Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino

Look at the Irish. They sing and none of them know the words. Jack sings, and all he knows is ‘Blaydon Races’ and ‘Cushy Butterfield.’ But look at the pride they have in those green shirts.

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!

A few months before we left for Birmingham and Aston Villa, John Docherty, my manager at Millwall, called me into his office one afternoon, in foul mood. The team was struggling and he was starting to feel the strain.

‘I watched the game last Wednesday and saw the running you did for Ireland and then you play for us on Saturday and you’re a lump of fucking shit! So we’re sending you out in green this week. I want you to play for us like you played for them.’

‘No, boss, you’re wrong,’ I argued. ‘The shirt has nothing to do with it.’

But later, when I gave it some thought, I had to concede that he was right: all my best performances that season had been for Ireland. But was that really so unusual? I mean, what was Docherty’s problem? Wasn’t it the most natural thing in the world to raise your game for your country? Except that Ireland wasn’t my country. I wasn’t Irish, as I’ll explain later. It wasn’t patriotism. I wasn’t doing it for the flag. Was there something about Jack Charlton that was bringing out the best in me?

My relationship with Jack got off to a shaky start, that summer in ’88. By shadow boxing with Kevin Sheedy (Jack had a thing about him) in my first training session, I hadn’t exactly taken the express route to his heart. However my goal against Poland soon redressed the balance and I was delighted to secure the last remaining place in the squad for the European Championships in Germany. We prepared for the finals at a training camp in Dublin and though I wasn’t centrally involved, I used my time on the periphery of the team to observe the manager and how he worked. The key to a harmonious relationship with Jack, I quickly learned, was to understand a few basic principles. Well, actually, there was just one basic principle. The manager’s instructions weren’t open to interpretation. The dressing room wasn’t a forum for debate. Jack never pretended he was running a democracy. When he said, ‘Jump,’ you asked, ‘How high?’

I remember a World Cup qualifying game against Spain once, when he ordered John Sheridan, who was playing midfield, not to lose possession by playing short passes to either me or John Aldridge up front. ‘I don’t want you giving it to the centre forward’s feet and playing cute one-twos,’ he was told. ‘If you do it, I’ll pull you off.’ I was standing next to John when he was given the order and knew from the tone of Jack’s voice that if he tried it even once, he’d be off. So did John. He was absolutely terrified. This, after all, was the same manager who had substituted the great Liam Brady ten minutes before half time in his last appearance for Ireland in a friendly against West Germany at Lansdowne Road. I was sitting on the bench when he made the decision and though he knew it wouldn’t endear him to the crowd, he wasn’t changing his mind. ‘I know it’s Brady’s day,’ he bellowed, ‘but there’s a World Cup to prepare for and I’ve got to get the midfield right! The Germans are running riot!’ He was ruthless in the heat of competition, but this wasn’t the only factor in the way he transformed the team.

He was a funny man, as funny as I have known, and had a great ability to tell stories and see the comic side of life. In June ’88, a week before we left for Germany, he organized a trip to the races one afternoon where, after a couple of punts and a couple of pints, we all soon forgot the numbing dullness of the training camp. As a mark of appreciation (and, it’s fair to say, in the hope we might be allowed another drink), we began singing his praises on the journey back to the hotel.

‘We love you Jack-ie, we do,

We love you Jack-ie, we do,

Oh, Jackie we love you . . .’

At first, he pretended not to buy it: ‘Shut up! Don’t try all that rubbish with me. You’re not fucking stopping at a pub for a pint. You lot are going straight back to the hotel.’ But five minutes later, there was a huge cheer when the bus pulled into a hostelry by the side of the road. ‘OK, everybody off,’ he smiled, ‘but let’s be clear on one thing: I am not buying the drinks!’ As an exercise in building team spirit it was brilliant. And if there was one quality the team possessed in abundance it was spirit.

