Autobiography

Steven Gerrard: Manager of Chelsea

football team, Former Captain of
Liverpool FC
Still now I hate Sunday nights. Still! It’s impossible to blank out the memory of getting ready for school,

a ritual torture that ruined the final moments of a glorious weekend. According to the calendar most

people use, a weekend lasts two days. Not at No.19 Ironside. Not with mum. A weekend is a day and a

half with her. She demanded we be home by 6pm to be scrubbed, bathed and ready for school the next

morning. We ran in at six and the uniform was there, on the ironing board, all pristine and pressed

glaring at us. Just seeing the uniform made me sick.

(*Ironside is the name of the street where he lived. )

They resembled prison clothes after the freedom of the weekend. It was not that I

hated school: I just loved my weekends roaming around Bluebell*. Mum took school

more seriously than Paul, my brother, and I ever did. A proud woman, she made sure

our uniforms were absolutely spotless. She polished our shoes so hard you could see

your grimacing face in them. Poor Mum! She had her work cut out. If I left the house

with a clean uniform, it was guaranteed to come home dirty. The same with shoes.

Scuffed and muddy. Every time. Mum went up the wall.

(*Bluebell is a park near his home).

My journey through the Merseyside* school system was straightforward and undistinguished. I looked

on schools as fantastic playing fields with boring building attached. My first stop was St Michael’s which

became Huyton-with-Roby Church of England Primary. Though only a short walk from Ironside, Mum

still insisted on driving me to St Mick’s and picking me up. I enjoyed the infants and junior school, just

messing about. When I was naughty, the teachers made me stand by the wall, looking at the bricks for

five minutes as punishment. I never bullied anyone. I never hurt anyone or swore. I was just cheeky and

mischievous. My crimes were petty ones: Answering back or going on muddy grass when we were told

to stay on the yard. Usual kids’ stuff.

(*Merseyside is the name of the area or neighbourhood where he lived. )

School held limited appeal. I sat in class, longing for playtime because there was always a match on in the playground. I loved

dinner time because it lasted an hour, which meant a longer match. I abandoned hot dinners because they wasted precious

minutes. Queuing for my meal, I’d shout, ‘Come on, there’s a big game going on out there.’ Eventually, I asked my mother for

packed lunches. ‘You should be on hot dinners,’ she screamed, ‘or come home if you don’t like school food.’ We compromised on

packed lunches; sandwich, bar of chocolate and drink. And some fruit. The fruit always came home untouched. Apples, bananas

and oranges weren’t for me. Butties [sandwiches] weren’t even me at that age, it would be bread off, meat out, quick bite, on

with the game. ‘Stevie, you haven’t eaten your butty,’ Mum would say, ‘you’ve only eaten your chocolate.’ Mum didn’t

understand. Speed was vital at dinner time. I ate the packed lunch while playing or wolfed it down running back into class. Same

with my tea. If there was a match going on outside Ironside, a game of chase, or my mates were waiting for me, I slipped my food

in my pocket, sprinted out the door, threw the food to the neighbour’s dog and raced on to the match. I returned home starving,

picking at biscuits, crisps and chocolate.

Back at St Mick’s, the teachers watched me scribbling away busily in my school book. Steam

almost rose from my pencil I wrote so furiously. The teachers must have thought I was focusing

really hard on the lesson. I’m sorry. I wasn’t. Lesson were spent working out the teams for

dinner time. In the back of my school book, I wrote down the names. When the bell for break

rang, I dashed out to organize all the boys – and get the girls off the playground/. ‘You can

watch,’ I’d tell them generously, ‘but that’s the pitch and you can’t go on it.’ The pitch was

marked out with bags and tops for goals. They were right serious battles at St Mick’s. Wembley

Cup finals have been less intense. My face still bears the trace of a scar collected in the

playground after I collided with a fence, tussling for the ball. Defeat was unthinkable.
Exercise 1
1. Why did Steven Gerrard hate Sunday nights?
2. Why does he say that to his mother a weekend was only a day and a half?
3. What is meant by ‘Mum went up the wall’ and what did Steven do to make it
happen?
4. Give the meaning of each of the following words as it is used in the passage:
1. Grimacing
2. Guaranteed
3. Undistinguished
4. Petty
5. Compromised
5. Explain using your own words how Steven looked on the schools he
attended.
6. Choose three details from the passage that show that Steven was fanatical
about football and explain how the examples you have chosen show this.
Answers-
1. Steven Gerrard hated Sunday nights because he hated getting ready for school and calls it “a ritual torture that ruined the final moments of a glorious
weekend”.
2. he says that to his mother a weekend was only a day and a half because She demanded for them to be home by 6pm to be scrubbed, bathed and ready for
school the next morning.
3. It is meant that she would get furious because steven would always make his uniform and shoes dirty.
4. 1.
2.
3.
4.
5.