Simp-Lee the Best

by Lee McCulloch

  But we blew it when it mattered. We finished in seventh place, yet we were top of the league after eighteen games. But we faded and didn’t have quality or bottle or stamina – call it what you want, maybe it was a mixture of all three – and we won only three of our last ten games. West Ham defeated on us on the final day of the season with a last-minute Brian Deane goal and that resulted in us slipping out of the play-off places into seventh spot. Naturally, we were distraught.

  I think a lot of people expected to return for pre-season with a hangover but we were the exact opposite. There was a steely determination not to miss out again. We knew how deflated we felt at the end of the previous campaign and weren’t going to subject ourselves, or our supporters, to that again.

  In 2004-05 we got off to a flier and we were unbeaten in the opening seventeen games. We went straight up as runners-up to Sunderland. We got 87 points, 16 points better off from the previous twelve months. It was a rise to the top that probably arrived quicker than everyone expected. But we weren’t complaining.

  I thoroughly enjoyed our time in the Championship. It was a tough league but it was brilliant. I found it great preparation for the Premiership. It was full of huge clubs with brilliant grounds – Nottingham Forest and Leeds United spring to mind right away. There was absolutely no let up in that league.

  Wigan was the making of me as a footballer and helped me mature as a person. I was a shambles as a man until then and I was far too immature. I think what helped me off the pitch was escaping the ‘local boy’ tag at Motherwell. I was able to be anonymous in Wigan town centre. Nobody knew me and nobody wanted to know me. It was the same if I went shopping in Manchester and Liverpool. The Wigan Warriors rugby league players were the celebrities in the town centre. They had an excellent tradition and had been extremely successful over decades. They attracted crowds of around 20,000 to the JJB Stadium – compared to us getting 7,000 or 8,000 in my early days at Wigan – but they were earning less than a fifth of what we were. They were winning every week and gave the town hope and something to focus on. They shared the training ground with us and I think there may have been resentment about what we were earning compared to them. I could see their point.

  I went along now and again to see them play. It was decent stuff and I learned about the game. My dad enjoyed it more than me; he liked to go and see them when he could. The football team overtook them in the popularity stakes once we got into the Premiership. The roles were reversed and that gave us a good feeling. Whelan supported the football and the rugby but there was no doubt the football club was his priority. Eventually everyone bought into us and we overtook the rugby team in terms of popularity with the local community.

  We enjoyed some great games on our way to promotion in season 2004-05 but it was a tiring campaign. Sometimes we would be close to seven hours on the team bus to travel to away games such as Queens Park Rangers. We also had journeys to Plymouth and Ipswich. When we had so far to travel we would report to the stadium on a Friday morning and head off. We would stop off close to London to break up the journey and have a training session. It saved us from spending almost all day Friday sitting on our backsides.

  There was no respite in the Championship. We had forty-six league games to play plus Cup games. It was Saturday–Tuesday, Saturday–Tuesday. It never stopped. Whenever I felt it getting on top of me, I would dangle a wee carrot and tell myself, ‘It’s Vicarage Road and Ninian Park just now but it won’t be long until it’s Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge.’ When we got into the Premiership, we would then go by train and hire a first-class carriage. It’s the best way to travel. I loved it on the train.

  We had some key games to get us into the top flight. A few stick out for me personally. We played away at Nottingham Forest towards the end of the season. There was pressure on us to win the game. I scored our goal but they equalised late on to draw 1–1. It was a full house at the City Ground and the atmosphere was brilliant. I loved that game; it just sticks in my mind. Walter Smith was Scotland manager at that time and attended the game. I played well, thankfully.

  We played Preston North End at Deepdale and that was another cracking game. Memorable. Billy Davies was Preston gaffer at the time and I always seemed to score against them. The game was live on Sky and I scored with a header. A win would have taken us up but then they levelled late on to spoil the party.

