Leaving home, train sarnies and Gazza
NO GLAMOUR TO LIFE AS A FLEDGING FOOTBALLER IN THE 1980S
NEWCASTLE United’s fringe players would be sent through the old Intercity 125 trains to buy sandwiches for their first-team peers on away days.
On their way back through, youngsters like Paul Ferris, Paul Gascoigne and Neil McDonald would be given messages to senior players from disgruntled supporters on their way back from away games in London.
Welcome to the professional football circuit in the 1980s, all of it a far cry from the jet-set lifestyle of the modern Toon stars who are whisked through airports without having much contact with away fans.
In a week which has resulted in Ferris launching his new book
The Boy on the Shed, he told the Chronicle: “We would get the old 125 train back from London and the senior players would send us to the buffet car to get some sandwiches.
“You would go through the carriages and fans would be saying: ‘Tell so-and-so he is rubbish.’
“Football in those days was very different. Pro football has moved on for the better, it is a different world.
“At 17 now you have a public profile and a big contract.
“My own view is it not always a healthy thing but maybe it is better than at our age when you were on £20 a week, you were living in digs and there was not much pastoral care going on.
“The group of lads I grew up with were Derek Bell, John Carver and Neil McDonald.
“Myself and Neil signed pro a year early and travelled together.
“In those days it was not a 25-man squad, there would be a 13-man squad pinned on the board and you were part of it. We were two boys in a man’s world.”
Ferris admits his early days as a youngster with the Magpies
The biggest memory of my time then was desperate homesickness. I was thinking I wouldn’t last more than a week
Paul Ferris
were tough after arriving from Northern Ireland as a raw teenager.
He added: “I was incredibly shy as a boy.
“To leave Ireland for England in those days was not like now where you can Facetime somebody or pick up a mobile. You can get regular flights now.
“England felt a long way away, you could get a flight on a Tuesday or Thursday, miss those – you were not getting home and the club would not pay for young players to fly.
“I would have to get the boat, get the train to Edinburgh, across to Ayr, then go home that way.
“It felt a long way from home and I was very homesick.”
Ferris left his homeland and a difficult political backdrop in the 1980s after being raised during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
However, he also arrived in a city which had not been illuminated by the tourism industry at that stage.
Ferris said: “Newcastle was a very different place back then.
“It is a vibrant place now, but it was depressed in the 1980s, it felt depressed and I came from a trouble-torn environment.
“Newcastle felt like a city on its knees, I was a boy and I could recognise that.
“The biggest which that strikes me now is my youngest son is 16 and I made my debut for Newcastle in May.
“I went home in June and my class-mates were doing their OLevels so the people I had left behind were doing exams and I did not finish mine. That gives you an idea of just how young I was.
“I remember thinking I needed to be better but I was just a boy in a foreign land.
“The culture of Newcastle and Northern Ireland were similar.
“I had been to Everton briefly beforehand and the lads from Liverpool were a bit too advanced for me and in your face.
“The Newcastle people seemed more like the Irish people.
“That helped because I moved in with a family which had an Irish feel to it.
“In reality, the biggest memory of my time then was desperate homesickness. I was thinking I would not last more than a week. Lads before me did go home.
“However, my football went well and the manager at the time was very encouraging, Arthur Cox.
“Even during training, he was quietly saying you might have something.
“Other boys were saying you were doing well and before you know it you are in the team at 16.”
Ferris also revealed his experiences of coming across a young Paul Gascoigne, saying: “I met him at Whitley Bay, he was 14 and I was 16 and we played in the same trial game.
“There is a bit in the book when he refused to pass to me.
“Most of my games were before 18 so when he came along he was there and rising when I was disappearing because of injury.
“He was an incredible talent and maybe did not have the physical attributes at that age but at 17 something just changed.
“He became stronger and he blossomed into this phenomenal footballer.
“My recollection of him is somebody who was always joking and smiling.
“He was always trying to wind you up and somebody who was always kind - he was just a nice lad.”