Bend It Like Bullard Read online

  As he walked off, I was handcuffed and marched off to a nearby police station where I was put in a cell. I was in there for three hours, shitting myself, with no idea what was going to happen to me or why I was there. Even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong, I was bricking it because I’d heard so many stories about people getting stitched up abroad by bent coppers.

  Finally, after a thoroughly unpleasant ordeal, I was pulled out of the cell and interviewed by the police. Which went something like this:

  ‘So Mr Bullard, have you had face surgery?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You had face surgery, yes?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re fucking on about, mate.’

  One of the coppers pulled out my passport, except instead of my photo, there was a picture of a bloke who looked a bit like my dad but with darker hair and far scarier.

  He pointed to the picture and said: ‘You surgery.’

  ‘Are you fucking mental?’

  While this surreal interview was going on, Polly had landed back in Manchester and was straight on the phone to my old man and our agent (we shared the same one) letting them know what had happened. Which wasn’t much, as he didn’t really know what had happened and neither did I. My old man phoned him every few minutes to find out if he’d heard anything and became so frustrated and agitated that he started driving to the airport to fly out to my rescue.

  Back in Spain, my suitcase turned up in the interview room and the police started rummaging through it. I was terrified, certain they were going to plant something on me and pretend they’d found it in my case.

  All that time, they didn’t say a word.

  Then, I had my fingerprints taken and I was convinced I was never going back home.

  Finally, after an agonising wait, one of the coppers came back in and said, ‘You can go now, wrong man.’

  Thank fuck for that.

  I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. It turned out somebody they wanted to speak to had forged my passport and was pretending to be me. Which probably explained some of my dodgy performances at the end of the previous season.

  The only place I’d ever left my passport for safekeeping was in a hotel in The Algarve, and the picture of the bruiser they showed me in the fake passport did look Portuguese. So I’d been done like a kipper – but I was free to leave.

  After calling everyone at home and telling them to cancel the protest marches and the boycott of all Spanish goods, I went back to the airport and was about to buy my new ticket home when I realised I’d left my passport (the real one) back at the police station. By the time I went back to get it, I’d missed the last flight to England so I was stuck in Spain for another night.

  But at least my prison nightmare was over – which is another line I never thought I’d have to write.

  * * *

  IT IS NOT THE WINNING THAT COUNTS. WHICH IS CONVENIENT IF YOU HAPPEN TO GET RELEGATED

  * * *

  ‘Be careful when you fight monsters, because you may become one.’ Friedrich Nietzsche

  Picture the scene.

  It was a beautiful spring Monday morning on Humberside. The Humber Bridge glistened in the sunlight. The sound of birdsong filled the air, blossom was starting to fall from trees and there was a feeling of hope among all those lucky enough to be outdoors on that glorious day.

  Around a hundred members of the local Women’s Institute were lucky enough to be out and about that particular morning, as they’d planned a march across the bridge. As they strolled along, they took in those beautiful sights and sounds.

  The sun’s rays bouncing off the river.

  The larks whistling to one another.

  And myself and Nick Barmby rolling around on the grass, yelling things like ‘Fucking arsehole’ and throwing punches at each other.

  That was probably the most ridiculous situation I’ve ever been in as a footballer, and I say that having had my head shut in a door by Paul Jewell. If you’re ever going to have a fight with someone, I would highly recommend not doing it in front of a hundred old age pensioners.

  But it had to be done because I was absolutely furious with Nick, and the scrap just happened to take place in the car park by the Humber Bridge because the gaffer had decided that’s where we were going to have our warm-down that morning.

  It was the day after we’d been hammered by Everton live on telly in my first game back after my third knee injury. Not the ideal return, especially when you consider I had also had a stand-up row with Nick in the dressing room at half time. And, as is always the case with these football flashpoints, it had started over something so stupid.

  We went a goal down that day after Mikel Arteta managed to run on to a deep, back-post cross, unchallenged. Nick was supposed to have picked him up, but was yards behind him when he volleyed the ball in. Nick was normally a fantastic presence at the back post, very good in the air and always covered danger thanks to his good positional sense. But, for whatever reason, he’d gone AWOL. Not a disaster as there was only seventeen minutes gone.

  The BBC’s match report read: ‘Yakubu delivered a hanging cross from the left and Arteta volleyed home superbly at the back post, although some slack defending from Everton old boy Barmby allowed the Spaniard all the time in the world.’

  Personally, I think my version was a little better than that, but then I have inside information.

  During a break in play, I ran past Barmby and said: ‘I thought you were comfortable at the back post there, Nick?’

  ‘Fucking comfortable!’ came his angry reply. ‘You fucking cheeky bastard!’

  Whoah! I really hadn’t meant that much by the comment, other than expressing my disappointment because he was usually so good at the back post in those situations. He obviously felt like I was digging him out, but that’s football and these things happen. So I attempted to diffuse the situation: ‘Hang on a minute, all I said was that I thought you were comfortable on the back stick. We’re still in the game, it doesn’t matter.’

