How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography (7 page)

9

A New Thrill

GAMBLING meant nothing to me until I moved to Manchester. It was something that other people did.

Sure, my Dad liked a punt now and again, but I paid no heed. We didn’t have a family bet on the Grand National or go to the races or anything like that.

My addiction started innocently, just a few short weeks after I moved across the water. It was another lazy afternoon in the digs and Colin McKee announced that he was going to the bookies, the Ladbrokes at the end of our road. With nothing else better to do, I tagged along. What harm?

It was my first time in a betting shop. I remember the experience vividly.

Colin opens the door to an alien world. Instantly, I’m struck by the hum of activity, the maze of screens. Some showing horse races. Others displaying odds. Another for the greyhound racing.

The walls are covered in newspapers that are packed with colours, and names, and words that appear to be make sense to everyone but me. I follow the lead of people who look like they know what they are doing, and stare at the form, trying to compute the lingo. Horses with bolded abbreviations after their name. Jockeys with numbers in brackets next to them. They all stand for something. I just don’t know what.

Every couple of minutes, a scramble begins for pens and dockets, followed by a rush to the counter as a faceless man announces over an intercom that a race is about to start. Another faceless man commentates.

As the race unfolds, the men stand watching, cigarettes hanging from the corner of their mouths, talking to nobody in particular. Most curse their bad luck, condemn a jockey, throw crumpled dockets aside and march to a different corner of the shop. To examine another race, to unravel another code.

I follow Colin’s lead and start small. There is no other way. We are apprentice footballers earning just £46 a week, after all. I join the procession, study the form, read the newspaper verdict and draw my own conclusion.

I take the slip of paper, scribble down a £1 win bet and walk to the counter. I join the group of eyes trained on the screen, and mutter under my breath as another horse is called the winner.

I lose money, but don’t care. The thrill is worth it. I bet on the next race. £2 win this time. I feel a rush of adrenaline when it comes into shot, and the commentator calls its name.

It’s going well, but another horse is going better. Foiled again, but it doesn’t matter. I was close, and I want that rush of excitement again. There’s another race, another chance.

This time, I’ll get it right.

The next day, I returned on my own. And the day after, and the day after that, until the days that stand out are the ones where I didn’t go.

My only break from the routine was the location. At the other end of the street there was another bookies, a Mickey Dines shop. I alternated between the two, and devoured information about horse racing form, quickly learning the slang and what the abbreviations stood for. CD beside a horse that had won over the same course and distance. BL next to a horse that wears blinkers. That kind of thing. In particular, I focused on the trainers and the jockeys and developed my own favourites.

As apprentices, we were training twice most days, finishing up around 4pm. For me, that meant a sprint to the bookies to catch as many races as possible. When the evenings were longer, the racing might go on until 9pm some nights. Winter was tougher; at best, I might be able to get an hour in. Eight or nine races perhaps. I always looked forward to the changing of the seasons.

Occasionally, I had company. Colin would still come in, but wouldn’t stay as long. Darren Ferguson and Russell Beardsmore popped in the odd day too.

But, in time, I became pally with the regulars. After I made my Manchester United debut, they knew who I was, but nobody passed that much comment. We were part of a different club.

At the Cliff, my gambling habit was common knowledge, but nobody expressed any concern. Instead, it gave me a handy little earner.

On Wednesdays, when the football coupons for the weekend were printed, I always used to stick a few in my pocket and bring them into training. For no particular reason at first, just to study them, maybe chat to a few of the other lads about the games.

The coaching staff liked a punt, and had established syndicates who would do the coupons every weekend. Eric Harrison ran one. Jim Ryan, Brian Kidd and Pop Robson went in together. The physios, too. My habit saved them the hassle of going into the shop themselves.

We had a half day every Friday, but I would wait around while the staff sat upstairs, mulling over the possibilities. Eventually, someone would call me and hand over the completed coupons and the money. Then, it was my responsibility. I’d go to the bookies, place the bets, and collect any winnings ahead of the Monday morning, although sometimes if I looked at the selections and reckoned they had no chance, I’d pocket the money and pray they didn’t come up. A risky strategy, but I was never caught out.

I’d never have dreamt of doing that with one person’s coupon though. When Alex Ferguson got involved, and employed me as a runner, I felt extra pressure. He would generally stake £50 on his coupon, more than my week’s wages, and I always had a special interest in his selections. If he came up trumps, I would deliver the prize to his office, and receive a healthy tip. I remember dropping almost £400 into him one Monday morning, and walking out with a crisp £50 note in my pocket.

