I came off at half-time, sat in the toilets and put £500 on us to lose the game...
As he bids for an FA Cup giantkilling, ex-professional Scott Davies reveals how he escaped gambling addiction and is now helping to save players’ lives
SCOTT DAVIES knew the game was up when his then manager, Brendan Rodgers, demanded to speak to his dentist on the phone. Having just broken into the Reading first team at 21 in the Championship, he had been summoned by the manager who demanded why he was leaving the training ground so quickly.
‘I told him I was having something done to my teeth and he replied “You’re lying, son”,’ says Davies. ‘I sat there melting in my chair. That was it, I never played for the first team again.’
The truth, he knew, was that he was screeching off to get to the bookies to feed an addiction to betting that had spiralled out of control. Now 30, Davies is due today to anchor the Slough Town mid field as they attempt to topple League One Gillingham and make the third round of the FA Cup, with all the possibilities that holds.
These days the welltravelled Davies plays parttime alongside his main job, which is making presentations to Football League clubs to warn players about the dangers of gambling and offering an avenue down which anyone affected can seek help.
Not entirely surprisingly given the onslaught of temptations, the number of subsequent referrals received by his employers, Epic Risk Management, suggests that they provide a much-needed service.
Davies has experienced former Premier League players breaking down in tears after pulling him to one side once he has offered his abundance of cautionary tales.
Now free from his addiction for well over three years, he speaks with disarming honesty about how he slid into such a state that he suffered suicidal thoughts and spent so many hours playing online roulette that it would bring on motion sickness.
An articulate ex-grammar school boy who got nine GCSEs and holds a home- studied media degree, Davies does not seem like an obvious candidate to succumb to this modern-day scourge. Not long before his fantasy dental appointment was rumbled, Rodgers had told him he had the ability to play in any l eague in t he world and he had briefly kept a young Gylfi Sigurdsson out of the Reading team. ‘The last few years of being a professional footballer for me were complete hell,’ he says. ‘I didn’t like going to training and being around the banter because I was struggling inside. When I came out about it people were shocked because I was such a loud character but it was probably a front to hide my demons.’
The seeds of his demise had been sown two years earlier, when he turned up at training with a broken jaw after being punched on a Saturday night. Steve Coppell, then in charge, sent him on loan to Aldershot for a year and it was there that he got hooked, first by playing poker on the team bus.
They have ended up being one of 13 clubs he has played for. En route he has lost nearly £ 250,000 on betting, with the problem reaching a crescendo towards the end of his days as a full professional.
During one match for Crawley Town, he went off to the toilet at half-time with his mobile phone to place a bet. ‘I went into the cubicle and put £500 on us to lose and we ended up losing so I won £2,000, but the strange thing is I didn’t stop trying when it restarted. I wasn’t a bad person like that but I look back and think how powerless I was.
‘ I played for Oxford United against Fleetwood and I didn’t go sleep after getting back from training on the Friday lunchtime until the kick off on Saturday afternoon. I just lay in bed drinking Red Bull and betting. I was betting on everything, horse racing in Chile and basketball — I hate basketball, I don’t know anything about it.
‘I just loved the buzz, replicating the buzz of scoring a goal on a Saturday and i t gave me that repeatedly. As a sportsman, you usually have a competitive nature and hate losing, so when I did lose I was thinking, “I’m not letting you beat me”.’
His epiphany came on June 8, 2015 when he was confronted by his mother in the local William Hill. He was persuaded to get help and spent four weeks in rehab through the Sporting Chance charity and has not had a bet since.
‘ My mum said it was like she hadn’t known me for nine years and I have felt a completely different person since I emerged from this,’ he says. ‘I’ve always enjoyed racing and now I can go to a meeting and just have a few drinks and enjoy it and not feel the need to bet at all.
‘The job can be very satisfying. Earlier this year a senior pro at one club got in touch and told me that he thought one of his younger team-mates had a serious problem — and we were able to help put something in place and he has now stopped gambling.’
So what does he think about the preponderance of gaming adverts that fill our screens? ‘ I never needed to be reminded to go and have a bet,’ he says. ‘So for me, the adverts made no difference. I have had friends who are alcoholics and it’s the same with them, they don’t need reminding to have a drink.
‘But what worries me more is the younger audience seeing them and the effect that can have, although I know there are measures being put in place to combat that [such as post-watershed restrictions].
Today Slough, of the National League South and nicknamed the Rebels, will try and go one better than last year, when they lost in the second round to Rochdale. They got past Sutton in the last round after an 18-penalty shootout and now take on League Two strugglers Gillingham.
‘I don’t think talent and skillwise there is a huge difference between the non-league and league but they have full- time preparation,’ he says. ‘I’ve missed the bigger games with the bigger crowds.’