Craig Bellamy - GoodFella

by Craig Bellamy

  I felt at home straight away. And I felt privileged to be there. Until you settle into the area, you don’t realise how big a club Newcastle actually is. It was a new level of scrutiny and a new level of expectation but after my troubles at Coventry, I wanted to seize the second chance I felt I had been given with both hands. I wanted to embrace the challenge.

  I enjoyed working with John Carver too. He acted young and he was on the same wavelength as the players. He was the link between the manager and us and because he was a Geordie boy, he had a real feeling for the club. We had a good fitness coach, Paul Winsper, and everything felt as if it was geared to success. The first few weeks were brilliant. I loved every moment of it.

  Sometimes in pre-season you are just concentrating on getting fit and staying out of trouble. Sometimes, a lack of match fitness can catch you out when you get to the first game of the league season. But the run in the Intertoto Cup solved that issue. After Lokeren, we beat 1860 Munich away and at home and that put us into the final against Troyes.

  We under-estimated Troyes. I did, anyway. We drew 0-0 in the first leg in France but they were superb. They were managed by Alain Perrin, who had a brief spell in control of Portsmouth, and they played one-touch stuff. We were chasing shadows. They should have beaten us quite comfortably at their place but somehow we hung on for a draw.

  We went 1-0 up in the second leg at St James’ Park but then they took us apart. They were 4-1 up after an hour and although we dragged ourselves back into it and Aaron Hughes even scored a last minute equaliser, they deserved to go through. The supporters, of course, were disappointed because they wanted European football but it was probably the best thing that could have happened to us.

  We had a good squad but we didn’t have a big squad and now our playing resources wouldn’t be quite so stretched. The six Intertoto games we had played had bedded everybody in and the players watching from the sidelines, like Shearer and Kieron, were thinking they were going to come back into a decent side. There was optimism around the place.

  The first game of the league season was against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. They had spent £32m on Frank Lampard, Emmanuel Petit, William Gallas and Boudewijn Zenden and they had ambitions of challenging for the title. But we matched them. We fell behind early but we finished strongly and Clarence Acuna equalised for us with 13 minutes to go. It was an early boost for our morale.

  The next weekend, we were at home to Sunderland in the Tyne-Wear derby. I had sampled a few East Anglian derbies. In fact, I scored in one and the atmosphere was always brilliant. But it had nothing on that Newcastle-Sunderland game. I had never been involved in anything like it. It is on occasions like that when you realise why people talk about St James’ Park as one of the great cathedrals of football.

  Sunderland had a little bit of a hold over Newcastle at that time. A couple of years earlier, Ruud Gullit had decided to leave Shearer on the bench for a Tyne-Wear derby. It was widely interpreted as a power-play, an attempt to prove he could take on the Geordie hero on his own patch. It didn’t work. In fact, many people interpreted the team sheet he handed in for that game as tantamount to a managerial suicide note. Sunderland won 2-1 and Gullit was out.

  This time, we went a goal down after 20 minutes. Kevin Phillips had scored in Gullit’s last game and now he scored again after about half an hour. But there were 52,000 fans inside the stadium and they kept up the support. Two minutes before half-time, Laurent Robert played me in and I slotted it past the Sunderland keeper. That gave me a lot of confidence and belief and helped establish me with the fans.

  Shearer returned to the team for the next game against Middlesbrough and that felt like a big moment for me as well as the supporters. I knew what he was all about because I had watched him down the years, not just for England but for Southampton and Blackburn before his move back home. He was an incredible player. By the time I worked with him, he had dipped a little because of the number of injuries he had suffered but he was still a brilliant player. He could hit the ball like no one else I’ve ever seen. He was great at holding it up and he was magnificent in the air.

