Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
HODD SQUAD TO SPICE BOY
halfway down his legs. The dog had ripped his trousers off him.
“He had to go to this lady’s house, knocking on her door and saying, ‘Miss Jackson, have you seen a dog running past with my trousers in its mouth?’.
“She just looked at him and said, ‘No’. He used to tell it way more humorously than I could, but I heard it loads of times as a kid.
“So when I got to play for Grenada, I looked Miss
Jackson up. She’s quite old now, but I got to meet her. She hasn’t got the best of memories, but she told me it was true.
“That story was legendary in our house and there are so many like that.
“Unfortunately, I lost my father three years ago, but it’s sentimental for me that connection.
“There was always a thing with my family and last summer I got married to Dahlia there. It was about connecting with the family. It felt right.”
Beckles’ path to today’s glamour tie with the Premier League champions-elect is by no means conventional.
He graduated from Glenn Hoddle’s (left) academy in Spain and worked as a PE teacher, playing football part-time before breaking into the professional ranks with Accrington.
But he struggled with the grief of losing his dad and has now immersed himself in mental health issues and runs his own foundation.
Beckles said: “Anyone that has to deal with the trauma of losing a loved one knows that we all deal with that in very different ways. I carried mine with me.
“My doctor said it happens with highachievers, that they place so much pressure upon themselves to perform and be at their best.”