Fergie’s ‘first fledgling’ on the brutal realities he faced at Man Utd – and making it better

Boarding the No 94 bus at 6.30am, Alan Tonge had a spring in his step. Fresh out of school, it was the first day of the rest of his life. As an apprentice at Manchester United, he would be living the dream.

By the time he took the bus home that evening, a few of his illusions had been… if not shattered then at least damaged.

For one thing, his watch, a 16th birthday present from his parents, had been stolen from the dressing room, which immediately left Tonge questioning whether he could trust his fellow apprentices and team-mates.

For another thing, the environment felt brutal, bordering on hostile. It seemed the apprentices’ role was as much dogsbody as trainee footballer. If they weren’t cleaning the dressing rooms, the showers and the first-team players’ boots, they were being yelled at by the coaches, the senior players or the second-year apprentices, all part of a strict social hierarchy.

And that was before he and his fellow apprentices were subjected to the various dark, sinister rituals that were justified as “initiations” or, after a mock trial, as punishments for shoddy workmanship: 16-year-olds being forced to climb onto a medical bed and simulate sex in front of braying older players; being bundled into the tumble dryer for a spin; being pinned down as balls were smashed at them from close range; being forced to run outside naked and do a lap of the changing block; being held down while boot polish was smeared over their body using a wire brush, often leaving abrasions on their skin.

Tonge, second from the right on the front row of United’s 1990 FA Youth Cup photo above, is not the first footballer apprentice from the 1980s and early 1990s to recount these stories of a harsh, at times fearsome climate.

But when that culture has been described by players who went on to achieve greatness at United — Gary Neville, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs in their autobiographies and the Class of 92 documentary — it has at times been rationalised or mythologised as an experience that made them stronger, helping them develop the thick skin and mental toughness to be able to face up to anything, even a Champions League night in Milan or Turin.

The experience sounds very different when it is recalled by others such as Tonge, who talks of a “toxic masculinity” and a “bullying culture” that soon began to “conflict with your identity”.

It sounds like something from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. But Tonge, who never played a first-team game for United but went on to achieve a BSc degree in sports science, a master’s degree in philosophy and a PhD, studying the psychological challenges players face before, during and after a professional football career, opts for a different literary reference.

“I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities by (Charles) Dickens and the way that started: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’,” he tells The Athletic. “That’s how it felt as a young footballer in those days. That same paradox: ‘It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness.’”

This paradox has formed the basis not just of Tonge’s studies, after a football career cut short by injury, but of his new book From Red to Read: The Story of Fergie’s First Fledgling.

The “first fledging” part refers to his proud claim to be the first signing of Sir Alex Ferguson’s 26-year tenure at United: signing schoolboy forms and a two-year YTS contract as a 14-year-old in January 1987, two months after the Scot’s arrival at Old Trafford.

But he was stuck between generations: the group known as “Fergie’s Fledglings” who broke through in the late 1980s (Lee Sharpe, Lee Martin, Russell Beardsmore, Mark Robins and others) and the now-legendary “Class of 92” (Neville, Beckham, Giggs, Paul Scholes et al). He left United at the age of 19 with his only first-team appearances coming in friendly matches. He moved to Exeter City, where he was forced to retire from professional football three years later due to a chronic back problem.

Tonge’s book is not a misery memoir or an attempt to rewrite history. There is no trace of resentment towards the club or the players who went on to achieve greatness. His love for United and his admiration for those players shines through, as does his pride in being a member of the club’s former players association.

But the more he has reflected on his own experiences and studied others’, the more he has concluded that the environment faced by young footballers in the 1980s and 1990s — not least at United — was wrong.

“I honestly don’t know where that stuff came from,” he says of the bullying, punishments and initiations. “I don’t know why it was like that. You’re entering a football club for the first time, straight out of school, 16 years old, an apprentice at Manchester United, the club I supported, the biggest club in the world, and I found myself sitting on that bus home thinking, ‘I’m not sure I like this. Is there anything else I could be doing?’”

The way the coaches addressed the players could be brutal too. The late Eric Harrison is rightly revered as a great developer of young talent, but Tonge recounts an occasion when, aged 15, yet to start his apprenticeship, he played in an under-18 match at Crewe Alexandra and found himself subjected to a “vitriolic” verbal assault in the dressing room afterwards.

