THE HOODED BASEBALL BAT GANG STORMED IN!
It was supposed to be A Night With Keith Gillespie, then...
KEITH GIllEspIE has h seen most things in life. But not this. Not half a dozen men in balaclavas armed with baseball bats storming the function room in which we are sitting.
Earlier in the day, over a couple of pints just around the corner from Newcastle United’s st James’ park, Gillespie had journeyed through stories of gambling, fighting, sex, drinking and spanish prisons, offering them as reasons why he is now well placed to guide the next generation of young footballers.
As the 43-year-old put it: ‘I was a winger from Northern Ireland playing for Manchester United, so they obviously called me the next George Best… I went on to emulate him — off the pitch anyway’.
Gillespie had lived through the Troubles in his home country, where his dad was a prison officer at the infamous Maze in County Down. But even for him, this is terrifying. We are in the back room of a pub in Newcastle’s West End five miles outside the city, where Gillespie is sharing some of his memories with 80 or so Geordies, each enjoying his honesty and humour.
Then, at around 10pm, the doors to the room crash open. The laughter stops. Is it a wind-up? No, the bats, balaclavas and shouting make it immediately clear that this is no joke.
For a split- second you worry that the raiders are here to settle some historic gambling debt with Gillespie, who has flown in from Belfast for one night. Thankfully, not so.
Is it a robbery? As one punter points out later, Gillespie was declared bankrupt a few years ago, so they had picked the wrong ex-footballer if theft was their motive.
No, it soon becomes apparent the gang are looking for someone. Mercifully, their target is not here. After what seems like 90 minutes rather than 90 seconds, they smash back through the doors and are gone. Wheels screech in the distance. Chests exhale nearby.
A woman in the crowd breaks the tension. ‘I’m sorry,’ she hollers towards Gillespie. ‘I booked them as the strippers for a hen do, but they must have got the wrong night.’
The host, Graeme Forster, seated with Gillespie behind a wooden table, adds: ‘Did anyone check their tickets? I should have asked if they had any questions for Keith.’
Finally, it feels safe to laugh, and the audience does that for another hour as the former Newcastle favourite somehow continues with his tales.
Afterwards, while as good as inhaling a nerve-settling Guinness, he confesses: ‘I have never seen anything like that before.’
It takes us back to the question put to Gillespie hours earlier — what does he have to offer those youngsters making their way in the game today?
‘With my background, I’ve been there and done most things — I know what not to do,’ answers the father of three, who is now in partnership with friend Brian Adair after launching the OneTwo football agency.
‘Agents don’t have a good name. Ninety per cent are in it for themselves, as I found out to my cost. That’s one thing we’re not. We want to help players.
‘We’re not going to be busy fools, we still have to make a living, but we will do it the right way. I want to be able to draw on my experiences and use them to guide young lads.
‘I didn’t have that. It would have been nice to have someone in my ear who had made those mistakes.’
It is, however, very difficult to pin down Gillespie to any regrets. He has emerged from the 2010 bankruptcy and says it has given him the chance to rebuild.
He is good company and there is a carefree acceptance of the life he has lived. He has enjoyed it and is grateful.
He was a member of the Manchester United Class of ’92 and scored on his debut before moving to Tyneside aged 19 in 1995 as part of the British record transfer which took Andy Cole in the opposite direction.
In four years at st James’ he played 147 times and scored 14 goals. ‘Easily the best and happiest days of my career,’ he says.
There were 86 caps for Northern Ireland — including victories over England and spain — and spells at Blackburn Rovers, leicester City and sheffield United, among others. Gillespie calculates his total earnings at about £7.2million. And how much of that is left? ‘None,’ he admits.
It is well documented that gambling was Gillespie’s vice, losing £47,000 in one day while at Newcastle — or Black Friday, as he calls it. Two days prior to that, however, he reveals that he took his gambling addiction with him on to the pitch during a league Cup tie at stoke City. ‘I won £3,500 on the horses over the phone in the team hotel in the afternoon,’ he starts. ‘so I then had £500 on peter Beardsley first goal and Beardsley first goal doubled with 2-0, 2-1, 3-0 and 3-1.
‘peter scored early and we were 3-0 up with about 15 minutes to go when Darren peacock — a defender, don’t forget — ventured forward and rifled one in the top corner. That cost me 52 grand!
