England Forty-three - Transcription
Well - I was born in Manchester on the 16th of March 1967 - uh Manchester is is a big town - famous for football - either Manchester United or Manchester City - two big footballing teams - I was brought up in a little city called Salford - uh - which is within a city if you can - possibly understand that - uh - Manchester and Salford have their own cathedrals - so - that's why they say it's a city within a city - uh - I was brought up in a middle class family - just on the old cobbled streets - uh - my mother was from Ireland - my father is from England - my mother is from a place in - Ireland called Sligo - on the west coast of Ireland - uh - a little town called Tubbercurry which was - uh - out in the west - nothing really going through there - maybe one bus a day - a really really old town - (and) she come over to Manchester when she was 16 - lived there for a while - then moved to London - and met my father - and that produced me - so I mean - I basically started off - going to the local primary schools - my brothers and sisters - uh - three brothers and one sister - you know - then I started - uh - into the sports when I was very young - probably five or six - uh - started off in goal - uh - in soccer - as in football in England soccer in America - and then - as from there I got into athletics - I like my running - which I enjoyed a lot - and then it just - uh - one thing led to another with the football - I wasn't really interested in the football - for a long while - it was just more or less the running and the - the athletics part of it - which was very interesting for me 'cause it was a kind of - a loner sport and I and I liked to be alone I was a very shy lad - so I didn't mind - uh - running on my own - and running in competitions - against other people so - it was very interesting - and then - I remember one day playing for the school - uh - the primary school was playing football for the primary school and - the teacher turned around and said you've got a bit of a talent mr Phelan - I said a bit of a talent what what would that be - football - soccer as they say - so I said well I only play it for fun - my ma- main reas- sport is - athletics - so he said - well maybe you should try playing football a a little bit better - a little bit more - so I said well I only play in the playground - uh - which is like a yard - in the schoolyard - or the school playground - just kicking the ball about - that was as far as I used to go - uh - so - he turned round and said maybe - you should try playing for the th- the school football team - and I said to myself - well yeah I'll have a try of it - it cost nothing - you know my m- uh - my mother didn't really have a - a lot of money - and then to buy football boots - and to buy football kit so - you know it was a - it was a big gamble - the gamble paid off because in athletics - I run in bare feet for the school - so you know it didn- it didn- and we had our kit from the school so it didn't cost my parents much money - uh - whereas the football was a little bit more expensive 'cause you had to have football boots and you had to have a football and you had to have shoe pads - so - I said to my mother - would it be possible to have a pair of football boots - so she said - well you going on a school holiday - so you've got a choice - you got the school holiday - or you got the football boots - so I picked a five pound pair of football boots - so - you know and I and I treated them like they was gold - they never went out my sight I cleaned them every night - and that was - uh - when I was probably eight or nine - playing for the primary school - and then it just took off from there really
Transcribed by Christian Jensen, Copenhagen Business School, February, 2005