Bradford City and their Redcar crew offer me slice of home

Not some playground insult, or an excitable seven-year-old talking, but me about 10 seconds into my phone call with Bradford City's standout summer signing Richie Smallwood.

With T&A chief sports writer Simon Parker on holiday in sunny Tunisia for two weeks last month, it was as if City knew he was going away.

I'm from a market town in the North East called Guisborough, about 20 minutes away from Middlesbrough.

It's also only about 35 or 40 minutes from Hartlepool, which is where wide-man Harry Chapman hails from.

He was City's first signing during my two-week stint in Parker's hotseat and it was nice to hear a familiar accent on the other end of the phone when I did a lengthy interview with him.

We also chatted about his time at the Boro, a team I'm all too familiar with, as the black sheep at school, a supporter of their big rivals Newcastle.

And if that's not a link enough to home, I will be covering City a couple of times this season, with my first game on August 20.

Guess who City are playing? Why Hartlepool away of course! Of all the long trips I could have faced in Parker's absence, I'll take one practically on my parents' doorstep.

Far closer to me in Guisborough though is Redcar, which is barely 10 minutes drive away, and where new boys Smallwood and Brad Halliday, as well as City's head of recruitment Stephen Gent, all hail from.

Stephen Gent was the first of City's Redcar recruits this summer.

I was only there last weekend, meeting my cousin for a drink, and I have plenty of family and friends who live or have lived in the seaside town.

I've not spoken to Halliday yet since he signed, and he might not be aware we have anything in common, but we do.

He is the same age as me, 27, and has just had his first child.

And I probably knew that several days before every other Bantams fan did.

Brad Halliday has already impressed City's fans, despite having only made two pre-season appearances so far. Picture: Thomas Gadd.

Don't panic, I'm not moonlighting as a stalker when I clock off from my day job as a sports journalist, but I am an old school friend of his girlfriend, Annouska.

We got off to an awkward start, as she thought my friend and I were following her through the corridor, but we just wanted to ask if she knew where our new A-Level English class was.

That misunderstanding out of the way, I ended up sat next to her for the rest of the year, where the two of us, along with Dave, Lewis, John and Ellena, got up to all kinds of mischief in the classroom, while still studying hard of course.

She was even kind enough to give me a lift home a couple of times, much appreciated when the Guisborough weather turned sour.

Halliday also studied at Prior Pursglove College at the same time, but there's a reason he plays sport, and fitness-challenged me only writes about it, so sadly we never shared any classes together, but it will certainly make for a good conversation when we do meet.

And what about Smallwood? He is a bit older than myself and Halliday, at 31, so there are no school links there.

But his interest was piqued when I told him I was doing our interview in Guisborough, having popped home from Horsforth early that week due to train strikes.

Richie Smallwood still lives in Redcar, and commutes to City each day. Picture: Thomas Gadd.

And our dads do know each other, having been cricketing rivals over 30 years ago.

My father Pete was Loftus' star all-rounder (he told me to say that...) and Smallwood's old man Mick opened the bowling for rivals Dormanstown in the Cleveland League.

The pair had plenty of fierce battles on the pitch, though sadly the respective sporting abilities of their sons are a bit further apart.

If any League Two club does want to take a chance on me this season, I'm open to offers of course.

Like Chapman, Smallwood spent many years at Middlesbrough, and having broken through into their first team when I was in Year 11, he was the topic of more than one discussion between me and my Boro-supporting classmates, as I argued there was no way he was on a par with Newcastle's great enforcer Cheick Tiote.

Why am I blabbing on about this you might wonder?

Well, since I moved to West Yorkshire four years ago for this job, it hasn't always been easy.

The first 18 months I was living in a cramped terraced house in Great Horton with a rat problem, earning £600 a month as an apprentice with nearly half of that going on rent, and even that was because my lovely landlord reduced the price.

I am happier in Horsforth without doubt, but most of my family and friends are still in Redcar & Cleveland and I naturally found the Covid lockdowns hard when I was miles away and couldn't see them.

I have talked before about suffering with depression too, and while I won't go into that having already discussed it in a previous column, that has only made living away even harder at times.

So this column was simply to say thank you to City. I doubt you brought in Smallwood, Halliday and Gent with me in mind, but it's nice to have a little slice of home to enjoy.