Euro ’88 was a great experience. At first, we were perceived as the pub team of the tournament – a happy-go-lucky bunch, who partied with their supporters and were just happy to be involved. But when we beat England in our opening game and were unlucky to concede a draw to the Soviet Union, we began to be taken seriously. I sat on the bench for both those games and didn’t get to play until the last eight minutes of our narrow defeat to Holland, but thoroughly enjoyed just being with the squad. We had a great card school going and by the end of the tournament, a lot of money had been won and lost. Aldo (John Aldridge) and Dave Kelly had taken a hammering; Kevin Moran and Liam Brady were even; but Niall and I were ahead and looking forward to pocketing our winnings, when Liam suddenly announced that, ‘in the spirit of the occasion and the interests of team morale’, all debts were off. I thought, ‘You can’t do that! I’ve won a right few quid!’ But Liam was right. It had been a memorable week. The team was more important.

Three months later, the first of the qualifying games for World Cup ’90 began in Belfast. I hit the post and played well in our scoreless draw with Northern Ireland. Jack had handed me Frank Stapleton’s role and wanted me to play as a target man who dropped into midfield when we didn’t have the ball. I found it difficult at first but gradually became more confident and before the end of the campaign had established myself as one of the cornerstones of the team. In November ’89, after successive victories over Spain, Hungary and Northern Ireland, we travelled to Valetta, needing a result against Malta to secure a place in the finals for the first time in history. We were joined in our quest by thousands of fans who had made the trip from Ireland and our joy was unrestrained when we won 2–0. We celebrated in Valetta after the game and I eventually ended up in a disco bar with Andy Townsend, Ray Houghton and at least a thousand supporters. John Aldridge was also part of our group but went missing as soon as we reached the bar.

‘There he is!’ Andy announced, ‘Fuckin’ ’ell!’ And when we looked to where he was pointing, the prostrate body of Ireland’s two-goal hero – his first in twenty games – was being ferried over the heads of the sea of supporters on the dance floor, on a conveyor belt of hands. ‘Can you imagine that happening in any other country?’ Andy observed. He was right. In England, they’d have been thumping him.

Italia ’90 wasn’t my first visit to the World Cup finals. In the summer of ’82, I had travelled with some friends to Spain and watched England play Germany in Madrid. Although I had just signed for Gillingham, I never imagined that I would one day return to the finals as a player. And if someone had suggested that not only would I play but I would line out against England, I’d have advised them to consult their shrink. How could I play against England? I’d supported England as a boy; England was my team, the land of my birth. But that’s exactly what transpired: eight years later, on a wet and windy night in Cagliari, I walked out for my country, to face my country, in the biggest game of my career. And I wasn’t alone. Six of the team wearing green that night were born in England. A seventh, Ray Houghton, was born in Glasgow. Our manager, Jack Charlton, was one of the most famous English footballers of all time! But there was no question of divided loyalties for any of us. On the contrary, it made us even hungrier to succeed because although we never pretended we were 100 per cent Irish, we were 100 per cent committed to Ireland and its team.

I was playing against Terry Butcher, one of the world’s best defenders. I was the most nervous I have ever been before a game but I was quietly confident, as I’d worked hard during the build-up and played reasonably well. England scored first with a goal from Gary Lineker in the ninth minute, and Kevin Sheedy put us back in it with a great strike midway through the second half. It was a scrappy game, played in horrible conditions, and though I acquitted myself reasonably well, I had one horrible moment at the end when Butcher slipped in behind me at the far post and headed into the side netting from a free kick out left. There was nothing Jack despised more than sloppy marking and I thought I was in for a right bollocking after the game. But 1–1 was a better result for us than for them, and in the elation of the dressing room, my error was overlooked.

A week later we travelled to Palermo to play Egypt, who were perceived as the soft touch of the group. This, the experts lectured, was a game we had to win. And to be fair, we weren’t arguing, but we failed to ignite on a boiling Sunday afternoon and were forced to settle for another draw. Two days later, Jack organized a practice game and began toying with options for the final group game against Holland. He was still crusty and irritable after the Egypt performance and I was aware, running out, of the need to look sharp. But from the moment the session began, I was a disaster and missed chance after chance. I could hear Jack barking on the sideline, ‘Look at ’im! He’s gone! His fucking confidence is gone!’

