Staring into the camera with his arm wrapped around his three-year-old girl, Garry Hardwicke is the picture of a proud young father with his adored daughter.
But it is one of his final moments with his daughter Nicole before the 27-year-old, gripped by World Cup fever and the lure of cheap beer, sun and Bobby Robson, left her behind and set off to follow England to the Mexico 1986 World Cup.
Garry told his girlfriend Janet he was nipping out to the shops to get a pint of milk and never returned.
He snuck off with four Wolves fans friends, Gary Allen, Stuart Bates, David Arnold and Steve Dawson, and flew 5,000 miles to follow their beloved Three Lions.
The idea of ‘the man who told his partner he was going to get milk but went to Mexico instead’ has become such a legend among football fans that most assume it’s apocryphal.
But as the Daily Mail discovered it is the literal truth – although perhaps inevitably the full story is darker and more complex than the terraces banter version.
For it would be another five years until Garry saw his daughter again, as instead of coming home when Maradona’s infamous ‘hand of God’ put an end to England’s World Cup adventure, he went on to the US, finding construction work in Atlanta and setting up a new life there.
‘My mother is still fuming about it forty years on,’ Nicole Hill told the Daily Mail from a pub in Huddersfield this week as she shared her father’s story.
Garry, then a chef and, to him more importantly a hardcore Wolves fan, had only confided in his sister and his close friends that he was going to Mexico and told them not to tell his girlfriend, Nicole’s mum.
Staring into the camera with his arm wrapped around his three-year-old girl, Garry Hardwicke was the picture of a proud young father
Garry went on to the US, finding construction work in Atlanta and setting up a new life there
‘My mother is still fuming about it forty years on,’ Nicole Hill (pictured) told the Daily Mail from a pub in Huddersfield in sight of where she scattered his ashes just four weeks ago
Garry, pictured wearing a Rambo T-shirt, snuck off with four friends – Gary Allen, pictured with his arms crossed, Stuart Bates, David Arnold and Steve Dawson – to the 1986 World Cup and never came back
He later admitted that he had been struggling with fatherhood and wasn’t yet ready to settle down.
‘He didn’t want a family,’ says his sister Fiona. ‘He used to say, “I can’t look after a goldfish, let alone a child”. He was a party animal but he tried really hard. He absolutely adored Nicole.
‘I don’t think he had the 100 per cent intention of staying but it was, “I’m off for an exciting adventure with the lads”.’
‘He just said, “I’m popping out for milk”. He packed two bags, one with a few T-shirts and one with booze and off he went.’
Garry and his friends called themselves The Disco Firm, and were all Wolves fans from Stourbridge and Lye, Worcestershire, with the exception of Mr Arnold, who was from Solihull and a Birmingham City fan.
The group travelled to Monterrey and Acapulco and watched every England game before the team was knocked out 2-1 by Argentina and Maradona in that notorious quarter-final when the referee missed a blatant handball winner.
Their trip is also the subject of a documentary called Lost Down Mexico Way which follows their adventures over the years, and their friendship that has endured through four decades.
During their hard-drinking and partying adventure two of them even managed to convince some local women they were then England star players Peter Shilton and Gary Lineker.
Gary Allen said: ‘The locals had never seen anything like us, we were on the pop every night.
He said they found a hotel which was around £3 a night and it had a bar next to it ‘which was ideal’.
‘When we were pretending to be the England football team, all these girls were coming up to us asking for autographs.’
But there was a darker side to the trip with a bout of violence after the Argentina game, played in a hostile stadium filled with South American fans just four years after the Falklands War.
Garry was chased and fell off a bridge after the match, ending up in hospital with a fractured skull, broken arms and legs while Mr Arnold was stabbed in the leg with a flagpole.
After England were knocked out they decided to stay in South Padre where they all got jobs in the restaurant trade.
None of them returned home after the tournament as they embarked on new lives in the US where they settled down, went on to marry and have 14 children between them – with one marrying a former Miss Mexico beauty queen.
‘I had three or four jobs within the first few weeks and your accent got you women,’ Mr Allen said.
Garry settled in Atlanta, married and moved to Florida where he remained until he passed away from pancreatitis and severe liver damage two years ago. He loved rock music and never stopped partying, regularly attending festivals into his 60s.
While he forged a life 4,000 miles away, his daughter was raised in Pensnett by her mother and adopted father, who she views as her real dad.
Nicole, 42, a veterinary receptionist, now has two children of her own and was too young to have any memories of her biological father. ‘I used to just class him as a sperm donor,’ she admits.
She was eight the first time she remembers seeing him. While Janet cut contact with Garry, her parents, who set the pair up originally, arranged for him to secretly meet his daughter.
