Trevor Francis – More Than Just a Player to Me

Affers who originally set up J&S, sent this wonderful tribute to TF to me today. I hope you enjoy it.

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“Dad…”
“Yes, mate?”
“Was TF better than Pele?”
“…”
“Well?”
”… No”
“Maradona? George Best?”
“No…”
“Nigel Gleghorn?”
“Yes, he was better than Nigel Gleghorn…”

To my young brain I couldn’t compute why TF was held on such a pedestal. That said, he must’ve been good if he was better than Nigel Gleghorn. I knew it was my job, as a Blues fan, to adore and love Trev – and to argue the point with anyone who dared disagree – that Trev was the best player anyone had ever seen. This is despite my dad confiding in me that technically, he wasn’t. This was a tough ask growing up early 1990s Kingstanding. I was one of about 5 Blues fans in a large inner city comprehensive. The rest were… well… them.

And this is where my origin story begins.

When the news broke of TF’s passing yesterday evening Australia time, it left me in a state of something resembling shock. I’ve experienced sporting icons passing away before and it’s always tremendously sad. But this one, this one felt personal. Maybe because I’d spent so long of my apprenticeship as a Blues fan learning about TF – or maybe it’s because it taught me the importance of loyalty when it comes to football and community. But people became misty-eyed and almost went into a sitcom-like dream sequence when recounting having seen TF play.

But for me, TF and that period in the 1990s was so closely linked to my own well-being and recovery that I become misty-eyed in a different way. It’s hard to shed a tear when on a certain level of anti-depressant however it was hard not to feel choked up when seeing how quickly the shrine had gone up at St Andrews last night. And steadily I’ve read report after report about TF and watched video after video about his exploits, people’s grief interspersed with renditions of KRO and the like from matchdays that I haven’t been fortunate enough to be at since emigrating across the world some 15 years ago.

These days I work in mental health and I often talk to people about finding a reason, finding a purpose. What’s the thing? What’s the shiny thing that provides a spark? That thing that makes you feel something, that makes you feel connected and makes you want to recover from whatever travails you are going through. For me, at that time, it was Trevor and the teams that he built.

It was the fact that now I had my own TF stories to tell people about, in the same way my dad had with me. I remember coming home from games and talking about how Trev had killed the ball stone dead with the outside of his boot with little effort on the touchline – still the best player in the stadium. Or going to Wast Hills and seeing TF sprint across the pitch to steal a tap in off a player and celebrate like it meant something. Or frantically pressing refresh on my Netscape browser when he resigned for those 24 hours.

I still have all of those programmes and all of those fanzines – I wrote for some of them. When I moved to Australia, it was the heaviest box to ship but there was just no way I could leave them behind. There were memories of the good, the bad and the ugly – which incidentally was the original name for this blog when I started it off over twenty years ago now.

I don’t really care too much about statistics or how much TF cost as a player. For me it cemented a relationship that has always been rock solid in my world – the thing that I always return to when things are stormy in my own mind.

It’s perhaps no surprise that this week I’ve taken a week off work. Whilst things have greatly improved throughout my life, it somehow seems ironic and fitting that I’m not travelling all that well on the week that TF passes away. Mix that in with being taken over at the right time with Wagner and co and it’s like someone up there is having a bit of a joke at our expense.

I guess what this week has taught me is that football is so much more than 11 people kicking a ball around a pitch. It’s about relationships, it’s about community, it’s about wellness and it’s about connectedness. This week I feel like part of that has slipped away – a key figure in not only the history of BCFC but a personal, unknown to him, motivator and someone who helped me get through some of the darkest times.

For some TF was the nearly man, for others he was the best player they’d ever seen. For me he was the man who transformed us from mediocrity to respectability – a journey I walked alongside in mental health recovery concurrently.

RIP Trev – and thanks for everything.