I grabbed Gaz tackle out of fear
VINNIE JONES has revealed that a fear of being turned into a laughing stock led him to take drastic measures during his clash with Paul Gascoigne at Plough Lane in February 1988.
The pair met up again more than 30 years after one of football’s most infamous incidents for a joint interview on talkSPORT last night.
Jones’s famous grab at Newcastle star Gascoigne’s testicles has gone down in the history of the game but the Wimbledon hard-man has insisted it was motivated by nothing more than anxiety to avoid embarrassment.
Jones said: “I thought, ‘I could be the laughing stock of this game. What if he scores four goals, what if he runs riot?’
“Something snapped in me... I stretched in the dressing room and I am building up and building up and I thought, ‘When I see him, I’m going to kill him’.”
At the time Gascoigne was a teenage sensation earning rave reviews for his skills, in stark contrast to Jones, a former hod-carrier who was an integral part of Wimbledon’s notorious Crazy Gang.
Speaking with Gascoigne about the incident which was captured in newspaper photographs, Jones added: “We were fighting to get in and we started jostling as well and you said something like, ‘How much are they paying you for this, are you getting £100 for this today?’
“That is when I reached down. I grabbed it and it was just spot on! There weren’t no fiddling about... I just grabbed it and didn’t let go.”