Budgie still fluttering around

He admitted being a loner, not having a best friend, spending frugally, eating baby food before games to build up his carbohydrate level, wearing his gloves in bed – sometimes even his boots – and hating fat people.

“What I like least of all about football,” he added, “is the press.”

So what’s changed? “Nothing much,” he insists, watching the sun dancing upon the Indian Ocean from his beachside villa in Oman.

If it may not be said that Budgie sings, at least not without risk of serious discord, he chirrups cheerfully for upwards of half an hour on everything from road rage to Rooney. We always did get on – goalkeepers’ union, probably – though he may never have seen the paragraph about an appearance he made, doing a turn, at Horden supporters’ club.

Budgie really did sing on that occasion. “It sounded,”

someone said, “like a man weeing in a can.”

NOW more accepting of the universal soubriquet – “even my son gets Budgie” – he’d appeared briefly in Tuesday’s column.

Trevor Benjamin, now player/manager at Morpeth Town in the STL Northern League second division, had played for 16 different Premier and Football League clubs.

Could Burridge beat it?

He loses 16-15, though edges it with 29 senior clubs to Benjamin’s 28 to date. He’d started at Workington, his home town, topped 100 appearances for Blackpool and Sheffield United, had 67 between 1989- 91 for the Magpies but seriously considered quitting the sport in 1990 when Sunderland were promoted despite finishing six points behind their North-East rivals.

He marked his 44th birthday while with Darlington, played also for Scarborough and Durham City, lived in Durham, managed Blyth Spartans, owned several North-East sports shops and drove a car with the registration A5AVE for which Nigel Martyn unsuccessfully offered £50,000.

He never drank, smoked, gambled or indulged in any of the other more lurid activities latterly associated with professional footballers. He went home to watch television, to put the bairns to bed. He was the most boring man alive, he’d insist, wore ever more uncomfortably the mantle of eccentricity that press and public foisted upon him.

What was wrong with giving a ten-minute Match of the Day interview in your sleep?

What was wrong with selfhypnosis tapes? Silliness was losing a week’s wages on a horse, he once said, not going to bed with a football.

To John Burridge it was simply about dedication. “People made fun of him but it didn’t matter,” his wife Janet observed.

“The feeling of flying through the air was the only motivation he needed.”

Budgie had put it similarly.

“All I want to do is make great saves.”

Still he remained an enigma, some thought an odd bird, his privacy semi-public. All that was unequivocal about John Burridge was that he was a hell of a good goalkeeper, and to him it may have been all that mattered.

HE first became an Oman national team coach in 1998, after a conviction and £16,000 fine at Richmond magistrates court in North Yorkshire for selling counterfeit goods. He pleaded poverty, doesn’t any longer.

He owns three other houses alongside an exclusive golf course, drives a top-of-the-range Hummer that he fills up for £8 – “people here think tax is something you keep your stair carpet down with” – bathes in the sunshine, admits to being paid “very handsomely”

for a job he loves, speaks fluent Arabic and maintains the dedicated fitness regime for which he was renowned.

“You wouldn’t think I was 56, more 36,” he insists – more 58, actually, 59 on December 3.

“I’m like Garth. I’m tanned, I still have a 33-inch waist and 44-inch chest, I have short hair – the curls have gone – and I look great with my shirt off.

“Part of it’s that there’s no drink culture over here like there is in England.

“Here there’s a café culture, you go for a coffee and a muffin.

When people finish work they don’t go to the pub, they go for a game of football on the beach and because there’s not much alcohol there’s also not much violence. I can even leave my car unlocked.”

Janet’s an estate agent. His daughter Katie works for the British government, his son Tom – a former Durham Wasps ice hockey player – has a good job on the rigs. After three years in the UAE, Budgie is again national coach.

“I live for football, I always did. You don’t do it for the money but if you love it and the money comes along then that’s great. That enthusiasm will never change, only when I die.”

HIS whole life changed, however, after an accident in Oman in 1999 in which he was knocked from his cycle into the path of a car and dragged for 50 yards beneath it. It was the day that Budgie nearly fell off the perch.

He suffered serious injuries, underwent several operations, sued and won substantial damages.

“If it hadn’t been for that I honestly think I could have still played in the Premier League, it took 15 years out of my life, stopped me playing football.”

When we spoke nine years ago he was getting by on Prozac, took ten minutes to put on his socks, feared for the future.

“I’m still a bit of a wreck, my shoulder’s bad, I can’t do everything I’d like to do and I’d really struggle in England in the cold. This is the best time of year here and the most beautiful of all the Gulf states.

It’s about 27 degrees, blue skies, lovely beaches, plenty of culture. I tell you, it’s not bad at all.”

HE’S credited with the development of Steve Harper, Paul Robinson and Martyn but reckons Ali Al-Habsi – who played for Wigan against Newcastle last weekend – the best discovery of all.

“He’s huge, 6ft 6ins, springs like a gazelle. I’ve worked with him since he was 14, wanted him to go Manchester United and spoke to Alex about him but they couldn’t get a work permit. One day I hope he will go to Man United or Arsenal.

I’m very excited about him.”

He’s less excited about Rooney, talks of him at once and unprompted. “There’s too much written about him, he’s not that good. Like all England players he needs a ball carrier with him.

