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ordinary young bloke who never thought too much about the future at the time. He’d shown talent as a kid, and those who knew him had always said he’d play professional football and he’d gone on to do just that. The achievement had almost been preordained. Redknapp had never had to think about a career;the career had come to him. And like many young men in that situation he had thought himself immortal – that life would somehow stand still and the good times would roll for ever. But eventually the lifestyle found him out; the bottom line was that he didn’t quite have the innate talent – or possibly the desire – of a Bobby Moore who could perform flawlessly week after week, no matter how hard he had been partying. Redknapp was good, but not that good. His sharpness was blunted and the cracks began to show.
    The other phrase that stands out in Redknapp’s self-assessment is ‘Suddenly, whenever you got the ball you were clattered within a split second.’ The key word here is ‘clattered’. In the 1960s and 1970s, by the time the season had reached the winter months many pitches were mud-baths and the balls were heavy and waterlogged; as a result, skinny, nippy wingers like Redknapp did not have the advantage their counterparts do today. Both the ball and the winger got stuck in the pitch, making it easier for opposing full-backs to neutralize their threat – as often as not, by crunching them as hard as possible in the tackle. If the winger didn’t bounce back up immediately, so much the better. A limp made him even less of a problem for the rest of the game.
    And Redknapp was regularly injured; the knee injury that forced him out of English professional football in 1976 was just the last in a long catalogue that had gradually destroyed his pace and effectiveness. Perhaps if he had been playing these days with better pitches, better physiotherapy and higher levels of fitness his career might have fulfilled its early promise, but that’s another story.
    John Sissons has a lot of sympathy for Redknapp. As a fellow winger, he was often on the wrong end of the treatment himself. ‘It was a tough, tough game for a winger,’ he says, ‘especially as you didn’t get much protection from referees. If you went pastsome players, such as Norman Hunter, early in a game they’d make a point of catching up with you a little while later and saying, ‘If you do that again, I’ll break your legs.’ You tried to ignore them and just get on with the game, but it did make you think twice, because you knew they were being serious.’
    The impact of the ‘clattering’ wasn’t just physical. Intimidation is just as much in the mind; a full-back who knows that a forward is going to pull out of any 50-50 ball has a significant advantage. And a few early, heavy tackles – with possibly a yellow card as collateral – can shift the balance even more, with opponents not going for the balls that are 60-40 in their favour. Then the game really is up for the forward, and this is the reason that one old-time West Ham fan gave for the Upton Park crowd turning against Redknapp. ‘We never doubted his ability,’ he said, ‘and no one had a problem with him being a bit of a joker. What annoyed us was the sense we began to get that he just didn’t really fancy it that much. When the chips were down and the studs were flying, he would go AWOL.’
    Football fans can be an unforgiving bunch; they expect things of their players that they wouldn’t dream of doing themselves and offer little thanks for it in return. They demand their players make that potentially career-ending tackle, and when the bone does break or the ligaments do snap, they say, ‘That’s a shocker’, before wondering whom the manager is going to bring on as a substitute and whether the formation will have to be switched. Even before the mega