Losing My Spurs , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - Anthony Potts

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105 pages

English

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Description

What is it like to get so close to your dream that you can almost touch it, only to have it torn cruelly away? Anthony Potts knows the answer. He sacrificed everything in an all-consuming pursuit of his dream to become a professional footballer. It was a dream, like many others, seeded in childhood. He was born with some natural talent, but things did not come easy for him. Nevertheless, he persevered and the hard work paid off. He was part of the Tottenham side that won the 1990 FA Youth Cup, and he earned a place in the England youth team. Later, he was a member of Tottenham's first Premier League squad alongside Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker - but he never got to play for the first team in a competitive match. In this tell-all book, Anthony shares the inside story of his time at Spurs, including his friendship with Gazza. It is a story that rarely gets told - the story of a failed footballer. Anthony sacrificed everything in pursuit of his dream. Was it worth it? You be the judge.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	24 janvier 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801502146
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Anthony Potts, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801500517
eBook ISBN 9781801502146
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Contents
Prologue
1. Jumpers for Goalposts
2. Woolies Wonders
3. Football Existed Before 1992
4. All Latin to Me
5. House of Cards
6. Phoenix Rising
7. Is F * * * an Adverb?
8. Up for the Cup
9. Three Lions
10. Is Gascoigne Going to Have a Crack?
11. I m Doing Nothing Until He Gets One
12. Trial and Error
13. Lost
Epilogue
Photos
To my wife Sonya, my family and my close friends - thank you for being there for me. Without your love and support there would be no story to tell.
Prologue
IT WAS Paul Stewart, the ex-Tottenham Hotspur and England footballer, who told me that I should write a book about my time at Spurs with Paul Gascoigne. I had just stayed overnight at the house that Gazza shared with Paul following another eventful day in Gazza s company. I thought about it, but soon dismissed the idea. I knew that to write it I would need to do it as part of my own story, and who would want to read a book about me? There are a million of me out there: someone who chased their dream but never quite made it. I m too normal.
Then a few things happened.
First of all, I wrote a book. I had always wanted to, I had the idea for years, but I finally put pen to paper. Although by the time I wrote it, it was finger to keyboard. It was based on my experiences at Spurs through the eyes of a fictional teenager called Liam Osborne, and on the whole, it was well received. I enjoyed the process, so I wrote another one. This too did okay. I found that I enjoyed writing. Next, I started to write a regular blog, and people seemed to enjoy it and liked some of the things I had to say.
Then Jeremy Wisten, a youth team player at Manchester City, committed suicide after being released from the club having been there since the age of 13. It resonated with me. I wrote a blog about how tough it is having your dreams wrenched away from you at a young age. I was shocked at how many people got in touch and said that they d had the same low points, the same negative experiences. It made me think that it was an issue that needed to be put into a wider forum.
Lastly, I had people tell me that my books about the fictional Liam Osborne had helped their children in dealing with the harsher side of football. The fact that Liam didn t give up had shown their children that if you want something enough then you have to fight for it, and told them they weren t the only ones going through what they were going through.
In the end, I decided that my normalness was exactly why I could and should write this book. Sometimes it s not the millionaire success stories that matter the most.
I have tried to be honest. I have never really spoken about a lot of the events in this book, and I actually feel better having written some of them down. I am sure a lot of people who know me will be surprised by some of what they read as I can be quite a private person. I have always fought against being the bloke in the pub who would have been a player if only .
1
Jumpers for Goalposts
POTTSY, IT S my knee. It s f***ed. I saw the X-ray, they re saying it s nothing but I m telling you it s f***ed.
What do you want to do? I asked.
We need to get back to London, get John to look at it. I ll get Jimmy to drive us.
This conversation took place in the early hours of 29 September 1991. I was standing, more like swaying, in a quiet corner of the Newcastle Freeman Hospital. I had been drinking for two days and was talking to a very distressed Paul Gascoigne, arguably the most talented player in English history.
This wasn t how I had pictured life as a professional footballer.
