Bend It Like Bullard Page 23

  Sadly, that top-flight experience seemed a distant memory when I was released by Ipswich.

  One minute I was about to start a season playing in the Championship, the next I wasn’t even playing in my back garden. For the first time in my career I didn’t have a club, which is a pretty crucial part of the whole being-a-footballer thing.

  My old man was there for me as usual and, together with my new agent Simon Dent, we all rang round a load of clubs, letting them know that I was available, fit and raring to go for the new season. At that point, retiring was not a thought that had ever entered my mind as I still felt I could do a job at a high level.

  There was a mixed response from the clubs we contacted. Reading manager Brian McDermott returned my call and we had a long chat – nothing ever came of it, but I really appreciated him taking the time to talk to me about my predicament. And the same can be said for Chris Powell at Charlton and Kenny Jackett at Millwall, who both made time for a chat, while I exchanged answerphone messages with Dougie Freedman at Crystal Palace.

  As nice as all that was, plenty of others didn’t return my calls and the overall result was that I was still a footballer without a club. A very weird feeling. Suddenly, I didn’t have anywhere to go every day, no training ground, no matchdays. I tried to stay calm about the situation but that was hard as I was so keen to carry on playing.

  My mood was up and down like a yo-yo and it was during a bit of a despondent phase when I picked up the phone to a random football agent I hadn’t worked with before called Rob Segal.

  ‘How do you fancy playing for MK Dons?’ he said. ‘They’ve got a really good up-and-coming manager called Karl Robinson, they play good football and …’

  I was already halfway round the M25 before he’d even finished his sentence.

  I was back. It didn’t matter that MK Dons were in League 1, I just wanted to play.

  Karl rang me and we had a good chat, he sounded like a top bloke. He also sent me out some discs of their recent matches to show me the way his club played, and they did look really good. They got the ball down and passed it, and the keeper always rolled it out. I was pleasantly surprised how well they passed it as it had been quite a while since I’d last played at that level with Peterborough and Wigan, but things had obviously changed.

  I went up to Milton Keynes to meet Karl and he told me he didn’t have much money to offer me – he couldn’t do better than £1,000 per game.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I’ll play for nothing. I just want to play football.’

  Eighteen months earlier, I was still a £45,000 per week player at Hull, and now I was on £1,000 a week with MK Dons, playing in the third tier of English football again. Football really is mental sometimes.

  The first thing I had to do was improve my fitness so I spent a couple of weeks training with my new team-mates, which meant I got to know them a bit before I had to go on the pitch with them.

  I came on as a sub in a home win against Carlisle and had a twenty-minute run-out which was good. I even managed to make it into the opposition box, latching on to a loose ball and getting a shot in. The shot was blocked, but it felt good to be playing again and the fans were all brilliant to me.

  Three days later, I started my first game, a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy tie against Northampton, something of a local derby.

  And that’s when my career pretty much ended. Just like that. At Sixfields. With all due respect, it wasn’t the most glamorous location for my swan song and there were only three thousand punters in the ground that night. What’s more, none of them would’ve even known what had happened.

  What did happen was that a little Northampton winger accidentally put his knee straight through the top of my right knee and I felt like I’d been shot. My right knee was the one which had been operated on twice and it wasn’t a massive fan of collisions with anything, let alone with a younger, far better-looking knee, smashing against it at pace.

  The pain passed and I carried on playing, but by half time my knee was stiffening up so I kept on my feet in the dressing room as I really wanted to make the best possible impression in my first start for my new club. But I only managed to last ten minutes of the second half before I had to come off as there was too much pain and stiffness to carry on.

  I went to Northampton’s medical room where I was given ice to put on my knee while keeping my leg raised. After a while, I plucked up the courage to lift the ice pack off my knee to survey the damage. That’s when I realised the full extent of what had happened – the nightmare had returned.

  I couldn’t actually see my knee as it had swollen up so much. A virtual swimming pool of fluid had gathered there and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  That was the moment when I knew it was over.

  I wasn’t prepared to put myself through that pain any longer. If I took another knock on that knee, I might easily do something so long-lasting that I wouldn’t be able to walk properly again. I’d reached the point where it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

  The truth was that I couldn’t do anything on the pitch that I was once able to. I was a very poor imitation of the midfielder who was called into the England squad and was once worth £5 million.

  I was also well aware that I had been lucky to have the career I’d had. I had achieved things I never would have dreamed of and played until I was thirty-four so I couldn’t really have any complaints. Especially when I look at someone like Dean Ashton, whose career was over at the age of twenty-six.

  My surgeon, Steady, had told me that my knee wouldn’t ever feel the same again after the operations but that I would learn a different way to play, to make up for its deficiencies. He was right and it worked to an extent, but the psychological damage caused by the injuries was something that could never be healed.

  The truth is I was a little bit scared of getting hurt again and once you acknowledge that feeling, it’s impossible to feel like the same player, because you’re always going to be playing slightly within yourself.