The other syndicates were good to me as well. I could expect anything from £30 to £40 when they won – enough to keep me going in the bookies for another few days.

I should stress that my own strike rate was poor. It wasn’t uncommon for me to get paid on Thursday, and find myself skint by Friday evening. After that, it would be a case of scraping enough money around for a couple of placepots.

A placepot is when you pick a horse in a number of selected races over the course of a day and, if they all finish in the first two, three or four depending on the size of field or type of race, you collect a portion of the overall dividend. It was the ideal bet to keep your interest going through a day if you were short of cash.

For a larger stake, it’s possible to pick a couple of horses in each race and increase the chances, but I rarely had that luxury in my Manchester United days. Some Mondays or Tuesdays, I could be down to my last £1 or £2. In the ‘A’ team, we received a £6 bonus for every win. In my mind, £6 meant six placepots. That was my currency.

I did have the occasional lucky afternoon in Manchester. A few times I managed to walk out of a shop with a couple of hundred quid in my pocket. The problem was that I would give it all back in the next couple of days.

As much as I became aware of horses and jockeys, I really didn’t have a rational approach. Professional gamblers might only have one bet on a given day, something they would channel all their energies and funds into. That approach didn’t appeal to me. I liked to have a bet on every race. Before one race was over, I was already glancing at my options for the next. On really busy afternoons, with races going off every couple of minutes, my pockets would be stuffed with live dockets. My bedroom floor used to be covered with the losing ones.

The seeds of an addiction were sown but I was oblivious. I earned small money, so I didn’t have anything to lose. When I moved onto my £250 a week contract at Manchester United, I was able to add an extra zero to my minimum bet. But I was a modest punter compared to the majority of the regulars. My flippant attitude to betting was my trademark. Frittering money away without a care in the world. If I was rich, I would have been dangerous.

Then, Newcastle happened. I was rich.

Suddenly, there were no boundaries. No fear of scraping around for loose change when Monday and Tuesday came around. I was on £1,200 a week and had also collected a six figure signing-on fee. Jackpot.

One of my first priorities in Newcastle was to find a bookies close to my hotel. Sure enough, I found a Ladbrokes two minutes drive away on Gosforth High Street. They did well out of me.

I made £100 my standard bet, and turned over cash with abandon. I could win £500 with the click of a finger, and lose it just as quickly.

As a first-team regular, I had more time to play with. Double sessions were rare. So I’d be in the hotel by 1pm, with a free afternoon ahead. The older fellas were married with kids and had other responsibilities; the younger local lads that were my drinking buddies in the evening generally had mates or girlfriends to hang out with.

Gambling was my hobby, and my new club were also cool with that. Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott were both interested in horses and often shared information. Terry was particularly well connected.

The only person who didn’t know was Mum. I was still ringing home most days, chatting about what I was up to. But I neglected to mention my visits to the turf accountants. I knew she wouldn’t approve, and didn’t want a lecture. I was my own man, doing my own thing.

The hotel was right next to Newcastle racecourse, and when there was a meeting on I did go in, but days at the races didn’t excite me in the way that a bookies did. I found it restrictive. I do remember going into the track one afternoon with the girl from reception, taking the time to just concentrate on the six races at Newcastle, and coming out with full pockets. I preferred Ladbrokes, though. The regularity of a race going off every couple of minutes rather than having to wait half an hour for another chance.

Just like in Manchester, I became acquainted with the regulars. As a first-team player, my presence probably turned a few more heads, but I was so focused on betting on everything and anything that the attention brushed off me. When they came up for a chat, I diverted the small talk to the horses, especially as the other players at the club weren’t that big into nags. Alan Neilson, who left for Southampton six months after my arrival, was fond of a bet although he didn’t want his wife to know. He was probably the only one aware of the extent to which my gambling was escalating.

Leaving the hotel was the catalyst which brought things to another level. I was in no rush to depart Room 131, but it was inevitable. In May, 1995, as the season drew to a close, I bought a four-bedroom house. I didn’t stray too far; just five minutes drive away, so I was able to stay punting in Ladbrokes. Shay Trainor came up from Manchester to do the paperwork. He was 15 years older than me, a confident talker and therefore the right man to complete the deal. I paid £140,000 to become a homeowner for the first time, and Shay was my first tenant. He was an area manager in a double glazing company and was appointed to the Newcastle branch of that firm. It suited us both perfectly.

