Bend It Like Bullard Page 15

  ‘Blinding night last night,’ he replied, giving me a wink and getting into the lift, and showing me straight away that he was as decent a man as Coleman.

  I can’t think of any manager/assistant manager combo who would’ve presided over a night like that. But that was Cookie’s relaxed management style, possibly down to the fact he was still a player at heart. He had moved into management after his career ended early when he broke his leg badly in a car crash aged thirty, but he still seemed like one of us.

  For that reason, there seemed like there was a good spirit about the place, with the added bonus that Fulham was a great opportunity for me to advance my career. On top of that, my wages had been doubled.

  I was now earning somewhere in the region of about £25,000 per week, which was mind-blowing. Whenever I made a leap in my pay bracket like that, I always thought back to my non-league days. Madness, utter madness.

  And I spent the whole of that pre-season trying to get my head around the transfer fee of £2.5 million that Fulham had paid Wigan to trigger my contract release clause. I was a seven-figure player who wasn’t afraid to put his testicles on the line – or on a team-mate’s head – for the cause.

  When I wasn’t larking around, I was determined to hit the ground running at my new club. One Friday after training, I was working on my free kicks. Ask any player about set pieces and they’ll all say the same thing: practise, practise, practise.

  Ever since I’d been at Peterborough, I wasn’t afraid to put the hours in after training and I’d spend many afternoons whacking free kicks into the net – or not far from it – until I was kicked off the pitch by an irate member of the groundsman’s team.

  To me, it was like being back on the green in front of my parents’ house, where I would just keep going until it was dark. I loved it and I wanted to be the best I possibly could.

  That particular Friday, I was practising at the Cottage end of my new home ground on my own because I’d worn the goalkeepers out. I lined the ball up on the same spot, about twenty-five yards from goal, and aimed for the top left corner. A couple of steps and bang! In it went. Except it didn’t. I must’ve taken about eighty or ninety free kicks during the hour or so I was out there and missed most of them. I hit the post, the bar or missed by miles. But I kept going anyway.

  I’d taken that many that a little bit of the grass was starting to get worn out where I was standing and that was the Fulham groundsman’s cue to get the arsehole with me and throw me off the pitch. Groundsmen don’t tend to like me very much, but we were at home to Sheffield United the next day so I could see his point. The git.

  Twenty-four hours later, the match was goalless when we won a free kick in exactly the same spot I’d been hitting them from the day before. I could even see the marks in the grass that the groundsman had been getting pissed off about.

  I placed the ball down as I had done the day before and as I stepped back, I looked up and knew I was going to score. It was a weird feeling but I just thought ‘goal’. I knew it was going in. I had 18,000 in the ground behind me and the adrenaline was pumping – which was exactly what had been missing the day before.

  As soon as the ball left my foot, I was ready to run off and celebrate, but just in case my gut feeling was wrong, I hung about and watched it arrow into the top left corner – exactly what I couldn’t make it do the previous day.

  And then I was off, all the drama and excitement of the moment came screaming out of me as I got mobbed by my new team-mates. I could see my old man watching on in the stands and I saluted him. In those seconds of joy, every bit of hard work I’d done to get to that moment came pouring out of me and the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention.

  Once I’d finished celebrating with my team-mates, I tried to take it all in and acknowledge the fans, but Graham Poll, who was refereeing that day, was having none of it and asked me to get back into my own half so we could get on with the game. I hated that. This is the bit I worked so hard for all week and now some killjoy was telling me to cut the celebrations short.

  The way I celebrated that goal, you’d have thought it was my first for the club and first for an age. But the funny thing was that I’d also scored three days before when I stuck in a last-minute penalty to get us a point against Bolton. Always make the most of it …

  I also smacked the post later on in that Sheffield United game, which we went on to win thanks to my goal. I’d had a great game and Cookie was brilliant afterwards as he told the press that I was the best two million quid he’d ever spent. I had to do loads of interviews after the match as I’d scored the only goal, which meant Match of the Day, radio and newspapers, but I didn’t mind that one bit.

  I played with a lot of players who hated doing interviews and would try to shirk them, which I could never understand because I was always up for it. It was a chance to talk to the world, let people know a bit more about who you are and possibly even open up new opportunities off the pitch if you were half-decent in front of the camera.

  A few of the boys I played with were very guarded and were just worried about saying the wrong thing in an interview, like slagging off the club or another player by mistake. Not me. I had nothing to hide and would always say it how it is, which seemed to work for me.

  But I hadn’t said much the previous weekend when I made my Fulham debut at Manchester United. No matter how many teams I was a part of that got beat at Man United during my career, I never tired of playing at Old Trafford. What a place that is.

  I think the problem was I used to spend too much time floating around in a dream-like state when I played there so it was like my teams were playing with ten men. And it’s hard enough to play a team like Man United when it’s eleven v eleven.

  Six months earlier I’d been part of the Wigan team that was walloped by United in the Carling Cup final and there I was making my first start for my new club and it was déjà vu all over again, to coin a phrase.

