Bend It Like Bullard Page 21

  When you grow up being taught that football is all about the team and then you make it as a pro to find out that business comes first, it can leave you with a bit of an empty, horrible feeling.

  I must have around 200 numbers in my phone of all the people I’ve met through football and would be happy to have a drink with. But how many of them do I actually trust? I doubt there’s more than a dozen. And that’s because we were all ships that passed in the night as the game became more and more money driven. We were just the pawns in that game, albeit pawns who earned a lot of cash.

  It’s hard to complain when I was lucky enough to do so well out of the game. But it’s also hard to explain what football can be like sometimes – at Hull, I was treated with no respect or decency and feelings like that can linger longest.

  Luckily, I’m a happy-go-lucky old sod so I didn’t spend too much time moping around. Instead, I got my head down and got on with it, waiting for my fairy godmother – or Paul Jewell, as he’s better known – to come and save me.

  * * *

  MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR DOWNTIME; WHY GO ON ONE NIGHT OUT WHEN YOU CAN GO ON TWO?

  * * *

  ‘Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.’ Sun Tzu

  I grabbed the ball for the free kick, feeling as confident as usual about scoring. Just because I was thirty-three, playing on two dodgy knees and in the twilight of my career, didn’t mean I’d lost any of my on-pitch swagger. You’d have had to wrestle me to the ground to nick the ball from me for any set piece – but my Ipswich team-mate Keith Andrews didn’t fancy a tussle.

  We were comfortably beating Coventry in a televised match when we won the free kick about twenty-five yards from goal. Keith also fancied himself in those situations, so he’d come over to stake his claim.

  He was very much like me as a player in that he wanted to do everything on the pitch and had no interest in sharing the workload. Taking it in turns doesn’t really tend to work for free kicks in any case because ideally you only want one player to be responsible for them so that man can get his eye in, get a feel for it in each game and gain more confidence.

  ‘I want this one,’ I told him straight away.

  ‘Nah, nah,’ he said, doing his best impression of a kid making an ambulance noise.

  ‘No, I want it,’ I insisted.

  ‘Come on then, let’s do rock, paper, scissors for it,’ he said.

  Whoah, hang on a minute. We’re professional footballers, in the middle of a televised match and he wants to play a daft children’s game to decide who should take a free kick?

  After a second’s reflection, I decided it was a great idea.

  ‘You’re on.’

  One, two, three … Bang!

  My rock crushed his scissors.

  I was taking the free kick.

  And I missed it.

  By miles.

  But it didn’t matter too much as we won the game comfortably. Except the TV cameras had caught us playing our little game and the touchline reporter asked the gaffer Paul Jewell about it afterwards.

  ‘It’s a waste of time me doing free kicks and corners if they want to do their own thing,’ he told them, which was a slightly softer version of what he told us afterwards.

  ‘You two fucking about with rock, paper, scissors – that ain’t the done thing, is it?’ he said. ‘You made us look like a pub team.’

  But Paul knew what I was like from years before when we were at Wigan together. For all the planning he’d do in training and team meetings before games, I’d often go off and do my own thing, which drove him round the bend – at times, he told me, he wanted to kill me.

  He still signed me again, though, so I couldn’t have been that bad, could I?

  And thank goodness he did come in for me again because I was just about done with football after my career had gone completely off the rails at Hull.

  I’d been in and out of the team under Nigel Pearson and the club were still desperate to get me off the payroll. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from the chairman Adam Pearson, telling me that Paul Jewell was interested in taking me on loan to Ipswich for the rest of the season.

  Hallelujah.

  Not only would I escape my Hull nightmare, I’d be playing regular football again and I’d be reunited with my old Wigan gaffer.

  The phone call with Paul was one of the easiest conversations I’ve ever had in my life.

  ‘Do you want to come and play for Ipswich on loan?’ Paul asked me.

  ‘Fucking right I do!’ I replied. ‘I’m not playing here and they don’t like me. Of course I want to come.’

  I raced down to Portman Road and couldn’t wait to get started. I could tell from the minute I arrived that the place needed a lift so I took it upon myself to get the boys buzzing again – not that I needed much encouragement.

  Paul had only been in the hotseat there for a couple of weeks when I turned up. He’d come in to replace Roy Keane, with the club sixth from bottom. And as I got to know my new team-mates, I realised that Keane had made quite an impact at Ipswich but not necessarily in the right way.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but Keane had scared the living shit out of those boys. It was such a quiet dressing room because the former gaffer had ruled with fear and an iron fist. That lot wouldn’t have said boo to a goose so it took a while for some of them to come out of their shells and realise it was fine to mess about a bit after training and enjoy their football again.

  And as they all relaxed, they started to share some of their favourite Keane stories with me – blimey, it was almost like I was their football shrink or something. After hearing all their stories, it occurred to me I’d arrived there at just the right time as the bloke sounded like a proper, full-blown nutcase.

  Once, after a match they’d lost, Keane had the whole team sitting in the dressing room and he was talking to them while doing his tie up in the mirror.

  ‘Tactics,’ he said. ‘Everyone goes on about formation and tactics.’

