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A Game of Three Halves The Official Kenny Swain Biography Brian Beard 3 A GAME OF THREE HALVES Pitch Publishing Ltd A2 Yeoman Gate Yeoman Way Durrington BN13 3QZ Email: [email protected] Web: www.pitchpublishing.co.uk First published by Pitch Publishing in 2013 Text © 2012 Kenny Swain & Brian Beard Kenny Swain & Brian Beard have asserted their rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher and the copyright owners, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the terms stated here should be sent to the publishers at the UK address printed on this page. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1908051400 Cover design by Olner Design. Printed in Great Britain by TJ International. 4 CONTENTS Foreword 5 CHAPTER 1: The EarlyYears 7 CHAPTER 2: Teacher Training and Wycombe 21 CHAPTER 3: Chelsea 29 CHAPTER 4: The Villa 41 CHAPTER 5: Brian Clough and Forest 68 CHAPTER 6: Portsmouth 122 CHAPTER 7: Crewe Alexandra 137 CHAPTER 8: Management 149 CHAPTER 9: The National School Lilleshall, Thomas elfordT and Back to the FA 172 CHAPTER 10: The Final Chapter 183 5 A GAME OF THREE HALVES 2 A GAME OF THREE HALVES Foreword It is rare in the football world that someone can remain at a level of influence in our national game for 40 years without any significant break. Kenny Swain is one of the few! With four decades of experience as a player, coach, teacher and manager he has made an enormous contribution to our national game. Arguably the custodian of the future of English football – working with the young talent that we provide – he has an enormous responsibility having to nurture and guide the young footballing talent of this nation. Kenny has never been out of work in football which is an incredible achievement shared by very few in an industry where employment is so volatile. In between managerial posts he would turn up at my door and twice I have appointed him to the role of Director of Football at Thomas Telford School, with the aim of making us the strongest performing football school in England, which many would argue we are, thanks to Kenny’s contribution. He has worked with and for exceptional leaders often regarded amongst the best in football and they have had a potent impact upon his philosophy – Dario Gradi, Dave Sexton, Ron Saunders and the great Brian Clough to name but a few. He therefore has a story or two to tell and I have heard many of them. Sometimes they made me laugh, other times made me think as I learned from the wisdom that they shared with him. I have lived with him, played football with him, coached with him, watched him play and employed him, and I have enjoyed every single moment. He has much to share with the football fraternity and fittingly these experiences and anecdotes can now be enjoyed by others. Football is so much richer for having Kenny Swain’s contribution. You will find the read of A Game of Three Halves enjoyable and inspirational. Sir Kevin Satchwell Headmaster, Thomas Telford School 6 A GAME OF THREE HALVES 2 Chapter 1 The Early Years Growing up in post-war Liverpool wasn’t very different from the 1930s, according to my parents, except for the obvious alterations from air raids. Not long after the last Luftwaffe attacks there were still bomb sites dotted across the landscape for local kids to enjoy, our own adventure playground. My dad remembers seeing incendiary bombs descending like confetti, swinging beneath parachutes, and how everyone was s******g themselves until they landed somewhere else and the relief and sadness he felt because someone else was out of luck that night. Ironically the last air-raid on the city in 1942 destroyed a house which had been home to Alois Hitler, half-brother to Adolf, and birthplace of the Fuhrer’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler. I was born in Birkenhead but only lived there for 18 months before we moved to a flat in Kirkby. Noel Blake, who works alongside me with England Youth players, keeps giving me stick about my bragging rights as a Scouser but he calls himself a Brummie despite being born in Jamaica. When my family moved across the Mersey before we settled in Kirkby we actually lived in the Anfield area, in Everton Valley. Our house was in a tenement block and we had the upstairs part of the building (posh people would call them maisonettes). Although very 7 A GAME OF THREE HALVES young I remember our time living in the city and going to Major Lester County Primary School. My maternal grandmother lived nearby so we were back where my mum had grown up though my dad originally came from Everton. They were happy days, carefree times with plenty of bombies, bomb sites, around to play on before the programme of urban regeneration swept them away. I recall regular trips to the shop to buy a briquette, a block of compressed coal dust. It would be wrapped in a sheet of newspaper to carry home where it would keep the fire going for a while. Life for ordinary people in Liverpool was very similar to how it had been for generations and the humour was, as it always has been, and hopefully always will be, typical. Regularly I would be sent to the butcher’s to ask if he had a sheep’s head and being told if he says “yes” ask him if he can leave the legs on or, and the butcher was as sharp as any of his customers, when I would ask for some lean chops he would ask, “which way do you want them to lean?” We stayed in the city until I was five or six years old, when we moved to the vast open spaces of Kirkby New Town and a brand new council flat. Kirkby actually became renowned worldwide a few years later as the setting of the 1960s television police drama Z Cars. It was really THE place to be then, a kind of boom town with all kinds of building work because the government seemed to be throwing money at new towns all over the place, particularly the North West. We were in a good spot and, despite it being a flat, we had a back garden, with enough grass to satisfy modest football requirements. And if numbers swelled beyond the capacity of “Estadio Swain” we backed on to school playing fields where there was more than enough space for our regular 50-a-side games though there was no set number of participants. If there were ten of us we played five-a-side, if 30, 15-a-side and so on. If there was an odd number we played rush back goalie, basically a sweeper who could use his hands. Those games provided a great early learning experience which doesn’t seem to be the case nowadays when there are so many indoor distractions like computer games which mean children are less attracted to playing fields or parks. You had to learn on your feet, literally, and develop skills otherwise you never achieved any self-esteem and that was pretty much how it was playing football as a kid in Liverpool 8 THE EARLY YEARS where football was such a passion. We couldn’t get enough. We’d play on the playground, before school, after school, at lunchtime and in PE lessons. I remember one time doing a football proficiency test, along similar lines to the cycling proficiency test. And I failed. I was devastated because I always thought I could play football. All my mates passed, which made it worse but to add insult to an already bruised ego some of the numbskulls who never got anywhere near the school team passed. It was a salutary lesson for a young Kenny Swain to watch those lads receiving their proficiency certificates at school assembly. I never retook the test. Though not Kirkby-born I was most certainly Kirkby-bred and that’s where I adopted the Scouse religion that is football and where football embraced me. I was a football nut from a very early age and when I started to play organised football at under-12 level I actually kept a detailed record of matches played. I dutifully recorded all scorers, half-time scores, even opposing teams’ colours, in a book. I kept that book going until I was about 15 when all my time seemed to be taken up playing football. By the time I left junior school for Ruffwood Secondary I was already scoring goals and being noticed and that continued when I went into Year 11. Ruffwood was a very big school at the time. If it wasn’t the biggest in the country it wasn’t far off with a pupil population around 2,000. If the size of the school was a shock to me I was prepared for the sports facilities as my mother had already gone through the brochure we had been sent ahead of us going there.

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