Bend It Like Bullard Read online

  Personally, I couldn’t have been happier. I played every game that first season – all fifty of them – and was settled up north with Diane. Everything was much closer together than London and it suited me down to the ground.

  The following season we roared out of the blocks. This time we didn’t bother to lose our first game, instead opening the campaign with a mad seventeen-match unbeaten run.

  We refused to lose.

  At one point we even refused to draw as we won six in a row. It was extraordinary and we were all loving being part of this amazing team. The spirit was still unbreakable. There were no prima donnas, no fancy-dans and no mercenaries.

  Up top, Ellington and Roberts were almost unstoppable, both scoring more than twenty goals that season. Roberts’s pace was extraordinary. He never wanted the ball to feet, only over the top because he was so fast. And he was so powerful, he’d run at full pelt with a defender hanging on to him, or he’d just run straight through them. On his day, he was the best striker I’ve played with and he packed one of the hardest shots I’ve ever seen.

  And The Duke scored some silly goals again. There was one in a 3-3 draw at Wolves that I still don’t understand to this day. John Filan took a long goal kick which was headed down by Roberts back to Ellington. He was about twenty-five yards out, to the right side of the goal, and he just unleashed a ridiculous right-foot drive which sent the ball crashing off the underside of the bar and into the net. He scored another one with his back to goal, where the ball came to him, he flicked it up, turned and volleyed it in. It shouldn’t have been possible.

  Then again, me playing in the Premier League shouldn’t have been possible either, but it was about to happen.

  We stayed with the pace even when we had the odd dip; our fast start had left us breathing space.

  Shortly before the end of that season, we went away overnight for a team-bonding session in a local hotel. We weren’t over the line yet, so the gaffer pulled our skipper Matt Jackson into a room to have a word with him.

  ‘Listen, I don’t want any trouble tonight,’ said Paul. ‘It’s the back end of the season and we’re going for promotion. You’re responsible and you’re in charge. Any trouble at all and I’ll sack you.’

  ‘No problem gaffer,’ said Matt as he walked out of the room, from where he could see the front of the hotel and the car park. And I’d loved to have seen his face when he looked out there and saw me surfing on the roof of a taxi which was cruising down the hotel drive. The driver was completely unaware that I was on top of the car, some of the lads had to run alongside and tell him. So that was a good start to the gaffer’s trouble-free night.

  Stunts like that just relieved the pressure a little bit and it was definitely building ahead of the final game of the season, at home to Reading. Win that, and we were in the Premier League.

  We had a great week’s training ahead of the game, which we cruised through. Not winning never even crossed my mind, I wanted it too badly and I know all my team-mates felt the same.

  A goal each from McCulloch and Roberts set us on our way before The Duke put the icing on the cake. We won 3-1 and the celebrations were insane, on and off the pitch. To say we had a mad night out in Wigan that night doesn’t really do it justice. It was time to let our hair down and do it in style.

  The chairman agreed, only his idea of doing it in style was a hell of a lot better than ours. He saw our night out in Wigan and raised it with a trip to Barbados to celebrate our achievement. Whelan not only paid for all the players to go to the Caribbean, he also took the entire coaching staff out there too. It was an absolutely blinding trip.

  We all played golf at the famous Green Monkey course (also at the chairman’s expense) in the exclusive Sandy Lane area, where Whelan also had a holiday home that used to belong to a British monarch. It was the most astonishing, palatial house with monkeys swinging from the trees in its enormous garden which backed on to the sea. In many ways, it reminded me of the house where I’d grown up on the estate in Bexleyheath.

  One night we were all having dinner around the chairman’s enormously long dining room table. The drinks were flowing and everyone was merry, to say the least. Whelan was sat at the head of the table with many of the club directors alongside him while we all tucked into a barbecue. As we ate, he made a speech from his seat and began slurring the odd word. We started whispering to each other that the chairman was sozzled, as none of us had ever seen him like that.

  Every time he thanked us, we replied ‘No, thank you!’ This carried on for a while until, before my disbelieving eyes, he fell right off his chair! He was that steaming drunk that he couldn’t even sit, never mind stand.

  One of the directors went to help him up, but Whelan bellowed ‘Get off me! I’m a man, I’ll pick myself up’, before scrambling back on to his seat again.

  As funny as that moment was, it epitomised the calibre of the man and made a real impression on me. From that day on, I swore that the next time I was sat at the head of an unfeasibly long table in my Barbados mansion, being waited upon hand and foot by servants, as monkeys swung through the trees in my garden and I fell off my chair because I’ve had one too many, I will definitely refuse any assistance and pick myself up.

  Seriously though, Whelan is a legend and that Barbados trip was immense. If we weren’t playing golf, we were on the beach, where we’d usually find David Hamilton, one of the scouts, water-skiing every morning, thinking he was the business. Hammy would cruise along the surf on his skis, in front of all of us, calling out, ‘Alright lads!’ in his Geordie accent.

  One morning, there was one of those huge inflatable donuts on the back of one of the speedboats which would take four people out for a ride, then twist and turn and fling them into the water at various intervals. Whoever went on first would be thrown off first, but only a short distance of about five metres. Second on board would go a bit further and so on, until the fourth person on would be launched about twenty metres in the air and hit the water like a bag of shit.

