‘SAM SHOWED THE WAY AND IT’S A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME NOW...’
CHRIS Beech remembers the day in 1996 when Sam Allardyce called to offer him a new contract.
Aged 21, the midfielder was one of Blackpool’s rising stars. Already a veteran of some 82 matches and popular on the terraces, he expected a deal that reflected his burgeoning status.
Instead, he was administered a tough lesson in football finance by one of football’s most no-nonsense characters.
“Sam put the contract in front of me and basically said ‘Sign it, or f*** off”,” laughs Beech, who was last week named as the new manager of Carlisle United.
“When I looked down, it was only worth about £50 more than what I was on. I’d played all those games for him and that was me gone, basically. It was quite harsh in those days.
“It was funny, though. When I finally got up to the Championship with Huddersfield, I managed to get about ten goals. We came within a whisker of promotion under Steve Bruce.
“We played Bolton just after I won player of the month. Ironically, they asked Sam to present the award. He just shook my hand and said ‘You know, I might have got that one wrong’.”
Beech, who retired through injury at 30 after 279 EFL appearances, never did hold a grudge against Big Sam, whose son Craig is a personal friend.
In fact, those years at Bloomfield Road opened his eyes to the power of progressive coaching at a time when sports science and statistical analysis were as novel as the internet.
“Sam was a massive influence,” Beech recalls. “Not just on me, but in terms of changing how all players approach the profession.
“It was an era when drinking was still part of the culture. He stopped that. Before we left to go home, we had to eat at The Tangerine club across the road.
“I remember people saying ‘I’m going out tonight gaffer, I can’t hang around’. Sam wasn’t having any of it. If you didn’t stay, you didn’t play.
“It was all about getting energy back in your body within two hours of playing sport. These days, that window is 20 minutes. You weren’t allowed to drink alcohol for two hours, either. It was a big insight for me.”
Beech looks back on his formative years fondly, and as a coach of 15 years’ standing is fascinated at how the tough love that forged his own playing career is neither acceptable nor effective in the modern age.
“I actually presented to the PFA regional coach educators about eight weeks ago,” says the 45-year-old, who cut his coaching teeth at Bury before spending a decade at the helm of Rochdale’s prolific academy.
Among his alumni are current Brighton stalwart Dale Stephens, Stoke City forward Scott Hogan and Portsmouth midfielder Andy Cannon.
“I based my talk on Generation Z – the post-millennial babies who are now 23 or younger. My question was, how do we challenge these young men and women on a daily basis when their social outlook is so different to the way my generation grew up?
“My dad was a builder who played part-time for Fleetwood. After I made my debut for Blackpool against Port Vale, he took me out to celebrate. We got back late.
Adversity
“First thing next morning, he got me out of bed and said ‘Right, you’re filling this skip’. He said to me ‘I don’t consider you to be a proper football player until you’ve played 50 league games. And until then, you can help me out on site’.
“One minute I was playing against Ian Taylor and Robin van der Laan. The next I’m lugging bricks around. But that’s how it was then.
“These days, I’m not sure many players know what a skip is. But you have to find a way to replicate that experience. I call it building up a football immune system.
“Take someone like Messi. Coming through, he was miles better than anyone else. He was whacked from pillar to post. Kicked. Brought down. Doubled-up on. Every single Saturday.
“But that experience developed his skills and his mental capacity to deal with adversity. He built up a tolerance and worked out how to succeed in spite of all those things.”
Peers of Beech have been subject to allegations of bullying young players, including
Steve Stone at
Burnley and
Craig Bellamy at Cardiff. “Which is quite right if you’re not looking after players properly,” says Beech. But the former Hartlepool man also understands that those coaches were probably just replicating the ways that steeled them for success.
“I look back to when I was 14, playing against the youth team at Blackpool, which was full of 18-yearolds,” he says.
“We got battered, then a coach said to me, ‘You’ll never be a footballer as long as you’ve got a hole in your back-side’.
“I walked down to Squires Gate, got on the tram back home to Fleetwood and was still crying when I got home.
“My old man had nipped back from work and asked me what was wrong. When I told him what the coach had said, he said ‘Well, he’s right – now what are you going to do about it, son?’
“You were expected to deal with those things. Is that right or wrong? I don’t know. And in a way, it’s irrelevant.
“Because any coach now is faced with a generation that wants to be treated as individuals, and who respond more emotionally to setbacks. You have to
find a different way of building that immunity.
“All I would say is that in the 15-year career I’ve had, I’ve helped to produce 18 players for Rochdale who have been recruited, developed and sold.
Principles
“Of those 18, the three who have played at the highest level, are paid the most and have represented their countries are the least ‘academy-ised’ players.
“Scotty Hogan, Will Buckley and Dale Stephens all came into the system late. They’d had trials and tribulations. They’d known setbacks. They’d not been in the dream factory from 8-18, with all the opportunities that promises.
“Is that coincidence? I don’t know, but it’s a question I put to the PFA and I think it’s worth discussing.”
Such discussions are for another day, however. For now, hauling Carlisle away from the foot of League Two is the only task that matters for a man who many thought was destined to be a career coach.
As assistant to Keith Hill – a man he describes as one of the best coaches outside the Premier League – Beech helped Rochdale to promotion from League Two, an FA Cup fifth round replay against Spurs and unprecedented stability before departing when Hill was sacked in March.
“I’m proud of what we achieved there,” adds Beech. “We achieved big things and it was based on honesty, hard work and intelligent energy.
“Those are my basic principles. I want to represent Carlisle people, who are hard-working people with a lot of integrity.
“I want them to identify with that in our players, and I want our players to live those values. If you get that connection, something special can happen.”