Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I swapped football for a life of fishing.. but when the call came to return I fell hook, line and sinker
LEE BOWYER made a rod for his own back, when he abandoned his ‘retirement’ to a private fishing lake in France, and took the bait of a return to football.
He was happily running his anglers’ retreat in the heart of Champagne country, when, five years ago, he answered an SOS from former Leeds team-mate Harry Kewell, to help plug the leaks in Watford’s Under-23 side. Financially secure, after an 18-year playing career, Bowyer had settled across the Channel, and his 12-acre lake Etang de Bows (Bow’s Lake) was brimming with 200 carp. He had cast football to one side, in favour of casting his line into the tree-lined lagoon. But Kewell’s shadow squad at Watford was serving up its own load of carp – and when he asked his pal for help, Bowyer’s know-how proved the cure for all eels.
The England one-cap wonder could have been forgiven for resorting to the language of the perpetual out-to-lunch bon viveur: Gone fishing. His short-term role as a consultant at Vicarage Road was such a conspicuous success, however, that when Charlton Athletic – the club he had joined as a schoolboy – came calling with a coaching post, he bought it hook, line and sinker. Promotion in his first full season as manager, sealed with a 95th-minute winner at Wembley last May, vindicated his U-turn.
And if the Addicks survive their Championship relegation scrap, where he faces another old Leeds chum and nocturnal accomplice, Jonathan Woodgate, against Middlesbrough today, Bowyer, 43, will be happier than a catch in the back of his landing net.
“When I was sat by the lake, just me and my fishing rod, I never thought I’d come back into the game,” said the man who was once Britain’s most expensive teenager at £2.8million, when he moved to Elland Road in 1996.
“I literally had no intention of getting involved in football again, and if Harry hadn’t rung me up and asked me to help him out, I’d probably still be doing that now.
“But once Harry brought me back, and I got the taste for it again, I realised football is what I love and what I’ve always known.
“Once you get that touch, that sensation of winning again and helping to improve players as a coach, it’s hard to let it go.
“I like to think I know the game – I was a player at the top level for 15 years, I learned from a lot of good people and I learned how to handle players.
“Have I ever thought about going back to the lake? No – I love it here, I started at Charlton as a kid and I want to take the club up to the next level. That’s why I signed a contract.
“If we can stay in this division, we can build in the summer and I’ve got no intention of walking away. That’s not my style – I’m a winner, and I always will be.
“But it’s crazy how things work and how they turn out, and this weekend I’ll be standing along the touchline from my old mate Woody.
“We still speak regularly, often to compare notes about teams we’ve just played, and we’ve been supportive of each other at different times.
“That’s what friends do in any walk of life, but we both know that we’ll be enemies for 90 minutes on Saturday.”
It is fair to say Bowyer has mellowed since he was grazed by the rough edges of youth and, as a club, Charlton have lost their dissident fringe since unpopular Belgian owner Roland Duchatelet agreed a £50m takeover deal with East Street Investments last November.
But influential midfielder Conor Gallagher’s reassignment by parent-club Chelsea to Swansea on loan took some of the wind from Bowyer’s sails, and 11-goal top-scorer Lyle Taylor will need more support to keep the dotted line at bay.
“The history of this club is that it’s never easy, it’s never straightforward, and we always seem to do things the hard way,” added Bowyer.
“Even winning promotion went down to an injury-time winner in the play-off final. But I’m looking forward to this run-in because this is where you come together as a group and fight for everything.”