Budgie - The Autobiography Part 4

24.

55.

25.

5 West Ham

42.

18.

14.

10.

68.

39.

50.

31.

Because of the one-off nature of the game, and the fact it was being played on a Friday night, the match was generating a lot of interest throughout the country. Clubs had a lot to gain by us losing, and I knew I had to do my best to stay calm in the days leading up to the match and set an example to the younger lads. This was a huge game as big as they come and the last thing I needed on the night before was to be targeted by match-fixers.

In an era long before the internet you didn't really hear about match-fixing. Sure, there would be the odd dodgy result, or a performance that was too bad to be true, but that's football isn't it? To prove that someone had actually thrown a game would have been impossible. I had never heard of match-fixing from any player I had played with and I would have punched anyone's lights out if I suspected that they were willing to chuck a game. I may have been the joker, but football meant everything to me, and it would have been too much to take to work like a slave all week only for someone to affect the result.

At the same time, I wasn't naive; I knew there were a lot of bad guys out there, and that there were certain people you didn't get on the wrong side of. I may have come from Workington, but I knew the way things worked, and that criminals would use any enterprising scheme they could dream up to make a fast buck. Gambling was one lucrative way of generating cash, and even though football betting wasn't as big a deal as it is now, it was seen as another way to extract some money from the bookies. I suppose if you are going to try to n.o.bble the result of a game, then the best person after the referee to try to influence would be the goalkeeper. I just never thought anybody would be daft enough to try it on with me.

On the Thursday night before the Palace v Burnley game, I was sitting watching television in the house, when my telephone rang. I picked it up, and on the other end of the line was someone with a Geordie accent. 'Is that John Burridge?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said, none the wiser. 'If Crystal Palace lose tomorrow, you could be a rich man. I'm right outside your house just now. Tell me there's a chance they might lose, and in 10 minutes' time there will be 25,000 sitting on your doorstep. Come outside and pick up the parcel. It's yours.'

I really didn't know what to think. My first reaction was that it must be somebody having a joke. Maybe someone deciding to have a wind-up at my expense? After all, I'd played enough jokes on other people.

But I wasn't going to hang around to find out. I blurted out two words, the second of which was 'OFF'. I hung up the phone on him and that was the last of it. I half-expected the guy to ring back and try again, but he'd got the message.

I put it to the back of my mind and never mentioned it to anyone. To this day, I don't know if I was the only one in the team to get a call like that. Or whether people involved in other games were targeted in that way. I honestly don't know whether it was someone trying to influence the game for gambling purposes, or whether it was someone determined to make sure that Sunderland went up to the First Division. It would have been pointless for me to go running to Terry about it or going to the FA. For one, I'm no snitch. And anyway, how the h.e.l.l would I have proved it anyway? It was only a voice on the other end of the phone. It didn't affect me in any way before the game; I just put it down to a crank call and went on with preparing for a ma.s.sive match where I had to make sure I would be at the very top of my game.

The lads were brilliant in the hours before the game, completely focused, and on Friday, 11 May, 1979, we went out there determined not just to win the point that would deliver us into the First Division, but to beat Burnley and go up as the champions we believed we were. I had friends and family down, and Janet's mum and dad were there in an amazing crowd of 51,482. There were thousands more locked out, I don't know where they all came from. But what a noise they made inside Selhurst Park that night.

It was a horribly uncomfortable game to be part of as a goalkeeper, because we had all the possession and pressure, and I just had to stand there and keep my concentration and hope that we could break Burnley down. I was kicking every ball and I leapt for joy when we got the goal that would put one hand on the Second Division trophy with just 14 minutes to go. Vince Hilaire sent over a cross from the right, and Ian Walsh got on the end of it to head us one-up. It was party time, and Dave Swindlehurst put the icing on the cake with a second. We'd done it, we'd come from fourth to grabbing the championship in the last 14 minutes of our season.

The Palace team that night was: Burridge, Hinshelwood, Sansom, Kember, Cannon, Gilbert, Nicholas, Murphy, Swindlehurst, Walsh, Hilaire.

It was a wonderful story young boys of 18 had helped us win the t.i.tle. I'd done it with my d.i.c.ky shoulder and we were going up to the First Division.

CHAPTER 11.

