FOOTBALL’S VERY OWN ROCKY
WHEN a young lad called David Rocastle started training with Arsenal’s youth team, a new member of the board was particularly excited. David Dein joined Arsenal as vicechairman in 1983, a year after Rocastle was scouted during a school game, and would regularly attend youth matches in the morning before watching the seniors at Highbury. A month after first seeing Rocastle, Dein could not stop waxing lyrical about the playmaker.
He would return home and say to his wife and kids: ‘He could be a Brazilian player and he comes from Lewisham! We’ve got a player here. He’s got the skill, he’s got the technique, he’s got the body.’
Such was Dein’s obsession, his wife, Barbara, enjoyed winding him up about it. ‘All the time I was singing his praises, this boy is going to go the whole way — he’s sensational,’ said Dein. ‘So much so, when it was my birthday, my wife bought me a wallet as a present and inside the wallet where you’d normally put a photo of her or the family was a picture of Rocky.’ She also bought him a coffee table for his office that had legs modelled on Rocastle’s.
Yet Dein, who spent 14 years as one of the most prominent figures at Arsenal, is far from the only person to find a special place for David ‘ Rocky’ Rocastle in their life. Rocastle is an iconic figure at the club, immortalised in paint on the outside of the Emirates Stadium and adored by supporters, long after he died of the cancer nonHodgkin’s lymphoma aged only 33.
On Saturday evening, the day after the 16th anniversary of his death, BT Sport will air a brilliant new film — Rocky & Wrighty: From Brockley to the Big Time — sharing memories of his life and an extraordinary relationship with Ian Wright.
How a boy from south London became a legend in the city’s north began on an artificial pitch on Market Road in Islington, still used by Arsenal today. Terry Murphy was working as a part-time scout for the club and was a sports instructor at two local schools, Holloway and Tollington Park. He thought his Tollington Under 14 side were decent until Rocastle rocked up and thrashed them in a cup game.
Murphy was immediately struck by the 13-year- old’s loyalty when he would not agree to Arsenal trials until he had cleared it with his teachers and local club. He would excel in trials and eventually played and trained with the year group above. Murphy became youth development officer and one of Rocastle’s closest mentors.
‘Mr Dein couldn’t contain his excitement when he first saw him,’ Murphy told Sportsmail. ‘He said he thought we had a good ’un.’
Such was Murphy’s care and concern for the boy, he once offered to buy Rocastle some clothes. ‘He’d come to training and his trousers were up to his knees and he needed new ones,’ said Murphy. ‘He was proud and said he was all right. It always stuck in my mind. Not only did he look after his fellow players and his managers, he always looked after his family. As he made his way in the game he always made sure they never went without.’
Football was a different world in those days. Players did not sign with clubs until they were 16. When Rocastle became a scholar, Murphy went on team-bonding trips with their group — including Michael Thomas, Ray Parlour and Tony Adams — to the Welsh mountains for orienteering and to explore caves with their hard hats and flashlights.
‘ I don’t think Tony did the caving, he might not have been able to get in some of the pot- holes!’ said Murphy. ‘Nowadays they’re so careful of what they do with players because of insurance and so on.’
Scholars were also made to do ‘work experience’ around the club by hardened maintenance man Paddy Galligan. Galligan, who died in 2006, was a small man with a mouth like thunder who had no qualms about telling the players his views. ‘He used to really make them work,’ said Murphy. ‘Cleaning, sweeping, doing the terraces, around the training ground, Paddy was a real taskmaster. Didn’t matter who you were — as they grew up and became famous he’d still say what he wanted to say.’
It was that grounding which made Rocastle as famous as they come in those parts, respected across football and eventually an England international. Even though injury took the second half of his career elsewhere and cancer stole his life far too early, he was never forgotten.
‘There was tears from everybody when he finally left us,’ said Murphy, the 79-year-old welling up at the recollection of his death in 2001. ‘Players who, when they were on the field of play, you wouldn’t see a tear in their eye. Michael Thomas, Steve Bould, Ray Parlour. All the big names. But that’s how they felt about him.
‘In the hospital they wouldn’t allow visitors at the end. I went to see him and they said, “Sorry, family only, he’s not very well”. He knew I was there and he said he wanted to see me. I went in there and he was talking about his family and knew he was going and said, “I think the world of my
He plays like a Brazilian... and he’s from Lewisham!
family, I know it’s going to be hard for them, there’s nothing I can do, will you keep an eye on them?”
‘While I can forget so many things, that is something that never leaves me — how much he felt for his family.’
Murphy has remained close to Rocastle’s wife Janet and three children, Melissa, Monique and Ryan. ‘There was so much more to Rocky than being a gifted footballer,’ Dein wrote when remembering Rocastle in the programme for a tribute match. ‘He was a consummate gentleman, warm and modest. In an age when footballers are often accused of being mercenaries, David Rocastle was a Prince.’ Worthy of a cherished spot in any wallet.