Terry Butcher likens English soccer to Shakespearean tragedy
The former England captain recounts his journey from the prison yard to the World Cup, and why the game he knew is gone
EASTERN PROMISE My father was in the Royal Navy and he was based in Singapore when the British navy was in all its glory. My mother came out to join him, and I was born there. I was two years old when we went back to the UK so I can’t remember anything about it. But it’s always been quite a good question for people: which former English international was born in Singapore?
LOCKED IN We went back to Lowestoft, in Suffolk [eastern England], which is where my parents are from, and where my wife, Rita, was born. My father ended up leaving the navy and becoming a prison officer, and I actually played for the prison officers’ football team when I was young. It was fiercely competitive, the prison officers wanted to win to make sure the inmates didn’t win their bets. We ended up playing at some strange locations all across the country. We played one game in the grounds of a mental asylum. Some of the patients started wandering across the pitch halfway through the game.
GOOD ENOUGH I always said I didn’t want to be a professional footballer because I didn’t want someone to say to me, “Sorry, son, but you’re not good enough.” I was never tracked as a younger player. I played for Suffolk County under-19s for two years because I was put up a year at school, so age-wise I would play ahead of my time. I was spotted by a good supporter of Ipswich Town, Mike Regis, who wrote to the club and said, “I think you should look at this guy,” so I was invited for a month’s trial and, after three weeks, they signed me as a professional. That was my dream as I supported Ipswich as a boy. It was £50 a week in 1976, signed by Bobby Robson (who would go on to manage the England team). I was earning more than my dad.
LOVELY BOBBY Bobby Robson was a massive influence on my career. To be at a club with Bobby was just brilliant. He was funny. He didn’t mean to be funny but he was. He used to sometimes say the wrong thing, he’d get names wrong. I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t love him. He was like a favourite uncle or your grandad. He was just a special guy and he made you feel 10 feet tall. You’d go through brick walls for him. And he was a clever guy, way ahead of his time in the tactics we used and the preparation for games.