THE PIONEER.

'My dedication far outweighed anyone else. What is regarded as normal today, I was doing in the late 1970s, yet I was regarded as a bit of a weirdo at the time.'

To prepare for life back in the top flight, it had been arranged for Palace to go to Florida for their pre-season, where they would play against North American Soccer League sides like the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Terry Venables was very friendly with Rodney Marsh, who was playing for them at the time, and that's how the game came about. American soccer was ma.s.sive at that time, and superstars like Pele, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer were playing there. I would have loved to have gone there and seen all the razzmatazz first hand, but I couldn't because I had to have my injury operated on urgently. I went to a private clinic to have my tendons fixed in my shoulder, and on the same day I checked in to go under the knife, the rest of the squad flew off to Fort Lauderdale to play Tampa Bay.

I really would love to have gone there, but I had no option my thoughts had to fully be on next season and getting myself 100 per cent fit to be part of it. I needed a lot of recuperation and physio treatment to get myself fit, and it was a major relief when I got the sling off after the op. I was very frightened at first that my shoulder was never going to be the same again. I'd had a few broken fingers and bust my nose more times than I cared to remember, but this was the first serious injury I had and you start to worry about the long-term effect it might have on you. But once I started swimming in the rehabilitation pool, the doubts started to ease and I had a tremendous sense of relief that I'd be able to play again. Between the end of one season and the start of another you only got six weeks off, but I was counting the days down like a kid does waiting for Santa Claus to come. I couldn't wait to get started again, and to play with this young exciting team in the First Division.

A few of the Palace players were already getting picked for England, Ireland and Wales and I was being touted for an international call-up too after the form I had shown in our promotion-winning season. Because I hadn't been playing in the First Division it had counted against me, but now that we were going up it seemed like I was going to get my chance because Ron Greenwood, the England manager at that time, had been seriously considering me and taking a close look at me. Terry was telling me: 'Budgie, you play like that again next season and I promise you you'll be getting an England spot.' It was easier said than done, of course, because Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence were dominating the No.1 jersey at the time, so the compet.i.tion was fierce.

When Palace came back from Florida, one of the first things I needed to do was to see Terry Venables about my salary, because I thought I deserved a rise. I was on a two-year contract and was coming to the end of it. I'd just had one of the best seasons of my life, letting in only 24 goals in 42 league games, so I felt I was in a fairly strong bargaining position. Palace were splashing the cash on the back of their promotion they had bought Mick Flanagan from Charlton for 650,000, and Gerry Francis from QPR for a million huge money for 1979. I was on 500 a week, and as soon as I heard that they were on 1,000 a week and had got big signing-on fees, I was knocking on Terry's door. I said: 'Look, Terry, I helped win you promotion; I put up with cortisone injections and played through the pain barrier for you. I want a 25,000 signing-on fee and a new contract and I want to be on the same wages as them.'

I suppose I lost my temper a little bit, but while Mick and Gerry had both played well for their respective teams, I had played well for Palace and I thought that deserved to be recognised. Like I said, I think the goalkeeper is the most important position on the pitch, and that I deserved to be on a par with the top earners. Terry was a bit taken aback, and he pointed out to me that I still had the best part of a year left on my contract. I wanted an extension to that deal, on better wages, and when he knocked that back I exploded. In the heat of the moment, I snapped at him: 'Fine, get yourself another goalie.' I said to him that if he wanted me to play that season and be happy, Palace should give me the money I was asking for. Terry was always Mr Cool in those situations and, to his credit, he said he would speak to the board and get back to me. But when he did that, it wasn't the news I wanted to hear he said they had heard him out and listened to my terms, but they couldn't do it.

It was the days before Bosman, and I knew I had to be ruthless as I was the only one who could do something about it. My nose was well out of joint and I told Terry I didn't want to be at Palace, and that I wanted a move. The impa.s.se lasted a few days, but eventually Palace dug into their pockets thanks to Terry's diplomacy and I got what I wanted. I got the year's contract, I got the signing-on fee, got the salary matched to the top men. I admit I was selfish when it came to money. My philosophy was simple if I felt I'd had a really good season then I always wanted a rise or a new contract. Basically I was adopting the 'Bosman' approach before it came in.

