SCOTT PARKER’S eyes still light up at the memory of lorry rides with dad at three in the morning.
Sometimes there would be trips along the Kent coast as he accompanied his old man Michael on his rounds as a Heinz delivery driver — followed by maybe ice cream and the amusement arcades.
Now manager at Burnley, Parker smiles as he looks back and said: “As a kid every day I was on at my dad to take me out on the lorries.
“Twice a week he’d take me out of school — probably not the right thing to do — but we’d get up at 3am and pick up the lorry.
“Thursdays were the best because he’d have coast runs — Ramsgate, Margate — then he’d take me to the amusements after.
“For a young kid, those days were fantastic. Great memories.”
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Yet they also helped form the bit inside that now drives him on in his managerial career after a hat–trick of sackings — at Fulham, Bournemouth and Club Brugge.
That treble, all within 19 nightmare months, might have suggested that being a boss was not for him — even if he did take the Cottagers and Cherries into the Premier League before each gave him his P45.
In Belgium he lasted just 69 days and 12 games.
He could have, as he knows, joined the bleeding hearts club, bleating about the unfairness of it all.
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Yet his only public complaint throughout was to claim after a horrendous 9-0 loss at Anfield in Bournemouth’s fourth game back in the Prem that his squad were “unequipped” for the top flight.
He was fired four days after that statement in August 2022 that came on the back of defeats of 3-0 to Arsenal and 4–0 at Manchester City.
Asked why he has never talked about the sackings that might have cost him so much inside, he bluntly declared: “Well, in the last four months, nobody ever asked me.”
Parker, 44, gives the impression that he would rather throw himself off Margate’s Harbour Arm than show his true feelings.
But for once he dropped the mask and admitted: “Standing on the touchline that day at Anfield, that was a lonely, lonely place.
“I was disappointed it had to end way it did and of the three, Bournemouth still hurts the most. But we move on.
“The pitfalls you fall into, the bumps we managers take along the road, you just deal with them.
“Some have been knockouts for me but you dust yourself off, get back up and go again. There were times things were very tough. No denying that.
“That’s why I took a year out after Brugge because at that point there had been a lot of jabs on the nose and I needed to mend, to get out of the fire.
“I had to adjust and I realised a long time ago you can feel a bit sorry for yourself, mope around and be a victim. But there was no chance of that.
“Not with my upbringing, not from where I come from — the Lettsom Estate in Camberwell, inner London.
“Dad a lorry driver, mum a special needs teacher and it was what it was.
“No hard story, but my career was the be-all and end-all for my mum and dad because of where we were. Did I ever think I had huge talent? Never.
“Never even contemplated what life was like then, to the position I’m in now. But I’m always conscious of how different it could have been for me.
“Those memories of going to Margate are great — but what I also realise now that it was that work inside my dad that became ingrained in me.
“That’s what I stand for now. What I’ve always stood for. Working class values — and working as hard as you can. No one really sees that, that core inside me.
“I understand what and how the people are at whatever club I am. Working-class people, just like they are here at Burnley because I’m one of them.
“It’s because I’m one of them that I’ll do everything in my power to take this club back up.”
He is making a good fist of it too, the Clarets travel to Stoke today sitting in third.
And the former West Ham and England midfielder stressed: “Heading off with my dad, they’re my fondest memories because of the fine margins of what it was and where it was.
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“Core values were instilled in me. They are as strong as ever. There’s been disappointments and triumphs, a roller coaster ride.
“But sitting next to my dad in that lorry helped form who I am today and I’m proud of that.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
