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Hudson: my soft spot for Stoke

FA Cup fifth round: For an old-timer's sake, Chelsea will be knocked out today – by the other great club in his life

Ronald Atkin
Sunday 16 February 2003 01:00 GMT
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Considering he was born in Chelsea, still lives there and played with distinction for the football team, Alan Hudson harbours an alarmingly low opinion of anything to do with Stamford Bridge. Which is why he is hoping that Stoke City, the other big club in his career, will beat Chelsea in the FA Cup this afternoon.

"It's a match that captures my imagination because I have played for both of them against each other in cup-ties," said Hudson as he settled himself at the bar of the Conservative Club on the King's Road, a slight wince betraying the pain he still endures from the accident which nearly killed him five years ago. Portraits of the last three Tory leaders gazed down at us from the wall, Major and Hague smiling, Thatcher with the sort of look indicating possible disquiet at Hudson's choice of dress – jeans held up by bright red braces worn on the outside of a multi-hued shirt.

"As long as Stoke don't go a goal behind too early it should be a great tie," he said. "I would like them to win because the fans I had such good rapport with have been starved since the heady days of the Seventies, when we topped the League." Hudson, who continues to write a twice-weekly column for the Stoke evening paper, makes regular journeys north to see his 15-year-old son and take him to a match. Does he still enjoy watching the game? "I enjoy watching a good game," he corrected. Good games used to revolve around the genius of Alan Hudson, who joined Chelsea as a 13-year-old and graduated into a first team who drank with as much dedication as they played. Eventually the manager, Dave Sexton, could take no more.

"He kicked me out of the club without my feet touching the floor, me and Peter Osgood. We were no worse than anybody else but at the time they needed money to build a new stand and I think he sat down with the chairman and said: 'Let's get rid of these two, they're troublemakers'. They got relegated, just goes to show. It served them right."

This bitterness lingers. He no longer even goes to Stamford Bridge after a steward turned him away last season from the after-match drink to which he had been invited by Sunderland's then manager, Peter Reid.

Hudson was snapped up by that wise old bird Tony Waddington for a then staggering £240,000. Though Hudson was still only 22 there were misgivings at Stoke. "I think the directors were thinking: 'Dear oh Lord', but Tony put his neck on the line for me. When I left Chelsea my dad said the move would do me a favour, get me away from the pubs in London. But there were more pubs up there. I drank more at Stoke but I trained harder, because I wanted to repay Waddington for what he had done for me."

Hudson rapidly found out Waddington's intentions. "When I turned up at training he put me in a different-coloured shirt to the others and told them to pass it to me all the time. I thought, 'Oh no, he has just slaughtered me'. But I responded to it. What in fact Waddington did was to make me the first English quarterback, which I didn't realise until I went to play in America. He never questioned that I didn't score a lot of goals because I did so much of the other work."

The team responded to their quarterback, beating Liverpool and ending Leeds' great unbeaten run. Sir Geoff Hurst, who had also moved to Stoke from London and who became, at Waddington's insistence, Hudson's landlord, says Alan was "one of the finest attacking midfield players of his generation. With the right attitude he would have been one of the greats of world football".

Attitude, and an inclination towards forthright opinion, kept Hudson out of the England side until he made a sensational debut against West Germany in 1975, earning comparisons with Franz Beckenbauer. Despite that, he played only once more for his country, against Cyprus. Hudson thinks it was because the England manager, Don Revie, harboured a grudge from his Leeds days against anyone who had been at Chelsea.

After four years and against his will, in 1977 Hudson was sold to Arsenal. "I had got a big tax bill, couldn't pay it, so I told Tony if he paid the tax I owed I would sign for 10 years and let him knock the money off my wages. But the roof had just blown off the Stoke stand and they were uninsured, so he said the bank wouldn't let him have the money."

At Highbury, Hudson rubbed along no better with the manager, Terry Neill, than he had done with Sexton and Revie. "I have been called rebellious but I am certainly not a troublemaker, never have been. I just can't stand fools in false positions, but I do it the wrong way, I just walk away, which I did at Arsenal. I just couldn't work with Terry. I used to argue with him twice a week. I was never happy, never fitted in. Because of a bad midriff strain I couldn't train and I was only a quarter of the player I had been."

The bust-up came when Hudson accused Neill of being responsible for Arsenal's 1978 Cup final defeat by Ipswich, after which he went off to play in American soccer with Seattle Sounders, returning four years later for second spells with Chelsea and Stoke, where his career was ended in 1986 by a knee injury.

It was just before Christmas 1997 that Hudson was mown down by a car in Mile End Road as he stepped off the pavement. He was later told he was a testimony to what the human body is capable of surviving. Because of internal bleeding and gangrene he came close to having both legs amputated. "Waking up in hospital and finding I had no legs would have been curtains for me," he said quietly. "There would have been no point going on.

"My legs have been my saviour, I owe my legs so much." Then, pulling up his trousers to reveal an ankle brace, Hudson added: "The only thing that doesn't work now is my right foot. That was the foot I could put the ball through the eye of a needle with. Isn't life strange? But I can't see the point of feeling sorry for myself. I worked incredibly hard to get over this, and I'm still working at it. I never think why it didn't happen to someone else, to someone like Saddam."

No doubt Alan Hudson will have a similar quip or two today when he is a pre-match guest of honour in the Britannia Stadium's Waddington Suite. And afterwards? "They've got a nice little spot in that suite where you can sit and watch the match out of the window and it's right by the bar. You pull this curtain back and there's everyone out there in the cold and you're sitting having a drink. Lovely."

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