“Eric absolutely tore me to shreds,” he says. “It ended with, ‘You’re f***ing useless’, ‘You’re a f***ing disgrace’. As a 15-year-old, still at school, playing in an under-18 game, leaving that dressing room, I was left thinking, ‘Who can I talk to?’

“A few days later, Eric apologised. He said he had gone over the top. But he also said, ‘It’s for your own good.’ And I remember walking away thinking, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’”

This approach was not unique to Harrison or United. It was rife in English football for years. Many coaches were “drill sergeant” types who ruled by fear. Nobody questioned it. Nobody dared.

Looking back, Tonge says that tirade, as well as other moments during his three years at United, left a “deep scar”.

He wonders whether the plan was to “try to break us down to build back up in their image”. But some players simply felt broken. He cites the example of the late Adrian Doherty, who joined United as an outstanding 16-year-old prospect, on a par with Giggs, but soon fell out of love with football, dismayed and disenchanted by numerous aspects of an apprentice’s existence.

Tonge does not present himself as a talent on a par with Doherty, Giggs, Beckham, Scholes and others. But he feels he was inhibited, rather than inspired, by the environment he encountered at United.

“I felt a bit closed up, I think, terrified of making a mistake,” he says. “At the Cliff (the club’s former training ground), Eric and the coaches used to watch the youth-team games through the upstairs window of the main building. If you made an error or gave the ball away, you would hear this banging on the window and then Eric would come sprinting down to the touchline and be shouting expletives at you.

“I knew if I made an error, I would face that wrath. I think it closed me up as a footballer and made me play safely rather than try things.”

The threat of the coaches’ wrath didn’t stop Beckham from trying what the coach would call “Hollywood passes” or stop Giggs from running at his opponent time after time. But these were generational talents with the self-confidence to match.

Tonge remembers Giggs, aged 15, joining his age group for an under-18 tournament in Italy and showing not the slightest sense of inhibition on the pitch or off it. His talent was extreme, but so did his character. “Nothing seemed to faze him,” Tonge says. “He was very down to earth and didn’t say a lot, but you could see he was confident in himself. His persona was almost cold and assassin-like.”

For those not blessed with such rare talent or self-assurance, the environment could be stifling.

It was the nature of a football apprenticeship in the early 1990s: on one hand, the drill-sergeant approach; on the other hand, when the coaches’ backs were turned, an anarchic dressing-room environment which left players feeling degraded and humiliated.

As Tonge says, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Three years after a low-key departure from United, Tonge’s professional football career was over. He had started well at Exeter, winning their young player of the year award in 1992-93, but a serious back issue forced him to retire at the age of 22, leaving him facing a bleak future.

The way the football industry chewed him up and spat him out left him feeling he had wasted years chasing a dream that had now been shattered. An early retirement insurance pay-out of £7,500 ($9,500) softened the blow in the short term but, even in 1994, it would not go far.

He describes the next few years as a period of “mental torture”, spending too much time in the pub and the bookmakers’, “making bad choices”, drifting, in need of an anchor, living through what he now recognises as a depression. “I was completely lost,” he says.

He spent several years working in a warehouse and driving a delivery van. But he felt he needed a greater purpose in his post-football life. A gifted student in his schooldays, he had abandoned his studies to chase a dream. He had quickly concluded that being seen as a “brainbox” would do nothing for his prospects of a breakthrough at United.

Aged 28, he decided to re-engage with learning, enrolling as a mature student to do a sports science degree. It was, he says, “the best decision I’ve ever made”.

It helped Tonge to understand and come to terms with some of his own experiences. But it also fuelled a desire to draw on those experiences to try to bring greater understanding across an industry which, he says, was still stuck in the dark ages.

A lecturer at the University Campus of Football Business, Tonge is now Dr Alan Tonge

One theme he was fascinated by was the loss of personal identity — whether within the system, due to the pressure to conform, or upon falling out of the system. He describes the anguish so many youngsters face when they fail to live up to their own expectations, let alone those of friends, family or an entire community that invested so much hope in that player.

Another was that of the “critical moments” and “transitional points” players face — injuries, loss of form or favour, internal or external criticism, changes of manager or environment, difficult relationships, issues in their private lives, financial issues, retirement, that loss of identity — and whether the support network is there to prepare them for and navigate through those difficult times.

Tonge concluded that, while there is far greater support than three decades ago, particularly at academy level, many players still don’t know where to turn. Or even if they do know where to turn, they are worried about the consequences of doing so.

