‘Because he didn’t tell me, I thought my dad didn’t love me’
On the eve of his 70th birthday, Neil Warnock opens up on family, fear of dying and being a chiropodist
GET BENEATH what must be the thickest skin in football and it is surprising what you find.
Neil Warnock is used to brushing off chants and insults, bile and vitriol. But over an early-morning coffee in the run-up to his 70th birthday tomorrow, the bluff Yorkshireman is in surprisingly sentimental mood.
“I was my mum’s little boy really,” says the Cardiff manager, wistfully revealing a side to him that few of the haters bother to look for. “I used to sit in front of her wheelchair and she used to play with my hair. It were lovely.
“She always said to me, ‘I don’t have to worry about you, Neil, because I know you will be good at whatever you set your heart on’. But she would not have quite believed how it has gone for her little boy. I love my mum. Even now I talk to the grandkids about my mum as if she was still here.”
Sadly, Gladys Warnock was released from what her youngest son describes as “the horrible disease of multiple sclerosis” when Neil was only 13. It left a huge hole in his life.
“My dad was a macho man and of an era where he would never tell me he loved me,” Warnock says matter-of-factly. “And because he didn’t tell me, I thought he didn’t love me.
“I regret we did not get the chance to tell each other how we felt properly.
I used to tell him when he was ill just before he passed away but he was not really aware then. That is why I tell my own kids I love them 10 times a day.”
William Warnock had been working 16-hour shifts
to provide for his ill wife and three children by driving a crane in a steel mill that was slowly killing him.
“When I left school, Dad got me a job in the office,” said Warnock. “I had my nice white shirt and tie on but by the time I had walked through the bar mill to the office, I looked down at my shirt and it was covered with black specks. My dad was coughing all the time and he died in the early Sixties. I thought, ‘I can’t live like this’.”
A brief spell working as a coach at a ten-pin bowling alley ended when he taught the wife of a Chesterfield player, who encouraged her husband to get the young winger a trial. When a playing career that was largely unremarkable ended, Warnock turned to chiropody to earn a living while juggling his day job with non-League management at Gainsborough Trinity. Fifteen clubs and a record eight promotions later, Warnock has been as busy as ever this week preparing for the visit of Wolves tonight. He dare not contemplate any other way.
“I think the football is keeping me young,” says Warnock. “It frightens me what will happen if I don’t have it any more. It is the humour keeping me so alive. My boys are my life, really, in football. I have given them the opportunity to play at the top level and I want to see them repay me by enjoying it. The day-to-day buzz is the main thing.
“I know I have not got long left. I think about life – and death – all the time. I blow my nose and I think I have flu coming on. Talk about a hypochondriac!
“The problem is when you look at the papers today, there is always somebody younger than you passed away.
“Glenn Hoddle’s recent illness brought things back to the fore – how you have to look after yourself. You have to look at wills and things like that.”
It is a brutal reality but one Warnock had to face honestly when his wife Sharon was diagnosed with breast cancer. She insisted he take the Rotherham job just
over two years ago to get Warnock out from under her feet while she got on with her recovery without being fussed over – and thankfully she is enjoying her time in Cardiff now.
Her new lease of life lends itself to a more positive view of old age without football; Warnock, though, fears he has become too married to the job.
“Sharon tells me we’ve got places to see and things like that,” he says. “But whenever I have been out of work I would collect the eggs from the chickens, take the kids off to school, then wonder how many coffees you could have in one day and how long you could walk the dogs for.”
That said, his Cardiff players have just this week been giving Warnock a vision of what life could be like for him should he lose his job in the near future. “The lads have put my face on to of a picture of Harry Redknapp in the jungle and hung it up in the changing rooms,” said Warnock. “They are saying, ‘Are you the next one, boss?’”
Warnock once turned down the chance to go on Strictly Come Dancing – “It would have been embarrassing; I’m not a dancer,” he says. Sadly, though, he has spotted an immediate flaw with the I’m A Celebrity… format.
“Trouble is, I would have to do every trial going – football fans up and down the country would ring in to see me suffer,” he says with a laugh. The sound of his amused chuckle is a welcome one after we had explored some of those darker corners. We were back on familiar territory – anecdotes about Arsene Wenger, clearing dog muck off the training ground at Bury, half-time rants, too many chairmen to count and tonight’s opposite number, Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santo.
“How would I like to be remembered?” says Warnock. “I would like to be remembered as somebody who always gave fans a talking point.
“And maybe those eight promotions will sometimes get a mention too!”
I’d like to be remembered as somebody who always gave fans a talking point