Gazza: My Story (34 page)

It was so depressing. It had all happened five years before, and I was a different person now, or so I hoped. Life had moved on. It seemed I was destined to be convicted over and over again for the same offence, when I’d already admitted my guilt, paid the penalties and lost my wife and family, not to mention a huge amount of money. No wonder Bianca and Mason didn’t think much of me, having to put up with all that again.

I was drinking a lot while I was on the injury list, so I wasn’t all that fit when I got back. Then there was another upset: the death of David Rocastle, who had lost his fight against cancer. He was my age, my generation. I’d played alongside him in the England Under-21s and probably did him out of his place in the 1990 World Cup. He was gone, yet I was still alive and going strong, in theory, anyway; still playing in the Premiership at thirty-three. It certainly put things into perspective, and made me wonder why I was moaning so much.

But of course that feeling of being grateful for what I’d got didn’t last long, and the depression soon took hold of me again. And so did the drinking. Walter called me into his office and read me the riot act, saying I was getting out of control. I promised, as always, to stop.

I was driving all my friends mad. I was desperate
for their help, but at the same time I would turn on them, accusing them of all sorts. I’d send text messages all day long to Shel, and blamed Mel for all my troubles, which were not his fault at all.

At Everton, the players didn’t go out and socialise in the same way as they had at Boro. Most of the lads were genuinely scared of Walter and Archie and didn’t dare break any of the rules or curfews. So the last thing they wanted was a night out on the town with me. I became aware that a lot of them were beginning to steer clear of me.

I was very lonely in my hotel on my own. One night I picked up a total stranger and invited him to come out and have a meal with me. He agreed and was very nice. The evening ended with me slumped over a table. He was a good bloke. Evidently he was the soul of discretion, because the incident never appeared in any of the papers. Instead of rushing off and telling tales, he rang the club and got hold of someone who arranged for a taxi to come and pick me up.

I would have one drink, to make up for my miserable life, when I was injured and couldn’t play, feeling sorry for myself. Then immediately I needed another to reinforce the effect.

One night I fell over, drunk, and hurt myself. Somehow I developed an infection. I woke up in the night with a huge lump on my leg filled with blood. That meant another trip to hospital, another operation, another set of lies given out to present the problem as a training injury.

I missed Regan’s fifth birthday party. I meant to go, but I didn’t make it. There was no real reason, so I felt a right sod. I sent a card and £500. Pathetic, really. I still feel ashamed about that.

Bill Kenwright, the chairman of Everton, was brilliant, just as good as Walter. He listened to me moaning on for hours and tried so hard to help me, or at least accommodate me.

Towards the end of the season, Walter began to insist I went into a clinic. I was hoping my latest injury would clear up soon and I would get some games in before the season was over. I had managed only fourteen games so far. I said, ‘Please, please – anything but that. A month out of football, while the season is still going on, will destroy me. The only thing that makes my life worth living is football. I can’t do it.’ I put it off for a while, then they gave me an ultimatum.

‘If you respect me,’ said Walter, ‘you will go to the
clinic. If not, we’ll shake hands now and you can walk away from Everton.’

While I was mulling that over, Archie chipped in. ‘Surely, Gazza, you want to fight. You can beat twenty-eight days, can’t you?’

‘You bastards,’ I said, and walked out of the room, returning almost immediately. ‘OK, you’ve won – I’ll do the clinic.’

I didn’t want to go back into the Priory, as it hadn’t done me much good last time. I’d heard about this place in Arizona, Cottonwood, so I booked in there.

I talked to Shel and she said she’d help me through it. She said if I got through the treatment successfully, she’d consider taking me back, so that was another incentive.

I went for my twenty-eight days in Arizona in June 2001. I had to pay for it myself, with the help of an advance on my wages from Everton. I still had some money saved from my signing-on fee, but altogether it cost me £21,000. After that month spent in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere, I arranged for Shel and the kids to travel to Florida and join me for a holiday. I was calm and sober and enjoyed playing with the kids, but even though I wasn’t drinking, Shel and I still argued
quite a bit. Cottonwood was stricter than the Priory, and I took it more seriously. I suppose it did help me a bit more, but I was too busy helping others to really help myself. I just went round talking to other people. They didn’t know me, I wasn’t a name to any of the Americans there, so I could just be myself. And, as you know, I’m a lovely fella, always willing to help others.

The fact that I argued with Shel so soon afterwards shows it hadn’t really worked. One of the things I got upset about was that I stupidly got it into my head she had been seeing another guy. I was still angry when I came out – angry because I’d had to go there in the first place. And also angry because I got angry. I divvent know why.

We returned to Shel’s place in Hertfordshire, and I drove myself back up north from there in Shel’s car, a Jaguar which I’d bought for her. I fell asleep at the wheel. I was still tired after the long journey back from Arizona, and I careered into the side of a lorry and went off the road. The lorry was hardly scratched, but Shel’s car was really smashed up. The lorry driver came over to see if I was OK and recognised me. ‘Been drinking, have you, Gazza?’

‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been in a fucking clinic.’

I stayed sober for about nine months after that, and
got the fittest I’d been for years. Once again, the season started well enough for me. I got my first Everton goal, away to Bolton, in November 2001, and was playing well – and then it started all over again. My hernia came back. I could feel the pain, so I rested it for two weeks, but it wasn’t enough. It went again. I had another op and was out for a month. Then I ripped a muscle, trying as always to come back too soon, and had to have eighteen stitches. In all I had three ops in three months. I was really miserable. I managed to keep off the booze but I was back on sleeping pills. Then Maureen died – Maureen the mother of my childhood friend Keith Spraggon and little Steven, the boy I’d seen run over all those years ago. I’d remained very close her, so that affected me badly.