  I couldn’t train the way I wanted to and I had no pace. One morning during training, after the swelling in my knee had gone down, Alan Smith was leaning up against me during a match and I just collapsed on the ground like a bag of shit. It was so disheartening as I felt like a delicate, glass ornament. And in my experience, delicate, glass ornaments do not make good footballers.

  More than anything though, it was just embarrassing. I had nothing left to prove to anyone. I did not need to be sitting on the medical bench three weeks after signing for a new club. The signs were all there, I saw them and I eventually acknowledged them and took action.

  I managed one more sub appearance against Yeovil and was on the bench again for the following game against Notts County without getting on. But that Alan Smith moment had made up my mind for me and I woke up a couple of days later and just thought ‘No, sod it’.

  I called Karl and explained my decision to retire to him. He was surprised but he understood where I was coming from. The chairman Peter Winkelman was very good about it too and told me to take a few weeks to think about it.

  But I knew it was over because my knees wouldn’t allow me to play anymore. And every day since that I’ve woken up and been able to walk without any problems, I feel like I made the right decision. With all due respect to MK Dons, I was playing in League 1 and my football was never going to improve again as I couldn’t see any Indian summers on the horizon for me.

  Football had changed so much since I first started out. The game had become so serious, which sucked the life out of it for a happy-go-lucky player like me. There was a world of difference between the changing room spirit at West Ham in 1999 and Ipswich in 2012.

  When I first started, the players used to stick together in the changing room and look out for each other all the time. If someone turned up late for training, instead of making sure that player was fined by the club, we’d all cover for that bloke and try to help him, even if it meant telling the odd porky to the gaf
fer.

  By the time I finished my career, players were dishing out fines to each other left, right and centre for all sorts of nonsense reasons like not having exactly the right gear on or being five seconds late. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but that’s not the way it should be. If I was a club captain – okay, I never met a manager who thought that would be a good idea – and another player had stepped out of line, I’d go and see the gaffer with him and sort it out.

  The lack of camaraderie and unity in the dressing room was another reason why I had no regrets about my decision even though almost every pro I knew told me that I would miss all that daily dressing room banter.

  They were wrong. I didn’t miss that side of things at all. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that side of the game. Turning up at the training ground every morning and larking about with the boys. I probably spent more time laughing than playing football; I was privileged to be able to do that for a career.

  But I have all my old mates I grew up with and I have exactly the same kind of relationship with them and can always get up to mischief with them. And that same daft spirit is there with all of my golf and fishing boys, too.

  What I have missed the most, however, is the entertainment factor. Having the ability to perform in front of twenty-, thirty-, or forty-thousand people on match days was an incredible buzz, an extraordinary adrenaline rush.

  And I really miss that. It kills me how much I miss it. But there’s no replacing it. You cannot replicate feelings like those I had when I scored my first Premier League goal at West Brom. But you can cherish it at the time and remember it for all time – and, ask any of my team-mates on the bus with me after that match, I did exactly that.

  Saturdays now fill me with a kind of horror, as I walk around like a junkie, desperately looking for that next fix with no idea where it’s going to come from.

  I’ve not watched much football since I quit because that kills me too. And, although I love him to bits and he’s a top, top man, watching Jeff Stelling on Soccer Saturday does my head in as it just reminds me how much I miss playing. Stop it, Jeff – you’re killing me, absolutely killing me.

  I always have to get out of the house and do anything but watch that on a Saturday. I’ll go to a mate’s, go fishing, take the kids out, play golf – anything that will take my mind off the fact that I’m not playing football in front of tens of thousands of people.

  That’s why I think that so many players struggle when their careers end because you have to be completely ready for that moment. That feeling of loss. Of emptiness. If you’re not prepared for it, you’ll find out about it very quickly and it will hurt.

  It can be a very dangerous time and I can admit I struggled a bit here and there, but I’m lucky to have a lot of inner strength to get myself through low times. Others don’t have that and that’s why you’ll see ex-pros go off the rails sometimes. They’re looking for something to give them the same buzz, but they can’t find it. And that’s because it doesn’t exist.

  Another unique thing about football is that you build up very strong bonds with other players very quickly. Over a career, there will be dozens or even hundreds of people you’ll become close to, but the minute you retire, where are they? Do you hear from them? Do you bollocks!

  I found myself looking through old pictures and cuttings from my career. Incredible moments, winning trophies, receiving medals – highs that are way higher than I could have got in any other profession. Looking through the old stuff, I had a lump in my throat; I had a right moment before I pulled myself together and told myself to stop being such a soppy bollocks. Because I had no reason to feel disappointed by my retirement, not when I had inhaled every second of that amazing ride I went on.

  From the first time I went to Anfield with West Ham, I drank it all in, every single moment. When I celebrated on the pitch, I always went over the top, just so I would never be able to look back and say I wished I’d gone even more mental. I had an absolute ball, but life goes on and it was time for me to explore new avenues and opportunities. And keep myself busy, because it’s the boredom that’s really dangerous.

