This post is uncharted territory for me: A book review. But I’ve been waiting for the book to appear ever since Mick Rathbone mentioned on Twitter that he was doing a sequel to his well-received and now incredibly rare autobiography, The Smell of Football. This was sometime in 2020, I think.
It’s available in print form only, but I saved a very long wait by getting the Brewin’s of north London to scan me a copy and email it. Mick, or Baz as he’s better known, was the assistant manager and physio for Montserrat’s first four games under Willie Donachie in 2018/19, so there was always going to be a chapter about his time here. About his brief time in his adoptive “home,” as he described it.
His four games with the team were incredible. From a standing start, the team had three wins, achieved qualification for League B of the Nation’s League, and was denied qualification for the Gold Cup only by a goal scored with the last kick of the game at home to El Salvador. Rathbone is a big personality and is a great storyteller. His unique style is to tell you what he is thinking in both ordinary and extraordinary moments. It can be quite poignant at times.
A brief conversation with Donachie becomes a moment of zen; seeing the volcano for the first time becomes life-changing, a flight to Antigua in an electric storm becomes a flirtation with inevitable death while suffering the nightmare of a cabin filled with the smell of prawn cocktail puffs. He made not puking on the ferry sound like a momentous achievement.
But Rathbone is a football man, and his respect for the players, the Montserrat coaches, and back-room staff shines through, most of whom get a name check. Even if an administrative error led to him and Spencer Wier-Daley spending a night on an airport floor while everyone else had a stopover in Miami. He has said before that the win over Belize was the greatest team performance he has ever witnessed, and he repeats it here.
His relationship with Donachie sounds like something from a sitcom. Rathbone still can’t believe a group of players who hadn’t played for three years and who he’d never met before, managed to do so well against such established teams. On the other hand, Donachie has said he believed they would win every game. They spent hours walking together, taking in the wonder that is Montserrat and considering the meaning of life. He said that these walks were “some of the best times of my life”. Also, that Donachie is Guru-like and a weirdo.
The players’ only remuneration was compensation for lost wages. But this was their edge. They were free from the risk of failure and its ramifications. They are tough, working men who wanted and demanded total effort from each other. They policed themselves and would call each other out if their standards fell short. They even challenged the manager on tactics and team selection, demanding a more attacking approach against Belize, following Lyle Taylor’s return to the side. Donachie decided to go with the passion and acquiesced.
You can see why Rathbone’s first book is so hard to find these days. His writing is never dull, and having heard him on the radio, I found myself reading his book in his voice. The Montserrat chapter anyway. He is my age, and like me is fighting against the pull of retirement that eventually creeps up on us all. I love his ability to find joy in anything and everything. He is like a footballing Amélie, if I can be permitted to make such a huge cross-cultural leap. Perhaps everyone’s life is an undulating rollercoaster, but we are all too busy to notice.
Another thing I learnt is that Willie Donachie, as well as being a follower of pantheist philosophy, is also a vegan. It’s obvious when you think about it. But he struggled to get a decent cooked breakfast while he was here. If he comes back (and he told me he’d like to) I’m happy to take some of my vegan food experiments up to the MFA’s new dormitory. I did wonder why I had started cooking vegan sausages. Weird spooky things are happening in my life at the moment, but as Willie is quoted in the book as saying: “What is life anyway?”
The Smell of Football 2 is available from The Smell of Football 2 – by Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone Buy it now.
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