Free Journeyman by Ben Smith Page A

be training every day again.
    The agent believed we could get out of the Yeovil deal as it would not have been lodged with the FA yet. He insisted that I speak to the manager and tell him I had made a mistake.
    But I refused to do this.
    History shows that many players have used this strategy successfully, but it did not sit comfortably with me – especially when suggested by a manI hardly knew. He insisted I was making a mistake but I refused to budge and, after all, I hadn’t even spoken to Brian Talbot so I didn’t have any confirmation that what the agent was saying was true.
    This agent, like a lot of middlemen, was very persistent and said he would speak to the Rushden hierarchy to ask if they would be willing to pay a transfer fee for my services. After a couple of days of going backwards and forwards it was relayed to me that Max Griggs, much like myself, was not keen on making enemies of other teams and that Rushden’s interest in me would not go any further. I never actually spoke to any club representative so I will never know how strong their interest was, nor how true the figures the agent quoted were, but from what I subsequently heard, I am pretty sure they would have taken me on a free transfer.
    After that fiasco I continued with the rest of the season. We still had four games left, which turned into two away defeats (against those big, horrible northerners Leek Town and Southport) and two home victories (including ten goals scored against Dover and Gateshead). We finished the season eleventh – perfect mid-table mediocrity – with fifty-nine points. I hadn’t scored another goal so finished the season with five in fourteen games.
    Yet again I spent the summer abusing my body.
    I was still friendly with a lot of the Reading players and as soon as my season finished I joined them on midfielder Paul Holsgrove’s stag party. I spent three days drinking non-stop and never made it back to our apartment during the whole trip. I did make one aborted attempt to return for some sleep, but was so disorientated I had no clue where the apartment actually was. I should probably take this opportunity to apologise to the taxi driver who toured the outskirts of Magaluf trying to find my accommodation. As the meter kept going up, it dawned on me that we were never going to find where I was staying and I had no money to pay my increasingly irate chauffeur. We briefly stopped in traffic next to a backstreet and I took my chance to escape. I jumped out of the car and headed for the alleyway but,as I did, the driver got my shirt and ripped off half the buttons. It was not enough to stop me, however, and I was away.
    Unfortunately, I was then left wandering around Magaluf with no money and a half-ripped shirt. This was before most people took mobile phones abroad so I couldn’t easily contact any of the lads. It was FA Cup final day so I pitched camp at a Linekers Bar, reasoning that my colleagues would eventually turn up there. They did but, unsurprisingly, not until about 9 p.m. I hate to think what I looked like that day!
    It took me a good four days to recover from that ‘holiday’.
    Some may argue that this was immediately after the season ended so there was no real harm done. Nobody could say that about my next decision, however. As I had dropped into ‘non-League’ football, I surmised that pre-season was no longer important and I could go on holiday whenever I wanted. Along with some of my non-footballing friends, I decided to take a two-week holiday in Ibiza in early July.
    Pre-season training pretty much always begins around 1 July, give or take a couple of days. So, even though I’d just had two months off, I thought it wise to have another two weeks at an all-inclusive resort drinking and eating as much as I could rather than preparing for a new season. Admittedly I did get the blessing of my manager, but that is irrelevant. It was a ridiculous thing to do and during the 1998/99 season I paid for it in a