THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
A psychology degree is the ideal partner to help Foster in his football journey
HE has spent half his life in the ruthless struggle that is professional football and if Richard Foster has learned lessons, he has also taken the blows. He has the bandages to prove it.
‘I wear strapping on my wrists,’ he says in the quiet corner of an Inverness café. ‘It is a representation of my son and my wife. When the anger rises, I snap the strapping and say: “What would my wife and son want me to do?”
‘That brings me back to myself. I found it has helped. I don’t feel that I am going to do something that I am not coming back from.’
Foster, at 34, has won a title with Rangers, a League Cup for Ross County and played Champions League football. His reflections of 17 years at the elite level, though, range far from tackles made and goals scored.
He is frank about his clash on the park with Danny Swanson, his fall-outs with managers such as Tommy Wright, who he will lock horns against tomorrow when County travel to St Johnstone, and Jimmy Calderwood — but he is insightful on the tensions of the game, the demands of a winning personality and the difficulties of managing the mind ‘when the redness descends’.
Foster is in the final year of a six-year psychology degree course at the Open University. He also spends a day a week with the son of his estranged partner. And he is married to the singer Amy Macdonald. They live near Glasgow but Foster’s schedule and that of his wife means he is based near training in Dingwall while she pursues her career.
‘There are 99 positives to the marriage and that one negative,’ he says. ‘But we catch more than a glimpse of each other. It is busy, though.’ It is a schedule that suits his restless mind.
The lessons in psychology, too, have been life-altering. ‘I always have had a short fuse. It is one of the reasons that I decided to study psychology. My wife always says: “You need to take a breath and think”. But when the red mist descends there is no thought process. It just (snaps fingers) happens. I do not have prolonged anger or resentment. As soon as it’s finished on the pitch and I walk into the tunnel, it is gone. But, in that moment, there is nothing in my brain saying: “Don’t do that. This is stupid”.’
The football arena is a fertile ground for the study of how the rational brain goes into a 50-50 tackle with reason and comes out needing treatment. It is a place where the strongest survive, where players are subject to the whims and opinions of one individual, where merciless scrutiny can be conducted in 90 minutes of unrelenting bile from an individual supporter or the mass of fans.
‘I have to ask a question for a survey in my final year,’ he says of his degree course. ‘It may be about the incidence of anxiety and depression in the pro footballer. I believe it will be of a higher rate that in the general population.’
He shares with so many elite sportsmen the capacity for being as aggressive as a Tasmanian devil with toothache on the pitch while being as relaxed as the Dalai Lama on Valium off it.
He never shies away from discussing incidents that have caused him emotional and professional pain, but he is sharp and makes many of his points with a gentle humour.
‘We always have a police briefing as players. Don’t incite the crowd. Don’t leave the field of play. I sometimes feel they should talk to the supporters,’ he says. ‘They are trying to rile you, put you off your game. That’s fine when it is just banter but there are times when it flips over and it is personal and aggressive.’
He tells how his wife was called “a w***e” at a recent match. ‘Where does that sort of misogyny come from?’ he asks, not expecting a reply. He does seek answers in his own life.
‘Everyone comes with their own baggage,’ he says. ‘It is why psychology is so interesting. I have experienced things like having a bad day and having a manager on your case.
‘I have seen guys having team-mates by their throats in the dressing room, though that doesn’t happen so much now.
His immersion in psychology has taken a further turn. ‘The forensic side interests me,’ he adds. ‘Now, it would be tough to pursue that, going into prisons, talking to criminals.
‘You have to understand they are people. You can’t judge, you have to ask what has led them to this point in their life.’
The verdict of Foster on himself has been sometimes severe. ‘I was obnoxious as a young player,’ he says. ‘I know, too, that I have done things I should not have.’
The fight with ex-St Johnstone team-mate Swanson on the pitch at Hamilton Academical in April, 2017, falls into that category. ‘We are very similar,’ he says of Swanson. ‘We want to win. I had a go at him and he had a go at me back and 999 times out of 1,000 that would have been that. But right away it was half-time and we came together.’
He remembers the subsequent scene in the dressing room.
‘Everybody goes out for the second half. Me and Danny are sitting with the kitman, in case anything kicks off again. It was quiet for a couple of minutes then Danny got up, came over, shook my hand and that was enough to end it. I don’t hold any ill-will,’ adds Foster. He is similarly at ease over the fracture with St Johnstone after an argument with Wright, the Saints boss, that later involved Amy springing to her husband’s defence on radio and then having a social media exchange with the Northern Irishman.
He says: ‘Amy has a platform and we knew she was going to be asked about it. I told her just to be honest. She was. We played them last month and after the game I went into the St Johnstone dressing room shook his hand and wished him all the best.
‘He texted me later, saying for all the best for the season.’
He is similarly open about disagreements with Calderwood when both were at Aberdeen.
‘That was training-ground stuff
and somebody must have leaked it,’ he says. ‘I spoke out of turn and he put me in my place. And that was that.’
His drive comes from a need to win. ‘If I was playing you at cards now, I would be desperate to beat you,’ he says.
His two spells at Rangers included the title win in 2011. ‘How guys like Lee McCulloch, Kenny Miller, Steven Naismith and Steven Whittaker dealt with pressure was an eye-opener.
‘That was a will to win that I had never experienced before. It was really a need to win because of what Celtic were doing.’
He adds: ‘I have picked up pieces from managers throughout my career.
‘Walter Smith was fascinating. I know it is a cliché but he had an aura, a way of commanding a room.
‘He could lose and he was scary, but most of the time he was laid back and got his point across. I never heard any player challenge him. That was a mark of respect.’
But the League Cup win for the Staggies in 2016 was a special moment.
‘We beat Celtic and Hibs to do it, so in terms of achievement for a club like County, that tops the lot,’ explains Foster. He has completed his A Licence and will look for a job in football after he retires. ‘That will happen when the body gives up or I stop being offered contracts,’ he says. His relationship with his eight-year-old son Oliver is central to his life and, perhaps, to his understanding of himself. ‘We play the PlayStation and once he celebrated in my face when he scored a goal,’ says Foster. ‘I told him he had to win and lose graciously. It is something I have learned.’ There was another moment of revelation when he was play-wrestling with his son the other week. ‘He was under me and he just struggled and struggled. He just wouldn’t give up,’ he says laughing. ‘There is an unspoken recognition the son may just have the traits of the father. With that, Foster puts on his jacket and walks into the Inverness rain to wrestle with life and his studies and earn an honourable victory with both.
It was quiet for a couple of minutes then Danny shook my hand and that was the end of it