  Sometimes people say ‘be good with your left as well as your right, always work on ironing out imperfections’ but Alan knew the time for that had come and gone. Alan just improved his strengths. If there were some things he couldn’t do, he didn’t try to do them. He worked hard, although pre-season, he wouldn’t do any of the running that the rest of us did. He did his own stuff because he wasn’t a runner. He wasn’t quick. He didn’t have those qualities. But he gave the team confidence. When you know Shearer’s in your team…well, it can’t help but give you a lift. He had something. He had stature. He had presence. The crowd adored him. When it was known he was coming back against Middlesbrough, the anticipation around the region was intense.

  If you put the ball into the right area, Alan would always pick on the weakest defender. He had a sixth sense for sniffing out a defender’s vulnerabilities. If that defender couldn’t head the ball, he would be on him. He was just clever. When we started playing together, I did a lot of his running for him. I was coming short to receive passes and it was probably ideal for him. It allowed him to concentrate on being in the right areas.

  I’m the kind of player who creates chances, too. I will be wide and crossing it or cutting the ball back. Sir Bobby Robson knew exactly what he was doing when he paired the two of us up. We hit it off straight away. We played together against Middlesbrough and he scored twice in a 4-1 win at the Riverside. We were very, very different personalities off the pitch, but on it, we clicked.

  Early on in our partnership, the quality of his striking took me by surprise. Once, I made a run on the outside and Laurent Robert used my movement to slip the ball inside to Alan. I was watching and thinking he had time to take a touch but he hit it first time and it went straight in the top corner. I ran over to him and I was thinking ‘that is something different to anything I have ever witnessed’. That was what made him different to every other player. When he hit the ball first time like that, nine times out of ten it would go in and if it didn’t the keeper would have to make a very good save.

  Newcastle was Alan’s club. He was very strong within the club politically. Everybody was scared of going up against him. It wasn’t thought of as a battle you would be able to win. I was just grateful to be playing with someone like him.

  He wasn’t a guy that went around giving people advice. There was no question that if you had a problem you would go and see him. He wasn’t that type of character. I didn’t mind about that because I had Speedo to go to.

  Alan didn’t want to know about other people’s problems. He concentrated a lot on himself but then a lot of footballers do. That is probably what made him the player he was: he was very single minded. He did only think about himself. That was his only concern. Not the team, not the other players. It was about himself. That is probably his biggest strength.

  Even when he got flak, it didn’t bother him. He knew his own ability and if someone criticised him, he would set out to prove them wrong and succeed.

  I got an extra-time hat-trick against Brentford in the League Cup the following week. I got three in the space of 12 minutes. The highlights were coming thick and fast. I had wanted to hit the ground running at Newcastle and those first few weeks were everything I’d hoped for. In fact, the best was still to come. We were at home to Manchester United next. It was one of the most dramatic games I’ve been involved in.

  The atmosphere was electric. United were unbeaten. People were saying they might go the whole season without defeat. They had Juan Sebastian Veron, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Laurent Blanc and, of course, Roy Keane. We were already full of confidence, though, and we tore into them.

  We went 1-0 up. They equalised. Then Fabien Barthez made a mistake and Rob Lee put us back into the lead. Dabizas put us 3-1 up before they pegged us back to 3-3 with two goals in two minutes. It was breathless stuff. Seven minutes from
the end, I managed to get away from Blanc and lay a pass out wide to Solano. His shot was saved by Barthez but it rebounded to Alan and Wes Brown could only deflect his effort into the net. It turned out to be the winner.

  I was substituted soon after that because I’d got a kick on the knee so I was watching when Alan and Roy Keane clashed on the far side of the pitch in the last minute. The ball went out for a throw-in and Keane, who was already wound up anyway, reacted to something Alan said and threw the ball at him. It hit him on the back of the head and Alan complained to the referee. The referee sent Keane off and Keane went absolutely nuts. He looked like he wanted to rip Alan’s head off. It took about five of the United players to restrain him.

  I adored Keane. He was one of the best players I ever played against. I idolised him, in fact, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against him in those circumstances. I saw him waiting for Alan in the tunnel at the end of the game and Alan didn’t seem to be hurrying off the pitch. He was one of the last to come off, actually, which we all made sure we remarked on when he finally made it back to the dressing room. Keane had had to be dragged back into the United dressing room by then. There was a lot of laughing and joking about it all. The spirit was good, United had been beaten, we were off to a flying start.

