How Not to Be a Professional Footballer

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‘Right, lads,’ he said, handing them out one by one. ‘Your flight home to London leaves in three hours. I’ll see you when we get back from our holiday.’

There was a stunned silence as George turned his back on us to take the rest of the lads to Bali for a jolly. We were later told it was because we’d been caught drinking before the Norwich game. Our summer hols had been cancelled, but I don’t think my case had been helped when I was caught throwing an ashtray at a punter in a Singapore nightclub a few nights earlier. We were later fined two-weeks’ wages. On the way home nobody spoke, we didn’t even drink on the plane. I only used to have a beer when I knew I wasn’t supposed to have one. That day it hardly seemed worth it.

I should have guessed that George would let loose on the Singapore trip, because in between the beers at Norwich and our early flight home, Tone had been done for drink-driving. As a defender, he was top, top drawer and would run through a brick wall for Arsenal. The problem was, he’d driven through one as well, pissed out of his face the night before we were due to fly east. The police turned up and gave him the breathalyser test, and Tone was nicked. He was the Arsenal captain and well over the limit. Someone was always going to cop it from the gaffer after that.

The funny thing was, when Tone turned up late at the airport looking like he’d been dragged through a hedge, nobody said anything at first. We’d been waiting for him at the airport for so long that it looked like he wasn’t going to show. We were just relieved to be getting on the plane. It was only when he got into his seat and said, ‘Bloody hell, I’ve been done for drink-driving,’ that we got an idea of what had happened, but even then nobody batted an eyelid because we all knew he was a Billy Bullshitter.

Tone was forever making stuff up, and he’d built up quite a reputation around the club. I could be sitting there at the training ground, reading the Sun, and just as I was turning over to Page 3 for an eyeful, he’d lean across.

‘I’ve fucked her,’ he’d say, pointing to the girl in the picture.

‘Piss off, Tone,’ I used to say. ‘You look like Jimmy Nail.’

Then he ended up going out with Caprice for a while. She was a model, and a right fit one at that, so maybe he was getting lucky with Britain’s favourite lovelies after all. That day, though, no one was having it. Even as he was brushing glass from his hair on the plane, the lads thought he was pulling a fast one.

When we got to Singapore we knew it wasn’t a wind-up because it was all over the news. By the time the English papers had turned up, the whole club knew about it. Everyone at home was making out he was a disgrace to football, and the fans were worried that he might buckle under the pressure, but Tone had a seriously strong character. If anyone was going to get through it unscathed it was him.

You have to remember that he’d already shouldered a lot of pressure. When he made his Arsenal debut against Sunderland in 1983 he’d been ripped to shreds by a striker called Colin West. Tone was only 17 and it was probably one of the worst debuts by a defender in the history of the game. The golden rule of football is that everyone has a good debut – especially if you play up front, because there’s no expectations. You always get a goal, and I scored on my full debuts for Arsenal, Villa and Walsall. In his first ever professional game Tone had a shocker, but he got through it. Later, in the 1988 European Championships, he played for England in the group stages against Holland and was torn apart by Marco van Basten. It was horrible to watch, but he bounced back from that too. Even before the Daily Mirror’s ‘Eeyore Adams’ headline, the fans used to make donkey noises at him wherever he played, and while it gave him the hump sometimes, it never affected his game.

I knew Tone would pull through, even when he was later banged up on account of the drink-driving incident. But to be honest, I was just relieved it wasn’t me in the shit for once. I’d had more than my fair share of naughty newspaper headlines. This time, I was out of the limelight. The calm before the storm, I think they call it.

Lesson 5

Do Not Bet on Scotland on Your Wedding Day

‘Merse’s gambling binge begins, big style.’

An average afternoon in the Merse household, 1991, would be something like this. If it wasn’t a Tuesday I’d leave the training pitch at 12 o’clock, have a shower and rush home by one. I was never one for hanging around, chatting with the others in the canteen. Once I was indoors, I’d sit on the sofa and put my feet up, but by three I was always bored shitless. I’d feel fidgety and edgy. Then I’d flick on Teletext, put my William Hill head on and everything would be all right again. Mate, I just couldn’t sit still until I’d laid a bet.