Pride of Anglia - Ipswich Town Football Club
since 1878
The story so far!
By Tony Paris
Tony Paris moved to Portman Road from Chelsea in the early 1970’s, lining up alongside the likes of Glenn Keeley, Brian Talbot and Kevin Beattie, for the Youth team and Reserves. He later joined West Ham, Brighton and Orient before moving to Rhodesia in 1975 where he played for Tornados for two seasons. He returned to Europe in 1977, becoming player-manager for KI in the Faroe Islands and then Faroe Islands National Team coach in 1978. He is now Executive Director at the Everton Florida Soccer Club in the USA (affiliated with Premiership Everton).
A brief glimpse of my time in the game...There have been so many funny moments, but I have just mentioned a few..
I was seen playing by Bobby R when I played in a friendly game vs Ipswich Town for the famed Senrab Football club at the old training ground by the side of the stand. We were one of the best teams in the UK at that time and had been invited to play in an exhibition game. I really had no desire to move anywhere as I was happy at Stamford Bridge, however on that particular day, I had an outstanding game and Bobby wanted to sign me there and then. My Dad was whisked up into the Board room, scotch in hand, by Bobby with him selling both the merits of playing for Ipswich and him to my Father for the next hour or two!
I was at Chelsea at the time and had been for three and a half seasons and waiting to be signed by the then manager (Dave Sexton) when an Apprenticeship spot opened up as they were at their full compliment at that time. I was training full time with Chelsea. After my spell at Ipswich and me wanting to return to London, I spent half a season with West Ham, under Ron Greenwood and Johnny Lyall before going to Brighton FC for 2 seasons on a boat load of promises from Pat Saward. He had big plans for the seagulls and did a wonderful sales job in convincing me to move to the South Coast. He was a larger than life personality who did help shape me along with Bobby’s influence throughout my life.
At my first morning of training at Town they pulled me from the training pitch to the hallowed turf to play against the then first team for the reserves, where I felt right at home... My afternoon was even more interesting, when Glenn Keeley, Stephen Grout, Beat and Steve Tonsley took me to the local YMCA for some table tennis; unfortunately, this was also a local hangout for Bikers... One on the locals took exception to me and my Cockney accent and decided to pick a fight with me. This ended up outside in the car park, where an altercation ensued. However, unbeknown to me, the first team and coaches were up stairs in a team meeting of sorts and saw this form of entertainment much more gratifying than what was going on during their meeting... I did not realize this until all the players were patting me on the back for giving the local lad a good seeing too! So, instant respect from my peers was evident from day one.
I bonded very quickly with Kev B as we were taken on around the same time. As I recall Kev showed up with his boots in a brown paper bag on the day he arrived for a trial and that was it! He was a very outgoing person and I can remember sitting in the pictures with him on various occasions with him booming out his thoughts publicly on the film being shown in less than the Queens English with many of the clientele less than impressed with what was being said, however we thought it funny.. I think we always new, that he would excel on the field and be the one to go all the way and as we all know, a heck of player, as many of the players on that team at that time.
The Fulham game Kenny Sharpe talks about on Beats page on Pride of Anglia, describes when Kev B scored with a volley from the half way line with the rest of us barely able to run in the mud of Craven cottage mush pit. A generator ran the floodlights that night, as there were power strikes at that time... Under flickering lights our dismal performance enraged Cyril Lea to such a point that he picked up complimentary plate of sandwiches, which were courtesy of Fulham FC, and threw them at the dressing room wall. Funnily enough I had dived in to the plate beforehand and was just biting in to one when he shouted... "You should all be too sick to want to eat after a performance like that". I sort of dropped the sandwich on the floor :-) and nodded :-).
Bobby R kept in touch with me throughout the 40 years I knew him...I had spoken with him on the phone on numerous occasions while he was at Sporting, PS and also Barca and even made him late for a game for Newcastle while he spoke to me before the game and also for a team meeting on another occasion. He even invited me over to Barca for 2 weeks to observe!! Unfortunately I did not take up on that opportunity at the time.
I did re visit Portman road in 1977 to train and also pick up some coaching nuances as I was playing and coaching in the Faroe Islands. It was there I rekindled my friendship with Kevin and also Russ Osman... At that time the team was still training in the Mud of the training field...I do recall while training on that occasion that I did have a head collision with Warkie and gave him a black eye as I recall in an aerial dual.
Later that week Bobby had played me against a big gangly youngster in an indoor facility somewhere in Ipswich, where I barely got a look in. He had asked me what I thought of this raw colossus!! He then told me this prospect was one for the future, just as he had told my father some 7 years previously about me. His name ... none other than ... Terry Butcher. I remember him being big, quick, strong and tenacious. I think he proved all those qualities as he went through his great career.