Via questionnaires and interviews, he elicited the opinions of more than 200 footballers, some of them retired, on a variety of matters.

Times change — social-media criticism is one of the great anxieties of the modern-day player — but what struck Tonge was how many other players’ experiences chimed with his own and how few of them had dared to ask for support, either within the club or externally.

“A really high percentage said they found it difficult to talk openly to managers, coaches, team-mates etc about things they’re going through and preferred to try to work things out for themselves,” Tonge says. “Even now, in what we think of as modern, more supportive football environments, there is still a tendency not to show vulnerability.”

Why is that? “Partly because the rewards can be so high,” he says. “And because, if you start to say you’re struggling in one way or another, there are people who see that as weakness, which leaves you feeling more vulnerable.”

Similar applies in certain other working environments, but Tonge feels this is taken to an extreme in football, particularly lower down the leagues where contracts are short, job security is so fragile and the threat of “deselection” is terrifying.

“Even now, you don’t really hear many footballers talking about working with psychologists to help manage their emotions or build their confidence in their work — like you do in golf, tennis and other sports,” he says. “It’s as if footballers either don’t want to get help or they’re not comfortable talking about getting help. There’s still a tendency not to show vulnerability. I think that’s quite sad, to be honest.”

There are areas in which the football academy system has improved immeasurably in the decades since Tonge set out at United. He talks of the creation of specific player-care roles, focusing on well-being and after-care. Coaching-wise, the drill-sergeant approach has largely died out. These days, initiations and dressing-room punishments tend to revolve around karaoke rather than the appalling rituals of the past.

Now 52, Tonge wonders if in some aspects things have gone too far the other way. Like others from that generation of players, he feels all those hours spent doing menial jobs — cleaning dressing rooms, showers and boots for the senior players — taught him and his fellow apprentices certain “values” and a sense of humility that he feels would benefit today’s academy players.

He talks of Aristotle and the need to find a “golden mean”. “We don’t want environments to be too harsh and too ruthless, like in our day, but we don’t want them to be too soft and cushy either,” he says. “There’s always a worry that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, where players are treated almost with kid gloves. You’ve got to get the right balance where they are prepared for their resilience to be tested — but without some of the stuff we had to deal with.”

We keep coming back to the word “identity”. As a boy, as a teenager, as a young man, Tonge feels his identity — both in his own mind and in others’ minds — was bound up in his ambition to become a footballer for United.

His sense of identity was challenged during that difficult period as an apprentice at the club he loved. After his career was ended just a few years later, he says, his sense of identity was “obliterated”.

He hadn’t realised it at the time, but abandoning his studies as a teenager, in pursuit of a football career, had been symbolic of that stripping away of his identity. Going back to college more than a decade later, putting on a metaphorical gown, symbolised a new identity as he began to put those shattered dreams behind him.

Graduation felt like coming full circle, but it was the start of a journey rather than the end. He became a lecturer at the University Campus of Football Business  — even if going to work at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium took some getting used to. Being awarded a PhD, becoming Dr Alan Tonge, was something beyond his wildest dreams when he started out. So too was writing an autobiography.

He bumped into Ferguson at a dinner for the former players association a few years back. He wasn’t sure whether the Scot would remember him, given how many young players had come and gone through the doors at Old Trafford in the decades since.

But of course he did — and they soon found themselves reminiscing about old times and old players. And then, upon meeting Tonge’s son Sam, an aspiring footballer at the time, Ferguson joked, “I hope you’re a better player than your dad was.”

There was a time when such a remark would have devastated Tonge, before he had made peace with his journey in football.

But by the time he was reacquainted with Ferguson, having rediscovered his sense of identity, he could afford to laugh. It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. And he can treasure the fonder memories while learning — and helping football, as an industry, to learn — from the many ways in which things were not and still are not quite as they should be.

From Red to Read: The Story of Fergie’s First Fledgling, by Alan Tonge, is out on March 4 from Pitch Publishing

(Top image: Manchester United before a 1990 FA Youth Cup semi-final: Back row, left to right Mark Bosnich, Ryan Giggs, Darren Ferguson, Paul Sixsmith, Jason Lydiate, Sean McAuley. Front row, left to right Mark Gordon, Craig Lawton, Lee Costa, Alan Tonge, Adrian Doherty; Photo Manchester United via Getty Images)