I WAS DRUNK, SELFISH AND SELF-OBSESSED ... I’LL APOLOGISE TO KENNY AND EL TEL IF I SEE THEM AGAIN!
WITH his anger and vitriol a thing of the past Paul Walsh has offered a heartfelt apology to two of his former managers, Kenny Dalglish and Terry Venables.
The former England striker, in a candid and poignant reflection on his days at Anfield and White Hart Lane, admits that many of them were spent in a drunken haze.
It’s only now after joining Alcoholics Anonymous and becoming a volunteer at a local rehabilitation centre that he is finally able to remove the “rucksack of crap” he has carried for many years.
“Football makes you selfish and self-obsessed,” he admitted. “I used to resent some of my managers. I had a resentment of Kenny Dalglish for years.
“After Heysel the manager who bought me ( Joe Fagan) was no more. Kenny took over and we had stand-up, toe-to-toe rows. I was uncontrollable in those moments. I had to have this mentality that I didn’t live in fear of anyone. That was my whole life because I’m small.
“Maybe my aggressive attitude to him cost me. And then I got a bad injury so I was angry and resentful about that.
“I missed the FA Cup Final. It was my best season, the 1986 Double-winning season. I was devastated and drank myself senseless.
“I couldn’t cope with not playing in the Cup Final, couldn’t cope with not playing in the last nine league games.
“All my life I’d grown up wanting to play in an FA Cup Final. I wasn’t going to be playing in it. Poor me, poor me. Like it’s never happened to anybody else.
“Only now after going through rehab I realise that maybe Kenny (inset, top) didn’t rate me. He bought Peter Beardsley so he obviously thought he was a better player than me. I couldn’t accept that.
“He did what he wanted to do and went on to win several trophies.
“If I see Kenny again, I’m going to say sorry to him for my reactions towards him at different times.”
Former Spurs and England boss Terry Venables (inset) is also on Walsh’s mea culpa list.
“I went to Tottenham from Liverpool as a bit of a drunk. Living in a hotel, a single lad of 25,” he stated. “In the last year at Liverpool I’d turned into a drunk because I had no games, nothing to aim for, I wasn’t playing. I just consoled myself with just drink and girls.
“Terry Venables had given me a great opportunity, but in the end he never used to play me, so again I would console myself with drink.
“He played Paul Stewart in front of me. I would say: ‘How’s this happening? He’s not as good as me.’ I honestly didn’t think he was.
“But I had burnt all my bridges. I still blamed him for me not being in the team. I scored a hat-trick one week and got dropped the next week. I found that incredible.
“The reason being Paul Stewart was doing a lot of the same sort of things that I was doing but he paid £2million for Paul and £500,000 for me.
“That’s the way it was. He was trying to make Paul Stewart work. But I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t accept a lot of stuff.
“Now I realise that once you let all that resentment go it’s great. It’s been like carrying a rucksack of crap on your back everywhere. It’s gone and, like Kenny, if I was to see Terry Venables now I would apologise to him.”
Walsh, who is a Sky Sports pundit, believes his life has been turned around after admitting he needed help.
“After football I had to earn my money a different way and I struggled with that. I hated my life and at times I hated myself,” he said. “Part of the healing process is to trade in anger, resentment, aggression, abuse, arrogance, ego for humility.
“I had a mate who helped me so I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and I’ve been in it four years and I’ve not been drinking. “You have to take yourself out of yourself and stop thinking about you and start helping other people.
“Although I feel I’ve provided well for my family and stuff, my life predominately revolved around me and football.
“One day a week now I help out in a rehabilitation centre.
“I just knocked on the door one day and asked if I could be a volunteer.
That was two and a half years ago and I have become part of their set-up.”
Walsh, now 57, went on: “There are people in there from all different walks of life. I sit in with two therapists as a peer supporter.
“When they come out of the clinic there is after-care where they come back one day a week and everyone shares their experiences of reintegration back into life.
“In my earlier life I made my own rules up.
“When you do that for all of your life, ultimately, somewhere along the line it’s going to come back and bite you on the backside.”
Paul Walsh was speaking on The Old Footballers Club to Rob Mccaffrey on Switchbox TV. For the full interview search Switchbox TV on Youtube.
If I ever see Dalglish or Venables again, I would say sorry for my behaviour