‘I don’t know why it was like that’ — Alan Tonge experienced the worst of being a football apprentice, now he wants to help make 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 , 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.
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.
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