2023 NEW YEAR'S
HONOURS LIST

I first met Andy Sharp in 1984. It was one of those random, unplanned series of events that would leave a profound imprint on my memory.

I had just returned from honeymoon in Mauritius where impromptu lunchtime kickabouts with the hotel staff had rekindled my love for the beautiful game. I had quit football three years earlier to take up golf. Now on a sun-kissed summer evening in late July, Peter Ellis and I left the squash court at Cappers for a breath of air. Highly polluted, copper-smelted air. We staggered into the tail-end of a Capper Pass FC training session, just at the point where the assorted hopefuls were organising themselves into two teams for a kickabout. Pete and I made the numbers up. A cheap, if eye-catching, step-over & swivel was too much for Bob Williamson, the team manager. He approached me afterwards.

“What are you doing on Saturday? Can you get here for 2pm?”

It was the genesis of a four-season Halloween career with Capper Pass B and founded the happiest phase of my football career. Saturday duly arrived, and I was introduced to the team. Our goalkeeper, Dave Welburn, centre-half Rob Sanderson and I were the oldest men in the squad by at least ten years. I recognised Welburn having played against him somewhere and knew him to be a solid keeper. Th ere were three Hessle “Stooges” who I did not recognise from the training session. Only because they had not been at it. Andy Sharpe, Darren Wilson and Paul Osgerby had their aspirations set somewhere between kickabout and fuckabout. I was hoping for a more serious approach. The team had finished rock bottom of the league in the previous season and had a dreadful reputation. Bob Williamson had started the cleanout and wanted to create a team that rebuilt Cappers reputation. For me, it was the Last Chance Saloon, and every point was precious. There was no room for fuckabout.

You needed no football acumen to tell that Andy Sharp was exceptionally talented. Tall (about 6 feet two), good in the air and two- footed, he could pick a pass and possessed a thunderbolt shot from around twenty-five yards. My first thought was what is he doing here? He could easily play at a higher standard. “Different class” as the pundits now say. After a few games, I could answer my question. To me, he simply had no application. All the talents but could not be bothered to apply them. In my book, a cardinal sin. Many years later, I realised how superficial and inadequate had been my analysis of Sharpy. His issue was a chronic lack of self-confidence. He felt he was an impostor who had no right to be there. More of that later. In my categorisation at the time, he was filed under “Lazy Bastard”, which qualified him for special attention.

As his captain, to me the formula was simple: Sharpy playing well= team unstoppable. A lot of my focus, consequently, was centred on him. I knew he could be brilliant. Why he could not perform consistently was frustrating. He would drift out of games, which I put down to a lack of concentration. A guttural, Irish scream of “Concentration, Sharpy!” would often rend the East Riding air after Sharpy allowed the ball to run under his foot. In pent-up frustration, I could feel the blood vessels in my eyeballs swell as I screamed those words at him. I’m not sure if it stopped traffic on the A63. “Concentration Sharpy!” became a monicker which our teammates used to take the piss out of both of us. In the week, Sharpy worked on a production line somewhere south of the Humber. On one memorable occasion, Darren Wilson had a job interview at the firm. The manager asked him if he would like to check out the factory floor. On entering, Darren spied Sharpy up ahead, and the temptation was too much…

”Concentration, Sharpy!” a mock Irish accent bellowed across the floor to an ashen-faced Sharpy who looked like he had emerged from a Chamber of Horrors.

The team gradually improved and achieved the modest respectability of a mid-table finish. The following season brought more progress, and a fourth-place finish earned us promotion. The regular routine of training on Wednesday and playing Saturday was paying dividends as we became familiar with each other’s game and developed a style of play. We had a lot of pace up top (Paul Elliott had been a Hull Schools sprint champion and Darren was just as quick). 4-3-3 was our preferred formation and made us difficult to beat. The following season (86/87) brought our apotheosis: one defeat in twenty-two league games, including a record eighteen games unbeaten in all competitions, saw us crowned champions. My one and only league title at the age of thirty-two. How sweet it felt! At times, our football was scintillating: a 4-0 win over a very good Andrew Marvell team and a 6-2 hammering of Reckitts still shine in the memory (Sharpy man of the match in both). As does a 3-0 cup win over Blackburns A who had just won their division. In other games (invariably when Sharpy was scratching his ass out wide), we had developed a resilience like no other team I had played in. We could play poorly, soak up punishment, and win.

