The Man (Edward G. Robinson): ‘Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it? Making the wrong move at the right time.’
The Kid (Steve McQueen): ‘Is that what it’s all about?’
The Man: ‘Like life, I guess. You’re good, kid, but as long as I’m around you’re second best. You might as well learn to live with it.’
– The Cincinnati Kid
By the summer of 1987, I had played 263 games, scored 110 goals and spent six seasons with Gillingham in the third division, which seems a long time in hindsight but certainly didn’t feel that way at the time. The club was a big happy family and I was the favourite son; popular with the fans, I was always in the papers or on local TV and revelled in the role of smalltown hero. My experiences with Ireland, however, had broadened my horizons. When you’ve played in front of a capacity crowd at the Lenin Stadium, shared a dressing room with Liam Brady and flicked through the pages of a BMW catalogue, you suddenly begin to yearn for bigger and brighter things. And by the summer of ’87, it was time to move on.
My final season at Priestfield was easily my most successful. In May, I was voted Player of the Year after scoring five of the goals that beat Sunderland in an epic two-leg play-off. The win earned us another do-or-die game with Swindon, where the prize was promotion to the second division for the first time in Gillingham’s history. Had we achieved it, there was every chance I would have renewed my contract and stayed for another season, but we were edged out over three games, and after a short holiday in Marbella, I returned to London and signed for Millwall.
That the only other option was a move to Ipswich was surprising, given my performances that season. Maybe it was because It Will Be All Right On The Night was still showing reruns of my gift to Neville Southall, that the big clubs had all taken a look and kept their chequebooks in their pockets. I remember a chief scout at Chelsea explaining to me once that he had watched me at Gillingham. ‘I just couldn’t make up my mind about you. You were either very good or not very good – I just couldn’t decide.’ Inconsistency was the bane of my career until I moved to France. There was no such thing as an average performance with me; I was either brilliant or crap – there was no middle ground. One week it was: ‘Fuckin ’ell! Did you see Cascarino last night? He tore the arse out of them!’ And the next it was: ‘Who’s that big lazy fucker up front? He never moved!’ The reason, of course, for these erratic swings in form was my appalling diet and the fact that I didn’t look after myself. Like an old dog that only responds to his master’s boot, I needed to be whipped around the training ground and playing regularly to perform at my best. And when I did, I was close to unstoppable.
John Docherty, a 48-year-old Glaswegian, was the first manager I ever had who recognized this. On my first day at Millwall, he invited me into his office at the Den and offered me some cake and a glass of Coke.
‘Do you take a drink?’ he inquired.
‘Yeah, from time to time,’ I said.
‘You do know you have to be fit to drink?’
‘How do you mean, John?’
‘What I mean is that if you continue drinking and you’re not a good athlete, you won’t be playing for me.’
‘Oh . . . yeah . . . right.’
And then he said: ‘Now enjoy the cake, because it’s the last you’ll be having while I’m in charge. I’m going to whip your arse into shape.’ And when pre-season training began, he was as good as his word.
Millwall invested hugely that summer in the push for promotion to Division One. After forking out £225,000 for me, they signed George Lawrence from Southampton for £160,000, Kevin O’Callaghan from Portsmouth for £85,000 and Steve Wood from Reading for £80,000. That I was easily the biggest signing cut no ice with Teddy Sheringham, who had struck me as a right cold fish in training and who started ordering me around in our opening game of the season at Middlesborough.
Teddy was four years younger than me and had been at the club for years, but for ninety minutes it was as if I was his understudy.
‘Go there!’
‘Do this!’
‘Chase back!’
‘Hold on!’
I thought, ‘Wait a fucking minute! I’m the 25-year-old! I’m the one they’ve paid all the money for! This never happened at Gillingham!’ But I soon learned that this was Teddy’s way. He had to be boss.
Our second game together was on a hot and humid August afternoon at the Den against Barnsley, when I headed home a Terry Hurlock cross, six minutes after the interval, to score my first goal for my new club. Five minutes later, Teddy seized upon a parried clearance from the box to put us 2–0 in front. When we ended the game with a notch each on our belts, the first blows in our personal, season-long battle for supremacy had been struck. And then the cheers turned to jeers when we didn’t score again for a month.