  It came down to the last game and we had to beat Reading to go up. We won 3–1 and I scored. I also got Man of the Match. It was a brilliant day and one I’ll never forget. It was the biggest game in the club’s history. This was our moment and a chance to give the fans something to really shout about. We finished runners-up to champions Sunderland on 87 points. My dad and some of my family were down for the game and it was special to share it with all of them. We each received a £100,000 bonus for winning promotion.

  I scored fourteen goals that season and was also given the tremendous honour of being voted the Players’ Player of the Year. It was at that time I was getting into the Scotland team under Walter Smith. Things were good. Nice little financial rewards came on the back of it all. Puma offered me a contract to wear their boots and wear some of their other merchandise. I signed a two-year deal and earned £150 per first-team appearance; £150 per goal; £1,000 for every Scotland cap and £5,000 worth of clothes and equipment at cost price every year from their factory. I was on a bonus of £25,000 if I played in a Champions League final and £50,000 if I won the Ballon d’Or (I think their money was safe with that one!). We’d get all the latest PlayStation games and equipment sent to us for nothing. I also had a deal with Audi cars that allowed me 20 per cent discount. I had that at Wigan and Rangers but they took the privilege away when we were removed from the SPL to go into SFL Division Three.

  It was a great journey from Division Two to the Premiership. It was a real squad effort but I don’t think any players made a greater contribution than Ellington and Roberts. They were phenomenal. Any side outside of the top eight clubs in the English Premiership would have loved to have had that pairing. We also benefited from the gaffer allowing us to go out and express ourselves.

  Jimmy Bullard, Matt Jackson, Leighton Baines, Graham Kavanagh, Gary Teale and John Filan were also all huge for us. We were a close group, almost like brothers. We’d go for dinner and a couple of drinks. We loved to go to the driving range or have a game of golf. It’s the closest dressing room I’ve ever been a part of. The manager treated us like adults and let us get on with it. He loved to see us getting on so well. I am absolutely certain we would not have won the two promotions if there wasn’t such a togetherness. It played a huge part in the club’s success story over that three-year period.

  That said, it wasn’t like we had a ‘Tuesday Club’ or a ‘Sunday Lunch Club’. We enjoyed ourselves and loved a carry-on but we weren’t ones for hammering the bevvy. We were fairly sensible when it came to that, but we were very close.

  As well as improving on the park, the club was much more professional off the park. We got a Boot Room built, had a full-time kit man and washing machines put in. We had a full-time chef and canteen. We got a Jacuzzi put in, ice baths and a gymnasium. In my first couple of years there we just had a couple of large Portakabins and they were used for a variety of things – treatment room, office staff headquarters and the weights room. The weights area comprised of a couple of dumb-bells and a bar. The Portakabins were also freezing – there wasn’t any proper central heating in them. We’d be on the treatment table in there and we would be chittering during the winter months.

  There was no drainage on the pitches and it used to be ankle deep in mud for a number of months. It really sapped our energy and on a few occasions some of the lads took cramp at training. But Whelan also improved all of that and got a proper drainage system and upgraded the pitches. The training ground I walked into on the day I signed was totally unrecognisable compared to the place it became three years later. So long as we were going well and winning promotion, Whel
an promised to spend money to upgrade our facilities and make us much more professional. He was true to his word. He was also conscious of every penny. It was well known in the dressing room he would make sure the lights were turned off at the training ground and then he got sensors put in to save a few quid. We all had a wee chuckle at that.

  Whelan was very hands-on. When I signed a new contract he called down to the training ground and told the office staff to tell me to get to his office at JJB HQ. His office was plush, state-of-the-art. It was like JR Ewing out of Dallas. I sometimes found it quite daunting to be in his company on a one-to-one basis.

  He was also so passionate about Wigan and totally loved the club. He was at the training ground every day and would be in the dressing room on match days before and after games. He liked to entertain and used to bring celebrities to the stadium for games. He brought Ruby Wax one day as she was doing her show in Wigan. He brought her into the dressing room and she interviewed me for her show as I’d scored a goal that day.

