PRESIDENTS

Chapter Fourteen -

Graeme Marrs and other Park Presidents

I simply have to talk about this guy and it will lead us into other past Presidents of the famous Birkenhead Park Rugby Club. They are all so loveable and important yet the tales of them will sadly disappear, as they do and we do, as the years roll by. This is one of my incentives for putting this all together, we just can’t lose all these memories.

This is the last proper chapter of the book (I know, it’s sad, and please stop crying) and while I will focus on a slightly different element of life in those days, there is a common theme of goodness and insobriety.

Graeme Marrs himself came to my mind when I was writing about Geoff Mason’s huge office in chapter 4.

We sadly lost Graeme recently as he neared 80 and many people are the worse off for his passing. He was a true legend, and a Birkenhead Park and a rugby man through and through.

It was into Graeme Marrs’s probably larger office that I had sauntered into in 1989 as the Captain-to-be of said Birkenhead Park Rugby Club. I was with my Vice Captain, Alex Chapman, lawyer, and Yorkshireman, and we had some notes on what we wanted to discuss with Graeme, the then President of the Club.

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We wanted to try and make 1989 to 1990 a successful season for our club.

I am sure we both muttered ‘bloody hell’ as we walked into the room, as it was just so inordinately vast.

This was the nerve centre of Meade King Robinson, purveyors of oils, waxes and fats and before even that probably the office of someone hugely important in the shipping industry way back in Liverpool’s maritime heyday.

This company became the home of Phil Tarleton, another Birkenhead Park stalwart himself, on and off the pitch and a contemporary of mine. I will write more on him if I write a book about my era or if I am called to make a statement to the police.

You could have fitted a couple of full-size snooker tables in this room.

As it was then, it had a boardroom table, Graeme’s desk itself, another large oval desk, a seating area of leather chairs with a coffee table and floor to ceiling fitted wooden cupboards all along one side of the room as you walked in and to your left, probably 40 feet of them.

Still reeling from the powerful smell of old leather and wood together with the sheer opulence of the surroundings we tried to get focused on our to-do lists.

I pointed at players (we needed some more of these and some good ones would have been nice) and Alex nodded. I pointed at a pre-season tour and he again nodded. Either of those would do as opening topics to this landmark, game changing meeting.

We were serious in our objectives, and we were ready to make Birkenhead Park have the most amazing season, but it wasn’t quite what Graeme had uppermost in his mind.

Graeme started to make his way across the room, quite a journey for someone with his lifestyle, and in a booming but still quite distant voice he greeted us.

‘Chappers, Wainhouse, How the devil are you!?’

Before we replied, and started our grand speech, there was an unexpected knock at the door and to Graeme’s ear-piercing ‘COME’, it obediently opened and in peered a sheepish AJ.

AJ, one A.J. Ravenscroft, an eminent stockbroker in Liverpool and the North West was a loveable and kindly bear of a man who was a drinking chum of Graeme, a fan of the club but not in any way an expert on rugby strategy.

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I felt I had to mouth to him as he came in, while Graeme was still several metres short of completing his journey to the table, to ask what the hell he was doing here?

‘Haven’t the foggiest, old chap, Marrs bar asked me to come along.’ he whispered back.

He rubbed his hands together and looked around the room. Strange, as it wasn’t cold.

Graeme had by now reached the boardroom table and as he rested his chubby fingers over the chair at the head of the table, where we had all parked, he asked.

‘Now, what do you want to start with gentlemen?’.

Momentum was now taking place and he mysteriously now carried on past us and away from the table.

‘Players, Graeme, and then maybe a pre-season tour I think’ , I replied, glancing at Alex for reassurance as Graeme trundled away.

‘No, no, no.’ he chuckled as he opened the cupboard doors where he had finally come to rest.

‘Red or white?

And as he said this, he swung the double cupboard doors open to reveal row upon row of bottles of wine.

The top half was all red, lovingly and symmetrically assembled on the shelves and the lower half was actually all fitted fridges which were full of white and rose!

Literally hundreds of bottles.

Was this room also a bonded warehouse I thought?

‘Jolly Good’ muttered AJ rubbing his hands again.

That’s what he had been looking around the room for!

I don’t think I need to go into any of the details about how well the meeting went, or for that matter the following season.

It turned not to be a game changing meeting – and not exactly how Alex and I had intended.

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We staggered out of there half-cut at about four-thirty, and we only got away because Alex came up with a brainwave and claimed he had to go back and sign the post at work.

