Model pro who’s out for Cup glory
Fashion shoots and his toned torso made Seddon a TV star. . . tonight he’s back on the box with Salford
GARETH Seddon was sitting on the sofa with his girlfriend on a lazy Sunday afternoon when a withheld number appeared on his mobile.
Assuming it was a sales call he considered ignoring it but, wearily, the veteran striker answered.
‘It was someone claiming to be Gary Neville,’ he recalls.
‘I thought, “Yeah, good one, who’s this?” Slowly, you recognise the voice. I turned to Mellissa, “S***! It’s Gary Neville!”. I got all nervous. He asked if I’d be interested in signing for Salford.’
Seddon, who was forced to quit professional football at 25 because of illness, before recovering and playing with Jamie Vardy at one point, adds: ‘Gary sold me the family journey he envisages for the club and said he wanted me to score the goals to win the league.
‘That Sunday was the start of this incredible ride.’
Now, 18 months on, the part-time model is a star man for Salford City, the club owned by new Valencia boss Neville, his brother, Phil, and their former Manchester United team-mates Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt.
The 35-year-old was their 31-goal top scorer last season as they won promotion to the Northern Premier League, three divisions below the Football League.
Tonight, they take on League Two Hartlepool for a place in the FA Cup Third Round in front of 1,400 at their Moor Lane home.
The tie is live on BBC, the same broadcaster which followed Seddon during the making of the brilliant documentary ‘ The Class of ’92: Out of Their League’.
‘I was worried how I’d come across. What with the football and modelling, people might have thought I was a bit of a t**,’ smiles the former amateur boxer, who won 22 of 23 bouts at £100 a fight, all the while keeping it secret from his first club Bury.
‘I don’t take myself too seriously and the reaction was brilliant. Walking through Manchester the other day some builders shouted, “Sedders, can we get a picture?”
‘My missus cringes and says, “Why is anyone bothered about you? You’re a goon”. She’s right, I’m just a goofy lad from Burnley.’
We meet in Seddon’s home town of Ramsbottom at the foot of the Pennines in The Mouse Trap, the cafe he and Mellissa took ownership of this week.
Mellissa protests when Gareth removes his top for our photographer, worried it will offend their customers. But within seconds, a pair of elderly Lancashire ladies have put aside their lunch and are moving in for a closer look.
His toned, tattooed torso, however, was not always in such jaw-dropping shape.
In 2004, Seddon was devastated when illness ravaged his body.
‘I went to Thailand to help build an orphanage during close season at Bury and caught jungle fever. I was very ill,’ he explains.
‘I spent 13 weeks in hospital and it kept coming back over the next couple of years, my hands and knees knees would would swell up—up — it was scary. It was my immune system, something called Spondyloarthritis.
‘My body was attacking itself. I was having tests for AIDS, leukaemia, bone cancer. I was top scorer and had to quit in my prime. I lost a lot of weight.
‘I was back living with my parents and working in a factory on a boiler production line. I was thinking, “Where has my life gone?” But I had a determination, probably because I’m useless at everything else, that once I was healthy I was going to work my plums off to get back playing.’
And that he did. More than 100 goals followed — as well as two England C caps — during spells at Kettering, Fleetwood, Hyde, Halifax, Chester and, since Neville’s phone call, Salford. It was at Conference side Fleetwood where Seddon met Vardy (left), the now Leicester forward who last weekend set a new record of scoring in 11 straight Premier League matches.
‘When he first came I didn’t think he was good enough,’ admits Seddon. ‘How wrong was I?
‘Every time he went through on goal you just turned and went back to the centre spot.
‘I would win it in the air and he would score — I looked brilliant!’
While Vardy has climbed four divisions, Seddon dropped that same number when he left Chester for Salford. So is there any chance of Neville taking him to Spain?
‘He knows I get goals — I can be c**p for 90 minutes and nick the winner,’ laughs Seddon, who is hoping to return from a knee injury against Hartlepool. ‘But Gary will be brilliant. His passion and knowledge is so impressive.’
Seddon, though, hopes that Neville fares better than he did during his sole dalliance with management at Salford.
‘We were arguing between ourselves and Gary came in at halftime,’ he remembers. ‘We were getting beat 2-0 and ended up losing 4-0 — so he wasn’t exactly a tactical genius!
‘In fairness, we were down to nine men. But the owners have been brilliant. Gary travelled four hours to Grantham to watch us for 40 minutes. He wants it to be about family and community and, even if we got in the Football League, they would see it as a failure if the club lost its soul.’
One point of contention during the documentary was when Seddon told Neville he would be missing a game to model in Germany.
‘I love the club but in five years’ time they’re not going to call and say, “Hi Gaz, are you struggling for money? We’ll put some in your account”,’ says Seddon, who has a five-year-old daughter, Millie.
‘I spoke to Gary in private and explained I could not turn down £5,000 for me and my family. He understood.’
So how did Seddon’s ‘thousandyard stare’ — as he quipped in the show — and career in modelling come about? He says: ‘An agency scout in the Trafford Centre once said I had a “lovely face”. I said, “What you on about? I look like Jim Carrey” — but they gave me a deal.’
Given his football background, it was a contract that soon took him to Barcelona to film an advert.
‘It was amazing, a commercial for Nike with Lionel Messi and Gerard Pique,’ says Seddon, who once played in a team with Duncan Ferguson and Paul Gascoigne during a trial at Everton.
‘I had to bend a free-kick into the top corner — the Barca lads were stepping up and doing it first time. I was shocking, it added an extra day on the shoot!’ Other jobs included acting as body double for Giggs and the Manchester United fan admits he still gets star-struck around the Class of ’92.
‘That’s why I jumped at the chance — I thought I can drop a few leagues and make a difference and play for my idols,’ he says.
‘I scored 31 last season, including an over-head kick! At 35? I nearly slipped a disc! I never expected it to go this well and it could get even better. Just imagine if we beat Hartlepool and are going into the hat with Man United? That is everyone’s dream.’