Ex Arsenal forward Perry Groves, talks football boots.

FB (Footy Boots)We asked Perry what his first pair of football boots were?

PG (Perry Groves)”Adidas Beckenbauer Supers, black with yellow stripes and screw ins. I was about 7 years old”.

FB Nine years later, Perry got to see a lot of football boots because he was a boot boy for Colchester.

PG“I was the worst boot boy ever; I’d leave the pro’s football boots until just before a game. I just couldn’t be bothered with it. I used to come away from cleaning them looking like a chimney boy. We used cherry blossom polish and dubbing”.

FBWe asked him how it works; Do the players all chuck their football boots in to the boot room at the end of a game?

PG“You’re having a laugh; I used to have to go out onto the training pitch to get them. They’d just chuck them to one side; they wouldn’t even whack the mud off of them”.

FBWe wondered how players in Groves’s era managed to get a “boot deal”.

PG“Well, when I first got to the club I didn’t have a football deal. As soon as I broke into the first team, I’d see the football boot rep’s come along with their vans and show their gear off to the signed players. One of the players would introduce me to the rep and then they’d offer me a load of gear to wear along with the football boots. Nowadays, the pro’s will have football boots made specially for them, but in our day we just had ‘off the peg’ football boots”.

There’s more to come from the Perry Groves interview we’ll let you know what Groves said about ‘Lee Dixon and a pair of American football boots’. It’s all good stuff but we’ll save that for another day.

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