Football Crazy (3 page)

Donny now turned to George, annoyed at the intrusion. “Haven't you ever heard of knocking, George? You might be the club secretary but that doesn't give you the right to just barge in here unannounced. I mean I could have been conducting delicate transfer negotiations for all you know, I could have been buying a new player.”

“
The board have stopped you buying any more players, Donny,” George pointed out.

“
All right then, I could have been selling a player.”

“
Who to, the slaughterhouse?”

“
Oh very funny I'm sure. Proper comedian, aren't you. Well you'll soon be laughing on the other side of your face. Because you're going to see a big improvement in our performances this season. My word are you. And for two very good reasons. One, thanks to my coaching the lads have got much more close ball control than they had last season; a lot more skill on the ball, if you like.”

At that moment, as if on cue, a football came crashing through the window and ricocheted round the walls before coming to rest at Donny's feet. George almost managed to keep his face straight.

Donny was unabashed. “You can smile, George. The lads will get there. There's many a slip between cup and saucer.”

“
Right,” said George, by now well accustomed to Donny's butchered metaphors. He went on, “And the other reason we're going to see a big improvement this season?”

Donny smirked. He was going to enjoy this. He was fully aware that George didn't think much of his managerial skills, but this would show him, this would put him in his place. He puffed out his chest and announced, “I am going to take a mistress.”

George wasn't sure he'd heard right. “A what?”

“
Tell me George, what have Big Ron Atkinson, Malcolm Allison and Tommy Docherty all got in common?”

“
They all got the sack. And you're going to be joining them if....”

Donny cut him short. “They have all had mistresses. And at the time they had a mistress they all won the FA Cup. They all got a result in the big one.” He got to his feet to enlarge on his idea. “You see George my theory is that me not having a mistress is the one thing that's stopping me from achieving my full potential as a manager. I’m not exactly sure why, but obviously it has something to do with having your testosterone in balance. Well footballers have more testosterone you see.”

George regarded Donny with amusement. He might be an inept football manager but if he had one saving grace it was that he could always be depended on to give you a laugh. “You're not serious are you, Donny?”

“
Well of course I'm serious; it's the best idea since fried bread.”

“
You are off your trolley, Donny,” said George.

Donny sniffed. “Yes well what do you know George, you're just an administration man; I mean you haven't got my football brain, have you.”

Superintendent Screwer didn't mess about. And he certainly didn't mess about with football supporters. The huge bull of a man who was the new chief of the Frogley police force was a man who had been practicing zero tolerance long before that expression had ever been coined, and zero tolerance was what he was going to exact on any football supporters who got on the wrong side of him this coming football season.

Football supporters were very much on Screwer's mind at the moment, as he studied the large map of Frogley on the wall behind the desk in his office, noting the locations and proximities to each other of the police station, the football stadium, and the hospital - the last of which any football supporters crossing him would be ending up in with a very sore head indeed if they uttered as much as a word out of place, by Christ would they!

There was a tap on the door and Sergeant Hawks, eighteen months short of retirement and counting, entered. When Screwer had sent for him Hawks had been daydreaming about how very pleasant it all would be in the not too distant future, living on his full police pension in his little retirement cottage in the Lake District, with not a thing to worry about. Not that a Frogley policeman ever did have much to worry about; apart from the odd scuffle on Saturday nights there was little happened in the town that required the services of the long arm of the law; a short arm of the law would have been more than adequate in Frogley.

Screwer carried on looking intently at the map. Hawks cleared his throat and said, “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“
That's why I sent for you, Sergeant Hawks, that's why I sent for you.” Screwer turned to face him. “What arrangements have been made with regard to policing Frogley Town's opening match of the season in three week's time?”

“
Well we'll just do the usual I suppose, sir.”

Screwer regarded Hawks with impatience. “Come along Sergeant, I'm new here, I don't know what the usual is, do I.”

“
Sorry sir. Constable Balfour usually drops in for half-an-hour.”

Whenever he had difficulty in believing something Screwer had the habit of affecting surprise by jolting his head back in an exaggerated manner. At Hawks' explanation of Frogley's football policing arrangements it jolted back even farther than it usually did. “Constable Balfour drops in?” he said.

“
Well he lives near the ground, sir,” Hawks explained. “It saves somebody having to make a special trip.”

Screwer was aghast. “Oh that won't do, Sergeant. That will not do at all. Good God man, how can we hope to stamp out football hooliganism if our entire policing of a match consists of Constable Balfour dropping in!”

Hawks explained. “With respect sir, there isn't a lot of interest in football in Frogley. No, I think you’ll find that at the Town's matches it's strictly a one man and his dog crowd.”

“
Well this season there'll be lots of men there with dogs, Sergeant. Police dogs. Alsations with big teeth and bad tempers.”

“
And there certainly isn't any football hooliganism,” Hawks continued.

Screwer fixed Hawks with a beady eye. When would they ever learn? “Where there is football, Sergeant, there is football hooliganism. Having previously been stationed at Leeds I know that for a fact; and I know all about the cancer in our society that football hooliganism has become.”

“
With respect sir, what few supporters the Town still have are nothing like Leeds United supporters.”

Screwer glared at him. If Hawks had been the office door the paint would have blistered. “Respect?” he screamed. “Respect, Sergeant Hawks? You aren't showing me any fucking respect! If you were you wouldn't be arguing with me, you would be making plans to adequately police Frogley Town's opening game of the season!”

Hawks bit his lip. Retirement and that cottage in the Lakes suddenly seemed very far away. “Yes sir.”

Screwer drew in his horns a little. “Football supporters are the same the world over, Sergeant. Animals. Nothing more, nothing less. Take my word for it, just because the fans of Frogley Town have yet to reveal their true colours doesn't mean to say that one day they aren't going to.”

