Gray battles from gangland to dreamland

Burnley’s prolific striker tells James Ducker how football gave him the drive to reject a life of crime

T here are unlikely to be many of the Premier League’s newcomers with a back story to rival that of Andre Gray. When the Burnley striker makes his top-flight bow against Swansea City on Saturday, it will mark the culmination of a journey from gangland violence and non-League football, from wayward teenager struggling without a father figure and the part-time player who almost packed it in, to the pinnacle of the English game. The players of Middlesbrough and Hull City, the Premier League’s other two newly promoted clubs, will have their own tales to spin but try telling Gray there is someone out there with more motivation.

“Obviously, the Premier League was a dream, but it’s hard to be realistic at that stage,” Gray reflects. “When you’re on the bench in the Conference North, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But if your dream dies, then you die.

“Giving up? It plays on your mind sometimes. Sometimes you think of a different career and what you could do next. But the only thing I really want is football, so I knew I had to keep driven with that above anything else.

“I see the hard times in my life have ended up being the best now. It wasn’t nice at the time, when certain things happened, but everything’s a lesson, and it’s what you take from it. From everything I’ve done that’s bad, and from everything bad that’s happened to me, I’ve learnt from it.”

There were hard times on the pitch and, most especially, off it. Growing up in Wolverhampton without a dad and losing, at 13, the grandfather, Terry, who took him to football every weekend and substituted as the father figure he craved, Gray was dragged into the gangland culture that would ultimately claim the lives of a number of his friends.

His own wake-up call came six years ago when, still only 19 and playing part-time for Hinckley Town in the Conference North, he was slashed across the face in a street fight, a four-inch scar on his left cheek a permanent reminder of a life almost ruined.

“I honestly didn’t know any different until I was about 17,” Gray said. “It was a way of life. It’s easy for people on the outside to say that what you’re doing is bad, but until you’re in that situation, you don’t know how difficult it is. Especially when I didn’t have my dad around, and it’s hard for a woman to raise a man. I near enough had to raise myself.

“My grandad passed away when I was about 13. That was a big part of my life, so not having a father figure was difficult. It’s hard for my mum to understand certain things, and there are certain things she doesn’t know, because I didn’t tell her.

“You need someone to turn to at times, and you can’t turn to women in certain situations, so you’ve got to learn yourself. I got lucky with certain situations, but I’ve taught myself, and I wouldn’t want it any differently.”

Jamie Vardy’s rise from relative obscurity to England international, the Premier League’s second top scorer last season and title-winner with Leicester City was a story that touched many, but it carried a particular resonance for Gray. It was only four years ago that they were playing against each other in the Conference Premier, when Gray’s Luton Town beat Vardy’s Fleetwood Town 2-0. Gray scored, Vardy did not, but Fleetwood had already been promoted as champions, the start of the now England forward’s dramatic ascent, and Luton were beaten in the play-off final by York City at Wembley.

“To go from that to playing for England and winning the League with Leicester, it’s scary, but it’s been proven numerous times now that anything can happen,” Gray said. “It’s the same with Charlie Austin and Danny Ings. If people want to doubt and question you, then so be it. But it can happen, and they soon shut their mouths.”

It was Ings whom Gray replaced at Burnley last year, when he arrived at Turf Moor for a club-record £6 million after an impressive season at Brentford following his move from Luton. Gray hit it off immediately with strike partner Sam Vokes, one of Wales’s heroes at this summer’s Euros, and if the pair can go some way to replicating the 38 goals they plundered in the Championship last season, Burnley should stay up.

It may be a similar story at Middlesbrough, where manager Aitor Karanka has invested faith in Jordan Rhodes and former Manchester City striker Álvaro Negredo, signed on loan from Valencia, to provide the goals to keep them in the Premier League. Burnley and Middlesbrough would certainly appear a better bet to achieve that than managerless Hull City, who are beset by problems on and off the field.

That, of course, is something Gray knows plenty about.

‘When you’re on the bench in non– league, it’s hard to see light at the end of the tunnel. But if your dream dies, then you die’