12
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It sounds outdated now, doesn’t it?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.
It all blew over quickly. The fans knew it was nothing and treated it like that. Kieron came back into the side soon afterwards and he was such an outstanding footballer that it was like having a new multi-million pound signing in the team. Once things are going well and the team is clicking and that crowd in the north-east gets behind you, St James’ Park is a difficult place for any opposition side to come and play football.
On the road, our fans came in great numbers to support us. And we were playing good football. We went in attacking and even if we did lose, we gave it a really good go. We would leave our defence open at times but that was the kind of team we were. All our training was about how we were going to win, not how we were going to avoid defeat. It wasn’t about what the opposition was going to do to us. It was about what we were going to do to them.
Three days before Christmas, we played Leeds at Elland Road. They had reached the semi-finals of the Champions League the previous season under David O’Leary and they were still one of the top clubs in England but there was a sense that they might just be beginning to slide. The club had expended a lot of emotional energy on the trial that involved Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate, who had been accused of a racially-motivated assault.
The trial had ended the previous week but the club was exhausted by it and Woodgate, in particular, was a shell of the player he had once been. On the pitch, a couple of new signings, like Seth Johnson and Robbie Fowler, were struggling to make an impact and O’Leary was starting to feel the pressure.
We knew how important it was for us to beat them because we were similar sized clubs fighting for the same things with the same amount of revenue. We didn’t know then quite what a financial mess they were getting themselves into but it was obvious to us that if we could get ourselves into the Champions League positions and deprive them of a top four spot at the same time, then they would be doubly damaged.
I overheard Sir Bobby saying that if we could overtake them, we might be able to get one or two of their players rather than have to listen about how they wanted to sign Kieron, which was a rumour doing the rounds at the time.
It was a terrific game at Elland Road. They had a fine team with players like Rio Ferdinand, Mark Viduka, David Batty, Harry Kewell and Fowler and it was an even game. I put us ahead before half-time after a great run from Kieron but Bowyer equalised straight away and then they went 3-1 up early in the second half.
But then Robbie Elliott got a goal back with a diving header, Shearer equalised with a penalty and Solano scored the winner in the last minute after more great work from Kieron. Sir Bobby said that the week could not have gone any better. The victory put us three points clear of Liverpool at the top of the table, four points ahead of Leeds, and six clear of Manchester United and Arsenal, who were fourth and fifth respectively.
Sometimes, I think that what Sir Bobby achieved at Newcastle just by getting us into that position in the first place has been too quickly forgotten. I know you don’t get any prizes for being top at Christmas but this was a team playing the same kind of attractive football that Kevin Keegan’s side had played a few years earlier, and I don’t think Sir Bobby got the same kind of credit for it.
We lost twice at the end of the year, at home to Chelsea and away to United, but we were back on top of the table by the middle of January. We went on a run of five wins in six games but United were really starting to show their quality now and by the end of February, we were second, two points behind them but with a game in hand. Lots of teams weren’t getting anywhere near us. Olivier Bernard had come into the side at left-back and he was refreshing because he was so attacking. We had pace, we had runners in the team with ability, we played quick one-twos, we were brimming with confidence.
Earlier that February, I had got myself into some trouble on a night out. We hit the headlines after the Malaga incident but this was my first proper taste of the attention you can get if you step out of line when you’re in the limelight in a city that reveres its footballers like Newcastle does. It was a Monday night and Carl Cort, Wayne Quinn and I went out for a meal and then decided to have a few drinks.
We went to a club called Sea, which was on the Quayside. Carl and Wayne were single and they had a couple of girls with them by the time we wanted to head home. Kieron had been in Ipswich for the day and he phoned to say that he would pick us up on his way back and drop us off. So we all got in his car and we dropped Quinny off at his apartment.
Everybody got out except one girl, who said she wanted Kieron to drop her off at her house. I wanted to get back to my place in Jesmond but she insisted we had to drop her off first. Kieron said he wasn’t running a taxi service and that she could order a car from Quinny’s flat. She refused to get out of the car so it started to get a bit heated.
In the end, she gave up and got out. As she was getting out, I began to climb out of the back seat into the front for the journey back to my place. She was angry and she gave me a bit of a mouthful and then she got the door and slammed it against my leg. I got out, pushed her away and jumped back in the car. I went ‘drive, drive, drive’ to Kieron and we sped off.
She was a third-year student from Newcastle University. She said later I’d slapped her while we were arguing in the car. Then she said that after I’d pushed her over, I’d kicked her while she was lying on the ground. She chased after the car for a few seconds but then she gave up. It was a bit of a mad episode. I was worried about it but I hoped I wouldn’t hear anything more about it. I was still naïve back then.
We trained the next day and then Wednesday was a day off. But in the early evening on Wednesday, Wayne Quinn called. He said Tony Toward had rung him and said a girl had been to the police and said she had been assaulted by a Newcastle United player. They had given her a team sheet with pictures of the players and she had picked out Wayne Quinn. Quinny sounded very nervous. He wasn’t in the first team at the time. He felt vulnerable. “Bellers,” he said, “they will probably sack me.”
“Quinny,” I said, “you’re just going to have to bite the bullet on this one.” He went quiet. There was a long silence. Then I put him out of his misery and told him not to be so stupid.
I phoned Tony Toward and told him it was nothing to do with Quinny. The next day, it was on the news and I had to go and see Freddy Shepherd in his office at St James’ Park. He had been told what had happened. He seemed more angry about the girl slamming the door on my leg. He said the police wanted to speak to me to get my side of the story. He said I could fight it and I would win. But he said it would drag on and on and if I accepted a caution, it would all be forgotten about and I could concentrate on preparing for the next game. So on Thursday night, I went to the police station. They talked to me for about an hour, they cautioned me and I left. The next day, there were photographers outside my house and reporters climbing the fences around my house. It was horrible. It was the first time I had been at the centre of something like that.
Kieron came out of it well. The student said that he had behaved like ‘a perfect gentleman’. But the papers said that I could wreck Newcastle’s season. They said I could spoil everything, that I was the loose cannon that could throw the club off course. I was worried about the effect it would have on Claire but I had told her what had happened as soon as I got back the night it occurred and she was understanding about it.
I was very single-minded. I just wanted to get on with playing against Southampton that Saturday. Everything was going so well and I wasn’t going to let an incident like that get in the way of it. A lot of the papers were speculating about what state of mind I was going to be in but I was fine. I didn’t really feel I had anything to be ashamed of and certainly nothing to hide. The only thing I was concerned about was the reaction of the crowd but I got a great ovation when I came out for the warm-up at St James’ Park and we won 3-1.
Gordon Strachan was the Southampton manager by then. He had been sacked five games into the new season at Coventry and taken over at St Mary’s soon afterwards. He’d obviously read all about my nocturnal adventures because he smiled at me as I ran out on to the pitch.
“Know anywhere good to go out tonight, Bellers?” he asked.