- Culture
- 03 Mar 09
The suggestion that Roy Keane lost the dressing-room at Sunderland has been questioned by England legend Peter Beardsley who also talks about Paul Gascoigne’s woes, Paul McGrath and the tackle that gave the world a glimpse of his tackle!
Did Roy Keane bottle it when he walked out on Sunderland before Christmas?
“No way,” says Peter Beardsley who followed Keano’s Stadium of Light tenure from up the road at Newscastle United, where he’s part of the PR and marketing team.
“He’s kicked the crap out of me a few times, so I don’t see him as a bottler,” elaborates the England footballing legend. “We did our coaching badges together at Lilleshall for two weeks and Roy was different class. He was in the room next to mine so we talked a lot, and he was determined to become as great a manager as he was a player. The other coaches on the course loved him, and nobody was surprised when he got the Sunderland job and took them straight up. He spoke from the heart and got the best out of what, to be honest, were some quite average players. I’ve nothing against Ricky Sbragia who’s succeeded him, but I think they’d be better off if Roy was still there.”
Beardsley, who is still as fit-looking at 48 as he was as a player, is also dismissive of the notion that Keane ‘lost’ the Sunderland dressing room.
“Michael Chopra, who came to Sunderland from Cardiff and has now been loaned back to them, is a good friend of mine and he absolutely loved Roy as a manager,” Beardo resumes. “I know from working with him at the Newcastle Academy that Michael’s no shrinking violet. He’ll tell you to your face if he doesn’t like you, but despite perhaps having good reason to, he never said anything negative about Roy.”
In other words, Beardsley is backing up Keano's claims in the Irish Times last week that it was the arrival of new American owners, rather than a player's revolt, that made his position at Sunderland untenable. It's a debate, one imagines, that will continue to rage.
When not bamboozling defences with his silky skills – Gary Lineker describes him as “the best partner I ever had” – the young Peter Beardsley could be found hanging out in recording studios with Mancunian rock legends.
“I was one of the rappers on ‘World In Motion’ and have the gold disc on my wall to prove it,” he laughs. “The six of us had a mic each, with John Barnes – who was huge into his music – at one end. I remember the producer saying to Gazza, who’d been in the charts with ‘Fog On The Tyne’ and fancied himself as a singer, ‘Can you do us a favour? Take a step back’ because he was so out of tune. He was devastated!”
Was he au fait with Barney and Hooky’s oeuvre before meeting them?
“I’d shaken a leg to ‘Blue Monday’, yeah, although to be honest I was more of a Rod Stewart fan. He’s got a pitch the dimensions of Wembley in the grounds of his London mansion, which Newcastle United trained on if we had a midweek game in the capital. I’ve played in a few tournaments with Rod at Stamford Bridge, and you could tell that he’d had trials at Brentford.”
Talking of Gazza, how is he at the moment?
“Paul’s problem is that socially he’s always chosen the wrong people to be with, the major exception being Jimmy ‘Five Bellies’ Gardener who, for all the ridicule he’s had to endure, is a true friend. The good news is that at the moment Gazza is on an upward spiral, and getting his life back together again.”
The same is by all accounts true of another of Beardsley’s former teammates, Paul McGrath.
“That’s great news. I was in the Manchester United reserves with him, Arnold Muhren, Remi Moses, Mark Hughes, Mike Duxbury, Viv Anderson, Gordon McQueen and Kevin Moran, which sounds like a championship-winning side now! One day in training during an Attackers vs. Defenders game I shimmied past Paul and he just stopped and clapped. I can hear Ron Atkinson now – ‘What the fuck are you doing? Don’t applaud him, tackle him!’ He was a diamond lad. Bryan Robson says he’s the best centre-back he’s ever played with, which is high praise coming from him.”
I’d be guilty of gross dereliction of journalistic duty if I didn’t finish by asking Peter about the (in)famous photo of him being tackled by Frank Rijkard with his own tackle hanging out.
“It’s amazing how many people still expect me to sign that,” he groans. “I’ve got a daughter of 15 who I hope to God’s never seen it! My saving grace is that it’s only a still so, unlike Gazza having his balls squeezed by Vinnie Jones, it can’t be run for 20 seconds on TV. If they were to ever dig the footage up, I’d have to emigrate!”
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Peter Beardsley was in Dublin as an Ambassador for Sunderland, Newcastle and Gateshead. See visitnewcastlegateshead.co.uk for details of breaks there.