TOMMY JENKINS

Funny thing happened to me this week amidst my bout of being ‘out of the game’, and and the first sign was a name coming up on my mobile telephone and what a lovely surprise as Tommy Jenkins name flashed up. Tommy is a gem and one of those rough diamonds that they used to say many years ago, ‘Come out of East London’ although I have never looked at him in that way. Anyhow, after our brief exchanges of warm greetings, Tommy tells me that he has a couple of stories for my book. I hesitate. After telling me that he has spoken to Tony (Millard) who he enjoyed in October and vice-versa, telling me that he knew that my friend was in Lanzarote, Tommy was right for a change, I jest, as he continues ‘Huddy, I thought Lanzarote was in Italy”, and I break out of my illness and into laughter. Only Tommy.                                                                     We exchange our views on geography, which is my least favourite subject and move onto Renton. ‘Do you remember Renton?’ Now I know that Tommy is spaced out, for how can I not remember our training ground of four long years? If he had said Houlihans or Barnaby’s it would still be absolutely absurd, but Renton, where the engines of those aeroplanes reminded us that we were only small fry in this city. The sound of Boeing behind our goal would be enough to make Jose Mourinho pick his ball up and walk to the changing room, well, either that or let their tyres down, something that he thinks that he could do. But this was Seattle Sounders 1978 and I suppose for one like me, it was a welcome break into a training session where the likes of Mike Ivano would look around and wait for the coach to say. ‘Okay, hit the showers’ however, Mike never, ever got his wish. The funniest thing I ever recall with ‘our’ friend Mike was that on one trip out in the afternoon, I knew that I had to speak to him about his inability to play our game. I loved Mike Ivano like a brother, in fact more. in my case. I told him that ‘As captain of this team I feel that you are not letting us down but yourself, and I need you to go on a diet, number one, and start training harder, number two’.  It was not difficult to speak to Mike and I think that was what made him so loveable. Anyhow, I got through to him. He began eating sensibly and even drinking ‘Light Beer’, I think?                                                                             But it was not the booze, it was his overall attitude, as he thought that his role of being ‘Social Manager’ allowed him to escape what he was actually getting paid to do, play in goal, even though Jack Brand was far superior, Mike forgot he was our back-up and needed reminding. I was absolutely delighted to see the difference in him, when one day Jack (Brand) was seen in a low flying aeroplane hanging out of the side of this contraption, as we were having ‘shooting practice’. This meant that Mike was the only goalkeeper on the training field and had no-one to take the alternative shot. To make things worse it was raining like I call ‘Stoke-on-Trent drizzle’, you know the type of rain that gets into your bones. The last time I remember him trying to become a back-up goalkeeper was when the aeroplane sirens went off and in all of the complete chaos, I saw him on all fours’ punching the Astroturf’ screaming ‘I can’t take anymore’. I cannot tell you how much I felt for Mike on that morning, especially with Jack flying the open skies withought telling anybody, not even the coach, Alan Hinton. Yeah, I hear you say, what a Football Club? But that was part of making us tick, nobody moaned about Jack taking flying lessons when he should have been training, for as I saw it, he owed us one and he never, ever let us down. Well, maybe once against LA when I thought he should have saved that near post shot that got us knocked out of the Play-Offs, but that might be harsh, as I have played with Peter Shilton and shot-for-shot Jack was more reliable. So, Mike’s new career was in tatters, and afterward we went to one of the bars and drank to him going back to being the ‘Old Mike Ivano’ that everyone loved. Going back to Tommy, and why he called me, I think because he wanted to add a little to the book by telling me the following: “I remember us all being in your home and as usual having a ball, and remember Jimmy (Gabriel) going home around midnight and the band carrying on playing, You know the usual Sunday afternoon, with Buttle, Cavey, Adrian and all and I recall leaving in the early hours and seeing you in full flight. The following day at Renton we were running round the track when John Ryan turned to me and said, ‘I never, the last time I saw him was not being able to stand up at his bar about three hours ago, and here he is out in front running us into the ground.’ I turned to Ryan and said, ‘Yeah and he can play a bit also”.

That was Tommy, I think having a tiny dig at John Ryan, because there was a great doubt about JR as he missed an all-important penalty against Vancouver in a Play-Off match at the Kingdome, something Tommy reminded me of, and I told him that I missed that match through a knee injury (Cliff Brown dove into my knee in training the morning prior) and I had to sit out the most important match of my new career. It was also a match that had I been fit might just have kept Jimmy his job, only maybe?  I say that because if you can work out the way they work then you should have told me on my arrival. The reason I remember it so well was that there was a young lady in the seats near us and she said that she served JR up on that morning with his flight tickets home for the very next morning. You work it out?

Alan Ball and me after that West Germany triumph, on my debut

The other outstanding thing I remember about that match was my friend and England team-mate Alan Ball, was absolutely magnificent in the wide open spaces of the Kingdome, and I could do nothing about a player who still remains the greatest one-touch footballer of my time. I first saw him as a skinny 17-year-old at Fulham playing for Blackpool and napped him as a player of the future, but ‘My Goodness’ I never thought that I’d be next to him beating the world champions at Wembley, ten years later. The only other player of such size to bless this stadium was our very own Steve Buttle – and as I always say “Pound for pound as good a player one can possibly get’.