  12

  Party Tyne

  There were two groups among the players. There were the more senior players, like Speedo, Shearer, Rob Lee and Warren Barton. When they socialised, they went out for meals with their wives. In the changing room before training, they’d talk about what they had done with their kids the day before or which restaurant they had eaten at.

  Then there was the younger group: me, Carl Cort, Kieron, Wayne Quinn, Andy Griffin, Dabizas and Solano. We had a deal with each other. If we won, we would head out on the town, usually down to the pubs and clubs down on the Quayside on the banks of the River Tyne. If we lost, we’d stay in. If we drew? Well that was tricky. It depended on the performance. If we decided we’d played okay, we’d go out.

  We only lost at home four times all season. So we went out quite a lot. If we wanted to win the next week, we had to keep up the tradition. That’s what we told ourselves anyway. We had a team spirit and togetherness partly because we were all socialising.

  On a Monday, the whole squad would go out for food and Sir Bobby encouraged that. He wanted that togetherness. I still look back on that with fondness. It would be called ‘old school’ now but it worked. We all enjoyed each other’s company and we were treated like kings in the city. When you are winning and things are going well in Newcastle, you are loved like nowhere else.

  It sounds outdated now, doesn’t it? But the formula worked for us. I felt like part of a family within a few weeks of arriving. Sure, there were two separate groups – Shay Given belonged to both – but we all got on well. Underpinning it all was a belief that we had the potential to have a very successful season.

  We suffered our first defeat at Upton Park against West Ham and lost twice at home, to Liverpool and Spurs. But after the defeat to Tottenham at the end of October, we won eight of our next 10 league games, a run that included back-to-back away wins at Arsenal and Leeds United. When we beat Derby at home in late November, it moved us joint top of the table.

  We slipped back a little but when we won at Highbury a week before Christmas, we went top in our own right. It was a bitter-sweet moment for me. It was the first time I had ever been part of a team that was top of the league but I marked the occasion by being sent off by Graham Poll 20 minutes from time, supposedly for swinging my arm into Ashley Cole’s face.

  I didn’t like Poll and he didn’t like me. I thought that he was arrogant and rude. There was nothing worse than knowing you were about to play one of the big teams and finding out that he would be the ref because, in my opinion, if ever I came across a man who appeared star-struck, it was him. He loved David Beckham, for instance, absolutely loved him. I’d see him before games, shaking hands with Patrick Vieira, talking to the big players. He looked to me like he wanted to be around the cameras. He called some of the big stars by their Christian names, like he thought he was their mate.

  In contrast, he seemed to hold me in contempt. I didn’t show him any respect. I didn’t want to be his friend and he used to book me given the slightest opportunity. I wasn’t surprised when he booked the Croatian defender, Josip Simunic, three times during the 2006 World Cup because I didn’t actually think he was that good a referee. There was an element of karma about that, too. He had that coming. I think he saw himself as a celebrity ref.

  I don’t have a problem with most referees. In fact, I think we are very fortunate with the standard of our officials. Mark Halsey is outstanding. So is Phil Dowd. I’m probably not the easiest player to manage on the pitch. I accept that. There are times when I can be very incorrect in what I say. I will appeal for something I am never going to get but during the game I’m convinced I’m right.

  Some refs will know I’m talking rubbish and they’ll tell me. I despise swearing at refs, believe it or not, but sometimes I can’t help myself. Some refs tell me where to go straight away and swear back at me. That’s fair enough. I haven’t got a problem with that. I certainly don’t take it personally.

  Poll got a lot of stuff wrong, though. His decision to send me off against Arsenal was a joke. I might have brushed Cole with my arm but the contact was minimal and it was certainly accidental. Most people could see that but Poll would not change his mind so Newcastle appealed the decision and it went to an FA disciplinary commission. To no one’s great surprise, Poll’s decision was overturned and my three-match ban was wiped out.

