When you start off reading a football autobiography, your hopes aren’t always that high. Perhaps a few inside stories on players you know, insight into managers, the odd anecdote – the usual stuff. Having said that, nothing quite prepared me for the contents of this book. I had fairly clear memories of Andy Morrison, and his role in the resurgence of Manchester City football club. I knew he liked a drink, that his knees had caused him trouble, and that his role at City didn’t last that long for those reasons. Little did I know just what else had gone on in his amazing, and often shocking life.
Morrison was born in Kinlochbervie, a small fishing village of 500 people a 100 miles north of Inverness. He had a happy childhood, but at a young age, took the 750 mile journey south with 3 brothers to Plymouth as his father moved away for work. Morrison clearly fears and respects his father in equal measures. He is described as a tough man who helped shape his son. Soon his parents had split up, but his focus turned towards football, and aged 10, he was selected for Plymouth schoolboys. As he grew older, his football skills developed at Plymouth, but there was a new thing in his life too. Alcohol.
“The booze cured me of my chronic shyness. I felt relaxed and the world was a better place. Drink filled in the void in my life and I knew from that moment on, I had something I could turn to when I need to blot out a memory or just feel better about myself.”
And with alcohol came fighting, and lots of it with his elder brother Ian, as they tried to be like their father, who himself wasn’t averse to the odd “scrap”.
Nights out almost inevitably ended in violence, and the consequences often spread to his football career. The fans didn’t mind, as long as he did the business on the pitch, and he was a fans’ favourite wherever he went because he was a leader, who always gave his all. He seemed fortunate that various managers gave him second (and third) chances and accepted him for what he was. It was even more fortunate that he didn’t end up in prison – fighting even crossed the path of Plymouth football club’s hooligan element.
After over a 100 games for Plymouth, Kenny Dalglish surprisingly signed Morrison up at Blackburn as he began building his title-winning side, in 1992. Morrison got few opportunities there though, now a small fish in a big pond. Missing Plymouth, depression began to set in for the first time also. It also marked a cycle of fights with team-mates – the red mist often descended under the influence of alcohol, memories of what happened hazy or non-existent most of the time.
Eventually Morrison moved to Blackpool, experiencing more success, though once more violence reared its ugly head, Morrison narrowly avoiding prison after a fight. On the day he was cleared, the night’s celebrations ended with yet another fight, and another escape from the arm of the law.
But on the pitch, a disastrous collapse meant Blackpool blew an almost nailed-on promotion push, and Morrison soon moved to Huddersfield under Brian Horton. It wasn’t long before injuries started damaging his career, and a serious knee injury meant he only played sporadically for the Terriers over three seasons.
And then came Manchester City, in 1998. Joe Royle needed a leader in the City dressing room, where morale was rock-bottom in the third tier of English football – the rest is history. Morrison’s arrival made all the difference along with a few other shrewd signings, and the season ended at Wembley, and a famous play-off victory over Gillingham.
Soon the knee was controlling his life again though, and Morrison would not feature much more for City – on his return to fitness he made a couple of loan moves to try and reach his previous levels of performance, even returning briefly to Blackpool, but his career was effectively over, and eventually he was forced to retire.
Life didn’t get any simpler though. Cashing in his pension early on retirement landed him in court once more, this time for benefit fraud. His younger brother was lost to a drug overdose, his brother’s propensity for violence led him to prison with a conviction for manslaughter, and his wife had to have a cancerous growth removed – three events that happened within a mere six-month period. And Morrison’s link to violence hadn’t ended either – after turning out for a pub team, a barrage of abuse by three opposition players led to him following them to a pub post-match and wreaking his own brand of revenge.
But somehow he survived, turning his hand to management, and that is how he found himself on the management team at Northwich Victoria, and now in the Welsh Premier League with Airbus UK.
The book stands well against other footballers’ autobiographies, the bland, featureless tomes of recent years having been replaced by a raft of good stories like this or Paul Lake’s. Morrison’s book does not tug at the heart-strings like Lake’s and isn’t as professionally written or as polished, but it is still excellently styled, and pulls no punches, written in an honest, straight-forward manner. Never has the word candid been more apt. There’s so much in there that no incident gets more than a page of comment, so in a book that is not overly-long, you are pushed along on a roller-coaster ride. Morrison does not hold back, his honesty resulting in great criticism of many famous names from the past twenty years of British football, and plenty of praise too. Clearly Joe Royle is the man that he respects more than any other, as it is he who provides the foreword to the book, showing the feeling was mutual.
There are also little gems in there, like the time Shaun Wright Phillips tried to fight him after a bruising first training session together, and who could forget him getting sent off for licking Stan Collymore’s ear? He even ended up at Philosophy School after Willie Donachie helped him to try and defeat his demons. He also ended up in Antigua, coaching youngsters.
Like Lake’s book, it is not just about football, it at times is barely about football. This is the man who has been charged with a Section 18, wounding with intent, GBH (twice), affray, actual bodily harm ,threatening behaviour, and many public order offences. Morrison does not have to have played for your club for the book to be of interest. In the end, the football is skimmed over much of the time, a backdrop to the craziness of his personal life. At times you feel the relief when you read four pages without anything bad happening to him – but with the anxiety that comes with knowing another fall is just round the corner.
It’s hard not to like Morrison at the end of it all, despite feeling guilty for doing so considering all the wrongs his life has contained. I guess that’s often the way when a story is told from one man’s perspective. But he does not seek to excuse many of his actions, just to explain why his life has taken its particular path. Whatever you think of the man, it’s an interesting read. And let’s hope that he has at last found some peace in his life so that the sport that made his name can provide for him for the foreseeable future. This is an autobiography that is a cut above most you will read.
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