The rules of employment were all wrong and stacked against players in the 1970s and '80s. It was the only job in the world where you could come to the end of your contract and then your employer could keep you there and demand compensation for you. I'm glad Jean-Marc Bosman took it to the European courts and won, but back then I was doing what he later made famous, and winning. If I thought I was one of the best players at the club then I wanted to be one of the best paid why should goalkeepers be any different? I know it sounds mercenary, and it will probably upset some fans who appreciate a bit of loyalty, but footballers have a short working life and you have to gather in as much money as you possibly can while you're playing. I felt I deserved a decent wage, given my dedication to football and my professionalism. At Palace, one night week all the lads would go out for a good drink, but not me. I'm not acting all prim and proper here and frowning at the rest of the lads' behaviour each to their own but I was never into that. My night was watching Top of the Pops and a good night's sleep. My dedication far outweighed anyone else in the team.

We started the season impressively, picking up where we had left off in the Second Division, and really underlined our potential as the new kids on the block when we faced Ipswich Town in September. They were managed by Bobby Robson, G.o.d rest his soul, and their line-up included players like Russell Osman, Terry Butcher, George Burley, Eric Gates and Paul Mariner they were just a fantastic team. I had a good pre-season behind me, my shoulder felt strong, and I was pumped up at the thought of playing in the First Division again. I was also well pleased with my signing-on fee and contract, so I was one very happy goalie. Terry Venables had gone up even further in my estimations here I had a great manager whom I really respected and it wasn't lost on me that he'd had to fight the board tooth and nail to get me the contract I wanted. He had taken all my cheek as well, when a lot of the time he would probably have been well within his rights to tell me to get lost. Terry Venables always went that extra yard for me.

I remember that Ipswich game for a lot of reasons. We had recently been in Bilbao to play a friendly in a tournament, in which Dynamo Moscow were also taking part. I was spellbound as I watched the Moscow goalkeeper before the game he had been out on the field on his own to do a warm-up. This was in the days when everyone stayed in the dressing room until five to three and any warm-up was done within those four walls. I had been watching him and taking mental notes, thinking to myself: 'That's brilliant I'm going to start doing that!' So, against Ipswich Town I came out more than half an hour before kick-off and the old groundsman at Selhurst Park was telling me: 'You can't go out now, you're not allowed on the field!'

He kept on at me, determined to clear me off the pitch, telling me: 'You're not allowed a ball.' So I said to him: 'No ball, no problem.' I had done a lot of gymnastics at school, somersaults and stretches and so on, so seeing as I couldn't have the ball I started walking on my hands across the penalty box and doing somersaults. Word had got to Terry Venables in the dressing room about what was going on, and he came out to see what the commotion was. It would be no big deal today. Everyone is out there now doing stretches, but in 1979 there was Terry looking at me and thinking my head must have gone as he stood there watching me bouncing about doing somersaults. He was worried I'd do my back in! From then on it used to become part of my pre-match routine. I came back into the dressing room after 20 minutes, and Terry asked me if I was all right. But even then his revolutionary mind was working overtime and the more he thought about it, the more he thought it was brilliant.

In that game, I was so happy that when we went 1-0 up, I did a back somersault in my box. When we banged in a second goal I did it again. The crowd thought it was fantastic that I'd be doing somersaults every time we scored a goal, and I was kept busy entertaining them that afternoon because we were running riot. We got a third, then a fourth goal, and I thought: 'I've got to something that's going to make the fans REALLY cheer,' so I climbed up onto the crossbar and sat there Budgie by name, Budgie by nature. I was sitting there grinning, on the corner between the bar and post, at the stanchion. I was taking the p.i.s.s out of Ipswich and their striker Paul Mariner was looking at me open-mouthed, at this nutcase sitting on the crossbar. I was shouting over to the rest of the lads: 'I've got the best seat in the house you get a cracking view from up here!' But then one of the Ipswich players tried a shot from just inside our half and I had to jump down and save it. If my manager had been Ron Saunders he would have had me strung up on that crossbar, but Terry Venables came up to me at the end of the game and said: 'That was the funniest thing I've seen in football in my life.' To this day I don't know why I did it, I just did. You would get into all sorts of problems with the FA now for unsporting conduct and all that politically correct nonsense, but I just did it to send the fans home smiling. They couldn't have been any happier to be honest we'd just thrashed one of the best sides in the country 4-1 and Crystal Palace had gone top of the First Division for the first time in the club's history.

