Why his Tigers exit still rankles with Alex Bruce
DEFENDER LIFTS THE LID ON HIS ACRIMONIOUS KCOM DEPARTURE
Former Hull City defender Alex Bruce has told his side of the story on his acrimonious departure from Hull City three years ago. Bruce has announced his retirement from the game following a 20-year career which saw him represent the likes of City, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich Town and Wigan, as well as winning international caps for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Bruce’s departure from the KCOM Stadium was famously played out on Twitter back in May 2017, after he responded to an official club tweet confirming that his contract was not being renewed.
Since being released by City, Bruce has had spells at Wigan, Bury and most recently Kilmarnock before training with Crewe earlier this season, though any hopes of a deal at Gresty Road were nipped in the bud by the financial impact of coronavirus.
Bruce, speaking exclusively to the Mail, has revealed just how his departure from the KCOM Stadium came about and the role vicechairman Ehab Allam played in the event.
“The way it was handled by the club, I was really disappointed to be honest,” admitted Bruce, who was signed by then Tigers boss Steve Bruce, his father, in 2012.
“I felt that from my time at Hull I deserved a phone call from one of the hierarchy at the time to say thanks for everything.
“Looking back, I had a bad injury, I had a bone growth on the back of my heel and they had to butterfly my Achilles tendon to scrape the bone out, which was an injury I got playing for Hull – I got a kick on the back of my heel.
“A bone grew to about the size of a golf ball and I had to have it cut out not long after the play-off final against Sheffield Wednesday.
“At that time, my dad had fallen out with Ehab.
“He had a great relationship with Ehab’s father, Assem, he was great. Peter Chapman (then honorary president) was fantastic; I’d like to give him a special mention because these people were really good people around the club.
“When Ehab got sole charge of the club, everything changed for me.”
Bruce described how on the morning of his Achilles operation, Ehab had been in contact with his agent to tell him his career at the club was effectively over.
“I remember when I was going down for my operation, my dad had just left – I felt as if I’d done enough in my own right to deserve a little bit of respect,” he said.
“My agent rang me and said I’d just had a phone call or email from Ehab, and I was honestly expecting something along the lines of ‘he wishes you all the best with your operation today, and no matter what’s happened between your dad and I, you’ve still got a future here. Get yourself back fit and we’ll see where you’re at when you get over your injury’, kind of thing. It was the opposite.
“My agent said: ‘He knows you’re going for an operation, but when you get yourself back – you’re going to be out for between six to nine months, you can leave, you can go.’
“I thought, ‘that’s a really shocking message to receive in the morning I’m having a big operation.
“It still sticks in my throat to this day. I didn’t think I deserved that.”
Having picked up the injury playing for the
Tigers, and plotting a route back to full fitness with the prospect of almost a year out of the game, Bruce felt the only way to restart his career was by leaving East Yorkshire in favour of a move elsewhere, albeit in hindsight, he says, was against his better judgement.
“I got myself back fit and in the back of my mind I thought, well, I need to get out of here as quickly as I possibly can, which was difficult because who was going to take me after I’d been out for nine months with an Achilles injury?
“I needed time and looking back, maybe I should have stuck it out but I was desperate to leave.
“I left on loan to Wigan; I should have stayed at Hull looking back because I wasn’t fit, I hadn’t trained – the first day I was due to start training after my injury I was at Wigan.
“I wasn’t right, I needed a good two or three months training to get myself anywhere near back to being able to play, and to do that at a new club was tough.
“My loan period finished, I played about two games for Wigan.
“It was ‘are Hull going to have me back, what’s the situation, are they going to offer me another year’?
“Anybody else under the circumstances, maybe what I’ve done in my time at Hull, maybe they might have turned round and said ‘here’s a year contract, let’s see if you can get back playing’ – I felt as if I deserved that.”
Fast forward to May 24, 2017 – social media exploded when the club’s Twitter account confirmed his departure, only for Bruce to make a jovial reply which went viral.
Here, Bruce explains exactly how it really happened.
“To find out on social media that I was officially released, I remember doing my coaching badges in Belfast and one of the lads shouted over who was in the dugout;
‘Brucey, you’ve just been released from Hull’ and I genuinely didn’t know.