***
I can t remember a time when I wasn t obsessed by football. As I have got older, I have managed this obsession but it is still there. I m not one of those who has incredibly early memories and can t recall living in the womb or being held as a baby. Before the age of about four is a complete mystery to me, but I can remember Arsenal getting to three consecutive FA Cup finals at the end of the 1970s. I was five for the first, against Ipswich Town. This was in a time when the FA Cup was the pinnacle of the footballing calendar. I can remember the excitement of the build-up during the week. The day itself was a real event. It was shown all day on ITV and BBC and I would watch every minute, flicking backwards and forwards from channel to channel to find the best segments. Meet the players, how they got there, the fitting of the cup final suit, the FA Cup song and joining the players as they left the hotel to go to the game. I loved it all. I would get some sweets and sit down on the floor of the living room with my dad and watch five hours of build-up followed by the game itself. I would physically shake with excitement.
My dad, Michael, takes his football very seriously. He has never hidden his annoyance if his concentration on the game is interrupted, and everyone in our house knew not to make a noise when the football was on. I know I used to irritate him with my inane questions. I used to try so hard to sit there in silence, but my excitement always got the better of me. Seven hours is a long time for any child to be quiet and I m sure my dad was relieved when we finally got a second television and I could watch the build-up in a different room. I would still go back for the game itself, though.
Years later, I used to watch Match of the Day with my dad. It was the only programme I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime for. He would spend all evening avoiding the results as he didn t want to know the scores before he watched the highlights. The radio in the car would be switched off, and he would avoid anyone who might tell him the score. When it came to the time that Match of the Day was due to start, he would turn the television on and off, really quickly, in case the news had overrun, as at the end of the bulletins they gave the football scores. If it overran, and he saw the results flash up on the screen, the air would turn blue. My mum, Patricia, would then usher me out of the room; it was a similar thing when he was doing DIY and it wasn t going as smoothly as he had anticipated. I would be transferred to the garden before I heard some words that my young ears weren t yet ready for.
My dad was a latecomer to football. It was always a regret for him that as a young man, in 1963, he and my mum had owned a flat that overlooked Highbury, the home of Arsenal. He had a perfect view of the action, which Arsenal fans would have killed for. But, at that time, he had no interest in watching the game, and would even make a point of leaving the flat on a Saturday afternoon as the noise of the crowd would disturb his day. He played football as a young man but never watched it and was never really a fan. The World Cup in 1966 was the event that ignited his love for football. He then began watching Millwall with my mum s dad and ended up being a season ticket holder. He actually missed the birth of my sister while queuing to get a season ticket for Millwall in 1968, something my nan never let him forget. He was lucky that the team he watched ended up evolving into the class of 1971, thought by most Millwall fans to be their best ever. Millwall were always my second team growing up. They started an obsession for football with my dad which he then passed on to me.
When I was just three years old, my dad was involved in a motorbike accident which left him in Greenwich Hospital for nearly three years. I was five when he eventually left. It was a bad break to his leg, which got infected, and they spent all that time trying to save the limb. The ward he was on was full of patients in similar situations. Eventually, they had to concede that they could not save it.
My mum used to regularly take me and my sister Sarah to visit my dad at the hospital. After they heard the news that my dad s leg was to be amputated, my mum took me aside before a visit to the hospital and explained what was going to happen. They were very worried about how I might react with me still being so young. The Six Million Dollar Man was a very popular programme at the time, and my dad s new leg was sold to me as a bionic one, just like Colonel Steve Austin. The thought was that rather than me seeing the amputation as a disability, it would convince me that it was actually a good thing. Far from being bothered by it, I was envious. For years I thought my dad could leap giant buildings in a single bound. He must have got sick of me constantly asking him questions about his bionic leg. My dad said that on that particular visit he was sitting in his bed waiting for us when a very loud voice could be heard from the corridor shouting excitedly, Daddy, they re cutting off your leg today!
The way my dad tells it, everyone in the ward turned to stare at the door in horror, praying it wasn t going to be their kid who walked in the door. The group sigh of relief could be hear