A few games later we were away to Manchester United at Old Trafford. You come out of the tunnel at Old Trafford in the corner at the Stretford End and everyone was looking a bit uptight as we prepared to come out on to the pitch. My way of easing the tension was to walk out of the tunnel, then across the box in front of the Stretford End, on my hands! The United fans and players were wondering what was going on, but I was only warming myself up to play a football game. It didn't do us any harm as we got a 1-1 draw.

After that, my acrobatics became the centrepiece of my regular pre-match ritual. I'd be quite happy out there on my own, and because a lot of the groundsmen wouldn't let me onto their pitch until kick-off, I'd get round that by staying off the field and doing my routine behind the goals so they couldn't stop me. After a while, Terry started to think about what I was doing and decided it would be good for the whole team to go out at 2.30 to warm up. So Crystal Palace were trailblazers by becoming the first team to come out onto the football field half an hour before a game. Our old groundsman wasn't happy with the situation he was old school and didn't like anyone messing about with his own long-established rules. It had dawned on Terry that it made a lot of sense for players to get a feel of the ball and a feel of the pitch before kick-off. He would get the centre-forward to take shots at me, all stuff that's still done to this day. Other teams started copying us and it became the norm. It became common practice, but because I had done it first I was regarded as a bit of a freak, an extrovert, an oddball but the truth of the matter is that I was simply thinking ahead of my time. And time has proved me right, just look at the methods used by the top clubs now.

I remember another time we played Nottingham Forest, just before Christmas 1979. Forest had won the European Cup the year before and had a very strong side. We played them at Selhurst Park and they had Peter Shilton in goal, who was the England goalkeeper at the time. Just having him in the opposite goal helped me raise my game and I played great that day. We won it 1-0 and it was another big feather in our cap. All the lads were in the mood to celebrate and headed down to the players' lounge afterwards for a couple of well-earned beers. But while they were all showered and changed and knocking back lagers in the warmth of the stadium, I was out on the pitch on my lonesome, going through my warm down and getting rid of any tension in my muscles.

Terry had seen me out on the pitch doing my stuff and then running round the track, and when I was changing in the dressing room on my own, the door opened and Terry stuck his head round. 'Budgie,' he said to me, 'I wouldn't even swap you for their keeper.' That meant everything to me, made me feel so big, so fantastic. I thought to myself, if I'm ever a manager that's the way I want to be. With just a few sincere words, he had built up my self-belief. It was just another example of Venables' man-management genius. You may think I am going overboard in my praise of the man, but I can't speak too highly about Terry Venables he was absolutely fantastic for me. Instead of branding me a nutcase, like most people did, he used to let me get on with my eccentricities. He would accept them as long he saw that I was playing well. He accepted me for what I was. He was quite happy to go along with my revolutionary ideas.

I used to try anything that would get my mind focused on the game. I went to what they now commonly refer to as a sports psychologist. A lot of athletes use them these days, and there is nothing unusual about using their services to get you in the zone. Clubs pay psychologists thousands now on a regular basis. But in the early 1980s they were regarded with great suspicion they were seen as 'psychiatrists', and I think everyone thought I was a bit mental for going to see him.

As was pretty much always the case, I didn't give a toss what other people thought of my quirks, so I stuck at it. I went along to see him, told him my life story, about my upbringing, and I confided in him that I found it confusing why I could be strong in my mind one week, then a bit defeatist the next. He told me that it's all down to body rhythms he explained it to me, broke it all down and it made perfect sense. This guy was brilliant for me. During our sessions, we decided that a course of hypnotherapy might also benefit me. He couldn't just click his fingers and put you under, it's not as simple as that; you've got to WANT to be hypnotised. I just wanted to be strong-minded every week, so I was willing to give it a go. He went ahead and hypnotised me. I had six two-hour sessions, which cost me 1,500 and if I told anyone that at the time, they thought I was most definitely mad! The therapist would tell me a story then put me to sleep. He made me a motivational ca.s.sette as well and people used to laugh at me, because on the way to games on the team bus I'd slam it into my personal stereo and listen to the tape. I was in a trance-like state, but I could hear the boys taking the p.i.s.s and calling me 'Alice in Wonderland'. But I was totally calm, and my mind was in the perfect place. Whenever I was playing especially a big game at Anfield or Old Trafford I wasn't nervous in the slightest, because in my thoughts I'd already been there and conquered any lingering anxiety I might have had. I was mentally ready for anything.