‘The entire team went to celebrate with him, it was such a novelty.’ Where was Gillespie? ‘Walking back towards the half-
way line on my own,’ he says. ‘It was only that day I discovered what Darren’s middle name was.’
And what is that? ‘ Darren f****** Peacock,’ replies Gillespie with a smile.
But there is a more serious tone. ‘Gambling is a problem in football, it always will be. It’s rife,’ he adds.
‘It’s so accessible now. When I first started, you could only lose what was in your pocket, you had to get to the bookies. Eventually, phone betting was my downfall. But now, you don’t even have to speak to anyone, it’s just a click of your finger away.
‘More needs to be done. Gambling is one area where I really hope to help.’
*** ‘I NEVER had a problem with drink,’ insists Gillespie. ‘I never had any alcohol in the house, it was always social and I think I did it at the right times. And that would be my advice to young players now — you’re still human, do it in moderation and only when it is appropriate.’
A mid- season trip with Newcastle to Dublin in 1997 was one such occasion where it seemed appropriate for a few beers. It was the moderation Gillespie and the likes of Alan Shearer ignored. The scene is the swanky Cafe en Seine in the heart of Ireland’s capital.
‘We were all around a big table playing drinking games,’ begins Gillespie. ‘I was losing. I knocked some cutlery over and Alan told me to pick it up. I said, “F*** off. Outside now”.
‘I was walking out in front of Alan thinking, “I’ve got no chance here, just get the first punch in at least”.
‘I thought I’d swung and missed, Alan says I actually clipped him but it couldn’t have been much if I did, because he swung once and caught me on the side of the head and I fell and hit a plant pot.
‘The lads all ran out and there was blood everywhere. The next thing I knew, I’d woken up in hospital. Rob Lee told Steve Howey to sort it out, just give the police a story, because Alan was England captain.
‘Steve got back to the hotel and said to Rob it was all OK, he’d told the police I was the victim of a hit-and-run driver… so now the Guards are running around Dublin looking for some fella who has knocked me over!
‘The next day Alan was the first at my door and we laughed about it, one of those drunken things. Although he admitted he was worried at one stage he might be facing a manslaughter charge!’
We break off as Gillespie is approached by a woman who wants a selfie to send to her son. He obliges and it leads us into another recollection, one taking in the misdeeds of drinking, women and fighting. ‘I met two girls in town one night and was dropping them off in a taxi,’ he says.
‘One of them invited me in. We were upstairs and all of a sudden there was someone at the front door. I ran across the hallway and into another bedroom. I jumped in a bed and pretended to be asleep, just acted as if I was drunk.
‘I remember the light coming on and turning over to see her boyfriend stood there. He looked at me and said, “F****** hell, it’s Keith Gillespie. Have you been s******* wor lass?” We started throwing punches, like something out of the Wild West.
‘I managed to get to the stairs and ran straight out of the front door — I suppose the one thing I always had was pace!’
It was that same turn of foot which Gillespie used during the match which has come to define his career, Newcastle’s 3-2 victory over Barcelona in the club’s first Champions League match.
We are now in Pavel’s Gents Hairdressers — named after the late Pavel Srnicek and owned by a friend of Gillespie — as we escape the noise of the after-work crowd.
On the walls are pictures of Newcastle stars of yesteryear, including Gillespie on that famous night when he laid on two of Tino Asprilla’s three goals after burning by Barca left back Sergi and crossing for the Colombian to head home.
‘ You could not have scripted what happened,’ he says. ‘Part of my success was innocence, really, I didn’t know how good Sergi was. When the Spanish football was broadcast on a Sunday night, I was always down the Bigg Market.
‘So here was this player regarded as one of the best in the world and I’m thinking, “I wish I could play him every week!”’
Some memories involving Spaniards are not so pleasant, such as the week Gillespie spent behind bars along with Leicester team-mates Paul Dickov and Frank Sinclair after they were charged with sexual assault following claims by three women which were later proven false and motivated by financial gain.
‘The one thing it did was make me a stronger person,’ says Gillespie of the La Manga sunshine training camp which suddenly turned dark.
‘Paul, Frank and I were in a cell together, on triple bunk beds. They were very worried and would lie awake at night talking about what could happen if no-one believed us. It was frightening, the situation we found ourselves in.
‘But we were totally innocent and I just put my trust in the justice system, although I wouldn’t wish the experience on my worst enemy.’