John Gorman: A survivor of the pain game
Last updated 08:28, Friday, 05 December 2008
There is a remarkable story in John Gorman’s autobiography about the time when, as an adventurous 10-year-old, he nearly died after falling off a roof at a West Lothian building site.
The tale surfaces again over coffee in a High Wycombe café, when I ask him to explain why he was so certain of his ability throughout his playing career: a prevailing theme in his memoirs.
“It came from the time I fell from that house,” he replies. “It probably convinced me I was indestructible.
“I could so easily have lost my life that day. My arm was hanging off and I was even given the last rites. But I recovered, even if that injury stayed with me.”
He chuckles. “It’s funny, Carlisle fans used to have a go at me for giving away so many foul throws. Maybe now they’ll know why.”
An embarrassed smile appears as he confides more startling tales of childhood folly. “There are loads of other times I was close to death. Once, I was on a frozen pond and the ice broke, and I had to be pulled out. On another occasion I came into contact with this metal spike, which went right through me. Other times when I fell from garages. Another time when I went into a swamp. . .”
He chuckles again, shakes his head, and quickly changes the subject, as would anyone who had so recently discovered that if there is one word in the dictionary which you cannot pin on the human condition, that word is indestructible.
When you are the manager of Wycombe Wanderers, when you are steering the club to a record 21-match unbeaten run in Coca-Cola League Two, when your team is performing with all the adventure you exhibited in your own playing days at Carlisle United and Tottenham Hotspur, when thousands of people are delighting in your every act, you don’t contemplate outside intrusions.
This was Gorman, at the onset of 2006: happily encased in football’s bubble. Then it burst.
First, on January 14, he was told that Mark Philo, a 21-year old Wycombe midfielder, had died in a car crash. Then, on February 26, Gorman’s wife Myra succumbed to the cancer she had fought for many months.
It is from this precise point onwards that Gorman wishes he could grab life’s remote control, and hit rewind.
“At the time Myra was in hospital, I remember going to see Martin O’Neill and his wife Geraldine, who also had cancer,” he says. “He had walked away from football for a while. Why didn’t I do that?
“But no – I was so into Wycombe, I just wanted to keep the record going, and everyone was encouraging me. The family, the doctors, Myra herself. Keep working, they said. But when she died, I was straight back into the job and it was stupid of me. Two days after the funeral, we went to Cheltenham, lost 2-1 and I nearly throttled the referee.
“After another game, the chairman came in and said, ‘How can you lose to Torquay?’ I lost my rag, told him to ‘F*** off’. My mind was all over the place. It had properly hit me by that point. I thought, ‘flippin’ heck, this is real – she isn’t going to be there any more’.”
Eventually, he scooped up his thoughts and offered to temporarily step down from first-team duties – an offer the Wycombe board accepted, except they swapped ‘temporarily’ for ‘permanently’. This wounded Gorman, who watched his old team stagger towards a play-off defeat while resolving to pursue the next job that came along. It arrived in the form of Northampton, newly-promoted into League One and bubbling with decent potential.
It felt right. He still needed the game; the game needed him. All was peace, until his mind again unravelled.
The 2006/7 season began promisingly, including a 1-1 draw at Brunton Park where Gorman received a sympathetic standing ovation, with Myra’s death still painfully recent. Then there was a home match against Leyton Orient on December 19.
The trigger was a misdirected backpass from the Northampton defender, Sean Dyche, 11 minutes from time. Orient’s Paul Connor intercepted it, won the game for the Londoners, and tripped a switch in Gorman’s head. What am I doing here? What is my connection with this place? Why am I bothering with the people who are booing me? What is the point, when the woman I love won’t be waking up next to me on Christmas Day?
The next morning, he hastily arranged a meeting with the Northampton chairman, David Cardoza, and quit. “I was happy to get out of it, really happy,” Gorman says.
For the first time since he was a teenager at Celtic, he escaped the game for five months. Then, after the grief at its most acute, came a stirring, an anxiety to return to his profession, albeit on less rigorous terms. His friend George Burley made him chief scout at Southampton, a role which briefly lapped into caretaker manager duties. A few months on, and he is now working with his old team-mate, boss and friend, Glenn Hoddle, at the former England manager’s new coaching school for discarded youth team players in Spain.
The post ought to suit Gorman perfectly: away from the hailstorm of front-line management, but back on the training pitch. Coaching without the strain. The best of both worlds? If only it was that simple.
