6 Choosing the right club
Lynn: At this time they were doing their school football alongside the centre of excellence. But then the club changed the rules and prohibited school football. They were sort of saying we’ll take him away from his school pals. They couldn’t play boys club football either. You’ve got to be centre of excellence only. Which I totally disagreed with because as far as I’m concerned your friends are very important. Your friends you go to school with, you grew up with. You need them to help you along.
Vince: For someone to turn round and say you can’t play with your school mates!
Lynn: By this time there were a few clubs in for Michael at 14 anyway. He had been with Middlesbrough from 10 to 13. Then there was a gap and he could go to the Milk Cup with Newcastle but he said he didn’t want to sign for Newcastle. And West Ham came in for him and Chelsea and Arsenal, all different places.
Again, Vince wasn’t there, so I went down to London and took him to different places. He went to Arsenal and they had like a hostel system and it was dorms and such like. And he came back from there and said ‘I don’t like it there.’ Just didn’t care for it. And he went to Chelsea and again we got the reasons why he didn’t like that set up.
And they were offering silly things. Like mortgage paid off and money like clubs do. And there were other clubs. We had scouts coming to the house. And I would only talk to scouts in the house when Vince was at home. The local scouts. And sometimes even with them I would disagree with what they were saying about the schooling. I would say that education to me was one of the things we wanted him to carry on doing alongside his football. Come on you’re talking about taking him away but not all of them are going to make it!
Lynn: So he went at half-terms for a week. And he loved it. At odd times he would go if there was a big game or something. He’d go away at a weekend. We had to take him down about every 6 weeks. In the meantime, he used to go to Chester Le Street for training. Where Graeme was funnily enough.
Vince: Lads from the area. Some would be going to Spurs, some would be going to Southampton. And the clubs themselves paid for a centre, once a week for 2 or 3 hours. And all the boys that were on schoolboy terms would go there. They ran this centre for lads who were possibly going to clubs outside the area. To keep them at a decent standard of training. Even though it was only for 3 hours or whatever it was.
Lynn: Michael was really, really happy at West Ham. He loved going. It was a family club. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t all false. You know some of the places you go to; any club can promise you so much.
Vince: You get the feeling when you walk in somewhere. It’s hard to explain you know what’s right.
But he went down to West Ham and honestly and truly he was so happy. But he was slightly too young because his birthday wasn’t until the end of the summer. So he had to hang around and hang around. And finally he signed schoolboy forms.
Vince: At the time you could sign schoolboy forms for 2 years. And when you signed it meant no other club could come in. And you were committed to West Ham. But you still could play for your school, and the town and the county.
16
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