‘Life has turned upside down the last eight weeks,” Allan Cockram says with a breathless smile after another muddy Sunday morning training session with the exuberant kids in his football team for players with Down’s syndrome, the Brentford Penguins. “It’s gone from just the training to all this recognition from so many people. I’m at a stage in my life where I can handle this stuff so let’s go for it. Let’s highlight these extraordinary children.”
Cockram’s life has been remarkable and unusual. After a couple of games for Spurs in the 1980s, playing in midfield alongside Glenn Hoddle and Ossie Ardiles despite his undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he became a playmaker with a magnificent mullet for years at Brentford. His depression after football, while he found work as a fireman and then a taxi driver, lifted when Cockram met a teenager with Down’s who, years later, inspired him to start the Penguins.
Now, an immensely moving documentary about Cockram and his team, Mighty Penguins, has been made while they have recently been feted by David Beckham, sent a personal message by Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher and invited to lunch by Gordon Ramsay. They have also flown to Spain to play their counterparts at Athletic Bilbao. Cockram and his wife Vickie, who has played a key role in the rise of the Penguins, look as if they still can’t believe everything that has happened but, over coffee in the clubhouse, they turn as always to the kids.
“They’ve got more kudos going to school or college than most ‘normies’ as I call the kids without Down’s,” Cockram says. “Why? Because they’ve been flag bearers for Brentford at a Premier League game, they’ve gone to Bilbao, they’ve had a film made about them and God knows what else is going to happen in the future.
“If anyone tries to bully them, the retort from our kids is: ‘How many times have you met Beckham? How many times has Gordon Ramsay had you over for lunch?’ If we don’t offer them these extremes in life, how do we know what they could do? Has it ever been tested how far these children can go?”
Watching Cockram’s amusing rapport with his boisterous Penguins, it’s obvious that he regards them as kindred spirits. “This is my world,” he says, “because I love their honesty and no-holds-barred attitude. People are usually guarded about their emotions. But these kids smell a rat if you’re closed. For me there’s a deeper connection with DS kids than there is with adults or normies because I love the fact that what you see is what you get and there’s no filter. I thrive on their rebel behaviour. I love it.”
Cockram is warm and funny but he is thoughtful too. “This is a good subject,” he says when I ask if his humour hides his own past pain. “Fucking about is my mask but I never realised that until Covid hit. I have ADHD and that was only diagnosed three years ago. It explained so much of my life after growing up in an era where such things were never spoken about. Whether being a footballer, firefighter or football coach, my brain works in a very frazzled way. It constantly needs movement and emotion and when that got cut in lockdown I had to address it. I was like a caged lion who didn’t know what was going on in my head.”
He admits he can be “trouble in my own company” but, since the diagnosis, Cockram has understood his blurring past. “I was at Spurs for 10 years, from when I was 12. Unfortunately, when I was 14, I was bedridden for nine months with a serious injury. Looking back, it was the start of me. I never went back to school and, even though the doctor told my dad I’d never play again, I had such spirit. It’s why I’m always fighting for the underdog.
“I played two First Division games alongside Ossie, Hoddle, [Ricky] Villa, [Steve] Perryman … and me. That was my midfield. I still hold dear those world-class training sessions where Hoddle’s talent and Ardiles’s intelligence was through the roof. That’s why, at Brentford, I was a rebel in refusing to comply with the long ball. I had some wonderful years there.
“But, back then, you were left on the scrapheap after retirement. No one paid attention to the mental side in football. I had lots of problems and I became a firefighter and a cab driver. I was told one day: ‘Can you pick up this kid and take him to school?’ Phil had Down’s syndrome. Phil would sit in the front and I would have house music on and he wouldn’t get out until we got to the end of a particular track. I felt a deep connection with Phil. He also loved football, so we would train together and play little one-twos.”
Cockram’s expression clouds. “I left six months later and then the controller rung me and said: ‘Al, Phil’s passed away through complications from DS.’ He would have been about 14. I felt so sad and, ever since then, DS kids have been in my subconscious. I kept thinking about them and what makes them so different and why do I feel this way to these kids? Then, years down the line, I decided to do something about it.”
Six years ago, in October 2017, Cockram started the Brentford Penguins. Five kids turned up for his first indoor session. “I had all the cones and footballs and I was fully prepped,” Cockram says. “The first kid came in wearing corduroys and a jumper and he flapped his arms like wings while making bird noises. I loved it and kicked every cone away and winged it for 18 months.”