But Janet found out after a friend walked past and told her she saw Nicole talking to a ‘stranger’ in the park. It prompted a blazing row between Janet and her mother and ended with Nicole and her parents soon moving out of Stourbridge to the nearby village of Pensnett.
It was five years until he next saw his daughter, with Garry (pictured) finding construction work in Atlanta and setting up a new life in the US after the World Cup party stopped
Nicole, 42, a veterinary receptionist, now has two children of her own and was too young to have any memories of her biological father. Pictured: The pair together
She was eight the first time she remembers seeing him. While Janet cut contact with Garry (right), her parents, who set the pair up originally, arranged for him to secretly meet his daughter (left)
But Janet (left) found out after a friend walked past and told her she saw Nicole (right) talking to a ‘stranger’ in the park. It prompted a blazing row between Janet and her mother
It ended with Nicole and her parents soon moving out of Stourbridge to the nearby village of Pensnett. Pictured: Nicole’s mother Janet
It wasn’t until almost two decades later that she heard from Garry. Pregnant and about to go into a hot tub on a hen do in Liverpool, she saw a message pop up on her phone.
‘That was not something I wanted to see at the time. I was with 20 drunk women and I got a message on Facebook saying, “I think I’m your dad”.
‘I was a little bit abusive to him at first,’ she admits, but continued to message over Facebook and was eventually persuaded by her ex-partner to meet him.
They met at Revolution bar in Huddersfield, where Garry proudly told the waitresses he was with his daughter. He gifted her an orchid, which she still keeps.
Nicole said: ‘He was really nervous but we had the conversation and he gave me his side of the story.
‘Garry had a good heart. My mum wouldn’t agree because of their relationship, but everybody who meets him said he had this aura.
She said she forgave him for leaving her. ‘He was young at the time. He wasn’t mature enough. He wasn’t mature enough at the age that he died, so he’s never going to have been mature enough then.
‘From my mum’s side he did things that were very hurtful. But when me and Garry spoke he said he loves spending time with me and always spoke about me in America.’
In the following years they stayed in touch and she introduced Garry to her children at Castle Hill, an ancient hilltop tower overlooking Huddersfield.
She was planning a trip to visit him in Florida but he was taken ill.
She recalls: ‘That was sad really. Because it took me a long time to accept him back and as we started to build that relationship, he died.’
It at Castle Hill that Nicole scattered some of his ashes. She returned last week to watch the documentary of his adventure in his company.
The rest of The Disco Firm dedicated the documentary to Garry and are reuniting at this summer’s World Cup.
Mr Allen said: ‘The trip made us grow up and realise there was more to life than Stourbridge and Lye.
‘We had to get jobs and the opportunities were better there than back home, so it was a no-brainer really.
Garry and his friends called themselves The Disco Firm, and were all Wolves fans from Stourbridge and Lye, Worcestershire, with the exception of Mr Arnold, who was from Solihull and a Birmingham City fan. Pictured in Dallas in 1987 after relocating the US. Gary Allen in the red cap with Stuart wrapped in a towel
Garry settled in Atlanta, married and moved to Florida where he remained until he passed away from pancreatitis and severe liver damage two years ago. Pictured: Stuart, back second left, and Gary Allen, centre right, in striped shirt
The group’s adventures in Mexico have now been featured in a documentary called Lost Down Mexico Way which follows their adventures over the years, and their friendship that has endured through four decades. Pictured: Stuart, second right, and Gary Allen, left
After Garry’s passing, the rest of The Disco Firm dedicated the documentary to him and are reuniting at this summer’s World Cup. Pictured: Gary Allen, left, Stuart, centre, and American man they befriended, known as Texas Steve, right, at a recent meet-up in the US
‘We have got together at reunions over the years but this time there’s a massive group of lads coming over from the UK too and we’re all meeting for an England game.
‘The lads I met are like brothers to me, we’re all just family and have always stayed in touch.’
In the wake of their 1986 adventure Mr Allen went on to build a company from scratch in the sewage and drain equipment industry turning over $20million annually before retiring last year. He has two children and divides his time between Atlanta and Italy with his wife.
Mr Bates, 63, a father of four, who lives in Houston, Texas, is successful in the car industry, while Mr Arnold stayed in Mexico where he became head of a school in Monterrey, where he still lives after marrying a former Miss Mexico beauty queen and raising four daughters.
Louise says today she is oddly proud of her brother’s infamous trip: ‘I really didn’t blame him and I’m glad he did it. Because you can make it over there and he was having such a blast. Here at the time there were no jobs and he found work there.’