  We had real momentum by then. It had survived intact despite an episode in November that I suppose marked the beginning of the idea that people like me and Kieron were out of control during our time at Newcastle. We had beaten Aston Villa at home on the first Saturday in November and the next day the squad flew out to Malaga for a winter break.

  We were staying at a resort called La Quenta in San Pedro Alcantara, a few miles from Marbella. The idea was to play some golf, relax and hopefully soak up a little sunshine. We had a friendly against Recreativo Huelva scheduled for Wednesday night. I didn’t play golf back then so on Monday, which was a free day, Carl Cort, Andy Griffin, Kieron and I went for a bit of lunch at a place in Puerto Banus. We had nothing to do, it was pouring with rain and so we just stayed in the restaurant, eating and drinking. We were a bit bored, basically.

  Early in the evening, about 6pm, Tony Toward, the team administrator, rang Kieron on his mobile. He told us we had to report back to the hotel at 7pm for an evening meal. We said we had just eaten but he told us we ought to show our faces and then we could go. Well, 7pm came and went and we were still in the restaurant. We made our way up to the hotel about half an hour later but we were oblivious of the time. We didn’t think there was any particular urgency about the meal.

  We got to the hotel but there was nobody there. They had already gone in for dinner. We didn’t want to just barge in because it would have created more of a scene. So we went to the bar for a bit. While we were there, we ordered four vodka Red Bulls and a cigar each and put them on Freddy Shepherd’s room bill. Then we went back to our rooms to get changed so we could meet up with the rest of the squad when they came out of their dinner.

  No one said anything except Speedo who was honest, as usual. He said we should have turned up. He said it was a dinner in honour of Newcastle’s former chairman, Sir John Hall, and that it wouldn’t have cost us anything just to put in an appearance as we had been asked to do. It was the first time anybody had told me it was in honour of Sir John Hall but anyway, after that everyone went their separate ways.

  I woke up the next morning to a knock on my door. There was a guy from the club there with a sheet of paper that had an itinerary on it. He handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “You’ve been sent home,” he said.

  I was astonished.


  “What for?” I asked him.

  “The taxi will be here to pick you up and take you to the airport,” he said.

  I rang Kieron, who was still recovering from a long-term injury at the time. They had nagged him to go on the trip and now they were sending him home.

  That flight back from Malaga was not pleasant. We were all hungover, for a start. And the club hadn’t booked us back to Newcastle. We had to get from Heathrow to King’s Cross and then travel up on the train. I looked at one of the papers on the way up and saw a picture of me and a poorly child I had befriended. ‘Everything I’m involved in now is news,’ I thought.

  I knew there would be more to come the next day. I knew we were going to get both barrels in the press after what happened in Spain. I knew it would get out and that we’d be crucified. It was about 18 months after the Leicester incident at La Manga when Stan Collymore let off the fire extinguisher. But this time, there was no incident.

  Because we had been sent home, everyone believed something more must have happened. There was a hunt for the real story. Nobody believed that we had just missed a dinner. It was even on the 6pm news the night we arrived back in the north-east. I didn’t realise it was going to be that serious. By the end of the week, all sorts of stories were flying around. One claimed the four of us had been in a brothel.

  The four of us were summoned to a meeting at St James’ Park in the chairman’s office. We went in one by one to be greeted by Freddy Shepherd sitting there with his glasses on and behaving like a school headmaster. He said we had deliberately snubbed a meal for Sir John Hall but I said we hadn’t been told anything about the nature of the meal.

  Give us a fine, sure, a slap on the wrist, but he was hanging us out to dry. He had created a storm by sending us home. I apologised but there had been no malice in what I did. It was just the action of a young, stupid kid turning up late for a meal. Freddy wouldn’t hear any of it. I just had to let him rant. I think what wound him up the most was that we’d put the drinks and the cigars on his room bill. If I was the chairman, I would have laughed my head off at that.