Goals to Gold. Lee Sandford
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was a whole different ball game for me though.
When it happened, when I froze up in fear just before I was due to give a lecture to a group of traders a few years ago, I immediately sought help. I managed to get some great training to help me battle those fears, those voices of doubt that can destroy even the most talented people.
I stayed at PFC for three more seasons. By the time I was 21, Alan Ball had left and gone to Stoke City. Our new manager was John Gregory. We’d just been relegated so spirits were low. Plus, Gregory brought with him a whole batch of new players. Things were changing and I missed the old days.
A phone call came through the day before the PFC Christmas party in 1989 – it was Alan Ball asking me if I wanted to sign with Stoke. At that point I was out of contract with PFC, so I didn’t hesitate for one moment before saying yes. I packed my bags and drove to Stoke the next day.
Chapter Three: The Emotional Decision
Starting out in the Potteries
AS I DROVE up the M6 to Staffordshire, I kept thinking about how far from home I was going to be. In my mind I had imagined Stoke being, at most, two hours drive from Portsmouth. I was 21. I had never driven myself such a long distance before. By the time I got to Birmingham, which had taken the full two hours, I was certain Stoke had to be just around the corner. When I was still driving 45 minutes later, I started to panic slightly.
Despite the fact that I knew I was going to be miles and miles from everyone and everywhere I knew, I felt sure I was doing the right thing. I was nervous but my loyalty to Alan was so strong I never questioned my decision. I hadn’t thought about what was best for my career, about whether it was wise to move down a division (at the time, Stoke were in Division Two, the second tier of the football league system) or whether any other club might be interested in me; I went with my heart. I didn’t want anyone else as my manager, I just wanted to play under Alan, my football dad.
It was an emotional decision and any good businessperson will tell you that you shouldn’t allow your emotions to dictate your business decisions. At that point I didn’t see myself as a business, which might have been my mistake. I absolutely loved every minute of my time at Stoke and I was never happier under any manager than I was under Alan Ball, but it’s possible that a different decision at this early stage in my career might have led to bigger and better things for me in the grand scheme. However, at the time, I never gave it a second thought. I was, literally, having a ball.
The Stoke fans were fantastic and couldn’t have been more welcoming to me. Also, it wasn’t long before the gaffer started to bring up other PFC players, so some of the old crowd were together again and we tried to recreate the atmosphere we’d had in Portsmouth. There was a sense of security in things staying the same.
But times were a-changing and the old “work hard so you can play hard” philosophy wasn’t quite producing the results anymore. Either that, or other clubs were doing away with it and getting more serious, leaving us in their wake as they moved up the league tables. Coaching tactics were being overhauled and modernised. While we were having fun, my old football dad was falling a little behind the times. At the end of my first season at Stoke, under Alan Ball’s management, we were relegated to the Third Division.
To be honest, at this time, I wasn’t too bothered about where we were in the league, I just wanted to play football every day and collect my weekly wages. I had other responsibilities to think about by then... it wasn’t just about me anymore.
Seeking stability
Shortly before I signed with Stoke, my beautiful daughter Chloe was born. Her mum and I had only been together for a short time and, sadly, the relationship didn’t last. As any parent will tell you, the birth of a child changes your life, irreversibly, forever.
A big part of my focus now had to be on my job security and I knew I had to keep earning my living as a footballer. I had no other qualifications; I wasn’t trained to do anything else. Playing for Stoke City was safe – I knew I would always be welcome and wanted at Stoke. Maybe a part of me had been thinking with my head when I signed with Stoke after all because at this stage in my life, with my responsibilities, it wasn’t so much about playing for England and the glory anymore, it was about having a steady job and providing for my dependents. I doubt I could provide particularly well for a family on the jobs I could get with my CSE in Woodwork, or my O-levels in Pottery and Art!
When you’re 16, you can’t imagine being 21, let alone 31 or 41. When I was at school, I believed all I would ever need to do in life was to keep being good at football. I thought that, as long as I kept fit, stuck to the training regime and did my best out on the pitch, that I would always have a job. However, once I’d been out in the real world for several years, reality hit home. I saw players retire, get injured and get the sack. It occurred to me that you can’t depend on talent alone and that there will always be mitigating factors outside of your control. I realised that if anything ever happened to stop me from playing football, I’d have nothing to fall back on. It scared the hell out of me.
So when the PFA (the Professional Footballers Association, the footballers’ trade union) announced a scheme to give young footballers the opportunity to get a university degree, I jumped at the chance and in the autumn of 1995 I arrived at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Alsager campus with 14 other local footballers and football-related professionals, including coaches. The degree was in Sports Science and Coaching. I didn’t have a clue what to expect. On our first day, the lecturer told us all to go off to the library and choose a book. We could choose anything we wanted but, once we had picked something, we had to bring it back to the room and read a passage out loud to our fellow students.
I was browsing the shelves of the library when I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was one of my old mates from my Portsmouth days who’d signed with Stoke around the same time I had. He looked miserable. He told me he couldn’t hack it – he didn’t have the balls to read something out loud in front of all the other guys. He quit on the spot; he didn’t even come back to the lecture room that day.
For me, this opportunity came at exactly the right time in my life. I was ready to learn again. I was 27 and I’d had an amazing six years at Stoke, playing football and having fun, but I knew my big partying days were behind me. I had to plan for the future and this seemed like a great way to begin.
It was tough going, being back at school after more than ten years! Out of the 15 of us who started, only about half of us graduated. I was glad I stayed the course. Apart from anything else, it taught me that there is nothing to be gained from quitting. Quitting is actually the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s easy to hit a wall and give up, declaring, “I can’t do this.” We will even kid ourselves that we don’t want to do something just as an excuse not to finish it.
All of us who started that degree were out of our comfort zones. We knew the football pitch, not the library stacks, but those of us who stuck it out were well rewarded. It’s one thing in life doing the thing you always believed you were destined to do, but there is nothing like the feeling of being awarded something you were fairly convinced you could never achieve.
There were other new influences in my life around this time. I was in a steady relationship with an older woman who taught me a great deal about life and business. It was probably my first, proper adult relationship and it grounded me. She was a fitness instructor and had opened her own health club right in the middle of the late 1990s fitness boom. She was a successful businesswoman and I learnt business practices and skills from her that I still use today.
Future planning
Graduating from university changed me; it shifted my focus. I suddenly became a sponge. I wanted to learn everything I could about everything there was to know. It had finally dawned on me that being a professional footballer was not a career that could last forever. Okay, the Steven Gerrards of this world probably don’t need fall-back plans, but most of the rest of us will have a nasty bump as we come back down to earth if we don’t plan for the future.