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The David Armstrong biography
by David Armstrong
with Pat Symes
Pitch Publishing, £17.99
Reviewed by Harry Pearson
From WSC 324 February 2014
There was always something a little Dickensian about Middlesbrough and Southampton midfielder David Armstrong. Small, prematurely bald, slightly portly with a face that fell naturally into an expression of melancholy, he was more Oliver Twist than the 1970s footballer of popular mythology. Even his nickname Spike has a whiff of the Victorian workhouse about it.
The nickname, it transpires, was given to him by Middlesbrough team-mate Basil Stonehouse for no other reason than that Stonehouse thought someone in the squad should have it. It’s the kind of anticlimactic tale that seems to have characterised Spike’s career. A hard-working left-sided player and an excellent passer and crosser, Armstrong scored over 100 goals from midfield and was so robust at times he seemed indestructible (he made 356 consecutive appearances for Boro).
He was not a dribbler though, nor was he quick, both of which counted against him when it came to international honours – he was only capped twice by his country. Trophies too eluded him. At Ayresome Park Jack Charlton’s reluctance to spend money – faced with a choice between Trevor Francis or Alf Wood, Big Jack opts, naturally, for the latter – scotches Middlesbrough’s chances of silverware, while Southampton fall agonisingly short of a Double in 1983-84 with Armstrong playing in all 51 games.
While other footballers’ autobiographies are often brimming with bitterness or rancour, The Bald Facts is tinged with sadness and regret. Armstrong’s career ended by an ankle injury that was treated in so bungling a manner the player is barely able to stand up for several years, his finances in tatters, you come away from reading it with the impression that the midfielder feels let down, not necessarily by individuals, but by the game itself.
As is too often the case the player’s unworldliness has hardly helped his cause. You don’t need to be a genius to realise that when you are going to court for an alimony hearing driving into the car park in a brand new red Mercedes is not the best idea. That’s what Armstrong does though. The results are predictable – his wife gets the house and whacking great yearly maintenance payments. “I came out of that court and burst pathetically into tears,” Spike records. There are a lot of tears in these pages, the odd laugh too, and a rather puzzling story about dognapping and Joe Laidlaw. Ultimately though there’s a sense of promise unfulfilled and of tales half told.
I started reading The Bald Facts during the hullabaloo that followed FA chairman Greg Dyke’s comments on the number of foreign players in the Premier League weakening the national team. Armstrong, of course, played when there were very few non-British professionals in the English top flight so it is instructive to see the midfield Ron Greenwood selected for the game against West Germany in 1982. Alongside Armstrong were Alan Devonshire, Ricky Hill and Ray Wilkins. Is that the sort of line-up that would strike fear into the hearts of the current Spanish, German or Brazilian sides?
by Eamon Dunphy
Penguin Ireland, £20
Reviewed by Dave Hannigan
From WSC 324 February 2014
Near the end of this enthralling book, Eamon Dunphy devotes a chapter to George Best, somebody he first encountered when they were both apprentices at Manchester United. Over the course of two particular anecdotes, one involving an afternoon’s drinking in London that segues into a tabloid sting of Best’s own orchestration, the other a night where the fallen icon plays pool with a Down’s syndrome boy in a pub on the northside of Dublin, Dunphy paints as revealing and as poignant a portrait of the late genius as you will find just about anywhere.
In recent years, Dunphy has become something of a caricature of himself on Irish TV, making outrageous, often ill-informed comments on European and international football. Watching this admittedly entertaining cabaret act, it’s easy to forget he has often been one of the most perceptive and insightful writers on the sport, from Only A Game?, the first warts-and-all journeyman diary of a season, to A Strange Kind Of Glory, his fine book on Matt Busby’s United. Thankfully, The Rocky Road (the first volume of his memoirs – it ends in 1990) is a worthy companion to both those works.
While there are sections dealing with Irish politics and the Dublin media that may baffle and/or bore British readers, they are dwarfed by the substance of the book which is actually a gripping account of one man’s journey through football. From his arrival at an Old Trafford still recovering from Munich to his role as national pariah for legitimately criticising the primitive style of Jack Charlton’s Ireland during Italia 90, this is a complex and often uncomfortable read.
It isn’t every football autobiography that deals with child abuse (he was a victim), and rails eloquently against the Catholic church and former president Eamon de Valera, the institutions that defined Ireland for much of the 20th century. Between his childhood in poverty in Dublin in the 1940s and 1950s to becoming one of the highest-paid personalities in Irish media, Dunphy lived many lives and they are all available here in fabulous detail.
The naive apprentice gambling away money he didn’t have with Barry Fry and witnessing the arrival from Belfast of a teenage prodigy who would change the game. The journeyman pro growing embittered and disillusioned with the harsh reality of professional football at York, Millwall and Reading. A brief and disastrous spell trying to transform the League of Ireland alongside Johnny Giles in the mid-1970s. Through each incarnation, Dunphy is tough on a lot of people he met (Terry Venables, Bert Millichip and a cast of FAI blazers receive entertaining sideswipes), but true to his personality he is always hardest on himself and his own inadequacies.
One of the things that makes this such an enjoyable read is Dunphy’s self-deprecating tone when recalling his own limitations as a footballer. Whatever they were, very few writers have offered us such a revealing glimpse into the brutal reality of an unforgiving sport in the 1960s and 1970s.