‘And you haven’t felt threatened lately by the blazing form of Niall?’

‘Look, for fuck’s sake, it was obviously something I ate at breakfast! A bad day at the office! They happen to everyone in every walk of life.’

But Jack didn’t see it quite that way. Halfway through the session, he ordered me to switch with Niall, who immediately looked sharper and began to score. Later that afternoon, when the team to play Holland was announced, I was named as one of the substitutes. Furious, I called Jack aside to confront him about his decision.

‘Give me one good reason why you’ve left me out,’ I demanded. ‘In all the games I’ve played for you, I haven’t let you down once! You said yourself, after the . . .’

But Jack wasn’t listening. His face had turned crimson. ‘You were fucking crap!’ he exploded. And then he started reaming off a litany of mistakes and I realized that nothing I could say would change his mind.

Gutted, I went for a walk and shed a few tears but couldn’t face the lads at mealtime. Kevin Moran thought it hilarious: ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone being dropped because of a training session,’ he laughed. But it was more than just a ‘dropping’. Here’s a record of my next nine appearances for Ireland:

v. Holland (0–0), June 1990. Subs: Cascarino for Aldridge (62 mins)

v. Rumania (0–0), June 1990. Subs: Cascarino for Aldridge (22 mins)

v. Italy (0–1), June 1990. Subs: Cascarino for Quinn (52 mins)

v. Morocco (1–0), September 1990. Subs: Cascarino for Quinn (59 mins)

v. Turkey (5–0), October 1990. Subs: Cascarino for Quinn (68 mins)

v. England (1–1), November 1990. Subs: Cascarino for Quinn (61 mins)

v. England (1–1), March 1991. Subs: Cascarino for Aldridge (72 mins)

v. Poland (0–0), May 1991. Subs: Cascarino for Quinn (71 mins)

v. Chile (1–1), May 1991. Subs: Cascarino for Sheedy (70 mins)

And for the next five years, as long as Jack had Niall as an option, that’s how it was. As long as Jack had the option of Niall, I was second-rate. And nothing – not my goal against England in Dublin, or my winner against Germany in the summer of ’94, or some of my great performances later at Marseilles – was ever enough to change his mind. For stepping out of bed on the wrong side that morning, I was effectively sentenced to life on the bench. Do I resent him for it? Do I recount the story through gritted teeth? Not at all. He definitely upset me and it certainly wasn’t fair, but how can I ignore what made him great?

Four years later, on a night off during our training camp in Orlando before World Cup ’94, I met a girl at a bar in Church Street and invited her back to the team hotel. For security reasons, access to the team floor was restricted to team personnel, but I managed to divert the guards for long enough for my friend to slip into the room.

Things were progressing nicely when we were suddenly interrupted by a commotion outside. The police had arrived and were checking all the rooms.

‘The cameras have picked up an intruder,’ the officer replied. ‘Seen anything?’

The following morning at training, Jack gathered us in a circle. ‘Who was the fucker with the bird in his room?’ he demanded. ‘Come on, own up.’ He seemed reasonably calm at first but grew visibly more irritable with every negative response.

One by one, he put the question to almost everyone in the group but me. I couldn’t believe it. Had he confused the inquisition with the naming of his team? Anyway, by the time he was finished, he was really pissed.

‘Right! If that’s the way it’s going to be, fine. But don’t think you’re going to get away with it! I’ll find the bastard whoever he is and when I do he’ll fucking regret it!’

Dismissed, we broke off and began to warm up, but before I’d reached the corner of the pitch, my conscience was at me and I decided to own up.

He completely lost the head. ‘What! We’re training for the fucking World Cup and you take a bird back to the room!’

A group of journalists had moved into range. I thought, For fuck’s sake, Jack, keep your voice down. We don’t want them to get wind of it. But how do you tell Jack Charlton to shut it when he’s frothing from the mouth with rage?

