Bend It Like Bullard Page 22

  I was walking up that road when training had finished and was stood just behind Chops, when this bloke reappeared and walked towards us. He grabbed Chopra by the scruff of his neck and said: ‘Are you Michael Chopra?’

  Quick as a flash, Chops replied: ‘No, it ain’t fucking me mate, it’s him over there’, and pointed to our young left-back Aaron Cresswell, who was behind us.

  ‘It is you, you cheeky bastard!’ said the gangster, tightening his grip on Chopra’s collar. ‘I know it’s you cos I googled you. Make sure you get my fucking money back, okay?’

  ‘Okay, okay, okay, I’ll get it for you,’ said Chops, as the bloke let him go and walked off.

  A couple of weeks later, the gaffer got a phone call from one of the gangsters, trying to shake him down for Chopra’s money. ‘Make sure your boy gets the money because otherwise I’m coming to the club to see you.’

  The rationale was that they were clearly never getting their money off Chops, but they certainly had a better chance of getting it from the club. The last thing Paul needed was gangsters on his case, so the club gave Chopra a huge loan in order for him to pay off his debts, on the condition that he went into therapy for his gambling addiction.

  Off he went to the Sporting Chance Clinic to sort himself out. I felt sorry for him being stuck there, but he had a bad problem and it needed fixing. Which was why I was very surprised to see my phone ringing with his name on the screen after he’d been in rehab for only three days.

  ‘Hello Jim, I’m better!’ he said brightly.

  ‘What? You’ve only been there three days, you mug!’ I replied, almost laughing but I thought better of it.

  ‘You know what they let me do today? They put me at the bottom of the swimming pool and let me find myself. And now I’m complete.’

  Now I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘Fuck off, you need three years at the bottom of a pool to sort yourself out!’ was the best I could offer in the circumstances.

  After a fortnight of rehab, Chops was back with the club again but the clinic hadn’t sorted out his problems at all as I discovered one night when I was staying at his place. For starters, when I was talking to him, he wasn’t focusing on a word I said. I know I’m not that interesting, but it was obvious his mind was elsewhere, which was a tell-tale sign.

  I woke up at 4am on that particular night as I needed a wee – it happens when you get older, trust me – and as I walked to the bathroom I saw Chops looking at the racing odds on his telly using the red button, or whatever replaced Teletext.

  He sprung up out of his seat and rushed to turn the telly off, saying, ‘It’s for my mate!’

  ‘So why turn it off then?’ I asked him, once I’d done my wee – I had to get my priorities straight.

  ‘Because I was scared,’ was his rubbish response, which made me laugh.

  ‘Look, you don’t have to lie to me,’ I said.

  ‘Please, please don’t tell anyone,’ he pleaded with me. ‘They’ll sack me if they find out, you know what they’re like.’

  I told him I wouldn’t and I didn’t. I’m a man of my word but I’m not sure if I was helping him by doing that. Weighing it up, he didn’t need to be given the elbow by the club. That would only have made things much, much worse for him. What Chops and I really needed was a good night out. Or, as it turned out, two good nights out.

  He had his gambling problems, while I had suddenly found myself on the bench unable to get in the team. The sitting role that the gaffer wanted me to play didn’t suit my natural game. When I just signed, I had a decent run in the team as we won five of the first eight games I played, but a shocking run of seven straight defeats saw me lose my place and, from then on, I was only ever in and out of the starting line-up.

  The gaffer had changed a bit too. He’d had massive success in the early part of his career at Bradford and Wigan, but he had a bad time at Derby, and Ipswich wasn’t plain sailing either, so we all saw a slightly darker, harsher side to him. If we’d lost and he was angry with you, he’d let you know about it. There was no pussyfooting around the issue.

  And he wasn’t best pleased one Saturday in February when we’d ended a run of four straight wins with a heavy defeat at Brighton, a game I watched from the bench. Chops had been planning a night out for the squad the following week and the gaffer knew about it.

  So twelve of us went out in London on the Tuesday and had a good time. Ten players decided they’d had enough, and then there were two.

  Me and Chops.

  So we did what any pair of blokes would do in that situation and headed up to Newcastle the following day for another bender. Chops made sure we were well looked after in his home city and we had a blinding time. I forget where we went but it definitely seemed like fun while we were there.

  Being the reliable, conscientious pros that we were, we made sure we were back at Chops’s place near Ipswich in time for training the following morning. We’d done the hard bit, which was making it back from Newcastle, but then Chops forgot to order the taxi to take us to training, the dopey sod.

  So we rolled in there late on the Thursday, having had an extra day of partying in Newcastle, all of which added up to a furious gaffer. Naturally, I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but Paul took a different view and made us train with the youth team that day. Even worse, he called me into his office after training and told me I was suspended for two weeks.

  ‘What? That’s a bit harsh isn’t it?’ I protested.

  ‘You need to be taught a lesson,’ he told me and I couldn’t argue because his mind was made up.

  I was absolutely gutted about it – even though I hadn’t been playing regularly, I still needed that daily fix of training and the dressing room nonsense with the lads. Two weeks without that was like a life sentence for me.

