Harry's Games Read Free Page B

bullshit requires some intentionality. Was Redknapp deliberately trying to hoodwink the fans or was he just saying something he thought would go down well? There is a distinction to be made. Redknapp wouldn’t thank anyone for suggesting he had anything less than an idyllic childhood – he has an image to protect – but, given everything that was going on, he can’t have felt as secure as all that. And insecure children tend to grow into people-pleasing adults. They have learned the necessary mechanisms to hide their vulnerability, and the automatic response to any new and unfamiliar situation is to avoid any possible conflict by saying whatever they feel is required: a joke, a half-truth, whatever. It’s worth bearing in mind, given the question marks raised over his loyalty and integrity at various points throughout his career.
    What is for certain about Redknapp’s childhood was that school didn’t feature highly on his list of priorities, other than as a place to showcase his football talent. That he would go on to play professionally seemed self-evident to most people who watched him as a slightly built, but devastatingly quick, teenager. But then these same judges often have a tendency to forget the many other youngsters for whom they predicted great things and whose football careers never got further than schoolboy trials.
    So just how good a player was Redknapp? These days, it’s much easier to reach an objective assessment of a player’s ability. Every game in every division is televised and, for those with the time and inclination, you can make a detailed analysis of every minute of a player’s entire career. Not just the goals scored and the assists made, but the yards run, the tackles missed, the passesuncompleted and the team-mates blamed. It may not give you the player’s whole story, but it will give you more than enough to make an informed judgement.
    You can’t do that with Redknapp. When he began his professional playing career, very few matches were televised; fewer still were shown in their entirety. The BBC’s Saturday-night
Match of the Day
programme featured the highlights of just one, sometimes two, of the afternoon’s First Division fixtures. ITV’s Sunday-afternoon show,
The Big Match
, had just one game. A bit of bad luck with an injury or loss of form and even one of the best footballers could go through a whole season without appearing on television once. Search all the available archives, and you’d be lucky to come up with even ninety minutes of Redknapp’s career on film.
    What you’re left with then are memories of those who played both with and against him, of those who paid a few shillings at the turnstiles to stand on the terraces of Upton Park and Dean Court. And memories fade over time, so that the distinctions between what’s real and what’s imagined become more blurred. This is especially true for a player like Redknapp, whose contributions, even at the time, were frequently overshadowed by those of his more famous team-mates, in particular Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, the triumvirate of World Cup winners. Some memories will be rose-tinted, some unduly negative, and a great deal more almost certainly blank. There are few clear ways to differentiate between questionable contemporary evidence and hard fact. So whose word is to be believed – that of Redknapp’s friends and admirers, which is likely to be spun in the most favourable light, or that of his detractors, which will most definitely not be? And where does this leave Lord Macdonald, Milan Mandaric’s defence QC – a man who one would hope would favour evidence over opinion – who described Redknapp in court as a not very good footballer?
    The bare bones of Redknapp’s career are 149 first-team appearances for West Ham between 1965 and 1972, 101 for Bournemouth between 1972 and 1976 and just 26 for Brentford,