‘I’m really sorry, Jack,’ I grovelled. ‘I promise, this will never happen again.’

Now the possibility of being sent home in disgrace wasn’t, I must admit, something I’d considered when deciding to come clean. I thought: ‘Fuck! You stupid bastard! He’s going to make an example of you! He’s going to send you home before you’ve even had a kick!’ I stood, in silence, awaiting judgement.

He grumbled and continued to seethe until at last it was delivered: ‘Well, I hope she was fucking worth it!’ he exploded. And that was it. That’s how it ended. We looked at each other and started laughing and it was never mentioned again.

Two years ago, when Teddy Sheringham was exposed by the tabloids for drinking at a disco, a week before the start of France ’98, he was made to read a letter of apology before the cameras by the England manager, Glenn Hoddle. I remember watching it on TV, and feeling bad for Teddy and the humiliation he had to endure. I also remember thinking of Jack and what he’d have done. He’d have said, ‘Of course he had a drink. I told him to have a drink. He’s been training non-stop for three weeks! Do you think I’m going to keep him locked up? He’d be bored out of his mind. There’s a week before the tournament starts and we’re back training tomorrow, so where’s the problem?’ And then, after making his little speech, he would have taken Teddy behind closed doors and given him the biggest bollocking of his life. Jack understood that your team was your family, and you didn’t expose your family and expect to retain their respect.

And that’s why he was never ‘Charlton’ to me, always ‘Jack’. And that’s why I continued to answer, whenever he called. For sure, out on the pitch, we did it for ourselves, but we also did it for Jack, no question. In my eighteen years in football, he was easily the best I’ve known.

But I digress. We were about to play Holland and I had just been dropped and in my rush to explain why Jack was God, I fast forwarded too quickly and neglected to explain how we became kings. Now we must rewind to the Dutch game. And the Dutch goal. And Niall’s equalizer. And the 1–1 draw that allowed us to progress to the second phase of the tournament. And the penalty shoot-out with Rumania that kick-started us into the fast lane and an amazing period in our lives . . .

The game was played on a boiling hot afternoon in Genoa. After two hours of stalemate, we collapsed on the pitch in varying states of distress. Jack walked on and told us that whatever happened in the next few minutes we had done the country proud. We were looking down the barrel of a penalty shoot-out. Five volunteers were required. ‘Right,’ Ray Houghton, announced, ‘who fancies it?’ There was no immediate response.

Neither of our two designated specialists – Aldo or Ronnie Whelan – had finished the game, which put the onus on Kevin Sheedy, who promptly agreed to take the first. Ray volunteered, and so did Andy and Dave O’Leary, but then there was an uneasy pause. Paul McGrath clearly wasn’t having it and walked away. We were one short of the quota. Suddenly, inevitably, the spotlight turned to me.

‘What about it, Cass?’ Ray asked, exasperated. ‘Are you a man or a fucking mouse?’

The Rumanians won the toss and had the advantage of shooting first. Kevin, Ray and Andy had all passed the test with honour and we were 4–3 down when I placed the ball on the spot. I could hear the fans behind the goal chanting my name; and my heart thumping in my chest; and the voice, as ever, sowing the seeds of doubt.

‘Really? You’d better assure your mother. “Don’t do it son!” she’s screaming. “What happens if you miss?”’

My legs felt like rubber sticks as I ran towards the ball. I choked over the shot and stubbed my toe in the turf on contact and almost fainted with relief as the ball followed the divot, under the keeper’s arm and into the back of the net. It was a terrible penalty but Lady Luck had been kind to me and when Dave converted the final kick after a brilliant save by Packie, the mother of all celebrations began. We had reached the quarter finals of the World Cup.

