Totally Frank: The Autobiography of Frank Lampard. Frank Lampard

that at school. You could stop, tell the teacher that you just could not go on, and they listened. Not here. This was more like army training where there is no choice but to keep going. It would go on like that for between two and three weeks. It was relentless and I quickly realized that I had entered another world, one where there were no boys, only men. You got used to it but I couldn’t help thinking that it was all a bit archaic.

      Claudio Ranieri was a big fan of running though not like that. It was only when Jose Mourinho became Chelsea manager that I came across the idea that extreme running in pre-season is not a pre-requisite for a successful campaign. As Rui Faria, our fitness coach, eloquently put it: ‘If I am working with a concert pianist why would I make him run round the piano until he drops? Will it make him a better pianist?’ I am not sure how much better at football I became as a result of those cross-country runs but I gritted my teeth and got on with it. It also built up mental strength and created a threshold within me for that kind of exercise which is invaluable.

      We moved on to sprinting and when the ball eventually came out, it was more drills than anything else. We practised heading and little volleys back and forth, running with the ball and passing and shooting. This was more like it. This was what I signed up for. Tony Carr was our coach and he was great with me. He set the tone just right as far as I was concerned. He never showed me any favouritism and when he needed to have a go at me he would. I appreciated that. It was a potentially difficult situation because of who my Dad and uncle were and he helped me a lot.

      Tony was quite strict about our routine as YTS boys and always asked that we start our day an hour before the professionals arrived for training. On Mondays and Wednesdays we had to run the mile – which was measured by five laps of the pitch. We’d get in at 8.30 am and by nine we were out on the field. It could be quite a daunting prospect. We would have played on Saturday and had Sunday off so the idea of kicking off your working week by running as fast as you can for that distance was not exactly appealing. Neither was there any let-up.

      We’d come straight back into the dressing room and we would prepare the training kit for the first team squad and make sure the boots were clean. Then we would set up the gear outside while the pros were getting changed. It was all part of the routine though one of the worst jobs was collecting the balls after they had finished training. That was mainly because Julian Dicks took particular pleasure in booting them as far as he could. Anyone who ever saw him play will know that Dicksy has a shot on him like an express train. He didn’t slow it down when he was blasting the balls to all corners of the training ground either. He also had a wicked sense of humour. When we’d managed to collect most of them back into the bag he would sneak back and start smashing them all over again. If there was one missing then a search party was sent out to the fence which surrounded the area to find it.

      I liked doing the jobs around the ground. Traditionally each trainee was assigned a couple of pros whose boots you were responsible for keeping spotless. I was given Dicksy and Lee Chapman. Dicksy was particularly pedantic about his footwear and if he spotted a smudge on one of his boots he would call you in and throw them at you. The big thing for us about that job was the Christmas bonus, when the pros – who were on big money – would bung us a few extra quid for doing the job all year. I was already on a promise. Dicksy had pulled me at the start of the season and told me that if I did a good job he would see me all right come bonus time. I gave him my word and he was as good as his. Just before Christmas he called me over and gave me a hundred quid. I was quite shocked – and made up. It was a lot of money but then Dicksy was a generous guy who respected people whom he thought had done the right thing.

      Not for a moment did I think he would tip like that though. Expectations were raised and so was the ante. Lee Chapman was one of the club’s biggest earners and I had scrubbed, scraped and polished his boots until the skin on my fingertips was peeling off. He gave me twenty quid. Just my luck but I didn’t complain. How could I? These were the guys I aspired to be and I was chuffed if they just called me by my name. It’s something that I do now with the youth team players – try to learn their names, remember them and give them a bit of my time. I was that young player once and I haven’t forgotten what it’s like.

      Dicksy could be nasty to me sometimes but he never meant any harm by it. I didn’t mind because at least he was paying me some attention. Anyway, Dicksy was a legend. To say he had a beautiful left foot would be the equivalent of saying Paolo Maldini was a half decent defender. Before training, everyone else would dutifully do their warm-up. It was group stretching and loosening off before the real stuff started. Not Dicksy. He would go out with a bag of balls over his shoulder and set up in front of goal. While we were touching our toes he was smashing, volleying and bending vicious shots into the net.

      On the pitch, he had the reputation of being a real hard man though he would likely have done more damage with one of his shots than his tackles. He was, however, a fantastic player. He could bring the ball down and beat men, and to the fans he was an absolute idol – the captain and main man. Maybe there were times when he went a bit too far. He did go right through people now and then. But as I got older I learned he was actually quite a sensitive guy. He had a certain way about him. He was a maverick and I liked that about him.

      Certain senior players would behave around me in a specific way because of Dad and Harry. I would never know if they were being genuinely nice or whatever but Dicksy would tell me to ‘F*** off’ the same as he would anyone else. He couldn’t care less if my Dad owned the club. I respected him for that.

      Cleaning his and anyone else’s boots was not the worst job by a long way. We had to clean the canteen, corridors, dressing rooms and scrape the gym floor once everyone else had gone. Then, at the end of the day, we would be made to sit in the canteen while Tony Carr would check all of the jobs to make sure they had been done properly. It was a nervous part of the day. We waited patiently because if there was a single bit of sloppiness then we all had to stay behind while it was corrected. It was a pain in the arse if someone hadn’t pulled his weight properly but I could see the point. It was all about teamwork and not letting your mates down.

      There was the odd occasion when we were made to stay on and more often than not it would be Rio’s fault. A few years later Sven-Goran Eriksson apparently described Rio as ‘a bit lazy’, but he was wrong. Rio isn’t ‘a bit lazy’; he is a complete lazy bollocks – off the pitch that is. At training, during matches, and in his spare time there are few players I have come across who are as committed to their game as Rio. He’s like that now and was the same then. He was very dedicated to his football but he also hated doing the chores and was always trying to duck out of cleaning the gym and stuff. Sometimes he would sneak off and other times just go into a big strop about the state of someone’s boots or the mess in the showers. I found this quite amusing.

      It didn’t stop him claiming the credit for a job well done of course. I found it very funny and Rio is so loveable that you would end up doing most of his part as well while he made you laugh. It was carefree and I loved it. There was a camaraderie then which was unique and which I haven’t known since. It was founded on the excitement of starting off on that adventure but also on the fact that we were realizing every boy’s ambition.

      We would lark around and dig each other out for things that happened in training and that would carry over into our daily jobs. Rio and I became mates right away as soon as he joined West Ham. He was promoted to my team almost immediately even though he was a year younger but he was very good and made the grade.

      We used to have a game called ‘D’s’ where we played two versus two in the gym hall. Me, Rio, Hodgey, and Joe Keith were thick as thieves. The rules were simple enough: you had just one touch to control and the other player had to knock it back to the other team inside the D which was drawn on the floor. It was good fun but we were very competitive. The fact that one man could easily cock it up led to banter which could drag on for days. We spent so much time together it was best not to be on the receiving end.

      Hodgey was always the stronger player between us in that first year. He could play anywhere in the midfield or off the main striker. He was strong and athletic, the talk of the town then. He had played for England schoolboys and was head and shoulders above the rest of us. He also had a real eye for goal. Not just any old goal either. Hodgey had the Midas touch