system. England internationals whose careers have been shaped by his strictures, like David James and Ashley Cole, revere him. Generations of apprentices have traipsed around to the house he shares with Pauline, a wife who refuses to obey the conventions of a football widow. They’d stay for tea – tomato ketchup with everything – and, in an age of innocence, even sleep over. They were eager to learn, awestruck to be invited. The crisp clip around the ear, designed to amplify his advice, was accepted without a murmur.
He told them stories of his childhood, of collecting firewood to sell from the age of six. He ran endlessly in the hills of North Wales, distancing himself from the rituals of village life. Contrition in chapel, following the Saturday night fight in the pub, was not for him. He lived right, took a bus to London, had a successful trial at Arsenal, and made something of himself. His catechism is the essence of simplicity: look after your body, be on time, do your work, and learn from every experience.
‘When I signed a boy I was putting my job on the line, so I got into them, sorted them out. It was, “Right, let’s see what bollocks you’ve got”. I wanted them to relax around me, but when we worked it was proper work. I wanted them to take pride in themselves. I wanted them to shine their boots so they could see their faces in them. I wanted them to look at those boots and say, “They’re mine – they will make me a life”. I wanted them to take that feeling on to the pitch with them. I loved them, controlled them, gave them discipline.’ The cardinal sin, for any apprentice, was failure to put sufficient vinegar on Tom’s fish and chips, which they ran into the town centre to collect.
Tom’s boys would take perverse pride in surviving the bin run, a series of 300-yard shuttles around a dustbin, set in a field at the bottom of his garden. The coach set an optimal time of 36 seconds for the run, allowed little more than a minute’s rest in between, and probed for physical and mental weakness. He hadn’t done his job until the boys were retching. Jackett hadn’t made the county schoolboy side, because the hobby coaches who picked the team doubted his pace, but Walley sensed the warrior within: ‘He learned quickly, had what you need. There was a mettle about him, a massive toughness. He’d want to win everything. He wasn’t a cross country runner – he was useless, tailed off last. But you give him doggies, shuttles, and he’d be in the top lot. He was like his Dad, very quiet, but got what he wanted. You hardly heard his voice but his attitude spoke for him. He was busy, a nasty little fucker, exactly like his old man.’
Jackett beamed delightedly, when the description was relayed to him: ‘Tom’s a good football man, but he’s more than that. He’s a good man, full stop. He was tough with us but his bark was much, much worse than his bite. My Mum and Dad thought the world of him. He could have beaten me up and they would have said it was my fault. They trusted him. He had a really good heart. A kid would be struggling. He’d have him around his house, give him the best steak, and talk him through his problem. He would do that for any of us. He wanted us to succeed, maybe needed us to succeed. At five o clock most days I’d be in his front room, with cakes and biscuits. He’d be off and running.
‘He’d talk about football, your game. Some of the things he tried to teach us about life, Christ. He once got a load of us in a room. He started telling us about women. “When you fuckers get married you’ve got to take her out, buy her a bunch of flowers now and again. Let her have a dance. Take her shopping, let her have a wander.” One day we were walking down Watford High Street, and saw his wife Pauline with Sarah, their youngest daughter. “Where’s Tom?” we asked. “Oh, he’s lying on the settee watching the racing!” That’s football, big time. Don’t do as I do, do as I say.’
Jackett was a reserve team regular before he left school at sixteen. He grew up fast in a dressing room that taught him the value of senior players, powerful personalities who developed into managers and coaches. Sam Ellis had a face that belonged on Mount Rushmore; Dennis Booth a viper’s tongue that reduced apprentices to tears. John Ward was cerebral, Steve Harrison comical. Even as England’s assistant manager, he would walk around the team hotel dressed as a tramp, or Quasimodo. When Kenny took his first team place, at eighteen, Harrison sought out Alan Jackett. ‘That’s me fucked’, he told him. ‘Your kid’s there for good.’ More of Walley’s eager youngsters, like John Barnes, poured into the breach. Graham Taylor used them to build a team that rose from the Fourth Division, to runners-up in the First Division, in six seasons.
‘When you’re young you get used to opportunity. I was pretty battle-hardened. It wasn’t a problem for me walking into the dressing room and getting changed. I loved the toughness of it, the banter, the competitive nature of the environment. That group took some holding. They were fucking fierce. It was full-on. Graham used to call Tom “the individuals man”. He would do the big picture, the team structure and club ethos. Tom would get inside your head. We trusted him, in all aspects of our life.’
Taylor is an enduring influence: ‘With Graham there was some distance. I learned a lot from the way he talked to the group. He had a collective approach, but pared down his analysis so you knew when he was talking about you. Graham was the manager, an authority figure. There was not that closeness, on a human level, that we had with Tom. I can’t really remember Graham giving me a bollocking as an individual, but if he called you upstairs you knew about it. His strength was standing up in front of the group and summarising what we needed to do collectively. He was brilliant at it. He could touch on things and not say it all, but leave the message there.’