“That was exactly the situation,
I didn’t receive a phone call from anyone.
“I felt like I deserved a letter or a phone call at least, and the fact I didn’t get that, it was poor.
“People might say well,
‘well the writing was on the wall, you were allowed to go to Wigan on loan’ but because of the email or phone call my agent told me about on the morning of my operation, I just wanted to get out straight away.
“Looking back I shouldn’t have done, I should have stayed, got myself back fit at Hull, tried to get back into the team towards the end of the season and then you never know, I might have deserved a contract.
“It was just a mess, it was a mess and I felt as if I deserved better. Forget my surname, forget who the manager was, I felt off my own back that I deserved a bit better.”
Bruce was philosophical about his chances of a new deal given his injury, though he’s in little doubt that he could have been an asset to the club, as it struggled to recover from relegation from the Premier League and then ultimately its current resting place in League One.
“Listen, I’d have loved the manager to put his arm around me and say ‘listen Brucey, you’ve been a good servant, go and get your operation done, you’ll be given time to get yourself back fit’ – I was still only 30/31,” he said.
“Looking at how the club has gone over the last few years, I honestly believe I could have helped them, that’s the thing.
“I could have still been there until this day but unfortunately it didn’t materialise.
“What was a really great time, it ended on a sour note which was unfortunate.”
After the departure of Bruce Snr, Mike Phelan took charge before Marco Silva oversaw what proved to be the demise of Bruce Jnr, though there is no animosity towards the ex-city boss.
“I have to say, Mick Phelan was great – I was just going into rehab when he was in charge. He knew what the situation was.
“Mick left and Marco Silva came in and he was alright as well, he was as good as gold with me.
“I have to say, as soon as I came off the treatment table I was ready to go back into first team training, my first day I went out on loan to get myself out of the situation.”
Bruce admits to feeling sad about the way things have unravelled at the KCOM Stadium, following the departure of his father
“It really is sad, the people behind the scenes, Peter Chapman who was the link between my dad and the owners, put a lot of good work into the club.
“My dad and his coaching staff did a lot of good work, Keith Birch, Steve Agnew, Stephen Clemence, Mick Phelan, Gary Walsh, they all did good work and hard work.
“They had really good times. Assem Allam was great, he let my dad get on with his work. Everything was great and it wasn’t until the change at the top when everything just changed. Everything my dad did was questioned. Ultimately, it resulted in my dad
saying ‘do you know what, if you want to do it your way, on you go’.
“Stan Ternant, the chief scout at the time did great work in finding the likes of Andy Robertson, Harry Maguire – these lads, and then someone wants to change the whole structure of the place. It’s entitled because it’s their club – that’s the bottom line.
“I’ve seen things and heard things in the past where he’s come out and said ‘Steve was a great manager for the club and all the rest of it, however he was very expensive.’
“Look at the money they’ve recouped for the Harry Maguire’s, Andy Robertson, Sam Clucas, Robert Snodgrass, the list goes on.
“Even Jarrod Bowen was signed by my dad. They were still making money up a couple of seasons ago, he sold the lot and then there’s the parachute payments, and the payments from actually getting into the Premier League, so to hear he was expensive after all he did for that club was something that didn’t surprise me, but I thought it was a bit of a cheek.”
And now the boots are back on the shelf, what next for the former City man?
Working with agency SJM, Bruce is relishing the chance to pass on his advice to the younger generation coming through in what’s a difficult environment.
“I’m doing a bit of a mentor role, not like an agent and it was a proposition that was put to me and I thought it was time for something new, so why not have a crack at it.
“It’s been OK, I only started on Monday so this is my first week. It’s been different, it’s been an eye-opener to see how the other side works but it has been enjoyable.”
And as for management? “Yes,” says Bruce without a pause. “With the role I’ve got, I’m not signed in as an agent so there’s no conflict there, so if the right opportunity came along, I would never say never to it.
“It’s all about opportunities, I’ve done all my coaching badges and if I got the opportunity then it would be something I’d think about. But I’m appreciative of the role I’m in at the moment and if an opportunity came along further down the long then we’ll look at it.”
Hull City declined to comment on Alex Bruce’s interview.