Gerrard: My Autobiography Read Free Page A

which got us £800, and then the fork in the foot. We got £1,200 for that. That wasn’t bad! Mum took me to town, got me new kit, two trackies, loads of stuff. ‘All that pain was well worth it!’ I kept laughing with Mum.
    When I think back to the accident, the pain still goes right through me again, like an electric shock. I still see the fork sticking out of my trainer, still sense it grating against the bone. Once or twice, I spoke about the incident with my dad. Like Steve Heighway, he wasn’t the type to take credit. Dad would never boast ‘I made sure they didn’t take your toe off’; he just says, ‘You were fortunate, Steven.’ We all knew if I had lost the big toe of my right foot, any chance of Liverpool and England would have ended right there, impaled on a rusty garden fork on a council wasteland in Huyton.
    Bungalows cover that patch of land now. No nettle-beds will ambush any innocent schoolkids now. My earliest pitches disappeared under concrete or cars. They park all over the cul de sac where I grew up, Ironside Road on the Bluebell Estate. Back then, that tarmac area in front of my house, No. 10 Ironside, was My Pitch. Nocars allowed. Unless the weather was good, when we’d dash round to the grass back-field, we’d be on Ironside. Straight out the front door, into a game, full throttle. Brilliant. Someone put that concrete area there for a reason, I’m convinced of it. Someone was telling me to make football my life, showing me the way ahead. It was so strange. That was My Pitch. If anyone was there when I came out of my house, they had to go. We used it for five-a-side, ten-a-side, twenty-a-side, rounders, shootie, catch, and a great game called Bare Arse. That was hilarious! If you got a certain amount of goals scored past you, you had to get your arse out. Everyone then got a free shot at your bare arse. Bare Arse is a Scouse tradition that produces brilliant goalkeepers and really accurate shooters. Fifteen years on, when Peter Crouch struggled to get off the mark at Liverpool, Bare Arse came in handy. We played it in training to help me and Crouchy with our shooting. I dropped my shorts and got Crouch to aim at my Bare Arse. Someone looked over the wall, sneaked a picture, and me and Crouchy both got our arses in the papers! The papers never said we were just playing Bare Arse! Games picked up on Ironside have stayed with me for life.
    Ironside was known as the Happy Street. I arrived there on 30 May 1980, straight out of Whiston Hospital and into a football-mad house on the Happy Street. Bluebell’s quite a big estate, a warren of roads with four pubs, one on each side: the Swan, Bluebell, Rose, and Oak Tree. Quite a few famous people come from around here, comedians like Freddie Starr and Stan Boardman, and the old actor Rex Harrison. The actress out of
Sex and theCity
, Kim Cattrall – the lively one – lived on Whiston Lane for a while. Bands like The La’s, Space and Cast grew up in Huyton. Characters were on every corner.
    I loved life on the Bluebell – my kingdom, my playground. Two youth clubs offered the usual attractions, but mostly we were outside, playing two-man chase on the River Alt, hide and seek, and you’d better be quick. Me and my brother Paul would come home filthy with mud. Mum went crazy, Dad just smiled. Ironside was always alive with activity. In the summer, families sat out, chatting away, sharing a drink while the kids played. Ironside had many distractions. Two girls my age, Lisa and Caroline, lived either side of No. 10 and I knocked about with them, crawling around the square, playing in the mud. Girls fascinated me. I had no sisters myself. I thought Lisa and Caroline were well fit. I flirted with them. Lisa and Caroline had one fault, though: they couldn’t play football.
    Didn’t matter really. I never had far to look for a game. Bluebell was full of lads up for some footy action, always has been. Huyton is famous for producing decent pros, like