Big Nev and his unforgettable impact on Torquay United

It was a Friday night early in the 1999-2000 season when my phone rang at home.

Something went ‘click’ before a North Walian voice said: “Dave, it’s Nev - sorry. I’ve been trying to ring, but I’ve only got my mobile where we’re staying and the signal’s rubbish.”

Neville Southall MBE, by general consent one of the greatest goalkeepers ever to tip a ball over his bar, was playing for Torquay United.

He and I were writing, in his name of course, a Saturday night newspaper column. It was a great success, thanks to his fund of stories and for his forthright views on almost everything.

We usually spoke after Friday’s training session, so the piece could be placed in advance of the next day’s paper.

“Thanks for calling, Nev – I’d nearly given up on you,” I said. “Where are you, by the way?”

“I’m in a phone box outside the pub in Blackawton. I haven’t got much change, by the way,” he replied.

The man who had won nearly every honour that football had to offer had driven from the cottage he was renting deep in the South Hams countryside to shove coins into a public telephone when he could have had his feet up, ready for his next command performance.

I told him to put the phone down and called him back. If anything summed ‘Big Nev’ up better, I never heard it.

His commitment to the agreement we had. The kindness to get in his car at that time of night and drive to that callbox. The notes he’d written, so he’d remember what he wanted to say in the paper of the Fourth Division club where he was seeing out the final days of his phenomenal career.

Even today it still seems extraordinary, not just that he agreed, at 40 years old, to sign for the Gulls, but that he stayed for more than a year and 61 matches.

He’d played a few games for Doncaster Rovers in the Conference, but was mainly coaching the goalkeepers at Huddersfield Town when United’s manager Wes Saunders rang his opposite number there, Peter Jackson, to see if he could borrow a goalie halfway through the 1998-99 season.

Torquay had sold Matthew Gregg to Crystal Palace for £400,000 a couple of months earlier, Kenny Veysey was injured and the only other keeper at Plainmoor was an untried rookie, Ryan Northmore.

Jackson couldn’t spare anybody, but when Saunders stressed how desperate he was, Jackson almost joked that Southall still looked pretty good in training and hinted that he might be up for a game or two.

A couple of phone calls later, and a man who’d once earned £6,000 a week at Everton had agreed to join little old Torquay for less than a tenth of that wage.

Many United fans didn’t know what to make of the news. They were excited that such a famous name was coming, but a man of his age who’d virtually retired from the game...?

They were serious times too. United, deep in relegation trouble after 13 league games without a win, were about to play fellow strugglers Hull City in a vital six-pointer.

But over the course of that first wet, windy but remarkable December afternoon at Plainmoor, Southall rolled back the years and became an instant hero to the Gulls’ faithful.

It’s part of club folklore now that when Neville turned up, his chest and shoulders were so big that no shirt could be found to fit him. The late Norman Medhurst, United’s physio, had to take some scissors to the biggest one they could find.

It still looked like something from the bottom of a long-neglected wardrobe. But did it worry Southall?

He galvanised United that day, saving a penalty and defying everything else that Hull could throw at him in a 2-0 victory.

After the final whistle he stood in the rain, signing autographs for every supporter, young or old, who asked for one.

With Nev in command, United won five and lost only one of his first nine games, pulling themselves away from trouble in the process.

When they went to Home Park in February, Plymouth Argyle fans welcomed him on to the pitch with a barrage of chants about his figure and likely diet.

At the end of a 0-0 draw that was almost entirely down to Southall, they gave him a standing ovation.

Even though he played only half that season, he walked United’s Player of the Year award.

Southall, who had never been able to stand pomp or ceremony in even his headiest days for Everton and Wales, bought into the club, the town and the area in a way which even he hardly expected.

He nurtured and coached Northmore, ready to succeed him, but he was still not about to stand down when he suffered concussion in a 2-1 defeat at Chester City in January 2000.

A larger-than-life figure on and off the pitch, Southall left shortly afterwards, insisting privately that the ‘mutual consent’ statement was hardly of his making.

Even for a player as exceptional as he, that should have been the end, but his games at Torquay weren’t quite his last.

Two months later, coaching this time at Bradford City, he answered another emergency and played against Leeds United in the Premier League at the age of 41 years and 178 days.

Various managerial jobs, mostly short-lived, followed over the next few years – Neville always called a spade a spade!

He also wrote a highly entertaining autobiography, The Binman Chronicles, a reference to one of the many tough jobs he did before he ever made it in the pro game.

He’s found time to return to Plainmoor on several occasions, in a busy life which has taken him away from football in his later years.

He’s worked with special-needs children, helped disadvantaged young people back and into work in the former South Wales mining valleys, and found time to be a foster parent too.

Nev has also embraced a wide range of other causes, including drugs, suicide and bereavement helplines, as well as campaigning for Welsh independence.

In an interview last year, he insisted that he wasn’t doing anything special, saying: “The world is very judgmental.

“All the TV programmes are about judging things, all the papers and magazines are judging people. And then you have the government that wants to divide people.

“So we’ve got a divided community and a judgmental society, with people feeling more isolated and communities breaking down.”

That’s Big Nev, telling it exactly how he sees it. As he’s always done.

I can’t remember what he came up with for his column, as he stood in that phonebox in Blackawton back in 1999.

But you can bet it was something good.