When Taylor left, Walley was recruited by Millwall, where he ignored the first law of football and declined to look after number one. Jackett’s enforced retirement, and installation as Watford youth coach, meant he was in direct competition with his mentor. ‘Tom was still living in Watford. He’d started a centre of excellence, and I was thinking, “Fucking hell, he’s gonna nick all the kids and take ’em to Millwall”. I’d earned my badges early, but didn’t know shit. He must have been 45, and in his prime. I’d sit in his front room and he’d tell me what to do: get the boy in, map out his future for his Mum and Dad. If the parents like you, and what the club has to offer, then he will go to you. I did six years as youth coach, and he was my first point of contact on training sessions, player issues, team meetings, principles of selection. He did nothing but help me. He taught me to be a coach and a manager. At that time Watford lacked stability and direction. We were drifting. Tom was there for me. I can still hear him: “Be steady son, fucking steady. Let it go.”’
Jackett developed the habit of recording his professional life in a series of diaries. Taylor’s traumas as England manager helped him to rationalise his principles as a manager, and his priorities as a man. He saw someone he respected reduced to the level of a cartoon clown. He understood the impact on Taylor’s family, and the scars it has left on his psyche. One private exhortation in his diary, underscored for effect, stands out: ‘You have to act and not react.’ It’s a simple mantra, which comes in handy when the Cold Blow Lane End is running hot.
‘If you are a manager you are going to get criticism, so you’d better learn to take it. That’s really important because when you react you give certain people the credence they are looking for. It gives them their niche in the market. I love my football but I know why I’m in it, and what I get out of it. I like the mechanics of the game, the planning, the whiteboard, the training. I like logging it, comparing what I did this year to last year. The witch hunts and the endless analysis bore me. Sometimes I watch games and leave the sound off. I want the information without the opinion, but I don’t begrudge the whole media show. It generates the interest from which we profit. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t earn money that is perceived as unrealistic, and escape scrutiny.’
Watford went 22 matches without defeat in Jackett’s only season as manager, but he struggled to come to terms with a schizophrenic existence. Taylor, elevated to the front office during his second spell at the club, was, simply, ‘boss’. Walley, recruited to whip the reserves into shape, still cuffed Jackett around the ear. He reverted to being assistant manager, and when Taylor warned him that Gianluca Vialli was to take over, with disastrous consequences, Jackett understood: ‘There’s nothing worse than walking in dead man’s shoes. Graham gave me time to sort myself out.’
He spent three years assisting Ian Holloway at QPR, then joined Swansea, another club with a distinctive culture. ‘It was a hard one for us as a family. I wanted to be around my kids as they were growing up. They went to school just around the corner from the ground, and, in retrospect, I wish I had found a compromise. Living on top of the job added to its intensity. I got a lot of praise, and a lot of criticism. Swansea has such a small-town mentality. It’s insular, but wonderfully passionate. You don’t see any shirts in the town other than Swansea shirts. They think the world ends at the Severn Bridge. Even Cardiff, 50 miles away, is a different land.’
He won promotion from League Two in his first full season, lost on penalties to Barnsley in the League One play-off the following year. Swansea’s win in the Football League Trophy at Wembley offered minimal compensation and in February 2007, despite being in and around the top six all season, he left by mutual consent. Football’s all-too-familiar euphemism for a messy divorce masked traditional tensions. Like many managers, Jackett was caught in a pincer movement between political opportunists in the boardroom and agitators on the terraces. Assisting Eriksson at City was a release, a return to the purity of life on the training ground.
The Big Man, oblivious to the derision, was determined to make the most of his annual opportunity to put the Millwall manager in his place. ‘I stood here last year and told you we weren’t going to get enough goals’, he began. ‘There’s not enough goals in this team either.’ The impact of his defiance might have been diluted by the shout of ‘How the fuck did we get to Wembley then?’, but he ploughed on regardless. ‘That Jason Price is terrible. He’s got nothing to give you. If you’re the opposing manager, you’re not worried. You’re missing out on great targets. That Ibhere, who was at Walsall and has gone to Milton Keynes. He was a proper player. This lot are going to give you nothing. Your signings are poor. What are you doing? That Tony Craig. Crap. That Ashley Grimes. He’s got no pace. He can’t play.’
Jackett smiled: ‘That’s your opinion, and you are quite entitled to it. What’s your question, please? I’m wondering if I’m going to have to sit here for the rest of my life.’ The mocking laughter didn’t go down well with the Big Man. He blurted: ‘You might have 30 years in the game but I’ll pit my knowledge against yours any day of the week.’ Jackett refused to take the bait: ‘The beauty of football is that it’s all about opinions. All I can tell you is that we are going to go at teams with a fury. It’s about me grafting, doing it for you over the next nine months. If I thought I’d win by picking you, you’d be in the team.’
The Big Man convulsed with embarrassment and unrequited aggression, but stayed silent. ‘Welcome to the world of being Millwall manager’, Jackett said later. ‘It’s a no-win situation but you have to fight your corner, win your respect. Maybe Mark McGhee had the right approach when he was here. He grabbed one guy by the throat, and pinned him against the wall …’
