Mr Unbelievable

Mr Unbelievable!

Chris Kamara

Fighting Like Beavers on the Front Line of Football

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents Irene and Albert

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

A Note to Reader

Team Sheet

Foreword by Jeff Stelling

THE FIRST HALF

CHAPTER ONE GROUND-HOPPING WITH KAMMY PT 1 (ON THE ROAD WITH SOCCER SATURDAY)

CHAPTER TWO ‘HE COULDN’T HIT A BARN DOOR WITH A BANJO!’

CHAPTER THREE SMILE, YOU’RE ON KAMARACAM…

CHAPTER FOUR KAMMY’S TV TWERP

CHAPTER FIVE UNBELIEVABLE, JEFF! (HOW I CAUGHT A CATCHPHRASE)

CHAPTER SIX GROUND-HOPPING WITH KAMMY PT 2 (TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM ON SOCCER AM)

CHAPTER SEVEN KAMMYOKE!

CHAPTER EIGHT JEFF AND THE CRAZY GANG

CHAPTER NINE EASY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING

CHAPTER TEN NAME DROPPING

HALF-TIME KAMMY ANALYSIS AND STATS

THE SECOND HALF

CHAPTER ELEVEN I’M NO ZINEDINE ZIDANE, BUT…

CHAPTER TWELVE KICK IT OUT

CHAPTER THIRTEEN IN THE DRY DOCK

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (NOT) THE LAST OF THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOYS

CHAPTER FIFTEEN CSI: SWINDON – DEATH THREATS AND POLICE ESCORTS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN BUZZING WITH BOWLESY

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MY RETURN TO SWINDON…(OR, HOW NOT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLER)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN FRANK MCAVENNIE: THE TRUTH

CHAPTER NINETEEN SERVING SERGEANT WILKO

CHAPTER TWENTY WISH YOU WERE HERE? (MY LIFE ON THE MOTORWAYS)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE LIFE IN THE DUGOUT

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO UNBELIEVABLE, GEOFFREY!

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE SACK RACE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE FAX ABOUT STOKE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE THE LAST WORD

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

A Note to Reader

Like an afternoon in front of Soccer Saturday, Mr Unbelievable is a game of two halves, complete with some big-match punditry from your host Jeff Stelling and plenty of shouting, giggling and nonsensical babbling from your author. Get the kettle on, put your feet up and watch the fun kick off. Enjoy the show…

Kammy

A Premiership touchline near you, 2010

CHAPTER ONE GROUND-HOPPING WITH KAMMY PT 1 (ON THE ROAD WITH SOCCER SATURDAY)

To the untrained eye of your girlfriend or granny, Soccer Saturday looks like a nuthouse in action. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the basic idea behind the show: four ex-professional footballers of varying repute – Phil Thompson (Liverpool fan club), Paul Merson (reformed gambler), Matt Le Tissier (saint) and Charlie Nicholas (playboy) – sit at a News at Ten style desk every Saturday afternoon and each watches one of four Premiership games on a row of tellies positioned in front them.

Over the course of 90 minutes, their job is to explain the action as it happens, usually through a series of shouts, groans and girly squeals. Meanwhile anchorman Jeff Stelling (or ‘Stelling, Jeff Stelling’, as he introduces himself to members of the opposite sex) delivers the news of every goal, booking and red card around the country via a vidiprinter that runs at the bottom of the screen. Even to the well-trained eye, Soccer Saturday looks like a loony bin.

My role in all of this is to act as a roving reporter. Every weekend, I’ll be sent to some far-flung corner of the country to report on a game from a TV gantry, whatever the weather. It’s a risky business. One day I’m standing in front of thousands of Pompey fans at Fratton Park in the pouring rain, the next I’m dangling under the roof at White Hart Lane. I bloody love it.

There are a lot of perks to being an intrepid touchline reporter with Soccer Saturday. For starters, I stay in some of the best hotels around the country and can eat as many motorway service station sarnies as I want. I also get a complimentary Sky Sports coat, which makes me look far more important than I am. When it comes to a Saturday afternoon, I watch some of the best footballers in the world strut their stuff, for free.