He didn’t really because he was still only a junior lawyer, but he knew the Berman’ s partners all used that same excuse when they wanted to leave the Hole in the Wall pub or Rigby’s near their offices. No one noticed he was upping his role there.

I have asked Phil T whether the company still has the same gargantuan booze reserves and, yes, it does. I suspect there might be even more there now as Phil T actually put the Boo in Boozing.

The Presidents of Park, and let’s be honest those of all clubs around the globe, are all legends in their own right so these few anecdotes could be matched by similar tales all over the UK and the world.

I will pause and go back to 1985, when I was in my early years at the Club. The then President was one Henry Simpson. Tweed jacket, scruffy worn-out corduroy trousers, piercing blue eyes, a grip like a vice and covered almost from nose hair to hush puppies in snuff.

What an absolute star.

For his presidency to coincide with the captaincy of ‘Nutty’ Nick Powell was one of those once in a millennium type of events.

Like the demise of the dinosaurs or the industrial revolution. We had a good side too and we were gathering sometime in September for a pre-match snack while on tour prior to taking on the current Cornish Champions, Camborne.

It fell silent in the slightly dated lounge of the St Ives hotel where we were staying. Henry addressed us along the following lines:

“Listen chaps, I just want to have a few words with you before Nicholas takes over for a warm-up.

“Today is a bloody big game for the club and might I say a ‘landmark’ game. These chaps are the current Cornish champions. They won't be taking any prisoners today, but we will show them what Birkenhead Park are all about.

“Don’t get me wrong boys, I want you to play hard, damn hard, but I want you to play fair.

“I don't want to see any unnecessary violence.

“I don't want anyone to be sent off and I want you above all to always remember that you are ambassadors of this fine historic club.

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“I want you to carry this on after the game when we have defeated them and then treat our lovely hotel owner and his premises with great respect.

“Go out there today lads and do us proud.

“See you after the game. Thank you.”

He got up red-faced, clearly very moved by his own words and very much wishing that he could take the field of rugby again today.

Looking at his still strong physique, it would not have been a bad thing if he could have.

To be fair, this was a very rousing talk. We all felt the passion in it, and though know it isn't exactly what he said it was something very close to those lines and it lifted us, without doubt.

Actually, by contrast, I had a different team talk while playing for Cheshire later that same year. We had been raised to a frenzy by the fierce warm-up routine of the then captain. We had been stamping up and down on the floor screaming ‘123, 123, 123’ and our feet hit the floor and all that stuff, when out of the blue, a loud knock on the door interrupted us.

Thinking it was the referee to tell us we had a couple of minutes until kick off, we all stopped in our tracks and looked at the door as it opened.

A chap with a red nose, flush cheeks and a deerstalker popped his head round the corner and in a ridiculously (almost made up) pompous accent completely diffused all the good work our captain had done with the words:

‘Good hunting, Chesh!’.

If the ventriloquist dummy Lord Charles was based on anybody real then this was indeed this chap, and he only lacked the monocle. Shortly afterwards we shuffled out lamely on to the pitch to get bullied by Lancashire or Yorkshire as a direct result of his interruption and ‘encouragement’ .

Henrys talk, however, was another matter and made a massive contribution towards our defeating the Cornish champions 11-9 on their own ground in front of a huge partisan crowd.

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We followed Henry's code of contact almost to the letter. Only when a brawl was started by the Cornish forwards in the far corner of the ground did we step in and soundly thrash them at pugilism as well as at rugby.

Unfortunately, though, Henry himself came off the bench to join us in the scuffle and was sent off by the referee to the very top tier of the stand, giving us a fine example of exactly the sort of conduct he had begged us all to refrain from.

Later that evening as we returned back to the hotel, we were a couple of seconds too late to witness Henry falling backwards off a barstool onto a glass topped coffee table.

Only a former rugby player in his seventies (eighties probably, I don’t recall) could do this without being very badly injured. He was lying there in a pile of glass and shattered timber just as Nick Powell stood over him and asked him whether this wasn’t, once again in fact, the very same sort of conduct that he had warned us against.

‘Bugger off, Powell and get me a gin and tonic’, he responded.

Powell was/is a head case. The tales I could tell about him, would be well worth reading, if only there were no libel laws in the UK.

Ouch, you’re twisting my arm, so let me see if I can manage one even though he was never President of the Club.

Before I do, I want to pause here to make a note that to be a President of Birkenhead Park you don’t need to be a lunatic, or an alcoholic basket case, or both.