The last time I saw Bobby was when he got two tickets for me and my son when Newcastle played West Ham in 2003 at Upton Park.. As an avid hammers supporter it was nice to see the claret and blue in action. Until we walked through the entrance and was seated amongst the Geordie section of the ground! It was an interesting 90 minutes, that’s for sure, while both my son and I worked on our Geordie accent for the duration of the game!. I did spend time with Bobby before the game in the Executive rooms at West Ham and went down memory lane and shared some fond memories.
Before coming down to Ipswich, Chief Scout, Ron Gray had met me at a Town game in London, I was told to go over to Crystal Palace and meet the lads by Bobby as Ipswich were playing in London... Ron, being Ron, mistook me for Micky Droy and kept calling Micky?? I had no idea who Micky was at that time? This went on for the whole game and after. It turned out that Town was also trying to woo the Chelsea player at that time as well as me!! He did eventually get my name right in the end though :-)
While at Brighton I had had the pleasure and good fortune to meet another Town legend... Ray Crawford. He had come down to Brighton to finish his career. The next season he became the reserve team coach. At this time I was an apprentice and it was my turn to travel with the first team to gain experience, sit on the bench and also look after the equipment skip. I managed to get the skip from Brighton and over to Euston without a problem for a trip to Sheffield where we were playing Rotherham. While busy playing cards and feeling as if I was a super star on the next leg of the trip and arriving at Birmingham, the back end of the train went somewhere else!! So, you can imagine my surprise when I leisurely got off the train in Sheffield and could not find the carriage I had carefully stowed the skip on? It came to light shortly thereafter that it was 80 miles in another direction!! A taxi was used to get the gear over 15 minutes before kickoff which saved the day, but I never lived that one down nor when I packed two left boots for Eddie Spearritt’s game at Villa Park in a promotion battle. This only became apparent 15 minutes before the game when he went to put two left boots on!! He of course thought I was trying to tell him he had two left feet! My name was not good during that game, but we all see the mistake and the funny side of things the following week when we thankfully had won!!!
On my travels overseas I played for a club called Tornados of Salisbury in Rhodesia along with Bruce Grobbelear who tried to convince me to join the Rhodesian Army to fight the Terrorists while I was playing professional football :-( I declined for obvious reasons. Bruce was in his element running through the bush between playing football matches, his climb to the top really did not surprise me as I remember him as a driven and gifted athlete at that time. The game was much different to what I had experienced in the UK, with the speed and skill factor very good. You can imagine my surprise when I was introduced to the most important man in the club, no not the Chairman, but the Mutti man, or as we know the term as “Witch Doctor”, who hastened to put water from an old bucket with the grass from the pitch we were about to play on and put it on by boots and forehead and put some sort of spell on me!
From that point on I knew things were going to be a lot different to what I had become accustomed to playing in England. I also recall being holed up in a stadium in Bulawayo due to 40,000 fans rioting over one of my tackles on their star player... We were stuck in the changing room for 2 hours after the game with stones raining down on the roof of the changing room, with us having a police escort to get out of not only the stadium, but Bulawayo in one piece! Or being stopped by armed terrorist way out in the bush while en route to an away game, which made us late for the kickoff!!
I left Rhodesia due to the draught for conscription changing from 5 years to two years of residency and ended up in South Africa with another Town favorite, Bobby Bell! A brief period at Durban saw me return to the UK for an extended stay. After a brief spell at Feyenoord under Heir Brox, my next adventure shortly was about to open up. Injury had thwarted my playing days to some extent, so when an opportunity came up to both coach and play this seemed like a perfect job and a good time to get into coaching. I had already acquired my FA coaching preliminary badge in 1976 at Bisham Abbey so felt this was a good move.
So, towards the late 70s I got the opportunity to go to the Faroes as a player/coach and readily excepted. I thought I was going to the land of the Pharos’s and sphinx in Egypt!! Yes, the Pharos! What an exciting destination? I could not wait to tell my fiancée the great news and told her to pack her sun tan cream once again. However the location I was going too started with an “F” and not “P”? I then ended up on some baron rocks in the North Atlantic with no TV, no pubs and an alcohol ban, with the country being extremely religious! There we were my wife and I looking like Posh and Becks as we got off the plane, with me in a 3 piece suit and her in a fox fur, to be met by the President of the club wearing a Parka and wellington boots and a beanie!
