Gerrard: My Autobiography Read Online Free PDF Page A

Knowsley Boys, and that was key. Liverpool Boys teams were better run. The scouts at Liverpool and Everton knew that and always went talent-spotting at Liverpool Boys games. Cardinal Heenan was the only place for me.
    Having picked my secondary school for footballing reasons, I still had to endure lessons there. Cardinal Heenan was massive – more than 1,300 boys. I didn’t want to go at first, even with the knowledge that the football would be good. Night after night, I cried. The idea of moving among so many strangers horrified me. Cardinal Heenan was three miles from home – another country in my mind. But Mum and Dad persuaded me it would be best for my football. Reluctantly, I went. I needed time to settle, for it to become a familiar scenario in my life.
    By the third year, I was on the back of the bus from the Bluebell with the boys, the whole atmosphere buzzing, loving it. For this was the first time Mum let me go to school on my own. I was thirteen and it was brilliant. Christ, I felt grown up. I left Ironside with my bus money and dinner money jangling in my pocket, feeling like a king, strutting down the Bluebell streets. I’d knock on the door of a couple of mates, Terry Smith and Sean Dillon, and the three of us would head on to the bus-stop, striding along like the top gang in town. Sean was a nightmare, late every day. Terry and me chucked stones at Sean’sbedroom window to get him up at quarter to nine. Sometimes we got so annoyed we threw the stones really hard. A few shards of broken glass around Sean’s bedroom would sort out his lousy time-keeping. When we finally got Sean out of his house, there would be a mad dash to the bus. All three of us, school-bags dangling, legs racing, sprinting down the road, laughing our heads off. Great times. Sean is a bricklayer now, doing well. I see Terry often. He’s a huge Everton fan. So we have some banter.
    When Sean, Terry and I reached Cardinal Heenan, the day revolved around waiting for the two play-times of 25 minutes each and the hour-long dinner-time. I spent all day thinking about football. I loved PE with Mr Chadwick. Unfortunately, we never did football all the time and I used to get a cob on if it was rugby, gymnastics or cricket. I wanted football, indoor or on the field. Or tennis. I was quite warm at tennis. At Cardinal Heenan we played short tennis, with a smaller net and these wooden bats. We decorated our bats with the Nike Swoosh or Adidas stripes to see who had the tastiest bat. But football remained the main subject on my personal curriculum.
    Cardinal Heenan wasn’t rough. Just a few fights in the playground now and again, a few big boys who were the so-called Cocks. I had my own gang and we looked out for each other. The odd fight erupted and I would be in the midst of it, throwing punches, standing my ground. No-one was going to push me around. Older boys, bigger boys, no-one. I suffered the occasional split lip from a punch I failed to dodge, but my uniform tended to bemore spattered with mud than blood. I was always throwing myself around on the pitch, covering myself in dirt. I lived for those moments. Lessons were just the dead time between games.
    When it came to class-work, though, I wasn’t thick. All the way through Cardinal Heenan, I was in the middle academically. Different subjects provoked different moods. If I wasn’t doing well at maths, I despised it and hated going to the lesson. But if I was flying in English, and our brilliant lady teacher helped me, I wouldn’t mind it. I enjoyed creative writing, making up stories. I wrote about how one day I’d win the World Cup. I liked messing about with words. Reading, too. My favourite book at school was
Of Mice and Men
. It’s quite a sad story when you get to know the characters. I read
Of Mice and Men
from cover to cover so many times the book almost fell apart. We watched the story on video, did a project on it, and an exam on it. When GCSEs arrived I got a C in English,