There is very little doubt that those qualities really help for the role but we need to reflect for a moment to remember the more understated and conservative Presidents of that fine Club who have held the esteemed role and performed admirably.

Chris Beech has to be one of those. While calm and reserved he was there to help that rugby club through its tough times. An unsung hero and not the only one in the Club’s past. He would constantly donate his own company money to drag the club through the bad times, which in his case were the early 90s. He got personally sued for one matter, while doing the right thing, but he still carried on.

More recently the club has had other great sponsors and benefactors such as the amazing McNally brothers for one (actually two – John and Mark) and others

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who have not yet been President such as Phil Tarleton and Chris Chidley for example.

I should never have started to name names, but they don’t do it for recognition.

Fellows such as John Horwood, Charlie Hillock, Ritchie Morris (he was actually another of those lunatics), Clive Plummer (now sadly lost to golf) were all understated and brilliant ambassadors for the rugby club. They should not be forgotten just because they didn’t come onto the pitch in Cornwall with their fists swinging, laced with rum offering to take on the entire stand in a boxing match.

So, back to Nutty, and on one skiing trip to the French Alps he upset so many people that he opened an account at the Interflora in the village.

I believe he peaked one night at a restaurant called Nyon in the Morzine and Les Gets ski resort. The owner, Big Pascal (not to be confused with Little Pascal down the road at the Dixie) was a fantastic host and actually not unlike Nutty. Still managing to carry off longish (and I’m pretty sure, regularly dyed) strawberry blonde (ginger) hair while in their fifties and both with very well lived-in faces.

They got on like a house on fire with both speaking bad English in the same gravelly tone that suggested a lifetime of Gitanes and Merlot.

The lunch there almost ended after about three hours when a couple of us cheekily suggested it might be an idea to do some skiing that afternoon. After all we were paying for lift passes, equipment hires, etc. . ‘Absolutely’, quipped Nut, ‘let’s go. All things in moderation I always say’.

Several of us were standing up by this time gathering hats and gloves and the noise of old cracking knees must have been a cue for Big Pascal as he was instantly stood at the head of our table with a very long bottle of yellow liquid and eight shot glasses cleverly grasped on the fingers of one large gnarled arthritic hand.

‘Ah, it’s only polite’ said Nut, falling back into his seat with a groan of pleasure.

If you had dipped your finger into the end of this liquid to try and guess what it was, testing the very smallest of drips on your tongue, you probably would not have guessed that it was actually meant for human consumption. Your best guess might be that it was for cleaning coins or de-mossing decking.

But to drink it? Don’t be bloody daft.

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Anyway, you probably know what happens next. Nut suggests after necking his first coin cleaner/cough mixture concoction that it would be rude not to return the complement and so the cycle of mayhem commences on a new level.

After many down-in-ones the bottle was empty and we then ‘need’ a cool beer to take away the taste and the heartburn that the corrosive combination has caused. I think the heartburn is just an external symptom of the internal injuries and is a pre-curser to massive organ damage in later life.

After that, another bottle of red had opened itself and it has gone dark outside.

We had of course missed all the lifts down but carried on drinking as Pascal had offered us the use of the staff lift when they went off site. We were soon stumbling towards it and pushing and barging each other like nine-year olds. (Apologies to any nine-year olds reading here).

As we waited for the bubble lift to come up in the pitch dark, we heard a set of skis fall to the floor.

There could only be one possible explanation - someone had dropped them, you are all thinking

In different circumstances, such as normal daylight, above zero temperature and when sober, there would have been another possible explanation namely someone might be putting their skis down on the floor to clip into them and then ski off.

However, it was the middle of the night, pitch black and not the time to even think of skiing while stinking rotten drunk and incapable.

As a general rule, if you can’t stand up, skiing and many other normally upright activities should be avoided.

Unless you’re Nutty Nick.

Yes indeed, the next thing we heard was the sound of skies deliberately being let to fall to the ground, and we then heard boots being clipped into skis and the scraping noise of someone paralytic, totally drunk setting off to try and ski down a mountain.

‘See you down there, losers’, he croaked.

By rights these should have been and very nearly were his last words.

All we could do was yell stop but there was no point.

Very soon complete silence resumed.

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Pascal was somewhat furious (point of note here as there was to have been only the second bad swear word in this book and I’m sorry but that’s how furious Pascal was) and he predicted Nutty was very likely to die unless we acted quickly.

