Paying the Penalty.

There are pivotal moments in ones life, where looking back one can see the crossroads behind them after they’ve taken the wrong turn.. One such time that sticks out in my mind was in September 1992 and involved this football match (excuse the quality)

I was 17 at the time and if I’m being honest I had a lot more going for me than most 17 year olds kicking about Teesside in 1992. I had a full time, well paid job with career progression almost guaranteed to boot. I had money in the bank, decent clothes and a social life that was blossoming into full blown party animal status.

I don’t want to go into names or places of work but I was working on the mighty River Tees doing something with ships and small boats.

The story goes thus: it was the weekend and I was due to be at work at 8am on a Saturday morning for a 12 hour stint. For some reason, I’d never do it now, I decided to head to the pub on the Friday night in spite of having to get up at 6am the following morning. And yes drinking well before you were above the legal age of 18 was quite normal back then. In fact, because I’ve always been tall and well defined, I’d been getting served with booze since I was 14.

Back to my Friday night visit to the pub and how it seemed a good idea at the time. I think my plan must have been to have a couple of drinks, see the lay of the land, meet a few familiar faces then head home. What happened was only three of those four things came to fruition. One of the guys I was at school with (he’s on my facebook but we don’t talk) turned up at the pub and asked if anybody fancied driving to London the next day to see the Boro (Middlesbrough Football Club) play QPR. The guy was even nice enough to offer to drive us in his car so the rest of us could have a skinfull that night. Well who could turn down an offer like that? Not me obviously.

After a raucous evening of making merry and with half a mind on how I was supposed get out of work the next day I returned home. What I decided to do and what would have a massive impact on the rest of my life, was to phone in sick on waking up at 6am. This was the easy part as the guy on the duty shore side wasn’t my strict, no nonsense - Scottish boss.

Within the blinking of an eye I was soon back in the company of my drinking partners from the night before. We headed, at some speed down the A1 and M1 towards London with six frozen Melton Mowbray pork pies, taken from my mother’s freezer for subsistence. I was much younger then and the hangovers hadn’t started to kick in fully, save for a thick head. So it was a very jovial ride indeed as the miles passed quickly.

We arrived at London far too early, about 11 o’clock for a 3pm kick off as it happened. There was nothing else to do for four 17 year old lads and that was head to the red lights of Soho. As it turned out it was too early for Soho too and there was nothing of the ‘adult’ nature open. So we drove through London on a Saturday Lunchtime towards Sheppard’s Bush and QPR’s Loftus Road stadium.  The game was a cracker as you can see above but we were robbed by a late penalty which nearly spoilt an entertaining day.

On driving back north after the game and a few hours in traffic our car developed engine trouble. We limped into Watford Gap service station to weigh up our options. It was there that the “Boro’ team bus pulled up alongside us and out trooped the players we had seen earlier on the pitch. I had a long discussion with the then Boro captain Alan Kernaghan about that dodgy penalty and our cars engine trouble. I was hoping for a lift back on the team bus but the offer wasn’t forthcoming.

Eventually all was resolved and a passing mechanic on his way home fixed our car with what turned out to be a simple cable problem. Making it home after Midnight I was relieved, exhausted but most of all the worry about facing the music on Monday was ticking away at the front of my mind.

Come Monday the brown stuff had indeed hit the fan and I was waist deep in it. The crew I was due to sail with on Saturday were not happy that I had let them down and the weather that day was rotten too which added to their anger. When I was grilled about my absence by my boss I somehow found myself wandering from my tale of an upset stomach, sleeping all day Saturday and not hearing the phone ring multiple times ( my parents were also in London on a day trip as it happened) . I soon entered into a tale of food poisoning, hospital visits and stomach pumps. Well I wouldn’t believe me either, so my boss went about contacting the hospital that I claimed I was at, so as to confirm or deny my very dubious tale.

It got worse as the Monday went on and I was treated like a leper by my colleagues. My boss was also hinting that if I was lying then I’d better admit it or else face the chop. At that tender age I was very head strong, much more so than now. Then there was the fact that I wasn’t exactly happy working seemingly endlessly, when I had friends on the dole who seemed to have more fun and more of a social life than me.

Looking back now both the above are not worth quitting a job over at all. I could have told my boss that I was spinning a yarn and how sorry I was for letting everyone down too. Then, this notion that I’d somehow be better off unemployed rather than working was nothing short of teenage stupidity.

So quitting the job is what I did and then my life went rapidly into decline forthwith. I gained weight, lost self esteem and couldn’t get another job. To add insult to injury the friends who were on the dole got jobs about the same time I signed on the dole. It all became a bit of a mess and I’ve only got myself to blame. I wouldn’t say I became bitter because my life changed so drastically in the space of a few weeks, but the carefree attitude that was born because I’d gone from school into earning decent money was gone and never would return. Something changed in me during the next four or five years where I tried to create a stable base once again.

Since that day I’ve often asked myself if the trip to Loftus Road in September 1992 was worth it. To be honest, I don’t think it was in spite of the laughs, gags and other stuff we got up to (which I’ll not publish in the public domain). It has however highlighted for me how one bad decision can have a knock on effect for years to come.

I might feel different however if the bloody Boro had won that day and ultimately not been relegated from the fledgling Premier League at the end of that season. So the real villain of this story is not the demon drink, my outrageous lies or my hard-line boss, it is of course Jim Borrett the match referee for giving that bloody penalty.