In January 2002, before a home game against Sunderland, all my Sunderland friends were telling me that Gavin McCann was going to get the better of me. He would really play me out of the match, they said. I didn’t sleep the night before. Nothing unusual there – except that I decided to take eleven sleeping tablets to get me off. And then I drank two bottles of wine.

Next day, just before kick-off, I had a double brandy. We won 1–0 and I was voted Man of the Match. I had, of course, been off the booze for about six months before
that, so probably my body was in good enough shape to take it at that stage.

In March we were beaten by Boro in the sixth round of the FA Cup. None of us distinguished ourselves, including me. It turned out to be my last game for Everton. It was also that defeat that finished off Walter.

Walter had done his best for Everton, and I had done my best to help him. My injuries had buggered everything up, and then the drinking made it worse, so I was never able to contribute as much as I would have liked, or as much as I felt capable of.

David Moyes took over as manager, stepping up from First Division Preston North End. He was another Scotsman, and I’ve always got on well with them. However … he didn’t say he wanted me to leave, but I could see the writing on the wall. Besides, with Walter gone, I felt it was time to move on again.

After I left Everton, I got myself a new agent, Ian Elliott, and he fixed me up with Burnley.

It was a bit of a culture shock, joining a club struggling in a lower division. I had played in the First Division before, during that first season at Boro, till we got promoted, but Boro were really a Premiership club, in terms of wealth and facilities. Apart from that year, I had spent sixteen of my seventeen years as a professional, since making it into Newcastle’s first team in 1985, playing in the top league with a top club.

After my first proper training session, I saw that my dirty kit was still lying around in the dressing room.
I asked this apprentice to take it away to wherever it got cleaned. In seventeen years, I had never thought twice about where it went. It had always been dealt with automatically.

‘It’ll cost you,’ he replied.

‘You what?’ I said.

It turned out you had to pay an apprentice to clean your stuff, or else do it yourself. The club didn’t do it for you. This lad charged me £5 a week to clean my boots and £20 a month for my kit.

One day I arrived for training and there was no kit laid out for me. I sat there for a while, waiting for my clean stuff, before I got hold of the lad. He said he was sorry, his washing machine at home had broken down. I had to borrow someone’s old kit to train in.

The deal with Stan Ternent, the manager, was that he would use me when necessary in vital games, bringing me on to change things if the team were getting nowhere. My basic wage was £5,000 a week, quite a drop from Everton’s £12,000, but I was also on £5,000 a game appearance money and a big bonus if Burnley reached the play-offs and got into the Premiership. I was also promised a share of the gate money, if it went up, and a percentage on the sale of all shirts with my name on them.

There was one week when I had just got over an injury and wanted to rest, so Stan said fine, go off and have a break, and I went off to Dubai for a few days. When I got back, Stan said there was no need to train, as I would be jet-lagged. Come Saturday, he didn’t pick me. ‘What’s the problem?’ I said. ‘I’m fit.’

‘Ah, but you haven’t trained.’

I stayed in a hotel during all my time at Burnley – I was only there about two months and made only six appearances. My last was as a sub, coming on for the final ten minutes against Coventry. We had to get at least as good a result as Norwich did to get in the play-offs as we went into the last game level on points and goal difference, though we’d scored more goals. We won 1–0 but just missed out on the final play-off spot as Norwich beat Stockport 2–0. I had two free kicks, which went near, but we didn’t make it, and that was it.

I didn’t really enjoy my football at Burnley. I found the First Division very tough. The lads were fine; it wasn’t them, it was me. Their sort of football wasn’t my style. It was all kick and rush. Perhaps I’d lost a bit of the necessary pace for it, but whatever the case, I wasn’t comfortable with it.

Gates had shot up by about 6,000 when I played,
so my presence did give them a boost. And they sold hundreds of extra shirts. I remember standing in the chairman’s office and signing 150 of them. Yet later, when I got the figures, they said only seventy had been sold all season. Funny, that.

The rest of that year, 2002, is a bit of a blur, even though it wasn’t that long ago. I was depressed, as ever, about the usual things: about not playing football, about my stupid behaviour, about all my worries and obsessions, but also about not seeing Regan. I’d always put football and drinking before my family, which was wrong. By this time, Shel had washed her hands of me yet again. I was getting more and more blackouts with the drinking and desperate to find more ways to numb my misery. I experimented with a line of coke, just the once. It did give me a high, but afterwards I was left even more down.

I went back to the north-east, where I was living in hotels or rented flats, which didn’t help. I took more cocaine. So that made it twice I used it. Except the second time I took it for three weeks, solidly, every day. I didn’t pay for it. It was given to me by someone – not someone in the north-east.

Ian Elliott fixed me up with a trial in the USA with
Washington DC. I knew it had been a bad move to take cocaine, and that it would show up in the blood tests, so I drank water for ten days to try to disguise it before going out to the US.

But all Washington DC offered me was $1,500 a week, which was a disgrace. I couldn’t afford to accept that, even if I’d wanted to. Not only would I have had to live in a hotel in Washington, but there was the small matter of the £10,000 a month I had to give Sheryl. I would have been paying out far more than I was earning, so it was impossible.