Today, 35 Penguins are in training and the Cockrams, a few volunteers and various parents help run a session which includes wild penalty shootouts, riotous goal celebrations, impromptu on-field “interviews” and an imaginary call from Cockram to Ramsay to discuss the best pizza toppings.
Having seen Mighty Penguins, a film directed with such a light touch by Louis Myles and Ahmed Twaij, I feel I already know most of the kids – from Big D, a former Penguin who is now Cockram’s assistant coach, to Charlie the captain to Louis, who told Alison Hammond she was “hot” before proposing to her on morning television, to Peanut who has been through 50 operations and come out smiling, to Katherine who has overcome so much adversity in her own life.
In a recent screening at BFI Southbank, Mark Kermode hailed the film as “utterly remarkable and utterly life-affirming” but Cockram first saw Mighty Penguins when he, his wife and 16-year-old Katherine were invited to New York for the world premiere at the Tribeca film festival. Cockram calls Katherine ‘Special K’ and he sat between her and Vickie at the screening. “We’d made a point of not wanting to see the film before then,” Cockram says, “because we wanted to see it in its rawity.”
He pauses and asks, with some bemusement: “Rawity? Is that a good word?”
“It’s a new word,” Vickie says drily.
“I like it,” Cockram says. “I’m holding Vic’s hand and Special K’s hand and thinking: ‘What the fuck is coming now?’ They had been with us for four months and filmed everything. I’m thinking: ‘What the hell have I said?’”
Cockram has already spoken about his “Tourette’s moments” which mean that he can’t help shouting “Wiggy” if he sees a bald man wearing a toupee in the street. He has also been banned from the weekly shop with Vickie because he will count up the number of apologies he can get when gently banging his supermarket trolley into people.
“I’m sitting in the dark,” Cockram continues, “and the first bit that got me was when Vanessa, Charlie’s mum, became emotional as she remembered one of his old school reports which only focused on his struggles. Charlie was hurt as he realised that he was different to other kids and that his brain worked in different ways. That got to me. There was obviously a change in my body which Special K felt. She put her arm round me and said: ‘Coach, everything is going to be all right.’”
Cockram shakes his head in wonder. “Special K has spirituality. Put Special K in the middle and everyone calms down. But it was hilarious afterwards. We’d gone outside as I don’t do all the bullshit stuff, like the celebrities. The Americans were coming up, high-fiving, and me and Vic found a little corner. Then we saw Special K had gone off and she’s milking it. She is dragging film people back to us and going: ‘Oh, this is Joe from Paramount.’ She was working the room.”
They are growing used to celebrities but, when Beckham turned up out of the blue to present Cockram with an award while the kids jumped around him, the 60-year-old was shocked. “I smelt him before I saw him,” Cockram says of Beckham. “He was wearing Issey Miyake. I’m like, hang on a minute, is Issey Miyake behind me? Then I’ve gone: ‘Fucking hell, it’s Father Christmas.’ It’s David Beckham with his son Romeo. My Tourette’s is going: ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Where’s Juliet?’ He’s looking at me like: ‘Who’s this nutter?’”
Cockram laughs again. “But they spent the next two hours with us and Beckham is very intuitive, very respectful of the kids. Little Louis was telling him jokes and he’s cracking up. Afterwards Beckham wrote a nice letter and then he sent us a signed Miami shirt with penguins. Romeo sent a Brentford shirt. I did calligraphy when I was younger and I’ve written both of them a nice letter. I’ve asked Romeo to be a patron, an ambassador, and he couldn’t turn it down when Louis sent him a video where he is going: ‘All right, mate? It’s your pal Louis here.’”
The mighty Penguins are flying now – as is Cockram who stresses that his young footballers lift him as much as he helps them. “I’m very mindful of that,” he says. “It’s a two-way street. I’ve worked with many people in my life but I’ve never felt more spiritually attached to a group as I do to the Penguins and their parents. Vic and I are very aware that this is a lifelong commitment, building this community, and we love it. It’s fantastic.”
Mighty Penguins is part of Sports Explains the World, a new sports anthology series by Meadowlark Media, consisting of a collection of 15 short documentaries that transcend the boundaries of sport.