Millwall was the hardest club in the country when you weren’t playing well and its supporters could be absolutely vicious but again, it was Teddy who showed the way. I remember once during the drought, following him down the tunnel when a ‘fan’ suggested he wasn’t trying hard enough. Or to use his exact words: ‘Oi! Sheringham! Get that fucking piano off your back!’ Teddy carried on as if nothing had happened. He didn’t even blink. I tried to present the same impregnable sheen when the venom was directed at me but because mine was fake, the bastards always got to me. Teddy genuinely never let it bother him. He could play, and he knew he could play, and no loudmouth on the terraces was ever going to convince him otherwise. Teddy is the only player I know who could miss three one-on-ones and still try to chip the goalkeeper! The crowd could be absolutely baying for his blood but he would just carry on. He had more self-belief and confidence than any player I’d ever known. And after a while his confidence began to rub off on me . . .
The drought lasted until the end of September when we both scored in the 2–0 defeat of West Bromwich Albion. A month later the goal tally was 6–4 in his favour. November belonged to me (7–1); December was his (5–3); and it was tit for tat until the last game of the season. The rivalry was bad news for the rest of the division. Teams were unable to cope with our lethal blend of power and skill and hated playing against us. With every game, the bond between us grew. Teddy is a policeman’s son and it shows occasionally in his mannerisms. Sometimes, you’ll bounce something off him, expecting an immediate response and he’ll just look at you, blank.
‘Ted? Ted? Please say something Ted.’
He isn’t a joker and can seem a bit distant when you meet him first but he likes a good time. I have always admired him as a player and a friend.
If the more rigorous training regime and the confidence gleaned from Teddy were the two critical factors in my successful début for Millwall, the third was undoubtedly my life-long addiction to a very different game. From the moment I watched my grandfather upend the kitchen table, I have always been fascinated by cards. I could play a three-card break before I could read or write. Stud? American? Five card? Omaha? Draw? For Tony Cascarino read the Cincinnati Kid. Although I had always played for money, it wasn’t until I became a professional footballer that the stakes were raised.
It started when a team mate at Gillingham introduced me to a car dealer called Lucky Jim and I was invited to join a card school that convened in a social club in Sparrows Lane, which was just across the road from the Charlton training ground. Every day from Monday to Friday, I’d stash a grand in my tracksuit pocket after training and drive to Sparrows Lane. The games started at two and went on for as long as there was money on the table, sometimes finishing at seven, sometimes finishing at midnight or into the early hours. For three years, I kept a record of my winnings and averaged an annual profit of £15,000. There were losings too – I lost my car once, a Ford Sierra – but I was generally pretty good when it came to knowing when to quit.
Poker, you quickly learn, is a game of consummate skill. For sure, there’s an element of luck involved but the higher the stakes, the more craft it takes to win. I knew I could play a bit but also knew there was a difference between playing for pleasure and playing for real. I played for pleasure. The pros played for real. It was only when you observed them in the casinos that you truly appreciated what the difference was. Teddy thought I was crazy. He’d come along and watch from time to time but never got involved. I loved playing with the card school – I loved it more than playing football. It was under my skin, part of me. I had it bad – so bad, there were days when I couldn’t wait to leave the training ground. And because I was passing on snacks and dinners, the games kept my weight in check.
The group that played at Sparrows Lane were a motley crew of car dealers and duckers and divers. Sometimes, because of the sums of money involved, we would switch venues for security and play at other clubs. The Butterfly Club in Eltham was one of our least frequented locations as it was awkward to find and situated in a lane which wasn’t that accessible. One afternoon, a few months after I’d joined Millwall, we were about an hour into a game when there was a knock on the door.
‘Who is it?’
There was no reply.
‘What do you want?’
Again there was no response. I was nearest the door, but like the rest, was too engrossed to leave the table. There was another knock.
‘It’s open!’ I roared.
