Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CALLUM WILSON EXCLUSIVE
I try to stay humble. I come from a neighbourhood of broken glass and stones. Thankfully I made the right choices
CALLUM WILSON took his five-year-old son on a guided tour of the cages and lock-up garages in the Coventry precinct where he learned to play football.
As a kid, Wilson had to pick his way through familiar urban debris to enjoy his jumpers for goalposts. Now the Bournemouth striker with a matching pair of bionic knees is being tipped to join England’s shooting tsars at the World
Cup in Russia.
Wilson marked his return to full throttle with a clinical hat-trick against Huddersfield last weekend – his first Premier League goals since January. Back of the nyet, as they say in Moscow.
Playing for England would be light years away from the concrete jungle where Wilson grew up, but he has not forgotten his roots.
“We just had to make the best of what we had,” he said. “Everyone’s life goes down a different route and it’s about the choices you make. Thankfully, I made the right ones but some of the kids I used to hang out with didn’t.
“I took my son Oritse to see my old neighbourhood, to give him an insight into his dad’s life. It’s been built up and it’s a lot better now – a lot less broken glass and stones on the ground.
“I try to stay humble. Even though I’m a Premier League player now, I make sure everything’s tucked away so my kids don’t have the life I had growing up. I had five brothers and sisters brought up by a single mum so we didn’t have a lot of the things you want from life.”
Now Wilson has his eyes on one of the greatest prizes of all. Cherries boss Eddie Howe (above) believes his bornagain striker could still make the cut for Gareth Southgate’s squad in Russia, and why not?
It was Southgate who handed Wilson his two England Under-21 caps three years ago. Since then, the Bournemouth livewire has recovered from cruciate ligament surgery in both knees.
And Howe’s dossier of data reveals his bargain £3.2million signing from Coventry in 2014 has come back as good as new, if not even faster.
“When I was at Coventry, I remember coming down to Bournemouth and there was building work going on everywhere,” said Wilson, visiting the Glenmoor & Winton academy to promote the Playstation Schools Cup.
“I never thought I’d end up playing for them in the Premier League.
“Later, when I had the choice to sign for Norwich or Bournemouth, everything pointed to Norwich.
“But when I came down here, Eddie Howe talked me through clips on a screen showing how I would fit into the way Bournemouth play.
“I felt he had a plan for me, and I wasn’t just another striker. He really made me feel wanted and we won promotion in my first season here.
“No player wants to go through a bad knee injury.
When it happens once you think:
‘OK, let’s deal with the setback and then you can be injury-free for the rest of your career.’
“They don’t let you rejoin full training until your scores are the same as they were previously, but they were all OK.
“We do a 20-metre sprint test as a squad and I’m top of that. We do a hamstring test and I’m top of that as well, so I have renewed confidence that my body will hold up.
“Scoring three goals against Huddersfield was a fantastic feeling, but it’s no good unless I can back it up at Swansea this weekend.”