  He turned round for a moment, pointed to the tactics board in the changing room and asked one of his coaches to set it up, before continuing his rant about tactics while fiddling with his tie in the mirror.

  After a minute, with absolutely no warning, he turned around from the mirror and launched himself two-footed into the tactics board, smashing it to pieces as his stunned team looked on with mouths wide open.

  ‘That’s what tactics mean,’ he said, surveying the wreckage of the board. ‘Fuck all in this game.’

  But, by far my favourite Keane story was told to me by new team-mate Damien Delaney. Unsurprisingly, it came after another defeat when the gaffer was going off on one in the dressing room. This was all taking place in front of an old boy, who was stood at the door because he had to keep an eye on one of the players who was supposed to be doing a drugs test after the game.

  When the drugs boys come along after the match, they have to stick with you until you can piss for them – which is why they’re known as the ‘piss fellas’.

  So Keane was ranting and raving when he turned to one player and said, ‘And you, if you carry on like that …’ – he turned and pointed to the old piss fella at the door – ‘… you’ll be taking the piss for the rest of your life like him!’

  The place erupted. Even the innocent piss fella couldn’t escape the fury of that man.

  But that dressing room was soon alive and kicking again as we set about the business of moving away from the relegation zone. I was absolutely raring to go as I’d missed so much football, almost half the season. But my fitness was never in question and I hit the ground running in the first game I played, away to Derby, where I scored on my debut.

  We were losing when the ball popped up to me about thirty yards from goal. I volleyed it first time and it thundered into the net via a bounce over goalkeeper Stephen Bywater, who probably should have saved it. What a C-U-… no actually, let’s not go there.

  That sparked a grea
t run for me and the club as we finished the season well, moving into mid-table – I also banged in a few belting goals along the way, including two in a win at Cardiff. The first I smashed in from the far corner of the box into the opposite corner of the goal, and the other was a free kick, which I celebrated with an in-joke from Ipswich training sessions.

  During our extremely lengthy warm-up and warm-down sessions with fitness coach Andy Liddell, the boys would always complain: ‘Fucking hell, this is killing me!’ So I developed this daft way of running where I would lower my back a bit and take really silly stride lengths, a little bit like a chicken – I christened it the ‘Energy Saver’. When they were all moaning, I would run about like a chicken and say, ‘This ain’t bothering me boys, I’m on the energy saver. You should really try this, lads, you can save so much energy.’

  I’d only ever done it in training, but I gave it a spontaneous public airing after that goal, which the boys liked while nobody else would have had a clue what it meant. Nice one, Jim.

  It was really just about enjoying the moment because it doesn’t matter if you’re twenty-three or thirty-three, you’re always going to enjoy moments like those. The Ipswich fans were also loving it and they’d always sing this chant about me (it’s to the tune of ‘I Love You Baby’ if you want to join in):

  Oh Jimmy Bullard,

  You’re the love of my life,

  Oh Jimmy Bullard,

  I’d let you shag my wife,

  Oh Jimmy Bullard,

  I want curly hair too.

  I’d heard it sung about other players too over the years, but it was still fantastic to hear it from a new set of fans when I’d only been at the club for about five minutes. The fans at Fulham also had a great chant about me (before they started singing that I was a greedy bastard – they literally changed their tune pretty quickly, didn’t they?) which was a piss-take of the Liverpool song about Steven Gerrard to the tune of ‘Que Sera Sera’:

  Jim Bullard, Bullard,

  He’s better than Steve Gerrard,

  He’s thinner than Frank Lampard,

  Jim Bullard, Bullard.

  It’s always a weird feeling to hear a chant about yourself. At first, you don’t really have a clue what’s being sung as you’re too wrapped up in the game, but after a while it occurs to you that’s your name you keep hearing, or someone else might give you a nudge and tell you the fans are singing about you.

  The giveaway that the fans haven’t really got a specific chant for you was always ‘There’s only one Jimmy Bullard’, which they used to sing to me at Peterborough.

  But I certainly preferred hearing that than being jeered by Hull fans years later, and that whole experience seemed to be a distant memory when I was awarded the Ipswich Player of the Year trophy. I was gobsmacked as I’d only been there for sixteen games so I wasn’t even sure if that was right. But I’d scored five goals in that time and played really well, so who was I to argue? Another one for the mantelpiece.

  Sadly, that was to be my last really consistent, sustained run of good form.

  Even though it had gone so well at Ipswich, when the season ended I was left in a sort of limbo as my loan was over and I was technically still a Hull player. Luckily, my form at Ipswich had helped spark a bit of interest in me from other clubs and there were a few approaches over the summer, with one of them happening at a rather unfortunate time.

  I was on holiday in Ibiza with all my old mates. I have football mates from all the teams I’ve played with; I’ve got golf mates from over the years; and the same with fishing too. I also have my old mates, the blokes I’ve known since I was at school, most of whom are lunatics. And there I was on holiday with them when I got a call from the Queens Park Rangers manager, Neil Warnock.

