Emotional return from an emotional trip for England's world champion kit man
Pat Frost's eight-year-old daughter Daisy wants to wear his World Cup winner’s medal to school and show it off.
It’s been a difficult five weeks with daddy working on the other side of the world as kit man to England’s under-20 team.
It was an emotional return to his Telford home late last night for the former Albion kit man and die-hard Baggies fan, but coming back from South Korea with that medal around his neck meant it was worth it.
“I don’t know where I’m going to put it, my daughter is insisting she’s going to wear it to school!” Frost told the Express & Star.
“It's difficult being apart. The first thing I’ll do when I get home is buy her the new Albion shirt, that’s what she wants.”
The 51-year-old has been a kit man for years and currently looks after England youth teams. In 2009 he was with the Women’s Under-19s team that won the European Championships in Belarus, but now he’s got his hands on the big one.
“I’ve done a lot of events,” he explained. “I've won the Euros before but I’ve been to eight World Cups and never got further than the fourth round. There was always a feeling with this group they could do something.”
Frost has been on plenty of England tours and sat in plenty of England dressing rooms, so what was the difference this time around?
“Everything’s been spot on from the start,” he said. “We went to Japan for 10 days before we came to Korea. We’ve had a chef with us, everyone’s been eating properly. You don’t know how important it is to have a chef.
“The staff get on well too, five weeks away with each other, you can start to get on people’s nerves. It helps if you get along.
"Everyone has to muck in. We've moved five times on this trip, with three tonnes of kit and often you're unloading it by hand. Mind you, it doesn't feel like work when you’re football fan.
“Even though the head coach (Paul Simpson) is ex-Wolves, he’s done unbelievable with this group.
“They’re a tight-knit group. They’ve had the two terrorist attacks when they were over here. Ten of them are from up north, and the other ten are from London.
"Although we’re over 5,000 miles away it affects these kids because they’ve all got friends over there.
“But at the end of the final, while they did the lap of honour, they played Don’t Look Back in Anger (the Oasis song which has become a tribute to the Manchester victims) over the tanoy. It was unbelievably emotional, the whole crowd joined in."
After the final with Venezuela, which England won 1-0, the kit man witnessed first-hand the togetherness and warmth of the young Lions.
"I shed a tear when the head coach called me - some poxy kit man from Shropshire - in front of everyone and handed me a World Cup medal," he said.
"When the players show their appreciation for what you do, I got a bit emotional then, I’m not ashamed to admit it."
Frost is well known to Albion fans. When he’s not working for the FA, the former kit man travels home and away to watch the Baggies, including most under-23s fixtures.
And whenever he’s on tour, he always makes sure he spreads the good word. Not only did he hang his Albion flag up behind the goal for every game in the World Cup, he even took 30 replica shirts with him to hand out to Korean children.
“I spent £500 on shirts and gave them away,” he explained. “I saw the camera honed in on a few of them so it was all worthwhile.
"That was probably the highlight. I gave this kid an Albion top two weeks ago, and then he turned up at another game, with a Korean lad wearing a Villa top. I gave his friend an Albion shirt and he took off his Villa top! I wished I’d filmed it now.”
Frost wasn’t the only one with an Albion connection in South Korea. Aaron Danks, who was under-18s coach before the FA snapped him up 12 months ago, was there as a specialist in-possession coach, as was FA technical director Dan Ashworth, who made his name as Albion’s highly-successful recruitment chief.
It’s been a tricky 12 months for Ashworth after the senior men’s team disastrous performance at Euro 2016 and the controversy surrounding Sam Allardyce’s exit.
And for the past few years there have been cynics questioning his ‘England DNA’ project, but Frost reckons its impact is starting to bear fruit.
“What a difference Dan Ashworth has started to make at the FA,” said Frost. “We have just won the Toulon Tournament again, the under-17s got to the European final (in May), and the under-20s have just won the World Cup.
"He’s also made massive inroads in the women’s game. It’s just started to take off.
“They need the senior team to win a big one. But this group has some good players.
“We’ve got Dom Solanke who’s just signed for Liverpool. Josh Onomah from Spurs has been unbelievable. Lewis Cook has just gone to Bournemouth for £10m. But all of them are brilliant, all 21.
“And if they’re still around in five or six years time, and they all start playing Premier League football, who knows?”