The biggest bonus as far as I’m concerned is that I’ve got the freedom of most of the stadiums in the Premiership. I can pop into the manager’s office at White Hart Lane or wander into the dressing-rooms at Sunderland without any hassle. I’ve sat in the stands with Arsène Wenger at the Emirates and made reports from the dugouts at Craven Cottage. I’ve even had a heated discussion with Gérard Houllier on the touchline at Anfield, though I always draw the line at taking liberties at Old Trafford. The thought of getting a Sir Fergie ‘hairdryer’ scares me, although I have to say I get on well with him these days.

Generally, I get a greater access to the inner workings of a football club than most other football reporters would because people know me from the telly. If I’m at Goodison Park or Stamford Bridge, I rarely have to flash a pass and I can sometimes have a free run of the stadium, which is a bit like getting the keys to Disneyland. It also helps that I’ve built up a level of trust among the boys in the game. Most managers know that I won’t take the mickey too much when I’m wandering around their ground with the cameras. Often they will tell me things over a cuppa that they wouldn’t tell another reporter (but only if we’re off air). They know I’m a football person and I’m not going to blab my mouth off for the viewers. Well, not all of the time.

Most of the Premier League managers and Football League managers look after me when I’m on the road. Harry Redknapp at Spurs is as good as gold. I’ll visit him before a game when I’m reporting at White Hart Lane and we’ll have a chinwag, usually about football and horses. We’ll watch the early kick-off together, then around ten to three he’ll kick me out: ‘All right, Kammy, off you pop, I’ve got a spot of work to do.’

Most of the gaffers will invite me in for a drink with them after the game. Sam Allardyce is good for a beer in his office. Alex McLeish at Birmingham, Steve Bruce at Sunderland and another old-school manager, Roy Hodgson, will always tell me to come into their offices for a bevy. I used to have a small shot of brandy with my old mate Gary Megson when he was in charge at Bolton. Once or twice it was before the match. Who can blame him? The abuse some of the fans were chucking his way at that time was unreal. They didn’t like the way Bolton were playing and would boo him, whatever the result. And I just needed it (hic!).

As a former manager myself, I know when I’m not wanted. If a mate’s team has lost or even drawn, I’ll always stay away from the office, unless I’m invited in. Losing is bad enough for a player, but I know from experience that losing as a gaffer is much, much worse. You feel a real pressure on your shoulders and Big Sam or Brucey wouldn’t want me sitting at their desk, taking the mickey with a complimentary bottle of lager, especially if they had been hammered at home.

I always used to love seeing Bobby Robson whenever I travelled around the North-east, because he was such a great man. He was always hospitable at Newcastle and he would talk your ears off about this player or that player. Sometimes he wanted to chat about a game he had watched on the telly, and it was always a joy because he was so knowledgeable. It was hard to see him as he fought cancer at the end of his life and he was being pushed around in a wheelchair. Bobby wasn’t the same person and it was heartbreaking.

It won’t come as a great shock to learn that I still feel intimidated when I bump into Sir Alex Ferguson. He has an attitude which makes you feel like you’re imposing on his time, wherever you are, but the little insights you get from him in interviews are always fascinating. In general, the managers from the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have kept me at arm’s length, so far. I’ll always talk to Arsène Wenger when I’m at the Emirates, but I don’t go into his office, and Rafa Benitez has never invited me into the famous Liverpool boot room either.

The exception to that rule was José Mourinho. He was great with me when he was in charge at Chelsea. Well, he was for a while. It eventually turned sour with Sky and The Special One after an incident involving Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien, but we’ll come to that in a moment. We first met before a Carling Cup tie at Fulham and seemed to hit it off.

‘I like you very much,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘I like listening to you and Andy Gray. You educate the public on the game.’

It was really uplifting hearing it from a football man like him. I could hardly get the headphones on my swelling bonce afterwards. We struck up a great friendship immediately and he always made me feel at home whenever I visited Stamford Bridge. José loved Soccer AM and its silly humour and I remember we really took the mickey on the show while he was serving a European touchline ban after an ugly bust-up with referee Anders Frisk.

