Free Always Managing: My Autobiography by Harry Redknapp Page B

£120 per week, with a little Ford Fiesta as my company car, to sit in a Portakabin on a building site on my own. Sometimes another bloke, supposedly our chief executive, would sit with me. ‘Right,’ he’d say, ‘let’s go and have a look at the new training ground.’ And we’d drive up the road and stand in this empty field and say, ‘We’ll put the dressing rooms there, and pitch number one there,’ and then we’d drive back and sit looking at each other for the rest of the day until Bobby and the players turned up at 7 p.m. Andbecause the owner was playing at the fantasy of running a big club I had to be there every morning at 9 a.m. – which meant leaving my home in Bournemouth at 7 a.m. I’d get in very late at night, exhausted, having done precisely nothing for most of the day.
    Sometimes we’d be at an away match somewhere like Aveley, in Essex, in the driving rain and I’d think, ‘What am I doing here?’ And then I’d look at the bloke sat next to me and think, ‘“What am I doing here?” – what is he doing here?’ It was a hard slog for us, because in that company we were fish out of water. We’d spent all our life in the professional game and we just didn’t know the league or what was needed. We got some older ex-professional players in, thinking they would be a class above, but they couldn’t hack it. As for the rest, they had already done a day’s work by the time they got to training. They were knackered, and we weren’t used to that either. We were ordinary, mid-table at best in the league, and then when we played Oxford United in the local Cup final, and we couldn’t live with them and lost 5–0. To make matters worse, Tony’s business was beginning to struggle and, when the results didn’t come straight away as he’d hoped, he began to lose interest. Within a year, the Oxford City project was over.
    I enjoyed being with Bobby, but not all the people I met in grassroots football were as charming. We frequently saw a poor side of human nature that year. I think a number of the other coaches were jealous of Bobby for what he had achieved in the game. Beating him became the story they wanted to live off for the rest of their lives – score against us, and they would get completely carried away. I got used to an opposition manager or coach jumping out of his seat and running over to celebrate in frontof Bobby. They seemed to delight in sticking it to him and yet, once the final whistle had gone, they would be over wanting his autograph or a picture with an arm around his shoulder like they were best mates. I thought it showed a complete lack of respect and was very distasteful. Yet Bobby let it all wash over him. He never allowed the aggro to get to him, never once took the bait or sunk to their level. He was just above people like that. He posed for all their pictures and signed every autograph, while I stewed in the background, quietly seething. What was it with people? Why were some so spiteful?
    I guess Bobby was used to it. I remember when we were at West Ham, we drew Hereford United in the fourth round of the FA Cup, 1972. They had just knocked out Newcastle United in one of the most famous upsets in Cup history. Their players were suddenly big names: Ronnie Radford, who had scored a spectacular winner, and Dudley Tyler, a winger who ended up signing for West Ham for £25,000, which was a record for a non-league player at the time. They had a big centre-forward called Billy Meadows, who used to be at Barnet. He had plenty to say for himself – and plenty to say to Bob. The game got postponed a couple of times, and we ended up playing it in midweek on a really heavy pitch. As soon as the match kicked off, Meadows started abusing Bobby. I’d been around, but this was really beyond the pale. Stuff about Tina: really nasty, personal insults, it was disgraceful. We drew 0–0 and ended up playing the replay at Upton Park on Monday 14 February, with an afternoon kick-off