Why this unsung coaching hero has finally traded turf for surf
DAVID KEMP HAS SWAPPED BEING A PULIS SIDEKICK FOR CALIFORNIA’S SUN
As English football zips up its autumn coat and Tony Pulis angles his baseball cap for battle, David Kemp is ambling down the slope towards the golden sands of san Clemente.
To the north Dana Point and to the south la Casa Pacifica, once Richard nixon’s beachside mansion dubbed The Western White house as it hosted summit meetings with leonid Brezhnev and other world leaders.
On the market earlier this year for £ 48.5million, it was where nixon retired to write his memoirs after Watergate.
The home Kemp shares with wife Debbie, a Californian, is far more modest and utterly charming.
They bought it in 2002, vowing to one day retire to this surfers’ paradise. Fifteen years and hundreds of thousands of air miles later, one of the Premier league’s unsung coaching heroes has finally traded turf for surf.
‘i’m useless in the water,’ admits Kemp, although he loves to walk his dog along the beach before his daily visit to the gym.
Then he takes advantage of the eight-hour time difference and tunes in for a lunch-time fix of live European football.
it is hard to kick old habits after a lifetime in the game, plundering goals in the lower leagues when the seeds of a coaching career were sown by top tacticians.
At Crystal Palace there was Malcolm Allison, who plucked him from slough Town, and Terry Venables.
‘Venners was full of ideas and very inventive with set-pieces,’ said Kemp. ‘Mal was flamboyant when the cameras came on but very introverted, actually, sometimes morose. The Daily Mail walk in and he’d become Malcolm Allison. They leave and it was gone. he was all right, don’t get me wrong, but like a lot of people, not all was as it seemed.’
After stepping into coaching as player-manager of norrkoping in sweden, Kemp joined Dave Bassett’s staff at Wimbledon, learning how to make a team punch above their weight in the top flight. he stayed under Bobby gould, learning from Don howe, as they won the FA Cup in 1988.
‘Dave Bassett taught me a good lesson,’ said Kemp. ‘his training sessions would be long, about three hours or more, and they were hard.
‘he came over to me once and said, “When i finish this, you take them and run them for 20 doggies”. i said, “Really, 20? That’s a lot”. he said, “Yeah, give ’em 20”.
‘so i did it and the players were moaning because they’d been out for hours. After about eight, Dave comes over and says, “What’s going on here?”
‘ They go, “it’s Kempy, he’s making us do 20 doggies (a running drill)”. Dave goes, “Twenty? That’s a lot, how many have you done?” They say it’s about eight and Dave says, “Well, that’s enough, in you go”. he’s the good guy. Clever management.’
Back at Wimbledon more than a decade later and Kemp and Mick harford took control when Joe Kinnear suffered a heart attack in the dressing room before a game at sheffield Wednesday.
‘it’s midweek and we (he and Kinnear) had gone the day before to watch a player at Chesterfield,’ said Kemp. ‘When we came out, it was pouring with rain and our taxi was on the other side of the ground and we ran, the best old men can, to get the taxi.
‘it could have happened on a back street in Chesterfield 24 hours earlier and then what? he was lucky it happened in the dressing room before the game. The medical people and the equipment were right there. it was a lot more serious than they let it be known. he’s still alive today so that’s fantastic.’
like many from his generation, 64-year-old Kemp frowns at some of football’s modern affectations but medical progress has saved lives.
‘When we won the FA Cup we had six people running the football side of the club,’ he said.
At Stoke we won a semi 5-0 and Pulis is still ‘defensive’!
H‘Bobby‘B bb Gould,G ld DonD Howe, me, theth physio, the kit-man and Ron Suart was the chief scout and he used to answer the phones, and that’s it.
‘I did about 35 different jobs and now they employ hundreds of people. I often think, “Oh, I used to do that”. Now, they have a head of giving-out-tickets. I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s good. Especially the medical side, all that’s far better.
‘One day at Wimbledon I was in on my own with a large group of kids and pros who hadn’t played. The physio had to have a day off. I send the kids off to warm up with a run-around.
