GoodFella by Craig Bellamy

Author:Craig Bellamy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Liverpool FC, Football, Norwich City FC, Cardiff City FC, Newcastle United FC, Wales, Soccer
Publisher: Trinity Mirror Digital Media
Published: 2013-06-03T07:00:00+00:00

17

Cursed

Iwas looking forward to playing for Martin O’Neill. I didn’t really have any contact with him when he was the manager at Norwich because I was still an apprentice then but I knew there was an aura about him and something that made players want to play for him. I knew his assistants, John Robertson and Steve Walford, too. I met Steve as soon as I arrived in Glasgow. He hadn’t changed. He didn’t seem to give a shit whether I signed for Celtic or not. I signed anyway.

That was the way Steve operated. He had that rare talent of being able to make people like him despite being rude to everyone he met. Not caring was what he did. Some of the boys who played for Martin at Leicester told me that Walford was the same there. He used to stand on the touchline at training, telling the boys to hurry up and finish because he wanted to get down the pub. He was a very difficult guy to impress but if he’s not slagging you off, you know you’ve done all right.

While I was driving to Glasgow, John Hartson had called me. He warned me that the media up there was different to anything I would have experienced before. He said they were a law unto themselves and that they did whatever they wanted. I laughed at the idea it could be any worse than what I had been through at Newcastle.

There was a little silence at the other end of the line. “It’s worse,” Harts said.

He said they would be out to get me. He said that the poison had already been laid down for me and that some people from my time in England had already been on the phone to some of the press lads telling them to give me stick. And the first few weeks I was there, I was followed relentlessly. Everywhere I went, everything I did, there were photographers and reporters not far behind.

I was looking forward to making a fresh start but it was the first time I had moved clubs in the middle of the season and it was difficult. It didn’t sit easily with me that I had effectively abandoned Claire and the boys in Newcastle. It wasn’t easy for them. They were like the survivors of a shipwreck, clinging to what was left. And there wasn’t a lot left.

Claire felt shunned by some of the other wives. My departure hadn’t exactly been a model of good grace. And Ellis got a bit of stick at school from other kids. Children can be nasty sometimes so he was teased. He still had to finish his school year off. Terry McDermott did an interview in the one of the local papers that slagged me off. Claire and the kids got more grief. There was no point in them coming up to Scotland with me for a few months but they had a rough time.

I was okay. At least I had football to keep me occupied.

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