"In January 1980, I turned up at Vale Park to discover that I had walked into a ‘land that time forgot’ scenario. Far from being somewhere, I would actually end up spending almost 20 years, in this place that seemed more like a throwback to when I started my fledgling career in the late 1950s. Given that Vale Park had been (part-)built in the very late 1940s and opened in 1950, and had barely been touched since, this wasn’t far off the truth."
"John McGrath was a very big, imposing man who, I felt, dwarfed me, as he enthusiastically laid out his plans during our long chat. He explained that he really needed someone who knew the Third and Fourth Divisions well and had some experience of coaching; he was basically describing me. This, I felt, was very shrewd and I could see immediately how I would dovetail with him, both in that way and in terms of personality."
"Vale, like Crewe, were near the bottom of the Fourth Division, yet John was incredibly ambitious for the club and wanted it to live up to the ground’s nickname of ‘the Wembley of the North’ which had been coined on its opening due to the extremely wide pitch, the second-widest in the Football League. This gave me ideas about coaching wingers, a position I had played quite a bit myself and had also benefitted from their service when playing as a striker."
"The strange thing is John actually completely overawed me with his enthusiasm about what he was going to do at Port Vale. By the end of the meeting, I thought we’d be winning the European Cup within five years! He was so overwhelming, that after telling his wife, Del, about it, she said to me later, ‘John, I can’t understand why, but you don’t seem enthusiastic enough about the job. Do you really want to take it?"
"Bear in mind she was also thinking about moving our family from our idyllic life on the south coast to the Midlands. But it wasn’t that I was unsure at all, what had happened was that John had overpowered me with what he planned to do so much that it had knocked me for six. It felt like I was being apprehensive, when, in fact, I was struggling to process his vigorous determination that we would succeed when both history and everything I had seen on my visit to the club suggested the opposite."
"However, there was one clinching factor that I kept coming back to; not inspiring the players to win trophies, not finishing off the shoddy ground, not the challenge of turning round one of the lowest-placed clubs in the Football League, not even John’s inspirational, if challenging, enthusiasm … ultimately, I took the job because I was sold on the fact that the contract came with my first club car, an 1100cc Lada, which apparently had just the one previous careful lady owner, low mileage and was reputed to have a good heater (well, according to director Don Ratcliffe, club director, who owned the garage the car came from)."
"So, yes, a second-hand Lada changed my life. To have a club car as an assistant at that time was quite something. Don’t knock Ladas, they’re very good cars. OK, they weren’t in 1980, but this was Port Vale – my club car clearly wasn’t going to be in the Jaguar class, now, was it? Moving also meant we would have to part with our beloved beach hut. It wasn’t the best swap deal I’ve done in my career …"
"You may not be surprised to hear that the car turned out to be rubbish. I mean really bloody awful. I remember driving that Lada to Southampton once to have a look at a player, as John McGrath made me travel down to watch this potential target he had been tipped the wink about at his former club. I can’t even remember who it was now, as we didn’t sign him. He clearly wasn’t that memorable."
"Far more unforgettable was the diabolical journey I had in that car. In fact, I recall it as clear as day even now as some kind of dystopian nightmare. It was a heck of a long trip, especially on the way home after the game, with the Lada clanking and phutting all the way back to the Potteries. That car nearly was the death of me. I was constantly amazed that it got me anywhere. Another reason I joined Port Vale was that, being located in the heart of the country, I felt the club was part of a ‘hotbed’ of soccer, in stark contrast to Torquay. However, that was the only thing hot about the Potteries. On my first day in the job, Del and I left Torquay in a balmy 18 degrees at 6am, but by the time we had reached north Staffordshire it felt like Ice Station Zebra. The temperature had dropped about 12 degrees, there was a wicked wind whipping in off the Staffordshire Moors and Burslem itself looked like a set from a mid-19th-century Arnold Bennett drama of the kind the BBC often put on in the 1970s and 80s. It was bloody freezing!"
"I remember stopping in Burslem town centre and dropping Del off, advising her to walk down Waterloo Road to Hanley, to do some shopping while I took training with John McGrath. I arranged to meet her back in the same place about 3.30pm. At the appointed time, I proudly drove up in my clanking Lada, heater on full blast, to find my wife at the side of the road looking simultaneously freezing and dazed. ‘Are you alright, love?’ I enquired breezily, flushed with the buzz of taking a first session as coach. Del looked me in the eye and simply said, ‘What the hell have you brought me to?’"
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | John Robert Rudge | ||
| Date of birth | 21 October 1944 | ||
| Place of birth | Wolverhampton, England | ||
| Height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) | ||
| Position(s) | Forward | ||
| Youth career | |||
| 1959–1961 | Huddersfield Town | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1961–1966 | Huddersfield Town | 5 | (0) |
| 1966–1969 | Carlisle United | 50 | (16) |
| 1969–1972 | Torquay United | 96 | (34) |
| 1972–1975 | Bristol Rovers | 70 | (17) |
| 1975–1977 | AFC Bournemouth | 21 | (2) |
| Total | 242 | (69) | |
| Managerial career | |||
| 1983–1999 | Port Vale | ||
| *Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
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