ROBERTS - THE LAST OF HIS KIND? ‘I wanted to give everything I had, it was my club’
ONE-TEAM MAN AND FORMER SKIPPER REFLECTS ON HIS TIME AT THE TIGERS
Garreth Roberts, you suspect, was the very last of his kind. From apprenticeship to retirement, he loyally served no one but his boyhood club Hull City. A long association brought close to 500 appearances and the majority came as City’s captain. Twice Roberts celebrated promotions as a constant of the 1980s, always the local boy in the photographs of a golden age.
“To play once for City was all I’d wanted to do growing up,” he said. “I was lucky enough to live the dream after that.”
And some. Despite making his final appearance for the Tigers at the age of 30, when his career was cut short by a knee injury, Roberts amassed 487 games for the club he had idolised growing up in Willerby.
Only Andy Davidson, George Maddison and Chris Chilton can boast more league appearances for City in a history spanning
116 years.
Almost three decades have passed since Roberts’ final game but the pride in achieving so much with City is undimmed.
“It meant everything,” he explained. “I’d been going to watch City since I was seven or eight. My mum and one of my neighbours would take me every other Saturday. My Dad was on the trawlers but whenever he was home he’d be there as well.
“My team was (Ian) Mckechnie, (Chris) Simpkin, (Alan) Jarvis, (Frankie) Banks, (Ken) Wagstaff, (Ken) Houghton, (Chris) Chilton, (Ian) Butler. They were my heroes.
“To follow in their footsteps was Boys’ Own stuff. I was always really proud and proud for my family as well because they were the ones who’d shaped my upbringing.”
Roberts was the one-club man that has now all but disappeared from English football.
City are currently unable to boast one player that has been in their first team for more than three years. Roberts, though, featured in 13 consecutive campaigns between 1978-79 and 1990-91.
Those included the best and the worst of times, the spring of hope following the Tigers’ winter of despair.
As well as being part of a club plunged into receivership in 1982, Roberts then captained City’s revival with two promotions inside three years. That same swashbuckling team had ambitions of reaching the top flight but that last leap would elude them until regression and mismanagement returned.
Roberts was there for the whole ride, beginning with him signing apprentice forms on his 17th birthday during the reign of Bobby Collins.
“I’d played in these nice local leagues with my school team and county team,” said Roberts. “Then when you become an apprentice you realise how hard the game was.
“It certainly made you think about looking after yourself. You could either shrink or stand up for yourself. Luckily I did the latter.
“I was boot boy in the first year and kit man in the second. You’d think you’d done a really good job and you’d end up getting stick left, right and centre from the senior players.
“Every Monday morning it would be sweeping the terraces at Boothferry. If you got
Bunkers Hill you were in deep s**t. It was an enlightening two years you could call it but it brought me out of my shell.”
Enough for Roberts to catch the eye of manager Ken Houghton, who saw fit to hand the busy midfielder his debut as an 18-yearold.
“Out the blue I got asked to be sub for Swansea away,” said Roberts, recalling a trip to South Wales in March 1979.
“In those days it was only one sub and we got absolutely paggered 5-3. I was hoping I wouldn’t get thrown on and I didn’t. It was a couple of games later I was the sub in a home game against Bury. Alan Warboys got injured, it turned out to be his last game for the club, and I was sent on after 30 odd minutes. We won 4-1 and that was the start of it all.”
Roberts started each of the 18 remaining games of 1978-79 and, more impressively, 413 of City’s next 546 league fixtures. To make the longevity more significant was the length of service wearing the armband.
“It was Mike Smith who first made me captain,” added Roberts. “I was either 20 or
21. It was a bit of a poisoned chalice at first as there was a lot of older pros, who didn’t like the fact they’d been overlooked for a young local lad. For a year or so it was tough going.
“You’d get the snide remarks. Changing rooms aren’t the easiest places to be and if you don’t stand up for yourself you’ll get hammered. It was sink or swim.
“I tried to not focus too much on being captain. I wanted to give everything I had for the team because it was my club.”
Roberts gradually became the figurehead of a young and hungry side. The names of Tony Norman, Pete Skipper, Billy Askew, Billy Whitehurst and Roberts ran through much of the 1980s, starring in promotion out of Division Four in 1982-83 and then Division Three two years later.
Don Robinson had brought brushstrokes of colour back to Boothferry Park and it was almost that team who broke the mould when finishing sixth in Division Two under Brian Horton in 1985-86.
“The fact a lot of us grew up together made it a strong group,” said Roberts. “From going into administration and then rebuilding, it gave us all a jolt. We had to work hard and we had to do it as a team, not as individuals.
“You can spot some of those old pros a mile off. There for a quick buck and they’ll clear off. But we had a lot of young lads who’d grown up together.
“You look back and wonder if we’d just been able to add a couple more players whether we’d have been able to make that next step. We had a winning mentality for those few years and we’d been hard to stop. I suppose we’ll never know.”
If Roberts has the occasional daydream of what City could have achieved, he must also wonder how life might have turned out had he opted against staying at Boothferry Park for all of his career.
“There was no agents in those days and if you were a half decent player then the club wouldn’t even tell you anything,” he said.
“I remember having a phone call from Ian Porterfield, who was in charge of Sheffield United at the time. Keith Edwards had told me they were keen. Sheffield United were pretty much on a par with us at the time and you questioned if the grass would be greener.
“Chelsea were another to show an interest, Middlesbrough as well. But it never felt right to leave.”
Roberts classes Horton’s side, including the likes of Alex Dyer and Frankie Bunn, as the best City brought together during his time but it soon became apparent that a slide was underway by the end of the 1980s.
The short reigns of Eddie Gray, Colin Appleton and Stan Ternent ultimately led to City suffering relegation in the same summer Roberts was told his time with the Tigers was up.
“I still regret that my career finished so early,” he added. “I was 30. I still thought I had three or four years left. I still made almost 500 appearances for the club and yet here I am saying I wish it could’ve gone on for longer.
“I played my last game in December 1990, Charlton away. I turned my body but my studs and ankle didn’t move. My knee just went.
“I was bitter about how it all ended after that. My contract was due to run out in the June and that was it, I never played again.
“I just had a letter from the club saying thanks for your service. That stuck in my throat for a while. It was all over in a sentence or a paragraph. You ask ‘was that all I was worth?’ But football clubs quickly move on. That’s just the way it was.”
Roberts’ time with City did not have a fairytale ending but for the local lad who achieved so much the separation cannot taint all that went before.
“I was fortunate enough to spend my career with the club I’d grown up supporting,” he adds. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”