As a boy he’d play football on this patch of grass — now this proud son of Dudley is England manager ALLARDYCE
CLOSE and slow, summer has settled on Dudley. Three young boys amble across Ash Green with that already-bored, long schoolholiday shuffle about them, a listless tinge to the scene. The air is heavy, the grass is long and lush — and they have no ball. What would Sam Allardyce make of this? Ash Green in Dudley, after all, is where Allardyce grew up in the 1950s and 60s. His memory is of raucous ‘14-a-side’ kickabouts on this patch of grass and his neighbour, 85-year-old Milton Hughes, recalls Allardyce and his brother Bobby playing there so often they were ‘digging a furrow’.
When Allardyce wasn’t here pretending to be Derek Dougan scoring for Wolves, he was off kicking a ball somewhere else. His mother, Mary, would take Milton’s son Robert along to watch. It was football, football, football. But there was no play on Ash Green on Tuesday afternoon. It was the day after Allardyce had been unveiled as England manager, when he had spoken of his career, his style, his leadership — and when there had been a brief nostalgic detour back to Dudley and to Big Sam’s youth.
‘It was a great place to be developed as a footballer,’ he said.
‘The area was Ash Green. It was a council estate with a green in the middle but it didn’t have much green on it. It was brown and bare and muddy because we played on it that much. That was where it all started for me.’
Ash, Elm, Oak, Maple — there are a series of greens on the Old Park Farm estate north-west of Dudley’s struggling town centre.
From Mulberry Green, adjacent to the old Sycamore Green Primary School Allardyce attended, the limestone caves he explored as a boy are in the distance.
The landscape gives Dudley a distinct feel — centre of the Black Country, part of old England; the Industrial Revolution. In the local paper, The Express &
Star (Dudley edition) — where Allardyce’s appointment was front as well as back-page news last Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday, one of the headlines was: ‘Pride as Dudley son Sam Allardyce becomes England manager’.
He had told the paper: ‘I am a Black Country lad. Whenever people ask me whether I’m from Birmingham, I always correct them and tell them I’m from Dudley.’
When Allardyce was born, in 1954, and raised in No 1 Ash Green, the houses and the estate were new and an upgrade on the slums they replaced.
In the decades that have passed since, some homes have been cared for more than others.
A couple of St George’s flags hang limp. There is the council estate staple, angry barking dogs. One after another.
Old Park Farm and the Wren’s Nest estate, where Allardyce went to secondary school, retain an old Labour feel — and the North Dudley constituency returns a Labour MP.
Yet Dudley as a whole was 67.6 per cent in favour of Brexit. Or, only 32.4 per cent of locals voted to remain in the EU.
So while this may indeed be back where it all started for Sam Allardyce, that was a half a cen- tury ago. You could pass the ball back to the goalkeeper. You could get a job in manufacturing.
Dudley’s changed, Allardyce’s society has changed. Issues are different and one — modern childhood — will have an impact upon Allardyce in his new job.
As Milton Hughes says: ‘When they were young, they were always out there playing. They were no trouble to nobody. Now there’s not much football played here, nothing like it used to be.
‘The atmosphere’s different. It
seems quieter here now. More of the young’uns are out of work.’
An undiagnosed dyslexic as a young boy, adult Allardyce is strident about PE in schools which, as a country, he says ‘we don’t pay enough attention to... without physical education you put your life at risk.’
At Dudley Town FC, where 14-year-old Allardyce played twice in a men’s league in 1969, chairman Stephen Austin says: ‘Realistically, the non-League level is not the same as it was in the early 1970s, and the West Midlands League is not the same.’
England’s talent pool has shrunk: the percentage of English players appearing regularly in the Premier League is as low as those who voted ‘Remain’ in Dudley.
However, Austin adds: ‘One of our players has just gone up three leagues to Halesowen Town.
‘There is still talent at this level, it’s about opportunity, about being scouted. Jamie Vardy isn’t unique, you see others.’
Anyone who saw Duncan Edwards kicking a tin can up Elm Road knew scouts would soon follow. As with Allardyce, one came from Bolton Wanderers, but it was with Manchester United — and England — that Dudley’s Edwards earned renown.
Killed in the Munich air crash in 1958, aged just 21, Edwards had stimulated such awe that on the back of his statue on Dudley’s Market Place Sir Bobby Charlton has inscribed: ‘The best player I’ve ever seen; The best player I’ve ever played with; The only player who ever made me feel inferior.’ Today when you s stare at the statue, there is a huge Poundland just be behind. Po Poundland is a Midland lands company, with its headq headquarters near Wolverham verhampton. And as of the night of JuneJu 27, it is also an England footballfoo joke: ‘Iceland 2 Poundland 1’. That is where Allardyce’s reign begins, with England mocked as a cut-price shop. It is hardly the glory that Edwards represents. Edwards remains Dudley’s England star, even if at his grave just down the hill in Dudley cemetery the scarves and flowers are the red and white of Manchester. Edwards grew up in a then-new council estate, the one next door to the Allardyces’. The Wren’s Nest pub was renamed after Edwards in 2001 only to be demolished five years later.
Allardyce was four when Edwards died, but he grew up with the local hero around him.
‘Everyone in Dudley was proud of Duncan Edwards,’ Allardyce says of his upbringing.
‘Mention you were from Dudley and the first person who came to mind was Duncan. You could see people looking at you thinking: “You’ll never be as good as him”.’
Sam Allardyce wasn’t — as a player. No-one was.
But as a manager, Allardyce of Ash Green has been handed England’s ultimate job.
He and Dudley Town have lost contact over the years but Stephen Austin will be writing soon.
He may mention the name of Dudley’s current manager: Andy Allardice. With an ‘i’.
‘I’ll be writing to Sam,’ Austin says. ‘Care of Wembley.
‘Obviously there’s the man Bobby Charlton called the greatest- ever — Duncan Edwards. But we’re really honoured that Sam comes from Dudley.’