Craig Bellamy - GoodFella

by Craig Bellamy

  Everything about it was difficult. I was in digs and the house was owned by a family who hadn’t put anyone up before so they weren’t quite sure how to act. They imposed curfews at night. It was strict and formal, a bit of a culture shock after the life I had been living in Cardiff.

  I shared a room with another apprentice who had grown up in a village a few miles away. So at weekends, he could go home. I couldn’t. I was down. I moped around quite a lot and the family who were putting me up found that difficult, too. I probably wasn’t the best introduction to lodgers for them. They wanted to try to make me feel better but they couldn’t.

  Pre-season was difficult in those days. It was hard work and it was unforgiving. It was all about long runs and supposed character-building. It was what I imagine it’s like in your first few days in the army. The senior professionals treated you like dirt. So did some of the staff. All the apprentices had a senior pro we had to do jobs for and mine was John Polston, the defender, who was a club stalwart by the time I arrived.

  I had to clean his boots, get his kit for him, make him a tea or a coffee if he wanted one and generally clean around after him. He was difficult. He made a point of it. Every so often, I would go away with Wales Under-17s or 18s and every time I came back, I’d have to introduce myself to him all over again. “Who are you?” he’d say. He knew who I was but he wanted to try to humiliate me.

  If he wasn’t happy with the tea, he’d throw it in the sink and tell me to get another one. He complained about his boots all the time, too. He wasn’t unusual. I think the rest of the players saw it as character-building, too. Look, I agreed with certain aspects of it but it felt like bullying really. You were intimidated. It felt like they were trying to break you.

  Every six weeks, I was allowed home for a long weekend. I played on a Saturday and the deal was I had to be back in training the following Wednesday. So I would get a few days off but then I found it difficult to go back. The first occasion I was okay but the second occasion, I was crying at my parents’ house when the time came to leave. I didn’t want to go back.

  My father rang Norwich and they gave me an extra couple of days off. They didn’t rush me. They had probably seen it before. In the end, my father got firm with me. He said I needed to go back. He said I’d get over it and it would get better and if I could cope with this, I could cope with anything. I wasn’t so sure. I was missing my girlfriend, I was missing everything.

  I had just turned 16. When I came back to Cardiff for a couple of days, I wasn’t really one of my friends’ group any more. There was a distance between us. It was kind of understood that I had left, that I had chosen a different route. I suppose at a basic level, my friends felt I had rejected them and, at a basic level, they were right. I had gone in another direction. I became alone when I was at home as well as when I was in Norwich.

  That period of being ripped away from my old life was agony. I refused to go back to Norwich during another one of my home visits and one of the other apprentices, another Cardiff lad called Tom Ramusat, came round to the house to persuade me to return with him. He put me on a guilt trip about how he couldn’t face the journey back by himself. I owe a lot to him. He went out of his way to make sure he looked after me. I’ve stayed friends with him and his family ever since.

  Things were difficult for a long time because of how I felt. Once, I got involved in a fight outside the Norwich training ground with a triallist. It didn’t go too well for that kid. He was a goalkeeper and I broke his arm. I felt embarrassed about it afterwards and Norwich warned me that if anything like that happened again, I was gone.

  The thing was, part of me wanted to be sacked. I was looking for every excuse I could to get sacked. I thought if I got sacked then I could come home and I could say it was their fault. I could say it wasn’t my fault that it didn’t work out. It was theirs. And then I could do what I wanted to do and blame everyone else for the loss of my football career.

  But Norwich knew what I was up to and they didn’t half bend the rules for me. I was pushing certain things. I walked off the training pitch once. Then I refused to come back out for running. When I felt really unhappy, I was looking for ways to get myself out of it. But the people at Norwich were absolutely fantastic. I will always be grateful that they persevered with me.

  Martin O’Neill had been appointed the first team manager that summer. He wasn’t particularly sociable with apprentices like me. In fact, he didn’t even look at you. The only contact I had with him was walking past him in the corridor at the training ground but even in those circumstances, I knew there was a kind of magnetism about him.

  Because I didn’t go home at weekends, I had to clean up the first team dressing room after matches at Carrow Road and the best part of it was hanging around just outside the door, listening to the way O’Neill talked to the players. He would praise some of them like you wouldn’t believe and he made some ordinary footballers play very, very well. Some of them never played at the same level again after he left that Christmas.

  But he wasn’t shy about getting stuck into someone if he felt they weren’t pulling their weight. I remember one occasion. He had signed a guy called Matthew Rush for more than £300,000 from West Ham. It was O’Neill’s signing, a biggish signing for Norwich and Rush was a flash Londoner who had a healthy opinion of himself.

  But in one of his first games, he came on as a substitute for about 20 minutes and didn’t do particularly well. Martin absolutely destroyed him after the game. He called him a big-time Charlie and generally lambasted him for his lack of effort and quality. I was impressed. It showed he didn’t care who he got stuck into. I admired that about him.

