My Left Foot

by Steve Brazier

If Bow bells make a Cockney, what makes a Wulfrunian? Answer: born within the sound of the Molineux Roar. A Muni education counts too, of course. Reinforced by the floodlights' glow and the smell of Banks's Brewery. I wrote here on Wolves when they were relegated to the third division in 2013, concluding philosophically : "Out of Darkness Cometh Light". Well, the sun is shining so after their two best seasons for decades, let's return to the centrality of football in my life.

1950's Wednesdays at Graiseley Primary were grim. A long crocodile walk to a glass-strewn recreation ground beyond the Ship and Rainbow, across Birmingham New Road. Competent players were supervised by Mr Williams, our form teacher while a ragged rump of no-hopers slunk to rough ground to kick a desultory leather case-ball around until it was time to trudge back again. In a class of 42 boys and girls, you would expect me to have got into a group of 22 boys. I never did. My Cub Pack met back at the school the same day. The intervening hour found me rubbing Vaseline into my poor chubby chapped thighs before putting on the itchy green jumper with its Seconder armband. Wolves were on TV against Continental teams like Honved and Moscow Spartak. To his dying day, my brother complained that he missed two of Wolves goals as they fought back to beat Real Madrid 3-2 because the shilling ran out and he had to go down the cellar to feed the meter. No action replays in 1957.

Street games - kick the can, Kingy, Queenie, I draw a snake were rarely interrupted by a car. How I hated it when called in for tea or bed. My mother would stand at the back door and shout at full volume "ST-EE-PH-EN", drawing it out into four syllables in a two octave glissando. Football games employed a bald tennis ball - who knew they were white and fuzzy when new? The goal was Read Engineering's blue gate in Upper Zoar Street. In1953, not long after we'd had the Coronation street party in Read's machine shop because it was too wet to be outside, our games were translated into Hungarian. The Magic Magyars took on England, who had taught the game to the world, and thrashed them 6-3 at Wembley. "Bags I'm Hideguti"; "I'm Puskas"; "I'm Kocsis". Like Wolves, we played under floodlights - street lamps, green cast-iron with the town's coat of arms and lamplighter's crossbar, which I'd just learned to climb. Soon I could swing Tarzan-like from the 'Jungle Jim' in the Graiseley playground. (I know it's spelt 'Gym' but having never seen it written down, thought it was something to do with Tarzan. You know, Jane, Jim and Tarzan.

After my exposure to rugby in 1958 at the Muni my fondness for football intensified. As much stick as carrot. Being overweight with a mean-looking crew-cut, Mr Jones saw a potential for violence and put me into the front row as prop. I was even then unusually short-sighted and without glasses, became more of a danger to myself than to the opposing boys of 1B. After the1958 World Cup, I unearthed my brother's Newfooty game and began a miniature version. In Mr Thompson's 2A, Roger Nash had Subbuteo, a proper green baize pitch and table in a room of its own. We played several times a week. He still has our box of assorted teams. West Park was used for single period rugby and 'cross country runs'. Once round the perimeter was just over a mile and seemed longer. I lived near the park and on Sunday afternoons, Roger, Graham Hutchins and I would meet for a kick-about: my football career began in earnest. On summer evenings, I joined impromptu games which were always in progress. There might be thirty players with no control over who joined which side or where you played. The game went on 'til it was dark, with swifts screaming in their hundreds overhead. There was comfort in its anonymity, casual community and transience. Perhaps I was not useless at sport after all. Always the youngest in street games. Condemned to the no-hopers at junior school, intimidated and reluctant to risk injury in school rugby. I consciously overcame obesity at 15 and slowly, park football brought confidence: I was (untypically) left footed. So I learned to kick with my right too. An ability to kick with both feet was rare. I could run and pass a ball though heading it was to be avoided. One day, the Wolves player Peter Knowles was among the youngsters in a park game.I did not feel out of place. I learned that there was a Muni Old Boys team - rugby only began at the school about 1957. I joined and got a regular game, thanks mainly to my left foot. The team was not successful - I can't remember ever winning . But I was learning, prepared to turn up, knowing no one else and get involved. Years of rejection and inadequacy at sport had engendered personality-wide inhibitions. At last I was dealing with them.

"That's a girls' game" Mr Jones would shout if he saw us kicking a ball on the field. We began to play 'bench ball' in the gym at lunchtime. I incurred my first sporting injury as the wall-bars came between the ball and my big toe. It twinges in damp weather to this day. Seven years of rugby were injury-free because I kicked the ball away whenever it came near me. In mitigation, I should mention my two appearances in the Muni Third XV. Collecting a bloody nose, I scored my only try, admittedly only against Wednesfield Grammar. We began regular half-term football matches against the year below us. I was put in goal for ten minutes in one of these and let in about five while ruining my treasured track-suit in the goalmouth mud.

My first game for University College London was for the 4th XI versus a remote public school. Thereafter I was in the 6th XI. Why the swift demotion? Apparently few players would pay the train fare to Canterbury. There had never been a 6th XI before. It was invented for the Baby Boom intake and was regularly thrashed by assorted London colleges. When West Ham Tech beat us 5-0, the London clay on my boots got so heavy I could hardly run. The early 70's saw me working in Nottingham Planning Department and I got into its Sunday League team, working my way up from substitute to a regular place thanks to my left foot and becoming the secretary. (It's not what you know.....)There were several good seasons - runners-up, champions and then cup-winners. I learned some life lessons: whatever your own ability, it's the quality of those around you that get results. Early in my career as a left-back, the captain advised: "Within the first five minutes, make sure you kick the winger. He will remember it for the rest of the game." This too proved invaluable in a local government career. The cup final was at Notts County's Meadow Lane. With a crowd of nine wives and girlfriends. We won on penalties but I was anunused substitute. Although I did not need it, I jumped in the large communal bath with the rest of the celebrating team. Our regular pub gave us a barrel of beer and the City Planning Officer was photographed holding the cup, which he dropped on the floor and dented. Known for clumsiness, he regularly tipped coffee into his lap in high-powered meetings.

I stopped signing up to play when my daughter was born but Sunday mornings were regularly interrupted by a call "Have you got your boots?". The team was short, again. Saturday night revels had taken their toll. Again. I alway said "Yes". But one rainy Sunday, we were thrashed 6-0 by a team with a sponsor's name on their shirts (by now the Thatcher revolution was unleashing naked capitalism). It was Prestege Sheds. The ignominy of defeat by a spelling mistake was too much. There were no showers, I went straight home and stood muddy and dripping in our kitchen. The end of league football for me. Not with a bang but a whimper.

I played 5-a-side until I was 53 despite worsening visual impairment and joint injuries. "Am I too old?" I asked a physiotherapist. "Yes" she said. "You are fit but your brain is ageing and minutely slower reaction times cause strains and torn muscles". Oh dear. That was twenty years ago. It must all be a lot slower now.

I miss playing football. Now I can only kick around with my grandsons but find that the 3-year old is a natural left-footer. "Keep making him work with his right" I tell my daughter. With two feet, he'll always get a game. She knows how to do it as, conscious of the imminent rise of women's football, when she was eight, I coached her to kick with both feet. Sadly, thirty years later, only her cats bear witness to this rare ability.

Steve Brazier 1958-1965

Published WMGS OPA Newsletter Autumn 2019

Left-footed brother, Lenny (3) had tearfully refused to don a Wolves shirt for the photo-shoot. They are Leeds-born, which might explain it.