How did the house have an adverse effect on my betting? Simple. One afternoon in Ladbrokes, a chap I recognised as a serious gambler casually asked me why I bothered with the hassle of coming into the shop when I could do my betting over the phone.

I was so naive that I had no idea you could gamble that way, and was fascinated by the prospect. He recommended a local bookie, named Mickey Arnott, and said that I should open an account with him.

His argument made sense. So, I took the number, called Mickey and set the wheels in motion. Then, I moved my betting operation to the living room. I might pop into the bookies now and again for a change of scenery, but I did my serious punting from the couch. It was so easy.

No longer was I concerned about rushing to the counter, getting stuck in queues, finding myself in discussions from which I couldn’t escape, or fiddling around in my pocket for a lost docket. With Shay out at work during the day, I resided in a blissful kind of solitary confinement.

Crucially, I didn’t need to worry about cash. There’s nothing worse than the moment in a bookies when you realise there’s no money left in the wallet, meaning a trip to the bank and a loss of valuable punting time.

At home, it was a different story. I had a tab, and was betting with invisible money from the comfort of my own armchair. I laughed at how it had taken me so long to find this stress-free existence. All I had to do was dial a number, enquire about the odds, and put on as much I wanted.

What could possibly go wrong?

10

Black Friday

ON Sunday, October 29, 1995, I should have been the happiest man in the world.

I was on top of my game, top of the league, and received the ultimate compliment from two of the people I respected most in football.

We were on the way back from a clash with Spurs at White Hart Lane, a game that finished 1-1, making it our first draw from 11 starts that season. Aside from a loss at Southampton, we had won the rest with a swagger. Newcastle United were the talk of the country.

Kevin Keegan liked to have a glass of wine and wander down towards the back of the bus on our journeys home. On this occasion, he sat next to Peter Beardsley, and addressed him while pointing a finger in my direction.

“That lad there could just be the best player in the country at this time,” he said.

“I wouldn’t disagree,” Pedro replied.

I’ll never forget those words because of the timing.

To everyone else, I was a rising star with everything going for me. And I was overjoyed by the praise from the boss and a top senior pro.

But they didn’t know the full picture. I was keeping a secret from everybody on that bus. One that would eventually catch up with me.

The truth was that I had produced a man of the match display at White Hart Lane after a destructive 48 hours of gambling that had plunged me into serious debt.

I had blown £62,000. Effectively, a year’s wages. The vast majority of the losses had been incurred on Friday, October 27, 1995. A date etched forever in my memory as Black Friday. The day where I completely lost the plot.

Before telling the story of Black Friday, I need to place it in the context of my life at that point. I had grown into one of Mickey Arnott’s most prized customers. We had established a strong bookmaker-client relationship. Every day, I was on the phone to Mickey, or the couple of staff he had working the phones in his small office. Then, at fortnightly periods, he would visit my house to settle our balance and reset the tab to zero.

If you had asked me before I met him to draw a picture of what a bookmaker looked like, I’m pretty sure that my sketch would have resembled Mickey. He was a small fella, with a bald head and a moustache. A big Newcastle fan.

Sometimes, when he knocked on my door, Mickey had cash to drop off. My favourite bet was a £500 punt on four horses over the course of the afternoon. I’d split them up into four £100 trebles and a £100 accumulator. If one of those came off, Mickey might have £6,000 or £7,000 for me. They were the rare good days. Generally, though, I was the one paying up. Still, before Black Friday, I’d never lost more than £10,000 in one day.

That week could easily have worked out very differently. Two days before Black Friday, I nearly won over £40,000 on betting on a football match. Not just any football match. It was a game that I was very much a part of; a League Cup tie away to Stoke.

I’d rarely bet on games in which I was involved. I’d won a few quid on the third-last game of the previous season, backing myself to score first against Tottenham. Alan Neilson owed me £30 for some tickets so I told him to stick it on me at 8/1. Seven minutes into the game, an accurate diving header made it a winning docket.

By and large, I tried to stay away from punting on Newcastle matches. That was complicated territory, although I wasn’t aware of any rules forbidding it – aside from the obvious, which was backing us to lose, something I never would have even contemplated. I’d allow myself the odd first goalscorer bet now and again, but that was about it.

The genesis of my Stoke bet was an afternoon earlier in the week when, in search of a bit of cash in hand, I went to the bookies. Once more, I was influenced by a discussion with a betting shop regular. I really shouldn’t have listened to those guys.