“
No sir.”

The horns shot back out again as if spring-loaded. “Well just let them! They will not find the Frogley Police Force wanting. Not while my name is Herman Screwer they won't. We'll be ready for them, Sergeant. Ready to whip them into line; ready to break them; ready to smash the brainless bastards into submission!” He suddenly smashed his right fist into his left hand. The splat of the bone of his knuckles colliding with the flesh of his palm made Hawks wince. “Crowd control, that's the name of the game. Do you know who my hero is, Sergeant?”

Hawks didn't, and didn't want to, he just wanted to leave. “No sir?”

Screwer offered a clue. “He rode a white horse.”

Hawks thought for a moment. “Attila the Hun, sir?”

Screwer smiled in fond recollection. “'The Policeman on the White Horse', Sergeant. 1923 Cup Final at Wembley. One man controlling the uncontrollable; a crazed mob of over two hundred thousand. Now that's what you call crowd control! What are we like for tear gas?”

In the entire history of football not one player has ever said ‘Your ball’ when the ball has gone out of play.

The Bone Pulveriser at Price's Pies, the machine on which Stanley Sutton earned his daily bread, was to be found in one of the factory's yards, protected from the elements by a corrugated iron shelter. Until 1990 the machine had been housed within the factory itself, but the need of floor space for a new line in curried mutton and cowheel pies had seen it consigned to its present position, its product not coming under the stringent health regulations that govern the production of food for human consumption.

It was an impressive-looking piece of engineering by any standard. Operated by a system of hydraulics, and built to Joe Price's specification, it was still going strong over forty years after it had been commissioned. “And it will still be going when I'm pushing up t’ daisies,” Price had once remarked, and he was probably right.

Machines that performed the same function had been built since, many of them, but none better. Made of cast iron, with copper pipes carrying the hydraulic fluids and impressive-looking gauges encased in brass, the Bone Pulveriser was cylindrical in shape, twelve feet in diameter and ten feet high. A brass plaque, so highly-polished you could see your face in it, proclaimed it had been built in 1964 by the Barnoldswick engineering firm of Hardcastle and Unwin. In the bowels of this metal monolith were housed a series of three inch wide steel blades that combined together to render animal bones into shotgun pellet-sized granules, which were then bagged and sold on to a firm who made garden fertilizers. If the late Fred Dibnah had ever clapped eyes on it he would have had an orgasm.

The bones entered the business part of the Bone Pulveriser through an overhead hopper, its opening wide enough to accept the largest animal bone. A man could easily pass through it, and did every week, but only to clean it, after first isolating the electric starter motor and carrying out the full safety procedure. And of course there was no danger of anyone accidentally falling into the Bone Pulveriser and coming to a premature and nasty end as the safety guard was always in position. Indeed, due to the height of the machine, anyone intent on throwing themselves in it would first have to climb up to the opening, and although many of the employees at Price's Pies got a bit depressed from time nobody had as yet done this, probably being of the opinion that although we all eventually end up as fertilizer in one form or another they didn't want to end up as it courtesy of the Price's Pies Bone Pulveriser.

Encircling the great machine, four feet off the ground and three feet wide, was a wooden platform, necessary for maintenance purposes but also to bring the opening of the hopper within reach of the operator of the machine. Standing on the platform at the moment, three-quarters of the way through the 6-2 shift, was Stanley Sutton, who was currently dipping his hands into a barrel of bones, newly delivered by fork lift truck from the butchery department.

Stanley selected the thigh bone of a cow and tossed it into the hopper. A second later it made a satisfying
clunk, crunch
sound as it hit the steel blades. Satisfying to Stanley, that is, as he had imagined the bone he had just dispatched was the thigh bone of the Unibond League team central defender who had crocked one of the Frogley Town team in their recent friendly.

Clunk, crunch
again, as the shin bone of a pig hit the blades, this time the shin bone of the Unibond League left wing back who had tackled Frogley striker Darren Briggs just a little too vigorously for Stanley's liking.

Clunk, crunch
yet again, this time a cow's skull, in Stanley's imagination the skull of the referee who had refused Frogley a blatant penalty in the same match. The official had raised his whistle to his lips but hadn't blown. Stanley could see the blind bugger now, whistle to his lips but no sound coming from it. But now he could hear the whistle. Strange? There it was again. Then he heard a voice.

“
Are you bloody deaf, Stanley, or what!”

Stanley was amazed. How did the referee know his name? He shook his head to clear it, then dismissed the incident from his mind and made to pick up another bone. As he did he saw his foreman through the corner of his eye. He turned to him. The foreman did not look best pleased.

“
Stanleeee!” he yelled at the top of his voice.

“
Bert?”

“
Shit a brick Stanley I've been stood here whistling and shouting at you for the past five minutes!”

“
Sorry Bert, I were....”

The foreman butted in. “Daydreaming about that bloody football team of yours, I know what you were doing.” He calmed down a little, then said, “Mr Price wants to see you.”

Stanley's jaw dropped. “What?”

“
You heard.”

Stanley's panic mechanism immediately went into overdrive. What on earth did Price want to see him for?

Stanley knew only too well that whenever Price sent for someone, especially a lowly factory-hand, it invariably meant the sack. What had he done to deserve it? He racked his brains. On a few occasions recently a piece of bone had shot back out of the Bone Pulveriser's hopper when he'd been loading it, and on one such occasion an errant lump of bone had chosen to spew back out of the hopper as Joe Price happened to be passing and had whistled narrowly past his head. But I can't be blamed for that, Stanley reasoned, because I'd reported the fault when it first happened.