“He’s a good finisher and has a big heart, but he needs somebody like Ronaldo. I’m not worried about his private life, I’m just worried that if he’s supposed to be the best we’ve got, it doesn’t say much about the others.

“There are no street footballers any more, like George Best or Jackie Milburn. The players who excite me in the Premier League are all foreigners.”

Paradoxically, however, the Premiership is all he misses about England. If someone offered him £25,000 a week to be a goalkeeping coach he’d consider it, he says. Since he believes goalkeeping coaches to earn no more than £2,000, it’s not unlikely.

“I’ll tell you a story about England. I was back in Blackpool and one of the caps fell off my teeth, the ones I’d damaged in the accident.

“I went to a dentist, it was only a glue job, but he was going to charge me a fortune. I asked where the nearest NHS dentist was and he said Wigan.

I’ve paid millions of pounds in taxes since I was 16, and can’t even get a cap stuck on my tooth.”

For all that he’s smiling again, for all that flying high.

“I’m pretty sure that I’ll die here now,” says Budgie. “If I do, I’ll probably die happy.”

Backtrack briefs

IT’S A bitter August evening in 2007, Shikar Dhawan hooded and huddled against the cold in Etherley Cricket Club. “One day soon I want to play for India,” he tells the column. On Wednesday he did.

The man they called Shaky had been on holiday in Middlesbrough, was approached by an agent, became Etherley’s third pro of a difficult season and set about smashing records and windscreens simultaneously.

Against Mainsforth he’d broken the 157-year-old club’s scoring record with 215 in 45 overs and with Danny Hinge created a new league record for the seventh wicket.

At Crook he’d hit 198 off 40 overs, sharing a 291 opening stand with Michael Crane. The late Roy Coates, then the Durham County League secretary, had been incredulous.

“I just don’t know how he ended up at Etherley,” he said.

He didn’t hang around, of course, probably couldn’t stand the cold, made his India debut in a one-day international against Australia.

The story has no happy ending, alas. Shaky start, he played on second ball for a duck.

BITTERER yet on Tuesday evening, and – of all places – off to Tow Law. The bus from Darlington simply doesn’t turn up, the one 30 minutes later terminates at Crook.

A pint of beer and a packet of smoky bacon crisps – the crisps promise to be the highlight of the night – and then an SB bus up to the summit.

It has no heating whatever, like riding in a public service refrigerator. “I’m getting a new heater motor tomorrow,” the driver promises. They probably said the same thing to Robert Falcon Scott.

At the ground five minutes late, the Lawyers already a goal down to Spennymoor in the Durham Challenge Cup.

Steve Robinson, the goalkeeper, has flown back that morning from a stag weekend in Las Vegas, where they stayed at Caesar’s Palace.

“What’s the matter with Tow Law, then?” says Steve Moralee, the Lawyers secretary.

“My hen do was at the Indian takeaway,” says Sandra Gordon, the club chairman.

Though it ends 5-0, the goalie does well. Cold comfort is all that’s on offer.

FORMER Hartlepool United and New York Cosmos man Malcolm Dawes – good Trimdon lad – is organising a reunion next Thursday of all former pupils of St William’s school in the village.

Spouses welcome, too. The do’s at Coxhoe WMC, former Sunderland favourite Len Ashurst a speaker. Details from Malcolm on 07989 093946.

STAN Anderson, one of Len Ashurst’s team mates in that great Sunderland side of the sixties, had his autobiography published this week.

Stan remains the only man to have been skipper of each of the North-East’s big three. The book’s called Captain of the North, the author signing copies at Waterstone’s in Sunderland this morning when Kevin Alderson from Shotton aims to be among the first in the queue.

Back in March, we recorded the passing of Kevin’s dad, Maurice, a contemporary of Horden lad Stan’s in the East Durham schools team. Kevin’s hoping that his dad’s scrapbook, as well as the new book, will be signed.

Stan and Maurice are pictured together beneath the headline “The day went up in flames.”

The kit, apparently, was in Stan’s garden shed. It’s in the book, too.

THEN there was Alexander Donaldson McLaughlan, recalled by Ralph Petitjean in Ferryhill following last Saturday’s piece on Derek Forster, Sunderland’s boy wonder goalkeeper of 1964- 65. Sandy McLaughlan was also an outstanding Roker keeper of the period, recalls Ralph, though he lost his place after a 5-0 home defeat to West Brom on January 1 1966. The Scot, it was alleged, had been doing what most of his countrymen do at Hogmanay. For him and for Roker fans, an unhappy New Year.

NOW in Texas, Chris Willsden recalls happy nights spent with Malcolm Allison, bless him, holding court at the Baltimore in Middlesbrough. “There were some great stories but he never eclipsed the comment he made on the panel for the 1970 World Cup – Tostao, Brazil’s centre forward, was described as the best oneeyed striker since Moshe Dayan.”

And finally...

RAY Aggersburg in West Cornforth was first with the answer to Tuesday’s question – Methuselah, according to the Book of Genesis, lasted until he was 969.

John Briggs in Darlington today invites the identity of six “Erics” – the spelling may vary – who’ve scored in the Premiership. Five would be going some.

The column now takes a week off but returns, past a milestone, on November 2.