He pointed out that, under Keegan, we commonly won games 2-0, 2-1, 3-0 or 3-1. Betting on those outcomes were profitable for him. I filed the advice away in my head.

We travelled to Stoke on the morning of the game and checked into a hotel for the afternoon to get a few hours sleep. I roomed with David Ginola and while he conked out, I sat up in the bed, with the Racing Post opened in front of me, glued to the hotel phone. I’d call Mickey to place a bet, and then dial one of the commentary lines to listen. The first three horses in my daily £500 punt came up. The fourth narrowly lost out in a photo finish. Close. Nevertheless, I was up a couple of grand, and remembered the words of the betting shop sage.

Pedro hadn’t scored for a few games, so I stuck £500 on him to score first at 6/1. I then placed four £500 doubles, with Pedro to score first paired with final scorelines of 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, and 3-1.

I told nobody about my investment, although I must have raised eyebrows with an afternoon phone bill of £198. I had to borrow cash from Les Ferdinand to settle it.

Stoke were near the top of Division One, and there was a big crowd in the old Victoria Ground that night. The atmosphere was tense. A fabricated rumour went around that Newcastle fans had stabbed a little girl, and a section of home fans went on the rampage in the streets outside. We heard afterwards that the atmosphere around the ground was poisonous.

On the pitch, it was plain sailing. We took an early lead, courtesy of none other than Peter Beardsley, who must have wondered why I was so excited. Everything was going to plan. Pedro got another and, early in the second half, I set up Big Les for a third.

We were cruising, and I was running around the pitch calculating my winnings. When our defence switched off, and their main striker, Paul Peschisolido, raced through on goal, I quickly calculated that the odds for 3-1 were better, and willed him to score but he tried a lob and failed miserably.

Still, I was well on course for a win of around £50,000 as the game entered the final five minutes. Then, a remarkable thing happened. Darren Peacock ventured forward. Darren averaged a goal a season in his four years at Newcastle. When a loose ball fell in Darren’s direction, I reckoned it was a good thing. Wrong. 4-0. The other lads raced to celebrate a collector’s item. I couldn’t bring myself to join in. I was up £3,000 from the first scorer bet, but it was scant consolation for what could have been.

I sat in silence on the way home with one thought dominating my mind. Should I have told the lads after the third goal? We were a close bunch, and comfortably into the next round. I really believe that if I’d asked, they would have taken the foot off the pedal. But to ask would be to confess, and to draw attention, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

I brooded over my near miss on the Thursday, and dabbled in a few bets without getting too stuck in. By the Friday, however, I was back to myself and in the usual routine. Training, showered, changed, fed, and in situ on the couch, with the Racing Post in tow, by 2pm.

It was an unremarkable day’s racing. A moderate flat card at Newmarket, and jumps racing at Bangor and Wetherby. My first bet, in the 2.05 at Newmarket, was £1,000 on a horse called Quandary from the all-conquering Henry Cecil stable. He won like a favourite should, but there was no time to dwell on it.

I picked up the phone to Mickey’s office and had a punt on the 2.10 at Wetherby. No joy. The 2.20 at Bangor. Loser. Then it was time for Newmarket again, and the sequence continued. I suffered a bout of seconditis. When the odds were favourable, I appreciated a good each-way bet. But on this afternoon, I was betting on the nose, and chasing losses. I upped the stakes to £4,000 a race and got one up. Then stuck another £4,000 on the next and lost it. From then, it was £4,000 on everything.

I wasn’t keeping record of how I was doing – that was the danger of betting with invisible money – but I knew I was having a nightmare when the television informed me that we had reached the last race of the day, the 4.40 at Bangor, a National Hunt flat race for horses with little or no racecourse experience. In other words, a shot in the dark unless you were in the know.

Just two and a half hours after a relatively sensible bet on a good thing at Newmarket, I was sticking £4,000 on a 12/1 shot called Dream Ride who was making his debut. He was from a good yard, but I had no evidence to suggest he was anything better than his odds suggested. It was just a hunch. I wasn’t in the know.

Dream Ride finished 10th, some 40 lengths behind the winner. In vain, I had a few blind stabs on the greyhounds until they finished up for the day and there was nothing left to have a bet on. I called Mickey.

“What’s the damage?”

“You lost £47,000 today.”

“Oh...”

I pretended it wasn’t a problem, and put down the phone. But I knew it was a problem. I didn’t have £47,000. Not even close.

But I don’t think I really appreciated the scale of it.

