Big Fry: Barry Fry: The Autobiography. Phil Rostron

are you talking about, Adrian?’ I said.

      ‘Codner. He head-butted you.’

      ‘Bollocks,’ I replied. ‘What makes you think that?’

      He said he had seen the incident from the stand, but I countered.

      ‘Look. I had plimsolls on. I shouted something to him which he didn’t hear, so he came back to see what I had said. At that moment I slipped. It’s knee-deep in mud out there. You can see for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with me. Head-butted me – that’s a laugh!’

      ‘Oh, all right then,’ Adrian said. ‘He can play for England.’

      And play for England he did.

      I never see the point in allowing situations to fester and what happened at Bolton taught me that lesson. Two spats with the manager completely finished me. I have often wondered what would have happened if I had just sat in the bath that day and said nothing to Bill Ridding, but the fact remains that after just a year I was on my way again, this time to my most local league club, Second Division Luton Town.

      They had wanted me as a boy, when George Martin was the manager. He was still in charge and he telephoned me to say that it had come to his attention that Bolton were letting me go on a free transfer and he would like me to go along for a chat. The fact was that I was going home anyway. There was nowhere else to go. When we came face to face all George could say was: ‘When you left school you should have come here.’ I signed a one-year contract and that season Luton finished within 0.046 goal average of being promoted. Again, though, I didn’t play much. I was in and out of the team and I left the club having played a career total of fewer than 20 league games while at three clubs, which was disgraceful for what I had to offer.

      At the age of 21, six short years after walking into Old Trafford with the world at my feet, I was on the scrapheap. Finished. Caput. Not a single league club wanted me.

      The only club of any description to show even the remotest interest was Southern League Gravesend & Northfleet, who were managed by Walter Ricketts. They had a lot of experienced players like Jim Towers, formerly of Brentford and Tosh Chamberlain, who had been at Fulham, while John Dick, the ex-West Ham stalwart, was the coach. So here I was, living in Bedford and set to join Gravesend, which was almost the other side of the world. And part-time football into the bargain. I joined them purely because I wanted to play football, but it was clear from the outset that I would have to get a job in the Bedford area to make ends meet. A firm called Advance Linen in the nearby village of Kempston required a driver to make deliveries of those pull-down towels which you see in the ladies and gents toilets at pubs and restaurants and I was successful with my application. I had to do my rounds in quick time because on Tuesday and Thursday nights I had to be at Gravesend for training sessions.

      I was inhabiting a totally different world. While in Manchester I had met at a dance the girl, Anne, who was to become my first wife and she was no small part of the equation at this time and in these new circumstances. She had no interest in football, even though she lived in Salford right next to The Cliff, and I told her on the dance floor that I was a bricklayer. It was the kind of lie that only a woman could spot and she asked how I could be a bricklayer with such soft hands. Three years on we married in Salford but set up home in a flat in Bedford. It was a very difficult time. My life had been turned upside down. Instead of getting up and looking forward to work because I loved the running around and the training, followed by the afternoon off and going to the races, I was reporting for duty in a mundane job at 7.45am and rushing to allow time for the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Gravesend. Also, I was newly-married.

      Even though they had players who were far more experienced than I, Gravesend made me captain. I had been there for just six months when Walter Ricketts was appointed as assistant manager to Dick Graham at Leyton Orient. He told me straight away that he would be taking me with him and, presto, I was back with a league club. I was buzzing. Dick looked after me, giving us a club house at Gants Hill. By this time we had Jane, our first daughter, but the move wasn’t really of any concern to Anne because of her apathy towards football. It would not have mattered to her where we lived. She never came to any of the games and, consequently, didn’t mix with football people.

      I was never a regular in the Orient team, and in one of my periods on the sidelines something was to happen which would change the course of my life. The players arrived for one game to find that the trainer, the man with the magic sponge, had done a moonlight flit. No explanation. He just didn’t turn up. Dick was naturally concerned, but I volunteered to do the job. I allayed his misgivings about my qualification to take on the role by telling him that any silly bugger could apply cold water where it was needed and, anyway, we had a doctor on hand to deal with any serious injuries.