  Martin didn’t take any interest in the apprentices but the reserve team boss, Steve Walford, who has been part of Martin’s coaching team wherever he has gone in football, went out of his way to get to know me. He was brilliant to me. Even when I was 16, he gave me a lift back to my digs a couple of times. He told me about his debut at Spurs and about how, when he first began playing for West Ham in the early ’80s, the hardest team he played against was Liverpool. As a Liverpool fan, that was music to my ears.

  Then there was John Robertson, who until recently was the other constant in Martin’s managerial life. Someone told me that he had been a proper player once. I know that now. I know that people thought he was a genius, that he was Brian Clough’s favourite player at Nottingham Forest, that he won European Cups. But back then, I’d look at him with bandages round his knees, puffing on a cigarette and think ‘no chance’.

  It didn’t work out for O’Neill and his staff at Norwich, though, and they were out before Christmas, 1995. They were replaced by Gary Megson and although I didn’t really think it would make much difference to me who was the first team boss, Megson soon made it plain he thought I had a future and the homesickness that had been crippling me began to fade a little.

  I moved out of my digs after a few months. Tom Ramusat lived in some digs called The Limes with six or seven other apprentices from the club and I asked Norwich’s youth development officer, Gordon Bennett, if I could move in with them.

  It was more like living in a B&B than being cooped up in someone else’s home and Gordon fixed it up for me. I began to settle in a bit better. I was quite professional. For all the problems I had been having, I was trying to take my football as seriously as I could and do the right things. Most nights, I would go to bed on time. If we had a game the next day, I would go to bed on time because I wanted to play well.

  Most of the other boys would stay up. There was no one to keep an eye on us like there would have been in more traditional digs. As I was the youngest of the kids in there, I became the victim of a lot of practical jokes and pranks. One night, we were playing Scrabble, which wasn’t really my strong point. We had Arsenal the next day so I headed off to bed. The rest stayed up playing Scrabble and I fell fast asleep.

  The next thing I know, they’ve all come rushing into the room, all dressed and read
y to go. They were in a panic, shaking me awake and saying we had overslept and that we were going to miss the coach. They looked scared. We’d been late before and been disciplined for it so I was in a real state. I started saying I had to pack my bag because I was being allowed home after the game but they said I didn’t have time.

  I rushed outside and started trying to get into the car. Then I looked around and everyone was on the floor, laughing. It was only then I realised it was pitch black. It wasn’t time to get the coach at all. It was about 2am and they’d just finished their Scrabble. I had a major strop. I went stomping off to my room and all through the game against Arsenal, I was in a foul mood. I played rubbish. I made sure I blamed them for that.

  The youth team boss was a guy called Keith Webb. He was strict and I found his regime hard to deal with in the first year. A lot of the time I was a substitute because the second year apprentices were generally given every opportunity to try to prove themselves. But when you are homesick, not playing regularly doesn’t help.

  Keith was actually a brilliant coach and he was a great help to me in my second year but in those first 12 months, he intimidated me. The youth team played in the South East Counties League and because we had a number of centre forwards, I would often play on the right wing. My chances were limited and I was moved around quite a lot.

  I was small, too, don’t forget. In youth team football in that era, strength and size were prized as much as anything and I was a late developer. But I got my head down and learned a lot, even though at times I tried my best not to, and at the end of my first season, Megson’s first team coach, Mike Phelan, came to watch one of our games and immediately promoted me to the reserves.

  That hadn’t happened to anyone else from the youth team so it gave me a huge boost. In another game soon after that, Megson pulled me to the side and said ‘you are going to be some player you, lad’. That made me think I had actually got a chance. I played well in the reserve team games and one of them was watched by the Wales Under-21 manager, Tom Whalley, who called me up for a match against San Marino. I was still 16. I ended the most difficult year of my life on a real high.

  I had the summer of ’96 off and watched as much of Euro 96 as I could. I was only on £40 a week so Claire and I didn’t have enough money to go on holiday but we were still inseparable and it was still very difficult when the summer ended and I had to go back to live on the other side of the country. But being a second year YTS was a bit easier. We were given a little bit more respect by everybody and when I arrived back in Norwich, it didn’t feel nearly as bad as when I had got there a year earlier.

  I looked around at the new kids and funnily enough, seeing lads who looked as though they might be feeling as uncertain and as homesick as I once had, reassured me. When you see other people miserable, it makes you feel a bit better. Perhaps it was my first inkling of a sense of responsibility. A couple of the first years were from Plymouth. One of them was a kid called Darren Way, who behaved like he wanted to fight the world, just like I had done. I understood when he was homesick. He was a long way from home. I knew what he was going through.

  I had ended the previous season so well that I arrived back feeling renewed and excited. I set my target on getting a first team debut when I was 17 because that was what Ryan Giggs had done. But any hopes I had harboured that Megson would champion my cause had come to nothing during the summer when he became a victim of the first team’s disappointing season in Division One and left the club.

  He was replaced by Mike Walker, who took over at the club for the second time. I had been led to believe that Megson had been ready to give me a professional contract but now I knew I was back to square one. Pre-season training was hard, hard work. We didn’t see a ball for what felt like weeks. We just ran and ran. I knew I was going to have to prove myself all over again.

  Then I got the phone call that changed my life.