My instinctive ability to block out negative thoughts kicked in. Did I cry? No. Did I throw stuff around the house in anger? No. I had my own way of dealing with things, which was to say nothing and try and forget about it. Put up the shutters. Delay and deny. Maybe it would have been different if I had physically handed over that amount of money but, at that stage, it was just a ledger entry in Mickey’s office.

I lay in bed that night restless, but only because I was thinking about how to win some of my money back the next day.

We were travelling to London at lunchtime so I was up and about early, studying the form. I called the hotline to Mickey’s again, and laid down a variety of bets on the horses and football. There was no mention of the day before. My bets were accepted, no questions asked. I can understand why they were so happy to take them. I lost another £15,000.

On Sunday, a degree of realisation briefly set in. With no racing in England, I took a break from the betting and concentrated on the game. I reset my mind when I crossed the white line, and gave the Spurs defence a few problems that afternoon. It was only after I got home from London that I really began to appreciate my own difficulties.

I called a halt to the phone betting, although I continued to have plenty of discussions with Mickey. It followed a pattern. He would ask where his money was. I would try to fob him off. When I scraped together a few quid, I’d send it his way, but it was a ticking timebomb. “I’ll get you the money,” I’d say to Mickey, “I’ve got money coming.” He was under the impression that a famous Premier League footballer automatically had thousands in the bank. Not so.

I should have known that, in Newcastle, everybody eventually knows everybody’s business. Around a month later, Terry McDermott cornered me and said he’d heard that I owed somebody a lot of money. I denied it. Pride prevented me from telling the truth. But I didn’t have a solution. Instead, I went cash betting in the bookies again. I needed my fix and was hoping for a miracle that might somehow wipe the debt.

Terry approached me at training again, and repeated the same question. My answer was the same. “No way, Terry... not me.”

Over the winter, I was able to sort Mickey out with a few grand here and there, while promising I was good for the rest. The lie was less and less convincing. Towards the middle of January, I heard murmurs that The Sun knew the full story, and the whisper was confirmed when a reporter called to my house to ask about Black Friday and said they were running a piece the following day. I refused to comment, but had the door open long enough for a photographer to pop out of nowhere and take a picture.

There were a few calls I had to make. I knew the press would be after Mum so I rang to prepare her for the storm. I said that I’d lost some money gambling, and that the papers were going to reveal the details. I heard a long sigh from the other end of the phone.

“How much?” she asked.

“A lot.”

“Thousands?”

“Yeah...”

“£10,000?”

“More...”

A pause.

“£20,000?”

“More...”

“£30,000?”

“No... £47,000.”

“Ack... son...”

My hunch was right though. The press started knocking on her door. And, when she didn’t answer, they started ringing where she worked – an old folk’s home. Classy.

Then, I rang the gaffer. He told me to drive to his house straight away. I’ll never forget how understanding he was about it. He let me stay and have some food while he rang Mickey and got it sorted.

My saving grace was that I was due a new contract because of my form, a £5,500 a week deal that would rise by £500 every season. The five-fold pay increase eased the burden. Keegan spoke to the club’s hierarchy and organised an advance on the signing-on fee. It was that straightforward. The one thing the gaffer was really annoyed about was that I hadn’t owned up to Terry. I could easily have avoided all the publicity; the club had the clout to sort it out. Now, it was too late.

The next morning, the story was splashed over the front page of The Sun, and all hell broke loose. A steady stream of journalists set up camp outside, and I had to run out to the car and reverse out the driveway quickly, ignoring their cries for a reaction. They followed me, but I knew the roads around fairly well so I managed to pull a few manoeuvres and throw them off the scent.

When I showed my face at Maiden Castle, the welcome was less sympathetic. The lads were pissing themselves. There was no arm around the shoulder; the unforgiving rules of the dressing room applied and, to be absolutely honest, I was glad of the banter. They seemed to be more amused by the fact that I’d backed a horse called Dream Ride.

The club never ordered me to stop gambling. There was no mention of going to Gamblers Anonymous or anything like that. I wouldn’t have admitted weakness anyway. I was blissfully in denial and didn’t really believe I had a problem. The gaffer said they wanted to treat me like an adult, so they left me be and that suited just perfectly.

I did stop punting though. Not because I wanted to; the reason was that I had nowhere to go. While the Black Friday story was fresh in people’s memories, turning up in a betting shop was a no-no. The newspapers would have been all over it.

Lying low was the only option. I did a few interviews, insisting that I had learned from my experience and was ready to put it behind me. But, I was going through the motions, drawing on my media training and saying all the right things.