da fezbet： Up until recently, I didn’t know what a snood was. And now I do, I can’t helping thinking there are too many pansies in the game these days. Just imagine me walking out at Burnden Park in the 1960s wearing a snood and gloves. The Bolton fans would have loved that. And Bill Nick, too. He’d have banned them, no question. His idea of a football strip was one that had holes in it and had been worn 100 times. It wasn’t a proper outfit otherwise. In fact, we only got a new kit if we reached the FA Cup Final.
da bet vitoria： There was none of this fancy stuff – snoods, gloves, under garments, willy-warmers, or anything like that. We should ban it all on behalf of us old footballers who got grazed hands and knees, and froze to death while we were running around. I read the other day that boots worn by some of today’s top players can help keep your feet warm. What? I’m thinking about getting a pair to wear around the house. I could have worn them last weekend as I watched the Ipswich v Leicester game. It should have been abandoned when the referee took the players off, although I can’t imagine I’d like to tell Roy Keane I was cancelling a match that his side were winning 3-0.
Back in my day, fixtures were rarely cancelled because of snow. They normally laid a tarpaulin over the pitch, which solved the snow problem, but when you pulled it back it was hard as rock and as slippery as an ice rink. If they’d left the snow on it would have been easier to play. I remember up at Manchester City one year we could hardly stand and lost about 5-1. But that was all part of the game. Sometimes we’d have grounds like that, other times it would be a mud heap. Nowadays they’re all like billiard tables. We had to adapt dramatically. There were times you could not pass a ball 20 yards because it got stuck in the mud. You had to lift it or chip it, and all these various skills came in to play over the course of the season.
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I had to laugh at Wayne Rooney complaining last week that Christmas was a difficult time for footballers. You don’t know you’re born, sunshine! We played Christmas Day and Boxing Day. One year at Chelsea, we were home to Portsmouth on Christmas Day and away to them on Boxing Day. We won 7-4 and then lost 3-0. How do you work that out? Christmas morning at Stamford Bridge would be a full house. Men would watch the game, have a pint and go home for dinner. It was a good tradition.
The one perk we had at Tottenham was that they’d give us a turkey each and a bottle of perfume for the girls. The perfume was worth about sixpence and the turkey was all right, although it always looked like it had given itself up rather than been caught. At Chelsea we didn’t even have a Christmas party and if we did in Milan, I wasn’t invited. We used to have them at Spurs until it all got a bit out of hand.
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The first team had finished training, so we went to the White Hart and started having a decent drink. One of the reserve team players was ordered to get us, so we sent him packing. Eventually Cecil Pointon, our trainer, came in and said: “Come on, lads.” But we insisted he had a drink first. By the time we got back for the festivities, Bill Nicholson had a face like thunder. The board of directors were sitting there with all the rest of the players – the reserves, third team, youth team – and there were the star pupils staggering in. We all sat down and started throwing rolls – it was mayhem.
As the chairman got up, Dave Mackay shouted: “Sit down – you’re p****d!” It was pandemonium. And then dear old John White capped it all. You shouldn’t laugh, but it wasn’t an absolute sin to drink and drive in those days. On his way out, he took one of the main gates with him, collected it around the bumper of his car. That was the last party we ever had. Festive best wishes to you all!