  QPR had just been promoted to the Premier League and Neil was sniffing around in my general direction, so this was an amazing chance to get back in the top flight – well, it would’ve been had he not called while we were all getting blind drunk around the pool.

  I foolishly answered the phone, more than likely because I was half-cut.

  ‘Hello Neil, how are you doing?’ I said, putting on my best possible I’ve-not-had-a-drink voice, one which is so ridiculous that it doesn’t sound like me at all and, if anything, makes the other person suspect that I’ve had a drink.

  I mouthed ‘It’s Neil Warnock’ to my mates and they all started laughing and shouting as I tried to move away from them so we could speak properly.

  ‘Sorry Neil,’ I said, ‘I’m on holiday with some mates and we’ve all had a couple of drinks.’

  ‘It’s fine, you’re on your holidays,’ he replied.

  But, by then, I was cracking up laughing too because my mates were winding me up something rotten. I also found it quite funny that Neil Warnock was calling me on my holiday, because sometimes I just revert to being a football fan who thinks it’s hilarious to talk to all these famous people.

  While we carried on chatting, the nutters were trying to tape me to a chair with the aim of then throwing me into the pool, so while I was on the phone about a potential transfer, I was simultaneously trying to fight them off.

  He was talking at length about pairing me in the middle with Shaun Derry, another experienced player, but I was clearly unable to concentrate on the conversation thanks to my inebriated state and the close attention of my mates.

  After about ten minutes, I could tell that Neil was starting to think this might not be such a good idea after all and began to make his excuses. The conversation had started with him talking to me about playing for QPR, but by the time we said goodbye, he was pretty much saying he didn’t think it would work.

  When I told my mates, they roared with laughter at the snub and some of them still talk about it now, winding me up that Shaun Derry was a much better player than me. Still, that’s what mates are for, right?

  Luckily for me, Ipswich got off to a poor start to the new season and the fans were calling for the club to re-sign me. You’re always a much better player in football when you’re not actually on the pitch.

  The pressure was on Paul Jewell as the club had lost four out of their first five matches of the season, including a disastrous 7-1 tonking at Peterborough. A few days after that match, I joined the club on a permanent deal. Coming in on the back of a result like that, it would have been hard not to make an improvement.

  I must’ve done something right because I came off the bench in my first match against Leeds with us a goal behind and we scored two late goals to take the three points.

  I’d love to take credit for either of them, but the truth is I wasn’t really involved because the gaffer now had me playing in a much deeper role than when I had been on loan earlier in the year. He wanted me to sit in front of the back four more, rather than in my usual floating midfield role where I’d pop up all over the park.

  We played a midfield diamond and during my loan spell, I had been at the head of it, just behind the strikers, but once I’d signed permanently, the gaffer played me at the back of the diamond. I think it was because he had so many attacking midfielders like Keith Andrews and Lee Bowyer, so he wanted to fit everyone in.

  Obviously, I preferred to play in my normal position and I was a bit upset about it, but I had to be professional, get my head down and get on with it. I decided not to make a fuss at all as I was just so happy to be playing again. After all the problems I’d had at Hull, the last thing I needed was another argument with the manager – especially not one who’s keen on shutting heads in doors.

  So I got on with it and struck up some good friendships with my new team-mates, including our striker Michael Chopra, another brilliant character and complete wrong ’un, who reminded me of my old mates.

  I got to know him pretty well as I used to stay at his place twice a week so I would be local to the training ground. That way, I didn’t need to up sticks and move house again and could base myself back in Cobham with Diane and the kids.

  I never knew
whether to take Chops seriously because there was always a little bit of the wind-up merchant about him. At one point that season, things weren’t going too well on the pitch so the gaffer called a team meeting after training to allow us all to air our grievances. The idea was that it would be a constructive way of letting the players get those little simmering tensions out into the open with the aim of improving team spirit, unity and, ultimately, results.

  So Chops, who’d scored seven times that season, went off on one about the lack of goalscoring support he was receiving.

  ‘You can’t talk,’ said the gaffer. ‘You haven’t scored for years.’

  ‘To be fair boss,’ said Chops, ‘you’re better off signing Lionel Messi to play with these bunch of monkeys. There’s no-one that can put a through-ball in and the seven I did score, I set up myself.’

  Now, I don’t know what goes on in the average workplace because I was lucky enough to be a footballer, but I’m pretty sure you cannot say that to your colleagues whatever your line of work. You certainly can’t say that to your team-mates in football.

  Chops coming out with that in front of twenty other pros was animal behaviour. I was crying with laughter at the nerve of the bloke and even the manager couldn’t hide the smirk on his face at Chopra’s sheer audacity. But none of the other boys found it amusing and thought he was a bit of an arsehole.

  Chopra actually had a far worse problem than worrying about what his team-mates thought of him though, because he was a serious gambling addict. So serious, that he owed a bunch of gangsters a hell of a lot of money – about £150,000 to be precise.

  One morning, this shifty-looking character wearing desert boots came on to the training ground. I took one look at him and instantly thought he was trouble as he looked a right handy bastard.

  The gaffer called security, who moved the gangster on, but he waited across the road from the pitches, on the way to the changing rooms.