I am thinking of forming a society for the celebration and protection of Peter Crouch. This poor man and his fragile attempts to come up to a scratch he neither sought nor expected is still the constant talk of saloons, newsrooms and taxi cabs the length and breadth of Britain. Yet I suspect were he in any other field of public endeavour he would be a permanent fixture at these Three Cheers for Ordinary People lunches that the tabloid newspapers are so keen on staging.
For, as they say in the accepted language of those functions, Peter Crouch is a survivor. He is a hero. He is the lanky, possibly lonely, little boy who, against all odds, is now living his dream. They said he would never amount to a pile of peanut shells, that he was all the wrong shapes, that in the modern game there was simply no place for a kid who, even at the age of 16, was already the vertical equivalent of Dennis Wise cubed.
So is it any wonder then that, before the kick-off of his full England debut against the United States last May, I’m sure I detected a trembling top lip and a manly misting over as Peter falteringly choked out the words to the national anthem. I must say I even “went” a little too, for in selecting this unlikely, not overly gifted man, I suspected that Sven was overriding the obvious, boorish agenda of simply “winning” and choosing instead to pay tribute to perhaps the last of big-time soccer’s irregular-shaped humans.
The brutal fact is that, Peter aside, footballers today are forced to conform to a bodily aesthetic that in its rigidity and uniformity makes fashion models look as varied as snowflakes. This wasn’t always so. Up until the 1980s most teams in all divisions had a couple of fat ones, a couple of little ones, at least one bandy one, one completely covered in hair, two weaklings and a chap with no neck. This was an era when you didn’t need names on the backs of shirts in order to tell who’s who, you could clearly identify them with your eyes half shut from the other side of the pitch.
Indeed, Millwall have had many players that you could identify with your eyes half shut from the other side of the Grand Canyon. Tall players were simply a given. Every club had a few, usually goal-hangers, and they were respected, even feared, by supporters. As the teams ran out, if you saw that the opposition’s big bloke was a bigger bloke than your big bloke you decidedly got that sinking feeling. They, by their sheer altitude, posed a threat.
Whether this feeling of intimidation was justified varied but there can be little doubt for those of us who grew up playing football as part of the regular school curriculum — younger readers have permission to swoon at that utopian ideal — that you never got over the awe of having to face up to or, worse yet, mark a really big kid.
Clattering into the changing-rooms to start getting kitted for a fixture against a rival school, your heartbeat would surge as around the door would come a wild-eyed, 13-year-old team-mate gasping, “Here! Have you seen their centre half? He’s about eight feet tall! We’ve had it.”
Before true panic could set in, however, it would have to be ascertained whether this giant was genuinely big or just a beanpole. If he was a beanpole you were on Easy Street. Beanpoles are clumsy and useless.
There never seems enough blood inside a beanpole. Their fingers come to an end behind their knees and their knees are about a yard from their boots. Their inclusion in a school team is the first act of a desperate sports master. In the school yard they were usually pretty poor fighters — too much flailing and thrashing — and young boys are quick to realise that if you don’t choose to use your skills in defence of your nose you are not likely to unveil them just to scuttle West Greenwich Borough Under-14s.
The only beanpole I ever knew really well as a teenager, a tremendously long boy called, I promise you, Roy Hyacinth, was a complete washout with the girls. They seemed to resent his stature, judging it a form of boasting, and would stop smiling and go silent whenever he sat down near them. Roy, in common with all his type, also hated to dance, another symptom of spindly non-coordination we must suppose. Over the years I have had the opportunity to see at close quarters such notable beanpoles as Peter Cook, Stephen Fry and Stephen Merchant all attempting publicly to cut rugs and, believe me, they were never funnier. In fact, the only person of advanced height in history who could just about carry off a Watusi with aplomb was Herman Munster, but, considered against those named thus far, even at 7ft 3in he was so much more in proportion.
At our school we were very fortunate in that we had a really big boy, as distinct from a beanpole, in our squad. He was called Gerard Watson and he had sideburns at 11. He also, we found, had hair everywhere else and nothing will subdue a locker room full of first-years as much as that paralysing bombshell. The fact that he had a deep booming voice as well made it seem as though nature was blowing a huge fruity raspberry in the direction of the rest of us. Now, I’d like to be able to report that Gerard was a deft and imaginative player, too, but that just was not the case. He was pretty useless but was strong, awkward, in the positive sense, as well as intimidating. Being so different had made him extremely shy, too. It didn’t matter that what set him apart inspired veneration among the ranks, Gerard only wanted to be a simple unformed twit like the rest of us.
On the pitch he would apologise if he gave away a corner. “Sorry boys,” he would say, shaking his head, “I meant to kick it the other way.”
Whenever we conceded a goal, which wasn’t too often for we were a useful team, Gerard would often raise his hand, saying, “My fault, my fault. Shoulda covered, my fault . . .”
Normally such deference and weakness from a peer provides fresh meat for schoolboy aggressions but stories abounded of Gerard having been tested too far and of a sudden fearsome utilisation of his bulk. They say he wouldn’t actually hit you but would just pick you up and put you over walls. The closest I ever came to this ignoble posting was during one games period when we were playing six-a-side and Gerard was in goal for the opposition.
Now, Gerard didn’t want to be in goal but everyone had to take a turn and you were only allowed back out after letting one in. Anyone who has played under this rule will know it is open to the most shocking abuse, throwing up some of the softest goals ever scored. However, this day, probably because we were playing with scaled-down posts and a scaled-up schoolboy, the ball just would not go past him. After a quarter of an hour, Gerard was furious and began muttering that many of us were missing on purpose so as to prolong his agony. Salvation appeared to arrive when we were awarded a penalty after David Sissons upended me in the box. In our school, the logic always was that if you were the one who was fouled, you got to take the penalty, a ruling I’ve always thought should be extended and enforced into modern professional football.
So. Me v Gerard Watson. I want to score. He doesn’t want to save it. You know, I still wonder how such an accommodation could have gone so terribly wrong. Here’s how it went. As soon as I stood back and waited for the whistle, I was aware that Gerard’s eyes were blatantly signalling something to me. Both pupils were urgently darting from centre of socket to extreme left of socket over and over again.
Not being a slow boy I instantly read this as, “Put it that way, OK? That. Way.”
Trouble was that what Gerard was actually signalling was “I’m going this way, OK? This. Way.”
Consequently he appeared to make the save of the season. The ball cannoned hard, very hard, off his ear and flew back up the pitch. He came roaring out at me, “Baker! You idiot, you dope, you moron! Jesus Christ!” I leave you to insert the three or four F-words he let rip with there too. He soon calmed down, though. “Sorry Dan,” he said afterwards. “It was my fault. I should have run out and just whispered it to you.”
True, Ger, I thought, but a bit of a giveaway, what?
Anyway, the point is, we should lay off Peter Crouch. When he goes, and it won’t be much longer, the standardisation of world soccer player sizes will finally be complete. Facially and up close some players may still differ but I dare say the corporate cookie-cutters are working on that, too. For the moment let us just hope that come November 12, when England face Argentina, we can still count on a South American spy bursting into the Argie changing-room pre-match, bellowing wildly, “Aye Carumba señors! This numero nueve of the Inglese! Is mucho mucho grande!” The fact that he’s actually of the beanpole brand I think we should just keep quietly to ourselves.