It has taken a long time, the best part of his 18 years as a professional
footballer, for Dean Windass to feel at ease with himself. Throughout much
of his career, the Hull City striker has appeared intent on justifying a
reputation, gained early, as one of football’s most scabrous characters.
Scabrous, as in hard to handle with decency. The list of what might
generously be described as misdemeanours, on and, on one occasion when he
was banned for five games for abusing the referee in the car park, off the
field, is as long and dishonourable as a career average of nine bookings and
one dismissal per season would suggest.
It is also a fact, however, that in approaching 680 appearances, the
Yorkshireman with the boxer’s nose has scored 220 goals, a one-in-three
record that at the age of 38, he has maintained this season. And on top of
playing as effectively as ever - holding the ball up, creating, scoring,
urging his teammates on - he gives the impression that with age has come a
little wisdom, too.
“I am trying to do things differently, to channel my energy in the right
directions,” Windass admitted at the Tigers’ functional training ground in
Cottingham, a few miles outside Hull, the largest city in the country in
which top-level football has never been played. “There are various reasons,
including my wife getting fed up with me getting fined, but mainly it is all
down to not letting myself get frustrated,” he says.
For all that it is - typically - diluted with a joke, his point is a serious
one. Ever since being released by Hull, his hometown club, as a schoolboy,
and spending several years combining local nonleague football with work on
building sites and in frozen food factories before City offered him another
chance, Windass has played every game as though it was his last, and has
done everything he possibly can to win it. Far too often, he concedes, this
has led to him overstepping the boundary between all-out effort and
gamesmanship, or worse, but having seen what life was like on £140 a week,
struggling to meet mortgage payments, he has always been determined nobody
was ever going to accuse him of lack of effort.
A regular on the terraces at Boothferry Park, City’s ground before they moved
to the smart new KC Stadium, from the age of six, Windass leans back and
explains. Firstly, why, in the latter stages of a career that has taken in
Aberdeen, Oxford, Bradford, Middlesbrough, both Sheffield clubs and Hull, he
remains as motivated as ever. “Fear, basically,” he says. “The thought of
not playing this game at a good level is very, very scary, so I’ll go on
until - well, I’m 39 on April Fool’s Day, which sums me up, but I’ve got
another year after that, so it’s a case of how long is a piece of string.
“What I’ve said to [City manager] Phil Brown is that while I’m fit and
contributing to the team, I’ll carry on. And when I’m neither, I’ll be
honest with myself, and move on to the next chapter.”
The key, he reckons, is refusing to make concessions to the ageing process. Or
to anybody who thinks they may know what’s best for him. “I’ve always
trained every day, including on my days off,” he says. “Managers don’t like
it, but that’s what I have always done. I’ve been told by the likes of Colin
Todd, Steve McClaren and Phil Brown to rest on days off, but I don’t take
any notice; it’s worked for me all my career, so I’m not going to stop now.
I’ve never had pace, so I work on my stamina.”
At the same time, he has always insisted on the need to unwind. “I’ve always
had a drink after a game on a Saturday,” he says. “Win, lose or draw, it’s a
release, my way of getting it out of my system. I get drunk if necessary.
But then I take my lads to play their own football on the Sunday, and start
preparing for the next game.”
Not that he would like to be judged on his performance on the training ground.
“I try hard, and I’m not lazy, but I’m the worst bloody footballer in the
world out there,” he sighs, pointing to the window. “Like Dean Saunders used
to say, a lot of players look brilliant in training, but don’t do it in
matches. There are match players and there are training-ground players, and
it’s all about mental strength.” And that is something he possesses in
spades. “I’ve always had that bit of arrogance,” he says. “That’s not the
same as always being confident, but knowing that you’ve got the ability is
crucial.
“I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than five games without scoring, and a
manager who picks me knows what he is going to get. He knows I’m not going
to go past two or three defenders and smash it into the top corner, but if
there’s a ball into the box on to my head, I might miss the first but I’ll
get the bloody second.”
But while Windass takes a mischievous relish in playing up his unreconstructed
image - and nor is it entirely misleading - it is a long way from the whole
story. For all that trawling records turns up a couple of runs of six or
seven barren games, they essentially confirm his contention of remarkable
consistency, though not the implication he only scores mundane goals. Two of
his last three, for example, have been curling free kicks from outside the
box. If he scores 20 this season, he reckons City could make the playoffs.
“When we went up at Bradford [under Paul Jewell in 1999], we had some really
good players like Peter Beagrie, Dean Saunders, Stuart McCall, and we
achieved something that the club never dreamed possible. It’s hard to
compare the squads, and we’re probably among the outsiders, but Hull fans
are dreaming, and as a player and a fan, so am I. You never, never know.”
And even if it happens when he’s no longer playing, he insists that he will be
at the KC watching, although he won’t be accompanied by some people he used
to think of as friends or, rather more disconcertingly, several members of
his family. That is because Deano, his autobiography published last year, is
a startlingly revealing account not just of his career in football, but of
growing up in what Windass said was often an unhappy home.
“Writing my book wasn’t enjoyable, and I’ve lost a few friends and family
because of it, but no regrets, I told it like it was and is,” he says. “Some
people in my family said that I lied, but I don’t give a damn what they
think, and if they don’t want to speak to me again, that’s fine.”
The extent to which his upbringing shaped his character as a footballer, as
well as a man, is, he says, for others to decide. “Obviously you get people
saying, ‘That’s his excuse for being such a pratt’, but the only thing that
I would say in my defence is that although I’ve done some stupid things on
the field, it’s not as many as some people would have you believe. Quite
often I’ve been punished because of who I am. That car park incident is a
good example; it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, a joke, but the referee
took it the wrong way.
“On the other hand, there have been plenty of times when I have embarrassed
myself, and let myself get wound up when I shouldn’t. Though if you’d heard
the dog’s abuse I get . . . ”
Not just from the stands, apparently. “I’ve been one of those players who has
been slaughtered by some managers, really bollocked, had teacups thrown at
me, the whole works. Usually I take it, but sometimes I’ve had a little
argue back. I’ve also had managers who take the opposite approach. I’ve
never really minded which, because I try just as hard whatever.”
He has learnt enough, he hopes, to justify his intention to move into
management when he does stop playing. At City would be great, although he
accepts that might be some way down the line.
Besides, he has another season and a half to play yet. “At least,” he says
with a grin.
WINDASS’S TRAVELS
Hull City £150,000 Jun 19, 2007 - 26 games, 10 goals
Hull City loan Jan 17, 2007 to May 8, 2007 - 18 games, 8 goals
Bradford free Jul 1, 2003 to Jun 19, 2007 - 155 games, 66 goals
Sheff Utd free Jan 15, 2003 to Jul 1, 2003 - 18 games, 3 goals
Sheff Utd loan Nov 14, 2002 to Dec 17, 2002 - 4 games, 3 goals
Sheff Wed loan Dec 6, 2001 to Dec 28, 2001 - 2 games, 0 goals
Middlesbro £600,000 Mar 8, 2001 to Jan 15, 2003 - 46 games, 3
goals
Bradford £950,000 Mar 4, 1999 to Mar 8, 2001 - 88 games, 20 goals
Oxford £475,000 Jul 9, 1998 to Mar 4, 1999 - 38 games, 18 goals
Aberdeen £700,000 Dec 1, 1995 to Jul 9, 1998 - 93 games, 34 goals
Hull City free Oct 24, 1991 to Nov 30, 1995 - 176 games, 57 goals