  Whelan was a good guy and I never felt he interfered with the manager and players. Some owners have been known to overstep the mark and meddle in things they should keep out of, but Whelan got the balance right. He is a very loyal owner and always stands by his managers. From my vantage point, he appeared to have an excellent working relationship with Jewell. There was mutual respect there.

  Being successful at Wigan meant the financial rewards were excellent. It allowed us to live a good lifestyle but I made sure I never took anything for granted. I bought a nice house in Warrington and lived in the same estate as Kerry Katona. My good friend James McFadden – who was with Everton at that time – was also in the estate. Graeme Park, the legendary DJ, was next door. I really enjoyed living in Warrington; it’s a lovely place, nice and peaceful.

  When my partner Amanda and I got together in due course, we both liked living there. Then, for her Christmas in 2005, I bought Amanda a new house in the estate, just a few doors along the road. She had told me a couple of months earlier she really liked the house and it was slightly bigger than the one we were already in. I blindfolded her on Christmas morning and took her into the car and drove around for about ten minutes to try and put her off the scent. When I parked the car for some reason she thought we were at a stables and that I had bought her a horse. She got out the car, back to just fifty yards from our house, and I opened the front door for her and then took the blindfold off. It was a lovely three-storey house. It was beautiful. We had many happy memories in there and we were really sorry when we had to leave.

  6

  MY FAMILY

  AMANDA IS my partner and soon to be my wife. I’m extremely lucky to have her and we’re both very fortunate to have two lovely sons together, Callum and Jack.

  Amanda also went to Dalziel High School in Motherwell. If I had my way I would have asked her out when I was fifteen, but it took me the best part of ten years to pluck up the courage. She was the vice-captain at Dalziel High and I was two years below her. Me and my mates always used to talk about her and her best mate Suzy Russell. Both of them were the school babes, the ones we all fancied like mad. Amanda was tall and blonde, I was spotty and shorter and lacking maturity. I was always scared to speak to her. For some strange reason, I thought she’d be arrogant and wouldn’t want to speak to me. We did converse a few times at school sports days but that was probably only because I was winning a few competitions and that gave me a swagger for all of about five minutes, and then I’d go back into my shell! I always wanted to ask her out and time after time I’d convince myself to have the courage to speak, but my bottle would always go and I’d clam up. I’d end up walking away, scared. Around my mates I was always up for a laugh and never short of something to say, but the big blonde always left me speechless. Over the years I’ve managed to massage the facts of the story and say that she actually chased me for years and I eventually gave in!

  We bumped into each other in the Cricklewood Bar in Bothwell in June 2002. I was at Wigan and Amanda happened to be living in Manchester as she was working at Christie’s Hospital as a research assistant in gene therapy. We were both single so decided to meet up down there a few weeks later for a drink.

  But now I’ll let Amanda tell her side of the story.

  ‘After school I studied at Glasgow University and graduated with first-class Honours degree in Experimental Pathology. I then went to Australia to travel for a year in 1998 and came back. I landed a job as a genes research assistant at Christie’s Hospital in Manchester in 2001.

  ‘When Lee and I met again all those years after school it felt like it was “meant to be”! We had only seen each other a couple of times since we had left school and then we found ourselves both living and working within twenty miles of each other in England.

  ‘We met on the night of the Queen’s Jubilee in June 2002. We bumped into each other at the Cricklewood Bar in Bothwell. We had a chat and it was nice to catch up. We arranged to meet up the following month when we were both back down in England. We had our first official date on 22 July 2002 in Warrington.

  ‘We clicked and got on well from our first date. We became inseparable, mainly because we were down there on our own. Lee would get impatient in the afternoons, asking me to leave work early to come and join him as he would be finished training. But some of us have to work real hours! We moved in together six months later and got our first ‘baby’ – Sasha, our dog.