‘They ran off to the top of the field and all jumped to touch the crossbar and the crossbar fell down, hit one player on the head, knocked him out and he swallowed
Ahishi t tongue. As l luckk would ld haveh it, a doctor was nearby walking his dog. We called an ambulance, called off training and everything was all right. When I called his mother, she said, “That’s my Matthew, always getting into trouble”.’
Kemp worked in tandem with Pulis at five clubs — including two spells at Stoke — since January 2000 when they were thrown together at Portsmouth.
‘I worked with Don Howe in the 80s,’ said Kemp. ‘Here was this top coach who’d won the Double at Arsenal and was England’s coach but his sessions were about the basics.
‘They were about winning on Saturday. Not fancy-dan practices, they were bread and butter sessions and Tone is much the same. It’s not about entertaining anybody, it’s about preparing for the game.
‘We’d have arguments but I don’t take offence. The pressure on managers in the Premier League is unbelievable. You’ve got to have eyes in the back of your head.
‘He handles the pressures well. He’s a top-class Premier League manager and he’s done a fantastic job at every club. Plymouth, Pompey and Stoke were all in the bottom three; Palace were off the edge; West Brom were way in the bottom three.
‘He’s kept them all up, improved them and they’ve stayed there. They haven’t slipped back down. Swap him with some of those managers in the top six and see how they’d get on at West Brom.’
Kemp has no doubt Pulis can transfer his skills in the other direction, to manage one of the Premier League’s giants or into international football.
‘He’d be up for a challenge,’ he said, dismissing the criticism of his brand of football which has often been fuelled over time by comments from Arsene Wenger.
‘Rory Delap hasn’t played for Tony Pulis for years and people still think you’re going to get the long throw. At Stoke we won a semi-final 5-0 and he’s a “defensive” coach. Liverpool were going to win the Premier League when they were 3-0 up at Palace and we draw 3-3. Defensive coach?
‘Back at Stoke, most of the fans were very appreciative of what we achieved but you do get some bellyaching. Some of the goals they saw. Peter Crouch’s goal against Man City, where he lifted it over and volleyed it — a fantastic goal.
‘In the same season Cameron Jerome scored a fantastic halfvolley against Southampton. Entertainment? That game was 3-3 as well but once people make their minds up that’s it.’
Among vintage railway signs, sports books and sporting medals, Kemp keeps an antique clockingin machine in his home as a reminder of his days hopping around factory jobs as he played part-time football.
Born in Harrow, he was training as a teacher when he was offered a contract at Palace and became a cult hero at Pompey before moving to Canada and the USA.
Kemp played for seven clubs in North America’s various indoor and outdoor leagues of the 80s.
Dauntingly, he was handed George Best’s number when he arrived in San Jose and Alan Hudson’s in Seattle and learned the indoor circuit had its frustrations when you were the first replacement for Steve Zungul, a Serb known as the Lord of All Indoors.
‘The Lord of All Indoors, he’s not coming off,’ said Kemp. ‘ In Chicago I played for a mainly German team with a German manager and the top player was called Karl-Heinz Granitza.
‘ One time, I’m on and was brought down for a penalty. So I picked it up quickly and smashed it in. Then I get the call to come off and the coach says, “What do you think you’re doing? Granitza takes the penalties”. I said, “Not any better than that, he doesn’t”.’
These days, he finds football less confrontational, even with firebrands such as Pulis.
‘ I’ve seen fights, loads,’ said Kemp. ‘You have to remember football is a cut- throat environment. Not so much now, everybody tiptoes around each other. You’re not allowed to say this or that. The world’s changed.
‘Ian St John tore into me once at half-time and I thought I was having a good game. Players now would take offence. People are waiting to be offended now, aren’t they?
‘On the touchline, it’s more sanitised with the fourth official. There used to be more camaraderie. You were at each other’s throats but you were in the same business.’
Not any more he’s not. Not strictly speaking. But the phone still rings and often Pulis is on the other end, calling to consult with West Brom’s very own Western White House.
I’ve seen loads of fights. It is a cut-throat business