  It was Claire. She was pregnant. She was 16. I was just turning 17. A lot of thoughts rushed through my mind.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ ‘Are we going to keep it?’ ‘What do I have to offer a child?’ ‘How are we going to be able to look after a baby?’

  Well, Claire was from a Catholic family for a start. There was no way we were not going to have the baby and that was fine by me. But I was daunted by the idea of becoming a father. What do I have? I have nothing. I am living in digs. I am on £45 a week. What am I going to do? So I went in to see Keith Webb and told him my situation.

  He was brilliant. He told me I had to go out and play the best football I had ever played and get the best contract I could. He told me it wasn’t just about me any more. “You better eat and sleep football,” he said. “You better think about nothing apart from football.” ‘That’s right,’ I thought. ‘I know I can do this.’

  And after that, my attitude was perfect. There was no looking for ways out any more. I didn’t cut any corners. If we were told to do 45 seconds on a bike, I did 45 seconds. If we had to run to a cone, I ran right to the cone. I thought constantly of providing for Claire and the baby. It influenced everything I did, every drill in training, every recovery session. Everything.

  I knew what my options were. If it wasn’t football, we would be living in a flat in Trowbridge. Claire would have been okay with that. It wasn’t as if she liked me because she thought I was going to be a professional footballer. But I wanted her to have the best life possible. I wanted my kid to have everything. I had to do something about it. I wanted to be able to provide for the baby. It was all clear to me.

  I couldn’t afford to bring Claire over to Norwich. She had just left school and was working at the Forbuoys newsagents. Lads would just go in there to rob stuff, basically, and as soon as it was possible, I wanted us to be together. So I worked and worked and worked. When other boys went home, I stayed. I did extras. I trained and trained. The more I trained, the less homesick I felt. I went from looking like I might be a good player to people saying with something approaching certainty ‘he’s a player’.

  I was moving ahead of the other lads in the youth team. I was taking care of details. I cut out fizzy drinks. I drank water. I started doing weights. I found a new level of discipline. I didn’t know anyone in Norwich anyway so all I did was football, morning, noon and night.

  I have had the career I have had because of that moment when Claire phoned me up to tell me she was pregnant. I watched as much football as I could. I played as much football as I could. I trained as much as I could. I rested as much as I could. And if it turned out that, after all that, I wasn’t good enough, at least I could look at my child and say ‘I gave it my best shot’.

  4

  Rebel With A Cause

  At the end of my first year of YTS, all the second year boys I lived with at The Limes – including Tom Ramusat – had been called in for contract talks with Gary Megson and Keith Webb. One by one, they came out looking crestfallen. One by one, they said they had been released. Tom took it on the chin but I could see how down he was.

  The image of their faces kept coming into my mind. It was my other motivation. I was desperate to do well for the child we were going to have and I was also determined not to hear the words of rejection that those other lads had heard when my time came to be judged.

  I became very selfish and single-minded about that and the club loved it. I was supported fully in all the extra work I was doing. The reserve team coach, Steve Foley, was fantastic. He was strict but his football knowledge was brilliant and if I stayed late, he stayed late with me. I think it meant a lot to him that a kid like me was willing to do all this work, but I got so much out of him. I was educated so well at Norwich.

  We had a good youth team in my second year. Robert Green was the goalkeeper and Darren Kenton, who went on to have a good career for the club, was also in the side. Green lived at The Limes, too, but he wasn’t for me. He liked to come across as someone who wasn’t your stereotypical footballer, but that wasn’t the Robert Green that I
knew.

  My determination to get a contract drove me on but it also brought me into conflict with people. I had been selected for Wales Under-21s in my first year and made my debut when I came on as a substitute in an away match against San Marino. We’d travelled out to Italy with the first team squad – players like Mark Hughes, Ryan Giggs and Gary Speed – and they must have looked at me, this kid who was so small in all my over-sized national team gear, and wondered who the hell I was.

  That performance in San Marino made me the youngest player ever to appear for Wales Under-21s but when I found out I was going to be a dad, the next time I was called up, in November 1996, I told Norwich I didn’t want to go and asked them if they could tell Wales I was injured. It wasn’t that I didn’t love playing for Wales. I did. It was a real privilege to be around some of those senior players. But I felt it set me back at Norwich.

  I’d go away with the Under-21s for 10 days and miss a couple of youth team games and when I got back, I’d find that somebody had played in my absence, done well and was suddenly ahead of me. I needed a pro contract. I was totally focused on that. It was my number one priority. And if going away with Wales was getting in the way of that goal, if it was harming my chances, I didn’t want to do it.

  Norwich were sympathetic. I think they could see why the situation was difficult for me. And two weeks after the conversation about the Under-21s, they offered me a professional contract. They told me they wanted to remove any of the doubts and worries from my mind and reassure me that I had a big future at the club. What a moment that was. It was just an incredible relief. And I can still remember calling my parents to tell them. That takes some beating as a moment, I promise you.

  But, quickly, other thoughts started crowding in. First of all, I told myself I had done nothing yet and that the hard work was just beginning. I wanted to get into the first team and make myself a regular. And even though I was so grateful to Norwich for offering me the contract, I was also determined to get the best deal possible for me, Claire and the baby.