  Just nineteen minutes into the game, and we were four down. The match was being televised at home and all over the world. I don’t think I could have been more humiliated if we’d been forced to play the game naked. But this is what a team like that can do to you. For all the dreams I had as a kid of playing against Man United, the reality was very different.

  Cookie didn’t go too crazy in the dressing room afterwards though. It was the first game of the season and we’d played Man United. Obviously, it wasn’t acceptable but that can happen in the Premier League.

  We bounced back well and things were going brilliantly for me, until we played Newcastle and I busted my knee. Throughout that frustrating time, I still managed to keep my spirits up thanks to some of my new team-mates and a few more Bouba-Diop-style pranks.

  Like all walks of life, footballers come in all shapes and sizes but tend to laugh and joke at the same kind of things. But, occasionally, you’ll meet a player who’s unlike anyone you’ve ever played with before. Step forward Moritz Volz, Fulham’s proud-to-be-strange right-back.

  Don’t get me wrong, he was a great lad to be around and very funny too. But he relished being different. He prided himself on that oddness and played on it in the same way as I played on my reputation as a joker.

  Every day, we’d all drive into the players’ car park in our flash motors and get out of them thinking we were the bollocks. By then, my Fiesta had become a Range Rover, mainly because I could fit all my golf and fishing gear in there. I’d park that, get out of the car and then Volzy would turn up on his bike with a basket on the front containing fresh bread he’d just bought for his missus. I can’t think of anyone who does that, let alone a footballer.

  He’d park his bike next to all our cars and stroll into the training ground changing room as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He’d have cycled all the way through London to the training ground and should have been knackered before we’d even started training – but he’d still perform way above most other people’s levels because he was an absolu
te animal.

  He was one of those defenders who would throw themselves in front of a bomb, like Newcastle’s Steven Taylor but twice as hard. Although, one morning, he hurled himself in front of a shot of mine which folded his hand in half and busted all the ligaments in his wrist.

  I would’ve felt bad for him, but it was really Volzy’s fault for thinking he was a goalkeeper. If you chuck yourself in front of everything, you’re going to get hurt. I was never in any danger of suffering like that as I was a ‘back bloke’ – the only place I was taking a shot was straight in the back.

  Another of Volzy’s standard oddball lines was to always say that he’d scored three Premier League goals and then let you in on the fact that two of them were own goals. For a German, he was a very funny bloke. And so was Danny Murphy, who arrived at the club about a year after I did, although he wasn’t actually German.

  Danny and I got on very well, which was lucky because we played in central midfield together too, so a good understanding was crucial. Once I was fit again, we worked out a pretty good relationship on the pitch where he’d let me go wherever I fancied. As a central midfielder I wasn’t really supposed to overlap the right winger and put a cross in, but that was the way I played and Danny would help me out by sitting a bit deeper and allowing me to run around like a lunatic.

  He had always taken free kicks at his previous clubs, but when he saw me taking them for Fulham he didn’t even try to suggest he should have a go. I was the free-kick governor there, so I let Danny have penalties instead. If I’m being really honest, and this hurts, he was probably a better penalty-taker than me.

  Danny was a hell of a player and he became a good friend off the pitch too as he’s a sensible bloke with a good head on his shoulders, the exact opposite of me. If we were playing away, as soon as we got to the hotel, Danny’s would be the first door I’d knock on for a quick chat – and I’d still be there at one in the morning.

  One of my biggest problems with being a footballer was that I hated being on my own, and on those away trips I’d often be given my own room because nobody wanted to share with me. I mean absolutely nobody was interested in sharing with me because I’d drive my team-mates mad and keep them up all night. It was just my way. I had loads of nervous energy and no idea what to do with it.

  So the lads all avoided me like the plague and I was on my own – unless, of course, one of the youth team or a trialist was on the trip with us. On those occasions, I’d grab my unsuspecting victim before they had a chance to work out what was going on and say, ‘You’re rooming with me!’

  The next day the poor sod would be walking around like a bleary-eyed wreck of his former self. And the rest of the lads would point, laugh and say, ‘He’s been rooming with Jimmy.’

  One of my good mates, Michael Weirs, always tells a story about how bad I am on my own. He was staying with me up in Hull when my family were in London. He heard me calling him into my bedroom.

  ‘Weirsy! Weirsy! Come in, come in!’

  ‘What is it?’ he called back.

  ‘Come in!’

  So he came into my bedroom and found me taking a shit on my en-suite loo. He looked startled and puzzled.

  ‘Talk to me,’ I said. ‘I don’t like being on my own.’

  But for all the times they avoided rooming with me, the boys still enjoyed a good crack and I never let them down on that front.

  One of the many fire extinguisher incidents I was involved in was particularly memorable and planned to perfection. The A-Team couldn’t have done it any better.

  Fulham had these plush old marble-floored corridors inside the training ground that didn’t look like they’d be too hospitable to anyone who tried to walk on them wearing studs or football boots. So, in the interests of science, I decided to find out what would happen in those very circumstances.

  I went into the changing room and started slapping Clint Dempsey and a few of the other boys, saying, ‘Come on then. Who wants it?’ and generally acting like a tool. There’s only so much of that behaviour that the average footballer can tolerate before they take the bait and, sure enough, Clint and a few others had had enough of me and got up to throw some digs in the general direction of my face.

