by Tony Adams
I had a cockiness about me, I have to admit. ‘All right, Son,’ I would say to senior players such as Pat Jennings and David O’Leary. I guess they probably smiled at me, but I got away with it as I think I had the talent to back up that bit of swagger I had. I was confident and comfortable on the pitch. You have to be if players are going to look up to you. If you’re going to lead at the highest level, you have to do your own job well or people will simply not respect you.
It actually became unnatural for me not to be the captain. I was happy to be captained by the great Bryan Robson when I first played for England but, later in my career, I thought Glenn Hoddle was wrong to appoint Alan Shearer above me. Terry Venables had it right – of course I would say that – and the result was the Euro 96 England team which the nation would love to have representing them now.
After I quit drinking, my change as a person was mirrored in the way I captained sides. I am sure, indeed, that I became a better leader when I knew more about myself. You’ve got to have something before you can give it away.
Before, it had all been about leading by example, unconsciously, instinctively. Now, I think I was more dependable and could employ some of the wisdom that I was acquiring and being taught in AA. I would think my style became more about carrot than stick. My words were probably equally as strong, but more softly spoken. I didn’t need to shout so much in the dressing room. The growing number of overseas players coming in were unlikely to respond to that.
I could speak to Dennis Bergkamp in private, for example, to say with a smile that it would be a shame if he were not to win trophies while he was at Arsenal. I could tell Robert Pires that he needed to add toughness to his technical ability if he was to survive. Both took it to heart and reacted well. Dennis was magnificent as we won the 1998 double. Robert would become Footballer of the Year and star for the Invincibles of 2004.
It’s not to say I threw the baby out with the bathwater. That hunger and desire, and – to paraphrase what they say in AA – being willing to go to any lengths to achieve, returned to me and underpinned all that I did in those six sober years as a player.
I also discovered a self-awareness and self-doubt that I probably had not encountered during my years as a drinking leader. There were times, in fact, when I have to say I was even scared.
Leaders, actually, in my opinion, are probably the most scared people in the world. They may exude confidence and often an arrogance, but underneath that – at least the best ones, I reckon – can be a questioning of their own position that may surprise people who only get to see a public face and don’t think such people suffer from the same anxieties as they do. That is just comparing outsides with insides. They, we, are human too.
In fact, I wouldn’t trust any leader who didn’t have some self-doubt. It shows an open-mindedness and willingness to embrace new ideas, to change and improve. But I do know that anxiety would manifest itself in leadership when the going got really tough.
I, for example, have been a bad flyer at various times in my life. I have got really anxious about getting on an aeroplane and have actually avoided it by taking trains or driving instead. But I am certain that if anything did go wrong, I would be the one up on my feet, wanting to sort things out, gathering people I could trust around me.
That is actually what the art of leadership is about – building and retaining trust, then empowering those around you. I may have changed as a leader, for the better, but that basic philosophy never does.
It was the same when I had Jeff Fricker, Marty Cooke and Richard Stout around me as a kid, through my early days at Arsenal with Pat Jennings, David O’Leary and David Rocastle, through the John Lukic, Steve Bould and Anders Limpar years, to the finale with David Seaman, Sol Campbell and Dennis Bergkamp. I picked my soldiers, led them and won. But, if it was to mean anything, it had to be fair.
5
A Sporting Chance
A hero is someone who understands the
responsibility that comes with his freedom.
BOB DYLAN
It was about two years into my sobriety when the truth of a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous really hit home with me. ‘You’ve got to give it away to keep it,’ it went. It is one of many wise sayings they have, apparent paradoxes, such as ‘Surrender to win’ and ‘Hang in there – but let go’. For a professional sportsman, they were difficult to comprehend – surrendering to win, for God’s sake? – but gradually their meaning became clear. Only by conceding fully that alcohol had beaten me could I recover from alcoholism.
The one about giving it away to keep it meant that to maintain your sobriety, you had to help others achieve it . . .
I was getting plenty of phone calls from fellow footballers who had read my story in Addicted or in the newspapers and recognised something of themselves in me. It wasn’t just drinking either. Many were worried about their drug abuse or how gambling was affecting their lives and those around them. Gradually, it was becoming understood that addiction was a disease, no matter the substance or damaging behaviour pattern. Calls also came in from players’ agents, from family members and even friends of the family.
At this stage, around 2000, my playing career felt easy for me. I was in a great side at Arsenal. I was mentally and emotionally well, enjoying the single man’s life and spending time with my children. Clare, my stepdaughter, was now nearly 16 and my two children from my marriage to Jane – Oliver and Amber – were eight and five respectively.
I was doing some really interesting things, like learning to play the piano and having French lessons. I began going to the theatre, and was asked to become a patron of a young writers’ initiative at the Royal Court Theatre in London’s Sloane Square. I was reading a lot, got to like JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, read all of Nick Hornby’s books after Fever Pitch, and took in all the classics I had missed out on at school – some Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, though I preferred nonfiction, such as biographies and autobiographies.
