A Boy’s Own tale of a true footballing artist

Alastair Campbell

Martin Dobson sparked one Burnley fan’s love of the game. Now he hopes that his first novel does the same for a new young generation

Martin Dobson. To any football fan my age – 50 – or over, the name should immediately conjure up an image of a tall, elegant player controlling games from midfield while lesser players chase around, trying to tap his ankles.

He is one of the principal causes of my lifelong devotion to Burnley FC. He is in most Burnley and Everton fans’ all-time best teams. He is also a good quiz question – which England player won five caps under three managers? Answer, “Dobbo” – one under Sir Alf Ramsey, three under Joe Mercer, the caretaker manager, and one under Don Revie, who thereafter, bizarrely, preferred the graft of Gerry Francis to the artistry of Dobson.

Dobson is also a good “where are they now?” question because he has recently taken an unconventional path for an ex-pro. He has been player-manager of Bury, manager of Bristol Rovers, has coached at home and abroad, was director of Bolton Wanderers’ academy for a spell and is also a freelance scout for Ipswich Town. So far so conventional. Less conventionally, he recently became a researcher for the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and is to be found conducting face-to-face interviews for a government labour force survey. Most unconventional of all, he is a novelist.

His first book, Ultimate Goals (Wembley Dream for Jake & Ricky), is aimed at teenage boys, but when I met him scouting at a recent Burnley match he asked me to read it and maybe help him to get some publicity for it. Given the pleasure he gave me during his two spells and 410 games for Burnley, it is the least I can do.

It is the story of two youngsters from very different backgrounds who take very different routes to football success, culminating in a Wembley cup final between their sides. Along the way both suffer ups and downs on and off the field, some of which, such as injury and rejection, Dobson suffered. Others, such as dabbling in drugs and domestic violence, he had to research.

“I’ve never taken drugs in my life, it just wasn’t an issue for players in my time,” Dobson, 59 and a grandfather, says. “So I had to get out and talk to a lot of different people for that part of the book. The football side of the story reflects bits of my own life, I guess.”

Disappointment, he says, is an important part of a footballer’s life. “I think you learn more from failure than you do from success. I was rejected by Bolton as a 19-year-old and I was totally devastated. You just got a letter in those days – ‘Thank you, you’re crap, goodbye’.

“My dad was instrumental in making me feel I still had it in me to make it. I got a second chance at Burnley, who were a fantastic club, and I loved playing there. The manager and coaches were brilliant. We had a motto: ‘Train with a smile on your face and a chuckle in your boots.’ Fabulous times.”

His transfer to Everton in 1974, for a record British transfer fee at the time of £300,000,helped to pay for the new Bob Lord Stand, but it still rankles with older Burnley fans. “I didn’t really know what was going on,” Dobson says. “I got a phone call from the coach one Monday morning saying not to go to training but go to the ground. I was taken to the boardroom and there was Billy Bingham, the Everton manager, and the Everton club secretary, Clive Hassell. Nobody from Burnley was there and none of us had agents back then, and it was basically a done deal.

“I was sad to leave Burnley. To this day I don’t really know the full background, but I had great years at Everton, too, played some of my best football there.”

At Bolton he had been on £14 a week. At Burnley he started on £20, about half of what the club’s international players earned. By the time he left he was up to £120 a week. Everton paid him £150 plus £20 a week towards his pension. Peanuts compared with today’s wages, but although he is still paying off the mortgage on his home near Bolton and his wife, Carole, is working as a catering manager, he has no complaints.

“I don’t feel at all jealous of today’s players,” he says. “They may make a fortune, but then was then and now is now and I just look back and feel blessed that football gave me so many great years, over 600 games, 20 years playing, still involved since. I played for two great clubs, I played for my country, I still have my knees and ankles working and I’m very happy with my lot.

“Some of the old players might feel a bit bitter at what today’s lads make out of the game, but I don’t. The only thing I can’t really get my head around is when they’re on 100,000 quid a week and they’re holding out for £120,000. That really is a different world to ours.”

He runs through a “where are they now?” of his former Burnley team-mates one by one – bookie, brewer, pundit, businessman, stadium builder, after-dinner speaker, teacher, one dead, a couple retired, Mick Docherty, still in the game at Gillingham. “I think most of us have adapted pretty well,” Dobson says. “We’ve probably, all of us, had periods of unemployment. I drove a van for a while, enjoyed it, all a bit different.”

The novel idea came one night as he was sitting talking to Carole. “I just felt this urge to write a book and she said, ‘Come on then, get started.’ I did the first 1,000 words and I quite enjoyed it and then different ideas started to form in my mind as I was driving back from matches after scouting and the characters and the plot started to develop in different directions.

“I wasn’t a big reader at school and I’ve surprised myself that I’ve done it,” he says. “I’d bought books on how to write a book and I started sending off extracts to publishers. To be honest, I thought they’d probably think, ‘Who the hell is he?’ and it’d bomb, but then I got a letter from one of them saying, ‘I like what you’ve sent, can you send me the whole thing?’ ”

The last line of the book, saying that Jake and Ricky’s adventure “had only just begun”, leaves open the possibility of future volumes. “I’ll see how this one goes. It’s not like your book, you know,” he says with a laugh. “I bet they were saying, ‘How many noughts on the cheque, Alastair?’ I was getting loads of noughts, too – the trouble was there was no figure in front of them. I make 69p for every copy sold. But I’m really glad I did it.”

Dobson is relentlessly upbeat and optimistic. Of his work scouting for Ipswich, he says: “It doesn’t make you a living – expenses and a small retainer – but it keeps me in the game, talent-spotting or analysing their opponents. I still love watching football.”

He is just as upbeat about his 22 hours a week working for the ONS. “I feel I’m part of something that can make a difference,” he says. “You’re gathering information about people’s lives that just might help the Government make decisions that help other people’s lives in the future. When I was playing I had a lot of drive and determination and I really wanted to make a good career of it and you do have to be a bit selfish, I think. I’m much more focused now on family and thinking about them and the stuff that really matters.”

Having achieved his goal of writing a novel, he and Carole have set themselves another challenge – to learn Spanish. Do not be surprised if, in volume two, Ricky and Jake move to Real Madrid and Barcelona so Dobbo can put his Spanish to good use.

— Ultimate Goals is published by Sportsbooks, £6.99