http://www.football365.com/john_nicholson/0,17033,8746_4425999,00.html
Robin Friday is often called the greatest footballer you never saw.
However, I actually did see him play. It was 22nd September 1975 at Hartlepool United, a windy Monday night game. I was having an on/off affair with Pools. Now that Boro were in the top flight, I needed a regular fix of lower-league action. I was 14, new to puberty and with a fierce Suzi Quatro fixation.
At the time he was Reading's top goal scorer and already had a reputation as the Fourth Division's George Best. Rumours had reached us on Teesside that Friday was a bit brilliant, freaky and as tough as they came. Even his name had the whiff of star quality about it. Robin Friday. You can't be a wayward genius if you're called Alf Jones can you?
Reading were top of the league. Pools, more used to applying for re-election to the league, were doing okay in mid-table.
Their tactics to stop Friday was to kick the living daylights out of him; stamp on the fancy Dan in the first ten minutes and scare or maim him out of the game.
But it failed miserably. For a start Friday was unusually on his best behaviour and didn't retaliate when kicked up in the air a few times. My recollection of him is that he was a strong, powerfully-built man with big sideburns and shoulder-length hair. He looked like he could be been a roadie for Deep Purple. But then so did most men in the north back then.
Like much 1970s football, it was brutal and exciting. Hartlepool did the brutal and Friday did the exciting. Reading ran out 4-2 winners. I'm fairly certain Friday didn't score but recall him setting up at least one goal. In my mind's eye he was the kind of player that the game revolves around at the heart of everything.
What we didn't know standing on the Victoria Park terraces in our parkas, Brutus Fader 26" flares and stack-heeled boots was that Robin Friday was not only a great footballer, he was also a rock 'n' roll party animal of the first water.
Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll was his creed and he lived it full on.
Robin's football career had started at Hayes. He was spotted by Reading after playing a blinder in a 0-0 cup game. Charlie Hurley watched him for a while, realised Friday was 'a bit of a nutter' but also saw his huge talent and signed him as an amateur for 750 whole English pounds.
His debut came on 27th January 1974 in a 3-3 draw with Northampton. He impressed everyone from the start. So much so that within weeks Reading were already wondering if they could hold on to him.
He was a rare combination of flair, creativity and f**k you hard man. He wouldn't back down or shy away from confrontation on or off the pitch. Defenders would try and intimidate him, ruthlessly hacking him down, but Robin wouldn't be intimidated. He kicked back. One time after a hard challenge, he went hunting for his assailant and grabbed him by the balls. That was typical of the man.
Throughout 1974 the papers were full of accounts of his brilliance, not just as a centre-forward but also when called upon to do defensive work. Hurley recalls him as being a superb exponent of the sliding tackle. "He would slide, get the ball and bring it up all in the same movement. It was brilliant how he did it."
Off the pitch he could be found on the town dressed in snakeskin shirts, afghan coats and hippy gear off Kensington Market and he spent the summer of 1974 in a commune in Cornwall. I bet Frank Lampard doesn't do that this summer.
The club felt it had to try and control him and so got him a flat near the ground. They docked money from his wages to pay his bills because he was, like any stoner, not good with dealing with the every ay aspects of life. It didn't work though.
One night in the legendary Reading club Churchill's - apparently a place were you went if you were barred from everywhere else - he turned up in a long leather coat and hobnail boots. He stood in the middle of the dance floor, took the coat off and was stark bollock naked underneath. I'm only guessing, but I'm saying that drugs were involved there.
He painted the walls of his flat black so when tripping he wouldn't get distracted by patterned wallpaper. He loved rock 'n' roll. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Zeppelin especially, so he had great taste.
He smoked dope and dropped acid regularly. He had 'mild' and 'bitter' tattooed on his chest, under each nipple I assume. This was no ordinary footballer, clearly. He was told to calm down a bit by the club but he would laugh it off. He lived like a 70s rock star.
Legends, real or apocryphal have grown up around him. Did his hard family and mates wait for defenders after the game and rough them up if they'd given him a hard time? Probably not. He did floor a player for calling him a gypsy though. But he didn't drink in the dressing room before a game. He did have asthma though and collapsed on the pitch unable to breath at least twice. He was, inevitably, a legendary shagger; 'in and out like a fiddler's elbow', by his own admission.
Perhaps the most legendary moment of his short career came on 1st April 1976 at home in a 5-0 battering of Tranmere. Renowned referee Clive Thomas officiated that day and says Friday scored the best goal he'd ever seen.
In one flowing movement Robin controlled the ball on his chest with his back to goal on the edge of the box, turned and volleyed it over his shoulder into the top of the net. Thomas held his head in his hand, unable to believe what he had seen.
Reading finished third in the 75/76 season earning them their first promotion in decades. Their reward? Some meat from a local butcher. The board kept the fillet steak and gave the rest to the team. It didn't go down well. There was discontent throughout the club and after a few quieter months, thanks to his new love Liza, he set about raising hell again.
He married her that summer, turning up at the wedding in a brown velvet suit and tiger-skin print shirt. Robin was rolling joints at the reception and everyone including the old grannies got thoroughly whacked out. Drugs became more and more important to him and his form and fitness took the brunt of it. He lost what pace he had and missed games in the new season with 'mystery' illnesses.
He was finally sold to Cardiff City for 30 grand. He wasn't the player he had been the previous season and he knew it. But he carried on rocking; stripping naked on team coaches, getting arrested for fare dodging on trains and getting very high.
His Cardiff debut was the stuff of legend. A 3-0 win against a Fulham side featuring Bobby Moore. Robin played brilliantly, turned Mooro inside out, scored two and would have had a third if not rugby tackled when through on goal. He'd been drinking all through the previous day and night of course and he squeezed the ex-England captain's bollocks (or rather bollock, as Bobby only had one after a cancer scare in the early 60s) in the middle of the game, just for fun like. Typical Robin Friday behaviour - he'd been known to kiss his marker at corners to put the man off.
Later in the season in a home game against Luton he had an 'altercation' with the Luton keeper a minute before scoring. As the ball hit the net, he stuck the Vs up at the keeper. The photo of this incident was used on the cover of the Super Furry Animals single 'The Man Don't Give A F**k'.
He helped Cardiff stay in the Division Two that season but then he started to disappear to London, presumably on benders. His career ended with one final infamous incident.
You may have heard it before but it bears re-telling one more time because it involves Mark Lawrenson. It's 31st October 1977 and Cardiff are playing away and getting beat 4-0 by Brighton. Lawrenson has a kick at Robin, Robin retaliates by kicking the moustachioed camp miserabilist in the face while he was on the ground. He was sent off and promptly went to the dressing room and crapped in Lawro's kitbag. Producing a turd on demand was apparently another of his great talents.
It was his last game for Cardiff and his last professional game. The club released him, the FA admonished him. But he'd had enough of it all. 14 years later he was dead of a heart attack aged 38. By all accounts his lifestyle had changed little and there's only so much chemical abuse a body can handle before it's had enough.
Many good judges of football talent will tell you that Robin Friday was the best they ever saw, despite spending most of his short career in Division Four. An enigma of almost epic proportions, the fact that almost no footage and few photographs exist of him has only added to the mystique of the man and no one would have enjoyed that more than Robin himself.
