The Player has spent 15 years across all four divisions. He’s played in the Premier League and for his country. (Illustration by Spencer Wilson.)
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The dressing room is not a place for the faint-hearted. Anything goes – absolutely anything, whether it’s racist, sexist or homophobic. One team-mate had cancer and even he didn’t escape. When he refused to come on a night out, another player said: “Why not? You’ve only got a month to live.”
He was also asked whether he’d chosen his coffin yet or arranged his pallbearers. Amazingly, he took it in good humour.
As a young player, I was shown a bucket of 10 litres of foaming sports drink where water had been mixed with isotonic powder. The captain enquired: “Does your mum’s piss look like that?”
I was genuinely shocked.
“Seriously,” he said, “when you look in the toilet after your mum’s been for a piss, is this what it looks like?”
Treading a fine line
It’s not just the players. At one club the manager, attempting to liven up training, said: “Right, practice match between the good-looking bastards and the ugly f***ers, or those with distinguishing features.”
The manager, attempting to liven up training, said: “Right, practice match between the good-looking bastards and the ugly f***ers
I’d played blacks vs whites in training a few times. Most dressing rooms are split roughly 50/50 between black and white lads. The games were always played in good spirits, with a mixed-race player as referee. The black lads usually won. But this was a new one.
One player joined the good-looking team.
“What are you doing?” asked the manager. “You have a distinguishing feature. You’re black.”
The player, a full international, was livid. He ripped off his bib and told the manager that he was a racist. They didn’t speak for months.
Partner problems
Another common problem is when something happens on a team night out and a player tells his partner, who then gossips to the other wives or girlfriends. No football insider ever uses the term ‘WAG’.
One married team-mate was having the time of his life throwing shapes on the dancefloor, twirling girls around and pretending to be a caterpillar
One married team-mate was having the time of his life throwing shapes on the dancefloor, twirling girls around and pretending to be a caterpillar. Then he did his back in and had to stop. He went home early and told his wife he was too old for bars and clubs.
A young team-mate told his girlfriend what had gone on. She was a bit naïve and told the player’s wife, revealing everything in lurid detail. The wife asked her husband if he wanted to change his story.
Fuming, he got the younger lad by the throat after training the next day. The young lad learned one of the rules of the dressing room: don’t snitch. The rest of us called the dancer ‘John Travolta’ for months.
Practical jokes
There was one club with two very high-profile players who didn’t like each other. We had to give presents at a Christmas party. One bought the other a dildo and hung a mini kit with the player’s name on the back.
“Here you go,” he said. “That’s because you're the biggest prick in the team.”
Our manager once hired a James Bond film for his Friday night in and invited the neighbours round, but one of the team switched it for a hardcore porn film
It split the team, as it wasn’t meant as a joke. Some saw the funny side; others thought he went too far. Later that night, his victim got revenge. He smothered his mouth and nose with chocolate cake and shouted: “Right, who am I? Here’s a clue: I’ve got a brown nose after leaving the manager’s office.”
The other player hated him even more. They barely spoke.
Our manager once hired a James Bond film for his Friday night in and invited the neighbours round, but one of the team switched it for a hardcore porn film. The manager came into training raging.
“I’ve sat at f***ing home with the neighbours, the f***ing wife, a bottle of wine and a f***ing Chinese,” he shouted. “I put James f***ing Bond on, only to see a f***ing arse f***ing a f***ing arse!”
The lad responsible was fined a week’s wages.
Tough environment
Another young team-mate fell for a local girl who had a bit of a reputation. The lad was thick – he thought a chateaubriand steak was a fine red wine – but a rising star. Three months into the relationship, the captain started grilling him in front of the dressing room.
You learn quickly not to be a braggart in the changing room and ideally you need skin thicker than a rhino’s backside
“Do you love your new bird?” he asked. “Yes,” replied the player, sheepishly. “Could she be the one for you?” “Yeah.”
“So how do you feel that he’s shagged her, so has he, and so has he?” he said, pointing to several players who had indeed slept with the lad’s girlfriend. He was crushed and cried in front of us all.
There was no sympathy. You learn quickly not to be a braggart in the changing room and ideally you need skin thicker than a rhino’s backside.
- Captains are still important in today's game
- Skipping training after a night on the lash
- When everyone wants to know you
- How to survive when you're a foreigner
- How things get complicated with agents
- Being a new player at a club
- Being an out-of-contract footballer in the summer
- What summer is REALLY like – and how to strike a balance