  I was even more furious when I found out that Chops had only been fined for his part in the night … sorry, nights out. No suspension for him, he was free to train the following day and play at the weekend. The gaffer explained to me that if he’d suspended Chops as well, he’d have ended up in Ladbrokes in five minutes so he had to keep him close. He wasn’t wrong – as I knew better than anyone – and Paul would no doubt have been delighted with his decision when Chops scored the first goal in a win against Bristol City two days later.

  I understood where he was coming from, but it still didn’t add up to me – you can’t have two different punishments for the same crime.

  But I took my medicine, kept my mouth shut and got on with it because, even though I’d been in and out of the team, I was really enjoying my time at Ipswich. It was a fantastic club, I had a great rapport with the fans who were brilliant and the chairman Marcus Evans was a top man too. I was aware my football career was nearing its end so I couldn’t do anything other than relish it, in exactly the same way as I savoured every second of those early experiences at Peterborough.

  The Newcastle bender was the beginning of the end for me at Ipswich, however. I was only involved in one more game that season and that was the very last match of the campaign. That didn’t dampen my enthusiasm that much though and I resolved to come back in pre-season doubly determined to work really hard and get myself back in the first-team reckoning. I wanted to show the gaffer and everyone else exactly what I had.

  The only problem was that, by then, what I actually had was one very dodgy knee and another one that wasn’t particularly clever. I was definitely not the same player who was called into the England squad three years before. The injuries were taking their toll and there was no doubt that they affected my performances, both physically and psychologically. And I think Paul realised that too – my absence from the side in the latter part of the previous season spoke volumes. Having said that, while the Premier League may have been out of my reach, I was still very confident that I could do a decent job in the Championship. So I worked as hard as I possibly could in pre-season training, doing pretty much everything bar putting the cones and bi
bs out for everyone (I’m not that stupid).

  I played in a few friendlies and seemed to be doing okay, then one night I found myself playing in a match with youth and reserve players and only one other senior pro, my old Wigan pal Nathan Ellington. I’m no private investigator, but even I could work out that was bad news, because we shared the same agent and I knew The Duke was leaving the club as the gaffer didn’t fancy him anymore. So where did that leave me?

  It left me on the bench a week later for a friendly at Southend. Which on the surface doesn’t sound so bad – it was a warm-up game after all. But it was two weeks before the start of the season and I felt like it was now or never for me. If I couldn’t get on and show Paul what I could do there and then, I just had a feeling the writing might be on the wall for me. I wanted the club to know that I was desperate to play and that I wasn’t going anywhere. And that was the moment when I asked Chris Hutchings to put me on.

  A couple of days later, I was sitting with Paul in his office when he broke the news to me that I’d feared my whole career.

  ‘Look Jim, it’s not going to happen for you here,’ he said.

  No. Please no. I didn’t want to hear this.

  ‘As things stand now, I can’t see that you’ll be getting a game here this season.’

  No. No. No.

  All I could think about was Lee Bowyer who’d also been released by Paul a few weeks earlier and hadn’t found another club. He never would.

  I tried to collect my thoughts, but it was tough.

  ‘How long have you known about this?’

  ‘I decided about two weeks ago,’ he said.

  What? Two fucking weeks?

  ‘Paul, you’re killing me. You’re ruining me. Most clubs have already got their squads sorted for the season now, why didn’t you tell me earlier? We know each other so well.’

  ‘Look, I’m running the football club and that’s my decision.’

  We had a few words man-to-man – some things are worth risking another trapped head in the door for – and he apologised for not telling me earlier and explained he’d been thinking about it for a long time because it was the hardest football decision he’d ever had to make. He even said he’d tried to find another club for me. I know he meant well, but I felt that was going behind my back again like Hull did.

  Finding out you’re not wanted for anything in life is very tough to take. All I could think was that I was going to be out of football as a result of this. On the scrapheap. Done and dusted at thirty-three. I was devastated.

  I may not have been the same player he’d had at Wigan, but I honestly did not believe that my form and ability had deteriorated that much in the year since I’d signed for the club permanently. How could it? Ability doesn’t change that quickly. And what’s more, if he wanted to see the best of me, then why not play me in the right position? I think he was just after younger players and had decided to release the older pros, like me and Bowyer. I also thought I was definitely still good enough to play for Ipswich Town, but it didn’t matter what I thought.

  Paul had made up his mind that I was no longer part of his plans there.

  And he was the manager.

  Bollocks.

  * * *

  FROM ONE CAREER GROWS ANOTHER. AS LONG AS YOU CAN PLAY GOLF

  * * *

  ‘When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.’ Confucius

  The International Course at the London Golf Club is a picturesque setting for sport, right in the heart of the Kent countryside. It’s a fantastic place to play golf, especially when you’re participating in the regional qualifying rounds for the Open Golf Championship, the daddy of all golf tournaments.

  That’s where I found myself one beautiful summer afternoon, very much looking the part in my finest gear I’d chosen specially for the occasion. Ian Poulter would have been proud.