  So we hatched a plan to get on the donut with Hammy going last. He was so busy with his water-skiing, he didn’t have a clue what was going to happen and would be totally unprepared for it.

  Three lads climbed on first then Hammy jumped on and off they went – the driver chucked a big right, hit a wave and in went the first man. The second and third followed soon after flying about ten or fifteen metres in the air and then there was just Hammy left.

  The boat pulled an enormous left into a wave and Hammy flew through the air for an age before landing on his nose and crunching into the water. After a couple of seconds, he came up again and it wasn’t a pretty sight. There was claret everywhere and his nose was round his earhole. He looked startled and came up with the immortal line: ‘I must have hit a turtle!’

  I can’t remember ever laughing as much in my life. There were tears rolling down faces – and not just Hammy’s, the poor bastard.

  Whelan was brilliant at bringing us all together like that and was never shy with his generosity. At the end of one season, we were sitting in the dressing room and he walked in carrying a huge leather sports bag.

  ‘Right boys, listen up,’ he said.

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  ‘You’ve achieved what we wanted to achieve so share this between you.’

  And as he finished his sentence, he slid the bag across the floor then walked out.

  We all looked at each other, thinking the same thing – there must be cash in the bag.

  Our skipper Arjan de Zeeuw opened up the hold-all, peeped inside it then looked up with a smile on his face.

  ‘It’s cash, boys!’

  There must have been about £250,000 in there, which we all received a cut of in our next pay packet. We knew Whelan was loaded but that was ridiculous.

  He was also a man of his word, as he proved when it came to renewing my contract.

  When it comes to business, I may not be Alan Sugar but I know my way around a c
ontract renewal deal.

  After two years at Wigan, it was time to sharpen my negotiating knife and talk to Whelan.

  One Saturday afternoon during the promotion season, I’d been warming up on the pitch and he called me over to tell me we needed to speak because my contract was up for renewal. He also told me that he’d backdate it from that very day, which was a huge gesture.

  Naturally, being the shrewd, savvy guy that I am, I played it pretty cool and about six months went by before my agent Andy and I attended a meeting with Dave and the gaffer. In my favour was the fact that, by then, Wigan had become a Premier League club, meaning my negotiating position had strengthened considerably. My delaying tactics had paid off – either that or I’d completely forgotten to go and see the chairman for all that time. Until that point, I’d been on £2,500 per week at Wigan, which was good money, but not a patch on the average Premier League wage. I’d spoken to a few of my mates who played in the top flight to see what the going rate was but when Andy and I were sitting outside Whelan’s office, I said to him that I didn’t have a clue what I wanted and that we should just go in there and see what he said – another sharp move.

  Dave offered me £8,000 per week, which I knew wasn’t enough according to my painstaking research (a couple of texts and a phone call), so I blurted out, ‘Give me £12,000 per week and I’ll sign now.’

  To support my case, I then made a brief speech about how important I was to the club and how I’d never previously bothered him about money. A masterstroke.

  Dave asked my agent and I to step outside for a minute so he could talk privately with the manager. As we sat outside the chairman’s office, I felt like an Apprentice contestant awaiting my fate – was I about to be fired? Of course not. But you catch my drift.

  After about sixty seconds of agony, we were called back into Whelan’s office, where he greeted me by saying: ‘Job done. Name, sign and date.’

  Not just that, he backdated it six months as he’d originally promised. What a legend. (Him, not me.)

  This was in stark contrast to my previous salary discussions at Peterborough. There I didn’t have many dealings with the chairman as Barry Fry handled all the players’ contracts himself – luckily, I was more than equipped for dealing with him. In fact, my Posh contract was the most straightforward negotiation of my life as I stood for no nonsense and Bazza had too much respect for me to start any shenanigans.

  I walked into Barry’s office: ‘£700 a week,’ he barked. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Er, alright Baz,’ I replied. ‘But can I, er, have an extra £50 please?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Barry.

  Maybe I wasn’t that shrewd. But by hook or crook I was about to become a Premier League player picking up £12,000 per week for the privilege of kicking a ball around in front of thousands of people in a stadium and millions on TV.

  It was the summer of 2005. In 1999, I’d been a semi-pro at Gravesend where I was paid £60 per week. Six years and 170 professional games later, I was earning 200 times that amount and playing in the biggest league in the world. Excuse my French, but it was fucking mental.

  I had to take financial advisers on board because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And I was so pleased that I did. If you start receiving that kind of money when you’re young it’s so easy to make bad decisions. I’ve seen things go wrong for team-mates – luckily, despite most of the daft stuff I used to do on and off the pitch, I always had my head screwed on, believe it or not.

  Even at that stage, I was still motivated by the terror of having to go back to my old life. For four years I had to get up at 6am to go out and graft for not much money. I didn’t want to do that again. That fear kept me hungry and definitely helped me progress as a player. I knew a lot of the other players I’d be playing alongside and against in the top flight didn’t have that experience and I knew that made me stronger than them.