He urged us to hurry so we could get down and report him missing.

Pascal and his wife alerted both the police and the guys on the mountains that drive the massive piste-bashing machines at night.

They did find him. He was actually sound asleep, on the edge of a ski slope in deep snow.

If it wasn’t for Pascal, one of those piste machines would have surely run over him. When he was half carried out of the rescue vehicle and plonked in front of Pascal and his wife, she told him off as best she could while half in tears and completely hysterical.

‘Nutty, what were you thinking, you could have died. We have been looking for you for hours.

With very little thought, he replied instantly:

‘Well, you’re not very good at it then, are you?’.

Mrs Pascal did something she had probably never done before, and with one swift move, she instinctively, accurately and with all her might punched another human full in the face.

Back to Interflora, Nutty.

When I mentioned wine before, I have just remembered the Chateaux Margaux night of 1986.

That’s not the vintage of the wine by the way, it’s the year I was pestered into going skiing when I knew that in reality, I couldn’t afford an easyJet ham and cheese toastie, let alone a week of mayhem with big spenders.

I know I’m supposed to be talking about former Presidents of the rugby club here but there are links. Mark McNally was President for 11 years and his ample brother John is just about to be as I type these last chapters.

I also believe this is too good a story to omit, especially as I have nearly finished the book.

I was very seriously skint at the time of this trip because I had failed my accountancy exams (marking error) and I had to pay for my retakes and take unpaid leave to do them at the same time.

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‘it will only cost you a couple of hundred francs, Westy,’ said Mark the one-day future President of Birkenhead but at that time just a player and a mate.

I knew that wasn’t the case but for some reason I went anyway. I could not have predicted, however, that it would have cost as much as it did as I found myself walking into the most expensive restaurant in Morzine, totally smashed, all my ski gear still on including ski boots for some bizarre reason and with just a few francs and a pound note on my person. What could go wrong?

I did also have a very large useless collection of ATM receipts on me and I had worn a track backwards and forwards to that generous machine from the Irish bar as I refused to take any more than 50 francs out at a time.

We settled straight into it. John McNally, Mark’s younger and absolutely ridiculously badly behaved brother, had already dropped a salt and pepper set into Mark Ferguson’s (player and in later years a coach) ski jacket pocket and things were very quickly getting out of hand. There was already an egg in that same pocket for a start.

Someone accidently let the F word out of the bag and the others at our table noisily shushed him immediately glancing around sheepishly at the couple on the next table. The guy there immediately reassured us:

‘Don’t mind us lads we don’t mind the banter, we are from the UK too, so carry on and enjoy yourselves!’

Oh dear, that was a schoolboy error.

A matter of seconds later, after what was said next he had to immediately speak to us again, slightly red faced:

‘Lads, actually, my wife doesn’t like the ‘C word’ if you wouldn’t mind!’

The night got more boisterous and after ordering scrambled egg as a side order (which we had done for some reason all week) some of it started to fly around.

The wine waiter arrived and Mark McNally, who had been musing over the wine list, chirped up:

‘Lads, Chateaux Margaux, 160 francs a bottle, bet that’s delish’

He was/is so rich with his care homes, his-fat cat approach, his Range Rover, and, well, you know the score. He also knew I couldn’t afford a thimble full.

‘Yes, get that’, added John, ‘Westy will pay, ha ha!’

They both laugh.

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If you need help to try and imagine what this was like, imagine Sid James and Brian Blessed trying to out laugh each other.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t pay a share of that sort of money lads’, I whinged.

‘Don’t be a tart, what’s wrong with you’, asked Ferg.

‘I’m not a tart, I just don’t have any money. I made that perfectly clear when you forced me to come on this fiasco and if you buy one single bottle of that stuff, I’m walking out.’

“Really?” asked Mark

“Really!”, I replied in defiance.

‘In that case, my good man’, said Mark as he looked up at the helpless, confused waiter, ‘can we have TWO bottles of the Margaux please?’

Raucous laughter.

I got up, while sort of explaining in a mutter that I had to do what I said I would do, and I stormed off through the door.

The door that is, of the fekkin’ broom cupboard!

Miraculously, no one had noticed the error it seemed, and I could hear them laughing helplessly and calling me all sorts.

I looked around immediately for some way to get comfy as I suspected that I might have a long wait.

However, within less than a minute a helpful waitress sidled up and explained apologetically to the table:

‘Monsieur, your friend, he is still in zee cupboard!’

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