Best demonstrated against our closest rivals, East Mount. They had a toothless centre-half called “Eppy” who bumped his gums in profanity. He was quite the most reprehensible, despicable, specimen of faeces I have ever encountered on a football pitch. 3-1 down at their ground in early season, I substituted myself in disgust with five minutes to go: result 3-3! In the reverse fixture at our ground, a Darren Wilson goal in the first half, settled the dispute (Mr “Clean Sheet” Welborn man of the match). They must have had 70 percent of the play in that game. We also drew them away in the cup that season. A very tight, physical game saw them break the deadlock in the 88th minute. Injuries to Mike Burton and Kev Peart had forced us to play Sharpy at centre half. Now with nothing to defend, I despatched him to centre forward in desperation. Tactics and coaching manuals were condensed into a new strategy: “Fucking lump it forward!” There was barely time for a final attack. The ball was humped forward in the best agricultural tradition, Sharpy got a flick on it, there was a goalmouth melee, a toe prod and the ref blew the whistle…for extra time! 1-1! There was no such thing as celebration routines in those days, so we had to make do with giving Eppy a refresher on Verbal Abuse. Knowing the momentum was with us, I kept Sharpy up front, and he duly laid on the winner early in extra time. That sounded the retreat, and we held on like shipwrecked sailors clinging to the wreckage. East Mount did not like us much. I never understood why.

The following season, we performed well in a higher division, but the ball did not run for us. Still, third place was a respectable outcome and earned another promotion. A bruising, end-of-season cup game at South Cave on a Wednesday evening, saw us win 3-1 after extra time. It had been a very physical game on a heavy pitch and I remember feeling exhausted. Bob Williamson had organised a friendly against a team of school dads the following evening, as a favour. They were due to play the ex-Tigers in a charity game and needed the practice. “Leave me out of it, Bob- I am wrecked.” Bob persisted though and we compromised that I would turn out for the first half only. A scissor tackle from behind after twenty minutes, ruptured my Achilles tendon and finished my career.

I made a half-hearted appearance at fullback in a pre-season friendly the following August, but I knew things were not right. Bob was trying to commit me to the new season and turned to Sharpy for support. “No- his legs have gone” was Sharpy’s brutally honest assessment. I knew he was right. You can fool yourself, but you cannot fool your teammates. I had played close to one hundred games for Cappers, mostly with Sharpy and Dave Elliott as my midfield partners (before Dave retreated to right-back.) It was over. Football’s Grim Reaper was pointing me to the dressing room.

Although I disappeared to concentrate on my work in Leeds, an umbilical cord had been established with that group. To this day, over thirty-five years on, we still re-convene to drink beer and reminisce. The next reunion will be at the end of this month (January 2023). Now exiled in Buckinghamshire, I cannot attend but I hope to send these thoughts as my delegate.

It was at one such reunion, maybe a dozen years afterwards, that it dawned on me how horribly wrong I had been about him. For the first time, Sharpy and I fell into a deep conversation. A conversation that was not about football. He explained he had lost his father as a young child (something that resonated strongly with me as I recalled the fate of my younger siblings). He had been raised by his mum and older sisters, which had put him in touch with the feminine traits of his nature. He was not prepared for the macho, cursing, bruising, bullying culture of the typical football environment. It was an authentic outpouring. As we talked, I realised what an intelligent man he was. A long way from the lazy sod that needed a good kick up the ass, to make him perform! In a way, I was mortified. I had let him down. My superficial analysis had not scratched the surface of a deep, complex man. I also knew that he had let himself down. After school, he had drifted into a series of dead-end jobs, which made it easier for me to dismiss him, however unconsciously. Sharpy, I owe you an apology. I was only ever trying to figure out how to win a football match. You were a vital component. A better captain would have handled you differently, got even more out of you and made it better for you. Mea culpa.

