‘I was sat on the sofa every night drinking myself into a stupor’
Tony Currie opens up on his struggles after football, being snubbed for England by Revie, and that famous kissing picture
Tony Currie is sitting in the grandstand that bears his name at Bramall Lane, having his picture taken, explaining how chuffed he was when he heard that he was to be honoured in that way. Though for Sheffield United supporters it came as little surprise – Currie is revered in the red parts of the city, and reckoned to be the club’s greatest talent – he was astonished when the announcement came three years ago.
“I couldn’t believe it when they told me they were going to name it after me,” he says, at 71 his London accent barely affected by decades of living in Yorkshire. “What an honour. But they didn’t have to. In fact, it should be me honouring them. Seriously, I owe this club everything. It is no exaggeration to say they saved my life.”
He takes his interviewer back to the time in the mid-1980s when, by his own admission, he was living on the edge. His career had taken him from Sheffield to Leeds and QPR, before making diversions via less celebrated byways such as Southend, Torquay and a brief foray into a fledgling Canadian league that went bankrupt in its first season, before he stepped away from the professional game entirely in 1984.
“After I’d retired, for near on a five-year period I was in a bad state,” he recalls. “I was lost. I was one of them idiots who thought he could go on for ever as a footballer. Superman. But my knee was knackered, my first marriage was gone, I’d given my ex-wife the house, I didn’t have any plans. I was living at my mum’s. Working in a video shop. No money. Sitting on the sofa every night, drinking myself into a stupor.”
He reckons he was well on the path to oblivion.
“If they hadn’t come back into my life, I wouldn’t be talking to you now,” he says of the Sheffield club. “Simple as that.”
What changed things was being invited to play in the testimonial of Tony Kenworthy, his old Blades team-mate. When he turned up to Bramall Lane in 1986, nervous, embarrassed, not a little ashamed of the depths to which he had sunk, the reception he got was emotional.
The following year, the club offered him his own testimonial. Featuring everyone from Frank Worthington, George Best and Alan Hudson to Paul Heaton, lead singer of The Beautiful South, it drew the biggest crowd of the season, raised £13,000 and saved him financially.
But it was what happened a year later, when he was contacted about a job to head up the club’s newly formed community department, that really made the difference. He moved back to Sheffield, and immediately fell in love with his new role. Now, 33 years on, he is still working for the Blades. As a club ambassador he is at every home game, charming everyone he meets.
“I love it,” he says of his job. “I’d do it for nothing … though don’t tell them that.”
But what seems extraordinary is that it should ever have come to that point. There is a picture in the Sheffield United club museum of Currie in his heyday, his shirt hanging loose, his blond hair drifting over his shoulders, handsome, devilmay-care, apparently in full control of his destiny. This was how we remember him, a master footballing showman.
“I was labelled an entertainer,” he says. “Yes, I was a show-off on the pitch. I can remember running along the line with the ball, blowing kisses to the crowd, nutmegging Emlyn Hughes at Anfield and blowing another kiss.”
Not forgetting sitting on the ball during a game against Arsenal. “That’s because Alan Ball did it first,” he insists. “Arsenal were 5-0 up here and he did it in front of me. I clapped him. Two years later, we’re 5-0 up, I’ve scored twice and got my revenge: I did it to him in our sixyard box. He clapped me. But as I got up, my studs hit the ball and he nearly scored from it. I only just got away with it. Typical of me.”
Perhaps his most celebrated stunt was when he and Alan Birchenall, the Leicester forward, were photographed kissing each other midway through a game.
“We were playing Leicester in around ’75,” he says. “We’re in the box, I tackle him and we do a synchronised
‘I was lost. I was one of them idiots who thought he could go on for ever as a footballer’
somersault and end up sitting down next to each other. He goes to me, ‘Give us a kiss, TC’. And there was one photographer right there who got the picture. He must have made a bloody mint.” Indeed, the image has had a long afterlife, with the two of them frequently asked to recreate it.
“Birchy’s after-dinner story is that it ended up on the front cover of a German gay porn mag. How he knew, I don’t know…”
The stories are all there in his autobiography, Imperfect 10. The
irony of the title is central. Because on the pitch, Currie was a brilliant playmaker, the perfect 10. He could find a telling pass in the most crowded circumstances, he was brave, adventurous and with real tactical vision, a player who would thrive in today’s game. In the 1970s, however, he was regarded with suspicion by some influential figures. “Languid, they called me,” he says with a smile.
One manager took a significant dislike to him: Don Revie. Unfortunately for Currie, Revie was in charge of England when he was in his prime.
“Alf Ramsey picked me for his last six games for England, so he must have seen something in me. When Revie took over, I remember the first get-together he had of 40-odd potential England players. He takes me, Worthington, Hudson, [Stan] Bowles and [Charlie] George to one side and tells us, ‘None of you is in my plans’. And walks off. We just looked at each other and went, ‘Why invite us along then?’ ”
It was as self-defeating a managerial decision as any in the history of football. Here was a group of players who could have established Revie’s international renown. Instead he scornfully squandered the opportunity.
“Before the only game he picked
me for in three years as a manager, he held a press conference,” Currie says. “He goes, ‘Currie’s lazy. If he wants to play for England more often he’s got to work harder’. Nice. So I went out, ran me knackers off and hardly had a kick. Stupid of me. I should have played my own game.”
But then, for all the confidence he exuded on the pitch, off it Currie was plagued with self-doubt. Shy, awkward and diffident, he found life away from football a struggle. “Yes, the pitch was an escape. Not that I knew it at the time,” he says.
In the days before agents, he was particularly hopeless at negotiating his wages. It is not an exaggeration to say that if he were playing now he would be a multi-millionaire. But the most he earned from football was £25,000 in his last year at Leeds. Still, he had enough to buy himself a few intriguing fashion items in the Seventies.
“Yeah, I had a pink suit,” he admits, wincing at the memory. “John Hope was the goalie here then – lovely fella, I spoke at his funeral – he got me into it. He’d spend all his money on clothes. He took me shopping one day and I went for the pink suit. I’d go out in Sheffield on a Saturday night in it. And white clogs.”
Maybe if he had taken some of the many phone calls Tommy Docherty, the then Manchester United manager, had made to him in 1973, there might have been more money for a better wardrobe.
“Tapping-up, I think they call it,” he says of Docherty’s approaches. “I had that many calls from him it was doing my head in. Eventually, he rang the club and made an offer, but they turned it down. If I’d gone to Man United I imagine it would have been good. But would I have what I’ve got here?”
What was odd about Currie was he never made the most of his profile. The handsome maverick was a proto-beckham. He should have been awash with commercial deals even after he hung up his boots. But without the canvas of a football field he could not project himself.
“I was never good at that. As a kid, I was scared of exams, couldn’t get past the first question. Fear. Petrified,” he says. “And yeah, I’ve had therapy. Bit late though: I needed an analyst 40 years ago. Nobody frustrated me more than me. Well, apart from Revie. I really was the imperfect 10.”
A good title for a book, that.
‘Birchy’s after-dinner story is that the picture ended up on the front of a German gay porn mag’
Imperfect 10: The Man Behind the Magic, by Tony Currie with Andy Pack, published by Vertical Editions on Nov 2, £16.99. Signed copies available at verticaleditions.com