World Famous In Antwerp
Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone played for Blackburn Rovers and Preston North End before becoming a club physio at Everton and Manchester United. In 2011 he wrote the much-lauded, The Smell of Football. About to launch his second book, he spoke to David Fearnhead
There’s an old truth in football that you don’t have to have been a great player to become a great manager. Maybe it’s becoming less so in the current climate where the managerial merry-go-round demands a name to keep both shareholders and fans happy. Still, for every Pep Guardiola there is a Jurgen Klopp, or a Thomas Tuchel or a Rafa Benitez.
It isn’t a view which is naturally held by book publishers. Sport books are seen as a difficult sell. They tend to stick rigidly to two tried and tested methods. The first is a lament from a respected crusty journalist on a game whose characters have long since passed. The second is a big-name player autobiography.
With a few notable exceptions these are either ghost-written in the sort of beige coached media speak of the modern professional, or a loose stringing together of stories that have been well-worn on the after dinner speaking circuit. The latter might even throw in a few manufactured feuds for the tabloids to give the sales a nudge, but rarely did you get any real insight or real substance from the name on the cover.
So a decade ago when a book entitled, The Smell of Football hit the shelves by a former player, who had a modest but decent career, few would have expected it to be punching its weight on the William Hill Sports Book of the Year list. It did so by being the very antithesis of all that was wrong with the genre. It transported you to a rather unique place. A place that was packed full of nervous energy, of self-doubt with a knowing nod to hubris, a place we could all relate to even if we hadn’t personally had our mettle tested as Duncan Ferguson sized us up. That place was inside Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone’s head.
Baz, the author, did the thing all the best authors strive to do. He allowed us to see the story from the inside out. We were exposed to his flaws, his weaknesses and worries, and also his gift for the quick one-liner and his self-deprecating humour. There was no ghost-writer filtering his words, there wasn’t even the self-filter of a man saying, maybe I shouldn’t put that as I could come across as weak. Ten years before men’s mental health was finally being openly talked about amongst leading sportsmen, Baz was already writing about it. There remained a rawness to it, even though many of the events he described within its pages had transpired some 35 years previous.
He still lives in the same house in Blackburn, having first arrived here in 1979 and played for Rovers until 1987 when he joined Preston North End. So, when we meet at a local cafe, one question stood out as needing to be asked – when you’ve written a best-selling book that’s won praise from critics and readers alike, why did it take him a decade to write a follow-up?
Maybe it was a cathartic experience. Demons exercised, time to move on. Or maybe it was the difficult second album syndrome and the pressure to follow up on a hit.
Well, it turns out he was just very busy. It’s not that he didn’t try. By his own admission and embarrassment, he’s got more gold watches at home than your local jewellers, but like Michael Corleone, just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in.
“Salford City came calling,” says Baz, of his latest post-retirement job. “They asked me to come in for four weeks as a physio. That was seven weeks ago and I’ve told them I’ll stay for the season now.”
In his book he documents trying to tell then boss David Moyes he thinks it’s time for him to hang up his boots as the club physio. In the telling he perfectly encapsulates the personas of both men and the unique language of the all-male environment where a few coarse sentences can speak volumes of affection. It’s a beautiful piece of writing.
At 62, Baz says he’s relieved to be finally of an age that matches his appearance. “I still think of myself as 23, so it’s a bit of a shock when I get in a lift and say hello to the old bald guy in there and realise I’m looking at my own reflection.”
He tells me of the time he found himself sat in a bar in Belgium wearing his Manchester United blazer and a pair of reading glasses as he browsed his match notes. He became aware he was receiving some attention: “I was buzzing to be honest. I was thinking had my book made it over to Antwerp? Eventually one drunken fan came over and asked me for my autograph. I happily signed it and he replied, ‘Thank you, Sir Bobby’.
“He thought I was Bobby Charlton – who was well into his seventies at that time. I’d only recently turned 50! I binned the glasses. Never wore them again.”
In truth he still has the look of someone who keeps himself in shape, much to the pain of Shinji Kagawa who, whilst at Manchester United, was put up against Baz in a race. The aged physio in his mid-fifties on his first day lining up against the Japanese international midfielder in his prime.
“We were neck and neck, side by side then I looked at him and said, ‘Sorry Shinji, you seem like a really nice guy, but this is my first day.’ I changed gear and left him for dead.”
Just like his book, a humorous story leads to a revealing truth. “People ask why I find it important to run with the players. The thing is whilst I can run at the front with them it doesn’t matter that I can’t switch on a laptop, but one day when you can’t it will matter a lot.”
He has at least figured out how to type. For his second book, which can be read separately or out of sequence, he’s chosen to self-publish.
Although the do-it-yourself route has left him with an unexpected dilemma: “I don’t know if there are going to be four people wanting the book or twenty-thousand. Logistically, I’d prefer four because I can probably only manage about 50 a day with me and my wife sticking the labels on and taking them down to the post office.”
Having read an advance copy, I suspect the local post office might well be advertising for extra staff.
The Smell of Football 2 by Mick Rathbone is available in hardback from: thesmelloffootball2.co.uk