  I bolted it out of the changing room, on to that marble-floored corridor where I had the fire extinguisher waiting, and they followed me out there, still in their football boots.

  Oh dear.

  I pressed the nozzle on the fire extinguisher and unloaded jets of water right in their faces, and all over the floor. The resulting scene was like watching a cartoon as, one after the other, they slipped on the wet, marble floor and fell arse over tit on top of each other. What a scene that was.

  They all saw the funny side of it too – eventually, after weeks trying to kill me – but the club didn’t find it that amusing. They were furious that the floor had been sullied in that way and made me pay for it to be cleaned. And that’s why if you look at my payslip that month (not that I’ll ever let you see any of my payslips) you’ll see about £80 deducted from it with the words ‘fire extinguisher’ alongside it.

  In total I incurred around £500 worth of fire extinguisher-related fines while at Fulham – I even became known as ‘The Extinguisher’ for a while there before the usual swearing and name-calling resumed.

  Those were meticulously planned ruses, but a more spontaneous act of lunacy at Fulham occurred the day I decided to fill TJ Moncur’s car up with water for no particular reason.

  TJ was a young player who’d come up through the youth and reserve teams and was knocking on the door of the first team. One morning he pulled up at the training ground in a new Peugeot 206 convertible, which got me thinking.

  Once he’d cleared off, I grabbed a huge wheelie bin, filled it with water and poured it straight into his car. Which was quite funny, but not as funny as a convertible car with two wheelie bins full of water in it. I soon rectified that situation.

  Little did I know, but there was CCTV in the training ground car park and, after training, TJ and a few of the boys were gathered round a screen in the club office watching footage of me pouring water into his car.

  I walked into the office, saw a crowd around the monitor and innocently asked what everyone was watching. Big mistake.

  ‘Was that you in the car park, Jim?’ someone asked me.

  ‘Errrr, no.’

  They had me bang to rights.

  ‘You bastard!’ said TJ.

  Luckily, there was a decent spell of warm weather around which helped dry the car out and I sorted it all out with TJ. Served him right for turning up in a convertible when he wasn’t long out of nappies.

  While all that was going off, it was musical chairs time in the Fulham manager’s hotseat, which was an unusual experience for me. At my previous clubs, the managers who signed me were still there when I’d moved on. Fulham was very different. Managers came and went so frequently that there was even one for whom I never actually played a game.

  It all started with Cookie’s departure, which we were all absolutely gutted about as we had so much respect for the bloke. Problems in his personal life coincided with the team going seven matches without a win and the club sacked him. It was harsh in my opinion as we weren’t doing that badly in the league. We were four points above the relegation zone with five games to play, but the club didn’t like the direction we were heading in.

  It was doubly frustrating for me as I couldn’t do anything to help because I was still recovering from my knee injury. It was my Diane who broke the news to me as she’d seen it on the telly; I hadn’t even been told. Being the man he is, Cookie wanted to say goodbye to all of us and he even did that with a smile on his face.

  The week before his sacking, the papers had run a story about how his wife had bugged his car as she suspected him of having an affair, so he came into the changing room to say goodbye to about thirty of us, looking a bit shifty.

  ‘Boys, you know what’s been in the papers about the missu
s bugging me,’ he said, but stopped suddenly and started looking around the room as if he was checking that it wasn’t also bugged. He got a big laugh for that one.

  He said his farewells to every one of us, which was great because my team-mates were saying how most managers usually just do one and don’t bother saying goodbye.

  Coleman was replaced by Lawrie Sanchez, and I’m not entirely sure he would have needed to clear his desk by the time he was given his marching orders, because he wouldn’t have had much time to put anything in it.

  He arrived in April but was gone before Christmas, during which time I was still doing my rehab. Lawrie was always very good to me and showed me plenty of understanding regarding my knee and I can safely say that he was the best manager I’ve never played for.

  By the time he left we were in a right old relegation scrap and that’s when Roy Hodgson arrived to steady the ship. His appearance coincided with my return to fitness and that beautiful moment when I scored the winner against Villa.

  I’d heard about Roy’s achievements at other clubs, but I didn’t know him at all as a person. Let’s just say he was a completely different man to Chris Coleman. They were on two opposite ends of the scale and I’d originally come to Fulham to play for Cookie.

  The truth is that Roy and I never clicked because I was far too outgoing for his liking and I had to rein that in when I was in front of him (not that it stopped me letting off the odd fire extinguisher).

  On the pitch, there were no problems as I gave my all for him, as I would’ve done for any manager, and played a big part in helping Fulham avoid relegation that season. We just never had that special relationship I’d enjoyed with Cookie and Paul Jewell at Wigan. He never really opened up to me and let me know what he was thinking like they had, but he’s not that type of manager. He was far more like a schoolteacher-style gaffer who you couldn’t get close to. The English Capello, if you like.

  Funnily enough, the only time Roy loosened up a bit was when the chairman Mohamed Al-Fayed visited the training ground.