I was meeting people from all walks of life. I even went to see a modern dance performance featuring a friend, the daughter of Jerry Gilmore, the surgeon who had operated on my hernia a while back, and who even had a condition named after him – Gilmore’s Groin. Well, it’s good to be famous for something.
I was determined never to forget where I had come from, however. Given that I had been jailed for drink-driving, I was happy to get involved with a charity called RAPt – the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners trust, which ran treatment programmes inside jails. I enjoyed going into prisons, telling them my story and trying to offer them hope. Naturally, I would get some stick from fans of clubs other than Arsenal. I remember walking through the blocks to the venue for the talk at one prison on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent and being given dog’s abuse by some Millwall fans. Luckily, they were behind bars at the time.
I was also happy to become a patron of a charity called the National Association of Children of Alcoholics, having been put in touch by someone at AA with the Labour politician Mo Mowlam, who was their first patron and who wrote to me. Calum Best and Elle Macpherson were also patrons. While my mum and dad were not alcoholics, I wanted to endorse the message that it was important for children and young adults to know that they are not responsible for their parents’ drinking.
Looking back, I felt like I was blossoming and I was finding new courage. Despite that anxiety of mine about flying, I took myself off to Japan on my own for a week’s holiday during a close season. Arsène always talked fondly of the country, having been manager of Grampus 8 in Nagoya. He always said it was a spiritual country and that intrigued me.
I found Tokyo a bit manic, but hooked up there with a woman friend who was working in Japan and we travelled a bit. I enjoyed Kyoto. I was fascinated by Zen Buddhism and learned some basic tenets about meditating. It was all a far cry from the lads’ booze-filled summer holidays to Magaluf and such resorts in the eighties, as was a beautiful and peaceful fishing holiday in Ireland that I also went on.
Naturally, I was staying close to AA and going to plenty of meetings in Putney, Chelsea and Wimbledon, encountering new people there as well, men like Ronnie the postman, Derek the tube driver and Pete, who was a musician, both of whom became good friends, and others who had good long-term sobriety. There’s another old saying in the fellowship: stick with the winners; that is, those who are really walking the walk, not just talking the talk, and staying sober through the toughest of times.
These were special days for me and, as well as receiving wisdom from AA, I was having some fun too. I recall going to the Comedy Store in Leicester Square with a group of friends from the fellowship to see a woman member do an open-mike session. It was something she had always wanted to do, apparently, and now that she was sober, she decided to face her fears without any Dutch courage.
It was brave and it didn’t really matter that she bombed. She did it. We all went out for a meal afterwards and she thanked us for coming, said she had got it out of her system. What could have been a depressing experience became an uplifting one.
I felt that, with a bit of good-quality ‘clean time’ under my belt, I had something to offer others now. When people in football were calling me about their drinking and asking for help, I tried to share my experiences with them. But while you can always pass on what you have learned, you can’t get people sober. All you can share is your experience. Another old saying is true: you can carry the message but you can’t carry the alcoholic.
I particularly remember a call from a Manchester City midfield player who I spoke to for a long time. I was also spending time with Paul Merson, who was then into his own recovery from drinking, drugs and gambling. I guess I was holding up a mirror to a lot of people and reactions were mixed. While some may have admired me, I’m sure others thought me strange. For many who have had a problem, there is often a sense of something being wrong inside but not being ready to confront it. It can be too soon for some.
Things began to germinate in my head and three events occurred which would prompt me into action . . .
Around that time, I met another pro footballer by the name of Alex, who had played in the Premier League. In fact, I was introduced to him while he was in a 28-day rehab at the Priory in south-west London. He was trying to maintain his fitness in there ready to go back to his club, but there was no special physical programme for him. He was just running round Richmond Park. That struck me as an oversight. I reckoned a player going back to his club after treatment needed to get playing as soon as possible to help him with his recovery, not have to get fit all over again mid-season and feel isolated.
Then, at an AA meeting in Richmond, I met this guy called Peter Kay, who was doing his ‘chair’. He was a chef by trade and his talk was inspirational. He talked about how his drinking had led to him being in a coma, but when he got out of hospital he carried on drinking. Madness, but it made sense to an active alcoholic. He told of losing his pancreas and how close he had been to dying. Charismatic and enthusiastic, he had an amazing story and I talked to him after the meeting. We soon became friends.
Almost at the same time, I read something in the Sunday Times that confirmed to me that I had to do something. (Me reading the Sunday Times, who would have thought it? There were times when I would have been more likely to sleep under it.) The article was about a lawyer by the name of Ros Harwood, who was leaving her job at the Charity Commission to set up her own legal practice in York.
It felt as if all these experiences coming in quick succession were telling me something. There was this footballer who needed specialist help; a man with great communication skills who I reckoned could help me create a treatment centre for sports people; and a lawyer who could help me set up a charity that would finance it. I had also been impressed with how London Transport had helped my friend Derek the tube driver get into treatment and thought football could and should do that with its employees.
