Highs could never dilute Stewart’s pain
IN the Spurs dressing room at Wembley minutes before the 1991 FA Cup final, Terry Venables reminded Paul Stewart of his responsibilities. ‘Stewy, don’t let Keane out of your sight,’ warned El Tel.
Roy Keane was 19, wet behind the ears as a rookie professional at Nottingham Forest, but Venables had identified him as the main threat to Spurs.
Keane had scored crucial goals for Forest in the quarterfinals and semi-finals, and Stewart’s remit was to make sure it didn’t happen again.
‘All of us thought a lot of Keane,’ he recalled. ‘That season, they (Forest) seemed to be our nemesis. We always played them in important games and he was a driving force. In the Cup final I was asked to follow him all over the pitch, which I did,’ recalled Stewart.
‘Roy had been sent off playing against me a couple of times, he wasn’t keen on me. We had a lot of previous. I stuck to my job, I think I managed to wear him down and that gave me the space to get the equaliser, and we went on to win the Cup.’
That 2-1 win was the highlight of Stewart’s club career, which embraced spells at top clubs like Manchester City, Spurs, Liverpool and the thrill of playing for England at senior level. By most standards, it’s an impressive CV, even more so when it was achieved against a back-drop of constant alcohol and cocaine refuelling.
Manchester-born Stewart had his head turned by the bright lights of London, he lived with Paul Gascoigne, and he partied hard. He once turned up for England duty ‘rat-arsed’ with drink and was a regular coke-head, who felt ‘invincible’.
One night, Stewart was using a straw to snort coke in a back alley when two plain-clothes policemen clocked him. This was it, he thought. His career, his marriage, it was all over.
‘You’re Paul Stewart aren’t you?’ one of them asked. Stewart said yes, and a pause followed before one of coppers said. ‘On your bike.’
A part of him regrets not being cuffed and charged.
‘It might not have been the end of my career,’ he said. ‘If that policeman had took me in, I might have got help and come out the other side. Who knows? I might have succeeded at Liverpool. Looking back, I probably wish I had been arrested.
‘I used to turn up on England get-together absolutely ratarsed. It was stupid. There were random drug tests at the club but my number never came up. In truth, you think you’ve got away with it.
‘You think you’re invincible but in reality, I was spiralling out of control.’
STEWART will today hook up with David White and Tony Adcock in Manchester. It’s 30 years since they each scored a hat-trick for City against Huddersfield in the old Second Division. There will be talk of football, for they are forever linked by the sky blue of City, but Stewart and White share more in common. Both have suffered at the of hands of paedophile monsters.
In White’s case it was Barry Benell, with Stewart it was Frank Roper, and his cursed red Fiat, a make of car Stewart will never drive.
For four years, from 11 to 15, Stewart was molested nonstop by Roper, often in his car near Stewart’s home in Manchester, and on away trips, to Ireland and Boston, where Stewart tried to run away. Roper had pledged from day one to kill his parents if Stewart said a word, so he kept silent, literally.
‘For a year, I never started a conversation or engaged. An aunt said once “What’s up with our Paul?” That was me trying to cry out,’ he said.
When Stewart signed for Blackpool at 17, he met Roper again. Again, he stayed silent.
For 41 years, Stewart never told a soul about his secret but a year ago today (November 18, 2016) he read a story which chilled. Andy Woodward, a former player, went public about being subjected to child abuse by a football coach when aged 11, the same age Stewart was when Roper’s hell started for him. Stewart knew he had to speak, which he did first in a newspaper, and now more graphically in his book, ‘Damaged.’
‘When I wrote it down, I went into a spell of depression. But I wanted my voice and the truth to come through. I’ve the chance to make sure, where possible, that kids are safer than they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s,’ he said.
It is not an easy read, nor did Stewart intend it to be.
3 The number of England appearances Paul Stewart made beteween 1991 and 1992