To Hull and back for Snodgrass
Snodgrass on life with Hull’s depleted 13-man squad
CARETAKER boss Mike Phelan looked around the victorious Hull City dressing room and declared: ‘Well done lads, we’re 34 points from safety now.’ A voice shot back: ‘No, we’re 80 points from winning it.’
Hull’s players — joint top of the English Premier League after two wins and targeting a third at home to Manchester United tomorrow — are surviving on camaraderie, hard graft and gallows humour.
Robert Snodgrass, scorer of the winning goal against champions Leicester on the opening day of the season and one of only 13 fit senior players, quips: ‘At least we’re all guaranteed a game!’
For the Glaswegian, though, the ability to laugh is as much about his own perspective as it is the squad’s perverse enjoyment of the situation at their crisis club, where takeover talks and supporter protests rumble to the backdrop of no manager and no signings.
Snodgrass was just 19 years old, making his way in the game at Livingston when two of his close friends and his aunt and uncle died within a six-month period. Shortly after, his younger cousin was killed in a car accident.
‘It was a horrific time, to carry the coffin of my little cousin, Nicola, who I’d been brought up with. So you talk about the low times of my injury and this now (at Hull)… that back then, that is low,’ says the 28-year-old, one of five siblings raised on a council estate in the shadows of Celtic Park.
Snodgrass, then, is not likely to feel sorry for himself as part of the team written off as relegation certainties, especially as his career was in danger after his knee ‘exploded’ during his Premier League debut for Hull following his £6million arrival two years ago. He appreciates where he is and what he is doing.
‘In a strange way we’re really enjoying it,’ says the Scotland winger.
‘It’s a no-lose situation because everyone is like: “Ah, they’ll get beaten every week”. It’s what drives you on.’
’We love coming into work every day. It’s a great environment. And credit to Mike Phelan. He’s calmed the whole situation down but now he needs backing. I think he’s a terrific man and manager, and that is the feeling of all the lads.
‘We’re right behind him. We aren’t throwing in the towel here. We’re doing it for each other and for ourselves.’
Snodgrass has got used to working for himself. During 16 months of painstaking and lonely rehabilitation following that cruel knee injury, he admits he questioned his future.
‘Before the operation, the surgeon said four to six months and I thought: “Wow, I’ll take that, I’ve got away with one there”,’ he recalls.
‘Then I woke up after surgery and he said: “You’re out for 12 to 18 months”. That was one of the worst sleeps I’ve ever had!
‘It took nearly a year-and-a-half to get back — rehab, rehab, rehab. You have real dark days. You question whether you’ll ever get to the level you were at.
‘The lads wouldn’t tackle me in training because they’d seen what I’d been through. It was difficult, because in real games they didn’t care.
‘I remember against Bristol City. I got wiped out right on the touchline. Steve Bruce (then manager) nearly killed him: “He’s been out for 16 months you little **** ”.’
Snodgrass, though, has been on the receiving end of far worse. As a kid, there was no one looking out for him on the streets of Glasgow’s east end.
‘It was a rough place but those were some of the best days of my life,’ says Snodgrass, who is now the father of three girls.
‘Me and my two brothers painted a football pitch and used the net from scaffolding for goals with bits of wood, although they were burnt down in the end.
‘All of the scaffolders and builders from demolition companies nearby used to play each other for 20 quid a man — the tackles were mad.
‘I played for the local estate against them one day and we won. There was a full-scale riot. “He’s a ringer” they were saying.
‘Half of them were drunk, so I could get the ball and just run around them — I was only 12!
‘Having that at an early age was great. I wish we could get back to those days, just let kids go and play and enjoy themselves on the streets instead of at academies too young.’ Snodgrass supports a charity which offers free football for children in deprived areas of the city. He also helped raise money for victims of the Clutha disaster; when a helicopter crashed into a pub in Glasgow killing 10 people in 2013. That came just four months after Snodgrass and his family were fortunate to escape a tragedy of their own when his pregnant partner, Denise McKenzie, crashed her car through a shop front in Glasgow and the windscreen was speared by a pole. Snodgrass, then at Norwich City, remembers: ‘It was before a pre-season game and I had about 15 missed calls. I thought: “Jesus, what’s happened here?”. ‘I rang my mum and she said: “Denise has been in a crash. She’s in hospital. I don’t know what’s happening. I need to go”. I was like: “What the...?”. My mum was in a real panic.
‘I checked my texts and I had a picture of the car. That’s when it really hit home, I was in shock.
‘We later found out the cause was epilepsy. She was out of it with her foot on the accelerator. It could have been much, much worse.’
It is evident during time in his company that Snodgrass’ life experience has matured him as a man. He has been through a lot but is an abundantly happy soul, the dressing-room joker with both Hull and Scotland.
But there is no shortage of talent, either. His winner against Leicester — a first-time volley into the bottom corner — was evidence enough of that.
His real desire would be to captain his beloved Scotland in future but, for now, Manchester United are in his sights.
‘Two wins gives you the feeling: “You know what, I think we’re going to win again on Saturday”,’ he says with a smile.
Do that, and Snodgrass and Co are only 77 points from the title.
“In a strange way, we are all enjoying it”