  But he was still muttering away at me, and clearly not in a complimentary way. We eventually came back into the changing room at half time 2-1 down, still very much in the game, but Nick wasn’t interested in that.

  He was standing there waiting for me when I got in and, in front of the whole team and management, he lost the plot and crossed a line. Instead of sticking to what happened on the pitch, he took the incredible step of bringing money, and specifically my Hull contract, into it. I could not believe what I was hearing.

  ‘This football club paid £5 million for you and pays you £45,000 a week,’ he was ranting, as if to say I needed to be doing more to justify my wages.

  I was incensed. How on earth had he gone from being pissed off about me having a go at him on the pitch to talking about my contract? I was more aware than anyone of how much I owed the club seeing as I was only playing my seventh game for Hull in more than a year, because of two serious knee injuries. But I certainly didn’t need him discussing my personal business in the middle of the dressing room at half-time of a crucial match.

  I was raging inside as I’d never been spoken to like that before. I could see some of the other boys were shaking their heads implying that Nick was out of order but what I didn’t get, and still don’t to this day, is why Phil Brown or any of the management team never got involved.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, fuming. ‘You’ve obviously got a bee in your bonnet about me. It’s not about money where I’m from. We’ve let a goal in and now you’re digging out my contract. We’ll sort it out tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Anytime, anywhere,’ was his reply as we all stormed back out on the pitch to concede three more goals and get pasted. No surprise there.

  I always had difficulty kipping after a game because of the adrenaline, but that night, I couldn’t sleep a wink because I was so angry. I wanted to kill Nick Barmby and that’s all I could think about. I tossed and turned all night until it was time to go to the training ground fo
r the warm-down.

  But that Monday morning, the gaffer had decided we’d have our warm-down session out by the Humber Bridge, rather than pore over hours of video analysis of our drubbing the day before.

  We’d been out there before, it’s a mile-and-a-half each way during which we’d do walking and jogging, then it would be back to the club for ice baths and massages. Which was great, because I would certainly need cooling down when we got back to base.

  I travelled over to the bridge in my team-mate Richard Garcia’s car and he sensed something was up.

  ‘You’re not right from the game still, are you Jim?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘There’s definitely going to be a fight here.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you are raging!’ he said.

  But I barely noticed because I was focused on nothing other than Barmby.

  Richard parked the car and, as we got out, I spotted my nemesis and the red mist fully descended.

  ‘Come here you,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to have a word, haven’t we?’

  As Nick walked towards me, I reached out to grab him and he threw a punch at my head straight away. Within seconds we were having a proper ding-dong, rolling around on the ground, trying to belt the crap out of each other.

  We were both throwing punches, but none really seemed to land. I was so full of anger and adrenaline that I probably wouldn’t have felt it if Nick had landed one in any case.

  I’d love to be able to say that I sorted him out, but the truth is that it was little more than explosive grappling for a few seconds. As the gaffer said later, it was hardly Ali-Frazier.

  We both ended up lying on a bush with no real leverage to get out of it so loads of the boys dived in to split us up. Steve Parkin, the assistant manager, grabbed me by the arm and walked me down the path, while the rest of the lads took Nick and headed off in the opposite direction to make sure we were as far apart as possible … Except nobody realised that this particular path was circular, meaning that after a few minutes we all met up again!

  Parkin kept telling me to calm down, but I was still livid and, as soon as I saw Barmby again, I shrugged Steve’s arm away and launched myself at Nick. But this time, Barmby was protected by Amr Zaki and Kamil Zayatte, who stood in my path like two blocks of flats. I just bounced off them and had to call it a day.

  Just when it seemed like things couldn’t have got any worse, I returned to the training ground and they did too. The gaffer had started receiving complaints from members of the WI, who had called into the club and the local radio station, appalled by what they’d seen – and I don’t mean our wild (and wildly ineffective) fighting styles, which they would have had every right to criticise.

  I was completely unaware that there had been any spectators because I was so zoned in on righting what I perceived to be a wrong. Had they stuck up a pop-up arena and put us in a boxing ring in the middle of the fight, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  This was not what Brownie needed with the club in the relegation zone and the pressure only increasing after our performance the previous day; Barmby and I were summoned to his office to sort the whole thing out, like a pair of naughty schoolchildren – as if the whole morning hadn’t been humiliating enough.

  But even then, after everything that had happened, neither of us was prepared to climb down. I was still seething with anger and I’m certain Nick felt exactly the same. We were both big characters at the club, stubborn as mules and, crucially for the gaffer, essential to Hull’s chances of staying up. As Brownie said, he wanted his strong characters to be fighting for the cause, not each other.

  He had to have us working together if we were going to have any chance of survival – and he was going to have any chance of keeping his job. But the stand-off continued for hours until the gaffer threatened to get rid of both of us if we couldn’t sort it out. A very smart move.

  I realised that fighting in public like that while representing the club was a sackable offence, while Nick was Mr Hull City and there was no way he could have given that up for anything. Eventually, Hull skipper Ian Ashbee joined us in the room to help sort it all out and we all shook hands, agreeing to put it behind us.