It happened during a Champions League game with Barcelona in 2005–06. José had been unhappy with the way the game had been handled and made some derogatory comments about Frisk. UEFA were not happy and banned José from the touchline for two games. They even called him an ‘enemy of football’. The punishment also prevented him from having any contact with his players once they had arrived at the ground, which meant he effectively had to stay away from the game completely.

That didn’t stop José from influencing the match. On the evening of Chelsea’s next Champions League fixture, he sat at home (well, that’s what we were told). On the bench, his coaching staff were wearing woolly hats; it was cold, but not that cold. I watched the game on the telly and noticed that Steve Clarke, José’s assistant, was continually touching his ear and relaying information to the players immediately afterwards. I put two and two together and came up with a scam in which José was keeping touch with his staff via high-tech headsets. I wasn’t the only one with the same theory. It was also just the sort of clever stunt that José would pull. He denied the rumours when they were floated in the press the next day, but it looked so obvious. It was even suggested that José had been smuggled into the ground in a skip, to get as close to the action as possible, without being visible to UEFA. Nothing was actually proven and the club have never admitted it.

By luck I was at Chelsea the following weekend with Soccer AM, the Saturday-morning show then presented by Tim Lovejoy and Helen Chamberlain. José had given us permission to use the dressing-rooms for filming, as he always did, but I had a surprise up my sleeve. Chelsea’s kit man, Billy Blood, had given me an official woolly hat. I went into the home dugout to film a report, and the hat was pulled over my head but a mobile phone was stuck to the fabric with Sellotape, mimicking the antics from the week before. When our cameras went live, I could hardly stop laughing as I did an impression of Chelsea’s backroom staff that night. I heard José took it in good spirits, too.

Sadly, our relationship changed when Sky’s use of the action replay annoyed José. It happened during a Champions League game between Chelsea and Liverpool when Michael Essien clashed with Liverpool’s Dietmar Hamann at Stamford Bridge. It was an ugly tackle and it was shown over and over again on Sky Sports News. Once it was out there, UEFA had to act, and Essien was banned retrospectively. Because it was the Champions League, the incident was televised on different stations around the planet, but for some reason José personally blamed Sky for Essien’s suspension. He cooled noticeably whenever our cameras were on him and his attitude towards me changed. He wasn’t as friendly or welcoming as he had been in the past.

He was entitled to do whatever he wanted, of course, but the truth is, I was disappointed. José was a breath of fresh air when he first arrived from Porto and he was a joy to work with. I’ll be honest, I thought the sun shone out of his backside. The Michael Essien incident put a big, grey cloud in the way, which was a real shame.

A less imposing character was the former referee Paul Alcock. If that name rings bells it’s because he was the Premiership ref who was infamously pushed over by the former Sheffield Wednesday and West Ham hothead (and brilliant striker, it has to be said), Paolo Di Canio. It was a fiery situation. Paolo had been sent off during a game between Wednesday and Arsenal and he reacted to the red card by pushing the ref over. Alcock had barely been touched, but judging by his tumble, you’d have thought he’d been thumped by Mike Tyson. The fall was so exaggerated it was hilarious.

Our paths crossed for the first time several years later when Alcock was the referee’s assessor for an FA Cup tie between Southend and non-league Canvey Island. I was there as co-commentator for Sky Sports. It should have been a fairly run-of-the-mill evening, but trouble started as we waited for the teams to come out for the warm-up. I had spotted Alcock chatting to my colleague commentator Martin Tyler in the tunnel. When they’d finished I couldn’t help myself and I gave Alcock a little playful shove. I thought it was really funny, but he was stunned. He lost it.

‘You are a joke!’ he screamed, in a funny high-pitched squeal. ‘A chuffing disgrace’ (only he didn’t say ‘chuffing’).

Alcock then turned to John Smart, Sky’s senior floor manager (the grey-haired bloke you’ll always see at live games, sticking his thumb up on the touchline so the ref knows when to start a match). ‘I want him reported because that’s out of order,’ he shouted, not seeing the funny side. Thankfully, John ignored him and Alcock shuffled off to the referees’ room in a right strop. I turned to John, completely confused by the reaction.