An even worse experience was awaiting us as he drove like Nigel Mansell on the narrow mountain roads in a snow blizzard along icy roads. More surprises awaited my arrival with brutal weather, high winds and the worst pitches you had ever seen. Another funny story is when we were playing away on the most southerly Island and decided to take walk to the quayside and take in the good air. We had noticed that an Aberdeen fishing boat was in port and we were invited on board by a jovial friendly Scot for what I thought was a cup of tea and friendly chat, however when we went below decks the crew were slumped all over the place, hung over from the night before with some still drinking with empty spirit bottles all over the place. In order to preserve our safety the players and chairman were made to take some drinks but when we refused to take another offering a fight ensued in this small area with us trying to get up a small ladder one at a time before we lost our lives. We did manage to get out but at a cost with the Chairman sporting a big black eye for the game and his trip home!!
A Faroese tradition is “Grindabo” which in English stands for whale hunt. This plays a big part in Faroese culture and goes back to when there was no food available for the inhabitants of these Volcanic Islands. As a guest of the Islands you are expected to attend and even participate in these barbaric acts of cruelty. So, there I am in 4 ft of water, surround by Pilot Whales and blood soaked seas at 4am in the morning, with the locals gaffing and cutting the throats of these poor defenseless creatures! This was not one of my happiest memories. Or being called at 2am in the Morning to go slaughter the sheep!! I was even given the honor of cutting the sheep’s throat! Many of these events were fuelled by illegal drink helping the job get done. Having to eat the local delicacy of dried meat which smells like smelly socks and even worse than that tastes like old socks! Fish hanging on the washing lines to dry and take the salt that we mistook for socks hanging on the line! Or a 9 hour trip to a game on a schooner as public transport was on strike. Unfortunately we encountered 30ft swells as we headed south, with all the players throwing up and then having to play thereafter!
There was an upside to this, which was that I able to post on my Resume that I coached the National team for the period I was there. In all honesty the standard of football in the Faroes is very good as the Scots will attest to as they always struggle to beat them in the Euros. In fact I was on the Advisory Panel for the national Team in 2006.
I left the UK in 1992 for my last big adventure. Well I thought it was! I along with Steve Wicks’ (ex Chelsea) father John and started a Football Academy in the USA. John returned to the UK and I partnered up with the old Man Utd player Gordon Hill, to carry on the Academy. Two investors backed the Academy at that time, Anton Johnson who had been the Chairman of Southend and Rotherham, along with Mike Anderson, now a Director of Gillingham, who I believe made a run for the Board at Town?
I coached Girls for the first time and learnt to deal with pushy American parents along the way. In 1995 I was fortunate enough to land a coaching position at a University and held that position until 2006, when I returned to the Faroes for what I thought was a 4 year period. What predicated the offer of a lucrative 4 year contract was not what I had done in 1977-78, but what I had achieved in 1999. After 22 years the club I had coached back in 77, KI, asked me to return for one season. I was able to take a sabbatical from my College job and Youth club so embraced the chance.
I left my family behind for the land of ice and snow for one more time, or so I thought. The team I took over had come runners up in both the league and cup in 1998 and had reached the pinnacle with what they had. In 1999, I was able to get them into the Champions league, by winning the double, which had only been achieved twice in over 100 years! We also won FIFA fair play as well. We played in the UEFA Cup that year and played GAK Graz at the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium in Graz in front of a capacity crowd. In my return as the savior I took a team that had narrowly avoided relegation in 2005 and a club in demise. It was night and day from 1999. I did make the cup final and came 4th that year in the league and we made the Intertoto, but 2007 started slowly and agenda was the order of the day and I got fired.
Since that demise, I have since taken over two youth clubs under the Everton Football club banner as USA affiliates. Over the years, I did get qualified with two domestic “A Licenses” and the “UEFA A License” for good measure.
I have since run in to Roy McCrohan in Tallahassee, and also Roger Verdi who lives in Dallas in the USA. In fact I have seen Roger on numerous occasions and am in regular communication with him. Andy Button has managed to link us all together now through the wonderful web site, “Pride of Anglia” and face book, so I am hoping to be hearing a lot more from the boys from that era. I have now had communication from Kenny Sharpe, Glenn Keely, Stephen Grout and Donny Wilson, so we are on our way. So, come lads, make contact and we can all head for that long overdue re union next April at Portman Road.
As Sinatra said, mistakes I made a few, well my biggest mistake was leaving Portman Road prematurely. I still wonder what would have been if I had stayed and spent more time under Bobby R. I don’t suppose I will ever know. Bobby’s advice to me was and I quote “Enjoy what you do and make the most of every day”. There is no doubt he lived his life to the fullest that any man could possibly have done and is for me, as for the many, greatly missed. God Bless Sir Bobby Robson.