And so Sporting Chance – the name coming from Mandy Jacobs, wife of the guy at Arsenal who worked as a players’ liaison and was in recovery at that time from gambling addiction – was born. In my head at least.
After that, it became about how I established the treatment centre and then paid for it. I had some money from the book deal for Addicted and, after paying off some of my parents’ mortgage, I decided to put aside £165,000 to set it up. I managed to track down Ros Harwood and went to meet her. She said she would take me through the steps of establishing a charitable trust and she became the first trustee, to be followed soon after by my dad’s accountant, Norman Ewen.
To acquire some credibility for the new venture, I also wanted to attract a well-known patron. About a year earlier, I had met Elton John at a Capital Radio awards ceremony, when he presented me with a London Sports Personality award – the idea being that I received it from a London station that was on 95.8 FM on day 958 of my sobriety. I was delighted when Elton, who had had his own problems with addictive illness and was now in recovery, accepted the offer.
The first administrator was a woman called Mandy Scott-Johnson, whom I had met at AA meetings and who had been clean and sober for a few years. James West, my therapist, became my clinical director. James would fret that he wasn’t qualified enough at first, but he played a major part in getting me sober and I knew he would do the same with and for others. It was a giant leap of faith for him, given that there is a 50 per cent failure rate for new businesses in their first year. I was incredibly grateful to him for giving up a safe job with the West London Mission, a housing association that helped the homeless and those with addictions, and believing in me and the charity.
I, we, made expensive mistakes at first. I commissioned a report, for example, about the state and types of treatment in the UK ahead of deciding what I should be looking to establish. Basically, it cost me £28,000 to find out all about the business model of the Priory. And that was something I didn’t want. The Priory got certain people sober, but I needed something different, something specific. I wanted something tailored specially for sportspeople. I needed a programme based on the Twelve Steps of AA, yes, but I also wanted an approach that was holistic and involved the physical wellbeing of athletes, as well as their mental, emotional and spiritual health.
I wrote to all the various governing bodies, such as the British Olympic Association and the Football Association, asking what they did for people with addictive issues. Not one association came back to me with a plan for how they would help athletes or players with problems. The BOA told me that they banned people for two years if they were caught having taken drugs. I asked what they did for them – and got the same answer: they banned them. They simply could not grasp the difference between doing something with a drug-taker rather than for them. And the distinction between performance-enhancing and so-called recreational drugs seemed lost on them. The Rugby Football Union, meanwhile, told us there was no problem in their game.
The Jockeys Association did let me in to give a talk and they did make a contribution of £10,000, which was very welcome, but it wasn’t all about the money. It was about getting them to help us get their members into a treatment programme if and when they needed us.
This went on for some 18 months – me knocking on doors, being heard but not getting the message across – and while my motto had always been that if we helped one person, then we had been a success, in reality we helped very few. Meeting after meeting after meeting yielded nothing. It was demoralising at times and I just couldn’t understand attitudes within the various sporting bodies.
I had always thought that if you played tennis at Wimbledon, rugby at Twickenham or ran and jumped at Crystal Palace – in fact, had given something to your sport – and then fell prey to addiction or mental and emotional issues when you practised or finished your sport, then your union should and would offer you guidance and even financial aid to seek help. It seems I was being naive.
By now, in 2002, I knew my playing career was nearing its end as I was injured a fair bit of
the time. It meant I had more time to devote to the charity, but the harder I and the staff worked – the staff at that time being James and Mandy – the less Sporting Chance was happening, let alone thriving. My initial injection of capital was fast disappearing. We organised fundraisers, one at the Dorchester hotel, which did well enough in raising £25,000, but it was hard work and I just couldn’t get past the feeling that governing bodies should be contributing to all this. Their members were the ones in danger and they should have a duty of care to them.
Enter Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association. I had met Gordon previously at the FA’s offices in Soho when Sporting Chance was just an idea, but now we were up and running – well, limping – he met with me again to consider what we could do for pros with problems.
They always say that the darkest time is just before the dawn.
This time, with some evidence to show him, he understood and grasped the concept that the PFA should be involved in helping its members when they encountered problems. And the timing was just right. Television deals were taking off and the PFA were receiving more income from them, so could thus allocate some to us. On top of that, Gordon had had some bad, and expensive, experiences with other treatment centres that weren’t providing the holistic programme of physical training alongside the talking therapy that we were offering. He told me of one centre that had charged £36,000 for a 28-day stay, without the player concerned staying sober afterwards.
‘So why not give us a go then?’ I said.
We got a decision in a few weeks. Gordon pledged to help us help his members. Our crumbling charity was saved. He vowed that any player, past or current, who presented with addiction issues would be referred straight to us and the PFA would pay for them. And it looked like we wouldn’t be short of business.
At the meeting, he presented me with a folder of papers. It contained details and case histories of a whole host of players with drink, drug and gambling addictions as well as mental and behavioural issues.