Football hero to convicted scammer

Twenty-five years ago Robert Harries saw Mark Aizlewood on a magical night for Welsh football. But the defender was already battling internal demons – and here is the story of that long fight...

CARDIFF Arms Park, March 1993. Wales v Belgium in a crucial World Cup qualifier. As I walked up the stairs to be met by the inside of the cavernous old national stadium for the very first time, I saw them: the people that would become my heroes.

These were the men who would beat Belgium in front of the nine-year-old eager eyes of a schoolboy. These were the men who would ingrain themselves into my psyche forever. Giggs, Hughes, Speed, Rush, Aizlewood.

He never was a superstar, yet Mark Aizlewood’s story is as fascinating as any of the others who have ever worn the national shirt – touched by success, failure, tragedy and crime. The man seemingly had it all, but was haunted by demons.

Ten years after this glorious night in Cardiff, he stood on a bridge in Rome. He had reached the end, it seemed.

“In this second I didn’t have an ounce of fear as I stood on the small wall and looked down at the cars speeding along the road 50ft below me, because I only had one intention: to jump,” Aizlewood recalled in his 2009 autobiography.

What had led him to stand in the winter cold above Rome, agonising whether to step back into life or forward into death?

The answer is a long and complicated tale of depression, drink and gambling problems, long before his sentence to six years in prison for fraud last month.

“I had been looking forward to a romantic weekend in Rome with my wife, Penny, but I blew any chance of that, and I stood on the bridge knowing that I had hurt someone I loved dearly.

“I realised I had been doing this all my life – hurting people, not necessarily physically, but emotionally. I decided that the best thing I could do for everyone’s sake was to end everything.”

Mark Aizlewood was born in Newport in 1959. He would go on to a professional football career that would see him wear the colours of his hometown, Charlton Athletic, Leeds United, Bristol City and Cardiff City, among others.

After he retired, he worked as a pundit for BBC Wales and as technical director at the Football Association of Wales Trust, two roles he left after a tumultuous period that saw him banned from driving for a year and found guilty of assaulting a television reporter. The journalist was the BBC’s Jane Harvey, sent to interview Aizlewood in 2004 for the consumer affairs programme X-Ray.

That was the plan, anyway, until he “went berserk”. Mrs Harvey needed hospital treatment after the attack.

Aizlewood’s future in football was seemingly over. As he put it: “Who was going to give a job to someone who had just been sacked, who had been in court for drink-driving, and found guilty of assaulting someone?

“I had no choice but to start my own business. But, around this time, I had a call from Jeff Thomas, chairman of Carmarthen Town Football Club.”

He is remembered fondly at the club, even after he was sacked last month after being found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud.

The man who persuaded Aizlewood not to give up on football, Jeff Thomas says there was more to the man than has been portrayed in the media over the years.

“We had a young disabled supporter who would come to all the games,” recalls Mr Thomas. “Mark would always talk to him. That supporter died while he was still a teenager, and Mark travelled all the way

from Chepstow, where he was living at the time, to go to the boy’s funeral, and then travelled straight back again.”

It’s this articulate and studious approach to work that first attracted Carmarthen Town to Aizlewood.

“Before I spoke to Mark about coming to Carmarthen I was a director of the Welsh Premier League when we were in the throes of setting up academies,” adds Mr Thomas.

“Many believe Osian Roberts started the Pro Licence courses in Wales but it was Mark’s brainchild, and it’s now recognised as one of the best courses anywhere.”

Aizlewood’s qualities as a coach were proved by winning back-to-back Welsh Premier League Cups with Carmarthen Town, a feat the club had never achieved before and are unlikely to again.

“He’s not given enough credit,” adds Mr Thomas. “He’s a master tactician and is regarded as one of the best coaches in Wales.”

By the time he joined Cardiff City in 1993, his career was winding down. With the club in the old Second Division, however, it was big news to have this Welsh international signing for the club. Lifelong supporter Aled Blake remembers the period well.

“Aizlewood joined us when the club was on its uppers, and his signing was a chink of light in a season where we were battling for survival. For me, seeing a player like that was class, because I’d been used to watching such run-of-the-mill players down the years.

“I actually have a clear memory of a header he did, which sent the ball pretty much the entire length of the pitch at Ninian Park.

“He was a great passer of the ball and I’d not seen someone able to ping it 70-90 yards with such accuracy before.”

His popularity at Cardiff City meant Aizlewood was named club captain and he even wrote his programme notes in Welsh – having learnt the language and won the title of Welsh Learner of the Year at the National Eisteddfod.

Yet, despite these endearing traits, examples of the other side of his character were still evident.

A 20-year battle with drink took over a lot of his adult life. The professional footballer, the First Division footballer, the Welsh international. He had it all, but the look in his eyes said he had nothing.

His battles with his demons would continue for the rest of his career and were with him when he stood alone in Rome on that February night, and while his struggles were often played out in the public eye, those being faced by his wife were hidden from view.

Whereas he stepped back from the brink in 2003, his wife, Penny, who had issues with drink, drugs and depression, decided one day in 2016 that she had had enough. The couple’s daughter found her mother’s body and phoned Aizlewood with the words: “Dad, Mum’s dead.”

It was during this time that Aizlewood was being accused of a plot to defrauding the public of £5m that he was given to fund the training of football apprentices but which lied about the number of people enrolled and did not carry out the promised training.

He was sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

Publicising his book before its publication in 2009, Aizlewood’s words had an air of regret even then. He said: “I was a by-product of what I had to do to become a success in this field. Can you be successful and have the other side too? No, I failed on that point but I think I could have had it all, knowing what I know now.”

What he didn’t know then was how his life would unravel even more.

One thought cannot escape me: when the guy who scored Wales’ opening goal that March night 25 years ago, Ryan Giggs, leads his team out for his first game as manager of the national side in China later this month, the guy who was keeping it tight at the back will be sat in his jail cell.