It became an essential part of my pre-match build-up everything needed to be perfect in my mind when I was preparing for a game. I'd dabble in a bit of meditation too and no matter what abuse I was getting from the lads in the background, I'd be able to shut them out of my mind and concentrate on the job in hand. What is regarded as normal today, I was doing in the late '70s and early '80s, yet I was regarded as a bit of a weirdo at the time. Having a manager like Terry helped me believe in what I was doing, because he encouraged all this. Other managers would have just dismissed me as a headcase and ordered me to stop doing it, but he recognised that there was method in my madness.

Terry kept pushing me to Ron Greenwood, saying that I deserved an England call-up, and although I didn't get any full England caps I was in the squad for select games against Holland, China and Australia.

Although I'd missed out on a trip to the United States with Palace while I was getting my shoulder sorted, I made up for it later in my career by taking Janet and the kids there for our holidays. Naturally, I couldn't switch off from football and by watching 'soccer' in the States I drew a lot of inspiration for some of my tricks, like sitting on the crossbar. I just loved the way they presented their sports events and all the showmanship involved. It was outrageous but it put some fun into the game. I would go and see Tampa Bay Rowdies games, and I used to train with them while I was there. What the Americans were doing in the 1970s and early '80s is similar to what Sky Sports are doing now, adding a bit of glamour and razzmatazz. Football is meant to be an entertainment industry after all. Yes, first and foremost it's a professional game and you need to win, but if you can add a bit of entertainment to the mix then the paying public are getting a smile on their faces. Everyone loves a jacka.s.s. If you're the type of player that just goes out there all serious, keeps his mouth shut, and keeps himself to himself, then no one is ever going to remember you. I didn't want to be like that, I wanted to be a showman. If you're a bit of a jacka.s.s and you've got the guts to go out and do something a bit different then I would say go out and do it stand out from the crowd. At the end of the day you have to win the game, but if you can win it with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs then it's so much sweeter. Give those fans something to remember. But the thinking towards me in the seventies was that I was an idiot a show-off. I wasn't like that at all though, it was just charisma, and I was never big-headed, because I always knew that you were only as good as your last game.

Everything I did was dedicated to making myself a better goalkeeper and doing well for the team, but the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs were important to me too. I was always looking for that little something different that might make me that bit better. To give you an example n.o.body ever thought about diet in those days, but I would always find out what was good for you, when was the right time to eat it, and doing my homework on sports science and nutrition. I even studied the diet of African tribesmen to try to work out the secrets of their strength and agility. Players would usually eat fish and chips or a sandwich before a game, but I thought to myself that can't be right for football. I thought there had to be something better.

I was always questioning things. I wasn't always right, but a lot of the time I was decades ahead of my time. I was the first one to be blending apples, oranges and pears and drinking it before a game that's known as a smoothie now, but it was just dismissed as 'Budgie's strange brew' then. They used to think I was crazy, but I would actually take my blender along to the ground, go to the kitchen and make myself a c.o.c.ktail packed with sugar and goodness. That would be my pre-match dinner. I'd also make sure I ate plenty of carbohydrates, including jars of baby food, which as you know are full of vitamins and iron. People used to disagree, saying: 'Don't eat potatoes, don't eat pasta,' but I'd looked into it and realised it was the best thing to give you reserves of energy. Players would be tucking into a big fat steak, but I didn't want one it made me feel bloated, so I would do my own thing. I was regarded as a nutter for eating pasta or having a gla.s.s of water instead of a cup of tea. I didn't do it just for the sake of being different; it was all done for the sake of playing well. And while me doing somersaults might have been frowned upon, I only did it to entertain people. The fans were paying good money to be entertained, and I was only too happy to oblige them. I wouldn't have done it if we were losing right enough, because I would have looked a fool, and I always understood that the bottom line is that you have to win.