  The excitement of that close season was amazing. After the Barbados break, the squad all went away and did our own thing for a couple of months, although it was hard to concentrate on anything apart from the Premier League.

  I went on a family holiday in the Algarve, but I knew the date the fixtures were due out. That morning, I was like a kid at Christmas. I was up with the larks and actually sprinted to the local town centre to buy an English newspaper. And what a present I got.

  Bang! We were starting at home to Chelsea.

  Fucking hell.

  The Premier League champions.

  José Mourinho.

  Get bigger than that!

  I’d gone head-to-head with Frank Lampard on my first morning’s training at West Ham. Now we were going to do it again, for real, on the telly.

  I didn’t know who to tell first. What’s the Portuguese for ‘Chelsea at home’?

  It was 7am and I got straight on the phone to the boys back home, waking some of the fuckers up.

  ‘Bainesy, have you seen who we’ve got first game? We’ve only got the big dogs!’

  ‘Polly, put the kettle on, Chelsea at home! Let’s go and give them a good, fucking hiding!’

  I can’t imagine any of the Wigan fans were more excited than me or any of the boys – the game would be shown live around the world. This is exactly what we’d worked so hard for.

  We were all buzzing when we got back for pre-season. All the talk was about Chelsea. It was hard to think about anything else – sod the other thirty-seven games we had to play, Chelsea were coming to town.

  The press loved the fixture too and, as it drew nearer, there were plenty of write-ups about it. Wigan had only been a league team for around thirty years and here we were in the top flight. Of course, the chairman’s cash had helped us, but you’ve still got to do it on the pitch.

  And that’s exactly what we were trying to do as we took the field against Chelsea one sunny Sunday August afternoon. We were all realising a dream. We were up against the best players in the country, arguably Europe, and it felt great.

  We were also up against everyone who had written us off and we were really sticking it to them as we were holding the champions to a 0-0 draw, giving as good as we got throughout. We created the better chances and probably should have won the game, but a draw would be a decent result.

  Except we lost. I felt sick.

  In the last seconds of the match, Hernán Crespo scored a screamer to spoil our big day. I even remember thinking, ‘They’re going to score here’ and, to be fair, I probably should have acted upon that, but it was too late. A moment of magic had denied us and we had to take it squarely on the chin.

  What might have been a flat dressing room was actually more upbeat than you’d imagine. We were gutted and felt we’d been dealt a ‘Welcome to the Premier League’ card at the end of the game but we’d outplayed the champions at times and proved we belonged in this league.

  We just had to do that every week and we’d be fine. Except we didn’t in our next match against Charlton and lost again. So that wasn’t necessarily part of the plan, but we finally got going in the following game by beating Sunderland, which sparked a nine-match unbeaten run – another of our trademark form streaks that went on and on.

  We even managed to win six in a row during that time and by early November we were second in the table! Only Chelsea’s ridiculous start was better than ours. We had twenty-five points from eleven games, five clear of Arsenal, seven ahead of Man United. Mind-blowing.

  During that run, I scored my first Premier League goal. And it wasn’t just any old goal. No scrappy consolation strike for me. No, I netted the winner in injury time at West Brom. It was 1-1 and I was lurking around the edge of the box looking for a lucky break as we attacked. Bang on cue, the ball into the box ricocheted off a defender and rolled out right into my path – I love it when it comes rolling out like that.

  There were a crowd of players in between me and the goal, but a tiny, unguarded corner of the net became visible and the old light bulb in my head lit up. Fortunately,
it was a light bulb telling me to shoot rather than the usual one advising me to do something daft for no particular reason. I struck it with my instep. It was a low, skidding shot that whistled along the surface at lightning speed and tucked into the corner with no fuss at all.

  Which was quite the opposite of my reaction as I went absolutely mental.

  My first Premier League goal to win us the game in injury time. It was an unbelievable moment and it’s tough to explain the buzz I got from it, but I’ll give it my best shot.

  The adrenaline’s pumping anyway when you’re playing. Then something like that happens and it goes through the roof. There’s no legal way down – I was as high as a kite for hours afterwards.

  First of all, I was full of it in the changing room, still celebrating with all the lads and really milking the moment. Then I got on the coach and wanted to share the experience with friends and family.

  That night, I was on the phone to my missus, my mum and dad, all my mates. I must’ve talked them all through the goal at least a dozen times, to the point where my team-mates on the bus actually started to get pissed off with me because I just couldn’t shut up about it.

  If my yakking wasn’t enough, my phone was beeping and buzzing relentlessly for a good two hours all the way back, as friends got in touch to say well done. This is what it can be like being a footballer. Loads of people want to share in the successes and it feels good.

  By the time I got home it was around 9pm or 10pm and I was still pumped. Diane was there to welcome me and there was only one thing I wanted to do – watch Match of the Day. (What were you thinking?)

  It’s moments like this that I lived for as a kid. This is why I played football on the green in front of my parents’ house for hours on end. This is why I ran after my dad’s car for miles when all I wanted to do was, well, absolutely anything really, except that. Because now I was about to watch Match of the Day in which I played a starring role. And it doesn’t get better than that.