WHERE ARE THEY NOW?; Tony Hateley

No one could have been more delighted than his father when Mark Hateley, 34 today, agreed to join Queen's Park Rangers. Tony, himself once a striker of equal repute, hopes now to have more opportunities to watch his son play, having lived on meagre rations during Mark's exile in Milan, Monaco and Glasgow.

"My glory days are in the past, but I'm living them again, in a way, through Mark, and I'm looking forward to seeing him in the Premiership, especially when he comes to my area," he said. Home for Tony is the Maghull district of Liverpool, his base for 20 years.

Hateley Snr, scorer of 211 League goals in a 16-year career, the biggest part spent with Notts County and Aston Villa, retired in 1974, but his hopes that coaching qualifications would win him a manager's job came to nothing. "I applied for two or three, but quickly found it was a case of who you know rather than what you know. I started asking myself if I really needed the frustration."

Instead, after an unsuccessful business venture, he worked on Everton's lottery staff and then became a sales rep for a Blackburn-based brewery, where he stayed for 14 years. Today, aged 54, divorced and unemployed, he suffers from knee trouble and spondylitis and fears his working life might be over.

But he retains a bright outlook. "I like where I live - you develop an affection for the place. I've got old mates like Ian St John and Ron Yeats from my Liverpool days living nearby, and although I am on my own now I'm getting married again next year." His other child, Tina, mother of three of his seven grandchildren, lives in Anfield.

Jon Culley