  Golf certainly helps with that, but so does fishing. Angling can be a very lonely sport but when I go to my fishing club, I lose myself in it as there’s so much to think about. If you’re not into the sport, it’s probably hard to understand what I mean by that, but there’s a certain mystery to fishing. What’s in the water and where in the water is it? You’ve got to work it out for yourself.

  Fishing is one of the most natural things in the world. It’s pure instinct because, once upon a time, we all had to catch fish to eat so we could live. So it’s all about hunting and there’s a proper craft to it which I love. That skill element shouldn’t be dismissed – you’re taking on a fish in its natural habitat, which is a huge challenge.

  During my career, fishing helped me massively. If we were given a few days off in the middle of the season, loads of the boys would fly off to Dubai, but I would just drive over to my local fishery for a couple of days to switch off and get away from the world. While I was at Wigan, that meant a trip to Brookside where I became mates with a lot of the locals, including England international Stuart Conroy. We’d always meet up on a Sunday, go fishing, then go for a pint. It doesn’t get better than that.

  Down south, I fish for Dorking, probably the best club in the country if not the world. Imagine playing your football for Barcelona – that’s what it’s like to fish for Dorking. And because I’m still just a big fan at heart, it’s like I’m fishing with all my idols when I go there. Former world champion Will Raison was someone I used to read about when I was a kid and now we fish together and socialise now and again. I know it may sound sad to you, but that really is living the dream for me.

  A fishing competition is an amazing thing to be a part of as it’s really down to who is the best hunter. It’s properly primitive. There’s normally around fifty people spread around a lake for five or six hours – you could be playing as an individual or as part of a team like I did with Dorking. Usually, the biggest weight of fish wins the competition – it doesn’t matter whether you’ve landed loads of little tiddlers or one enormous catch. The best anglers are always the best hunters and it’s fascinating to watch them. Will just seems to know everything that’s happening under the water the whole time. It’s actually quite scary.

  My angling obsession has also taken me to some of the most beautiful places in the country, like the River Wye in Herefordshire, a truly picturesque location. The riverbanks are surrounded by fields of cattle and you have to really keep your eyes open at all times to take in the nature. I saw a forty-pound salmon leap out of the water right in front of my eyes, while buzzards flew overhead. It’s almost like being in a fantasy sometimes as it’s such a world away from, well, the world.

  It’s a different kind of buzz altogether, but, like the golf, it certainly helped me focus away from the fact that I’d retired from football.

  I can’t say the same for my post-football media career, though. If one thing is going to make you think about playing football, it’s talking about playing football. But the fact that there were TV channels, radio stations and other corporate organisations out there prepared to pay me for my thoughts, softened the blow somewhat.

  I was fortunate enough to already have an established media presence, so I felt fairly comfortable when Sky Sports News asked me to go into the studio and describe a Newcastle Europa League match to all the viewers. Until I got there, that is. Because they just handed me two sheets of paper with the teams written on them and told me, ‘On you go Jim, you’re live!’

  I would’ve thought I might have needed a bit of training for something like that and given how Sky broadcast into so many people’s homes, I just assumed things might have been a bit different. I’d never talked about a game live on the telly before so I was expecting it to be a little more structured; I could easily have frozen in the camera lights.

  As the game kicked off I f
elt like I’d been chucked right in at the deep end, but I just said what I saw and relaxed into it after five minutes. In the end, I enjoyed it but I didn’t really get any kind of buzz from it like I did from playing football.

  I also did some presenting for BT Sport, which saw me go down to Poole to play with the England beach soccer team. That all came about through my mate Chris Nutbeam, who used to work on Soccer AM. He knows how my mind works and just asked me to be myself on camera, not to worry about swearing as they could edit it all out and just have fun. Those were the kind of instructions I would have got from Barry Fry before a match, so it was music to my ears.

  Beach soccer was a breeze compared to my next assignment for them where I was taken for a spin by Elfyn Evans, the FIA World Junior Rally champion. That was definitely the best TV job I’ve had – I didn’t know anything about rallying before and it was amazing to go behind the scenes of a sport like that.

  Having said that, I think I’d rather have more knee surgery than sit in a car with that nutcase driving again. He flung me round corners at ridiculous speeds while the whole thing was filmed inside the car so I had to pretend I wasn’t shitting myself. I didn’t do a very good job of that and I felt lucky to get out of that car alive.

  Almost as bad was my appearance on talkSPORT with Colin Murray. My relationship with the station began when I received a call out of the blue asking me if I wanted to do breakfast with Alan Brazil. ‘No problem,’ I told them, ‘what time and where are we eating?’

  Once they’d stitched their sides back together, they explained I had to be at the studios at 5.15am ahead of the show’s 6am start. That involved getting up so early there was little point in going to bed. But I did it because it was always worth keeping my hand in with the media work and staying in the spotlight.

  They sent a car to pick me up and I turned up at talkSPORT Towers in the middle of the night, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. There was no sign of Alan, so the producers stuck a load of papers in front of me and started to worry me by telling me to read this, look at that, do say this and don’t say that. I started to think this was a bit of a mistake.