‘European Cup winner was not too proud to hoover City’s filthy carpet’

Eye Of The Tigers, a column by Sam Hawcroft

A fan’s thoughts on Hull City

After my last column was published, I wondered whether I’d been too harsh on Grant McCann.

The following day, after our turgid home defeat to Franchise FC, I wondered whether I’d not been harsh enough.

But football fans are fickle, and after a good February and early March that have seen us banging in the goals and sitting atop the league once more.

But I don’t want to jinx things by analysing our promotion credentials at this stage, save to say that, I was talking to my other half the other night (he’s not really a football fan; he became even less of one after I took him to his first away match ­– Millwall…) and he asked me how many games we had left.

“Er, 11,” I said. “Still time to cock it up then,” he replied. For a non-football fan, he’s pretty perceptive.

No, this month I’ve decided to stick with the nostalgia, as there’s plenty of people knocking out match reports, and, more to the point, I’ve a fair few memories from the late 1990s at Boothferry Park that I need to dredge up and share before they become too hazy and lost for ever.

‘RAINY DAYS AT MACCLESFIELD’: One of Martyn Hainstock’s columns for the Hull City programme

In 1999 I was a student at the University of Hull, and I guess I would still be kicking about there now if I hadn’t met Martyn Hainstock, the late, great, “voice of Boothferry Park”. He alerted me to a job advert for trainee sub-editors at the Hull Daily Mail, which is where I started my journalism career proper.

But before that, I’d taken a bit of a risk and chosen football literature as my final-year dissertation subject, as well as setting up a football book reviews website – which led to my being asked to start a book review column in the City programme.

An excerpt from the reviews Sam wrote for the Hull City programme

Bumping into Martyn in the club reception was the start of a long partnership that ended with his untimely passing in 2007, and back in those days, as well as introducing the teams on to the pitch in his inimitable way, he used to do all sorts for the club; from working behind the reception desk, writing his own column for the programme, and recording updates and interviews for ClubCall.

ClubCall – remember that? I’m sure the kids today would struggle to believe that people used a landline telephone to ring a premium-rate number for information about their local team, but they did, apparently.

I say “apparently”, because even back then I’m not sure how well-used it was (it cost 60p a minute!) – but there wasn’t really an on-demand service to rival it at the time, with the internet still relatively in its infancy.

Although I was a news sub, I’d always had an interest in getting into sports journalism, which Martyn indulged by asking me to help him out with research and interviews.

REMEMBER CLUBCALL?: Sam helped out with research and interviews

I was nervous, and hopeless, when I sat down in front of David D’Auria, clutching Martyn’s portable Minidisc player, to do my first proper player interview ahead of a crunch tie with his former club, Scunthorpe.

“Are you looking forward to the big ones coming out, David?” I spluttered.

I’d meant to use that more familiar footballing cliché, “big guns”, of course. But I recall that D’Auria barely sniggered, and passed over it like the perfect gentleman.

After that, I left the recording to Martyn and stuck to helping him with the writing. I’ve always been a far better sub-editor than a live interviewer, born to toil behind the scenes and shun the limelight.

We used to write features for the programme, and I think we came up with some genuinely interesting reads – but the one subject who topped them all, for us, was John McGovern – the ‘bad cop’ to Warren Joyce’s ‘good cop’ in the Great Escape season.

On the morning that Martyn and I were to take the trusty Minidisc and sit down with McGovern for one feature we were compiling, we found him vacuuming the club reception.

A double European Cup winner, blithely hoovering the sticky carpet of a poky fourth-division club office bolted on to the front of Kwik Save. It’s an image I’ll never forget.

“It needs doing, it’s filthy!” was all he said, as I’m sure our jaws must have dropped to the aforementioned carpet.

MEMENTO: The minidisc Sam used to interview John McGovern

We later met up with McGovern in his office in the house on North Road around the back of the crumbling West Stand. As usual, Martyn did most of the talking, and McGovern was great – full of insight, humour and great stories. What an interview we had in the bag.

We headed to the Three Tuns for a beer and to have a listen back to it. What the Minidisc relayed sounded more like Norman Collier than the former Nottingham Forest captain. The disc was skipping; most of the words were inaudible.

We sat, supping our pints in silence. We had a programme deadline to hit the next day. There was only one thing for it – ring McGovern back and ask him if we could talk to him again.

“Hi, is that John…? Listen, John… we’ve got a problem,” explained Martyn, fully expecting a blast of Scots hairdryer treatment down the phone.

“Well,” McGovern replied, “if you come back over here, and do the interview again, you won’t have a problem, will you?”

So we did, and he gave us just as good an interview, if not better.

It’s just a daft story, but this showed the measure of the man, for me. Two incompetent amateurs wasting his precious time? He could, and probably should, have told us where to go.

But it brings to mind that adage about never trusting anyone who’s rude to a restaurant waiter. Perhaps McGovern wasn’t such a bad cop, after all.