SEEING STARS

A film producer on the phone. Well, I had just arrived in Hollywood. It was 1976 and I’d been head hunted to direct commercials; now I was being head hunted to play soccer with the ex-pats in the Los Angeles film community. Souter Harris, who bears one of those improbable names you find on American movie credits, tells me to join a training session on Sunday.

By the time I arrived, a practice match was in full swing. I was waved into goal. No pitch, just piles of discarded track tops to indicate the posts. It was just like my childhood but with better weather and some very pretty girls looking on. That one looked a dead ringer for Britt Ekland. Take two, that one was Britt Ekland. So the mad Scot with the mane of hair who just kicked me must be Rod Stewart.

It’s hard to focus on the play when you’re trying to Spot the Celebrity. But soon I had another distraction. I was giving a moment’s thought to the level of compensation one might expect from a pop star as Rod Stewart bore down on me when my calculations were interrupted by a great last-ditch tackle from one of my defenders.

“Well played, son!” I shouted. She picked herself up and looked at me quizzically. She was most definitely a girl.

In that chauvinistic era the USA was ahead of the posse when it came to serious women’s football. Even so, I thought she was exceptional. So when Rod Stewart departed with Britt Ekland, I departed with her.

She had short hair and a powerful physique but out of a track suit and into a dress she looked anything but an East German weight lifter. Across the dinner table she wasn’t big on the small talk; in fact I could hardly get a word out of her. But when I went home she came too.

I woke suddenly in the middle of the night to find she wasn’t in the bed. I found her sitting bolt upright in a chair, making no sound but with big tears rolling down her cheeks. I tried to comfort her as best I could but when I saw her off the premises several waking hours later I was really none the wiser as to what was bugging her.

She didn’t come to the next training session and one of the guys put me in the picture.

“How d’you get on last week?” he asked

“Fine,” I parried.

“I mean with the girl that girl,” he continued.

“I know what you mean,” I replied, “What do you want, the film rights?”

“The guys thought you were pretty brave, “ he persisted, “But I said you probably didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“She murdered her husband,” he explained. “In the middle of the night, while he was asleep. Got off because the shrinks said she was crazy at the time.”

I paused to catch my breath.

“How’d she do it?” I asked eventually. As nonchalance it was very bad acting.

“Cracked him on the skull with something heavy,” he replied, “You saw how she tackled Rod!”

I certainly did. And now I would never forget.

The previous occasion on which, as a grown man, I’d defended two piles of coats, I was the one that nearly got arrested. This was in Hyde Park during the late sixties when, having temporarily run out of clubs who were prepared to pay me to play, I had foolishly agreed to assist the TV Entertainers in charity matches.

There were no girls on the pitch on that occasion and none watching. In fact our solitary spectator was a London policeman. Catching his eye was a mistake as he promptly said he was going to arrest me for taking part in an organised ball game in one of the Royal parks.

“Why me,” I complained, in a tone usually reserved for referees.

“You’re the nearest, “ he said evenly, “And the only one not moving about so I can caution you.” He wasn’t joking. It was yet another example of how, for goalkeepers, the pitch is never level.

“Why not arrest him,” I protested, pointing out Jimmy Tarbuck. “That’ll get your photo into the Evening Standard.” The copper’s jaw dropped. He hadn’t realised we weren’t just any bunch of overgrown anarchists out to annoy the Queen. Tarby chatted him up, gave him an autograph, and we all went home.

There were plenty of spectators at Reading’s Elm Park for the next Entertainers match, over eight thousand of them in all. I shook my head, remembering competitive reserve matches played in front of a couple of hundred in the same stadium. It’s a funny old game.

We weren’t all stars. Me in particular. Although technically I was an actor at the time, few remembered my three line gem as a ham sandwich eating mortuary attendant in “Bergerac” or my pornographer in “The Gentle Touch”. Neither qualified as a “starring” role as the crowd behind my goal were quick to remind me when I substituted at half time for Jess Conrad, a genuine pop idol of the period.

“Who the effin’ ‘ell are you?” they sang in ragged unison. In the musicals I’ve appeared in I’ve always had trouble with the chorus.

Worse was to come. The idea behind fielding those showbiz teams was to stiffen the thespians with a nucleus of famous retired soccer stars. One of ours was Tommy Docherty, the pugnacious former captain of Scotland, who treated every match like a World Cup Final. My problem was not confined to being an unknown actor. I was also a failed footballer. Brighton Reserves, two appearances, was the zenith of my career but to the Doc I might as well have been Gordon Banks.

Every time I got the ball he roared for me to hurl it to his feet. Recalling how disaster prone I had been at this form of distribution when playing for real I chose to ignore him and welly the ball down the middle. This technique is known as “snow on the ball” and usually provides an opposing central defender with a free header but crowds love it.

Finally Docherty was so incensed, that during a break in play he ran thirty yards to eyeball me. The prospect of Tommy Docherty, apoplectic with rage, running at you is enough to make mere mortals turn and run. But where to? The only escape was into the crowd and I didn’t fancy their company. So if you can stand your ground tentatively I did, while he poured a torrent of indecipherable Glaswegian invective into my face. The crowd thought it was part of the fun.

The soccer highlight was the last goal scored by that great former Chelsea centre forward the late Roy Bentley who was, I think, Reading’s manager at the time. Although I saw it all the way I didn’t have a chance. I flew through the air for the benefit of the photographers but the ball went thirty yards like a bullet into the top corner of the net.

Then Tarbuck was off on a run down the right wing and off the pitch into the dressing room tunnel at the far end. It was pre-arranged with the referee to end the match. I thought it was a bit over the top even as I watched thousands of kids invade the pitch. Trapped at the far end of the ground I suddenly realised the danger. This wasn’t a football crowd it was a showbiz crowd. I saw teammates in front of me engulfed by fans, and then saw their shirts disappear in torn strips and red wheals appear on their bodies as they struggled off.

But nobody jumped on me in the comparative anonymity of my goalkeeper’s jersey as I gently side-stepped my way the length of the pitch and into the safety of the dressing rooms. All of a sudden, not being a Star was OK with me.

Brian de Salvo

first published in Seagull Scene, 8 December 2002