And with that, the door slammed back and four armed and masked raiders burst into the hall. I nearly shit myself. I jumped out of the seat and dropped everything on to the floor. They pulled the telephone wires, checked to see if anyone was in the toilet and ordered us to empty our pockets into a holdall. As they were leaving, one of the lads had a gun shoved into his face. ‘I know who you are, and you know who I am, so there’d better not be any problems,’ he was warned. There wasn’t. We sat in silence, too stunned and afraid to move.
There was no great rush to involve the police. We would take our medicine and next time be more careful. In the days that followed, the overriding emotion when the group reconvened was one of relief that Nutnut hadn’t been present. Nutnut, as his name suggests, wasn’t exactly the most balanced member of the group and used to arrive some days with up to £20,000 in a plastic bag. Nutnut, we agreed, would have regarded any confrontation between himself and four armed raiders as an even call. They’d have had to kill him to take his money. And he would not have gone down alone.
On the first Wednesday of April, we arrived at Elland Road for one of our biggest tests of the season. The previous Saturday, a crowd of almost 14,000 – the biggest at the Den for ten years – had witnessed our 2–1 win over the division leaders Aston Villa. We were now fourth in the table, with six games to play, and trailed Villa by three points and Middlesborough and Blackburn by a point. For Millwall, the only London club never to play in Division One, the game against Leeds would be a critical test in the drive for promotion. But for me, there was another motivation.
As I ran out to warm up, I noticed Jack Charlton chatting with Kevin O’Callaghan in a corridor outside the dressing room. More than two years had passed since my last game for the Republic of Ireland. In sixteen games during his time at the helm, Jack had watched me once at Gillingham but never included me in a squad. For months I’d been dropping hints in interviews about how desperate I was to resume my international career. But the team had just qualified for the European Championship finals, so it wasn’t as if my country needed me. And Jack wasn’t the type who was easily coerced. When our paths finally crossed in the corridor at Elland Road, he glanced across and acknowledged me with a nod but said nothing. Had he come to visit some of his old pals, I wondered, or made the trip especially for me? It didn’t matter. He was there. This was my chance.
When the game started, I ripped into the Leeds back-four like a man possessed and scored after seven minutes, latching on to a long clearance from Brian Horne, to drive the ball past the Leeds keeper Mervyn Day. Determined to continue after the perfect start, I was twice denied by two brilliant saves from Day before setting up the winning goal for Terry Hurlock, five minutes into the second half. When it was over, I noticed Jack briefly in the players’ lounge and hoped for a sign that I’d impressed, but he was locked into a conversation with Peter Lorimer. Two days later, however, when he was quoted in the Sun as saying it was ‘the best I’ve ever seen Tony play’, I was sure I’d done enough. The Republic were due to play Yugoslavia in the first of a series of warm-up games for the European Championships, three weeks later in Dublin. I hoped, and waited, but Jack never called . . .
Meanwhile, at Millwall, the push for promotion had reached fever pitch when we moved four points clear after successive wins over Plymouth and Bournemouth. As the campaign entered its final week, we had just started preparing the next game with Stoke when Jack contacted the club and asked that I be released to fly to Dublin, following the late withdrawals of John Aldridge (hamstring) and Niall Quinn (chicken pox) from his squad. Reg Burr, the Millwall chairman, wouldn’t entertain it. ‘Only a little while ago, Charlton was saying Cascarino was no good for the Irish team because he lacked pace. So he’s changed his mind,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘We have three hard games in a week to make history and we just cannot afford to release Tony right now. I think he understands why.’ And I did. But I’d have preferred it if it hadn’t been trumpeted so loudly in print. When you were as far down the pecking order as I was with Ireland – sixth behind Aldridge, Stapleton, Quinn, John Byrne and Dave Kelly – the last thing you needed was to incur Jack Charlton’s wrath.