Five days later, our great adventure ended with a 1–0 defeat to Italy in Rome. On the morning after the game, we boarded a flight for Dublin, where a champagne reception at the airport was followed by a ticker-tape parade into the city on an open-top bus, where an estimated quarter of a million people lined the streets to welcome us home. It was quite extraordinary. In the seven months since we’d qualified for the finals, the country had been ravaged by the most contagious fever since the foundation of the state. Football fever. Blotched in green, white and orange, we could not have been greeted more fervently if we’d won! And on that hot summer afternoon in June, there was no greater celebrity than to play for the team that Jack built. We were Masters of the Universe. Kings.

Sarah was with me on the coach that afternoon. She enjoyed the status of being married to a footballer but, like most of the wives, had become uneasy with the attention we were getting in Dublin and the trappings of success. One afternoon, whilst out shopping in the city, she overheard two store assistants gossiping about the team: ‘. . . and Cascarino, well, he’s the Italian stallion!’ I laughed it off when she mentioned it on her return and swore I’d never set foot in the place, but I know she was concerned. And with good reason. In London, I could go shopping or take the tube or walk the streets in almost total anonymity. In Dublin, I was recognised by every man, woman and child. Six thousand people turned up to meet me one afternoon when I arrived to open a fête in Tipperary. I thought the engagement would take about an hour at most but I was absolutely mobbed – ‘Sign this, Tony’, ‘Well done, Tony’ – and by the end of the day, had to beg to get away. They just couldn’t get enough of me. And everywhere we went it was the same.

Nightclubs were offering us appearance fees and free drink for the night. We’d arrive and be sectioned off in a corner, and by the end of the night there’d be a thousand people on our side of the rope and about ten outside. And there was never any rowdiness or aggression shown to us when we mingled – it was just a real fun time. I remember our first game after the World Cup, a friendly against Morocco at Dalymount Park. As we were walking out to warm up, Jack tapped me on the shoulder: ‘Listen to my ovation,’ he smiled. And when he raised his arm, the place just erupted. He loved the way the people had embraced his team. There were very few withdrawals from the squad in those days. Players were turning up injured, just to be involved in the group, which was hardly a surprise when you considered some of the privileges.

When we weren’t opening shops, modelling clothes or doing fashion shoots for magazines, we were fending off girls, literally queuing to be screwed by one of the ‘boys in green’. They’d call our rooms, pretending they were wives or girlfriends, and it got to a stage where there was just no escape and the phone was left permanently off the hook. Some handled it better than others and resisted the temptations: I tried to stay onside but more often than not succumbed. It was just so ridiculously easy. It didn’t matter whether we were nice to them or behaved like complete wankers, they just wanted to be straddled by one of the champions; we were trophies they could exhibit to their friends.

Success isn’t pretty when you see what it does to people up close. Five years later, in the summer of ’95, I was rooming with Andy at an hotel in Limerick, when the folly of it all hit home. We had just returned from training and were about to descend for lunch when we heard some girls screaming from the garden beneath our window. I opened the window and gave them a wave and for a moment, just a moment, it was just like old times.

‘Aghhhh! Tony! Tony!’ they squealed. But then they immediately went and spoiled it: ‘Where’s Jason and Gary and Phil?’ In the five years since Italia ’90, the ‘three amigos’ – Jason McAteer, Gary Kelly and Phil Babb – had brushed the oldies aside and taken over as the team’s star trophies.

‘What! Do you not want me or Andy any more?’ I shouted, deciding to play along.

But we had obviously passed our sell-by date. They wanted Barabbas, all three of him, but Jason and Gary and Phil had gone to lunch.

Andy laughed and shook his head; I slipped next door and found a sweat-stained, skid-marked training slip on the floor. ‘The only thing I could find is this!’

They started screaming hysterically. Instinctively, I threw the slip from the window and watched in amazement as the winner emerged triumphantly from the short stampede and scrum. She was holding the skid-marked shorts to her face! She was inhaling them like a scented handkerchief! I couldn’t have made her happier if I’d dropped a million pounds! I thought: ‘Fuck! What have I done?’ And in that moment it was all there in front of me. The craving we have to be someone. The magnetic lure of fame.

Chapter Ten

Scent of a Winner