I like to think our conversation that night morphed us from teammates to friends. I now saw a highly intelligent man who had been impeded by a lack of self-confidence. Growing up without his father, he had come to expect, and accept, mediocrity. As a reputation once earned is hard to shake, so feelings of inferiority, once established, are easily reinforced. A good example was his birdwatching. We went on a memorable expedition to Majorca with two other experienced twitchers, my good friends Rob Watson and David Bryce. Sharpy was a walking encyclopaedia of ornithology. Rob and Brycey, much more learned on the subject than I, could not have been more impressed with the depth of Sharpy’s knowledge. Yet he dismissed himself contemptuously. “Nah- there are people who know more than me”. For me, this cast light on the core of the problem. If Andy Sharp met someone who had spent their entire life studying the mating habits of the zitting cisticola, then any comment or fact from that source, which Sharpy did not know, was calamitous! It exposed him as a fraud. “People know more than me” and shoulders would slump in despondent resignation. There was such a negative gap between reality and self-perception. His self-confidence was so brittle- it was like casting bone china into a cement mixer.

He also felt exposed by his lack of education. At least tertiary education. As one who had been fortunate enough to go to university, I told him the story of my dad, an intelligent child whose parents could not afford the bus fare to send him to grammar school, never mind university. Denied the opportunity himself, he broke his back to ensure his children got the best education possible. It was obvious to me that Sharpy was university material, and I told him so.

We stayed in contact through trips to Far Ings nature reserve where he was a warden and Cappers Reunions. Since my exile to Buckinghamshire in 2015, our meetings have been less frequent though we have met a few times, thanks to Cappers and a shared love of the Tigers. I was buoyed to learn he had left the production line for a post at the Spire hospital a few years ago. The thought of him pedalling his push-bike from Barton over the Humber Bridge to work was inspiring. At last, here was a man who was trying. About three years ago, he notified me he had enrolled for a university degree course. He was studying for a B.Sc (Hons) in ODP (Operating Department Practice) at the University of Derby. The Spire Group was sponsoring him and had clearly seen his potential. Doing the course alongside his job, Andy Sharp was finally applying talent to opportunity. At long, long last!

I had no doubt this would prove an unstoppable combination. In late November 2022, he texted me to say he had completed his course and scored 92% in his dissertation though, in typical Sharpy fashion, he quickly pointed out that had “done shit in other modules”. Remembering his birdwatching self-analysis, I immediately saw through this and texted him back:

“Congratulations! Finally living up to your potential, you lazy bastard!”

You must not be too effusive in your praises.

And so to the New Years Honours List, 2023.

You can keep your CBEs, gongs and garters- the most meritorious, creditworthy and well-deserved honour will be the First Class Honours degree that is awarded to Andrew Sharp in February!

Andrew Sharp B Sc (Hons) First Class. A First Class Honours Degree! Well done, Sharpy- a terrific achievement. In Life, it is never too late- you are an inspiration to us all.

Footnote

I wrote these words from my study in Buckinghamshire. The Capper Pass team of 1987/88 are looking down at me as I sit at my desk. I have already mentioned some of you: it would be remiss to leave anyone out. You were all part of something special: Barry Shippey, John Tasker, Des Carey, Ronnie and Mark Phillipson, Andy and Tim Tyler.

A nod also to those who were with us for part of the journey: Mel Gray, Danny Duffy, Chris Stipetic, Rich Hudson, John et al.

The picture was taken before a 6-0 win at Everthorpe. The skipper got two that day, as I will probably remind you again next time we meet…

Tony Ferguson

January 2023