  I was playing a shot to the green from the fairway with a lob wedge as there was a bunker in the way and I wasn’t taking any chances. I discussed it with my caddy, Lee, then went through my pre-shot preparation and got in the mental zone.

  ‘Nice and easy,’ I thought. ‘Nice and easy, arc it up over the bunker and on to the green. Nice and easy.’

  I swung the wedge, drove it straight into the ground, then made a slight contact with the ball, which trickled forward about four yards.

  And the red mist descended.

  Suddenly, I was the thirteen-year-old who’d just lost at pool and was smashing the cue and throwing the balls around.

  I looked across at Lee, a six-and-a-half-feet tall, absolute animal who wouldn’t take any shit from anyone, and he could see from my eyes that I had lost it. ‘Get away from me now’ is what those eyes were saying and, at that moment, it wasn’t possible to be far enough away from me. There’s nowhere you can go.

  I flung that lob wedge as hard as I could and it skidded across the grass of that beautiful course and clipped Lee on the shin before coming to a rest in the middle of the fairway.

  He looked at me and I knew what that look meant.

  ‘If you ever do that again, I will never carry your bag for you,’ he said.

  I was lucky, because if it wasn’t Open qualifying I’m sure he would have given me a black eye, no question.

  There I was, a thirty-four-year-old retired footballer, still acting like a stroppy, sulking teenager. The only reason why I hadn’t behaved like that on the football pitch throughout my career was because my parents had forced me to completely change my attitude.

  Once I started playing non-league, I played games with a completely different psychological outlook thanks to advice from my mum and dad. That fear of losing actually hindered my performances. I was a far better player when I put the whole win, lose or draw thing out of my mind and just focused on enjoying the moment and entertaining through my football. Losing that uptight and tense feeling which was all based around the result, allowed me to play far better football as I was performing without inhibitions.

  It’s a weird thing to admit, but there was a small part of me that didn’t care about the result – that had to be the way in order for me to play to the best of my ability. Of course I was desperate to win every game but, in order to play well, I had to force myself to believe that it wasn’t the be-all and end-all if the result didn’t go our way.

  People would say to me, ‘Jim, you don’t seem to take games seriously as you always play with a smile on your face.’ But that was what worked for me. You could count on one hand the number of times I got booked in my career and I was never sent off. But it’s not like I never made a tackle. Different things work for different players. Look at Wayne Rooney – he needs that anger and petulance that can sometimes make him look like a sulking kid on the pitch. Without it, he wouldn’t be the same player. Which is why it’s pointless when people have a go at him for picking up yellow and red cards. That’s his game.

  I need to bring a bit of my calming psychological approach to football into my golf game because that was the sport I decided to focus on after I called time on my football career.

  I’d always felt like golf was there in the background, ever since my dad had bought me my first half-set of clubs when I was eight. I used to caddy for my old man at that stage as he played regularly, but then we started to play nine holes together and a couple of years later, I got my first full set of clubs.

  I was never a member of a club as a kid but I used to spend ages pitching balls with a seven iron in a field behind my house, next to the River Cray. Like the green in front of my house for my football, I learned so much about golf in that field. It was only when I signed for Peterborough that I started entering golf competitions as I became a member at Thorpe Wood. In one summer up there, my handicap dropped from six to two, which is when I started to take it a little more seriously.

  With all the injuries, I had plenty of time to improve my game and even Fabio Capello was impressed that I was a scratch player. Plenty of people said to me over
the years that I could be a pro golfer, but I never really took that idea seriously. Well, not until I suddenly found myself twiddling my thumbs at home every day.

  So I entered a EuroPro Tour qualifying event – the tour is a couple of levels below the main European Tour – but I was told I’d have to pay to enter as an amateur. Sod that, I just turned pro instead. Occasionally, people have a pop at me for turning pro, saying I’m too big for my boots, but the only reason I did was so I’d be able to win prize money if I played well.

  That qualifying event went like a dream for me. I was one over par with just two holes remaining of my third and final round, a score that would’ve been good enough to put me on the tour.

  My drive from the seventeenth tee nestled in some rabbit droppings, and I wasn’t allowed to take a drop so I stupidly tried to hit a four iron out of it and hooked it left straight into the rough from where I bodged another shot out and ended up with a double bogey. With only the par three eighteenth left, that was game over for me and I went mental.

  Despite the presence of cameras on the course, I couldn’t control myself and smashed my club into the ground again and again. Messing up on the fifty-third of fifty-four holes was too much to take, and I probably made another fifty-four holes in the ground in my frustration.

  Luckily, none of the officials seemed to see my Basil Fawlty-esque thrashings and I was invited back to play the odd tour event that summer because I’d done so well in qualifying. As brilliant as it was, playing proper professional competitive golf turned me into a bundle of nerves and I struggled to play my best. But there were two good things about it.

  First, it got me out of the house, plus it also put me back into that competitive sporting environment again which was really important. And although I’ve had mixed fortunes since I joined the Tour – meaning I’ve either done badly or really badly – I was learning all the time and decided to stick at it and keep believing in myself. After all, if I hadn’t had that belief in my football when everyone around me was saying no, I would never have made it to the Premier League.