Too Many Crooks

Ian’s ferry mishap

After beating off The Sun in a vicious bidding war, The Gaffer is proud to announce our serialisation of Ian Crook’s autobiography, Too Many Crooks. The ex-Norwich hero’s book promises to lift the lid on a tumultuous career, and a much-anticipated chapter will unveil “The truth about Robert Fleck”. This week, Ian reveals all about the day the Canaries lost 1-0 at Carlisle in 1992.

Picture the scene: Me, Rob Ullathorne and Jeremy Goss stark bollock on the top deck of a P&O ferry to Calais. We’d only gone out for one to wet Gossy’s baby’s head and 12 hours later all we had to hide our shame were three betting slips for the 3:40 at Kempton. It was lucky it was a cold morning, if you get my drift.

Well, Gossy wasn’t going to stand around and admire the view. “Looks like Holsten Pils for breakfast, boys,” he said, strolling off to find the bar. That’s when Ullers reminded me that we had to be in Carlisle six hours later for a Rumbelows cup replay. “Shit,” I said. We would never make it.

We arrived at the bar to find Gossy sat at a table dressed in a chef’s outfit, tucking into a full English. Fried bread, two rounds of toast, black pudding, the works. He’d offered a waitress his betting slip in exchange for a cup of tea. She said she’d give him a fry-up, if he put some bloody clothes on!

We filled Gossy in about Carlisle and before you could say “lucky volley against Bayern Munich”, he had run up to the Captain’s cabin and told him to turn the ship around. Well, it was a stroke of luck that the Captain was a Canary. Before we knew it he’d turned the ferry arse-about-face and we were heading back to Dover. It cost us a few comp tickets to the following week’s home match with Wimbledon, but luckily Gossy’s wife wouldn’t need hers, she had a kid to look after.

Back on land, hitching a lift up the A20 in the pissing rain wasn’t as easy. We were there for a good 45 minutes (plus injury time!) before a bloke in a Micra finally pulled up. Lovely bloke, tyre salesman on his way to Scotland, wouldn’t stop asking us questions about Bryan Gunn. He turned out to be an Ipswich fan, and there was a bit of banter on that trip, I don’t mind telling you. But he said he would feel bad if he didn’t drop us to the gate of Brunton Park.

There was a bit of traffic but we finally made it to the ground 10 minutes before kick-off, stinking of alcohol and dressed in the Captain’s spare sailors outfits. The look on Mike Walker’s face was priceless.

“Where have you boys been?” said the Gaffer.

“Sorry, we thought you said Calais not Carlisle” said Gossy, daft as a brush as always, and all the lads had a big laugh.

Needless to say the Gaffer was livid.

Next time Ian reveals all about when Ruel Fox missed a sitter in training.

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