Another important thing I added to my repertoire was that I would always run to the fans at the end of a match. I especially did it away from home. Palace used to get a ma.s.sive travelling support. When we used to go up north, sometimes 5,000 fans had followed us up there. I would get down on my knees in front of them and blow them kisses. Some players used to just walk off and not acknowledge the fans, but I would never have done that. I used to run from one end of the ground to the other where our fans were. The way I saw it, people had paid a lot of money to come up from London and follow us. I used to cajole all the other players to go over and do the same, and to be fair most of them did. I did this throughout my career. An extract from the Herald newspaper in 1992, when I played a game for Hibs at Dunfermline, nicely sums up the way I would behave: Off-stage, the star of the afternoon was John Burridge. Hibernian's goalkeeper had nothing to do and he did it with incessant gusto. He was never still. He paced his area like a caged leopard. He did bending exercises. His tongue never stopped. He was always waving and shouting. When he ran out of other occupations, he re-dug the trench he had made at a right angle to the goal-line out to the penalty spot. It was hard to keep the eyes off Burridge.

Conspicuously, he was the only Hibernian to go and salute the travelling supporters at the end. He made so thorough a job of it that before he had completed his tour most of the fans had drifted away. Burridge was unabashed. He continued to applaud what the late Eddie Waring in a rugby commentary once called the 'empty crowd'.

There was nothing false about it; I always did it from the bottom of my heart. Mind you, if we'd just been beaten three or four-nil, I needed the hide of a rhino to go over and see the fans at the end of the game. But I was never the type to only sing when we were winning; it wasn't the result I was reacting to, it was the fact the fans had paid their money to watch their team. The fans get a raw deal in football all the time and are still taken for granted, so to go over and say thanks for their support wasn't much to ask.

When I was at Palace, football was changing rapidly and I was keen to be at the forefront of any changes. We had been over in Bilbao for a tournament and I'd seen a keeper try these new gloves. We were still mainly using our bare hands in dry weather which may seem unthinkable now because you wouldn't see any keeper without gloves these days but this foreign keeper was ahead of his time and had gloves that he would wear in dry weather as well as wet. After the game, I went up to the keeper and asked him all about his gloves. They had special grips and were made of latex, whereas the ones we used on a wet day were woolly. They were fantastic for catching the ball. There were still no gloves available in England like that so I got on to Terry and asked for some, badgering him to get me a batch. I was the first keeper in England to wear them on a dry day.

It quickly caught on and before long every keeper in the country was suddenly wearing gloves on a dry day. I had found out where they were made and I rang Adidas in Germany to sort out some supplies. They were 25 a pair a lot of money for 1979 so I asked for Terry to go the board and get them to agree to order 500-worth. At first, I was the envy of other keepers in the league I started getting calls at my house from Peter Shilton and Pat Jennings asking me where I had got them. You'll no doubt have heard all the stories about Pat Jennings having big hands like shovels, but he actually came to my house to try them on and when he put his hands in the gloves, they were just normal size it was all a myth. What a disappointment! Word was getting round and all the keepers were turning up at my house to get them. If I'd thought about it I could have patented them in England and made a fortune.

I remember we were playing against West Ham one day and Mervyn Day was in goal. We beat them 1-0 and Mervyn made a right howler. Straight after the game, I went up to him with a pair of gloves and said: 'Try these, son.' He thought I was being a smarta.r.s.e, taking the p.i.s.s out of him after his mistake, but I was only trying to do him a favour. Adidas had cottoned on, and were giving me extra pairs to pa.s.s on to other keepers because I was promoting their product. It got to the stage where I was giving the opposition keeper gloves at the end of every game. After that they started coming into the shops and were freely available to buy, but I was the first one to ring Germany and get a box sent to England. I broke the mould. It was the end of goalkeepers playing with bare hands.

CHAPTER 12.

PAIN ON PLASTIC.

'Queens Park Rangers turned their pitch into an airport runway.'

I had a fantastic time at Crystal Palace, playing under a great manager, but then the team started to lose a bit of its sparkle. We had risen to the top of the First Division in the early weeks, and we were even being tipped to make an unlikely challenge for the t.i.tle, but the big boys Liverpool, Man United, a.r.s.enal and Ipswich had the experience we lacked, and we started to get bogged down a bit in mid-table.