The teacher in charge of our school team was a nice guy from Oldham called Chris Boukley and he took me under his wing and encouraged me to play even when the older lads were trying to intimidate me. Some kids tried to make an issue of my background being different to theirs but I had my own group of friends and I wasn’t the only kid from ‘new money’. There were quite a lot of us at Brentwood, and at football we used to play away games at the really posh schools like Eton. It was a very different world to mine. There were children from very wealthy and privileged families at my school but it was nothing like Eton.
You find your own way and make your own society in those kind of situations and I didn’t hang out much with that crowd. We talked about politics and history but we still played football at lunchtime. I enjoyed learning but football was still my main ambition in life. Having to attend lessons on Saturday was difficult for me as was the fact that I played for the school team but was also playing at youth level for West Ham. It was only a matter of time before the two would clash. When they did, it was spectacular and the fallout was excruciating.
Dad bunked me off school so I could play an FA Youth Cup tie for West Ham. I never really thought much of it at the time. I was desperate to play of course and presumed I could get away with it. Anyway, my Dad was taking me. I played, we won the match and had a good game. Perfect, I thought. Wrong. I went to school the next day and there was a horrible buzz going about that I had been found out. The school team had also had a game the day before – the quarter-final of a cup competition. They lost, turning my absence into a major scandal when it might have been a minor irritation.
I sat in class like a condemned man waiting to be sentenced. I was guilty all right and if anyone doubted it they only had to look at my face. I was hoping for the best but knew it was a real issue when the headmaster marched into the room and shouted ‘Lampard! Come with me.’
I was taken to his office and sat there ashamed and silent. He fetched a copy of the local paper and spread it in front of me. I was puzzled. Then I noticed a photograph of me playing for West Ham in all my glory. There goes my excuse that I was sick then. They took truancy very seriously, as they did loyalty and responsibility to the school and your fellow pupils. He told me that I had let down the school, my team-mates and myself. He didn’t need to rub my face in it. I knew already. Worse was to come. He sent me to see Mr Boukley to apologize.
I really liked him. He had paid me a lot of attention when I first arrived and had made me feel like I could succeed even when I had doubted myself. I was dreading the meeting. Of all the people that the headmaster had pointed out that I had disappointed he was the one I felt worst about. The rebuke was pretty brief but I was upset with myself after I saw Mr Boukley.
I was also pissed off that I got two hours’ detention on Saturday afternoon – the worst possible. They made me write an essay that might teach me a valuable lesson: ‘How Loyalty is More Important than Self-Interest’. I thought about it for a while and decided that I could be clever too: ‘It’s true, loyalty is very important but sometimes you have to look after your own interests because no one will do it for you,’ was my conclusion. I was quite pleased with myself. My teacher, however, didn’t find it so entertaining and got the right hump.
As far as the academic side went, I studied pretty hard while I was there. I was no fool and I guess the desire to succeed came across in class as well. I got ten GCSEs – an A+ in Latin, three As, five Bs and one C – grades I needed to go on and study for my A levels. The school tried to put a case to me that I should stay on and I was promised that I would captain the football first XI. Mr Boukley made the point that it would be good for me regardless of my football ambitions to get a sound academic base. I could get my A levels and still go on to play football afterwards.
I thought long and hard about it. I got good grades in my exams and enjoyed studying French and Spanish. I went home and spoke to Dad. I had known for a couple of months that there was an apprenticeship for me at West Ham and that seemed the obvious thing to do. More than anything I wanted to play football, to be a footballer. But, when it was put to me that I should continue learning, it did turn my head.
My Dad turned it back. He was adamant I should take up the offer at West Ham. I didn’t need that much persuading. I think I might have got bored with school. I wanted to play football more and more. I entertained the idea of staying on just in case I didn’t make it in football and ironically, that was partly because all my life my Dad had told me how hard it was to become a professional player. It was what I had always wanted. It’s true that when the school offered me a different option I wavered a bit but not enough. Dad was very clear: if I didn’t do my apprenticeship then I wouldn’t learn the real basics of the game. You need to know the background in football even when it means scraping the mud off of other people’s boots and scrubbing the dressing room floor. Hardly the glamour of the professional game but essential.
It’s easy for me to say I have no regrets. I don’t. A lot of my mates went to a rival school and they went on and did A levels and then on to university. I have more experience now and I can honestly say that I’m not a great believer in further education for subjects other than science and technical ones. The likes of medicine and law are essential and clear about what they aim to achieve. I don’t mean to sound snobby or judgmental but I went and stayed with some mates when they were at university and I didn’t like the way they were living. There seemed to be a lot of time spent doing very little and experimenting with smoking dope and stuff and I have to admit that on that basis I wouldn’t necessarily send my kids to university.
A lot of them didn’t know what they wanted to do when they went to university and changed their minds a few times in the process. I realize that higher education can be of great benefit and is quite a privilege but I also think it can be a bit of a waste of time unless you apply yourself. It can also give you bad habits in life. I have this argument, even now, with my mate Billy Jenkins who spent five years at Durham University. We have known each other since we were five – he is the son of the former West Ham physio Rob Jenkins and we’ve always been close.
School was definitely enough for me as far as that academy was concerned. It was a positive experience and it gave me confidence as a person. Now I have an interest in the front of the newspapers – in politics and world affairs – as well as the back pages and football.
When I was a young professional I looked at players who had more to offer than just the stereotypical image of someone who is not very bright but earns a lot of money. I realized that people respect you if you have a bit more substance, if you are more than just another football player. It’s important to be aware of more than football but unfortunately in our profession life can be very sheltered and being ignorant of the world is easy.
You get some kids who can’t handle those who speak in a different way from them and react badly. I like to hold my own in conversation about politics and have been up until five in the morning with some of my mates arguing the issues of the day like Tony Blair’s policies or the war in Iraq. I enjoy that kind of banter as well as all the football kind and I make no apology to anyone about the fact that I have interests which extend beyond training and ninety minutes of football. When I speak in public I am confident and, I like to think, quite articulate. For a footballer, that can be quite unusual. There is an unfortunate image of footballers – particularly some of the younger ones – as people who can barely string a sentence together. That may work okay in the dressing room but football is an integral part of society and maybe the clubs and the FA could take more responsibility for their younger players and the way they present themselves.
The schooling I had made me more fortunate but I still had to apply myself. My parents were not so lucky, though just as I had Dad as my football role model, he had one also. His grandad was a player in the army and so was his Uncle George. Dad was brought up with football and even as a five-year-old was playing with boys who were nine. It was part of the culture. Where he came from there were only three career options for any lad making his way in the world. You could work in Tate and Lyle’s sugar refinery in the docks at Silvertown, you could live off your wits making money where you could, or you could become a professional footballer. Those were the only ways to better yourself and he decided at a young age that he wanted to be a footballer. He,