Two days after our 2–0 defeat of Stoke, Millwall clinched promotion, and the championship, with a 1–0 win at Hull. For the first time in 103 years the club would play in Division One. Four days later, amid scenes of jubilant celebration at the Den, we played our last game of the season against Blackburn, when the only outstanding issue was the ongoing battle with Teddy, which was tied at twenty-three goals each. Duped by the carnival atmosphere in the ground, I left my game in Hull as Blackburn brushed us aside to win 4–1. Millwall’s last goal of the season was scored by the same player who had scored their first. That was the thing about Teddy: he always wanted it more.
Two weeks of mostly rest and relaxation later, the call I’d been waiting for finally arrived and I was drafted into the squad for a friendly between Ireland and Poland in Dublin. My first contact with Jack was a brief handshake in the lobby of the team hotel but it wasn’t until we started preparing for the game that I caught my first real glimpse of the man in charge. We were practising set pieces and had moved from corners to free kicks. Jack was explaining to Ronnie Whelan exactly what he wanted done; I was facing away from him with Kevin Sheedy in the wall. It was hot. The session grew tedious. Bored with our role as mere bricks in the wall, Sheedy and I had just started to shadow box when I was suddenly aware of a hush and Jack’s presence on my shoulder. He was not amused.
‘What do you think you’re doing, you stupid fucking bastard?’ he fumed.
‘Sorry, Jack,’ I choked, ‘we were just having a bit of a laugh.’
‘A bit of a laugh! A bit of a fucking laugh!! We’re trying to get some serious work done here and I look around and you’re shadow boxing with fucking Sheedy!’
‘Sorry, Jack, I just . . .’
‘Just my arse! Pay attention, you stupid pair of bastards!’
Sure any chance I’d had of ever playing again for Ireland had disappeared, I was surprised at his good humour later, over dinner. ‘And what were you up to today, Cascarino, you silly buggah?’ he chuckled. And even more surprised when he named me in the team. It was nice to know he didn’t bear grudges.
In hindsight, because it certainly didn’t occur to me at the time, my performance during those first thirty-two minutes against Poland was probably the most important of my career. First impressions were important with Jack; had I ignored his instructions or played badly and been substituted, there was a fair chance I wouldn’t have worn a green shirt again. But when I scored in the thirty-second minute, following up a Ronnie Whelan free that was fumbled by the Polish keeper, the manager was happy. And when Jack was happy, your future with his team was secure.
That night, after returning to the team hotel for a meal, I headed back into the city with a group of the lads to a nightclub called Rumours, a favourite haunt of the team at the time. Footballers are seldom happier than when together out on the town and having just scored my first international goal, I was happier than most as I supped and danced into the early hours. I’m not sure what time it was when I stumbled out of the door to join the small queue for taxis. Or where my team mates had gone. I knew it was late. And that I’d had too much to drink. And that I would definitely have returned to the team hotel, if what happened hadn’t happened as I was getting into the taxi.
But what do you say to a good-looking girl, who follows you from a nightclub and hitches a lift in your taxi when it’s late and you’ve had a few drinks and you’re still on a high from the goal you scored against Poland? What do you say when she smiles and gives you a squeeze and says, ‘Your place or mine?’, leaving you in absolutely no doubt that she wants your seed. What do you say when it’s a week before Jack selects the squad for the European Championships and you’ve just got back in the frame and are desperate to make a favourable impression? Let me tell you what I said. I said: ‘Fuck the team hotel.’ I said: ‘Fuck the team.’ I said: ‘Let’s go to your place – mine’s a little crowded.’ I said: ‘Honey, what’s your name?’
The taxi took us south, to a house somewhere in the suburbs. We went inside, and ripped into each other like crazed animals, then dropped like crazed animals who’ve been shot with tranquillizing darts. When I opened my eyes again it was six thirty in the morning. I thought: ‘Fuck! Where am I?’ I thought: ‘Fuck! How did I get here?’ I thought: ‘Fuck! Gotta get back to the team hotel as quick as possible!’ I thought: ‘Fuck! Who’s she?’
I gathered my crumpled clothes from the trail on the floor and splashed some water on my face in the bathroom, where the view from the window was of a garden which backed on to a graveyard. I thought: ‘If Sarah finds out about this, that’s where they’ll bury me.’ Sarah was my fiancée. We were due to be married six weeks later.