  Which was easily said, but even when I was shaking Barmby’s hand I had to ask him where all the contract stuff had come from, because it still didn’t make any sense to me.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It was something that Neville Southall once said to me.’

  Oh, right. Well, that’s okay then. The legendary goalkeeper had once had a pop at Nick when he was a young player at Everton, so he now had every right to use that one against me. It made perfect sense. If only he’d explained that to me the day before, we needn’t have had that fight in front of a bunch of old women.

  Of course, I realised we shouldn’t have fought like that in public or private, but what Nick had said to me had grown out of all proportion in my mind and I felt really hurt and disrespected. For all the japes and jokes, I’d never been that rude to anyone and never would be.

  I had to stand up for myself, because Nick was highly regarded. He was Hull through and through and went on to manage the club so I had to back my corner or other people in that dressing room might have thought it was acceptable to speak to me like that.

  And it worked, because from that day on, he never spoke or acted in that way to me ever again. I’ve been heavily criticised for fighting in public like that, but I believe I earned respect from Nick for what I did as he would never say anything like that again.

  The fallout from the incident continued all week. The papers had a field day, there were radio phone-ins about it on the local station and poor Brownie was having to offer apologies to everyone for his players’ behaviour. The only person not to get an apology was me as I still felt the gaffer had let me down by not condemning what Barmby had said in the first place, and I told him that, too.

  My team-mate George Boateng, who wasn’t at the Humber Bridge with us, did nothing to help calm the situation either, although I had to laugh when I heard he told the press: ‘I’m sorry, because I missed it. I wasn’t there. I would have paid to watch it!’

  Probably the worst bit about it was that within a week Brownie had been sacked, which I was gutted about. We’d actually played really well in our next match, which was at home to Arsenal – just what we needed after such a traumatic week.

  They’d taken an early lead but we were awarded a penalty when Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink was clattered by Sol Campbell. I grabbed the ball and absolutely leathered it into the top left corner past Manuel Almunia. Unstoppable.

  I ran across to the crowd and punched the air twice – a completely unintentional reference to what had happened a few days before. But, as it happened, they were two far better right-handers than any I’d thrown at Nick.

  We were looking good for a decent point, but then Arsenal went and scored in injury time and that was it for us. And that was it for Phil Brown too as he was shown the door soon after.

  I felt exactly the same way when Chris Coleman was sacked by Fulham. First and foremost, I was gutted for Brownie because he was absolutely devastated about it. Hull was his whole world. He loved that football club so much and he’d taken them into the top flight.

  He called us all in to tell us the club were getting rid of him, and I could see just how hurt he was. Admittedly, he had upset a few of the lads, especially with the Man City on-pitch team talk the season before. Some of the boys never forgave him for that. If I’d been there at the time I really don’t think it would have continued to bother me for that long, but many footballers are like sheep – and not just because I’ve Pritt Sticked their towels – they hear an opinion in the dressing room and loads of them immediately adopt it as their own without thinking for themselves.

  There was a mixed reaction to Brownie’s departure. Some of us like myself and the skipper Ian Ashbee counted him as a friend and were upset for him; others like Boateng shed no tears. In a passionate TV interview after we’
d been relegated, he told the watching millions that the team had never recovered from that on-pitch dressing down, and that if Brown had been sacked earlier in the season we might have stayed up. Harsh, but that was his opinion.

  In terms of the football, I wasn’t sure he deserved to get the boot as he was just having a bad year, which can happen. Yes, we were in the relegation zone at that time, but there were still nine games left and we were only three points from safety. We’d done it by the skin of our teeth the season before and I felt we could do it again.

  Like when Cookie left Fulham, I thought about myself and no player is going to be happy about the manager who signed him being dismissed. It left me feeling slightly insecure. When Cookie signed me at Fulham, I went to play for him as he’d sold me a vision of how he wanted me to play and I was bang up for it. I’m not sure Roy Hodgson had the same vision for me and things went a bit sour.

  At Hull, Brownie had also promised me the free role that I craved. I could go out on the pitch and pretty much do what I liked as long as I made things happen for the team. He’d also impressed me massively with his belief and ambition for the club.

  When I signed on the dotted line for Hull, I didn’t do it purely for the money. Don’t get me wrong, a £5 million transfer and £45,000 per week wages were clearly extremely attractive, but there were other clubs also interested in signing me from Fulham.

  Before I’d put pen to paper, I was in a restaurant with Mark Curtis, a football agent. He put me on the phone to Sam Allardyce, who was the Blackburn Rovers manager at the time and we had a chat about what I was looking for in terms of wages and length of contract. I told him I felt a bit weird discussing it on the phone and that it would be better if we all met up, face to face. I never heard from him again, but that’s the random nature of football.

  The extra incentive to join Hull – other than the fact that they actually wanted me – was provided by Brown, who, alongside the club’s chairman, Paul Duffen, was probably the most ambitious person I ever met in football. He’d already signed players like Geovanni and Boateng, and was determined to make sure Hull became an established Premier League team.