We had to queue up for naked soapy massages. I was 11... and he was NOT alone
NEIL KERTON was just 11 when he first encountered the man who would try to steal his childhood innocence. ‘I went to a residential football camp in Deal in Kent,’ he recalled. ‘Kids aged from ten to 14 stayed in a dilapidated Army camp and trained every day. One evening we were all told to queue up outside this hut with just towels around us and each of us went in and had a soapy water massage with no clothes on.’
But the man – a member of staff at Southampton FC – was not acting alone on this occasion.
‘There were four coaches there. We were told this was what professional footballers do to recover after matches. “It’s all part of getting the muscles to relax.”’
There is no suggestion the other coaches were Southampton staff.
‘As an 11-year-old, if there’s another 30 kids there doing it and accepting it then you just go along with it.’
Two years later, Neil signed schoolboy forms for Southampton and was to spend the next three years unable to avoid his alleged abuser, who has been credited with bringing through players such as Alan Shearer, Matt Le Tissier and Francis Benali.
So complete was the man’s manipulation of his young target, he even befriended Mr Kerton’s parents, Margaret and Colin, and would offer to drive their son to training. ‘He and his wife became very friendly with my mum and dad and would see them socially,’ he said.
‘He’d say, “I want Neil to do some extra training on a Saturday”, and we’d be training on a Friday so he’d say: “It makes sense for him to come back and stay at mine.”
‘In the eyes of my mum and dad that was brilliant because it saved them driving up the country.
‘That’s when it got a bit odd,’ adds Mr Kerton. ‘I’d be in his car and we were driving along and next thing you know he’d get you to put your head in his lap. I’d be in the passenger seat laying across and I’m in a frozen state and I’m pretty sure he’s half playing with himself, trying to slide his hands down your back.
‘A couple of times he tried putting his hands down my pants but I’d just sit bolt upright. There’d be situations at his house where he’d be watching TV and he’d be lolloping over you on the sofa with his leg over you.’
Mr Kerton was thought of as one of the most gifted footballers in an intake which included current Bolton Wanderers manager Phil Parkinson. ‘He was in charge of my destiny,’ says Kerton, ‘When I was nearly 15, I became really good mates with two or three of the other lads I played with and we’d start having a bit of a play fight.
‘I remember we went to Sweden for a tournament and he said: “What’s all this I hear about you wanting to have a bit of rough and tumble with these two lads? Why don’t you ever want to mess about with me then?” I just pushed my way past him.
‘The whole time in Sweden he was pretty horrible to me,’ he says. ‘At 16, I got the call to tell me I was being released. But within three days I’d signed for Portsmouth. I remember [manager] Alan Ball saying, “I don’t understand why you’ve not been taken on by Southampton but it’s obviously to our benefit.”’
Mr Kerton says he holds Southampton partly responsible for not intervening. ‘There were definitely things going on that the club must have realised about,’ he says. ‘It went on for quite a few years, so apprentices would be in and around the ground, lads of 16, 17, 18 talking about it and someone must’ve heard. I think the club were aware of it.
‘There was a lad of 13 who had a breakdown. That might’ve been nothing to do with it, but lads of 13 don’t normally have breakdowns,’ adds Mr Kerton.