TONY ADAMS always knew he was a natural leader, even as far back as his days as a kid dishing out instructions in the playground. To some, the responsibilities of leadership are a burden, but there are people like Adams — captains to the core — who embrace it without a second’s thought.

For an early example, we can go back to Hunters Hall Junior School in Dagenham, where a gangly blond-haired boy would organise matches between his mates. And that didn’t just involve picking two sides. Even back then, special tactics came into play to try to gain the upper hand.

“I remember putting Geoff Fricker in goal, Marty Cook at centre-half and I went up front.” Adams recites the names without pausing, as if it all happened yesterday. “It was us three against about 10 others most of the time. Geoff was goalie because he was a great gymnast so was good at diving. Marty was quite big for his age so stayed at the back while I would just float about up front. It was brilliant! We always won.”

Winning: now there’s an appropriate theme to accompany the topic of leadership when it comes to addressing the life and times of this inspirational character. For someone born in 1966, the finest of years for English football, it was maybe destined that winning would develop into an extremely pleasant habit, one that Adams never had cause to give up during a spectacular career spent serving one club.

His reward was four championships, three FA Cups, two League Cups and a European Cup Winners’ Cup — a collection of trophies spread over three decades that confirmed him as the most successful captain in Arsenal’s history. Not that everything ran smoothly for this serial winner. Adams endured some extraordinary lows, mostly off the pitch where his losing battle with alcohol led to eight weeks in prison for a drink-driving offence around Christmas, 1990. At that point Adams could only wish he had been able to turn back the clock to three years before, when he accepted the captain’s armband, dreaming of glory.

Even now, the idea seems extraordinary — to entrust a 21-year-old with such responsibility. Many of his teammates were thinking along the same lines when Adams emerged smiling one morning from a meeting with the manager, George Graham. Those gathered outside wondered if this happy-go-lucky character could handle the “grown-up” demands that accompanied the job. Adams, in typically ebullient fashion, didn’t think twice about accepting the honour. After all, he had captained every one of his teams up until then. Why not the first team? “It felt pretty natural,” he says. “I felt like I was doing it anyway. I was surprised to be honest that George [Graham] hadn’t given it to me six months earlier.”

This may sound arrogant but that’s not how it was meant. No offence was intended towards Kenny Sansom, the previous skipper, whom Adams always held in the highest regard. As two London lads who loved a good laugh — not to say the odd drink — this pair had plenty in common. On this matter at least, there was never any chance of them falling out. The younger one, in fact, walked straight across that day to see his senior teammate, just to make sure no hard feelings existed. They didn’t. Kenny had been punished for a newspaper article in which he criticised the boss. It was just one of those things. Sansom wished his successor all the luck in the world.

In any case, if the move hadn’t happened then, it would have fairly soon. Graham, you sensed, wanted a different sort of lieutenant out on the pitch; someone he could rely on as a mouthpiece, as an aggressive deputy, to relay his demanding orders with unquestioning zeal. Adams was his man, the obvious candidate, whose clear inexperience was counterbalanced by outstanding promise and unwavering conviction, a trait that threads its way through the player’s whole life.

In this regard, we need to visit Adams’s childhood again to get a firm grasp of a mindset slightly different from the crowd. Disinterested in schoolwork, Tony’s thoughts never strayed far from the beautiful game. “Even then I’d lay out, say, cups against pencils like teams on the floor,” he remembers. “I had a proper league. I’d use the orange caps from my dad’s propane gas tanks. They came second one season to the matchbox cars. The pencils were always quite good... I think it was in me, organising other people. I noticed, as well, that as I got on in football, this helped me and people liked it about me so I kept doing it.”

This extrovert nature was inherited from his father, Alex, a decent centre-half himself who managed one appearance for West Ham’s reserves before going on to play for the Army during national service. An asphalter by trade, Alex also turned his hand to lorry driving and roofing — all unforgiving jobs where, in a verbal sense, you had to give as good as you got in order to survive. “I always remember him as a big, strong man. He wasn't shy, I suppose.” Neither was his lad. A few years on from messing about with cups and pencils, the schoolboy felt so sure of himself that he’d instinctively take charge during youth team matches, telling full-time apprentices exactly what to do. “Oi you, come here!” the 15-year-old would bark, pushing and pulling in a way the North Bank would later take to its heart.

Not surprisingly, this brash behaviour tended to upset a few people. Tony’s overt vocal style also raised a few eyebrows in an environment where anything slightly different from the norm is mercilessly mocked. For Adams, some England schoolboy trials particularly stand out. “I remember one lad who would take the piss out of me horribly,” he says. “I used to shout ‘TA’s up!’ when I climbed to head the ball and he’d always mimic that. It was strange. One part of me inside was a really insecure little boy who didn’t want anyone making fun of me and the other side was saying, ‘Well, actually, you’re winning everything in the air, everyone’s saying you’re a great player, so carry on as you are’.”

Adams was considered ready for Arsenal’s first team at the age of 17, walking out to face Sunderland as the second youngest debutant in the club’s history. The match could have gone better. It took only two minutes for the young No5 to gift the opposition a goal, allowing Colin West to dispossess him and chip the goalkeeper, Pat Jennings, from 20 yards out. “I was incredibly nervous beforehand and went out with my shorts on the wrong way round,” recalls Adams, “but I just loved the buzz of it all and it gave me a taste for more.”

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