GULLACTICO

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

LES LAWRENCE

It was great to spend an hour or so in Les’ company on Saturday, before the Farnborough game. He has led a full and fascinating life since leaving Torquay in 1982.

Much more of that later, but Plainmoor is the only place to start. Les described Torquay as the favourite club of his long career, and he certainly made his name here. In 5 years at TQ1, he scored 46 goals from 189 Fourth Division appearances, and of course formed a feared striking partnership with fellow West Midlander Steve Cooper.

Les was in Torquay for the weekend having been invited to Dave Thomas’ unveiling of his “Team of a Lifetime” on Friday night. Les didn’t make Dave’s final line-up, but “Coops” did, and only to be kept out of a side by Robin Stubbs is probably a feather in anyone’s cap.

Les had joined Torquay in 1977, recruited by Mike Green. Born and bred near Wolverhampton, he had cut his footballing teeth in nursery sides at Aston Villa before getting a start in men’s football with Stourbridge and then Shrewsbury Town. Dave described Les as “raw” when he arrived at Plainmoor, but before long he was using his pace and power to terrorise some fairly hard-bitten centre halves as Torquay started to come out of their mid-seventies doldrums.

The highlight was probably the night he came up against a highly rated young defender called Mick McCarthy, then earning rave reviews for his hometown club Barnsley as they charged towards promotion. It sounds as though McCarthy never knew what hit him, as Les smacked in a hat-trick. The punishment continued in the away game at Oakwell too, with Les again on target in a fairly rare away win.

At that time Barnsley were managed by a certain Allan Clarke- a top-class striker in his Leeds days but whose managerial career never hit the same heights and whose reputation with many Leeds fans was tarnished when he oversaw their relegation from the top flight in 1982. Clarke was assisted at Barnsley by the famous Norman “bites yer legs” Hunter, another Leeds legend.

By all accounts Norman was a lovely man once a game was over, and he showed his class when Les got that hat-trick against him. Les had actually been knocked out by a late challenge when scoring his third goal. His first question for physio Mike Hickman when he opened his eyes was: “Have I scored?” A few minutes after the final whistle Les knocked politely on the away team’s dressing room door. Clarke opens it. “What on earth do you want, young man?” is the cleaned-up question he posed. Les explained that he would like to get his hat-trick match ball signed. “Go away please” was Clarke’s ungracious (and expletives-deleted) response. Norman Hunter was having none of that. He had seen what was happening, told Clarke to behave himself and proceeded to get the whole Barnsley tram to sign Les’ ball. He even scribbled “Allan Clarke” on one of the panels!

Despite his Plainmoor dressing room antics, Allan Clarke did in fact want to sign Les for Barnsley. Les told me that, unusually, our Chairman Tony Boyce travelled to an away game at Halifax, and that this was to ensure pen was put to paper. But fate- and Halifax’s Billy Ayre- intervened. Les was carried off with a broken leg, and Torquay had to wait a bit longer for their payday.

As well as winning over fans at Plainmoor, Les met his wife to be, a local girl from Newton Abbot. They are still together 45 years later, and she gave me some insights into the uncertainty and unsettled lifestyle of footballers’ families as they move from place to place around the country- wherever the best contract is.

Les’ first move was to Port Vale: Mrs Lawrence described with a grimace the difference between The English Riviera and The Potteries in the early eighties. That didn’t work out brilliantly, but at Aldershot in 1983/84 Les enjoyed a highly productive season, finding the net 23 times. He went on to play in the North West for Rochdale and then Burnley.

They come back to Torquay regularly. They would have jumped at the chance to move back here and at one point that looked on the cards as Exeter were in for Les, but Peterborough’s alternative offer was too good to turn down. Les told me the manager there, Chris Turner, was the best he had played under: a great man-manager and motivator.

The tough life of an eighties footballer was summed up when Les started to struggle with an achilles problem. Sports medicine was a lot more rudimentary then, and after a lot of discomfort that was making it hard to maintain the great pace of his youth, he was prescribed a steroid. Initially there was a big improvement, but Les thinks it was the worst thing the medics could have done. He told me that a side effect of the drug was to make his tendon more brittle, and eventually it completely snapped. Les described the crack as “like a thunderclap”, and he went down in agony.

It took him two years to get back to full fitness, and he said he never really felt the same after the injury. He linked up again with Turner at Cambridge, where he encountered a certain Gary Johnson, then cutting his teeth in management with the Abbey Stadium’s reserve side. Les played on in non-league football for several seasons, and the Lawrences eventually put down roots in Lincolnshire, where they lived for 16 years.

I asked Les about racism during his career. He surprised me by explaining that in fact among the worst he encountered was years afterwards. He has had a distinguished career in sales, marketing and management, reaching very senior rank at Pirelli and then Bridgestone: he has clearly forgotten more about selling tyres than most of us will ever learn!

It was in Italy, at board meetings, that he says he could feel the prejudice every time he walked into the room. He is very much of the “you just had to get on with it” school, but he acknowledged that it was a tough time to be making his way in football. Unsurprisingly, he said that Millwall was the worst example: playing for Burnley at Cold Blow Lane was probably the only time he had ever been scared, and although John Fashanu was representing the South East London club at the time it sounds as if he offered Les little comfort when they had a pre-match chat. Les is certainly not alone in having much preferred Justin Fashanu to his brother.

Mr & Mrs Lawrence still love coming to Torquay, but home is now in the Midlands (not far from the M6 toll road, for any “petrol-heads” who might be reading this!). Their two grandsons are both keen young footballers, and it somewhat pained Mrs Lawrence that she was going to miss their games this Sunday morning! The lads are lucky to have an adoring grandma and one of Torquay’s most respected former players as their grandad. Les is a very impressive character, and learning a little more about him was an absolute pleasure.