To appreciate the extent of John Gorman’s dilemma in December 2008, you first need to know his significance to Carlisle United in the 1970s. For that, you either had to be at Brunton Park, when the young Scot was at play, or must talk to someone who remembers. When the all-time greatest United XIs are compiled, the search for a left-back begins and ends with one man: ‘Gory’.
“There was something special about playing for Carlisle,” he says. “The fans took to me straight away because they loved the way I went forward. And they haven’t forgotten. After my wife died, the reception I got at the Northampton game up there really took me aback. And I must have got 500 letters from Carlisle fans. It’s impossible to reply to them. The place and the people remain very close to me.
“For the club to reach the top flight when I was there…it’s ridiculous to think of. But we had some players. Young fans won’t realise how good Chris Balderstone was. And what about George McVitie, Allan Ross, Les O’Neill, big Bill Green, Ray Train, Hugh McIlmoyle? Dick Young was my favourite coach and Glenn still uses some of his drills today. He says they are the best.
“I suppose the players now must be sick of hearing about that team which played in the old First Division. But there is something about the place. Look at all the people who have gone back there to live, like Hugh. That tells you something. And I can’t deny there is a wee something in my heart that says I’d love to have been a manager there.”
I mention the current vacancy at Brunton Park. Out of respect for Greg Abbott, the Carlisle caretaker, Gorman rejects the journalist’s bait. But the question has pierced his thoughts. Asked more generally about a return to management, it becomes plain that opposing forces are now pulling hard at our man.
One: the desire to stay out of the firing line, away from the stinging pressure. Two: the fact he misses it all terribly.
“At Southampton, when I got a sniff of being caretaker alongside Jason Dodd, I admit the old adrenaline was flowing again,” he says. “I felt really up for it. But when we lost to Bristol Rovers in the cup, I took it all on myself again. I had that rotten feeling that I had let people down.
“I remember one fan came up to me after the game, an older guy, and slaughtered me. And again, I thought, ‘Do I really need this?’
“I probably shut the door on it at that point. But now…at the moment, I’m back in England for a month, doing some scouting for Glenn, looking for young players who we can take to Spain, develop, and then get them back into the game. It’s a good concept, and quite enjoyable. But I’m waking up on a Saturday, going to a game, and there’s no buzz.”
A sigh. “I think I’m a bit soft now. I want to be in it, but I just want the good parts. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve spoken to three of my friends who have been sacked – John Ward, Stan Ternent and Alan Pardew. All I seem to be doing is ringing people, saying, ‘Sorry you’re out of work’. Do I really want to be back on that scene?
“And yet, look at Joe Kinnear. Out of the game all this time, happy in Spain, a few bob in the bank, and yet he gets this chance to go to Newcastle and he takes it. It’s in our blood. We’re a bit strange, that way.”
If Gorman's tale is of a man pursuing perspective, he has realised it often comes at a price. He is content to have committed his story to print, but says his daughter, Amanda, is uncomfortable with the idea of reading a detailed account of her mother’s death.
Then there was the unexpected complaint from Mark Philo’s parents. “I just wanted to put in a tribute about him, but they said they weren’t sure they wanted the book published. They still found it a bit raw. I genuinely hadn’t thought of that. You don’t realise how sensitive you have to be with what you write.”
He then explains how he settled on the charity which will benefit from his book’s proceeds. “One day I was round at the house of some neighbours of mine, whose son had died from cancer when he was nine,” he says. “He’d stayed in this chalet in his last days, and his dying wish was for other kids to have something better. So his parents set up the Sebastian’s Action Trust, and made it their ambition to raise money for this holiday home for terminally ill kids. What they said really got to me. So every penny from the book will go there. And I know Myra would be happy with that.”
He pauses at the name. “My son is getting married soon and I expect it will all come back then,” he says, quietly. “Family events tend to have that effect, don’t they? But I’m ok. If I can get through Christmas, I’m alright. I think.”
The interview has overrun, and he is now anxious to leave for a signing session in a bookshop. Dozens of Wycombe fans are waiting; this town has not forgotten, either. Gorman, with his new partner Denise (“she’s good for me. . .I need the company”), is tanned and happy. But indestructible? What does he think about that today? What, at 59, and possessed of the most public back-catalogue of personal pain, does John Gorman believe?
After the afternoon’s longest pause, he eventually says: “It’s a deep question, and I’ll explain it this way. I was brought up as a Catholic, and I like that identity.
“I don’t ram anything down people’s throats. All I will say is that when you die, hopefully there is another life. I suppose that’s the purpose of it all.”
- Gory Tales, by John Gorman with Kevin Brennan, is available now (Green Umbrella, £18.99).