  ‘Lee and I both wanted children and talked about having a family from early on in our relationship. We were both extremely excited when I found out I was pregnant and, although he never said too much about it, I knew Lee was desperate for a boy. He had bought a little Wigan strip with “Daddy” on the back before Callum was born and was so proud the first day Callum wore it.

  ‘Callum was born in Warrington General Hospital on 7 January 2005 at 11.35am. He weighed 9lb. It was a long labour. I needed an epidural to ease the pain but it took longer because the anaesthetist was too busy chatting to Lee about playing for Wigan Athletic and getting his autograph. Meanwhile, I was bent over, having contractions. Lee has assured me he is indebted to me for the rest of his life after what I went through that day.

  ‘Almost before we could blink, I became pregnant again.

  ‘Callum was only six months old when I found out I was pregnant with Jack. We were delighted but it came as a bit of a shock. I’m epileptic and I took a fit in the middle of the night on 22 July 2005, in my sleep. It was the first time it happened to me since I was at secondary school. I was at secondary school when diagnosed with it. I went on medication, had to take it every day. I came off it when I was in my mid-twenties. I only started to get symptoms again after I had given birth to Callum. Lee had never seen a seizure. We were out that night for dinner in Manchester to celebrate the anniversary of our first date together. Thankfully, Lee’s parents were down and Lee shouted for his mum to phone an ambulance. Lee tried to help by putting his finger in my mouth to stop me swallowing my tongue but that is the worst thing he could have done. I bit down on it and he was in agony. I woke up with two ambulance guys in the room with their orange jumpsuits on.’

  It was a Saturday night so as you could imagine the hospital was mobbed with people encountering problems on a night out. After Amanda was examined, the nurse asked if she was pregnant. We said no, no chance of that. A wee while later she came back and said, ‘Oh, just to let you know you are pregnant.’ It was a major shock!

  Jack was born on 14 March 2006 at 11.25pm at Warrington General Hospital and weighed in at 8lb 11oz. That was an easier labour for both of us!

  Amanda had three or four seizures in the first few weeks after Jack was born. By then I knew how to deal with it. The doctor had put Amanda on a high dose of medication and she told me she felt like a zombie most of the time. It was hard dealing with a dog and two babies, especially when I was on the road with Wigan. There was also the added complication and frustration of Amanda not being allowed to drive for a year be
cause of her epileptic fits. We definitely needed support because she was told not to bathe the kids on her own in case she took a fit and they slipped under the water. Things like that. It was quite frightening. She’d have to walk everywhere. She couldn’t just pack up for the weekend and drive up the road, and it was too much trouble getting a train. It was like a flitting with two young babies, just not worth it. Thankfully she had good friends around her and both sets of parents were down a lot.

  Now that we’re back in Scotland it’s great that the boys can spend lots of time with their grandparents. The boys are great together and with them only being fourteen months apart they are good friends. They both enjoy football but I’ve never pushed them into it. They can choose their own paths in life and all that Amanda and I will drum into them are family values, good manners and a good work ethic. Amanda and I feel strongly about that.

  Amanda is a great mother and a brilliant partner. She has given me the freedom to concentrate on my career. She doesn’t care much for football and isn’t interested in coming to watch me playing but she understands what’s required and it’s been good to always have her backing on that front. She has the patience of a saint and that’s something that’s really helped me with my career.

  Now, the next big step for us as a family will be when we get married. I know Callum and Jack will enjoy the moment when they see their mum and dad finally getting married.

  Amanda: ‘We got engaged on 10 November 2010. It was a mid-week and Lee had played for Rangers and came home after losing the game to Hibs. He’d also hurt his knee and was in a bit of pain. We had just moved into our new house in Bothwell and the kids were away at their grandparents’ so we could get on with getting the place in order, unpack boxes, that kind of thing. It was the first night we were to stay in the house together and that was the night Lee chose to propose.’